Deadly Medicine : : Indians and Alcohol in Early America / / 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 inva...

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Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
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Place / Publishing House:Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]
©1997
Year of Publication:2018
Language:English
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (288 p.) :; 16 black/white illus., 2 maps
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Description
Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Illustrations --
Preface --
Abbreviations --
PROLOGUE History and Physiology --
CHAPTER ONE. Stereotypes --
CHAPTER TWO. Trade --
CHAPTER THREE. Consumption --
CHAPTER FOUR. Costs --
CHAPTER FIVE. Temperance --
CHAPTER SIX. New Spain, New France --
CHAPTER SEVEN. The British Imperial Moment, 1763-1775 --
EPILOGUE. Legacies --
APPENDIX I. Value of rum and of all goods traded to Indian groups in Illinois country by Baynton, Wharton & Morgan for the crown, 1767-1768 --
APPENDIX II. The Speech of a Creek-Indian, against the Immoderate Use of Spirituous Liquors --
Notes --
A Note on Sources --
Index
Summary:"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 Cord: A Family's Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol SyndromeAlcohol 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.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9781501728440
9783110536171
DOI:10.7591/9781501728440
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Peter C. Mancall.