Laborers, Native American, Eastern Woodland, and Far Western

Although early European settlers imagined North American Indians as "naturally lazy," in reality Native American labor dominated the continent's economy from the contact period well into the eighteenth century. Whether laboring for their own people, trading with Europeans, or working for others, American Indians contributed significantly to the early American and Atlantic economies. As their Native American independence diminished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, individual Indians turned increasingly to marginal wage labor to supplement their mixed agricultural and pastoral subsistence practices. With a greater proportion of Indians moving to urban areas in the second half of the twentieth century, wage labor became the most common form of work they performed. Through all of these changes, Indian peoples worked within a larger social and cultural framework that cannot be separated from the economic functions of their labor.

For centuries prior to contact with Europeans, Native peoples divided their own work along gender lines, reserving some tasks for men and others for women. In more sedentary, agricultural villages, women nearly always worked the fields, harvesting and controlling the distribution of corn, squash, and beans. Men generally hunted, fished, and conducted warfare and diplomacy. In societies less dependent on agriculture, Indian women gathered locally available grains, roots, and berries, while men performed labors similar to their agricultural counterparts. In all Indian societies, both sexes participated in trade, producing important goods and taking an active role in the exchange process itself. The labor invested in trade served both economic and diplomatic purposes, as trade partners became military allies and vice versa.

SURVIVAL OF THE PEQUOT PEOPLE

In the early 1600s the Pequot people occupied a large part of what is today eastern Connecticut, living in small villages spread out over an area of about 2,000 square miles. In the 1630s the Pequots began trading with the Dutch and English. By 1637 the English and Pequots were at war, nominally because of the killing of two seamen, but actually because of English attempts to control Pequot territory and force out Dutch trading rivals. In the beginning the Pequots were successful against the English and their Narragansett allies, but in May their main village was surrounded and attacked, and about 400 Pequots killed. This was a calamity for a tribe that had already lost many of its number to disease. Survivors were rounded up by the English and sold as slaves, either to other tribes or to the West Indies. Some women and children were enslaved as servants in the Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies. English efforts to eradicate the Pequots failed. By the 1650s two distinct bands emerged—the Mashantucket (Western) and the Paucatuck (Eastern) Pequots. Both groups survived, and the Mashantucket band achieved federal recognition in 1983.

David J. Clarke

These alliances often organized violence against common enemies, producing another pool of laborers for native villages: captives and slaves. Many North American Indians practiced a form of slavery long before Europeans brought their own version of slavery to the continent in the sixteenth century. Ranging from relatively benign systems of captivity and prisoner adoption to full-fledged, permanent bondage, slavery supplemented Indians' own production (and reproduction) with the labor of outsiders. The most developed system of Native American slavery north of Mexico emerged along the northwest coast, where Indian slaves labored as a distinct underclass, were bought and sold as commodities, and passed their status to future generations. In addition to the productive work performed by these slaves, captive-exchange networks also strengthened diplomatic and military relations among neighbors as they traded captives from shared enemies.

When European explorers and settlers came to North America in the sixteenth century, many sought to capitalize on these indigenous networks, following the Spanish model of co-opting and expanding Native American slave systems. In the English colonies, Indian slavery took hold in the first half of the seventeenth century, especially in Virginia and Massachusetts, where colonists purchased hundreds of war captives from their Indian allies. Carolinians perfected the practice, trading as many as 50,000 Indian slaves during the first half century of settlement. In this system, allied nations labored as warriors and hunters, providing skins and slaves for export to Europe and the Caribbean. A similar pattern emerged to the north in New France, where allied nations traded furs and captives to French settlers, who forced Indian slaves to work as domestics, farmhands, and semiskilled urban craftsmen. The Spanish missions of Florida, New Mexico, and California combined the outright enslavement of Indians with a coercive labor regime in the mixed Spanish-Indian settlements. All together, as many as half a million Indians either died in captive raids or became slaves of European colonists.

Despite the extent and severity of Indian enslavement, however, the most important Native American labor occurred in the arena of trade, where Indians worked as independent producers of highly desired commodities. At first, native peoples along the coast changed their work habits very little as they offered surplus corn, worn beaver pelts, or geographic knowledge to the newcomers. But as transatlantic trade grew in importance, many nations began to concentrate their labors on trade commodities, reducing their yields of food and other necessities. Their high demand for European goods drew them increasingly into an expanding Atlantic economy, narrowing their options for mixed economic output and sparking competition among neighboring groups. Still, the labors of Native American traders remained under their own control, especially where rival empires offered many outlets for the goods acquired by Indians' initiative.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Indians' ability to labor autonomously diminished in direct proportion to their declining population and territory. In those regions most densely settled by Europeans, Indian women had to work smaller agricultural plots and Indian men had to hunt and fish in shrinking or overtaxed forests and streams. European colonists made the most of the Indians' misfortune, crafting legal codes designed to ensnare Indians in coerced labor relationships ranging from short-term indentured servitude to lifelong debt peonage. Throughout the continent's vast interior, however, Indian labor remained independent, encountering European economic systems irregularly and with little transformative impact.

Yet, the pattern of dispossession continued and intensified during the nineteenth century as westward expansion rapidly displaced a growing number of Indian peoples, disrupting their economic organization. Deprived of the territory and demographic strength necessary to maintain historical subsistence and trade practices, Native Americans increasingly turned to wage labor to supplement a complex but insufficient economy of farming, hunting, and trade. Although clearly not "traditional," wage labor filled the need for external resources that was once provided by seasonal migration, hunting, and gathering. In many areas, local industries such as logging, mining, and commercial farming relied heavily on Indians' seasonal labor. Indian villages and reservations benefited from having access to the commercial economy, but did their best to maintain a distinct social organization built on diverse, but coordinated, community labors.

Individual wage labor would not predominate among American Indians until well into the twentieth century. In the early 1900s, federal policies designed to lure Indians into paid jobs faltered because they ignored the social and cultural rationale for their mixed-labor economies. After mid-century, however, as more and more Indian workers moved into urban areas, wage labor became the primary means of subsistence. Still, unemployment and low wages continued to place strains on these workers, creating real poverty while reviving the pernicious stereotype of Indian idleness. Yet these caricatures of the lazy Indian are largely ignorant. Through trade, hunting, farming, and warring, Indians were an essential part of the transatlantic regional economy.

SEE ALSO Commodity Money; Ethnic Groups, Native American; Furs;Tobacco;Toys.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Brett Rushforth