302 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BnU. 188 



acquiring any effective control over supply and distribution (cf. Tax, 

 1952 b, pp. 52-56). 



More often than not, however, the presence or absence of traders in 

 modem contact situations has been determined by environment. The 

 peaceful penetrations of Europeans and Americans into most of the 

 primitive areas of the world has undoubtedly been initiated by a 

 period, however brief, of direct barter (cf. Hunter, 1936, pp. 2-3; 

 Keesing, 1941, p. 29 ; Eeed, 1943, pp. 74-82) . The extent of additional 

 penetration, however, undoubtedly depended very largely upon the 

 productive potential of the region. In many areas, and particularly 

 wherever agriculture could be practiced extensively, permanent set- 

 tlers followed the trader, and control of raw material production 

 passed rapidly into their hands. The native, dispossessed of his land 

 and traditional means of subsistence, lost his status as an independent 

 producer and became instead a wage laborer (cf. Malinowski, 1945, 

 pp. 118-120) if not a slave (Frazier, 1957, pp. 101-109). 



Under the plantation economy which thus developed, and the sub- 

 stitution of cash for a commodity consumer market, control of com- 

 merce with natives inevitably passed from the man who marketed 

 their native products to the man who paid and thus controlled their 

 wages. The free trader gave way to the company or hacienda store- 

 keeper or commissary (cf. Reed, 1943, p. 122; Wolf, 1956, p. 241). 

 His role was for the most part reduced to a purely commercial and 

 instrumental one, as ancillary functions (see pp. 220-230) were as- 

 sumed by overseers or other Europeans in the plantation system. In 

 some cases, particularly in Oceania, the trader himself became a 

 planter (cf . Reed, 1943, p. 122) . 



European and American colonial economies throughout the world 

 can probably be roughly divided as between plantation and non- 

 plantation patterns. The former is found whenever environmental 

 conditions are suitable to intensive agriculture. Here the native is 

 rapidly dispossessed and becomes a wage or indentured laborer, if 

 not actually a slave. Non-plantation economies occur where envi- 

 ronments are not suitable to plantation agriculture; where the eco- 

 nomic base is some other exploitative industry, and particularly one 

 to which natives are as well or better adapted than Europeans. 

 Examples of the latter are the fur trade (Mandelbaum, 1940, pp. 

 172-187; Lewis, 1942, pp. 60-61), native craft manufactures (Hunter, 

 1936, pp. 139-143; Keesing, 1941, p. 68; Underbill, 1956, pp. 185-190), 

 and the gathering of wild plant and other products (Keesing, 1941, 

 p. 68; Reed, 1943, p. 122). Most commonly, perhaps, non-planta- 

 tion economies are found where native populations have been pro- 

 tected from dispossession by Government edict — i.e., on reserves or 

 reservations. 



