"
In these statements, contemporary records bear him out. There is
no sadder reading than the many pleas addressed by the Indian
chiefs to various officials to stop the importation of liquor
into their country, alleging the debauchment of their young men
and warning the white man, with whom they desired to be friends,
that in an Indian drink and blood lust quickly combined.
Adair's book was published in London in 1775. He wrote it to be
read by Englishmen as well as Americans; and some of his
reflections on liberty, justice, and Anglo-Saxon unity would not
sound unworthily today. His sympathies were with "the principles
of our Magna Charta Americana"; but he thought the threatened
division of the English-speaking peoples the greatest evil that
could befall civilization. His voluminous work discloses a man
not only of wide mental outlook but a practical man with a sense
of commercial values. Yet, instead of making a career for
himself among his own caste, he made his home for over thirty
years in the Chickasaw towns; and it is plain that, with the
exception of some of his older brother traders, he preferred the
Chickasaw to any other society.
The complete explanation of such men as Adair we need not expect
to find stated anywhere--not even in and between the lines of his
book.
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