Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives

Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives

Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives presents historical evidence that wage labor was prevalent among Native Americans. In this timely collection of essays, leading ethnographers and ethnohistorians, as well as innovative younger scholars, present field and primary historical evidence that wage labor was a significant American Indian economic adaptation as early as the seventeenth century in some areas and was common in many U.S. indigenous communities by the late nineteenth century. These well-written, well-documented case studies form a concrete picture of Indian dependence on wage labor from Maine to California and of Native Americans’ place in the capitalist system. The system of wage labor is usually associated with urban economies and, therefore, it is often assumed that indigenous peoples are not participants in the system until they have begun to assimilate into, or become assimilated by, a predominant culture. This collection of 10 papers, however, provides numerous examples of Native Americans as wage earners as early as the seventeeth century. The studies include a look at seasonal work in the potato fields of Maine, Sante Fe Railroad construction labor, and at communities among the Ottawas of Michigan and the Cheyenne and in San Diego, the West's Great Basin, and Death Valley. Seven of the 10 studies were originally presented at a 1991 symposium of the American Society for Ethnohistory and the American Anthropological Association; all demonstrate how wage labor became important for community and individual survival among Native Americans. David Rouse Used Book in Good Condition