Another reason that the Trade and Intercourse Act was so ineffectual at Fort Wayne was the fact that it was almost impossible to bring any offender to trial. The nearest court was at Winchester, Indiana, eighty miles away. A few of the better traders of the region formed a society to prohibit this illegal trade, but it soon dissolved when they found that their regulations could be inforced only by action of the courts. When John Hays, Indian agent at Fort Wayne reported that all the traders were guilty of selling whiskey to the Indians, and asked for special authority to deal with them as he saw fit, the government officials replied that they did not believe such authority was necessary. No action was taken. But these conditions at Fort Wayne prevailed to a large extent only during the periods of the annuity distributions. It is of interest, then, to quote the words of a man who made a “between-times” visit to the village. We find him in the person of Major Stephen H. Long, a topographical engineer, who visited the village in 1823. Wrote Major Long: At Fort Wayne we made a stay of three days, and to a person visiting the Indian country for the first time, this place offers many characteristic and singular features. The village is small—it has grown under the shelter of the fort.... The inhabitants are chiefly of Canadian origin, all more or less inbued with the Indian blood. The confusion of tongues, owing to the diversity of the Indian tribes which generally collect near a fort, make the traveler imagine himself in a real babel.[10] From the fort, a cart track angled down to the river bank and boatlanding, the bustling center of the town’s traffic in furs; and three embryonic roads, boggy and stump filled, let respectively northeast to Detroit, northwest to Fort Dearborn and Lake Michigan, and southeast to Fort Recovery, Ohio. Thomas Scattergood Teas, who visited the village in 1821, wrote The settlement at this place consisted of about thirty log cabins and two tolerably decent farm houses. The inhabitants are nearly all French-Canadians. The fort stands at the lower end of the village ... the barracks are occupied by the Indian agent, the Baptist missionary and some private families.[11]