Engines of Diplomacy : Indian Trading Factories and the Negotiation of American Empire

As a fledgling republic, the United States implemented a series of trading outposts to engage indigenous peoples and to expand American interests west of the Appalachian Mountains. Under the authority of the executive branch, this Indian factory system was designed to strengthen economic ties between Indian nations and the United States, while eliminating competition from unscrupulous fur traders. In this detailed history of the Indian factory system, David Andrew Nichols demonstrates how Native Americans and U.S. government authorities sought to exert their power in the trading posts by using them as sites for commerce, political maneuvering, and diplomatic action. Using the factory system as a lens through which to study the material, political, and economic lives of Indian peoples, Nichols also sheds new light on the complexities of trade and diplomacy between whites and Native Americans. Though the system ultimately disintegrated following the War of 1812 and the Panic of 1819, Nichols shows that these factories nonetheless served as important centers of economic and political authority for an expanding inland empire. For a quarter of a century, the United States government operated a system of public trading posts, or factories, in the eastern North American borderland. The factories sold manufactured goods to Indians at cost and bought their peltry, foodstuffs, and other wares at market rates. They also served as annuity distribution centers and host sites for treaty conferences. The U.S. government used the factories to build its influence in Indian communities, win Native American allies, and (in a few cases) to leverage Indian land sales with factory debts. For their part, Indian men and women turned the trading houses to their own uses: finding alternatives to British and Spanish traders; acquiring gifts and credit; enlisting the factors to resolve interethnic disputes; and selling goods for which the market had softened. Indians ultimately viewed the factories as alliance centers: during the War of 1812 the United States' Native allies employed them as arsenals and rally points, and its Indian adversaries viewed them as targets to capture or destroy. After that war, Superintendent Thomas McKenney tried to revive the factories by tying them to the Indian “civilization” program, advocating use of the system's revenues to fund Indian schools. Congress and the president, however, had come to see Indian alliance as less important than saving public money in an era of fiscal austerity, and fur trading as incompatible with the “civilized” lifeways they wanted Indians to adopt. With some pressure from the American Fur Company, they closed the factories permanently in 1822 "As a fledgling republic, the United States implemented a series of trading outposts to engage indigenous peoples and to expand American interests west of the Appalachian Mountains. Under the authority of the executive branch, this Indian factory system was designed to strengthen economic ties between Indian nations and the United States, while eliminating competition from unscrupulous fur traders. In this detailed history of the Indian factory system, David Andrew Nichols demonstrates how Native Americans and U.S. government authorities sought to exert their power in the trading posts by using them as sites for commerce, political maneuvering, and diplomatic action"-- Provided by publisher As a fledgling republic, the United States implemented a series of trading outposts to engage indigenous peoples and to expand American interests west of the Appalachian Mountains. This Indian factory system was designed to strengthen economic ties between Indian nations and the US. In this history of the system, David Andrew Nichols demonstrates how Native Americans and US government authorities sought to exert their power in the trading posts by using them as sites for commerce, political manoeuvring, and diplomatic action