The Deadly Politics of Giving
ISBN: 9780817382056
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / The University of Alabama Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Ceremonial exchange; Algonquian Indians; Indians of North America; Algonquian Indians;

A clash of cultures on the North American continent. With a focus on indigenous cultural systems and agency theory, this volume analyzes Contact Period relations between North American Middle Atlantic Algonquian Indians and the Spanish Jesuits at Ajacan (1570-72) and English settlers at Roanoke Island (1584-90) and Jamestown Island (1607-12). It is an anthropological and ethnohistorical study of how European violations of Algonquian gift-exchange systems led to intercultural strife during the late 1500s and early 1600s, destroying Ajacan and Roanoke, and nearly destroying Jamestown.

Seth Mallios is Associate Professor of Anthropology at San Diego State University and Director of the South Coastal Information Center, California Office of Historic Preservation, in San Diego. Author of many journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, this is his first book.

hidden image for function call