Wintering on the Peace 10g

considerable proportion of the natives, in the course of suc-
cessive debauches, were killed by their relatives in their
drunken frolics. In a four-year period an official of the
company records seven killings of this nature in a tribe of
forty. Mackenzie, though he frequently dispenses the fiery
beverage among his people, does not describe what afterwards
happened, but that the same scenes followed upon those occa-
sions as when others treated the native population to a
regale may be taken for granted.

In 1808 Wilberforce sponsored a bill in the British Parlia-
ment prohibiting the use of liquor among the Indians, but
this was opposed by a petition from the North-West Company
which defended its policy of supplying the Indians with
liquor on the plea of necessity. ‘This company used at its
posts an average of ten thousand gallons per annum, though
in the year 1785, when Mackenzie himself entered the
field on an independent venture of his own, the returns
show that they used fifty thousand gallons of liquor in the
ordinary course of business.1 ‘There were only a thousand
servants and partners in the company, and since, as one of
the officials writes, ““we take a drink once a week and get
drunk perhaps once in seven years,” there must have been a
very large amount of liquor for annual distribution among
the natives.

An unbiased history of the fur-companies would reveal
to an astonished public scenes of debauchery among the
native population, and the servants and partners of the com-
panies as well, that would amaze those who have been
accustomed to regard the ‘‘ Wolves of the North” as Christian
gentlemen, devoted entirely to “plain living and high think-
ing.” But this narrative is chiefly concerned with Macken-
zie the explorer, and therefore cannot take cognisance of

‘Davidson, Gordon Charles, Ph,D., The Norih-West Company, p. 24.