There was great need of reform; for a demon of drunkenness seemed to possess these unhappy tribes. Nevertheless, with all their rage for brandy, they sometimes showed in regard to it a self-control quite admirable in its way. When at a fair, a council, or a friendly visit, their entertainers regaled them with rations of the coveted liquor, so prudently measured out that they could not be the worse for it, they would unite their several portions in a common stock, which they would then divide among a few of their number, thus enabling them to attain that complete intoxication which, in their view, was the true end of all drinking. The objects of this singular benevolence were expected to requite it in kind on some future occasion.
A drunken Indian with weapons within reach, was very dangerous, and all prudent persons kept out of his way. This greatly pleased him; for, seeing everybody run before him, he fancied himself a great chief, and howled and swung his tomahawk with redoubled fury. If, as often happened, he maimed or murdered some wretch not nimble enough to escape, his countrymen absolved him from all guilt, and blamed only the brandy. Hence, if an Indian wished to take a safe revenge on some personal enemy, he would pretend to be drunk; and, not only murders but other crimes were often committed by false claimants to the bacchanalian privilege.
In the eyes of the missionaries, brandy was a fiend with all crimes and miseries in his train; and, in fact, nothing earthly could better deserve the epithet infernal than an Indian town in the height of a drunken debauch. The orgies never ceased till the bottom of the barrel was reached. Then came repentance, despair, wailing, and bitter invective against the white men, the cause of all the woe. In the name of the public good, of humanity, and above all of religion, the bishop and the Jesuits denounced the fatal traffic.
Their case was a strong one; but so was the case of their opponents. There was real and imminent danger that the thirsty savages, if refused brandy by the French, would seek it from the Dutch and English of New York. It was the most potent lure and the most killing bait. Wherever it was found, thither the Indians and their beaver-skins were sure to go, and the interests of the fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound up with it. Nor was this all, for the merchants and the civil powers insisted that religion and the saving of souls were bound up with it no less; since, to repel the Indians from the Catholic French, and attract them to the heretic English, was to turn them from ways of grace to ways of perdition. * The argument, no doubt, was dashed largely with hypocrisy in those who used it; but it was one which the priests were greatly perplexed to answer.
In former days, when Canada was not yet transformed from a mission to a colony, the Jesuits entered with a high hand on the work of reform.
* “Ce commerce est absolument nécessaire pour attirer les
sauvages dans les colonies françoises, et par ce moyen leur
donner les premières teintures de la foy.” Mémoire de
Colbert, joint à sa lettre à Duchesneau du 24 Mai, 1678.
It fared hard with the culprit caught in the act of selling brandy to Indians. They led him, after the sermon, to the door of the church; where, kneeling on the pavement, partially stript and bearing in his hand the penitential torch, he underwent a vigorous flagellation, laid on by Father Le Mercier himself, after the fashion formerly practised in the case of refractory school-boys. * Bishop Laval not only discharged against the offenders volleys of wholesale excommunication, but he made of the offence a “reserved case;” that is, a case in which the power of granting absolution was reserved to himself alone. This produced great commotion, and a violent conflict between religious scruples and a passion for gain. The bishop and the Jesuits stood inflexible; while their opponents added bitterness to the quarrel by charging them with permitting certain favored persons to sell brandy, unpunished, and even covertly selling it themselves. **
* Mémoire de Dumesnil, 1671.
** Lettre de Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, 24 Oct., 1693.
After speaking of the excessive rigor of the bishop, he
adds: “L’on dit, et il est vrai, que dans ces temps si
fâcheux, sous prétexte de pauvreté dans les familles,
certaines gens avoient permission d’en traiter, je crois
toujours avec la réserve de ne pas enivrer.” Dumesnil,
Mémoire de 1671, says that Laval excommunicated all brandy-
sellers, “à l’exception, néanmoins, de quelques particuliers
qu’il voulait favoriser.” He says further that the bishop
and the Jesuit Ragueneau had a clerk whom they employed at
500 francs a year to trade with the Indians, paying them in
liquors for their furs; and that for a time the
ecclesiastics had this trade to themselves, their severities
having deterred most others from venturing into it. La
Salle, Mémoire de 1678, declares that, “Ils (les Jésuites)
refusent l’absolution a ceux qui ne veulent pas promettre de
n’en plus vendre, et s’ils meurent en cet état, ils les
privent de la sépulture ecclésiastique: au contraire, ils so
permettent à eux mesmes sans aucune difficulté ce mesme
trafic, quoyque toute sorte de trafic soit interdite à tous
les ecclésiastiques par les ordonnances du Roy et par une
bulle expresse du Pape.” I give these assertions as I find
them, and for what they are worth.
Appeal was made to the king, who, with his Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience on one side, and Colbert, guardian of his worldly interests on the other, stood in some perplexity. The case was referred to the fathers of the Sorbonne, and they, after solemn discussion, pronounced the selling of brandy to Indians a mortal sin. * It was next referred to an assembly of the chief merchants and inhabitants of Canada, held under the eye of the governor, intendant, and council, in the Chateau St. Louis. Each was directed to state his views in writing. The great majority were for unrestricted trade in brandy; a few were for a limited and guarded trade; and two or three declared for prohibition. ** Decrees of prohibition were passed from time to time, but they were unavailing. They were revoked, renewed, and revoked again. They were, in fact, worse than useless; for their chief effect was to turn traders and coureurs de bois into troops of audacious contrabandists. Attempts were made to limit the brandy trade to the settlements, and exclude it from the forest country, where its regulation was impossible; but these attempts, like the others, were of little avail. It is worthy of notice that, when brandy was forbidden everywhere else, it was permitted in the trade of Tadoussac, carried on for the profit of government. ***
* Délibération de la Sorbonne sur la Traite des Boissons, 8
Mars, 1676.
** Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée tenue au Château de St.
Louis de Québec, le 26 Oct., 1676, et jours suivants.
*** Lettre de Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, 24 Oct., 1693.
In the course of the quarrel a severe law passed by the
General Court of Massachusetts against the sale of liquors
to Indians was several times urged as an example to be
imitated. A copy of it was sent to the minister, and is
still preserved in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.