Adams] SHONTO: ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 305 



Wherever traders have introduced a cash economy, they have con- 

 sistently taken care to deprive it of any added economic freedom 

 for the consumer by the technique of credit saturation (see "Market 

 Control," pp. 169-170). The practice has been noted in Canada 

 (Bonnycastle, 1943, p. 65) , Puerto Rico (Wolf, 1956, p. 240) , in Africa 

 (Hunter, 1936, p. 143), and in Oceania (Keesing, 1941, p. 123; Reed, 

 1943, p. 208). 



In short, the trader appears as a conservative force by comparison 

 to his White neighbors time after time. It may have been true ". . . 

 that the European residents, the missionaries and the administrators, 

 the settlers and the entrepreneurs, are indeed the main agents of 

 change" (Malinowski, 1945, p. 15). If so, the entrepreneur appears 

 to be the most easily satisfied of the four in this regard. Once his 

 chartered objective of promoting maximum economic exploitation and 

 consumption of manufactured goods is attained, he often becomes a 

 force not for change but for stability and the preservation of native 

 social integrity. In cases of advanced culture contact, as at Shonto, 

 the trader may become the most significant "correcting mechanism" 

 in the native culture (cf. "Summer Seminar on Acculturation," 1954, 

 p. 977). 



HYPOTHETICAL REGULARITIES IN TRADER- NATIVE CONTACT 



In view of the limited interest devoted to traders by anthropolo- 

 gists, and the paucity of literature on the subject, the foregoing con- 

 siderations are necessarily mere speculations. The suggestion that 

 there is any such thing as a "stereotyped" trader role in culture 

 contact, as suggested by the Summer Seminar on Acculturation (1954, 

 p. 981), cannot be considered as more than an miproved hypothesis. 



The hypothesis of a generalized trader role similar to that found 

 at Shonto is based on the assumption of certain common factors in 

 the history and environment of European contact with indigenous 

 populations. Following the example of a recent exhaustive survey 

 of culture contact and its consequences (Steward et al., 1956, pp. 503- 

 512), I may appropriately conclude by summing up the foregoing 

 discussion with a statement of the hypothetical processes by which the 

 special and unique role of the trader may become developed and 

 differentiated in any native community. 



1. The peaceful penetration of Europeans into aboriginal terri- 

 tories is commonly spearheaded by traders (cf. Bonnycastle, 1943, 

 pp. 59-60 ; Hunter, 1936, p. 2 ; Keesing, 1941, p. 29) . 



2. In a few areas Europeans may encounter a native market econ- 

 omy so well developed that they cannot effectively control it, and no 

 general pattern of free trade can be established (e.g., Tax, 1952 b, 

 pp. 52-65). 



