In
The Lives in Objects, Jessica Yirush Stern presents a
thoroughly researched and engaging study of the deerskin trade in
the colonial Southeast, equally attentive to British American and
Southeastern Indian cultures of production, distribution, and
consumption. Stern upends the long-standing assertion that Native
Americans were solely gift givers and the British were modern
commercial capitalists. This traditional interpretation casts
Native Americans as victims drawn into and made dependent on a
transatlantic marketplace. Stern complicates that picture by
showing how both the Southeastern Indian and British American
actors mixed gift giving and commodity exchange in the deerskin
trade, such that Southeastern Indians retained much greater agency
as producers and consumers than the standard narrative allows. By
tracking the debates about Indian trade regulation, Stern also
reveals that the British were often not willing to embrace modern
free market values. While she sheds new light on broader issues in
native and colonial history, Stern also demonstrates that concepts
of labor, commerce, and material culture were inextricably
intertwined to present a fresh perspective on trade in the colonial
Southeast.