Concerning the Indians, the writer here quoted said,[332] that the introduction of rum and whisky amongst them was a curse which they owed entirely to the whites, and that it has been a powerful agent in their destruction and demoralisation. At all councils it is freely distributed, either before or pending negotiations, and “hundreds,” he said, “breathe their last with the rum bottle in their hands.” No wonder that the poor Indians were impelled to avenge their wrongs and thus to accelerate their doom. The ordinary canons of civilisation and morality seem to have been completely ignored by the white man in his negotiations with the redskin. Throughout the civilised world a contract made between two men one of whom is intoxicated has no validity in law, and cannot be enforced, but it was not so in the white man’s dealings with the savage. There the rum bottle was the substitute for the pen which signed the contract, and the musket or rifle was the agent employed to compel its fulfilment. A more beneficent system exists at present, but it is too late, for this is the condition of the Indian of to-day, and of his relations with the white man, as described by an intelligent and impartial observer:—“Spirits and strong liquors of all descriptions are contraband in the Indian territory, and vigorous measures are taken to carry out the prohibition; but, in spite of the law, it is not impossible to obtain liquor at the settlements situated in the vicinity of the railways. At those places, however, that are under the immediate control of the military authorities, the execution of the law is strictly enforced.” But the same writer tells us that they (the Indians) “have acquired all the vices and debaucheries of the so-called civilised people (men who have escaped the meshes of the law, or reprobates who could do no good in civilised society) with whom they have come into contact, acquiring few of the virtues of civilisation, whilst the many noble qualities that adorn the character of the savage are sunk and forgotten in their attempts to imitate their white conquerors.”[333] This is what drink and civilisation has done for the American Indian, but we must now return to his “white conquerors.”