“Men and women have been drinking a match for three days and nights, during which it has been drink, fight—­drink, fight—­drink, and fight again—­guns, axes, and knives being their weapons—­very disagreeable.”

* * * * *

“Mithanasconce was so troublesome (in drink) that we were obliged to tie him with ropes to prevent his doing mischief.  He was stabbed in the back in three different places about a month ago.  His wounds were still open, and had an ugly appearance; in his struggling to get loose they burst out afresh and bled a great deal.  We had much trouble to stop the blood, as the fellow was insensible to pain or danger; his only aim was to bite us.  We had some narrow escapes, until we secured his mouth, and then he fell asleep.”

* * * * *

“Some Red Lake Indians having traded here for liquor which they took to their camp, quarrelled amongst themselves.  One jumped on another and bit his nose off.  It was some time before the piece could be found; but, at last, by tumbling and tossing the straw about, it was recovered, stuck on, and bandaged, as best the drunken people could, in hopes it would grow again” (Alexander Henry, jun.).

* * * * *

As regards drunkenness, several authors among the early explorers declared that the French Canadian voyageurs were more disagreeable when drunk even than the Amerindians, for their quarrels were noisier and more deadly.  “Indeed I had rather have fifty drunken Indians in the fort than sixty-five drunken Canadians”, writes Alexander Henry in 1810.  And yet the extracts I have given from his journal show that it would be hard to beat the Amerindians for disagreeable ferocity when intoxicated.

Henry, summing up his experiences before leaving for the Pacific coast in 1811, writes these remarks in his diary:—­

“What a different set of people they would be, were there not a drop of liquor in the country!  If a murder is committed among the Saulteurs (Ojibwes), it is always in a drinking match.  We may truly say that liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west.  Great bawling and lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor to wash away grief.”

As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them.  But in Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated.  Between the middle of the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had destroyed the native population of Beothik Indians.