BYM_Page_199

past originated in our yearly Meeting to introduce amongsome of the Indian Tribes bordering on your statethe most necessary acts of civil life, your Memorialistswere appointed by that Body to carry into effect thisdesirable object, and according proceeded to performthe service assigned them, but in the course of their effortsit was found that the quantities of spiritousLiquors with which those people were supplied byTraders &; others greatly counteracted every measuredevised to improve their situation, this beingabundantly confirmed in a speech deliveredto us by the Little Turtle the principal chief ofthe Miamis (an extract from which is herewithforwarded) your Memorialists in the year 1802 madea representation of the case to congress, whereuponthat Body, duly appreciating the magnitude ofthe evil, enacted a law authorising the Resident to prohibit the Tradersfrom carrying distilled Spirits into their countrythis being immediately done they were for a time precluded in a great measurefrom it, and the good effects soon became obviousin the general improvement amongst them.Sanguine hopes were now cherished that those unhappy people who had heretofore been a prey towant and distress would be induced to abandontheir precarious mode of life, and turn theirattention to agriculture and the arts of civillife for subsistence, which disposition seemed fora time increasingly to pervade them, but as thesettlements of white People approached their villagesand hunting camps, Spiritious Liquors were againbrought within their reach, and they are now in the habit of procuring large