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THE CHEYENNE IN PLAINS INDIAN TRADE RELATIONS
17951840
BY
JOSEPH JABLOW
PREFACE
The present study aims to examine economic relationships among the American Indian tribes of the Great Plains of the United States and southern Canada. The first end in view is to define the structure and function of intertribal trade among these groups. This must, perforce, be done against the background of the influence of the horse and the fur trade which, before the final conquest of the Indians, were the two most powerful factors affecting the aboriginal cultures. It will, thus, be necessary to view the Indian groups as functioning members of the White trade situation in which they were involved, and which was ultimately one of the most important influences on the trade activities maintained by the various tribes among themselves. Furthermore, it is essential also to evaluate the significance of the horse, not only as an object of trade, but also as an instrument of production which expanded trade. Since the horse and the fur trade were interacting and interdependent phenomena, they will be treated conjointly in their influence upon the aboriginal trade picture.
The study also explores the role of one tribal group in the complex of intertribal trade activities in relation to the role of other tribes and shows how these roles were affected by changing historical circumstances. And it further shows that an understanding of the dynamic influences of intertribal trade clarifies the nature of the relations between tribes within a culture area, such as that of the Plains, through observation of the manner in which a complex of tribal entities is subject to positive and negative forces with regard to each other under a specified set of conditions.
In addition, the study shows how further insight into the interrelationships of aspects of culture can be gained from the viewpoint of trade, and indicates how the influences of trade may provide a focus for viewing and, at least partially, explaining intra-tribal changes of various kinds. It is suggested that these may go so far as to involve a change in basic subsistence patterns. In this connection, it should be stated that although Plains political and warfare patterns have received considerable attention previously and are essential in a consideration of intertribal relations, they are here subordinated to the economic factors of trade.
Emphasis has been placed upon the Cheyenne Indians in this study essentially because the writer is more familiar with the data on that tribe. There is also another reason for selecting the Cheyenne as the focus of our interest in the present discussion. In the literature on the Indians of the Plains, attention has been directed to a shift, during historic times, in basic subsistence from horticulture to complete equestrian nomadism and semi-nomadism on the part of some tribes. Such tribes as the Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Pawnee, were originally fully sedentary, village-dwelling, horticultural people who later developed an increasing reliance upon the horse and a corresponding attenuation of some of their sedentary habits and aspects of their culture. {1} Continuing to employ their villages as permanent habitations and growing corn as a food staple, they also went out on buffalo hunts during part of the year. In the case of the Upper Missouri tribes such as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, the fact that their villages also became trade centers militated against any very significant progression in the direction of nomadism. The Pawnee, on the other hand, went so far in developing equestrian buffalo hunting patterns that they hung themselves on the horns of a dilemma, so to speak. They did not make a complete nomadic adjustment, while at the same time their horticultural existence, which offered such rich social and ceremonial rewards, became so debilitated that they had no cultural stamina to resist either their Indian or White enemies. {2}
On the other hand, there were individual tribes, of which the Cheyenne are a classic example, that migrated from the northeastern periphery of the Great Plains, where they were sedentary horticulturalists, into the heart of the Plains to become so-called typical equestrian nomadic hunters. {3} Because the historical literature on them is subject to interpretation from the vantage point of intertribal trade, and because they exemplify so strikingly the aforementioned transition in basic subsistence, the Cheyenne may be regarded as a key group upon which certain historical factors such as the introduction of the horse and the fur trade exerted their combined influence.
In the process of adopting a new type of subsistence economy on the Plains, the Cheyenne at the same time assumed the role of middleman traders. Conducive to the assumption of this role was the fact of their new geographical location between the sources of supply of important exchangeable commoditiesEuropean manufactures entering the area via the Upper Missouri villages and horses coming into the Plains from the Southwest. In this situation, the Cheyenne facilitated the transmission of horses to the northeastern periphery of the Plains and brought in exchange European goods from the trade centers of the sedentary village tribes to the mobile hunters of the interior Plains. It is, therefore, suggested that the interpretation of the data presented in this study throws light on the dynamics of the change from horticulture to equestrian nomadism, which up to now has not been satisfactorily demonstrated.
Until the first quarter of the nineteenth century the contacts of the Cheyenne with travelers, explorers, or fur traders were never extensive. The few individuals who did spend any appreciable length of time in their midst were illiterate traders or employees of traders who left no records except casual references to their sojourn among them. {4} Nevertheless, there is a body of literature, recorded by men who had varying amounts of contact with the Cheyenne and the tribes with whom that group had intercourse, containing considerable information relevant to the subject of our discussion. The period with which we are chiefly concerned extends from about 1795 until approximately 1840, a span of time containing documentation most useful for purposes of the problem considered here in that it provides a dynamic panorama of intertribal trade relations up to the beginning of the breakdown of that trade under pressure of the westward march of empire.
I am grateful to Professor W. D. Strong not only for introducing me to the Cheyenne via the route of archaeology, but also for helpful guidance and encouragement in exploring the possibilities of the material on that tribe. I wish to thank Professor Julian H. Steward and Dr. Gene Weltfish for trenchant criticisms and suggestions for improving various sections of this study. I cannot do less than express my deep appreciation to Dr. Alexander Lesser, whose brief contact with the materials of this study provided me with new and illuminating insights concerning its implications. I am especially indebted to Dr. Marian W. Smith for giving unselfishly and unstintingly of her time, effort and knowledge of the Plains Indian in long and fruitful discussions which immeasurably enhanced the final product. Profound thanks are also due her for invaluable aid in the preparation of the manuscript.
