Speakeasies, rum runners, and backwoods fundamentalists railing about the ills of strong drink are just one small part of the global story of prohibition. The full story of prohibition—one you’ve probably never been told—is perhaps one of the most broad-based and successful transnational social movements of the modern era. The call for temperance motivated and aligned activists within progressive, social justice, labor rights, women’s rights, and indigenous rights movements advocating for communal self-protection against the corrupt and predatory “liquor machine” that had become rich off the misery and addictions of the poor around the world.
From the slums of South Asia, to the beerhalls of Central Europe, to the Native American reservations of the United States, discover 20 key figures from history that you didn’t know were prohibitionists.
Little Turtle
Full name: Mihšihkinaahkwa
Lived: c. 1747-14 July 1812
Nationality: Miami Tribe
Occupation: military leader, activist
In the Indian Wars of the old Northwest Territory, Chief Little Turtle of the Miami Tribe dealt the US Army one of its most decisive losses. Yet following the defeat of the Miami tribal confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Little Turtle helped broker peace with the white colonists at the Treaty of Greenville (1795). As a goodwill ambassador between the native tribes and the US government, Little Turtle was concerned not only about the increasing encroachment of white settlers on tribal lands, but their increasing use of distilled liquors to swindle tribesmen of their land and furs, all in defiance of the terms of the Greenville Treaty. In 1801-02, along with his son-in-law, General William Wells, Little Turtle traveled to Washington, DC, and persuaded both local Quakers and President Thomas Jefferson to enact the first federal prohibition of liquor traffic in Native American territories, preventing white settlers from trading, selling, or bartering distilled liquors to Native Americans.
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