.... The traders that occupy the largest and most important space in the Indian country are the agents and engagees of the American Fur Trade Company. They entertain, as I know to be the fact, no sort of respect for our citizens, agents, officers or the Government, or its laws or general policy. After describing the "baneful influence of these persons," Hughes went on: The capital employed in the Indian trade must be very large, especially that portion which is employed in the annual purchase of whisky and alcohol into the Indian country for the purpose of trade with the Indians. It is not believed that the superintendent is ever applied to for a permit for the one-hundredth gallon that is taken into the Indian country. The whisky is sold to the Indians in the face of the [Government] agents. Indians are made drunk, and, of course, behave badly.... PROFIT AND ITS RESULTS. Not only, however, were the Indians made drunk with the express purpose of befuddling and swindling them,[80] but in the very commission of this act, an enormous profit was made on the sale of the whisky. Those who may be inclined to recoil with horror at the historic contemplation of this atrocity, will do well to remember that this was simply one manifestation of the ethics of the trading class--the same class which formed and ruled government, made and interpreted laws, and constituted the leading, superior and exclusive groups of high society. Hughes continued: I am informed that there is but little doubt, but a clear gain of more than fifty thousand dollars has been made this year on the sale of whisky to the Indians on the river Missouri; the _prices are from $25 to $50 a gallon_. Major Morgan, United States sutler at Cantonment Leavenworth, says that thousands of gallons of alcohol has passed that post during the present year, destined for the Indian country.[81] These official reports were supplemented by another on the same subject from William M. Gordon to General William Clark, at that time Superintendent of Indian Affairs. In his report, Gordon, writing from St. Louis, pointed out that, "whisky, though not an authorized article, has been a principal, and I believe a very lucrative one for the last several years."[82]