| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Indian-White Exchanges. By David Murray. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. x, 258 pp. Cloth, $50.00, ISBN 1-55849-243-7. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 1-55849-244-5.)

In Indian Giving, David Murray is concerned with two key concepts as they apply to intercultural exchanges in early America: gift giving and economies. In fact, according to Murray, his book is "about value and the circulation of value, within and across cultures. More specifically, it is about what was given and exchanged . . . and how these transactions were understood and represented on each side." He argues that such exchanges must be seen as "operating within a set of interlocking economies, which include the realms of the discursive and religious as well as the material." Most historians of early American intercultural dynamics would applaud such a "multifocal" and nuanced contextualization of a complex subject. Unfortunately, many historians will be disappointed with Murray's emphasis—as in his earlier book, Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing, and Representation in North American Indian Texts (1990)—on texts. Even more unsatisfying, however, is his focus primarily on European interpretations of these transactions; except for the last chapter on conversion and exchange, little of Murray's analysis deals with native perceptions or interpretations of the exchanges he examines. . . .

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