Heygler Quotes
I desire a stop may be put to the selling of strong Liquors by the White people to my people especially near the Indian nation. If the white people make strong drink, let them sell it to one another, or drink it in their own families. This will avoid a great deal of mischief which otherwise will, happen from my people getting drunk and quarrelling with the White people. I have no strong prisons like you to confine them for it. Our only way is to put them under ground and all these (pointing proudly to his Warriors) will be ready to do that to those who shall deserve it.
Heygler, *, Chief of the Catawbas Tribe of North Carolina, Conference and Treaty Negotiations with Chief Justice Henley, Salisbury, May 25, 1756
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The Congressmen who voted for Prohibition in the next century had not read or believed this quotation of Twain’s.
At the time, the traders were mostly French who traded all kinds of goods and especially alcohol—usually rum—for fur animal pelts. Many of the Indians were partial to the French and French oriented traders who did not covet their land and would provide the Indians with alcohol and guns, lead and powder while English traders sometimes tried to restrict these items. Many tribes of American Indians are genetically very susceptible to alcohol—both in terms of immediate impairment—getting drunk and in developing a dependency on having alcohol—addiction or alcoholism.
He was describing the way that the Colonial America, Native American communities coped with the adverse consequence of violence brought about by liquor which had been given to the Indians by white traders for the purpose of impairing the Indians’ judgment so that they would trade more easily and on better terms. Since then and into the 21st century, business people have entertained’ potential customers with alcohol for the same general purposes.
From the earliest days of the nation, alcohol has been a competitor for the resources and time of people, especially native Americans many of whom have a genetic predisposition to the deleterious effect of alcohol.
