6

Usner, Daniel H., Jr.  Indians, Settlers, & Indians in a
Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley
Before 1783.  Chapel Hill:  The University of North Carolina
Press, 1992.


     Daniel H. Usner, Jr., uses Indians, Setttlers, & Slaves

in a Frontier Economy to describe the changing context for

fluid economies in the Mississippi Valley up to the Spanish

absorption of West Florida.  Usner has sub-agendas including

teaching a new understanding of what (and where) a frontier

exchange economy could be, and bringing more academic light

to Colonial Louisiana previous to the Antebellum South

(Usner laments that version of Southern History is a

juggernaut).  His dissection of various frontier markets

(hides, farming, etc) presages the coming greater academic

interest in the contributions of individual and collective

smaller players on the margins of colonial emplacements.

Because of his interest in modes of production and

geographical determinants, some readers may perceive a

background of Marxian economic theory, although Usner's

interest in cultural matters and non-reliance on Marxian

terminology seem to refute this assessment of bias.

     Usner generally relies on transcribed archival sources

in English, French, and Spanish (sometimes translated, as

with the heavily-used Mississippi Provincial Archives.),

although he shows an appreciation for regional scholarship

found in journals like the Louisiana Historical Quarterly

and Alabama Review.  The first half of the book sets the

stage for the latter half, by describing the setting in

which the labor occurs (the specifics of the labor are

detailed in part two).  Oddly, though Part One reads like a

synthetic work, it relies more heavily on primary sources

than Part Two which in focus and structure looks like a

monograph.1.

     The first chapter asserts the marginality of Louisiana

to the French Empire.  This marginality is critical to

understanding the slow (and frontier orientation) of the

Louisiana colonies until Spanish takeover in the 1760s.  The

subsistence level society, deprived of human or material

support, relied heavily on natives for foodstuffs and mutual

protection.2  Secession of the colony to the Company of the

Indies brought about the first meaningful wave of

immigration. As colonial populations grew, these attendant

Indian populations (surrounding the colonies "like a Dutch

fair") experienced immunological, social, and economic

displacements.3  The settlers themselves had a hard time of

it, experiencing massive morbidity by famine and resultant

illness.4  Usner notes that the fluid frontier economies in

early colonial Louisiana were not conducive to rapid

deployment of commodity production (plantation economies).

     The second chapter discusses the tensions produced

between colonials and Indians due to the official desire to

make Louisiana at least minimally profitable.  Usner begins

with census sources to describe the wide variation in

colonial demographics.  Women and artisans were particularly

under-represented, leading to concubinage to assuage the

former, and training of slave labor (with dire economic

consequences) in the latter case.  In last half of this

chapter, Usner describes a similar diversity among Indian

"nations," dividing them by religion, attachment to

colonies, degree of cultural independence, and geography.5

He uses Natchez hostilities to illustrate the results of

strained colonial-native relations.  This strain leaked over

into racial fear as the slaves and Indians (Natchez,

Choctaw), showed varying amounts of willingness to collude.6

     The third chapter discusses the fragility and necessity

of trade-based alliances between the French and Indians.

Although hamstrung by a perpetual shortage of trade goods,

the French successfully maintained a tenuous alliance with

the Choctaw, learning to play them off the Chickasaw among

others.  This reliance on Choctaw strength was the cause of

some degradation of the Choctaw infrastructure: hunting,

farming, and product selection.  Stress eventually found

release in the Choctaw War, which Usner counts as primarily

important, if under-discussed.7  This uneasy situation,

frontier exchange held together by threatened or real

violence on one's enemies and allies, was the matrix into

which the colonists of the 1760s were introduced.8

     The fourth chapter describes the overlay of partition

politics and society onto this pre-existing exchange system.

The next two decades, leading up to the Spanish assumption

of West Florida in the 1780s are critical for Usner.

Massive immigration, no seen since the 1720s, changed

population ratios between natives and colonists.  The fluid,

laissez faire frontier society was quickly codified and

restricted to prime it for plantation use.  Indian unrest

took the form of harassment more than revolt: theft,

poaching, etc.9  Colonial powers sought to channel this

harassment into subjugation of the increasing oppressed

slave population:  Indians functioned as bounty hunters to

return escaped slaves.  Slaves saw previously-overlooked

infractions (petty theft, forays into the swamps) become

punished offenses, sometimes cruelly.

     Chapter Five begins the second half of the book,

concerned with actual labor and social systems in the

frontier economies.  Usner looks first at the pastoral and

hunting modes of production.  Geographical position often

dictated the chosen method of sustenance:  hill peoples

planted arable land and plains peoples hunted local game and

exploited indigenous plants, although Usner is careful to

point out the Indians were sure to make use of any available

resource.  Tribes were frequently mobile to make use of game

that was available in the winter, for example.10  Colonial

patterns of production were similar, likely because the

settlers were not ever far above survival levels of

agriculture at first (later on farmers were able to

integrate a higher percentage of export agriculture).11  The

colonial slaves, mimicking the Indian reliance on hunting,

were often handy with weapons, which did not decrease

slaveowner anxiety.12

     The sixth chapter relates the details of food marketing

and distribution.  The geographic and imperial marginality

of Louisiana made food logistics critical from the

beginning.13  Starving colonists, for example,  were allowed

to live with Indians in times of severe hardship.14  Company

officials were not pleased with the general satisfaction

with continuing reliance on Indians for foodstuffs.15

     Slaves were often sent to market the master's goods,

and could put this moment of independent action to personal

use.16  African women, in particular, became important in the

food market, as they secured foodstuffs for the master's

holdings.  For both genders, the freedom of the market

provided an outlet for social and economic needs, and could

sometimes be exploited so well that the slave could purchase

freedom.17  In this manner, and as with food-relations with

the Indians, we have continuing evidence of the previously

omnipresent exchange fluidity.  This would decrease as

commodity agriculture gained foothold.18

     The seventh chapter is concerned with male labor of

military and transport sectors.  Usner describes local army

life as divorced from the larger warfare in the Americas,

usually engaged in drudgery when not infrequently involved

in local fighting.  The work and conditions were not unlike

that of a slave.19  Few were predisposed toward sociable or

productive behavior, and their unique dependence on currency

was problematic for them.20  Life was similar for sailors and

boatsmen, except that their wages were depressed by the use

of boat-experienced Africans.21  Treatment of returned

deserters was so harsh that Indians began to bargain for the

soldiers' lives before their return.22

     The final chapter concerns the deerskin trade.  Again,

shortage of colonial goods hampered the extension of trade

alliances with the Indians, and even deerskins that were

traded for were sometimes ruined in storage or transport.23

Colonial interest in this important commodity led to price

fixing and other regulations.  Growing reliance on credit-

based transactions increased anxiety for everyone involved,

as is described in the tense exchange between Nelly Price

and John Fitzpatrick.24  Another key transition is the

diversion of Mid-western skins and furs down the Mississippi

river, which put downward pressure on the value of locally

produced skins.25  Even so hampered, deerskin trading

remained a viable-if-marginal market economy; perhaps it is

the best illustration of the fluid nature of this type of

frontier exchange.

     Indians, Settlers, & Slaves, with its interest in

Indian modes of production and society, reminds me of Chain

Her By One Foot, although with a much reduced emphasis on

Marxian terminology and theory.  In contrast to that work,

does not seem to side with one set of players; he does not

cast any group as victim.26  Instead, each is shown adapting

and responding to its setting according to its traditional

ways.  This even-handedness is not in great supply in works

that involve either Amerindians or African slaves.



jason carr

_______________________________
1 Quasi-monograph?
2 Page 17.
3 Page 28.
4 Page 40.
5 Pages 60-65.
6 Pages 72-75.
7 Page 92.
8 Page 104.
9 Page 127.
10 Page 153.
11 Page 154.
12 Page 164.
13 Page 192-3.
14 Page 194.
15 Page 196.
16 Page 201.
17 Page 202.
18 Page 218.
19 Page 220.
20 Page 224.
21 Page 228.
22 Page 242.
23 Page 248.
24 Page 267.
25 Page 273.
26 In one place, Usner does seem to adopt a politically
correct stance: continual infighting  he argues against the
idea that constant tribal infighting is not a sign of
cultural inferiority (page 95).

http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/transatlantic/