Jessica Yirush Stern. The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 268 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-3148-6; $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-3147-9.
Reviewed by Jay H. Precht (Penn State Fayette)
Published on H-AmIndian (July, 2018)
Commissioned by F. Evan Nooe (University of South Carolina Lancaster)
Redefining Trade between British Colonists and Native Americans in the Southeast
Much of the work on early interactions between indigenous peoples and Europeans focuses on cultural differences. In the case of trade, scholarly analysis often highlights a Native American emphasis on gift giving and contrasts it with colonial commodity exchange. In The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast, historian Jessica Yirush Stern challenges these interpretations by examining both British colonial and indigenous economic rhetoric, labor ideology, and trade practices. In the process, Stern paints a more complicated picture of trade in the colonial Southeast by considering production and consumption of trade items in addition to the actual exchange and differentiating between trade practices and rhetoric espoused by indigenous and British communities. The book convincingly argues that both colonial and indigenous trade practices included gift giving and commodity exchange and that community leaders and less prominent community members in both societies often competed to define the nature of trade in their communities.
Chronologically, Stern focuses on the colonial period up to the 1760s and identifies the Cherokee War between 1759 and 1761 as an event that fundamentally changed colonial-indigenous relationships in the Southeast. The author also limits her examination to South Carolina and Georgia and the indigenous confederacies of the Southeast. Within these parameters, Stern deemphasizes both colonial and indigenous local variation “to elucidate the broader patterns of responses to expanding marketplaces” (p. 9). Delimiting the scope of analysis raises questions about the applicability of Stern’s conclusions to different regions, indigenous nations, and colonists, and her regional focus leaves questions concerning local variation unexplored. However, these decisions allow the author to offer a tightly argued monograph with the potential to spur further research.
In her investigation of the two British colonies, the author contrasts Tory ideas about trade that viewed it as a dangerous, zero-sum game with Whig ideas that regarded it as a potentially lucrative, mutually beneficial exchange. Both South Carolina and Georgia officials operated on Tory principles and tried to create monopolies or heavily regulate trade. However, individual colonists outside these elite circles pushed for Whig principles, argued for deregulation, and ignored colonial laws limiting trade.
Indigenous peoples in the Southeast had similar debates about trade. Leaders of the Mississippian chiefdoms that preceded the confederacies of the colonial era used the distribution of prestige goods attained in trade to maintain their authority. However, after the collapse of these chiefdoms, individual households within the confederacies increasingly asserted control over their own economic activities. Nevertheless, traditional ceremonies continued to emphasize communal labor, and leaders refashioned themselves as advocates for their communities in trade relationships with European colonists.
In addition to asking readers to reassess Native and colonial trade practices, Stern also challenges a few additional common interpretations. In assessing the impact of European trade on indigenous communities, the author argues that although the influx of European manufactured goods contributed to a loss of some traditional production practices, southeastern Indians actually expanded their creative repertoire by refashioning these new commodities. Further, she maintains that European goods did not act as “instruments of assimilation” because indigenous people “remanufactured many of these goods according to their own fashion” (p. 128).
Overall, Stern successfully forces the reader to reexamine colonial-indigenous trade and work to avoid oversimplifying people’s practices and beliefs. In her chapter on commodity exchange, she points out that Native people’s first experience with European trade involved seamen and included no social relationship. Building from this well-known fact that establishes the indigenous use of commodity exchange, she effectively demonstrates that colonists and Native Americans in the Southeast used a variety of trade methods. The discussion about the practices of production, exchange, and consumption effectively highlights a critical approach to how we define these strategies. Stern’s study should interest anyone researching or teaching colonial or indigenous history. It changed the way I teach colonial trade in my Native American history class.
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Citation:
Jay H. Precht. Review of Stern, Jessica Yirush, The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast.
H-AmIndian, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2018.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=49820
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