A Drunkard's Self-Reflections

by Mark J. Green (Wánįhèga)
translated by Bill Hall (Hų̄ka)

William Hall, ca. 1895

"Yesterday, my eyes felt like something was put in them, a little bottle hung from a tree, it looked blue. There was a man who showed me a bottle I had drunk from. I had been drunk for a time. Later, I was in the weeds when I sobered up. When I became conscious and realizing this, while I was normal, it seemed I was running away from something. As I sat wondering, here laid a knife by me, and it was covered with blood. Perhaps I may have killed someone. Those people should be far enough away to be victims. Then I thought I could not have been able to walk there in my condition.

Over there, you competed with three of them, I thought to myself. But these were at the games. My arms and legs were in pain and I was hungry. And I was overcome with fatigue. They spread a blanket and put me in it, and they fed me there, and I really ate a meal. They were trying to bring the swelling down in the hips. They tapped my hips using a small sharp knife. I did not go anywhere for a time, perhaps a week. Then walked but with the aid of a cane. Then I thought, I had better be trying to get home. Then, unexpectedly, my people were said to be nearby. They pointed out to me the approximate location." (01:15)¹

Commentary. "my eyes felt like something was put in them" — severe alcoholism can result in blepharitis (swelling of the eyelids) that can create the sensation that something is in your eye.

"it looked blue" — this was the famed Edmund G. Booz's Old Cabin Whiskey bottles. They came in several colors, one of which was blue, as illustrated here. The bottles were shaped like a cabin and stamped with the date 1840, although the earliest manufacture date was 1859. Since the William Henry Harrison presidential campaign ("Tippeconoe and Tyler too") was launched in 1840, the cabin shaped bottle tended to bring to mind the distorted idea that the general lived in a humble western log cabin. However, the "cabin" depicted on the bottle is a two-story planed wood ediface, and not a pioneer log cabin.² Nevertheless, the ediface coupled with the date was quite sufficient to bring to mind Harrison and the Tippecanoe campaign. In the present context, this is a very subtle alusion to the almost omnipresent reference in these stories to the central event around which they orbit: the Tippecanoe campaign.

"the games" — if the game were kisik (lacrosse), it would explain the pain in his arms and legs, as the game was often described as "the little war," no doubt from frequent contact by the lacrosse racket, which was rather like a club in some respects.

Red Door Resale		© National Museum of the American Indian, NMAI_135667		NAA INV 06610200
E. C. Booz's Blue Whiskey Bottle		A Cupping Horn Made of Cow Horn		Lacrosse Rackets

"tapped my hips" — Hall remarks parenthetically that, "This is done to draw blood and then apply medication," a reference to the medical practice of bleeding, which was usually done by making a small incision and then cupping it with a heated horn.  There were two forms of cupping, called "wet cupping" and "dry cupping." The former involved making an incision on the area to be cupped so that the device would literally draw out blood; in the latter, the object was to cause a blister, which represented the displacement of the blood to a desired innocuous site. In recent times, when glass cups were used, the standard procedure was that

... both the site and the cup were warmed in water. Cups were then placed on the skin with one edge raised approximately one and a half inches. It was usually the lighted torch that was then placed under the center of the glass for two seconds and then quickly withdrawn to create a vacuum. The vacuum created would also pull the glass away from the operator’s fingers. The skin then rose slowly into the glass, occupying one-third of the volume. The glass was left on for a minute then removed ...³

The use of horns in the place of cups receives support from Schoolcraft who describes the use of cupping among the Hocągara:

They frequently cup a patient for headache, and other local pains. The operation is performed by scarifying with a flint, knife, or lancet, and applying the tip of the horn of the ox or buffalo; a vacuum is next produced by the operator applying his mouth to the small end of the horn, and exhausting the air; the operation is thus performed as efficaciously as by the use of cupping-glasses.⁴

This practice was adopted under the idea that the enlightenment of white men extended to medicine as well, and so their "scientific" procedures were adopted as a form of progress.

Comparative Material. ...

Links: ...

Stories: mentioning drunkenness: Chief Wave and the Big Drunk, Whiskey Making, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married, Chief Wave Tries to Take the Whiskey, The Brawl in Omro, Jerrot's Temperance Pledge — A Poem, The Shawnee Prophet — What He Told the Hocągara, Version 1, Little Fox and the Ghost, Version 1, Migistéga's Death, Version 1, The Journey of the Prophet’s Acolyte, The Spanish Fight, Snowshoe Strings.

Themes: ...

Notes

¹ Archives of Traditional Music (ATM), Indiana University, translation by William Hall, Original Typescript (Black River Falls: ca. 1960-1970) D7-8, recordeing by Milford G. Chandler of Mark J. Green - vocals, bef. 1921, Black River Falls, Jackson County, Wisconsin (duration on cylinder: 01:53). ATL no. 526.8 8742.9. Recording 44.SCY 1809; Collection number (collection identifier): 54-196-F: p. 47 of 87; OT no. 7695; APS 7226.

This corresponds to the audio tape in the American Philosophical Society: 10-04. Fraenkel, Gerd. Stacy, Stella. "The drunkard's self-reflections," recorded 13 July 1959, 1 .mp3; 00:01:15 - 00:02:04. Copy made by Gerd Fraenkel of an original tape held at the Archives of Languages of the World, Indiana University. This program comes from original tape 528.7. APS accession number 7260; APSdigrec_2182; Recording Number: 02; Program Number: 34.

² Virtual Museum of Historical Bottles and Glass: GVII – 3 E. G. Booz’s Old Cabin Whiskey, 120 Walnut St Philadelphia, 1840 (electrnic text, viewed 6.27.2026).

³ Gunwant Sandhu, "Bleeding Out the Evil Spirits," in Proceedings of the 13th Annual History of Medicine Days, March 19-20, 2004. Ed. W. A. Whitelaw (Calgary: Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, 2004) 270-275 [273].

⁴ Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Company, 1856) 4:242-243.