In those days when the Company had the country under their exclusive sway, no cheap, shoddy goods were imported in the trading forts. Durability was looked for, not flashy finery. These came with the opening of the country and the advent of peddlers and unprincipled traders. We see the results of this today at any of the stations where our transcontinental train stops. Bands of the once well-conditioned, well-clothed, sober Indians are now replaced by ragged, emaciated, vice marked descendants of these, hanging around in idleness, an object lesson of what so-called civilization has brought them to. Except in some far back isolated posts, the Indian's word goes for nothing. They have lost the once binding obligation that their promise carried and the trader can no longer depend on them. As the writer knew the pagan and uncivilized Indian some forty years ago he was truthful, sober, honest and moral. I won't say the white man has willfully made him otherwise than what he was, but as a fact he is. It has been a transformation in which the Indian has fallen to most of the white man's vices and adopted very few of his virtues. My experience has been over considerable of the country and amongst several tribes and my observation has told me that about the Mission centers (be the denomination what it may) is to be found the greatest debauchery and rascality in the Indian and that right at their very gates. Prior to 1821 both the Hudson's Bay Company and that of the Northwest gave liquor to the Indians, but after the coalition of the two companies a wise policy was inaugurated and liquor was stopped thruout the vast country. The Company's people saw that liquor to the Indian was laying the seeds of illness and death and impoverishing his family, but the Company did not take away the grog (which had been given in most cases as a bonus on their hunt) without giving an equivalent in value and the cash value of liquor to each hunter entitled to any was given in the shape of any goods he chose from the trade shop. Even the servants who had heretofore received a Saturday night allowance of spirits, received in lieu thereof two pounds sterling per annum added to their wages. The Indian in the olden days seldom stayed about the posts longer than to barter his furs and got back to his hunting grounds with as little delay as possible. They were fish and flesh eaters, almost every river and lake abounded with the former and the surrounding woods furnished the latter and the Indian got his living from day to day with very little exertion. The Indian has no idea of hording up the treasures of this world and in only two instances did I know one to have a bank account. They have an implicit and abiding faith in kind providence to supply their wants as they go thru life and reason that what is sufficient for them will be forthcoming for their sons and daughters.