Firewater

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As firewater ( english firewater ) a particularly in the designated pursuant Wild West Literature popular stereotype that Native Americans alcoholic beverages, particularly spirits such as brandy (especially whiskey ).

Origin of the designation

According to some literature, it is no longer comprehensible whether the word fire water for high-proof alcoholic beverages is a literary invention or whether it was actually used by Indians (comparable to the terms aqua ardens and aqua ignea for alcoholic distillates used in Europe since the Middle Ages ). The Oxford English Dictionary cites James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826) as the oldest evidence of the use of the word in this sense . However, this is contradicted by the fact that the Indian leader Handsome Lake apparently used the name as early as the beginning of the 19th century, i.e. before Cooper. The French officer and adventurer Jean Bernard Bossu (1720–1792) also mentions its use by Indians in his travelogues Travels in the Interior of North America, 1751–1762 . In some Algonquian languages , the word scoutiuabou is used to denote whiskey, which literally means fire water. The Encyclopedia of North American Indians writes that the term has probably been in use in one variant or another since the 16th century and although it is most likely of Indian origin it was mostly used in an undifferentiated stereotypical manner. She goes on to explain that there are a number of different names for whiskey and high-proof alcoholic beverages among the Indian tribes of North America. Sun used as the Sioux , among other mni wakan (holy water), the Mohawk deganigohadaynyohs (sense) converter, the Stoney Nakota gahtonejabee rneenee (maddening water) and some strains of Ojibwe skwidayabo (fire water).

Indians and alcohol

Alcoholic fermentation was unknown to the Indians of North America , so their use of alcohol must be understood as an acculturation process . However, it can only partially be considered a consequence of the Colombian exchange , since Indian peoples in Central and South America also produced weakly alcoholic beverages in pre-Columbian times, which, unlike in the Old World, were not consumed as food, but exclusively for cultic purposes. The North American Indians' way of dealing with alcohol has some similarities to this traditional ceremonial drinking binge, but the differences outweigh the differences.

The phenomenon of alcoholism among Indians is of particular relevance , as it has always been held responsible for the destruction of Indian cultures as one of the three main causes of the destruction of Indian cultures, along with diseases such as smallpox and the wars against the Indians. To this day, alcohol consumption among Indians, especially in reservations, is a major problem. Alcohol-related deaths, whether from cirrhosis of the liver or other diseases, accidents or violence under the influence of alcohol, are significantly more common among Indians than among the average American population. In the United States, for example, an American Indian is 8.7 times more likely to die of alcoholism than the average population. Because of its far-reaching consequences, the phenomenon is the subject of a large number of publications in medical, historical, sociological and ethnological research.

Even today, Indians themselves believe that Indians have a biological predisposition to alcoholism and that their metabolism breaks down ethanol more slowly than that of Europeans. The vast majority of relevant studies showed, however, that this is not the case.

literature

Essays
  • Randall C. Davis: Fire-water in the frontier romance. James Fenimore Cooper and "Indian nature" . In: Studies in American Fiction , Vol. 22 (1994), ISSN  0091-8083
  • John W. Frank, Roland S. Moore, Genevieve M. Ames: Historical and cultural roots of drinking problems among American Indians . In: Journal of Public Health , Vol. 90 (2000), Issue 3 (March), pp. 344–351, PMC 1446168 (free full text)
  • Dwight B. Heath: American Indians and Alcohol. Epidemiological and Sociocultural Relevance . In: Diane Spengler et al. (Ed.): Alcohol Use Among US Ethnic Minorities . US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC 1993, ISBN 1-56806-577-9 , pages = 207–222 ( digitized in Google Book Search)
  • Peter C. Mancall: The Bewitching Tyranny of Custom. The Social Costs of Indian Drinking in Colonial America. In: American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Vol. 17 (1993), No. 2, pp. 15-42, ISSN  0161-6463
  • Nicholas O. Warner: Firewater Legacy. Alcohol and Native American Identity in the Fiction of James Fenimore Cooper . In: Janet Farrell Brodie, Marc Redfield: High anxieties. Cultural studies in addiction. California UP, Berkeley 2002, ISBN 0-520-93570-5 , pp. 109-118.
  • Joseph Westermeyer: The Drunken Indian. Myths and Realities. In: Mac Marshall (Ed.): Beliefs, behaviors, & alcoholic beverages. A cross-cultural survey . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1976, ISBN 0-4720-8580-8 , pp. 110-116.
Monographs
  • Joy Leland: Firewater Myths. North American Indian Drinking and Alcohol Addiction (Monographs of the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies; 11). New Brunswick 1976, ISBN 0-911290-43-5 .
  • Peter C. Mancall: Deadly Medicine. Indians and Alcohol in Early America. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1997, ISBN 0-8014-2762-2 .
  • Marin Trenk: The white man's milk. The North American Indians and alcohol. Dietrich Reimer-Verlag, Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-496-02492-5 (also Habilschr., Univ. Frankfurt / Oder)
  • William J. Rorabaugh: The Alcoholic Republic. American tradition. Oxford University Press, New York 1981, ISBN 0-19-502584-9 .
  • William E. Unrau: White Man's Wicked Water. The Alcohol Trade and Prohibition in Indian Country, 1802-1892. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence 1996, ISBN 0-7006-0779-X .

Web links

Wiktionary: Feuerwasser  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John A. Simpson (ed.): Oxford English Dictionary 20 volumes, 2nd edition Oxford 1989. sv fire-water²
  2. ↑ Peter C. Mancall: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Indian Villages in the Great Lakes Region in the Early Republic . Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 15, No. 3, Special Issue on Gender in the Early Republic, Fall 1995, pp. 425–448, esp. P. 44 ( JSTOR 3124117 )
  3. ^ Joey Lee Dillard: Toward a Social History of American English . Walter de Gruyter, 1985, ISBN 9783110105841 , p. 151 ( excerpt (Google) )
  4. ↑ Jack Weatherford: Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America . Random House, 2010, ISBN 9780307755414 , p. 206 ( excerpt (Google) )
  5. ^ Robert Hendrickson: The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms . Infobase Publishing, 2000, ISBN 9781438129921 , p. 482 ( excerpt (Google) )
  6. ↑ DL Birchfield (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of North American Indians - Volume 4 . Marshal Cavendish, 1997, p. 528
  7. ^ Trenk, p. 192.
  8. ↑ Trenk, p. 12.
  9. ↑ US Commission on Civil Rights : Broken Promises: Evaluating the Native American Health Care System. (PDF; 1.7 MB) September 2004. p. 8
  10. ↑ Philip A. May: The Epidemiology of Alcohol Abuse among American Indians: The Mythical and Real Properties. In: American Indian Culture and Research Journal 18: 2, 1994. p. 123.