Indians, Alcohol, and the Roads to Taos and Santa Fe

by William E. Unrau

Overview

In the culture of the American West, images abound of Indians drunk on the white man's firewater, a historical stereotype William Unrau has explored in two previous books. His latest study focuses on how federally-developed roads from Missouri to northern New Mexico facilitated the diffusion of both spirits and habits of over-drinking within Native American cultures.

Unrau investigates how it came about that distilled alcohol, designated illegal under penalty of federal fines and imprisonment as a trade item for Indian people, was nevertheless easily obtainable by most Indians along the Taos and Santa Fe roads after 1821. Unrau reveals how the opening of those overland trails, their designation as national roads, and the establishment of legal boundaries of "Indian Country" all combined to produce an increasingly unstable setting in which Osage, Kansa, Southern Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa, and Comanche peoples entered into an expansive trade for alcohol along these routes.

Unrau describes how Missouri traders began meeting Anglo demand for bison robes and related products, obtaining these commodities in exchange for corn and wheat alcohol and ensnaring Prairie and Plains Indians in a market economy that became dependent on this exchange. He tells how the distribution of illicit alcohol figured heavily in the failure of Indian prohibition, with drinking becoming an unfortunate learned behavior among Indians, and analyzes this trade within the context of evolving federal Indian law, policy, and enforcement in Indian Country.

Unrau's research suggests that the illegal trade along this route may have been even more important than the legal commerce moving between the mouth of the Kansas River and the Mexican markets far to the southwest. He also considers how and why the federal government failed to police and take into custody known malefactors, thereby undermining its announced program for tribal improvement.

Indians, Alcohol, and the Roads to Taos and Santa Fe cogently explores the relationship between politics and economics in the expanding borderlands of the United States. It fills a void in the literature of the overland Indian trade as it reveals the enduring power of the most pernicious trade good in Indian Country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700619146
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	03/20/2013
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Before Becknell

2. “Vacant” Land

3. Cleared Land

4. Benton’s Road

5. Regulation Revisited

6. Benton Revisited

7. On the Upper Arkansas

8. Tribal Annuities and Bison Robes

9. Trade Alcohol

10. Roads Unregulated

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Unrau has written another provocative and riveting account of fraud, deceit, and deception that had cataclysmic effects on Indians and their way of life. Unrau’s research is thorough and detailed."—Great Plains Quarterly

"Unrau explores the sordid relationship between alcohol and expansion in the decades leading to the Civil War. He argues that overland trails, despite claims made by boosters like Thomas Hart Benton—who promised that commercial arteries would channel the lifeblood of liberty into the American West—led to widespread dependence among Native peoples."—Reviews in American History

“In this articulate discussion Unrau argues persuasively that the federal surveys of trails onto the southern plains after 1821 encouraged small time traders to open an illegal liquor-based trade with Indians there for buffalo robes. He concludes that this brought a persistent instability to the region and destruction to its tribes during the next fifty years.”—Roger L. Nichols, author of Natives and Strangers: A History of Ethnic Americans

“This fascinating study—by a leading historian of Indian history—is both a very good read and a significant contribution to the history of the West and the Santa Fe Trail.”—David Dary, author of The Santa Fe Trail

“Helps solve the puzzle of how Indian Country became the United States—and the human costs of that transition.”—Anne F. Hyde, author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860

“Focusing on the actions of larger-than-life characters, Unrau presents a fast-paced and succinct study.”—Michael L. Tate, author of Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails

From the Publisher