There can be little doubt that the redman once lived a noble and blameless life; that he was simple, honest and brave, that he had a regard for honor and a respect for a promise far exceeding that of most white men.

Think of the beautiful poetry and legends left by these silent men: men who were a part of the woods; men whose music was the sighing of the wind, the rustling of the leaf, the murmur of the brook; men whose simple joys were the chase of the stag, and the light in the dark eye of a maiden.
If we wish to find the highest type of the American Indian we must look for him before he was driven west by the land-seeking pioneer and before he was degraded by the rum-selling French trader.
The French claimed all the land watered by the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

The French Canadian was a restless, roaming adventurer and he found his vocation in the fur-trade.

This fur-trade engendered a strange class of men--bush-rangers they were called--whose work was to paddle the canoe along the lakes and streams and exchange their cheap rum for the valuable furs of the Indians.

To these men the Indians of the west owe their degradation.
These bush-rangers or coureurs-des-bois, perverted the Indians and sank into barbarism with them.
The few travellers there in those days were often surprised to find in the wigwams of the Indians men who acknowledged the blood of France, yet who had lost all semblance to the white man.