Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early ... and the University of North Carolina Press) Paperback – April 13, 1992

I recommend this book highly, both for the historian and the general reader who wants to understand the South of today by learning about the South in which it is rooted. The author relies heavily on a variety of primary sources, and he quotes judiciously from them to immerse the reader in the world of the Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783. His prose is crisp and highly readable, and he organizes his complex subject in a manner that makes reading pure pleasure. It's the kind of book to which I will return often.Usner begins with the French settlement of the region in 1698-99, when settlement density was low, slavery was negligible, and disease and near-starvation among the French settlers was rampant. Food was the first nexus between Europeans and Indians, who early had shared products from their gardens with Bienville's little camp at Biloxi. Because France never supplied Louisiana adequately and its French colonists generally refused to cultivate the soil themselves, food remained a critical trade element throughout the French habitation of the region. The deer skin trade had already brought Europeans and Indian nations together in commerce. The English, with trading firms anchored in Charleston and the West Indies, had an established trade network in the region and English traders were almost always able to provide better and a greater variety of trade goods than the French, though proximity led to a lively exchange between French and Indian inhabitants of what is now Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Slavery, both Indian and African, provided yet another part of the exchange economy in which the three groups encountered one another.Usner stresses that political boundaries were less important than mutual needs in the development of an exchange economy, and long after France lost the territory to Spain the primal exchange networks continued to function.He also cautions against understanding the term "frontier" to indicate an area where a highly developed society encounters an under- or undeveloped region or society. France's settlement of Louisiana had occurred in an era dominated by French rationalism's emphasis on environment as a primary shaping force in men's lives and narrowing opportunities within its realm. Thus, the nation emptied its prisons and local jails of inmates, who, some protesting loudly, were loaded on ships bound for Louisiana. Military units were dispersed throughout the countrysides to round up beggars and homeless citizens, who had become a familiar sight and a burden on the economy. Broadsides and newspapers spoke of the broad fields and fresh air of the New World, a world rife with opportunity. Disease took a high toll before the ships loaded with colonists even reached New Orleans and a higher toll after new colonists were cast ashore on the marshy lowlands that constituted New Orleans. Yellow Fever took many who had survived smallpox. In 1718, the colony had no more than 300-400 people, a number of them French Canadians who had come downriver with Bienville and Iberville as traders. Not only was the core of colonial society made up of criminals and miscreants of various sorts, but France neglected its new colony grievously, once failing to provision it for a year. By contrast, many of the Indian nations in the region were better organized politically and economically, better able to provide for their needs, and possessed of sophisticated social institutions.Thus complex social linkages among Indian villages, hunting camps, small military outposts and trading posts, plantations, and port towns developed naturally across a large region of the South before cotton became king, based in mutual need for subsistence. Many of them remained surprisingly egalitarian. For example, slaves on plantations along the Mississippi north and south of New Orleans enjoyed more autonomy than in many other areas and a surprising number were able to purchase their freedom. Marketing food was an important leveling influence. New Orleans was always short of food supplies, and colonial officials encouraged planters to permit their enslaved workers to grow gardens and sell produce and poultry at the city's market. Indians also met in that market and others along the river and its tributaries. Slaves skilled in the production of indigo and other vital items of colonial trade also enjoyed special privileges.Usner shows clearly how these early transactions shaped Louisiana into a distinct colonial region with a social and economic system based on mutual subsistence needs.I am not a historian. But I have read pretty widely about the history of the South, the Mississippi Territory, Louisiana, and the Creek Indians, and I'm pleased the region has been explored from so many different perspectives and by such gifted writers of history. Usner's book is among the most interesting and well-written of these.The one error I noted was trivial unless one were to use it as a culinary guide. Usner writes, "roux, from which all forms of gumbo are made is produced by cooking either sliced okra or powdered sassafras in a slowly heated oil." The first time I made duck gumbo, I added filé (powdered sassafras) early in the cooking process. Big mistake unless you want a tough, stringy soup. Filé is added at the table, after the dish is cooked.

I'm half way through the book. It is very informative and well thought out. I'm working on a screenplay about Spains role in the revolution and Gálvez. This really gives me a fresh look at the times, since I have read many books about the main characters. I highly recommend this book, its very well done. Hats off to the author!

Calling the area and period overlooked, Usner centers in on the lower Mississippi valley in the colonial period with a particular focus on the deer market trade for illuminating survival and sometime resistance strategies between native settlers and slaves. Strategies that are always changing with the context of contemporary political, geographical and other factors for groups. He contrast what he terms the frontier economy with the later plantation economy to elucidate that frontier economy strategies hold over into the plantation economy era and while they do wind up motivates they never disappear completely. In doing so, Usner provides a framework for analyzing overlooked groups and areas that can serve to either provide different or bolster interpretations of more mainstream histories!

You have to be interested in the topic already. It isn't what I'd call a thrilling narrative unless you care about it, and Usner doesn't go out of his way to fascinate you. But it's really informative, given the paucity of records, and pretty clearly written.I'm not any sort of specialist, so I can't challenge the scholarship. But as an interested amateur historian of the period, I found it really worth my time.

Being from Alabama, widely read in this area, I have never read an account as comprehensive and clear as this rendition! That includes the French, Spanish, Choctaws, commerce, and relative paucity of population. I packed it off to my close kin, pioneer Chauvin descendants.

Very informative

Good book shed light on the cause of many of the conflicts between the Indians, Settlers, and Slaves.

good book....much info