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

1. Alcohol Arrives

 Alcohol Arrives The Cherokees had no tradition of alcohol consumption, so the history of alcohol among the Cherokees begins with its introduction by Europeans. To the purveyors of spirits, the Indians’ consumption of alcohol appeared to support the Europeans’ view of Native Americans as profligate and irrational . In the mid-eighteenth century, for example, John Gerar William De Brahm, surveyor general for the southern department, wrote about Native people’s “love [of] strong Liquors, especially Rum or Brandy, at all times, which they prefer to anything in the World.”1 A closer look at the ways in which the Cherokees incorporated alcohol into their tribal life, however, reveals a range of responses that suggest more than simple addiction. If some Cherokees used liquor only to get drunk, others sought in it the power and prestige they associated with the exotic goods supplied by European traders. Alcohol found niches in Cherokee culture that the Europeans neither expected nor understood. These uses can tell us much about cultural persistence and change. The deerskin trade and diplomacy were the conduit by which alcohol was first introduced to the Cherokees. The Cherokees initially regarded alcohol,like other items received from colonial officials and traders, to be an exotic good, and as such, it had spiritual power. Like other southern Indians, 1  1 alcohol arrives the Cherokees considered their towns to be sacred circles where kinship bound individuals together,rituals maintained spiritual harmony, and chiefs arbitrated between opposing forces by exercising spiritual power. The font of power lay in worlds beyond the sacred circle—in the upperworld, where the secrets of the past resided, and in the underworld, which controlled the future.2 Similarly, in this world, the chaotic realm outside the reach of kin, ritual, or chiefly power represented a source of spiritual power, often in the form of exotic goods to which headmen attributed esoteric meaning.3 Indigenous trade in the Southeast must be understood in this context. Foreign goods had value that Native people did not measure in solely material terms. Cherokees may well have considered alcohol to be analogous to yaupon, a holly that grew outside their territory that they used to make a ceremonial beverage. Cherokees used this caffeinated, nonalcoholic beverage on various occasions , and they consumed it in highly ritualized ceremonial settings.4 Since yaupon did not grow in Cherokee country, the Cherokees traditionally obtained it through trade with Indian groups on coastal areas.5 The Cherokees had an indigenous exchange network through which they procured the sacred plant.The trade in yaupon as well as other Native goods meant that Cherokees had a well-established pattern of exchange into which they could fit the European traders who came into their country in increasing numbers in the eighteenth century and the goods,including alcohol,that these traders brought with them. Cherokees do not seem to have consumed black drink, as the ceremonial beverage has come to be called, in the quantity that other southern Indians did, perhaps because yaupon did not grow within their mountainous territory.6 Still, all public rituals demanded the consumption of spiritually puri- alcohol arrives 1  fying medicine,and in addition to black drink the Cherokees brewed medicine from other herbs.7 Lt. Henry Timberlake, for example, observed the preparation of medicinal drink in the Cherokee country in the early s: “Muttering something to herself,”the beloved woman, a highly honored position , brewed the tea from “a shrub-like laurel.” A group of Cherokee men invited Timberlake to join them in drinking what he described as “a spiritual medicine” to “wash away their sins.”8 In Cherokee medicine making, evergreens almost certainly formed a key ingredient.9 Cherokees considered evergreens anomalies of nature because they retained their leaves or needles in winter. Anomalies possessed spiritual power, and the Cherokees believed that evergreens were “greatest for medicine.”10 The purpose of taking medicine, therefore, was the acquisition of spiritual purity and power and not merely physical healing. Native men in the Southeast consumed black drink and other spiritual medicines in ceremonial settings.In the council , Cherokee men took medicine and smoked tobacco to solidify friendship and peace and to obtain spiritual power. The preparation for male activities such as warfare and stickball , “the little brother of war,” required spiritual and physical purity as well as the prowess attained through consumption of ritual decoctions.11 The Green Corn Ceremony also demanded...