Shannon Boyle
April 23, 2007
Working the Waters
Title
When people came to the Puget Sound with intentions to trade goods the effect on Natives was far further than the introduction of foreign goods. It is a popular belief that the Native Americans, not only in Puget Sound, but across America were taken advantage of. However, the Indians in the Making, Alexandra Harmon describes the very beginning of the relationship between the “Indians” and the “King Gorge men” as being a little different. This description revealed that the indigenous people around Puget Sound, guided by different sets of conventions, used the white people as a tool to gain spiritual standing, wealth, and peace among different tribes around Puget Sound area.
The Native Americans who inhabited the Puget Sound area had a completely different way of evaluating success and wealth compared to the men who came to trade. One of these differences is they way they view precious goods. “Acquiring precious items was desirable primarily because the items represented desirable personal relationships and afforded the means to establish more such relationships. To indigenous people, social ties were the real indicators of a persons worth (27).” This differed greatly who used wealth and items to show status over another man. To the people around Puget Sound, the white men were a vessel to gain more things, and as a result, to make more ties, not only with the white men, but with other tribes that came to the fort to trade.
Another difference between the Native Americans and white people was there beliefs in religion. To the people of Puget Sound a person “Without nonhuman help…was weak and poor; with help, he or she could have abilities that other people admired (23).” Though the men the men that came to trade thought they were starting to convert the Indians, “some Indians hoped to establish fruitful partnerships with spirits that only the foreigners knew about (33).” Though both parties involved were trying to get different results out of the Christian religion, this semi compromise created a bridge between the two communities.
Indians also used the white men to facilitate relations between different tribes around the forts. The trading posts became an open forum for people all around the Puget Sound area to gather and “arrange the ransoms of captured relatives or to negotiate alliances with other village groups (37).” They used the trading post as a neutral territory to meet on. Also the tribes that had created relationships with the men at the post “expected them to preserve peace among the sojourners (38).” And the men at the post agreed, not necessarily out of good will, but to maintain a healthy and friendly environment around their post.