Early history of North Dakota: essential outlines of American history

• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Cornell University Library
• Subjects: Arctic; Flagstaff; Fond du Lac; Fond-du-Lac; Indian
• Online Access: http://cdm16921.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ndsl-books/id/52863

46 EARLY HISTORY OF NORTH DAKOTA in the home of the man who is addicted to its use, his business will fail, his home will be broken, and his parents, his wife and daughter^ may expect to go in sorrow to their graves. There is no evil known to man that can or does bring the distress to the human race that follows its unrestrained use. Perhaps it has been, and may be used to some advantage in medicine and mechanic arts, but there is absolutely no compensation that it has given or can give the world, for the ruin it has wrought in its use as a beverage. A noble race that peopled the plains and forests of North America have been nearly destroyed by its use and the white man's greed for gold, and countless thousands, aye, millions of white men have been unfitted for life's duties, not to speak of the murders and suicides, and of the miserable wrecks in the hospitals for the insane and in the penitentiaries and jails. The flagstaff for Fort Pembina, a single oak stick, "seventy-five feet without splicing," was erected November 28, 1801, and at the raising the men were given "two gallons of high wines, four fathoms of tobacco, and some flour and sugar, to make merry." But it was not alone the aborigines who exceeded the bounds of sobriety, for it is written, that on New Year's day the men of the X. Y. Com-pany and the Hudson's Bay Company came over to Fort Pembina, and the manager treated the company assembled to "two gallons of alcohol, five fathoms of tobatco and some flour and sugar, the neighbors and everybody else of both sexes and all classes losing their senses, and according to the narrator, 'becoming more troublesome than double their number of Indians.' " Good drinking water was scarce on the hunt and in the midst of the winter of 1801-02 (February 28th), Henry returned from hunting almost famished, and declared that "a draught of water was the sweetest beverage he ever drank." Of the Indian when not degenerated by the use of intoxicants it may be said there is no selfishness in him. His anger and his appetite in those days were uncontrollable, but there is no human love stronger than his for home and kindred, and he seldom forgot to recognize "discretion" as "the better part of valor," and for that he has been called cowardly. No matter what the Indian's prospect for success in battle might be, the moment that he realized that his women and children were in danger he would retire. Their protection was his first con-sideration. Aside from that his creed was a life for a life, a scalp for a scalp. If the Indians traveled a thousand miles, enduring privation and dangers that were appalling, it was for scalps to recompense for similar losses. It was not the love of bloodshed, or for the wanton destruction of human life. It was for revenge, none the less sweet because indulged by the untutored tribesmen. NORTH-WEST AND X. Y. CONSOLIDATION In 1805 Hugh McGillis, partner in the North-West Company, had charge of the Fond du Lac district, with trading posts at every available point on the south side of Lake Superior, across the country to the Mississippi River, up that stream to its source, and down on the Red River. The company had extended its sphere of activity even to the very center of the Louisiana purchase; they were reaching out to the headwaters of the Missouri River, and pushing their way on to the Columbia and to the Arctic seas. Internet Archive