Giving Up "Indians"

Abstract

Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Indian-White Exchanges. By David Murray. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. Since the publication of Roy Harvey pearce's acclaimed Savagism and Civilization in 1953, Native American scholars have approached the study of Indian and European encounter from, one could argue, two distinct positions. On the one hand, Robert F. Berkhofer Jr.'s influential The White Man's Indian (1978) argues that the "Indian" is culturally constructed, an image of European imaginings. For Berkhofer, the border is a site of incommensurability; the study of "Indians" is always only a study of the European mind. In contradistinction to this well-established tradition that promotes a static model of encounter, recent scholarship has shifted the focus of study in ways that acknowledge the dynamic nature of exchange and, consequently, recognize the border as a site of negotiation.1 David Murray's Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Indian-White Exchanges similarly proceeds from the premise that cross-cultural relations are, to a greater or lesser extent, reciprocal in design. However, unlike the bulk of scholarship in Native American studies that focuses almost exclusively on [End Page 271] the accord and mutual understanding produced in the wake of encounter, Indian Giving also attends to the loss—misinterpretation, mistranslation—that takes place alongside these same instances of accommodation. The title is, of course, suggestive of the book's primary intention; the phrase "Indian giving" entails the parallel actions of giving and taking, loss and gain. Before turning to the epistemological and political implications of Murray's theoretical commitments, I want to briefly outline the scope and content of the book's seven chapters. As those familiar with Murray's work have come to expect, Indian Giving is the product of extensive research and meticulous scholarship, and in this, the author's second book-length study, the reader is presented with a project that is as ambitious as it is broadly conceived: "This book is about value and the circulation of value, within and across cultures. More specifically, it is about what was given and exchanged in early encounters between Europeans and Indians and how these transactions were understood and represented on each side" (1). Indian Giving engages a wide range of texts—from the canonical work of Roger Williams to lesser-known texts such as the writings of Protestant missionary David Brainerd—to explore acts of giving and exchange in seventeenth-century Indian and European encounter in the Northeast. In addition, although the book focuses primarily on the seventeenth century, its scope spans from the late fifteenth century (Columbus) to the middle of the nineteenth century (Melville). After a lengthy introduction to theories of the gift and exchange, the succeeding chapters consider the struggle for sovereignty and power, the creation and translation of word lists, the uses of wampum, and the process of religious conversion. Murray is particularly attentive to the way objects/signs take on value and circulate in a particular system—religious, linguistic, financial, material—and how these systems overlap in the discursive economy of early encounter. He argues that exchange across cultures takes place within a "set of interlocking and overlapping economies," and as such, the value of what was exchanged became unstable and confused. Subsequently, Murray contends that European attempts to control exchanges by imposing ordering systems to "fix" the circulation of meaning and value were, in the end, unsuccessful. By virtue [End Page 272] of operating within economies that are inextricably intertwined, what circulated was to a degree uncontainable. Something always got lost in the exchange. In "Abundance and Traces," Murray turns his attention to an area where exchange and power might most commonly be witnessed: in expressions of sovereignty and wealth in European accounts of the New World. His reading of Captain John Smith's A Map of Virginia (1612), specifically the coronation scene between Captain Newport and Chief Powhatan, illustrates how European and Indian acts of giving and exchange were not simply attempts at...