Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America

by Peter C. Mancall

"An important work of scholarship, with powerful, concise, and objective insights into the complicated history of alcohol use among Native American peoples. Impeccably researched, cogently argued and clearly written, Peter Mancall's book is both an eye-opener for the lay reader and an invaluable resource for the expert." ― Michael Dorris, author of The Broken A Family's Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Alcohol abuse has killed and impoverished American Indians since the seventeenth century, when European settlers began trading rum for furs. In the first book to probe the origins of this ongoing social crisis, Peter C. Mancall explores the liquor trade's devastating impact on the Indian communities of colonial America. Mancall recounts how English settlers quickly found a market for alcohol among the Indians, and traffic in rum became a prominent source of revenue for the British Empire. In spite of the colonists' growing awareness that some Indians abused alcohol and that drinking threatened the stability of countless Indian villages already decimated by European diseases, they expanded the liquor trade into virtually every Indian community from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. In response, Indians created one of the most important temperance movements in American history, a movement that was nevertheless unable to halt the lucrative commerce. The author follows the trail of rum from the West Indian producers to the colonial distributors and on to the Indian consumers in the eastern woodlands. To discover why Indians participated in the trade and why they experienced such a powerful desire for alcohol, he addresses current medical views on alcoholism and reexamines the colonial era as a time when Indians were forming new strategies for survival in a world that had been radically changed. Finally, Mancall compares Indian drinking in New France and New Spain with that in the British colonies. Forever shattering the stereotype of the drunken Indian, Mancall offers a powerful indictment of English participation in the liquor trade and a new awareness or the trade's tragic cost for the American Indians.

Genres: History, Native American

268 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995

About the author

A 1981 graduate of Oberlin college, Peter Mancall attended graduate school at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in history in 1986. Mancall was a visiting Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College from 1986 to 1987. After teaching as a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard for two years, he took a position at the University of Kansas in 1989. In 2001, Mancall took a position at the University of Southern California, where he helped to create the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute in 2003, becoming its first director. He has served on the editorial board of several journals, and from 2007 to 2009 he was Associate Vice Provost for Research Advancement at the University of Southern California.

Mancall has written five books and edited eight others, and written around forty book reviews in such journals as American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Economic History, Journal of the Early Republic, and many others. His newest book, Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic was published by Basic Books on June 9, 2009. Mancall has accepted an offer to write Volume 1 of the Oxford History of the United States series covering American colonial history to c. 1680.

~from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C....

Reviews

[Nadienne Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe that I originally obtained this book whilst taking a Cis-Mississippi History class at the University (Cis-Mississippi means East Coast to the Mississippi River, versus Trans-Mississippi, which would be the Mississippi to the West Coast). It was sort of an ancillary, "required" text which I don't recall we ever opened, referenced, or otherwise utilized in the class, but nevertheless were required to purchase. Stumbling across it on my bookshelf a few weeks back, I decided to crack it open and read it.

It's an interesting bit of history regarding early Colonial activities vis a vis trade with Native Americans specifically regarding their exploitation through alcohol (although the author does show primary sources in which both sides are somewhat to blame and the European governments back home were essentially powerless to stop - although they tried). The author also illustrates the different approaches taken by the English, French, and Spanish colonists and authorities.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deadly Medicine is a scholarly attempt to describe and explain the impact which the use of alcohol had on Native Americans during the colonial era.  IMHO, it exhibits both relative strengths and weaknesses in its handling of such a complex topic.

In the former category I would include first and foremost that its author Peter Mancall deserves kudos for integrating a comprehensive review of a variety of sources of information.  Primary sources such as reports by missionaries and colonial assemblies and representatives provided a great deal of useful information.  Other primary sources included correspondence between various people as well as speeches given during those times. These included both EuroAmerican colonists and NA leaders. A fairly comprehensive selection of such secondary sources as academic journal articles and books written by historians as well as by anthropologists and clinicians knowledgeable about alcohol added depth and substance to the book.

Another strength was that Mancall organized the book into topics with clearly delineated subsections which taken together helped present his arguments in a clear and logical manner. The chapter on the similarities and differences between the British, the French, and the Spanish experiences with the introduction of alcohol to their NA populations was quite instructive because I have not come across that in any of my other readings on this topic. His final chapter on the legacies of the so called alcohol trade provided a concise and incisive conclusion. There were also two appendices and a section of 'notes on sources' in which he described the various documents, reports, books, etc which he used to write Deadly.

Finally, there was one map and a nice collection of reproductions of paintings, book covers, and other visual aids throughout the book.  These plus quotations by various people of the times, including some of the NA leaders, helped make it more engaging.

Deadly’s weaknesses included its prose style.  As with many academic treatises Mancall employed far too many complex, compound sentences for my taste.  There were many occasions when I felt the need to go back and reread a sentence to ensure that I had grasped its meaning. A simpler, more direct narrative style would have made it more readily readable.

At only 180 pages of narrative text it is a relatively brief book.  But there was a redundancy in the presentation at times.  How many examples of the rationalizations used by the British to justify its continuing use of alcohol to foster its commercial interests in the fur trade, etc does one need to read to get the point?

In the preface to Deadly Mancall tried to provide some useful anthropological and clinical information about alcohol use and abuse to give the average reader a context in which to understand what was to come in the following pages.  Perhaps it was a lack of space or depth of knowledge of these factors himself but there were some inaccuracies in this presentation.  As a psychologist with 30 years of experience in the field of alcohol and drug abuse treatment I can confidently assert that as of 1995 when the book was written it was not true that ‘most clinicians had stopped endorsing the disease model’ of alcoholism.  Even if one does not believe that alcoholism is caused by a disease one should readily acknowledge that such things as changes in tolerance, liver and  GI damage, etc are disease like states.  Many clinicians who practice in the field liken alcoholism to diabetes:  the excessive ingestion of something over time eventually leads to permanent changes in bodily functions which can lead to disease of basic organs  and even death if changes are not made in the person's lifestyle. It was also inaccurate to state that it had pretty much been decided by 1995 that there was no genetic link in the NA people to their abuse of alcohol. In fact, research is still going on about that issue today.

Although Deadly was quite informative, I do not feel comfortable giving it more than a 3 star rating because of the inaccuracies noted above. I would still be willing, however, to sample another of Mancall's books to see how that was done.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Deadly Medicine, Peter Mancall unravels the central role the alcohol trade played in Indian-European relations and the devastating affects it had on Native communities of the eastern woodlands of North America. Born out of the development of an Atlantic commercial network designed to fill the British government's coffers and strengthen the expansionist and "civilizing" mission of Imperial Britain, the bartering and selling of liquor helped to destabilize Indian communities with little experience with alcohol while creating more fuel for European stereotypes of savage Indians. Mancall successfully foregrounds Native perspectives on alcohol use as well. While liquor was a European good, Mancall highlights how Native communities successfully incorporated the substance within cultural, communal, and religious practices. While focusing on the liquor trade offers a study that highlights the intersections of culture and commerce amidst clashing societies, I do not believe that alcohol itself was the destructive substance Mancall makes it out to be. After all, Chapter Three highlights how Indians used alcohol in supervised and culturally restrained contexts, and that alcohol use could have been an escape from a world being devastated by disease, war, and forced migration. Alcohol itself did not destroy Native communities, rather it was a symptom of the ad hoc expansionism of British traders, colonists, and Imperial officials. Despite this issue, Mancall's book persuasively argues that the liquor trade, a commerce organically born out of the supplies and demands of the growing British Atlantic empire, brought Indians and Europeans commercially together while demonstrating the cultural chasm between the two. Through the trade in alcohol Europeans were able to reinforce stereotypes of Indian savageness and white superiority while Indians focused on the inability of British leaders to control the greed and trade of their own colonists.

[Zachary Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

"the alcohol trade's greatest impact was cultural. The liquor trade became a crucible of culture in North America. Its persistence signaled a victory of British American values over those of Indian country."

Peter Mancall attacks the notion that Natives are somehow biologically vulnerable to alcohol--the science on that claim is too ambiguous. Instead, he shows that it was a particular cultural reaction to alcohol among peoples who did not have exposure to it. Where Indians had previously consumed alcohol (Mexico), there were few problems with the introduction of European spirits. Mancall argues that alcohol exacerbated the Indian crisis, but did not create it. Indians incorporated the effects of alcohol into their culture (like how Europeans incorporated tobacco, chocolate). Alcohol was associated with spiritual power, mourning, and Mancall suggests, as a way of coping with change. Basically the impact of alcohol was ecological and dramatic since Europeans had long traditions of the "art of getting drunk" which took Indians, already going through massive change, a long time to adapt to it [they only saw use in getting thoroughly intoxicated]--and age of improvisation, acculturation.

Mancall thinks that the alcohol trade could have been stopped, I'm more skeptical. He shows how European and Indian merchants of alcohol took down temperance advocates because the profits were simply too high. After 1763, the British Imperial strategy of commerce binding the empire together further prevents chances of change. Europeans defended trade as a way of civilizing Indians by connecting them to western ways, which was ironic since the effects of alcohol on Indians was catastrophic--disturbing hunting patterns, social relations, and undermining Christian reform efforts.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deadly Medicine appropriately complexifies the relationship between Native Americans and white settlers on the East Coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This topic has been explained repeatedly by simple narratives blaming one side or the other, but Mancall explains the complex interactions between, for example, the British government who had an interest in limiting the alcohol trade but didn't want the fur trade going to the French, Native people of various nations who saw the detrimental effects of alcohol but were also traumatized by disease and displacement and liked alcohol's effect on their minds, and white settlers who feared Natives but relied on alcohol manufacture and sales to Natives to supplement their incomes. Mancall says that, while European settlers consumed what amounts to seven shots a day per person in the form of whiskey, rum, beer, small beer, and other spirits, Europeans, Southwestern tribes, and the Aztecs, among others who had known alcohol for centuries, had well-developed drinking cultures that frowned on indolence and exuberant public drunkenness. East Coast Natives, developing a drinking culture from nothing in a few decades, decided that the point of drinking alcohol was to get crazy drunk. Mancall cites a writer who says that if a group of Natives had alcohol but not enough to get everyone drunk, the group would choose certain people to get drunk while the others abstained. Getting shit-faced whenever alcohol was available as alcohol became increasingly available because of colonial sugar cultivation in the Caribbean did terrible things to Native Americans, and various groups and villages chose to abstain from alcohol, but the convenience of alcohol as a trade good meant that European settlers were constantly trying to circumvent the bans. Good book, heckin' interesting.