American Alaska and the Birth of Hooch
While the Russians were in charge, alcohol was always an issue, but it was an issue of trade and smuggling. It was not until the 1867 purchase of Alaska by the Americans that the manufacture of spirits came to the land of the Tlingit in full force.
Building on the legacy of Russia’s apartheid prohibition, US congress banned the importation of liquors into the new territory in 1873. This was neither a unique policy in Alaska, nor anywhere else in the States. The Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 prohibited all trade of spirits to and among inidigenous peoples. With the Alaskan Purchase, the Tlingit, Haida, Athapascans, Yupik, and others would now be treated with discrimination equal to that of any other indigenous group in continental America.
American rule of Alaska would turn out to be slightly different than that of Russia. It took 17 years for the Americans to establish a civilian government in the new territory. Between 1867 and 1884, the Treasury Department, the Army, and the Navy took turns administering the region. With the influx of military personnel, the issue of alcohol in Alaska transformed.
The army did not have the best reputation for sobriety in the new territory. Officers were known to be drunk and even participated in liquor smuggling rings. Some soldiers allegedly instructed Russian children to run off to fetch whiskey for them. Thanks to such reputations, historical rumor has it that it was army men who taught the Tlingit people how to distill. Although it is likely some had learned to distill from the Russians earlier, it was not until American rule that hoochenoo, or Alaskan moonshine, became a major issue.
While the sale of alcohol to indigenous Alaskans was expressly illegal, molasses, sugar, and flour could not be banned. Natives, already privy to the fermentation of kvass, learned how to brew a mash from just about anything including potatoes, elderberries, apples, beans, rice, and hops with a sugar-rich base of molasses and flour. The fermented mash was refined in thrifted stills with pots made of coal-oil cans and columns assembled from scrap metal (perhaps even the hollow trunk of kelp). The bountiful raw ingredients would then become high-octane hoochenoo.
One contemporary newspaper describes the process, “These they put into a large caldron over a slow fire. Some of them have considerable mechanical ingenuity and they make a crude sort of a still out of tin. The pieces are cut out for the worm, one Indian holds them in place, while another with a bar of solder and a hot iron fastens them together. They patch on piece after piece until they have completed a rude sort of worm, and then their still is ready.” (Patriot (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), August 1, 1887)
It was more common for distillers to operate in rural areas, as large purchases of the raw ingredients in the city of Sitka would arouse suspicion. Nevertheless, customs data suggests that the residents of Sitka consumed 110 barrels of molasses a month in the production of the spirit during 1885.
Suspicion could be dangerous. In 1879, the Navy destroyed 38 of the home hooch stills. Then, on January 28th, 1881 Captain Glass of the Wachusett confiscated 20 still along with 1,500 gallons of mash ready to be distilled. Such busts were not uncommon, and some indigenous communities even took part in them, destroying the stills of those in their own communities. Every so often, violence would break out between the American military and natives over the liquor issue.
From the southern end of Alaska’s coast up through the Copper River Delta, indigenous Alaskans were distilling moonshine beneath the discriminatory prohibition the US government had placed on native peoples. The resulting liquor fueled trade, celebration, and widespread intoxication. The Tlingit, the first people to come into contact with the Russians, were the beneficiaries of this trade. They would exchange furs for molasses from white traders, make hoochenoo, then trade the liquor to Athapascas for furs. The liquor was a currency of exchange.
Yet Hoochenoo was not all good for the Tlingit. Although biased, reports from settlers claim that the drinking habits of natives left them underprepared for winter scarcity. One Naval Lieutenant named Emmons alleged that half of the natives on St. Lawrence Island died during the winter of 1878 because they had been drunk throughout the summer. Perhaps such accounts only fuel stereotypes and act as justifications for the discriminatory liquor laws that were in place. But there was also interest from Tlingit leaders to control the production of hoochenoo for the sake of their communities’ health.