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chapter 5 From “Superabundance” to Dependency Women Agriculturalists and the Negotiation of Colonialism and Capitalism for Reservation-era Lummi Chris Friday In 1857, the first agent on the Lummi Reservation in Northwest Washington, Edmund C. Fitzhugh, observed: “their women are industrious, and do most of the work and procure the principle part of their sustenance; they cultivate potatoes, and generally have a superabundance, so that they dispose of a great many to whites. . . . [They] raise a goodly number of potatoes” (ARCIA 1857: 326, 329). Such efforts were not part of a federal push to create agriculturalists out of fishers.1 Instead, agricultural cultivation (including potatoes) was an integral cultural and economic feature of Indian2 peoples’ lives in the greater Puget Sound. Exactly when potatoes became deeply embedded in these cultivation practices is unclear, but by the late 1820s they were common fare throughout the region (Suttles 1951, 1954; Deur 2002; Williams 1996). With the onset of the inland fur trade in the 1820s and the establishment of a European American settler society (circa 1850s), potato production expanded. Most scholars recognize women as the primary cultivators prior to the reservations , but what happened to the importance of their roles in production after that is seldom addressed. At first glance, it appears that a “masculinization” of agriculture reached fruition by the late 1910s under federal modernization and assimilation programs and cultural imperatives of late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth -century capitalism. By then, federal agents promoted a “Boys Potato Club” in which the boys planted and tended different potatoes varieties until the fall when they exhibited them at the annual Lummi Agricultural Fair. In contrast, agents sponsored, a “Girls Canning Club” to encourage home economics competitions at the same fair (RG 75 Box 205 [Tulalip Bulletin] May 1917, July 1917, ). Such divisions mirrored middle-class American gender divisions of labor and “civilizing” reforms idealized by federal officials (Deloria 1999: 95–127). Potato production among the Lummi in the reservation era, however, offers a means to assess Indian approaches to agricultural production, their responses to federal programs, and influences on gender roles. Scholars do not agree upon the rolethatagriculture played onreservations, butgenerally recentresearch highlights the creative negotiation of changes wrought by imperialism and capitalism while recognizing that the policies created a framework for dependency (Leavelle 1998: 433–34; Meyer 1990; Osburn 1985). In terms of the impact of agricultural production on gender roles among Native Americans, the scholarly record is virtually silent, and comparative studies ofthe issue indeveloping countries is divided. Some authors find that commercialized agriculture diminishes women’s contributions while others hold it allows women to maintain central social and economic roles (Ankarloo 1979; Lewis 2000; McMurry 1992; Wright 1983; Safilios-Rothschild 1985; de Leal and Deere 1979). The case of how Lummi engaged agriculture, with special attention to the gendered implications of potato farming, suggests the negotiation of outside influences through the social and environmental conditions of place (Andrews 1998; Perry 2001; Sahlins 2000; Vlasich 2001). Lummi and other Coast Salish Aboriginal subsistence patterns were robust, but most scholarship has focused on male-centered salmon fisheries (Boxberger 2000). Salmon were important to Lummi, but a singular focus obscures agricultural production. If as much as 40–60 percent of the caloric intake came from gathering and cultivating activities, the contribution was no small matter (Deur 2002: 20–24, 29; Doolittle 1992; Vibert 1997). Ethnographic and historical evidence of agricultural production among Coast Salish clarifies women’s contributions. Stern (1934) noted that about “twenty-five varieties of berries and sixteen varieties of roots are gathered by . . . [Lummi] women” (51).3 His description of spring camas harvests demonstrates that women intensively cleared, cultivated, and maintained gathering grounds (42–43). In an early account Gibbs (1877) noted “Inclosures [sic] for garden-patches were sometimes made by banking up around them with refuse thrown out in cleaning the ground, which, after a long while, came to resemble a low wall” (186). There were two types of root and tuber cultivation areas. Some were near significant “permanent” village averaging 4 to 5 acres and “owned” by a given clan or village but subdivided into individually inheritable plots (like those Gibbs described) among the village’s most influential women who tended and guarded them from incursions. Others were in more distant clearings near seasonally occupied sites and were typically not exclusively claimed (Mike 1927; Collins 1980; Deur 2002: 20–24; Judson 1966: 13–15, 55; Louis et al. 1973; Suttles 1951: 281–82, 1974). These long-standing patterns of...

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