Abstract
This thesis examines the history of alcohol use and the anti-alcohol temperance movement among the Cherokees in the Indian Territory in the last quarter of the 19th century. The focus is on how the Cherokee people adopted and adapted the white-oriented temperance movement into an exceptional tribal empowerment platform. This empowerment movement was specifically aimed at reestablishing cultural pride, tribal solidarity, and political force within the Cherokee Nation.
By combating the corrupting effects of white-produced alcohol, the Cherokee Nation sought to oppose and discredit the long-standing and offensive stereotype of the "drunken Indian." At the same time, temperate Cherokees would be shown to be exemplars of their people, endowed with remarkable prowess and indigenous skill.
This Cherokee empowerment campaign was waged largely through the pages of the primary Cherokee publication of that time, the Cherokee Advocate newspaper. Particular emphasis is therefore given to all aspects of temperance propagation by the Advocate. All available weekly issues of the Advocate -from 1870 to 1895 -were thoroughly examined to ascertain both the varied strategies used to endorse temperance as an empowering force as well as the historical arc of Cherokee temperance.
The Cherokee empowerment through temperance movement evolved from a less cohesive beginning in the early 1870s, through a peak period of advocacy in the 1880s, to a gradual loss of momentum, energy, and cohesion in the 1890s. As the national, white, temperance movements gained force, the Cherokee empowerment campaign was sapped and weakened.
The movement remains as a unique historical example of how a tribal community employed a white reform platform and transformed it into a distinctly Native American vehicle for ethnic pride and cultural reinvigoration.