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The whiskey trade was a constant issue for the government and recurs both in official correspondence and in the newspapers of the day. Although the authorities shut down many of the traders who peddled alcohol to the Indigenous people, unofficially they also allowed some traders to continue. One of the earliest journalists in British Columbia, David Williams Higgins, has described the whiskey trade at length in Tales of a Pioneer Journalist: From Gold Rush to Government Street in 19th Century Victoria.
The destructive impact of alcohol within Stó:lō society in the 1860s is touched on by Keith Thor Carlson in The Power of Place, The Problem of Time: Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism. The author describes the situation from the perspective of the Oblate missionaries and outlines their efforts to assist the Stó:lō in counteracting the whiskey trade by setting up “sobriety” societies and assigning Stó:lō “watchmen” and “captains” to protect their communities.
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