A CROW CAROUSAL   PICKED CROWS.



whose peculiar horrors were wholly indescribable, from the
inability of language to convey an adequate idea of its
hellish degradation. When a trader sold alcohol to a
village it was understood both by himself and the Indians
what was to follow. And to secure the trader against in-
jury a certain number of warriors were selected out of
the village to act as a police force, and to guard the trader
during the 'drunk' from the insane passions of his cus-
tomers. To the police not a drop was to be given.
  This being arranged, and the village disarmed, the ca-
rousal began. Every individual, man, woman, and child,
was permitted to become intoxicated. Every form of
drunkenness, from the simple stupid to the silly, the he-
roic, the insane, the beastly, the murderous, displayed
itself. The scenes which were then enacted beggared de-
scription, as they shocked the senses of even the hard-
drinking, license-loving trappers who witnessed them.
That they did not '" pcnt a moral" for these men, is the
strangest part of the whole transaction.
  When everybody, police excepted, was drunk as drunk
could be, the trader began to dilute his alcohol with water,
until finally his keg contained water only, slightly flavored
by the washings of the keg, and as they continued to
drink of it without detecting its weak quality, they finally
drank themselves sober, and were able at last to sum up
the cost of their intoxication. This was generally nothing
less than the whole property of the village, added to which
were not a few personal injuries, and usually a few mur-
ders. The village now being poor, the Indians were cor-
respondingly humble; and were forced to begin a system
-of reprisal by stealing and making war, a course for which
the traders were prepared, and which they avoided by
leaving that neighborhood. Such were some of the sins
and sorrows for which the American fur companies were



226