It was a false theory, from the start, that ardent spirits was one of the articles necessary to trade.  Congress entertained an opinion of its injuriousness to the character of the Indians, and passed laws excluding it.  This constituted another class of duties of the agents who were entrusted with their execution, and required them to “search packages,” and to judge of the probabilities of all persons applying for licenses keeping the laws.

To expect that this mixed body of foreigners would exert any very favorable political influence on the mass of Indian minds in the north-west, was indulging a hope not very likely to be fulfilled.  They were employed to glean the Indian lodges of furs, and expected to make good returns to their employers at Michilimackinack; and, if they kept the ground of neutrality with respect to governments, it was considered as exempting them from censure.

The great body of the Indians in the upper lakes, and throughout the north-west, extending to the sources of the Mississippi, were averse to the American rule.  Many of them had been embodied to fight against the Americans, who were successively met by ambuscade, surprise, or otherwise, as at Chicago, at Michilimackinack, Brownstown, River Raisin, Maumee, Fort Harrison, and other places.  They had been assembled in large bodies, by the delusive prophesyings of Elksatawa, and by the not less delusive promises of the agents of the British Indian Department, on the lines, that the Americans were to be driven back to the line of the Illinois, if not of the Ohio—­an old and very popular idea with the lake Indians from early days.

The lake Indians had suffered severely from the war, chiefly from the camp fevers and irregularities.  They had finally been defeated—­their great war captain killed, their false prophet driven from the Wabash into Canada; and, to crown the whole, were themselves abandoned, one and all, by their allies, at the treaty of Ghent.  Many never returned to the homes of their fathers—­entire villages were depopulated, and their sites overgrown in a few years with shrubbery.  Those who came back from the active campaign of 1814, were sullen and desponding.  As an evidence of what they had suffered, and how completely they had been abandoned by their allies, the transactions of the first treaty at Springwells, at the close of the war, may be referred to.  The tribes were literally starving and in rags.

The agents of the Executive and Governors, who were appointed to conduct their intercourse after the war, were, in reality, called to execute a high class of diplomatic functions, second only in general importance to those required at the prime courts of Europe.  The several classes of duties which have been described denote, to some extent, in what this importance consisted.  Eighteen years had now elapsed since this important commercial company had furnished traders to the discomfited tribes.  During twelve years of this period I had had charge of the intercourse with by far the largest and most unfriendly and warlike of the tribes; and, when I saw that Mr. Astor had disconnected himself from the concern which he had organized; and that, to some extent, new agents and actors were called to the field, I felt anxious to be at my post, to supervise, personally, the intercourse act, and to see that no improper persons should enter the country.