Long Island author, Rosemary McKinley has written a young adult historical novella, The Wampum Exchange, set in 1650, Southold, New York. A twelve-year-old boy has a chance meeting with a Native American boy and their worlds connect in a most interesting way. The tale is told through their daily lives, giving the reader a glimpse into life in America. Middle grade readers, as well as adults would enjoy reading this story.
Wampum has become a synonym for money, and it is widely assumed that it served the same purposes as money among the Native Algonquians even after coming into contact with European colonists' money. But to equate wampum with money only matches one slippery term with another, as money itself was quite ill-defined in North America for decades during its colonization. In this stimulating and intriguing book, Marc Shell illuminates the context in which wampum was used by describing how money circulated in the colonial period and the early history of the United States. Wampum itself, generally tubular beads made from clam or conch shells, was hardly a primitive version of a coin or dollar bill, as it represented to both Native Americans and colonial Europeans a unique medium through which language, art, culture, and even conflict were negotiated. With irrepressible wit and erudition, Shell interweaves wampum's multiform functions and reveals wampum's undeniable influence on the cultural, political, and economic foundations of North America. Published in Association with the American Numismatic Society, New York, New York."
Investigates the nature of money by looking at how the Island of Manhattan was purchased in 1627 through an exchange of shells or beads, which the author believes probably did not hold the same significance for both parties in the transaction.
In addition to the wampum belts that form our archives, the People of the Longhouse have also recorded our history and culture in written documents. This Rotinonhsión: ni literary tradition reached its zenith in the 19th century, with the works of men like Joseph Brant, Major John Norton, David Cusick, J. N. B. Hewitt, Seth Newhouse, and John Arthur Gibson, to name just a few. They have preserved for us not only our creation story and epic of confederation, but the story of our own evolution. Written and illustrated by Darren Bonaparte (Mohawk) with additional illustrations by Dave Fadden, Thomas Deer, Natasha Smoke- Santiago, and Curtis Mitchell, Jr.
"The White Wampum" is the first and the most famous collection of poems by E. Pauline Johnson, a Canadian writer and performer of Mohawk and English heritage. With vivid imagery, raw emotion, and a unique perspective, these poems are sure to captivate and inspire. Whether you're a lover of poetry or simply seeking a new perspective, this collection is a must-read.
Now a widely cited classic, this innovative book is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.
The book that launched environmental history, William Cronon's Changes in the Land, now revised and updated. Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land, provides a brilliant inter-disciplinary interpretation of how land and people influence one another. With its chilling closing line, "The people of plenty were a people of waste," Cronon's enduring and thought-provoking book is ethno-ecological history at its best.
Study describes in chronological order how the various trade ornaments (material culture) were used from initial contact to circa 1900 by representative tribes of the seven major native groups of Canada. Based on extensive search of published and manuscript sources, supplemented by examination of historical paintings, photographs and ethnographical specimens.
