Trade Habits and Economic Motivation among the Indians of North America

Extract

It was a strange caricature of the Red Indians which emerged as the “noble savage” from the scrutiny of the statesmen and the philosophes of the second half of the eighteenth century. “Mild and hospitable when at peace, though merciless in war beyond any known degree of human ferocity,” the “Indian was indebted to no one but himself; his virtues, his vices and his prejudices were his own work; he had grown up in the wild independence of his nature.” So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, emphasizing a great truth but suggesting an important untruth. For the Indian was indeed independent in spirit, and his vices and many of his virtues were alien to Europeans. But however independent his nature might be, he was not economically independent. The Chipewa chief who met Alexander Henry at Michilimackinac in 1761 expressed much of the splendid independence of the Indians: “Englishman, though you have conquered the French, you have not yet conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains, were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance: and we will part with them to none.” Alexander Henry, however, was present at Michilimackinac precisely because he knew that the Indians were not independent economically; he had gone up, and he stayed up through the dangers and vicissitudes of Pontiac's rebellion, because there was no doubt at all that, despite his savagery and despite his independence, the Indian would trade for European goods as soon as they were brought within his grasp.