The Evolution of Prohibition in the United States of America, by Ernest Hurst Cherrington
Title: The Evolution of Prohibition in the United States of America
Author: Ernest Hurst Cherrington
Year Published: 1920
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Excerpt: THE American liquor problem is as old as the white man’s knowledge of the American continent, and it may be said that primitive phases of the question antedate the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, since the traditions of practically all American Indian tribes include references to ancient customs and rites having to do with the indulgence of the aborigines in native intoxicants.
The age-old liquor habits and customs of Europe were introduced on this continent at a very early date. In fact, they came with the first explorers. The earliest settlers appear to have given particular attention to the kind and quantity of intoxicating liquors which accompanied them on their voyages across the Atlantic to their new homes amid the forests of the Western world.
English, Dutch, Spanish and French pioneers each made a distinct contribution to the beginnings of American civilization, but each also bears responsibility in the matter of the introduction of liquor-drinking customs different from any which the Indian had known and which promptly became the deadly enemy of the American savage, the cause of many of the internal difficulties of the colonists, and the principal factor in the numerous early misunderstandings between the whites and the Red Men.
At the earliest formal meeting between the French and the Indians, in 1535, on the island of Orleans in the St. Lawrence river, Jacques Cartier is reported to have celebrated the occasion by spreading a feast of bread and wine for the great chief Donnaconna and his Indian warriors.
The introduction between Henry Hudson and the Delawares in 1609 was in the form of a ceremony which consisted in presenting to the chiefs of the tribe a large drinking vessel filled with liquor, from which Hudson himself first drank.
The seed of drinking customs thus early planted in the New World yielded a prolific harvest. The use of intoxicating liquors as beverages, begun at those early dates, increased by leaps and bounds. There was no condemnation of intoxicating liquors as such. There was no attitude of hostility to intoxicants even on the part of the moral and religious forces. The only phase of the question which served to arouse any opposition was that which presented itself in the form of drunkenness. There was indeed in those days no scientific knowledge of the evil physiological effects of alcohol on the human system. The only sin therefore which in any sense came under the ban of social condemnation was that of excess which expressed itself in speech and manner.