Prohibition impacted beer-making nationwide, but in Oregon, tribes including the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, helped keep the art alive. Following is the edited version of the story by tribal historian David Lewis, who will talk July 26 as part of the Willamette Heritage Center’s “History on Tap” series celebrating Oregon Craft Beer Month. The unedited text of the story is at

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By Dr. David Lewis

Writer, CTGR Cultural Resources

From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition in the U.S. stymied the production of beer in Oregon. But for nearly 100 years ending in the 1950s, Oregon’s Native Americans lived under a race-related Prohibition. From the earliest administrative history of the reservations, the United States government worked to control the access of native people to alcohol, making it a crimeto sell to natives. The control of alcohol was linked to the white belief that alcohol corrupted moral values of the Indians, and to pseudo-scientific stereotypes connecting natives to alcoholism. In Oregon the initiation of the treaties and the tribal removals to the reservations in 1856 caused the federal government to impose laws and rules against the sale of alcohol to the Indian people on the reservation. The 1855 treaty with the Kalapuya, etc., states: “In order to prevent the evils of intemperance among said Indians, it is hereby provided that any one of them who shall drink liquor, or procure it for other Indians to drink, may have his or her proportion of the annuities withheld from him or her for such time as the President may determine.”

In Grand Ronde, tribal men and women took jobs in logging and in agriculture, joining other migrant and local workers picking beans, berries and hops, working in canneries and harvesting forest products, but discrimination and seasonal work often pushed Indians to seek funds elsewhere. Cottage industries were common –forest products, baskets, jams, jellies, and eventually, beers and other liquors.

It is not surprising that, during Prohibition when alcohol was scarce,local Indians chose to make liquor for sale, trade and barter to the surrounding white communities.Homebrew liquor trade became a regular medium of exchange for the tribes in the region beginning in the 1800s.Indians at the reservation would bottle batches of their ales and wines and trade for foodstuffs in urban areas like Sheridan or McMinnville. Elders said that they could get a pair of shoes from a batch of their ale.

Many reservation families took up the practice of making their own homebrews. Using crops from their personal gardens and perhaps gleaning the local fields of hops and berries, they found the raw materials to develop their own recipes. Cannery workers would secure sugar legally or illegally and use this to feed the live cultures of the mash. Elders at Grand Ronde recall it was a common practice for many families to have a batch of homebrew in constant production and that many of the farmers used the unused cattle feeding troughs on their barns to mix and ferment their brews.

The “rum-running” trade of the tribes was made possible because Indian reservations were federal trust lands and only subject to federal laws, not state laws. Because only federal authorities investigated liquor use and sales on the reservations during Prohibition, there were few efforts to investigate such activities in small remote rural populations such as Grand Ronde.

One elder remembers her brothers were left to mind the farm one day and the pigs got into the brewing operation and became quite drunk, and that her brother did not get in trouble. Another elder recalls how he found large gallon sized square wine bottles in his grandparents’ woodshed and broke them, and got in big trouble. Other elders remember that their parents and grandparents would make ales and elderberry wine. There is still a location at the reservation called “wine alley” where all type of activities occurred, one of which likely involved secretive gathering of youth drinking together.

When U.S. Prohibition began, Indians continued making their moonshine and capitalized on it by selling into the most lucrative urban markets. There are stories of Tribal peoplefrom Crescent City and the Coast making runs south to San Francisco, Calif., and north to Portland, to sell their alcohol to the growing underground speakeasy establishments in the cities. This was a common enough practice in Oregon, and there are numerous reports in the local newspapers of moonshiners being caught by the police on runs from Eastern Oregon and elsewhere. It is unclear how prevalent this activity was for all reservations but for those in Grand Ronde, many elders still remember this was a way for their families to have an income.

One case listed in Oregon Historical Society Archives suggests that some liquor activity was reported. In 1905 Dr. Andrew Kershaw, Indian Agent at Grand Ronde, received a letter about boy of the reservation being given liquor. There is no indication that the case was pursued in federal court.It was not uncommon for federal authorities to look the other way, when it came to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation at the base of the Coast Range far from large cities.

Laws on the books, and off, continued to discriminate against Oregon’s Indians, forbidding intermarriage until 1952, for example, and forbidding drink service to Indians at saloons.

Regardless, many tribal people continued to run their own affairs on the remote reservation, living in relative freedom, protected by secrecy.

Community members today recall that home brewing was a common activity spurred by the discriminatory and isolating laws passed by the state and federal government. Still today, wherever there are differential treatments of minorities, there have developed underground economies.

Today, in an atmosphere that is legal and encouraging for home brewers, tribal members at Grand Ronde say that many people continue to pursue home brewingusing their unique recipes.

ABOUT GRAND RONDE TRIBES

The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon is a federally recognized tribe that was restored in 1983. Previous to the final termination of the tribe in 1956, the people of the Grand Ronde Reservation lived there for 100 years. The people are the descendants of over 27 tribes and bands from western Oregon; the main tribes being the Clackamas Chinook, Kalapuya, Molalla, Upper Umpqua, Athapaskan, Takelma, Tillamook and Shasta. The reservation was organized as a military encampment where travel off the reservation was strictly controlled and people needed passes to leave. The military also prevented unwanted white people from entering the reservation to eliminate the racial conflicts.

HISTORY PUB EVENTS

Willamette Heritage Center “History Pub” Events, 1313 Mill St. S.E., Salem. All events are at 5:30 p.m.. Cost: $3, members; $5 non-members. Ages 21 and over only. Beer available for purchase. Call 503-585-7012, to register.

July 12 – “Essentials of Beer,” Fred Eckhardt and John Foyston, beer writers.

July 19 – “Northwest Beer Wars of the 1930s,” Tim Hills, McMenamins historian

July 26 – “Tribal Hop Pickers,” Dr. David Lewis, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde

Aug. 2 – “Suffrage and Temperance: Significant Women’s Movements in Oregon’s Prohibition Era,” Sandy Hardy, Western Oregon University.

Aug. 9 – Microbrew Revolution and Evolution,” Fred Bowman, Oregon craft brewing pioneer, co-founder of Portland Brewing.