Untangling the Roots of Dependency: Choctaw Economics, 1700-1860

Abstract

The Roots of Dependency, published in 1983, was a groundbreaking interdisciplinary examination of Euro-American-Indian cultural contact and its disastrous effects on Native Americans. Focusing on the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos, Richard White attempted to identify and isolate the various factors that contributed to the material decline of American Indian peoples. Roots of Dependency was widely acclaimed when it was first published, both for White's strong thesis and his new approach to Native American history. White's methodology differed from that of traditional historians most notably in his interdisciplinary approach and in his incorporation of a Native American focus and perspective into his narrative.' White began his study by examining the Mississippi Choctaw of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, showing how their initial adaptations to Euro-American influences eventually turned to disaster. As Euro-American market forces penetrated their economy, the Choctaws were driven to overhunt deer populations to extinction and in the process destroyed their resources, environment, and economy. Although he also cited alcohol as a major element of this decline, White asserted that the Euro-American market economy was the "critical" factor in understanding the "fate" of the Choctaws. White claimed that the Choctaws "were lured into the market" by liquor, that the subsequent exchanges "were literally dictated by whites," and that ultimately"commerce ... left them hungry and vulnerable." White further asserted that Choctaw resistance was rendered "utterly superfluous" and that their actions served only to slow the destructive consequences of the market economy. By the 1770s, according to White, the Choctaws had become dependent upon Euro-Americans to adequately feed and clothe themselves.2