From potatoes, we can make vodka. From corn, we can make whiskey. From honey and sap, we can make mead and wine. Prior to contact with Europeans, indigenous North Americans consumed each of these ingredients in their traditional diets, but almost no evidence exists to suggest that they fermented them into alcohol. South and Central American peoples fermented and drank alcohol from a wide variety of foodstuffs: cassava, pineapple, agave, cacti, mesquite pods, honey, and palm sap to name a few. The total absence of such drinks northwest of the Gila River in present day Arizona and northeast of the mountains of New Mexico is baffling.
There is a comprehensive canon of scholarship dedicated to the fermented beverages of ancient Mexico. Mesoamericans dedicated significant resources to the production of alcoholic beverages which were socially and religiously significant. They were expert brewers. This knowledge of alcoholic fermentation stretched up into the arid expanses of the Chihuahua and Sonora deserts where natives relied on corn, cacti, and agave to make beer and wine. North of this, however, alcohol was virtually unknown.
In contrast to Mexico, very little attention has been paid to the dearth of fermentation throughout most of North America. Reports of pre-contact fermented beverages are few and far between. Those that exist are rarely corroborated by more than one source. Among these speculated alcoholic drinks was persimmon wine for the Cherokee, berry wine for the Creek, maple and sassafras brews for the Iroquois, corn beer for the Huron, manzanita berry wine for the tribes of California, and a drink made from the sweet excretions of aphids which feed on the Phragmites communis reeds for the Paviotso. Certain reports also attribute a wine of raspberry and bilberry juice to the South Alaskan Yuit people, and the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island may have made a beverage of elderberry, black chiton, and tobacco. The natives of the Great Plains had no fermented drinks.
black chiton from Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>,
bilberries via Wikimedia Commons, AndreLinny, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>,
American persimmon via Wikimedia Commons, Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>,
Sassafras via Wikimedia Commons, Photo by David J. Stang, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>
Many of these reports are specious at best. Several of the claims originate in the Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem compiled by the 20th century Temperance Movement leader Ernest Cherrington. Not only was this encyclopedia intentionally political, but it clearly misrepresented certain Native American beverages. The entry which focuses on indigenous booze states that the Black Drink of the Southeastern peoples “was a fermented decoction made from steeped leaves of the cassina or cassia plant…Mildly intoxicating, its repulsive taste and strongly emetic qualities presented its common use as a beverage.” The drink was never fermented, only steeped. It was not intoxicating, only stimulating as it contained caffeine rather than alcohol. Any native alcoholic beverage presented in this text should be considered with scrutiny.
In his essay “New wines and beers of native North America,” Christian Feest debunks several of the theorized alcoholic drinks. While the Tarahumara of Mexico did make wine from the manzanita berry, the tribes of California drank the juice before it was fermented. The persimmon wine of the Cherokee, meanwhile, is attributed to knowledge diffused from white settlers in the 18th century. The same goes for maple wine which Europeans tried brewing in the 1760s in Iroquois territory. While natives undoubtedly taught Europeans how to tap the maple, the Europeans likely taught the natives how to ferment the tree’s sap.
Virtually no reports of pre-contact alcohols north of the Pima can be taken as fact. It is likely true that natives would occasionally encounter wines or beers that had spontaneously fermented, but intentional production of such drinks would have been rare and isolated. Robert Dunn and others compare North America to the rest of the world; “the diversity of indigenous alcoholic beverages appears to be far less in North America (potentially several orders of magnitude less.)”
Why was indigenous North America so starkly dry? Few scholars have attempted to answer the question, but we can say with confidence that it was not for lack of ingredients. Early European colonists quickly found fermentable materials in their new surroundings. Maple sap fortified beers, native grapes made foxy wines, and corn promised plenty of whisky. Perhaps the invisible ingredients were lacking. The microbiome of North America may not have been as well suited to fermentation for human consumption. It is hard to say how many of the yeasts and bacteria present in the Americas today are actually from the Old World, but it is likely that common brewer’s yeast was imported on European ships. Fermentations could have been less controllable and flavors might have been less savory. Mesoamerican fermentations like that of agave sap are unique in that they rely on bacteria. Moreover, most North American societies relied much more on hunter-gathering than sedentary agriculture. Surpluses of high carb foods were less predictable.
When alcohol did wash ashore, indigenous culture was caught off guard. Arriving Europeans drank alcohol constantly and plied the natives they encountered with the stuff. When the Pilgrims arrived, the native ambassador, Massasoit, was offered alcohol. The history, May-Flower and Her Log, states, “Strong waters” (or Holland gin) are mentioned as a part of the entertainment given Massasoit on his first visit.” As traders ventured deeper into the heartlands of North America, distilled spirits became a common currency in trade. Many natives, facing collapse of their traditional ways of living, came to rely on alcohol. The issue of alcoholism was such that the Jesuit missionaries looking to convert natives to Christianity felt that liquor was their largest obstacle.
There is nothing normatively wrong with North America’s apparent ignorance of alcoholic beverages prior to European contact. It is only surprising that alcoholic fermentation was absent from so large and contiguous a swathe of land. The examples that exist of fermented beverages in this area are interesting, but it is hard to say with confidence that they predate the beginnings of the Columbian Exchange. At the end of the day, beverages that were made by natives were ultimately part of native culture. Their antiquity is not always an important consideration, and it would be interesting indeed to learn more about these rare and unique North American brews.
Abbott, Patrick J. “American Indian and Alaska native aboriginal use of alcohol in the United States.” American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research (1996).
Beauvais, F. “American Indians and alcohol.” Alcohol health and research world vol. 22,4 (1998): 253-9.
Brown, Sanborn C. “Beers and Wines of Old New England: Under Harsh Conditions in a Country Very Different from the Fatherland, the Early Settlers Gradually Evolved Beverages Which They Came to Appreciate for Their Own Qualities.” American Scientist, vol. 66, no. 4, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, 1978, pp. 460–67, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27848754.
Cherrington, Ernest H. Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem. Westerville, OH, American Issue Publishing Company, 1925-1927, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001743985. Accessed on 5/19/2020.
Dunn, Robert R., et al. “Toward a global ecology of fermented foods.” Current Anthropology 62.S24 (2021): S220-S232.
Duran, Bonnie. “Indigenous versus colonial discourse: Alcohol and American Indian identity.” Dressing in feathers. Routledge, 2018. 111-128.
Feest, Christian F. “New wines and beers of native north America.” Journal of ethnopharmacology 9.2-3 (1983): 329-335.
Fowler, Don D., and Catherine S. Fowler. “Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell’s manuscripts on the Numic peoples of western North America, 1868-1880.” (1971).
“Mason, Bullock & Howland Genealogy.” The Mayflower Compact, http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~smason/genealogy/html/mayfllog.htm.
Several cactus wines exist in Mexico. One of these, locally known as nochocle, is made from the fruit of massive organ pipe cacti in southern Puebla state. The juice of the fruit is mixed with pulque and allowed to ferment for a day. Local belief says that the drink was once reserved for local royalty.
Heard of wood alcohol? Don’t drink it. Wood alcohol, or methanol, is poisonous. It is produced by heating wood in a sealed container until it breaks down, releasing trace amounts of methanol. This process, destructive distillation, has been practiced since ancient times. The last 100 years, however, have seen the rise of industrial production of methanol and an increase in methanol poisonings.
Drinks come in all shapes and sizes, at least when you pour them into different cups. Pulque is no exception. The Mexican booze has evolved through many centuries of drinking culture. In the earliest eras, pulque was consumed out of natural materials like gourds or leaves. Under the Aztecs, clay vessel were used in ritual contexts. Modern Mexico used an abundance of different glass vessels, all of varying shape, size, and style.
Milk seems like a foundational drink for humans. We take it for granted that our lives begin with breast milk and continue with cheese, yogurt, and cream. In reality, we started drinking cow’s milk 8,000 years ago. While most of us are lactose intolerant, some have learned how to deal with milk.
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