hooch

[Alan Hartley]

Here's the OED entry:

QUOTE
Hoochinoo. Also Hootsenoo, etc.
[ad. Tlingit Hutsnuwu, lit. ‘grizzly bear fort’.]
1. A member of a small Indian people found in Admiralty Island, Alaska.
Also attrib. or as adj. In pl., this people.
1878 Dennis in W. G. Morris Rep. Customs Dist. Alaska (1879) 122 On top
of this there came a fight among the Hootzenoo Indians here.
1890 M. Ballou New Eldorado (ed. 5) 321 We pass the Indian village of
Kootznahoo, occupied by a tribe of the same name, a people who have
always proved to be restless and aggressive.
1915 J. Muir Trav. Alaska (1917) 211 They were about to set out on an
expedition to the Hootsenoos to collect blankets as indemnity or
blood-money for the death of a Chilcat woman from drinking whiskey
furnished by one of the Hootsenoo tribe.
2. (Usu. with lower-case initial.) An alcoholic liquor made by Alaskan
Indians, esp. the Hoochinoo people; also any inferior alcoholic drink
(esp. whisky) in Alaska and the Canadian north-west.
1877 Puget Sound Argus (Pt. Townsend, Wash.) 23 Nov., I have frequently
seen soldiers go to the Indian ranch for their morning drink of
kootznehoo.
c1898 in P. Berton Centennial Food Guide (1966) 58/2 Whenever whisky
runs short the Yukoner falls back upon a villanous decoction..known as
‘hootchinoo’, or ‘hootch’.
1899 Boston Jrnl. 11 Jan. 4/5 Recently the House gave its official
sanction to the word by enacting that no whisky, beer or ‘hoochinoo’
shall be sold in Alaska.
1937 C. L. Andrews Wrangell & Gold of Cassiar 49 A discharged soldier
named Doyle..went to Hootznahoo, showed them how to distill a villainous
compound from molasses, yeast, berries, sugar, or other compounds. It
was first so called from the village, ‘Hootznahoo’ paraphrased as
‘Hoochinoo’.
1958 P. Berton Klondike Fever 27 Another was to collect the excise duty
on all locally made hootchinoo.
b. In full hoochinoo still. A still for the manufacture of hoochinoo.
1879 Chicago Tribune 14 May 6/3 We accidentally dropped upon a
hootchenoo still in full operation.
1883 J. Wright Among Alaskans 150 Mr. Dennis had appointed the most
reliable Indians as policemen, giving them authority, under United
States revenue customs laws, to seize and destroy the hoochinoos or
whisky-stills.
UNQUOTE

Hdbk. N. Amer. Indians v. 17 (1990), p. 227, lists as one of the Tlingit
tribes the Hutsnuwu (xucnu:wú), residing near Sitka (ibid. p. 204). And
just to confuse things, Hooch also occurs as a variant of Hoh, the name
of a subgroup of the Quileute (and inhabitants of a marvelous
rain-forest) (ibid. 437).

Alan