Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868-1940 (review)

2oogBook Reviews269 Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in tL· Marketplace, 1868-1940. By Erika Marie Bsumek. (Lawrence: University Press ofKansas, 2008. Pp. 304. Illustrations, notes, bibliography , index. ISBN 97807006 15g57, $29^5 cloth). Indian-Made describes how, between 1 868 and 1 g40, Navajo craftspeople, who resided on reservations in Arizona and New Mexico and made rugs and silver jewelry, participated in die modern market economy of the United States. The Navajo, radier than being "primitive" victims ofcapitalism, actively sought to profit from exchanges made at trading posts and with Anglo art dealers. Bsumek's intent is to describe how the Navajo influenced the markets and how the markets influenced the Navajo, and she argues that traders had to respect Navajo trading traditions to continue getting dieir business, describing how several white traders were even murdered by Navajos who had taken offense at their behavior toward them. The book focuses primarily on the mentality and motivations of white "Indian traders" such asJohn Hubbell, who ran trading posts on Navajo reservations that exchanged food and dry goods for Navajo crafts; white art dealers, such as Grace Nickolson, who marketed Navajo crafts to American consumers; and white anthropologists and curators, such as Stewart Cullin who helped to create a market for Navajo and other Indian-made goods by collecting artifacts and displaying them in museums. Building on die advertisements of the Fred Harvey Company, which operated a string of railroad hotels across the Soudiwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, white traders and dealers created the image of the Navajo and other southwestern tribes as "primitive," pre-industrial, and "vanishing" in order to create an aura surrounding Indian-made crafts. The marketing was so effective that the term "Indian made" itself became an asset. American consumers, eager to possess a hand-made piece of an exotic and disappearing culture, snapped up Navajo rugs andjewelry. Bsumek argues that white dealers misrepresented Navajo culture and created a false impression for white consumers. While this is undoubtedly true, a weakness in the central argument of die book is diat the narrative discusses the white views of the Navajo at great length but imparts little about the actual Navajo culture , leaving us without enough understanding of the Navajos diemselves to fully comprehend how the Anglos were misrepresenting them. Beyond describing the Navajo custom of gift giving while making trade exchanges and providing a brief history of the Navajo and the Navajo removal in the late nineteenth century, the book tells us litde about how Navajos viewed their own role in the market. The book also argues diat many Anglo Americans, especially women, collected Navajo crafts to express their desire to own "a symbol of the triumph of white Americans through manifest destiny and national expansion," (127) a phenomenon that the author calls "domestic imperialism" (126). While the book effectively demonstrates diat Anglos depicted Native Americans unrealistically, it does not effectively support the assertion that collecting Navajo goods amounted to imperialism. Many affluent collectors sought artifacts from a wide range of cultures during this period, including from the ancient Egyptians and Romans. Many 270Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober people collect art, coins, or crafts; perhaps collecting simply means that the collector appreciates the craftsmanship, history, or artistic quality of a given object. Indian-Made provides an interesting and informative view into die mentality of white traders and consumers of Navajo crafts. Chapter six, which I consider to be die book's strongest, provides a fascinating description of die controversy surrounding the definition and use of the term "Indian made" in the 1930s. IndianMade is well researched and gives valuable insights into the marketing of Navajo goods and culture. Texas State University-San MarcosPeter B. Dedek Salt Warriors: Insurgency on tL· Rio Grande. By Paul Cool. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. Illustrations, notes, index. ISBN 9781603440165, $24.95 cloth.) Paul Cool's Salt Warriors is a welcome contribution to the literature on social conflict in Texas and to studies of the San Elizario Salt War in particular. Making effective use of disparate and scattered sources, Cool provides a detailed narrative of the events leading up to the conflict and its consequences. Salt Warriors gives readers both the essence...