Native Americans and wage labor : ethnohistorical perspectives

Summary: This book reconsiders a largely ignored fact of North American Indian economic life--the place of wage labor in the culture and history of Native Americans. Case studies examine social networks of Native agricultural laborers, the decline of Native communities from self-sufficient producers to lower-class wage laborers, vocational education in Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, the extent of Cheyenne contributions to the U.S. economy, the extent to which loss of land drove Indians into the wage labor market, incorporation into Laguna culture of the Pueblo's longstanding agreement with the Santa Fe Railroad, importance of Indian labor to the economy of San Diego County, and adaptive changes for survival brought on by the sudden impact of mining. Chapters are: (1) "Native American Labor: Retrieving History, Rethinking Theory" (Martha C. Knack, Alice Littlefield); (2) "Tribal Network and Migrant Labor: Mi'kmaq Indians As Seasonal Workers in Aroostook's Potato Fields, 1870-1980" (Harald E. L. Prins); (3) "Wage Labor in Two Michigan Ottawa Communities" (James M. McClurken); (4) "Indian Education and the World of Work in Michigan, 1893-1933" (Alice Littlefield); (5) "Cheyenne Work in the History of U.S. Capitalism" (John H. Moore); (6) "Nineteenth-Century Great Basin Indian Wage Labor" (Martha C. Knack); (7) "Watering the Flower: Laguna Pueblo and the Santa Fe Railroad, 1880-1943" (Kurt M. Peters); (8) "Indian Labor in San Diego County, California, 1850-1900" (Richard L. Carrico, Florence C. Shipek); (9) "Wage Labor: Survival for the Death Valley Timbisha" (Beth Sennett); and (10) "From Legend to Land to Labor: Changing Perspectives on Native American Work" (Patricia C. Albers). Contains over 700 references, author profiles, end notes, photographs, and an index.