304 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 188 



Keesing, 1928, p. 42; 1941, p. 58; Lewis, 1942, pp. 60-61 ; Mandelbaum, 

 1940, p. 187) , resulting both from the sale of firearms and from the 

 stimulus to competition for trade goods, has not always been an en- 

 tirely disruptive influence. It, too, has brought about some surprising 

 adaptations of native life. On the Great Plains of America, for ex- 

 ample, it led directly to the celebrated hunting-and-warfare complex 

 (Lewis, 1942, pp. 60-61 ; Mandelbaum, 1940, p. 187) which to the lay- 

 man has become nothing less than the stereotype of American Indian 

 culture. 



MODERN ENTEEPBENEUES 



As the report of the Summer Seminar on Acculturation (1954, p. 

 980) observes: "Cultures do not meet, but people who are their car- 

 riers do. That part of their cultural inventory which they . . . 

 transmit is conditioned primarily by their reasons for making the 

 contact " Literature on culture contact situations (see "The Entre- 

 preneur in Literature," pp. 298-301) consistently points up the differ- 

 entiation in role between the trader and other agents of culture contact. 

 In Canada, for example, he has eliminated competition from rival 

 trading companies and from White trappers "to enable the native 

 population to become self-sustaining" (Bonnycastle, 1943, p. 62). He 

 has also "worked wholeheartedly for conservation of fur with a view 

 to continuing as long as possible the normal living conditions of the 

 Indian. This is, in fact, his plain and selfish interest" (Bonnycastle, 

 1943, p. 64). 



In Oceania, the trader, unlike the missionary, has "let the native 

 pick and choose from his wares" (Keesing, 1941, p. 68). In New 

 Guinea, he is content to "abide by a policy of laissez-faire" (Keed, 

 1943, p. 122), and in the Solomon Islands "Unlike the administrator, 

 commerce is not concerned, even ostensibly, with native well-being" 

 (Hogbin, 1939, p. 160) . All of these observations seem to express in 

 one way or another the idea that traders are not working to promote 

 native assimilation or social change. Their purpose is simply to 

 assist the aborigine to exploit the resources of his native territory to 

 the utmost, that he in turn may be exploited to the utmost by the 

 trader. 



In this regard the interest of the trader is clearly differentiated 

 from that of his White neighbors. The missionary, for example, 

 "sought vigorously to refashion traditional belief and behavior;" 

 (Keesing, 1941, p. 68), and "more conscious attempts to control all 

 departments of native life were made by the missionary than by the 

 other White groups" (Reed, 1943, p. 122). The administration, un- 

 like the trader, "is concerned with native well-being" (Hogbin, 1939, 

 p. 160). 



