Dakota Indian Economics and the Nineteenth-Century Fur Trade

Abstract

Understanding the involvement of the historic Eastern Dakota Indians with employees of the American Fur Company requires an understanding of the characteristics, context, and meaning of exchange for the Dakota. This paper outlines the cultural rules that guided Dakota economic behavior as it related to the fur trade in the 19th century Minnesota. In order to gain access to this ideological realm, the A. examines Dakota and Lakota myths, as well as ethnographic and historical information, to outline the ways in which the Dakota modeled their world and behavior to themselves. Fur trade exchanges are examined in relation to Dakota and Euro-American models of the environment and the productivity of nature, models of social relationships and reciprocity, and models of the supernatural. The A. compares both sets of models, and suggests that the degree of fit or conflict between the two shaped the nature of the contact situation for both the Dakota and the Euro-Americans working for the American Fur Company.