Arrived at his new seat of authority,
he found a pleasant, freshly fortified town whose white
population had grown to fifteen hundred, including a considerable
number of English-speaking settlers. The country round was
overrun with traders, who cheated and cajoled the Indians without
conscience; the natives, in turn, were a nondescript lot, showing
in pitiful manner the bad effects of their contact with the
whites.
As related by a contemporary chronicler--a Pennsylvanian who
lived for years among the western tribes--an Indian hunting party
on arriving at Detroit would trade perhaps a third of the
peltries which they brought in for fine clothes, ammunition,
paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg of brandy would be
purchased, and a council would be held to decide who was to get
drunk and who to keep sober. All arms and clubs were taken away
and hidden, and the orgy would begin. It was the task of those
who kept sober to prevent the drunken ones from killing one
another, a task always hazardous and frequently unsuccessful,
sometimes as many as five being killed in a night.
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