White man's wicked water : the alcohol trade and prohibition in Indian country, 1802-1892
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Authors
Unrau, William E., 1929-2016
Advisors
Issue Date
1996
Type
Keywords
Indians of North America Alcohol use , Indians of North America History , Indians of North America Social conditions , Liquor industry History , Prohibition History
Citation
Unrau, William E. White Man�s Wicked Water: The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country, 1802-1892. University Press of Kansas, 1996.
Abstract
Table of Contents
In White Man's Wicked Water, Unrau tells the compelling story of how an alcohol-sodden society introduced drink to the Indians. That same society then instituted futile policies to control the flow of alcohol to tribes who, as one superintendent put it, "have not the moral force to resist temptation." Unrau dispels that racial-deficiency theory and debunks the belief that prohibition was carried out by well-intended reformers. Unrau shows that, contrary to the perniciously false image of the innately "depraved savage," Indians actually learned their "uncivil" behavior by emulating in hopes of accommodating "civilized" men. Indian inebriation in the nineteenth century, he shows, essentially mimicked the habits of white Americans who-spurred on by prevailing attitudes and federal law-were aspiring to integrate the natives into the cultural mainstream. Prohibition zealots, intent upon soothing white anxieties, were far more concerned with this goal than with stemming the flow of alcohol. Scholars have often viewed the sale of alcohol to Native Americans as a ploy by Euro-Americans to trick them into unfair land and trade deals. But Unrau makes it clear that alcoholic consumption by Native Americans was the inevitable consequence of cultural confluence, not of conscious white subversion. To support his arguments, Unrau has closely examined previously neglected records pertaining to illicit alcohol trafficking, its tie to the land-cession/annuity-distribution system, and the influence of federal subsidy to non-Indian, western development. From these sources, he provides surprising new insights into alcohol use and abuse in relation to Indian removal. Unrau also sheds new light on nineteenth-century prohibition attempts in the trans-Missouri West (primarily Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma) up to the absolutist prohibition law of 1892.
Description
Publisher
University Press of Kansas