1891-92. ] EARLY TRADERS. 267 
from the southward who were neither hampered by moral nor legislative 
restraints. An item in the Annual Register for 1767 informs us that 
“Messrs. Ferguson and Atkins, two Indian traders had lately returned 
(to Mobile,) from a town eleven hundred miles up the great river Missis- 
sippi where they had each married the daughters of an Indian chief and 
thereby established a mart for beaver’s fur, deerskins, &c., from which 
great advantages were expected.” 
On the other hand, Sir William Johnson in the light of long personal 
experience as a trader insisted earnestly on the necessity of regulating 
the traffic. His correspondence abounds with complaints “of the 
irregularity with which trade is conducted through the want of sufficient 
powers to regulate it.” The picture he drew of the conduct and character 
of many of the traders is unpleasing but instructive. ‘When the Indians 
are assembled on public affairs,” he wrote to the Earl of Hillsborough on 
the 14th Aug. 1770, “there are always traders secreted in the neighbor- 
hood, and some publicly, who not only make them intoxicated during the 
time intended for public business but afterwards get back the greater part 
of their presents in exchange for spirituous liquors, thereby defeating the 
intentions of the Crown and causing then to commit many murders and 
disorders as well among the inhabitants as themselves.” In a speech 
addressed to him on the 4th of March, 1768, the Indian spokesman had 
said — “the rum-bottles hang at every door to steal our lands and instead 
of the English protecting us as we thought they would do, they employed 
superior cunning to wrong us; they murdered our people in Pennsylvania 
and Virginia and all over the country, and the traders begin more and 
more to deceive.” 
Again in 1772, Johnson wrote:—“ The Indians complain of the great 
cargoes of rum which of late in particular are sent among them to their 
ruin as they call it, and beg that it may not be suffered to come near their 
castles or hunting-grounds. . . . . Thecomplaints made daily by the 
Indians of the abuses and irregularities of trade are many and grievous 
and doubtless will be made use of by them in case of a defection in any 
quarter. . . . . The common ttraders or factors who are generally 
rapacious, ignorant, and without principle, pretending to their merchants 
that they cannot make good returns unless they are at liberty to go 
where and do asthey please. . . . . They are daily guilty of the 
most daring impositions. ... . . Most of these evils result from the 
rapid intrusions on Indian lands and the unrestrained irregularities in 
trade to which I see no period from any steps that are likely to be taken 
in the colonies.” 
These complaints referred particularly to the older provinces where 
