41 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel K. RichterFacing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Confronting a Material New World”
Chapter 2 discusses the new world of material things and forces that the European colonists brought to Indigenous peoples, along with changes both related to Europeans, like new types of goods used for trade, and unrelated, such as disturbances in the natural environment that affected agriculture and hunting. This latter factor included the deadly viral infections that “scythed through one Native community after another and reshaped the human landscape in the most potent way of all” (41).
First, Richter discusses economics and trade. Objects like glass beads and metal tools brought by the newcomers “provided most Indian people their first evidence of Europe’s existence” (42) and fit in naturally with already established Indigenous trading customs. At first, these tools often served as raw materials to refashion into objects more familiar and useful to the Indigenous people. Later, European goods came to be accepted as more practical or aesthetically pleasing replacements for traditional items—e.g., brass kettles for ceramic pots, woolen blankets for animal skins, and new kinds of weapons tipped with metal. In return, Europeans greatly coveted beaver pelts for manufacture into furs and hats. Wampum, already important to Indigenous ceremonies, became repurposed as currency and came into extremely wide use after the colonists developed the means of mass-producing it.
Second, Richter discusses how each culture interacted with the natural environment. Many Indigenous groups were mobile in their attitude to the land, while Europeans were more rooted and fixed: Whereas Indigenous cultures typically believed that an individual had the right to use natural resources and land according to need, Europeans regarded private property as absolute and tended to treat land as a commodity. The great demand for beaver pelts among Europeans caused the extinction of the species in some areas, upsetting the delicate balance of the ecosystem. The roaming horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs used by Europeans on their farms caused ravages to Indigenous agriculture.
Indigenous and European methods of farming differed as well. Indigenous people planted their staple crops (corn, beans, and squash, known to many Indigenous groups as the Three Sisters) side by side, allowing the crops to nurture and support each other. The farming process was simple, consisting only of a digging stick and a hoe, and virtually no weeding or tending was necessary. Europeans, by contrast, packed single crops densely together and used tools like plows and sickles to plant and harvest. The Indigenous diet, rich in vitamins and nutrients, was far superior to the European.
Finally, viral diseases imported by the settlers, like smallpox, measles, and chicken pox, caused widespread deaths among Indigenous people from the 1580s onward. Richter is cautious about drawing firm statistics on Indigenous deaths from European-carried diseases since the historical data is not entirely clear. In the Indigenous belief system, disease was the result of mysterious spiritual forces. To replace the human capital lost to disease, some Indigenous communities went to war with each other to take captives and slaves (a process known as mourning war raids). As a result, many Indigenous tribes became ethnically mixed.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Expanding on The Influence of Materials and Resources on Historical Events, Richter here describes the “powerful material forces” (41) that the Europeans’ arrival unleashed on North America and the ways Indigenous people responded to profound changes in their world through strenuous and creative adaptation. European culture first influenced Indigenous people’s lives in ways that made their daily tasks easier; for example, by adopting European items like metal axes and copper kettles, Indigenous families could keep hot soup simmering all day in a kettle hung over the fire. Yet the new material world brought by the colonists also had negative effects: the depletion of the beaver population, and the disruption of the ecosystem by European livestock and farming practices. By describing Indigenous adaptation of European technologies, Richter accomplishes two of his core purposes for the book: He tells the story of early American settlement from an Indigenous perspective, showing how these technologies fit into Indigenous life, and he suggests a framework for cooperation between Indigenous and Euro-American ways of life.
Despite increased trade with Europeans, Indigenous cultural patterns remained stable. In contrast to the “acquisitive, individualistic, profit-seeking values of Western European capitalism” (51), Indigenous people continued to pursue their community- and need-based lifestyles and values. This contrast is especially clear in each culture’s view toward land: Indigenous people believed that land belonged to everyone, while Europeans divided land into pieces of private property—the latter point of view became a significant force behind colonial expansionism. At the same time, certain Indigenous patterns of status and authority did change in response to European ways of life. Those Indigenous people who had access to the new European goods earned a privileged status in their society, and rivalry often arose between communities as a result.
Disease figured as a powerful “material force” as well. Indigenous peoples typically regarded disease as the result of wrongdoing that had to be expiated. Among the Iroquoian peoples of eastern North America, grieving rituals for the dead involved the custom of mourning war, in which raiding parties went out to capture members of rival tribes, who would then be adopted into the grieving tribe to replenish its ranks. As European diseases decimated Indigenous populations, these previously infrequent mourning wars escalated dramatically.
At the end of the chapter, Richter again draws a parallel between Indigenous and African Americans, two peoples who showed remarkable persistence and strength in the face of adversity. This parallel enlarges the book’s frame of reference and hearkens back to the Prologue, in which Richter spoke of the Gateway Arch in conjunction with the courthouse where the Dred Scott decision was reached.
