About the year 1800, the practice of keeping spirituous liquors and
other appendages in families to treat visitors commenced. In 1813,
when I commenced housekeeping, I thought it necessary to keep liquor,
sugar, &c., in the house to treat visitors, and from that time until
temperance societies were formed, I thought I could not agreeably
entertain a visitor without having those articles, and if I happened
to have none in the house at such time I generally sent out for them.
Cider had been a very plentiful and common drink in this neighborhood
for many years. Cuddeback and Gumaer had been in the habit of
drinking wine in their country, and after settling here, it appears,
made early provision to have cider for their drink; for there were
apple trees in their orchards and in Van Inwegen's orchard between
two and three feet in diameter in the time of the Revolution; and
when Gumaer (my grandfather) built his house, before the French war
commenced, he had an opening left in the back wall of his cider
cellar for a gutter to pass through it from his cider press back of
the house into the cellar, and this gutter and others led the cider
into the different cider barrels in it. From which it appears that
the making of cider had become quite a business at that time, and, as
it was no salable article, it was generally all drank by the family
and visitors and by the Indians. It was a common drink from the time
it was made in the fall until spring, when Gumaer made beer to drink
in warm weather, for which he had a large brass kettle set on mason
work, a long building and other fixtures to make and dry his malt.
The use of cider by the white people never made them drunk, but some
Indians, if they could get enough to drink, would sometimes get both
drunk and abusive, in consequence of which it was generally withheld
from them after they had drank enough. In respect to which I will
here relate an occurrence. A large, stout Indian at a certain time,
came to Gumaer's and asked for a drink of cider. The pewter mug,
which held two quarts, was filled and given to him. He drank and set
it down by him, which, after drinking a few times, he emptied and
asked for more. Gumaer told him he had drank enough, and that he
would not let him have more. The Indian, after asking a few times and
seeing he would not get more, took the mug and went off with it.
Gumaer went to the barn, where his black man, Jack (who feared no
Indian), was threshing with other hands, and told him that the Indian
had gone off with the mug and that he must go and get it from him.
Jack went, overtook the Indian, got hold of the mug, and, after a
hard scuffle, got it from him and returned to his work. The Indian
also returned and followed Jack to the barn and challenged him to
fight. Jack, having felt his strength, did not like to undertake it;
but, after some provocation of the Indian, a severe, long and hard
fight was had, in which Jack became the conqueror. He had had many a
fist fight with the Indians, but said this was the hardest he ever
had. The Indians, when they became somewhat intoxicated, would often
fight each other, in which they would make great exertions to get
hold of each other's heads and try to twist each other's necks. From
all of which, it appears, they could drink more cider than the white
people and enough to make them drunk, against which the latter had to
guard to evade the trouble of their intoxication. They would never
revenge injuries which emanated therefrom, but imputed the same to
the liquor as the sole cause.
After rum was kept in taverns in our neighborhoods a company of
Indians from other places sometimes came here to have a drinking
frolic, for which they procured rum and selected a place for that
purpose at a distance from the dwellings of the white inhabitants, so
as not to disturb them, where they appointed two of their number to
keep sober to watch and prevent them from hurting each other. To
these two men they gave up all their guns, hatchets and knives, who
hid them out of the way so that they should not have weapons
wherewith to hurt each other; and when all their arrangements were
made they began to drink and soon got into a very noisy, turbulent
and rude frolic, in which they would whoop, halloo, take hold of each
other, scuffle, wrestle and sometimes fight. This they continued till
their thirst for rum became satisfied, and after becoming sober, they
were dull, stupid and deprived of the liveliness and activity they
possessed before they commenced drinking, which had to be restored by
abstinence.
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