not too much ignominy be cast upon their memories; they were but
creatures of their time; and their time was not that "golden age," so
foolishly pictured, but a wild, tempestuous, contending struggle in
which every man was at the throat of his fellowman, and in a vortex
which statesmen, college professors, editors, political economists, all
praised and sanctified as "progressive civilization."

Like all other propertied interests, Astor's company regarded the law as
a thing to be rigorously invoked against the poor, the helpless and
defenseless, but as not to be considered when it stood in the way of the
claims, designs and pretensions of property. Superintendent McKenney
reported that all laws in the Indian country were inoperative--so much
dead matter. Andrew S. Hughes, reporting from St. Louis, Oct. 31, 1831,
to Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, wrote:

.... The traders that occupy the largest and most important space
in the Indian country are the agents and engagees of the American
Fur Trade Company. They entertain, as I know to be the fact, no
sort of respect for our citizens, agents, officers or the
Government, or its laws or general policy.

After describing the "baneful influence of these persons," Hughes went
on:

The capital employed in the Indian trade must be very large,
especially that portion which is employed in the annual purchase
of whisky and alcohol into the Indian country for the purpose of
trade with the Indians. It is not believed that the superintendent
is ever applied to for a permit for the one-hundredth gallon that
is taken into the Indian country. The whisky is sold to the
Indians in the face of the [Government] agents. Indians are made
drunk, and, of course, behave badly....

PROFIT AND ITS RESULTS.

Not only, however, were the Indians made drunk with the express purpose
of befuddling and swindling them,[80] but in the very commission of this
act, an enormous profit was made on the sale of the whisky. Those who
may be inclined to recoil with horror at the historic contemplation of
this atrocity, will do well to remember that this was simply one
manifestation of the ethics of the trading class--the same class which
formed and ruled government, made and interpreted laws, and constituted
the leading, superior and exclusive groups of high society. Hughes
continued:

I am informed that there is but little doubt, but a cle