A01=Michael Morris
American History
Author_Michael Morris
Category=JBCC
Category=JHM
Category=NHK
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780313308437
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 30 Apr 1999
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In the relations between colonial European traders and the Indians of the southern backcountry, trade was a powerful manipulative tool used by both sides in their attempts to control each other. This anthropological and sociological study examines how European traders sought out native women as cultural instructors, translators, and sexual companions. The network of native women, fur traders, and colonial diplomats functioned as an invisible social, political, and economic web throughout the backcountry. Although this web was an integral part of the colonial struggle for the region, it is often overlooked or ignored in conventional histories.
Women played a key role in this system of economic exchange. They benefitted materially from this arrangement, while the traders enjoyed increased political power as a result of the cohabitation. These Anglo-Indian unions helped to impose Euroamerican values on native societies, and, in part, the women functioned as unofficial diplomats for their people. Colonial governments hoped that the efforts of these frontier traders would impose stability on the tribes, but the profit-seeking of many such traders often resulted in bloody conflict instead.
MICHAEL P. MORRIS is a full time Instructor of History at the University of South Carolina-Aiken./e His previous publications include articles on Native Americans and Trade in the American Southeast.
