Drinking and Alcoholism

Drinking and Alcoholism

Sources

Alcohol Consumption. The poor health of most nineteenth-century Americans cannot be separated from their overwhelming consumption of alcoholic beverages. From 1790 to 1840 adult males drank nearly one-half pint of hard liquor each day, more than at any other time in American history. Because of the poor quality of water and milk, and the inordinate expense of tea and coffee, settlers in the West consumed mostly whiskey and cider. They drank these beverages in small amounts with family meals or in communal binge drinking, which generally led to public drunkenness. Settlers transported their drinking habits with them when they moved west of the Appalachians. Far removed from Eastern markets, settlers often used jugs of locally distilled liquor as the standard medium of exchange. Given the scarce opportunities for entertainment on the frontier, practically any occasion where two or three men gathered provided a reason for drinking. Soldiers, traders, fur trappers, and miners all imbibed to excess, and often suffered harsh physical consequences such as nausea, vomiting, and even death as a result. Drinking, it seems, became an integral part of Westerners’ daily activities, leading to gambling, fighting, and, not infrequently, murder. Today, twentieth-century Americans comprehend a little better the psychological effects of alcoholism. However, few understand or even acknowledge how Western settlement occurred in the context not only of constant sickness and disease but in an almost continual state of intoxication.

Whiskey. By 1800 whiskey replaced rum as Americans’ favorite beverage for a variety of reasons. The use of imported sugar in the distilling process made rum, like wine, more expensive than whiskey. During the late eighteenth century Scots-Irish settlers, who had long known how to distill grain, migrated into the western reaches of British America and produced their own whiskey. The opening of agricultural lands in the Upper Midwest during the early nineteenth century created a corn surplus that could then be used to make alcohol. Whiskey, unlike most agricultural products, could be hauled without fear of spoilage. Since settlers in the West were limited to local ingredients in their manufacture of medicines, locally grown foods dominated their diets. As a result they had a rather monotonous diet of pork and corn supplemented by distilled whiskey. Many adhered to the popular notion that alcohol served as an efficient preventive to disease; Westerners sometimes distributed free liquor during cholera and smallpox epidemics because of the belief that alcohol had curative power. Western pioneers also lived in isolation, far from towns and sometimes even far from family. The exhaustive work, loneliness, danger, worry, and even boredom that haunted their lives encouraged many to seek refuge in a whiskey jug, causing the West to develop a reputation for drunkenness that surpassed every other region of the country.

Indian Drinking. Native Americans in Mexico and the Southwest had fermented local plants to make alcohol long before European contact, which they used almost exclusively in religious rituals. However, most natives in North America first obtained alcohol through exchange with white traders. Some of the natives perhaps learned the joys and trials of liquor consumption from some of the heaviest drinkers in the world. Because of its imperishability, liquor became more valuable on the frontier than money, providing a medium of exchange between disparate cultures. Many Indians enjoyed the sense of power and liberation that accompanied drunkenness, even integrating its use into their ceremonies and rituals. At times, when natives experienced the devastation of epidemics, food shortages, and warfare, drinking habits increased, a characteristic response of cultures undergoing rapid transformation. Especially after the 1830s, when federal officials paid Indians in cash for lands they ceded to the government, some natives often bought alcohol rather than invest in agricultural improvements. Natives such as the Kansa even became regular suppliers to other Indians, providing alcohol to their neighbors the Osages and to nomadic bands along the Arkansas River. The image of Indians inebriated on government annuity payments stirred the resentment of whites, fueling the stereotype of “the drunken Indian” that had started during the colonial period.

Temperance Movements. Consumption of spirituous liquor peaked in the 1820s and then plummeted the following decade, reflecting the partial successes of temperance and other reform organizations. Originating in New England, antiliquor crusaders depicted drink as an agent of the devil. Clergymen and civic leaders held monthly meetings where they urged drunkards to “take the pledge” and become abstinent. These reformers cast drunkenness as a family problem since men under the influence often engaged in domestic violence or deprived their families of basic needs after squandering their resources on drink. On the frontier a wave of religious revivalism brought Methodist and Baptist missionaries to the West who exhorted the evils of “Demon Rum” at every opportunity. When more settlers entered the region and began establishing communities, the sense of isolation that had led to alcohol abuse faded amid a new popular movement for abstinence, reinforced by regular camp meetings and temperance sermons. Obviously such efforts never completely succeeded. As a result many reformers campaigned long and hard to convince state and federal legislators to enact prohibition laws. Overall, as churches, schools, and other institutions followed pioneers westward, alcohol use and its accompanying destructive effects tended to decrease.

Indian Prohibition. At the same time that voluntary temperance spread among white Americans, reformers, government officials, and tribal leaders preferred to prohibit alcohol availability altogether in order to combat Indian drinking. Many tribes passed their own legislation to prohibit alcohol use. The nineteenth century also had several federal laws that aimed to eliminate the liquor trade on reservations. An act of 1834 prohibited the introduction of alcohol into Indian country, and an 1847 revision mandated imprisonment for any person providing alcohol to Indians in Indian Territory and denied annuities to any tribe that failed to pledge themselves to abstinence. Yet such laws had power only on federal lands, not in areas under territorial or state governance. Further, these acts proved virtually impossible to enforce, and by maintaining the image of the drunken Indian, federal prohibition policies helped to sour Euro-American/Native American relations. As long as Indians desired drink, suppliers could always be located to sell them liquor, a lesson that Americans learned much more painfully a century later during the era of federal prohibition.

Sources

Peter C. Mancall, “Men, Women, and Alcohol in Indian Villages in the Great Lakes Region in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic, 15 (1995): 425-448;

Robert J. Miller and Maril Hazlett, “The ‘Drunken Indian’: Myth Distilled into Reality Through Federal Indian Alcohol Policy,” Arizona State Law Journal, 28 (1996): 223-298;

W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979);

William E. Unrau, White Man’s Wicked Water: The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country, 1802–1892 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996).