Bad Fruits of the Civilized Tree: Alcohol and the Sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation

4. Alcohol and Dislocation

 Alcohol and Dislocation Alcohol took a serious toll on the Cherokees in the years surrounding removal. Unregulated and widely available, liquor offered comfort to disillusioned Cherokees,particularly men. The justice of their cause and the moral fiber of their people seemed to carry little sway in the United States. The Nation they had established in the Southeast and the cultural transformation that many had achieved offered the Cherokees no protection from the greed and racism of white southerners. Alcohol eased the pain and indignity of their forced migration to the West and the political chaos that marked the reestablishment of their Nation. One of the great challenges presented by removal was reclaiming the legacy of sovereignty and morality, both rooted in the control of alcohol, that the Cherokees had created in the Southeast. In contrast to their previous sobriety, Cherokee alcohol abuse after  exacerbated the trauma of removal, and Cherokee women and children, in particular, suffered enormously . Recollecting the scenes of Cherokee family disintegration still vivid in her mind, for example, the wife of a Georgia intruder, Zillah Haynie Brandon, wrote that “the wives of those drunken savages knew the least about a resting place.” She continued, “[H]usbands would drink to drunkenness, and were very cruel when under the influence 4  1 alcohol and dislocation of the fire water.” Although the Cherokee men of Brandon’s acquaintance might refrain from drinking for a couple of weeks, “the poisoned cup was again placed to their lips.” Brandon admitted that Cherokee men posed no threat when they were sober, but she never knew when her safety would be jeopardized by an American intruder selling whiskey to the Cherokees in her vicinity.1 Once, in her husband’s absence, a group of Cherokee men started drinking in her neighborhood. One man uttered “shrill panther-like screams,” and his wife had to flee with her children. Brandon briefly sheltered them inside her house. Fearing that the Brandon household was too obvious a haven, the Cherokee mother and children soon left. Danger was,indeed,close at hand.With gun at the ready,the furious husband headed for the Brandon dwelling. Brandon immediately took her children to another neighbor’s house and escaped injury, but they did not feel secure until the neighborhood liquor store closed its door.2 Drunkenness provoked lawlessness, destroyed family life, threatened the entire community, and dismayed the Cherokees even more in the years to come. Under the terms of the New Echota Treaty, the federal government conducted three Cherokee detachments in  and early  to the new Cherokee Nation in what is today eastern Oklahoma. Accompanying the first party in March , physician C. Lillybridge recorded the events of the monthlong journey in his journal. As his account reveals , the party experienced considerable intoxication and lawlessness the entire way. From the first day of the journey , several Cherokees drank whiskey and became “a very rude and noisy set.”3 When they reached Gunter’s Landing in Alabama on March ,officials decided to anchor the boats at Gunter’s Island in the hope of preventing the Cherokees alcohol and dislocation 1  from getting drunk in the town. Some Cherokees, however, dared to swim across the Tennessee River to acquire alcohol. Afraid of drowning, the Cherokee Alexander Brown seized a canoe and attempted to climb inside, but because of the strong current, he lost his balance and fell into the water. When he finally managed to regain his footing, the river had swept Brown two hundred yards from the bank.4 Five days later, another Cherokee, Killanica, who had received a blow to his left eye on a spree, came to see Lillybridge. He treated Killanica’s inflamed eye and noted that the patient had a splitting headache as well.5 When the Cherokees “had free access to the Whiskey shops” at Montgomery Point on March , many drank, and some even brought whiskey into the boats, which produced a drinking bout and “a number of quarrels” on board.6 Although they did not suffer as much as their earlier counterparts did, the second detachment of Cherokees heading west to Indian Territory in the winter of  also experienced intemperance on their overland journey.7 On November ,for example,conductor B.B.Cannon had to “get out of bed about midnight” to deal with a group of drunken Cherokees.8 Nor could the third party prevent...