In League Against King Alcohol: Native American Women and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1874–1933 by Thomas J. Lappas

Abstract

Reviewed by: In League Against King Alcohol: Native American Women and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1874–1933 by Thomas J. Lappas Izumi Ishii In League Against King Alcohol: Native American Women and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1874–1933. By Thomas J. Lappas. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. xx, 321. $36.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-6463-2.) Drawing on years of extensive archival research, Thomas J. Lappas explores the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Indian communities. He focuses on Native American women who, as members of the WCTU, worked with white women for the cause of temperance at the turn of the twentieth century. Lappas poses the question of why Native American women took an interest in the work of the WCTU and became members. By analyzing Indian women [End Page 351] leaders' own words, he concludes that their reasons for joining the organization reflected both their degree of acculturation and their strong will to preserve their distinctiveness as Indians. The organization's Christian foundation also motivated many Indian women to join. Native women were aware of the devastating effects of alcohol on their communities, and they believed that the WCTU could help solve the problems they faced. Native women's writings reveal that they witnessed and even suffered from domestic violence caused by excessive drinking, which also spurred them to join the WCTU. Unfortunately, Indian women were rarely visible as individuals except for their role in the Loyal Temperance Legions organized for children. Being a member of the WCTU did not necessarily mean that Native women and their white counterparts acquired a better understanding of one another. The Union Signal and other WCTU publications helped perpetuate the stereotypical images of Indian savagery that offended the often well-educated Native members of the WCTU. The organization also weighed in on one of the most bitterly contested issues in Indian affairs at the turn of the twentieth century—the allotment of tribal land to individuals and the opening of surplus land to non-Indian homesteaders. Initially exempt from allotment, the five large Indian nations in eastern Oklahoma, known as Indian Territory, resisted extension of the policy to them. The national WCTU, however, passed a resolution supporting the merger of Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory WCTUs after Oklahoma statehood, a move that sorely disappointed Native members. In the end, the cause of temperance failed to forge ties of sympathy and friendship between Native WCTU women and white members. Instead, the WCTU found its strongest allies in Indian Territory among white missionaries rather than among Indian people. No one would challenge the author's statement that "[s]imply telling the story of the WCTU and Native Americans is valuable" (p. 5). Yet the best chapters are the ones that deal with non-Native women activists working for Indians and their communities, rather than "Native American Women and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union" as the subtitle of the book indicates. The WCTU that Lappas depicts was not likely to be an organization where Indian women members and their white counterparts enjoyed a world of solidarity and sisterhood. Lappas's study reveals the intolerance that characterized the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in aiming to attain its ultimate goals, at the turn of the twentieth century. To what extent did Native women contribute to the success in the WCTU's crusade against alcohol, and what roles did they play in the wide-ranging activities of the WCTU? In League Against King Alcohol: Native American Women and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1874–1933 gives readers an incentive to seek further what the organization meant to the Indian women who worked with assimilationist white reformers in the struggle for sobriety and at the same time strove valiantly to preserve their Native identity and tribal sovereignty. [End Page 352] Izumi Ishii Tokai University Copyright © 2021 The Southern Historical Association