Native Americans and alcohol

[Os Cangaceiros]

I've always heard that the problems Native American communities in the USA have faced in regards to alcoholism came from their cultures not coming into contact with alcohol prior to European contact. But is this actually true? I mean, alcohol is pretty easy to make. And just south of the present day USA, in Mexico, the Aztecs knew of and consumed alcohol. (Although it's use was strictly controlled (http://hispaniccommission.org/index.php/en/the-aztecs-and-alcohol).)

Kind of an odd question I guess, but yeah...

[Ostrinski]

Yes, it is true that Native Americans (in North America at least) had not been exposed to alcohol at all prior to European settlement. Therefore they had absolutely no resistance to it and were affected very strongly by it. It was, and still is, quite destructive.

Of course, the reason that Europeans were so resistant to it was because of their filthy water system, in which sewage, dead animals, and a plethora of other things were just thrown in, rendering wine and rum safer to drink than water.

It should be noted that the Europeans quickly became aware of and subsequently exploited this weakness, as when they would go to trade with them, they would get them drunk and then proceed to screw them over with one sided trade deals. Returning empty handed, these natives of course were not recieved well intheir families or tribes. This is something that actually tore entire tribes apart, so yes it was a serious issue.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Yes, it is true that Native Americans (in North America at least) had not been exposed to alcohol at all prior to European settlement. Therefore they had absolutely no resistance to it and were affected very strongly by it. It was, and still is, quite destructive.

Of course, the reason that Europeans were so resistant to it was because of their filthy water system, in which sewage, dead animals, and a plethora of other things were just thrown in, rendering wine and rum safer to drink than water.

It should be noted that the Europeans quickly became aware of and subsequently exploited this weakness, as when they would go to trade with them, they would get them drunk and then proceed to screw them over with one sided trade deals. Returning empty handed, these natives of course were not recieved well intheir families or tribes. This is something that actually tore entire tribes apart, so yes it was a serious issue.
Just wanted to expand on the bold text. During colonial times beer was consumed 24-hours a day, with every meal and throughout the day, pretty much exclusively (except stronger spirits, which were to get drunk). It tended to be only 1-2% ABV, just enough alcohol to keep it sterile. This is also a low enough concentration to not dehydrate you (which begins around 3% IIRC). People drank it from childhood until they died. So colonial Americans had massive alcohol tolerances.

[citizen of industry]

Just wanted to expand on the bold text. During colonial times beer was consumed 24-hours a day, with every meal and throughout the day, pretty much exclusively (except stronger spirits, which were to get drunk). It tended to be only 1-2% ABV, just enough alcohol to keep it sterile. This is also a low enough concentration to not dehydrate you (which begins around 3% IIRC). People drank it from childhood until they died. So colonial Americans had massive alcohol tolerances.

That is fascinating. When and why did beer become stronger, like the 5 or 6% that is standard today? I'm guessing as water conditions became more sanitary, beer become more for recreation, and hence became stronger like the spirits. When did that occur?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

That is fascinating. When and why did beer become stronger, like the 5 or 6% that is standard today? I'm guessing as water conditions became more sanitary, beer become more for recreation, and hence became stronger like the spirits. When did that occur?
The lower strength was intentional. Ex, they had beer that was basically sterilized water, and they had beer and spirits strong enough to get them drunk and have fun.

I'm going from memory here, though; the actual strengths might be off (pretty sure it's estimated 1-2%) but it was much weaker than "fun" beer.

[Igor]

Yes, it is true that Native Americans (in North America at least) had not been exposed to alcohol at all prior to European settlement. Therefore they had absolutely no resistance to it and were affected very strongly by it. It was, and still is, quite destructive.


This is not true, actually. At least in Mexico and Southwestern USA lots of alcoholic beverages were used, but in most cultures it just wasn't accepted to get drunk in public and Aztecs for example even executed people for that. They often had a purpose in religious rituals, like Aztec octli which was made of sap. Corn-based beverages were pretty common, too, and I'm thinking at least Apache used a drink called tiswin for ceremonial purposes. As far as I know, this really was the standard among most Native American civilizations, from the southern USA to the Andes. Unfortunately I really don't know much anything about the less sedimentary cultures up north, but I wouldn't be surprised if they knew alcohol to some extent as well.

What Europeans introduced wasn't the fact that you can make ferment things to make alcohol, it was the culture of binge drinking. It probably has to do more with the poor quality of life in reserves, substance abuse and poverty do tend to walk hand in hand. It's not only alcohol that's causing problems in Native American communities, drug abuse is pretty prevalent as well.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I've always heard that the problems Native American communities in the USA have faced in regards to alcoholism came from their cultures not coming into contact with alcohol prior to European contact. But is this actually true? I mean, alcohol is pretty easy to make. And just south of the present day USA, in Mexico, the Aztecs knew of and consumed alcohol. (Although it's use was strictly controlled (http://hispaniccommission.org/index.php/en/the-aztecs-and-alcohol).)

Kind of an odd question I guess, but yeah...

I don't know one way or another about a scientific backing for or against, but I have also always thought that this argument was also a dodge on the issue of the reservation system in the US. I mean people who are poor tend to both turn to self-therapy to deal with shit and also have a harder time dealing with any negative consequences of drug or alcohol use since a DUI could fuck your life for a while and arrest can fuck it forever to some degree - especially if you are poor or a worker. On top of being in poor areas, reservations are also sometimes remote and neglected and so rural poor areas also tend to have high levels of alcohol abuse.

I'm totally open to a scientific argument that shows that there is a biological connection, but I tend to think that this idea is warped up in some victim-blaming. Is it really that people turned to alcohol and this disrupted traditional communities or was it that colonialism and forced removal and the pressured transition from community-based production to individual trade with colonialists (often trade for goods that couldn't be easily produced by people living in native American communities such as mass-produced alcohol) which upended life and then led to more alcoholism or breakdowns in native communities and traditions?

Like I said I don't know one way or another about the biological side, but I think the factors I describe are probably just as significant, if not ultimately the fundamental cause.

[Karabin]

The Aboriginal community in Australia has quite a strong problem with alcohol. I have often seen lone drunken Aboriginal men walking around the streets in the poorer part of the town that I live. I think that the causes for their addiction to alcohol and its effect on them would be quite similar to that of the Native Americans. The high alcohol consumption by Aboriginals has also caused great strife in their communities, and it has further stigmatized them from the community. I find it interesting that the Aztecs and other communities also consumed alcohol and controlled it strictly; its very similar to what the Aboriginals did in Australia Pre-Colonization too. Apparently, translations of the word "alcohol" equate to words like "bad" in English.

The Australian government doesn't really do much to help either. In the Northern Territory, the Australian government sent in the military in 2008 to impose a ban on alcoholic consumption & use of pornography by the Aboriginal community. Obviously, this didn't really have much of an effect and if anything made it even worse.

If anybody is interested, this website has a great deal of info regarding alcohol consumption by Aboriginals in Australia. Unfortunately, since I don't have 25 posts I cant post links but here's the link anyway (Just add www at the front)

creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/health/aboriginal-alcohol-consumption.html

(Sorry for sort of derailing the thread from Native Americans, but I find the two to be very closely related to each other)

[citizen of industry]

I have no scientific basis for this, just musings. But I'm thinking we're making some broad generalizations here about Native Americans. Undoubtedly, poverty and reservations lead to alcoholism. But the problem is recorded before that. For one, "Native American" is not homogenous. The east coast tribes were forced west gradually and put on reservations or destroyed by over two centuries of conflict, so their relationship to alcohol in the 17th and 18th centuries was probably different than say Navajo in the 19th, with contact with Mexicans (who at the time were not homogenous and less exploitative). Anyway, I'm rambling, but alcohol as a commodity probably had a big influence with traders on the east coast in the 17th- early 19th century and reservations probably had more to do with it 19th century to the present.

[Teacher]

This is most likely a myth. The Indians had alcohol, as has been stated. Pulque was a very common alcoholic drink in Mexico. William B. Taylor actually talks about this at length in his book Drinking, Rebellion, and Homicide in Colonial Mexico. Basically he concludes that drinking did increase after Spanish colonization but that people exaggerate the extent to which it increased and draw way too many conclusions about it (i.e., seeing the rise in drinking among Indians as being symptomatic of some great social breakdown).

[Ostrinski]

This is not true, actually. At least in Mexico and Southwestern USA lots of alcoholic beverages were used, but in most cultures it just wasn't accepted to get drunk in public and Aztecs for example even executed people for that. They often had a purpose in religious rituals, like Aztec octli which was made of sap. Corn-based beverages were pretty common, too, and I'm thinking at least Apache used a drink called tiswin for ceremonial purposes. As far as I know, this really was the standard among most Native American civilizations, from the southern USA to the Andes. Unfortunately I really don't know much anything about the less sedimentary cultures up north, but I wouldn't be surprised if they knew alcohol to some extent as well.

What Europeans introduced wasn't the fact that you can make ferment things to make alcohol, it was the culture of binge drinking. It probably has to do more with the poor quality of life in reserves, substance abuse and poverty do tend to walk hand in hand. It's not only alcohol that's causing problems in Native American communities, drug abuse is pretty prevalent as well.Yes, the Aztecs and other groups in the Mexican area had alcohol. That is all very well known and not being disputed (as I did specify North American natives in my post).

However, if Native Americans from the northeast did indeed have alcohol and were aware of methods of making alcohol, then to my knowledge at least, this is not well known at all. What historians do you have in mind?

[Igor]

Yes, the Aztecs and other groups in the Mexican area had alcohol. That is all very well known and not being disputed (as I did specify North American natives in my post).

However, if Native Americans from the northeast did indeed have alcohol and were aware of methods of making alcohol, then to my knowledge at least, this is not well known at all. What historians do you have in mind?

ah yeah isn't Mexico usually included in NA though? Also I know nothing about the northeast, you must've misread, i was speaking about the American southwest. I don't remember where i read about that but could probably dig tomorrow

[Ostrinski]

ah yeah isn't Mexico usually included in NA though? Also I know nothing about the northeast, you must've misread, i was speaking about the American southwest. I don't remember where i read about that but could probably dig tomorrowMistranslation, sorry. I was mainly talking about the natives that first interacted with the English and French upon settlement.

[Radikal]

This is most likely a myth. The Indians had alcohol, as has been stated. Pulque was a very common alcoholic drink in Mexico. William B. Taylor actually talks about this at length in his book Drinking, Rebellion, and Homicide in Colonial Mexico. Basically he concludes that drinking did increase after Spanish colonization but that people exaggerate the extent to which it increased and draw way too many conclusions about it (i.e., seeing the rise in drinking among Indians as being symptomatic of some great social breakdown).

There actually are severe drinking problems on reservations. I follow a Native News network on social media (due to me being part Native and proud, so I keep up with news), and there are problems. Alcoholism is high, and many reservations are still under prohibition, making alcohol very expensive and many still buy it, like people who are addicted to illegal drugs. Also, the Eastern Tribes didn't have alcohol. I know Central and South American societies, like the Aztecs and Inca, did have it, but I don't think North American Natives did. Though, I only know a great deal about the Eastern Natives, so I may be wrong about the Western and Southwestern Natives.

[fug]

These Reservations sound like my old neighbourhood

[Mr. Natural]

Information about traditional Native American use of alcohol and psychedelics is spotty, as was probably the use of intoxicants. Papago use of the fermented fruit of the saguaro cactus at their end-of-year "rain festival" is well known. Gary Nabhan's Desert Smells Like Rain describes a visit to such a festival. Then just this morning I discovered that the fruit of the hollyleaf cherry was used by coastal California Indians to make alcohol.

The "fly agaric" mushroom, Amanita muscaria, was widely employed by traditional Siberian peoples and some Cree to provide visions, and Jimson weed was used by southern California Indians for a similar purpose. These two psychedelics provide a "low" trip of visions suitable for shamans, as does peyote, which was widely used, I believe, in the mid-Americas.

Then there are the various psilocybe mushrooms, which were extensively used south of what is now the US for their rousing LSD-like high and visions. Many other plants and means of "getting high" such as members of the morning glory family were also employed in the mid- and southern Americas.

However, it seems valid that alcohol use was absent in many traditions and irregular in others, and thus that the Indians of the Americas were generally culturally unaccustomed to alcohol and physically vulnerable to its worst effects.

Then there was the Native American holocaust wherein European diseases would wipe out half a tribe prior to the actual invasion that got most of the rest. Each tribe's traditional, verbal cultural relations were rapidly, almost completely wiped out, and this human devastation is a path to alcohol and drug abuse.

IMO, Native American attempts to restore many traditional practices are important for all of us, for traditional peoples developed humanly essential ecological and spiritual practices that modern peoples have lost and must regain in various ways. An American Indian renaissance could show the way for all of us in this sense. We humans are children of the natural world and must honor our Mother Earth and Father Sky.

My red-green best.

[Hiero]

The Aboriginal community in Australia has quite a strong problem with alcohol. I have often seen lone drunken Aboriginal men walking around the streets in the poorer part of the town that I live. I think that the causes for their addiction to alcohol and its effect on them would be quite similar to that of the Native Americans. The high alcohol consumption by Aboriginals has also caused great strife in their communities, and it has further stigmatized them from the community. I find it interesting that the Aztecs and other communities also consumed alcohol and controlled it strictly; its very similar to what the Aboriginals did in Australia Pre-Colonization too. Apparently, translations of the word "alcohol" equate to words like "bad" in English.I don't know what you mean by that, but that website states:


Contrary to public perception surveys have in fact found that proportionally fewer Aboriginal people drink alcohol than whites do.
Media tend to get the facts wrong, ignoring efforts by communities to get dry and reinforcing stereotyping.

Aboriginal people and alcohol—this combination raises a lot of misconceptions. Nearly everyone in Australia has seen Aboriginal people drinking or drunk in parks, yelling at each other. But is this representative of all Indigenous people of Australia? You have made a statement and then sourced something that contradicts you. It asks this question, is this representative of all Indigenous people of Australia? You state that "the Aboriginal Community" has a problem with alcohol, but your example is "lone drunken Aboriginal men". "The community" as a totatility is based on the singular example, which is contradictory.

If you re-read these statistics again you will see that Aboriginal people drink less then non-Aboriginal people, but Aboriginal people who do drink on average suffer more diseases and health related issues from alcohol then non-indigenous. These conditions are caused or exacerbated because of structural and historical reasons that have socially excluded Aboriginal people from public and private resources that prevent and manage alcoholc consumption, not some myth about genetic tolerances. This would be the same for North American Indigenous people, which is colonialism and racism.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Alcohol in Mexico and Guatemala is not as much of a problem as it is in American reservations even if it is a huge issue, which would support the notion that the indigenous drinking of alcohol helped to build a bit of resistance to the negative side effects over generations in central america

[The Jay]

My father recently lived in a tribe-heavy portion of Alaska and I have a cousin teaching on a reservation in the south-western deserts of the US. There is a lot of alcoholism, unfortunately, among other ills.

[Os Cangaceiros]

My father recently lived in a tribe-heavy portion of Alaska and I have a cousin teaching on a reservation in the south-western deserts of the US. There is a lot of alcoholism, unfortunately, among other ills.

Yeah, it is bad here in Alaska. Even though in much of the state with a heavy native presence (like Bethel), alcohol is prohibited.

[Fruit of Ulysses]

Some of my closest friends are all full blood natives of different tribes: a few Blackfeet, Chumash, and some Navajo-Apaches. It may be because I am an alcoholic and thus surround myself with certain people, but they are all alcoholics too haha.

[campesino]

for what it's worth, native mexicans have been making tejuino/tesguino corn beer for ages.

I doubt alcoholism stems from a physical reason.

[ComradeOm]

Like I said I don't know one way or another about the biological side, but I think the factors I describe are probably just as significant, if not ultimately the fundamental cause.I would tend to agree with this. It's perfectly possible that I'm ill-informed on this but I'm not aware of any study that conclusively demonstrates a generic disposition or weakness amongst Native Americans or Aborigines for alcohol

On the historical front, it's worth pointing out that the real drink that supposedly wrecked havoc on the Indian communities wasn't beer but rum. Any alcohol that the Native Americans ferment would have had a relatively low alcohol content of 2-5%, well below that of the new, distilled, European spirits. So if there was a change in alcohol consumption it was probably in the way that it was consumed, rather than being something entirely new to the continent

Still, it's worth putting a big question mark over many of the accounts of Indian drunkenness. Most of the commentators who recorded their impressions of the violence and addictiveness that accompanied drink in Indian communities were after all puritanical Protestants. They married an disapproving attitude to drunkenness to a strong disdain for the lower orders, of which the Indians were automatically included. Compare observations of Indian weakness for rum to the hysteria during the Gin Craze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze) back in London*. Similarly, there are accounts of Indian communities using alcohol in a responsible (and often religious) manner. So we shouldn't necessarily be taking at face value the assumption that the introduction of alcohol was a disaster akin to the spread of diseases

Of course, there's no question that later alcoholism was, and is, a major problem for the Indian communities. But that can be put down to any number of real social problems that the encroaching European settlements introduced

*Yet who would suggest that working class Londoners lacked a resistance to alcohol?

[Hiero]

*Yet who would suggest that working class Londoners lacked a resistance to alcohol? That is excactly right.

I believed that the reason for the poor state for Indigenous people in Australia was because they had a low tolerance to alcohol, but that was when I was in primary school and completley naive about social oppression.

Here is a quote from a magistrate about the Gin Craze and the behaviours of "inferior Sort of People":

In 1736, the Middlesex Magistrates complained, "It is with the deepest concern your committee observe the strong Inclination of the inferior Sort of People to these destructive Liquors, and how surprisingly this Infection has spread within these few Years … it is scarce possible for Persons in low Life to go anywhere or to be anywhere, without being drawn in to taste, and, by Degrees, to like and approve of this pernicious Liquor."[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze#cite_note-1)

[Take The Long Way Home]

Native Americans can't drink alcohol,their body cant take it,they can get addicted to it very fast and they die even faster of alcohol use.

P.S: also native Americans arent very "hairy"

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Native Americans can't drink alcohol,their body cant take it,they can get addicted to it very fast and they die even faster of alcohol use.

P.S: also native Americans arent very "hairy"
What? One of my ex-girlfriends was native american, 90 pounds, and she could drink me under the table ANYTIME

[cynicles]

Native Americans can't drink alcohol,their body cant take it,they can get addicted to it very fast and they die even faster of alcohol use.

P.S: also native Americans arent very "hairy"
I may not be a big fan of alcohol but I'm pretty sure we're not some foreign species of human who is allergic to it.