"PEOPLE OF THE RED PATH": AN ETHNOHISTORY OF THE DAKOTA FUR TRADE, 1760-1851

• Main Author: LITTLE, BRYCE PENNOYER
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: ScholarlyCommons 1984
• Subjects: Cultural anthropology; Arctic
• Online Access: https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI8422924

The Dakota people, the easternmost of the Sioux nation of north-central North America, historically controlled the upper Mississippi drainage chiefly within present Minnesota. To date, their history has been investigated only through a handful of specialized studies. Therefore the primary intent is to redress the lack of comprehensive historical synthesis, for the exceptionally important period between 1760, when British fur trading begins, and 1851, when the Dakota had to accept a government reservation. Throughout, the objective is to understand exchange with the whites as a set of linked institutional subsystems of the culture, progressing from the household and village levels of production and subsistence to the multiple philosophical and economic facets of trade with members of the Europe-based 'world-system' economy. It is proposed finally that pursuit of similar synthetic work is badly needed to create an adequate conception of hunter-gatherer populations (with sporadic but significant agriculture) in the temperate areas of the world, in contrast to the Arctic or arid regions which have preoccupied many anthropologists to date.