Heckew. “I did say so; and, indeed, it was nothing else but a sapling burnt black by the firing of the woods.”
Indian. “Are you sure it was that?”
Heckew. “Yes; and I called to you at the time to look, how I was standing on it; and if you have yet a doubt, ask your son, and the two Indians with me, and they will tell you the same.”
Indian. “O strange! and I took it for an uncommonly large snake, moving as if it intended to bite me!—I cannot get over my surprise, that the liquor I drank, and, indeed, that was not much, should have so deceived me! but I think I have now discovered how it happens that Indians so often kill one another when drunk, almost without knowing what they are doing; and when afterwards they are told of what they have done, they ascribe it to the liquor which was in them at the time, and say the liquor did it. I thought that as I saw this time a living snake in a dead piece of wood, so I might, at another time, take a human being, perhaps one of my own family, for a bear or some other ferocious beast and kill him. Can you, my friend, tell me what is in the beson that confuses one so, and transforms things in that manner? Is it an invisible spirit? It must be something alive; or have the white people sorcerers among them, who put something in the liquor to deceive those who drink it? Do the white people drink of the same liquor that they give to the Indians? Do they also, when drunk, kill people, and bite noses off, as the Indians do? Who taught the white people to make so pernicious a beson?”
I answered all these questions, and several others that he put to me, in the best manner that I could, to which he replied, and our conversation continued as follows:
Indian. “Well, if, as you say, the bad spirit cannot be the inventor of this liquor; if, in some cases it is moderately used among you as a medicine, and if your doctors can prepare from it, or with the help of a little of it, some salutary besons, still, I must believe that when it operates as you have seen, the bad spirit must have some hand in it, either by putting some bad thing into it, unknown to those who prepare it, or you have conjurers who understand how to bewitch it.—Perhaps they only do so to that which is for the Indians; for the devil is not the Indians’ friend, because they will not worship him, as they do the good spirit, and therefore I believe he puts something into the beson, for the purpose of destroying them.”
Heckew. “What the devil may do with the liquor, I cannot tell; but I believe that he has a hand in everything that is bad. When the Indians kill one another, bite off each other’s noses, or commit such wicked acts, he is undoubtedly well satisfied; for, as God himself has said, he is a destroyer and a murderer.”
Indian. “Well, now, we think alike, and henceforth he shall never again deceive me, or entice me to drink his beson!”
It is a common saying with those white traders who find it their interest to make the Indians drunk, in order to obtain their peltry at a cheaper rate, that they will have strong liquors, and will not enter upon a bargain unless they are sure of getting it. I acknowledge that I have seen some such cases; but I could also state many from my own knowledge, where the Indians not only refused liquor, but resisted during several days all the attempts that were made to induce them even to taste it, being well aware, as well as those who offered it to them, that if they once should put it to their lips, such was their weakness on that score, that intoxication would inevitably follow.
I can, perhaps, offer a plausible reason why the Indians are so fond of spirituous drinks. The cause is, I believe, to be found in their living almost entirely upon fresh meats and green vegetables, such as corn, pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, cucumbers, melons, beans, &c., which causes a longing in their stomachs for some seasoning, particularly (as is often the case) when they have been a long time without salt. They are, on those occasions, equally eager for any acid substances; vinegar, if they can get it, they will drink in considerable quantities, and think nothing of going thirty or forty miles in search of cranberries whether in season or not. They also gather crab-apples, wild-grapes, and other acid, and even bitter-tasted fruits, as substitutes for salt, and in the spring they will peel such trees as have a sourish sap, which they lick with great avidity. When for a long time they have been without salt, and are fortunate enough to get some, they will swallow at a time a table-spoonful of that mineral substance, for which they say that they and their horses are equally hungry.