CHAPTER XIV
A FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION
Despite the fact that nearly fifty years had passed since the Declaration of Independence, and ten years since the last peace treaty with England, nevertheless in 1825 the matter of trade on the western frontier was still unsettled, and there was a constant conflict between American and English interests there. For many reasons the Indians preferred the British trade. The chief of these was that England placed no restriction upon the use of intoxicating liquors in the Indian country, while it was entirely prohibited by American law and could be carried into the wilderness by American traders only at great hazard. The British traders naturally were very reluctant to give up the rich American field, and they constantly came in by way of Canada and the Lakes and across from the Hudson Bay country by way of the Assiniboine to the Missouri. Colonel Leavenworth was clearly of the opinion that the Rees had been incited to the massacre of General Ashley's men by English influence. This long-continued friction, and the Ree trouble, led the government to undertake once for all to keep the Englishmen out of our territory, and to secure all of the Indian trade for our merchants.
To this end, in the summer of 1825, General Atkinson
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