Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 297 



THE ENTREPRENEUR IN CULTURE CONTACT 



According to a recent analysis of the general phenomena of culture 

 contact — 



Intercultural role playing reflects the interest areas that are shared by the 

 two groups in contact, whether attention to these areas is cultivated or en- 

 forced by unilateral demands, or whether the areas represent a convergence 

 of aspirations or needs. . . . Particular roles demand specific purposes and 

 entail specific expectations. In the expansion of Western European culture, 

 the roles of the administrator, the entrepreneur and the missionary have 

 established a stereotype in accordance with the principal incentives activating 

 the expansion. ( Summer Seminar on Acculturation, 1954, p. 981 ; cf . also 

 Malinowski, 1945, p. 15). 



So long as Euro-American colonial expansion is motivated chiefly 

 by merchantile considerations, the trader must inevitably remain 

 one of its foremost pioneers. Throughout the primitive world ho has 

 instituted the earliest contact with tribal peoples, or has followed 

 close on the heels of first contact. The Navaho trader even today 

 remains only one of a vast army of private entrepreneurs who have 

 penetrated beyond the limits of their own societies in search of 

 profit in every part of the globe. They are or have been wherever 

 European and native tribal cultures are in contact. 



It was stated at the beginning of the present study (see "Definition 

 and Delimitation," pp. 1-2) that the intercultural social system of 

 modern Shonto community was to be examined first of all for its own 

 sake. Neither the community nor the trading post was assumed to be a 

 "sample," or to be representative of some larger social umit or institu- 

 tion. However, the suggestion has been put forward that the trader's 

 role in culture contact is more or less constant or "stereotyped" 

 (Summer Seminar on Acculturation, 1954, p. 981; Malinowski, 1945, 

 p. 15). It may therefore be appropriate as an epilogue to the Shonto 

 study to consider how far Shonto's trader may stand as representa- 

 tive of his fellow cross-cultural entrepreneurs in other parts of the 

 world. 



It is hardly necessary to observe that no detailed comparison of 

 traders' roles and activities can be undertaken. For the most part 

 the entrepreneur has fared no better at the hands of anthropologists 

 elsewhere than he has in the Navaho country (see "The Trader in 

 Literature," pp. 5-8). Historically he has been blamed for a variety 

 of disruptive changes in native cultures (e.g., Keesing, 1928, p. 42; 

 Price, 1950, passim; Hogbin, 1951, p. 187), yet the structural basis of 

 his influence has received scant attention. The anthropological litera- 

 ture contains no more than a suggestion here and a hint there from 

 which the "stereotyped" role of the trader can be reconstructed. 



