Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes

Focusing on the prolonged interaction between Native Americans and Europeans in the Western Great Lakes fur trade, Sleeper-Smith (history, Michigan State U.) argues that, contrary to stereotype, Indians have existed as a viable and distinct people from the earliest times to the present and that, while encounter changed indigenous communities, it also encouraged the evolution of strategic behavior that ensured cultural continuity. In particular she explores the often misunderstood role played by Native women in establishing the fur trade as an avenue of sociocultural change.