Daniel H. Usner, Jr.

Daniel H Usner’s book, American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories is a collection of essays that discuss Native American’s interactions with European colonists from the eighteenth century through the period dominated by southern cotton plantations. The eight essay within this book are a continuation of Usner’s previous work entitled, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783, and further illuminates the economic factors that contributed to Indian-European relations in the Lower Mississippi Valley.
Usner begins his book by discussing the historiography traditionally applied to this time period. He argues that many of the intricacies of the Lower Mississippi region were neglected until the middle of the twentieth century. Through the study of Spanish colonization in North American in the 1970s historians and anthropologists began to focus on the agency of Native Americans living along the Gulf Coast and the inland regions along the Mississippi River. Usner reexamines the borders between French and Natchez societies through the applications of “new” anthropological and historical approaches fashioned by Renato Rosaldo. Rosaldo calls the areas that lay between two populations of people where societies and cultures begin to intermingle and develop unique interactions and characteristics “cultural borderlands”. Due to these interactions, Native American populations fluctuated significantly. With the arrival of La Salle and microbial diseases in 1685 many Native American communities were decimated. In addition, the colonization of the Red River area forced many Indians from their homes and lands. With the migration of many Native peoples into the coastal regions during the 1750s Indian population began to increase as did trade and relations with Europeans. Yet this grown spurt was to be short lived. During 1777-1778 a major small pox epidemic hit the Native American communities, once again devastating much of their population.
During the phase of migration from the inland areas to the coastal regions, populated by Europeans and African slaves, Indians began to develop a significant system of trade, what Usner calls a “Frontier Exchange Economy”. This trading usually occurred in the borderland areas as the Louisiana Territory slowly colonized. Native Americans would supply deer and other animal pelts, grains and crops, while the Europeans would trade weapons, gun powder, metal wears and clothing. The Frontier Exchange Economy remained the system of trade until the start of the nineteenth century when the furs and pelts of the Indians were being replaced by the demand for cotton. As the colonists reliance on their Native American neighbors declined Indians became more aggressive, sometimes launching raids on colonial villages to collect weapons and other supplies that they once traded for. The question of Indian relations became an issue and developed into four main objectives; to maintain alliances through trade relationships, keeping the peace between Indians and Americans, reforming the Native People by teaching them animal husbandry, morality, temperance and how to dress properly and finally, Americans wanted to maintain relations with the Indians in a manner that would make it possible to acquire more of their lands, as the demand for land increased during the shift from an exchange economy to a cotton economy.
Indian people of the Lower Mississippi Valley illustrated their adaptability as they continued to survive as the world changed around them. Many began to work in the cotton fields as the first migrant workers in the area. Still others began to plant cotton and raise livestock themselves. It was not exceptional for some Indians to have significant plantation operations with African slaves and hired white laborers. As the cotton industry grew and the exchange economy continued to weaken many Native people began to provide goods and services on a seasonal basis. As American expansionism pushed west and the Louisiana Territory gain statehood, Indians maintained their identities through economic relationships with Whites. Many Native people moved into more populated areas like New Orleans during the antebellum era. Native Americans sustained a marginal role in the economy of New Orleans through casual labor and the sale of handmade baskets and other goods. They distinguished themselves from the American and slave populations through their traditional dress and adornments and remained socially elusive within the city retaining their native languages and values.
Usner presents his ideas and concepts in a way that is clear and useful. His development of the idea of Frontier Exchange Economy is not only clear, but proves actuate and insightful. Through the use of contemporary historiographical method, Usner is able to develop an argument that brings a new perspective and understanding of economic relations between Indian and European peoples in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Yet his work lacks in one area of significance. Usner’s subtitle mentions not only “Economic Histories” but also “Social” histories. While Usner offers the reader encyclopedic information dealing with the economic relationships between Europeans and Native Americans, his work desperately lacks exposition on the social relationships between the two groups.
Usner does mention several accounts of hostility between the Indians and the Whites, and gives the reader an understanding of the social upheaval caused by disease in his discussion of “petites nations” and the redistribution of surviving Native peoples. Yet Usner’s development of concepts like “Frontier Exchange Economy” and “cultural borderlands” are not applied with any detail to social issues between Whites and Indians. There is very little discussion of the personal and social interaction between Native’s and Whites or African slaves. Usner is not insinuating that there was no intermingling sexually between these populations in the Lower Mississippi Valley between the late seventeenth century and the nineteenth century, yet he barely breaches the topic. Usner’s work becomes lopsided when compared to work like Lucy Murphy’s A Gathering of Rivers. Murphy’s work is an excellent example of the intermingling of cultures and peoples and the unique socio-economic issues that rise out of such a melding.
This is not to say the Usner’s book was useless. His understanding of historiographical traditions gave him a unique perspective with which to approach his topic. Through his expansive use of government documents, journals, personal correspondence, maps and territorial papers, Usner’s work is well researched and documented. His book is an informative account of the relationship and economic development of the Lower Mississippi Valley Indians and the European colonists and later American settlers. It gives the reader a solid understanding of the development of Indian relations in the ever-growing United States and is an excellent introduction to the American development and expansion into southern and western Indian Territory.… (plus d'informations)