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.
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