An excerpt from Myers: Quest for Trade
Debauching the Indians with Brandy
The principal means used in trading with the Indians was in debauching them with brandy, and then swindling them of their furs. This abuse became so notorious that on April 17, 1664, the Sovereign Council issued a decree prohibiting bartering or giving intoxicating drinks to the Indians.5 This decree was called forth
by the consequences of debauching an innocent race, hitherto immune from the knowledge of liquor, and the demoralization, atrocities and conflicts following in its wake. The traders ranging the woods, however, were far away from the reach of enforcing officials, and continued their debauching process.
On November 10, 1668, pleading as an excuse that the freedom of sale of strong drink would cause less demoralization than a restraint impossible to enforce, although admitting the pernicious influence of drink upon the Indians,
the Sovereign Council gave permission to all Frenchmen inhabiting Canada to sell and deliver strong drinks to the Indians.6 A proclamation the next year forbade the lying in wait for the Indians in the woods or going to meet them, and prohibited drunkenness among the Indians.7
Immorality, Theft and Murder
“ What does the most harm here,” wrote Mother Mary of the Incarnation, Quebec, in 1669, “ is the traffic in wine and brandy. We preach against those who give these liquors to the savages ; and yet many reconcile their consciences to the permission of this thing. They go into the woods and carry drinks to the savages in order to get their furs for nothing when they are drunk. Immorality, theft, and murder ensue. . . . We had not yet seen the French commit such crimes, and we can only attribute the cause of them to the pernicious traffic in brandy.”8
Writing on November 2, 1672, to Colbert, Minister of Finance under Louis XIV, Governor Frontenac outlined the measures he had taken to keep in check the
“ ever-active ambition of the Jesuits ” and he continued, “ But whatever pretense they manifest, they will not extend that language [French], and to speak frankly to you, they think as much about the conversion of Beaver as of souls ;
for the majority of their missions are pure mockeries . . .”9 In another letter to Colbert, in 1674, Frontenac told of his difficulties with the Jesuits whom he had spoken to in vain regarding the state of the missions, “ they having declared to me that they were here only to endeavor to instruct the Indians, or rather to get Beavers, and not to be parish priests to the French.”10
But the Governor was himself accused by Duchesenau, — appointed on May 30, 1675, Intendant of Police, Justice and Finance in Canada, — of being interested in the Indian trade illicitly ; that he had intermediaries to extort and receive presents and bribes of packages of beaver of large value which his henchmen disposed of for him.11
The letters were written, therefore they stand as documentation as to what was taking place at this point in Canadian History.
