Last modified: Wednesday, March 23, 2011
State history journal looks at saloon-busting Mennonites
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 23, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Battles over saloons in the Mennonite community of Berne, Ind., are featured in the March 2011 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History.
The Brenneman Saloon was one of several that operated in Berne, Ind., in the late 1800s, threatening the pious lifestyle of Mennonite immigrants.
According to author John Eicher, in the article "'Our Christian Duty': Piety, Politics and Temperance in Berne, Indiana, 1886-1907," temperance fights helped that northeastern Indiana town's second-generation immigrants to reaffirm their religious identity while joining in mainstream American politics.
Elsewhere in the issue, Thomas Campion reviews the land treaties made between the U.S. government and Native American tribes in northern Indiana from the 1820s through the 1850s. Campion reveals the importance of these treaties to a concerted federal effort to ensure white settlement on what had been Indian lands across the state.
Finally, well-known Bloomington author Scott Russell Sanders offers his thoughts on the historical fiction of the prolific Hoosier novelist James Alexander Thom.
The Indiana Magazine of History is published quarterly by the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. The magazine's website can be found at www.indiana.edu/~imaghist. For general information on the articles, contact the editorial office at 812-855-4139.
