Cultural Exchanges ("British Report," ca. 17th century)

When one travels across the New World, one may come to a realization about the nature of the exchanges between cultures: the natives provide mostly food stuffs and simple goods, while the European colonists provide more technological goods.¹ Why, then, is this so? After a broad survey of all three powers’ efforts in America, we have come to several conclusions.

The first, of course, is that as the emissaries of such advanced countries as Great Britain, who have known all the advances of the eighteenth century, the colonists do not have anything to learn from primitive, “savage” technology.² We bring them the benefits of metal working, gunpowder, and true religion; their mixed-crop fields, “Indian wheat,”³ and stone tools are paltry in return. With our advanced tools we have shaped thelandscape of the New World as the natives could never have dreamed. Were we toadapt their technologies, more inclined to give way to nature than to control it, surely we would not make as much progress towards cities and European civilization.

Naturally, our British brothers especially long for the comforts of home when they come to this wild country; therefore they understandably opt to bring over familiar goods such as wheat rather than resign themselves to the primitive and hostile environment on the new continent. Wheat has long been the staple of the European table and remains, in the view of many, nutritionally superior to the maize which is grown across the New World; so that colonists may plant wheat not only of adesire to remember their accustomed surroundings and palate, but to save themselves from the itching and scabs that can occur from eating “Indian bread” when one is not used to it.

Second, it must be admitted that in some instances the difficulties of language do arise, and that a trade good may be conveyed with limited vocabulary, while a practice may be traded less easily unless one understands well the language of the savages, or they the tongues of Europe. When one is shown corn made into a fine meal, like flour, one may easily surmise its value; but to know how it was made into meal takes a detailed description, which may only come if those trading have a thorough understanding of one another. It is also prudent to note here that in some areas our colonists face natives who have become increasingly hostile, unwilling to share processes and increasingly unwilling to trade at all.⁵

In addition, it has come to our understanding that, in many American cultures, it is the women who are in charge of such things as weaving and food processing.⁶ Yet, naturally, our colonists and traders deal with the men mostly, and do not conduct business with the women as a matter of course. It seems the women play a larger role in altering the environment of the natives, at least in the areas near their camps. Our men, by merit both of acquaintance with European, efficient agricultural practices, and of the heightened strength and reason that comes with their sex, have chosen not to follow their lead.

1. Diane E Silvia, “Native American and FrenchCultural Dynamics on the Gulf Coast,” HistoricalArchaeology 36 (2002): 26-35; Lightfoot, Kent G. and William S. Simmons.
“Culture Contact in Protohistoric California: Social Contexts of Native and
European Encounters.” Journal ofCalifornia and Great Basin Anthropology 20 (1998): 138-170. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27825674.

2. Luis Millones Figueroa, “The Staff of Life: Wheat and ‘Indian bread’ in the New World,” Colonial Latin American Review 19 (2010): 301-322. (pg 305)

3. Figueroa, “The Staff of Life,” pg 307.

4. Figueroa, “The Staff of Life.”

5. Joshua Piker, “Colonists and Creeks: Rethinking the Pre-Revolutionary Southern Backcountry,” The Journal of Southern History 70 (2004): 503-540. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27648476.

6. Katherine A. Spielmann, “Glimpses of Gender in the American Southwest,” Journal of
Anthropological Research 51 (1995): 91-99. Accessed at http://www.jstor.org/pss/3630249.

(image found at http://www2.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/history/ballardwq1.html)