American Rum 13: A Mass Destruction Weapon?
So, in the settlers’ opinion, rum was a decisive element in the Indians’ destruction and white men had their share of responsibility because they were selling it, but the Indians, with their greed and their lack of temperance, are those who were most to be blamed. This provoked, most of the colonists said, the disruption of Indian societies. It’s worth noticing that what astonished the settlers wasn’t the quantity of alcohol that the Indians drunk. They used to drink even more, but they thought they knew how to control themselves, the so-called “art of getting drunk”. Their astonishment (and their contempt) came from the fact that Indians couldn’t hold alcohol, they were unable to control themselves, got immediately drunk and completely lost their mind and the control on their life.
But is this really true? I am not that sure, so let’s try to think about it a bit. Unfortunately all that we now know about the way Indians drank and of its effects on their societies comes from the settlers. Very few are the sources left by Indians. We have lots of material, but almost all of it comes from the settlers’ point of view and perspective, and they couldn’t – and to a certain extent didn’t want to – understand the Indians’ reasons.
The first impact of the effects of alcohol must have been disruptive for a culture that didn’t know them before. I am not an anthropologist, but there is no doubt that from the very beginning alcoholic inebriation had for Indians something magical and spiritual. Inebriation altered sensual perception, gave a sensation of power, loosened inhibitions, warmed the body and the mind. But the wood- land Indians of the North-East continued being an important economic, politic and military presence for more than 150 years after the Europeans’ arrival, and their descendants still exist, and this shows that somehow they must have managed to deal with rum.
And then, how much rum was really drunk by Indians? Certainly, Indians loved rum, asked for it and drank heavily and without constraints, but their access to rum was restricted to very limited periods of the year, they didn’t live in a state of constant drunkenness. Some authors have estimated that they drank less than a gallon a year for every adult male.
Besides, not all Indians drank rum. Many didn’t, and some of them tried in all ways to stop the diffusion of alcohol in their communities. Many Indian chiefs repeatedly tried to convince the colonial authorities to forbid or at least limit the sale of rum to their people, and some authoritative men who accepted the Christian faith tried to convince their brothers to stop drinking, beginning what were real temperance movements. On top of that, many charismatic leaders that we might define as traditionalists tried to go back to the origins, when the white men had not appeared yet, and exhorted the Indians to refuse everything that came from them, including rum.
It’s true that they got drunk easily, but nowadays we know that this isn’t due to physiological reasons, as Indians’ body is not different from Europeans’, so the reason of their alcohol abuse and their disruptive attitude towards it can only be cultural. Indians went on drinking not because they were weak or idle, but because it was the only way to escape from the hardships of a daily life in which their culture, their society and their existence itself was every day more at risk. Rum clearly harmed the Indians greatly. But the damage caused by it pales if confronted with the appalling mortality rate caused by the new illnesses brought by the whites, the destruction caused by the continuous wars, the gradual usurpation of their lands. Therefore, maybe the “Drunken Indian” stereotype has been for the colonists also a clever form of self-absolution.
-Article written by Marco Pierini-
My name is Marco Pierini, I was born in 1954 in a little town in Tuscany (Italy) where a still live. I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence and I studied Political Science in Madrid, but my real passion has always been History. And through History I have always tried to know the world, and men. Life brought me to work in tour ism, event organization and vocational training. Then I discovered rum. With Francesco Rufini, I founded La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum),that runs a beach bar and selects and distributes Premium Rums in Italy, www.lacasadelrum.it. And finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History. But now it is the History of Rum. Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavors; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions. All this I try to cover in this column, in my FB profile, www.facebook/marco.pierini.3 and in my articles on the Italian webpage www.bartender.it .