We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,569,596.41 | Books Available: 794,845 | Members Online: 225

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - White Man's Wicked Water: The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country, 1802-1892

White Man's Wicked Water The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country 18021892
Author: William E. Unrau

"The inordinate indulgence of Indians in spiritous liquors is one of the most deplorable consequences which has resulted from their intercourse with civilized man." --Governor Lewis Cass, Michigan Territory, 1827 — "Often I have been compelled to ask myself, 'Who is the civilized and who is the savage?' Their principal vice... more »s are emphatically our vices. If they get drunk it is upon our whiskey.... [A]nd yet we claim to be 'civilized' and freely deal out to them the epithet 'savage.'" --The Reverend William H. Goode, reflecting on his early 19th-century sojourn in Indian Country

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.

ISBN-13: 9780700609642
ISBN-10: 0700609644
Publication Date: 6/1996
Pages: 180
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Americas >> Native American >> General & Post-Columbus
History >> Americas >> United States >> 19th Century >> General
Health, Fitness & Dieting >> Addiction & Recovery >> Alcoholism

Back to the Top ↑

Search - White Man's Wicked Water: The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country, 1802-1892

Loading...