Tsonnonthouan, Colonialism, and the Commodification of Culture

Abstract

During and following the Seven Years War, North American Indigenous people began to occupy a unique position in the British imaginary as compelling yet contradictory subjects, existing outside the culture of consumerism that was rapidly rising in Britain. The satirical novel Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Tsonnonthouan (1763) mimicked both the ethnographic works that British people read in increasing numbers and the body of Grub Street texts imitating Tristram Shandy. The novel, which depicts “Indians” as consumers and worshippers of European commodities, negotiates the entanglement of culture and consumerism in both Britain and the colonies.