Samson Occom Quotes

But who is it that has made my people drunk? Indians cannot make whiskey. Indians do not sell it. But white people make it and bring it among us. It is they that have brought the evil upon us and we cannot remove it. The white people can remove it and now we call upon them to do it. We ask them to take their whiskey and run away, and leave us sober as they found us.

The white traders keep these poor Indians continually under the force of liquor. They entirely estrange the affections of the Indians from the English.

We have drunk too much of your rum already, which has occasioned our destruction; we will, in the future, beware of it.

The white people brought whiskey into our village, made our people drunk, and cheated them out of their horses, guns, and traps!...I visited all the whites and begged them not to sell whiskey to my people. One of them continued the practice openly. I took a party of my young men, went to his house, took his barrel and broke in the head and turned out the whiskey.

Hear what the Great Spirit has ordered me to tell you! You are to make sacrifices, in the manner that I shall direct; to put off entirely from yourselves the customs to which you have adopted since the white people came among us; you are to return to that former happy state, in which we lived in peace and plenty, before these strangers came to disturb us, and above all, you must abstain from drinking their deadly liquor, which they forced upon us for the sake of increasing their gains and diminishing our numbers.

It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor and wicked, too, can for a penny make themselves drunk.

Ye Dutch, Swede, and English have by Brandy and Specially Rum, almost Debaucht ye Indians all.

When a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains.

There are teachers in the United States who cry in the daytime because they see a child or children who haven't eaten properly, children who haven't used soap in so long.

Thou deputy of Pleimont and Boston, paint our words on paper and send them to those on whom thou art dependant; and say to them that all the allied Savages dwelling on the river Kenebek hate firewater…; and that if the English have any more of it brought hither to sell to the Savages, the latter will believe the English wish to exterminate them.

When our forefathers first met on this island, your red brethren were more numerous; but since the introduction amongst us, of what you call spirituous liquors, and what we think may justly be called poison, our numbers have greatly diminished…It is not an evil of our own making; we have not placed it amongst ourselves; it is an evil placed amongst us by white people.

The speech of a Creek—Indian, against the immoderate use of spirituous liquors. Delivered in a national assembly of the Creeks, upon the breaking out of the late war.

Black people are killing themselves with alcohol ... it is a scourge of our neighborhoods. It's a disease that feeds on our people.

Although Drunkenness be justly termed a vice which the Salvages are ignorant of, yet the benefit is very great that comes to the planters by the sale of strong liquor to the Salvages, who are much taken with the delight of it; for they will pawn their wits, to purchase the acquaintance of it.

In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't.

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

This day we have held a council, and it is agreed by the Shawnee in general that whatever rum is in our towns shall be broke and split and not drunk; and whosoever shall bring any rum or any sort of strong drink into our towns, Indian or white man, let it be little or much, it shall be broke or split in the presence of the whole town…

Liquor perverts the end of society, and unfits us for all those distinguishing and exquisite Feelings, which are the Cordials of Life, and the noblest Privileges of Humanity.

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is riotous; and whoever is deceived by it is not wise

Who maintains the pubs and makes the peasants drunk? The peasant. Who embezzles the village, school, and parish funds and spends it all on drink? The peasant. Who robs his neighbor, sets fire to his house, and perjures himself in court for a bottle of vodka? The peasant.

First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.

Liquor traffic is un-American, pro-German, crime-procuring, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, [and] treasonable.

[Referring to alcohol:] After the lapse of nearly fifty years of undisputed political freedom, the blood-freezing clank of a cruel bondage is still heard.

Crack has destroyed more families than poverty.