"Birds Die for Food": Money and the Mentalities of Exchange among the Iroquois and the English in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Stephen Hum

This paper reconstructs a regime of exchange around the eastern Great Lakes region in the mid-eighteenth century that entangled British Indian Agents, the Iroquois Confederacy, and European traders. Specifically, it traces the arrival and circulation of paper money in the Mohawk Valley, and beyond, and addresses a number of questions raised by this circulation. First, why did certain Indians accept money, particularly paper money, from the English? What did they think they were receiving? What were the patterns of circulation for this form of cash? Even if we could assume that money had uniform and transparent value for Europeans, that assumption cannot be extended into the cross-cultural exchange around the Great Lakes. In attempting to answer these questions, this paper arrives at a number of conclusions, but its central observation is this: by embedding the arrival and circulation of money among the Iroquois firmly in the unavoidable context of imperial politics, it suggests a need for historical inquiries into Indian-European relations in the Atlantic World to acknowledge the primacy of politics, war, and violence in the making of culture. [WP# 98019]