First Peoples, First Prohibitionists

Armed with a new appreciation for prohibitionism as an anti-imperialist, anti-predatory-capitalist movement for community self-determination, Part III returns us to the United States, where prohibitionism goes back to the very first colonization of North America. Indeed, America’s first prohibitionists were its first peoples: battling against the “white man’s wicked water,” through which their sovereignty was stripped, in the same way as indigenous populations in Africa, South Asia, and Australia. Chapter 9 highlights the role of Miami chief Little Turtle in urging President Thomas Jefferson to enact, in 1802, the first federal prohibition of the trafficking of liquor to native tribes, even while liquor excises had become the primary pillar of state finance of the young republic.