One hour 15 minutes. One note of introduction. Since we are here at a museum, which is a slightly different venue than a library or university, i want to put in your mind couple of objects that you can see when you go to the gallerys today. Downstairs, in the gallery, on the west side of the museum, f you go down stairs and turn right, there is a room with a taxidermy bison in that room. If you look to the left of the bison, there are a couple cases. One of them is a case of artifacts related to the battle of the little bighorn. Inside that case, there isa a firearm, a springfield, acquired lacada fighter named little moon. You can look at that object and contemplate how it changed hands, the travels that it took prior to that and the ways that might help us think differently about history in then the west. Coincidentally, in the west, there is a small macabre basket. The washington Olympic Peninsula made of seaweed and one work of art. Maybe after this talk, you will be able to look at those objects differently. Maybe the objects will help you reflect on the talk differently. I hope so. I think im going to let you i was going to say a Little Something about trends in historiography, and about how different authors have been rethinking this, but i think it will come up in conversation. I will skip that part. It is part of a new wave of history that thinks about native geopolitics differently. Maybe that kind of conversation might come up. But in a lot of other histories, violence is a big part of how we rethink. There is violence in these histories, but trade is the theme of todays talk. Thinking about trade is another way that different native nations and outsiders have boundaries that lay claims to territory. I will introduce one of our speakers. He is kind of a moderator today, but also a participant. Zapia, is the chair here at whittier college. His work explores the intersection of continental, trade networks, food pathways, and more across the west. His newest book traders and raiders, tells the story of the Lower Colorado river, just a few hours east of here. But a long time ago. He is now working on a book titled froude frontiers and borderland ecologies in early america which explores the evolution of native and nonnative food systems and north america. He is currently the visiting Research Scholar at uclas institute for american cultures. Before whittier he served as the director of the Garden Organization which focused on ecological literacy, in addition a number of other public history and art projects. Outll let him introduce our of town guests. Thank you. And i look forward to this conversation. [applause] hey, everybody. First, i want to say what an to be on stage with these guys. I really love your books and im to conversation. So i have the honor to with uce ill start josh. Josh reed was born and raised in Washington State. He is from the snohomish nation a associate professor of history and american studies in washington. 2009, he got his doctorate at california ty of davis. Book that well be talking about today was published in press, and itrsity cloud t of the henry roe series on the American Indians and maternity. Numerous awards and acknowledgements from the organization of American American society for ethno history, the western association, the north American Society for oceanic history. Currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Pacific Northwest quarterly, and distinguished speaker for history association. Dr. Reeds next mono graph project explores the pacific late 18th century to the end of the 19th century. Edited a volume of photographs of American Indian ctivists and occupations and rganizing an Upcoming Library symposium on indigenous communities and violence. Silverman, who got his atd. From princeton in 2000, George Washington university. Book, one among many, was published with harvard 2016. Hes also the author of red indians and the problem of race in early america. In 2010. With cornell as well as faith and boundaries, olonists, christianity and Community Among the indians of marthas vineyard, published cambridge in 2005. Hes also the coauthor with his wife, julie fisher, whos in the udience today of the bigo biography of ninagret, the balance of power century, new england and Indian Country also published in 2014. Ell press awardson, like josh, many from the institute of American History and culture, and the new of history. Tion he is currently writing an Plymouth Colony and the thanksgiving holiday for bluesberry press which will 2020 on the quad ricentennial of plymouths titled and the work is no thanks. Maybe give him a hand. You. K [applause] mentioned, im going to moderate and ask some some questions and hopefully be able to answer some well. Ions as well also hopefully have images that well pull up from the work. With anted to maybe start whoever wants to go first. Of our works, in the theme of trade and power, rethinking the north american west, rethinking native america and one of the ways a lot of the which well talk bout today reconceives this is spatially, thinking about concepts of borders and things, s, all of the all of the terms that many think culture both in popular academy. N the but these are things were starting to rethink by thinking political enous economy and trade. All of us work with these concepts, and in joshs book, he uses the term, the chadi borderlands. Davids book, the concept of gun work, the nd my concept of the interior world. I wanted to maybe spend some ime to talk about all those concepts and how you think about it, hew they are employed, and helps us w that rethink indigenous space in early america. With maybe josh first. Came into now, so i this project as a trained historian and also an environmental historian, in primary field of American Indian history. So when i started to really kind macaw k about the relationship with the ocean, thats really what my history details. Automatically, that spatial oncept, some framework needed to be discussed, examined, included to point. And, of course, then i found, you know, this borderlands framework, an interesting way of kind of thinking about things. But for me, unlike many other scholars, at least at the time i was in grad school, i at it in the way that native peoples were also kind of property spaces of power, where they were sharing and contesting these paces and the resources that were in t so thats where you now my mind kind of started to take me to seeing an indigenous borderland. Unlike some of the other scholarship, my borderlands werent sitting on the land. Water. Re out in the and a lot of these, you know, ind of realizations came from many of the conversations that i had with macaw fishermen, as stories ted telling me about going out fishing with their fathers, with their grandfathers, with their grandmothers and theyd leave grandma the morning and would wake them up a little earlier in the day, theyd be out in the ocean, were here. This is the family fishing spot. And the kid would look up, you know, and how do you know where are . They started to unpack those histories of the indigenous knowledge of the space in these marine environments, really kind these me to unpack spatial relations in what was, at that time, a different kind native f understanding power in places. Silverman so i used the that rontier in formulation gun frontier advisedly. Frontier has fallen out of favor in Academic Circles years because 0 its idea logically frought. Its traditionally associated east to west sweep of Anglo American people, Anglo American institutions, and the is supposed to foreground indian disposition. What academies have tended to favor in recent years instead of frontier is the term borderland. Nd i think a short and accessible way to describe the borderland is the contact zone rather than the native dispossession. The reason i use the term frontier instead of borderland is i hope to reach both academic and popular assumption was most popular audiences wouldnt nderstand what the term border land was. I tried to draw in readers and then to disinvest this term frontier which has become colloquially in academic as the f word. Ideological f that phrase, i tried to reorient my readers towards a world in which cant assume that Anglo American peoples were going to the contest for the continent. Ikewise, i wanted to reorient readers to frontier zones that didnt necessarily move from east to west. Putting up the gun frontier map . Hat i do in my book, i trace the spread of guns through native america and the various that native people revolutionalized their lives firearms. And theres no question about it hat by and large, guns spread from eastern bases of European Occupation into native america. Direction ine only which these guns flowed. Company ns bay trafficked in guns from the and reached a portion of the western hemisphere of north america, eginning canadians of arctic, spreading to the canadian plains, of whats now british olumbia and the Pacific Northwest, the northern part of the plains in the United States and the Rocky Mountain west. Unloaded by the french, later on in spanish, later on United States and new orleans spread hundreds of miles north and , to the even east. And likewise, if you go to he you turn your attention to the Pacific Northwest, guns merchant, england nd to a lesser extent, british merchandises into ports of call northwest, aritish uquat, most of you yucca on the Vancouver Island and to the panhandle and eventually spread from west to east. What im trying to do with this frontier is similar what josh does with the term borderland which is to draw readers in and to have them exposed to a time in which native people actually held the power. And which native people tended to dictate the terms of interactions, which no one could have predicted. The way things would turn out. Mr. Silverman when you take mr. Zappia when you take borderlands, with historians, borderland itself almost carries a certain kind of ideological weight as the frontier. When you are at indigenous borderlands, it creates a different sense of the dimensions of power and who is dictating what those contact zones are, or how they would unfold. If i can talk income recession with the way i think of the ensure your world, which i have a map of here, it is reversing the direction of history, showing multiple modes, multiple ways of understanding these interactions. Thinking about it for me was thinking about these interior spaces which are often outside the process of archives. When these native groups show up, it is usually from a distance, or from a skewed perspective that did not really give them the economic or Political Agency that really existed on the ground. In many ways im interested when i think of borderlands, or indigenous borderlands, i think of multiple directions. Also this idea that these interior spaces this is where the guns are moving. That is where a lot of these Global Commodities are emanating out of into this pacific world. Repositioning that allows us to get a much different sense, a more templates understanding of a more complex understanding of these movements of power, people, and goods. Mr. Silverman you raised an important point in your comment. Frontier assumes racial identity. It is a contact point between white people and indians but for much of the period, there were no indians. Native people did not perceive of themselves as indians. It was a part of their identity. Not part of their identity. Their contact zones with other people were as, if not more, important to them then the relationship with others. Intracommunity relations is on e of the ways in which all of our work is making serious offenses. Serious advances. Mr. Reid we could take a quick look at the map that he has put up here. David has mentioned this idea that the frontier, one of the problems that historians often tease out is that it assumes history, capital h history, the grand narrative moved east to west, and the frontier and extra inexorrably marched west. One of the big pivots this was dan richters intervention. Lets talk about history facing east from Indian Country. That flips it around, but what we see here is something were all talking about and that our work engages with. It is not facing east to west, but starting weston facing out. You start to get a different perspective on all the different colonial powers coming in and a different perspective on how power played out in north america from the 17th century on. That is where i think there has been a big transformation in American Indian history, that helps us understand some of these larger narratives. That is something that all of our work has been engaging with. Mr. Silverman i wanted to come back to your work in particular because as you know that is the atlantic world, the pacific rim. The oceanic histories are in some ways catching up. There is a wave of books that are trying to reimagine some of the maritime spaces. What do you see coming out of that . I am thinking of the saltwater frontier. Mr. Reid what i take away from those is another layer or more examples of indigenous power. Another interesting aspect is this notion of indigenous nobility. A lot of times people work from the assumption that native peoples were in isolated communities, maybe some immediate trade with nearby neighbors occasionally, but there wasnt this idea of vast mobility. We are talking about mobility at the continental level. When you throw in ocean spaces, you start to see other types of connections and mobilities let that also covered impressive ranges of space. We start to see from nancy shoemakers most recent book about native whalemen from the pacific. One of her case studies is a native person from the northeast who ends up in new zealand and becomes venerated as a white pioneer there, because he is not maori, because the racial classifications there are wildly different. When you throw in the atlantic scale or the pacific scale, there are many different works engaging with this. You start to see ways that native people are engaged with the modern world from the beginning. Often, it is following up on indigenous priorities and agendas, other preexisting dynamics or networks, and they are tapping into the Global Expansion that happens at this time period. Advantage for their own purposes and own agendas. Mr. Silverman the place that you see this at work in thunder sticks, is in a chapter i wrote about the seminal war in the the second seminole war in the 1830s. There is no way that the seminoles shouldve been able to bog down the United States in its longest and most expensive war. If you put it in todays dollars, it would have run into that many billions of dollars. The seminoles are only 10,000 at 4000 people facing a country of 19 million people. They were not landlocked. They traded with cuba and the bahamas, building on diplomatic relationships. The United States could not control the seminole coastline. One of the reasons they were able to wage such a destructive war against the United States is that they were as well armed, if not better armed, than the u. S. Troops fighting against them. That gets at the question about indigenous consumers. Trade used to be perceived as barter. That deemphasized these global networks, the sophistication, and the power that these consumers have. Maybe you could talk a little bit about a little bit about thinking of commodities in your new book, maybe we can show some of the images of the guns. A lot of times, even when the early works look at indigenous roles, chose producers offering goods, or if the consumption of firearms is only negative for only to the detriment of indigenous communities. We could talk about how indigenous consumers come into play, in terms of borderlands and power. Mr. Reid why dont you bring up that one image. That one. This is one of john webers watercolors that he made after cooks voyages and it is quite large. In the big one, you can see some interesting detail that i think speak to the level of sophistication of the trade networks that already existed in this part of the world, long before cooks ships sailed in. They actually had to be rowed in. At the very back of the ship, this is one of these examples were you can see it better on the original. Right here, there is a sailor reaching out, trading with one of the indigenous who has come up from behind the ship and you have all of these highlevel diplomatic protocols unfolding. To figure out was, who are these outsiders . The did not know who they were. Were they distant outsiders, or so far distant that they were from somewhere else . One of the things that help them figure out where they were are the stifel medic protocols to diplomaticse protocols to figure out what kind of people these were. Trade was the other way to figure out who these people were. What value they had and what good they had. And it operated at different levels. Commoners managing trade on the side, with others managing trade between the ships captain, between the people on a bigger scale. One of the things that you see, when you look at indigenous consumers, is that native people had sophisticated trade networks that were extensive on more than a regional basis. This is where archaeology has been helpful at tracking where these goods came from. This is another opportunity that we were seeing and taking advantage of as these opportunities arose. This is what i was finding with my own reading of the document. Mr. Silverman i have a couple responses to this prompt. Lets focus on the gun trade for a moment. There is a widespread assumption among historians and the general public that when native people obtained f