5
The Inalienable-Commodity Continuum in the Circulation of Birds on the North American Plains

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María Nieves Zedeño, Wendi Field Murray, and Kaitlyn Chandler

From early accounts of indigenous trade centers, where exotic goods moved through myriad hands, to classical and contemporary studies of market economies, people around the world regard trade and exchange as the glue that binds society together (Kovacevich and Callaghan 2013). Archaeological modeling of trade and exchange has generally approached goods as passive and external to social relations wherein goods function as gifts or commodities. Yet the specific roles goods play in traditional modes of circulation are profoundly connected to their condition of personhood. Personhood implies that sociality, that is, a transaction involving other than human persons—whether these constitute tangible or intangible goods—is a social act between the giver and the good and between it and the receiver inasmuch as it is a social act between people engaged in the transaction.

In this chapter we deploy a contextual and relational approach to native value systems and illustrate, through examples of the acquisition and exchange of bird goods among northern Plains tribes of the Missouri River basin, the effect of personhood on the various social roles birds, bird objects, bird knowledge, and bird-related services played in native economies. We argue alongside Kopytoff (1986) and Godelier (1999) that the commoditization of inalienable goods or the inalienable qualities goods may acquire during their life histories is a process deeply embedded in the specific social and historically contingent contexts in which they circulate. We further suggest that goods can circulate simultaneously in different but interconnected systems of value, not only providing people with the opportunity for accumulating prestige and authority but also opening the possibility for sizable economic gain. Finally, we examine the effect of culture contact in the valuation of native goods.

The chapter begins with a working definition of “good” and a brief overview of contemporary approaches to gifts, commodities, and inalienable possessions to show how these are not categories of goods that neatly correspond to distinctive modes of circulation; rather, they are roles goods may assume in complex value systems, and certain roles are dependent upon conditions of personhood. Next, we discuss the dynamics of bird personhood in the northern Plains (specifically the Missouri River basin, figure 5.1); last, we discuss the influence of value systems involving the circulation of birds and bird parts on political authority, wealth accumulation, and the reproduction of social institutions.

Figure 5.1. Missouri River basin and tribal locations. From Chandler et al. 2017:fig. 2.1.

When Is a Good a Person?

Good is defined here as an inclusive term for natural resources, objects of human manufacture, knowledge, and services. We cast this definition broadly to emphasize the importance of considering both the tangible and intangible character of exchangeable and inalienable goods. Just as goods are diverse, so are the contexts in which they circulate. Early twentieth-century anthropologists, notably Durkheim (1965) Malinowski (1922), Mauss (1925), and Lévi-Strauss (1964), differentiated goods according to two general modes of circulation—gift and commodity—emphasizing the predominance of the former as a means of reciprocity in primitive society. Gifts are those goods that typically circulate in social networks. In these networks, the social capital of gifting is more valuable than the good itself, the latter acting as a bond between those engaged in reciprocity. The centrality of the Potlatch in the constitution and reproduction of social and political bonds in the Pacific Northwest (Roth 2002) and of shell objects in the rise of political inequality among societies in the Pacific Islands (Aswani and Sheppard 2003; Malinowski 1922; Mosko 2000; Weiner 1992) represents long-standing anthropological examples of the intricacy of gift exchange.

Commodities, in contrast, are meant to circulate in a market economy where the main goal is not to attain prestige or fulfill a social obligation but to incur economic gain. Commodity exchange has generally been discussed in twentieth-century anthropological literature in the context of complex (non-capitalist) societies where conflict and inequality are inherent in each interaction (e.g., Durkheim 1965; Sahlins 1972). Critiques of the classic models of trade and exchange (e.g., Appadurai 1986; Aswani and Sheppard 2003; Godelier 1999; Gregory 1982; Thomas 1991; Weiner 1992) argue that gift and commodity have been treated as two essentialized categories that mask the range of variation in modes and contexts of circulation; as Ferry (2002:335) notes, this categorization ignores the multiplicity of roles certain goods may play in producing and trading communities. In addition, treatments of gift and commodity exchange seldom consider the condition of personhood in valuation systems underlying the circulation of goods (but see Gell 1998; Godelier 1999).

In her revision of reciprocal exchange in the Trobriand Islands, Weiner (1992) calls attention to the existence of a third kind of good, which she names “inalienable possession” and models after Mauss’s (1925) conundrum embodied in “the gift.” Inalienable possessions are goods that circulate in a paradoxical context, where the owner of the goods simultaneously keeps the goods and gives them away or does not circulate them at all. There are fundamental differences between gifts and commodities, on the one hand, and inalienable possessions, on the other. The most significant difference is that gifts and commodities are consumed as they change hands (in other words, they are lost to the giver), whereas inalienable possessions are conserved or even multiplied in the act of exchange (kept by the giver). Weiner indicates that inalienable possessions generally can only be circulated under special circumstances in which the giver’s identity remains embedded in that which he or she gives. Godelier (1999:123) elaborates this idea further when he includes sacra—those goods that embody gods and spirits on earth and thus are essentially inalienable—into the enigma of the gift. Moving forward, Ferry’s (2002) study of silver production and trade as a cooperative industry in modern Guanajuato, Mexico, clearly illustrates that there are contexts in which goods can be both movable (ore-commodity) and immovable (vein-place/possession). She provocatively introduces the term “inalienable commodity” to illuminate a seemingly paradoxical context in which silver ore, while circulating in the global commodity market, is never truly lost to the miners but eventually returns as social patrimony.

From these works we are left pondering whether and under what circumstances a given good can be gift, commodity, inalienable possession, social patrimony, or a permutation of the above. If we assume that goods may be persons and thus capable of sociality, then the answer to this question may be found by, first, scrutinizing those realms in which goods display interactive, performative, transformative, and fluid dispositions of personhood and, second, by ascertaining how such dispositions are associated with valuation and circulation. By valuation we do not simply mean the worth of goods; we also refer to the ontological and epistemological principles goods embody, their place in the social order, and their relative importance for bestowing economic wealth and political authority as well as sustaining society and culture.

Interactive dispositions of personhood are common to all things, as goods have the basic ability to affect and be affected by those (humans, other things) with whom they engage as they create and define places, paths, and positions—this much is broadly accepted by contemporary students of behavior, agency, and materiality (e.g., Dobres and Robb 2000; Meskell 2004; Miller 2005; Mills and Walker 2008; Scheiber 2015; Schiffer and Miller 1999). Performative dispositions bring goods into the realm of the sign and the symbol (Keane 2003; Fogelin 2012). Things have the ability to communicate information about their worth and to denote abstract concepts and realities. The display of material icons (say, the Christian cross, a Kachina mask, or a Kula necklace) or the utterance of a prayer conveys meanings that are explicit to the viewers and listeners in the particular context of display, that may be carried to other contexts, and that can lend structure to future social practices.

Transformative dispositions, in contrast, reflect the power of goods to transmute into something altogether different under certain circumstances or to change the tangible and intangible qualities of those (humans, things) with whom they engage. Kachina masks, for example, are made to represent ancestral Pueblo spirits, and thus they are iconic objects; yet those who wear masks in a public ritual are not simply conveying this meaning to the participants—they become the spirits of the masks (Mills 2004; Fowles 2013). A Kachina mask is therefore a person whose transformative disposition fundamentally alters the substance of the wearer during the performance of the rite and even in his or her afterlife. Performative and transformative dispositions are fluid as they, too, are subject to social mores and historical contingencies. Among the Great Lakes Ojibwa, for example, a story involving supernatural beings is a living, multidimensional thing that when put into the written word, “flattens out” or loses its life and dimensionality because the characters in the story are no longer able to perform their roles as they would in storytelling. Ojibwa social mores apply to objects’ behavior just as they apply to people; personhood may be lost as a result of infringements of the social order incurred by things during their life histories. By the same token, inert things may become persons by virtue of their conduct (Zedeño et al. 2011:21).

Clearly, the dispositions and conditions of personhood that goods possess and the value(s) people bestow upon them are best displayed when different kinds of goods come together in interactive contexts. Among Plains tribes, for example, ceremonial bundles constitute a kind of complex object composed of two or more tangible and intangible goods. Bundles are literally small “universes” made of deliberate and historically contextualized landscapes, objects, songs, stories, rights, and more (Lokensgard 2010; Zedeño 2008, 2009). Each bundle and each good it contains have inalienable properties that both complement one another and speak to political and cultural authority, historical events, moral rules and obligations, the sociality of the supernatural, and the well-being of the owner’s community. This does not preclude bundles and their contents from also bringing the potential for gainful exchange: the possession and circulation of bundles plays an important role in the accumulation of economic and social capital. Yet the broader social significance of the bundle and its power to work toward the greater good and to enable cultural reproduction remains with the people as social patrimony (Pard 2015). Our research on the cultural significance of birds (alone and as bundle components) for several Missouri River tribes (see figure 5.1) suggests not only that bird goods can exhibit various dispositions of personhood but also that they play complementary roles in multiple value systems, depending on the contextual and historical circumstances that influence their circulations within and between tribes.

Birds and the Missouri River Tribes

Birds are a category of goods that, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Falk 2002; Parmalee 1977), tends to fall into the background of discussions of material culture, probably because they make up a small portion of the zooarchaeological record. Yet birds are among the most ubiquitous and interactive resources. Hundreds of species of birds frequent the Missouri River basin, some passing through seasonally on the Central Flyway that runs along the river from Canada to the Gulf Coast and some inhabiting the region year-round. A “flyway” is a general flight path used by birds during periods of migration, providing access to sources of food, water, and habitats with relatively few major geographic barriers, such as mountains. The Central Flyway narrows into an hourglass shape near the Platte and Missouri River valleys, offering one of the most diverse concentrations of bird species in North America (Johnsgard 2012).

This astonishing world of birds has captured the attention of visitors to the northern Plains since European arrival in the region in the eighteenth century (e.g., Audubon 1960; Jenkinson 2003; Witte and Gallagher 2008). Written and oral accounts of the northern Plains trade during the protohistoric and historic periods (Mitchell 2012; Wood and Thiessen 1985), combined with archaeological remains of a variety of birds, provide ample evidence of how birds and bird goods participate in multiple contexts of interaction. They may be complicit in the creation or maintenance of social relations and political alliances and be ascribed differential value based on the context of transfer or their intended versus actual use. Long-term research in national parks, forests, and Indian reservations, along with conversations with Blackfoot, Assiniboine, Hidatsa, Crow, Mandan, and Arikara people, has revealed (sometimes in startling detail) that birds are central to group and individual identity, which is reified through enduring and continuing cultural practices. This fundamental relationship, which dates as early as the Paleoindian period (e.g., Hill and Rapson 2008; Krech 2009), is expressed in myriad ways, as discussed below.

The attribution of value to birds derives both from their unique status as gods (Thunderbird) or as people of the air, or “wingeds,” and from the complexity of their relationship to human beings (Chandler et al. 2017). In the Native American world, birds are consummate communicators, capable of engaging people, animals, and things in conversation and of influencing behaviors and decisions. Birds are members of a spiritual community, barometers of a community’s well-being, and a tangible connection to the spiritual world that sustains them: birds bridge the spiritual and corporeal worlds (Murray 2009). The spiritual power intrinsic in some birds may be acquired by humans through dreams or visions, transferred from one person to another, or tapped through the incorporation of a bird or bird part—feather, claw, or bone—into objects such as pipes, flutes, drums, headdresses, necklaces, or bundles. As Chandler and colleagues (2017:2) note, this agency transcends human-bird reciprocation, extending to human interaction with bird parts, bird habitats, and features associated with human-bird interaction as, for example, eagle-trapping pits and lodges and avian reincarnations of human souls.

Birds are also agents of social prestige and political power. The best-known representations of “the Indian” in North America generally include a Native American in a large feathered headdress or perhaps with a single feather or the body of an entire bird affixed on the back of his or her head. While these styles are by no means ubiquitous to all North American Indians, they demonstrate the widespread importance of bird parts in material culture. Catlin’s (1989) and Bodmer’s (Wood et al. 2007) portraits of native people they encountered on their journey through America’s interior in the 1830s rarely show a subject without some kind of avian adornment, whether feathered headgear, a feathered fan, a staff, a shield, jewelry, or another object (figure 5.2). Bird parts, too, are used for utilitarian purposes, as well as to decorate pieces of regalia or ceremonial objects and to denote personal identity and belonging. Finally, birds (gallinaceous birds and waterfowl) also provide a subsistence complement to bison, corn, and fish for some tribes. As they participate in multifarious social interactions, birds thus provide unparalleled opportunities to illustrate systems of valuation within the various contexts in which goods with inalienable properties in one context may be commoditized or deployed for the accumulation of wealth, power, and prestige in another and yet remain social patrimony.

Figure 5.2. Mandan war chief with his favorite wife. George Catlin, 1861–69. Courtesy, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Bird Gods and Spirits

Birds figure prominently in origin stories across the Plains, but there is one bird without an emergence story: the god Thunderbird. It is thought that this legendary creature was present in the cosmos before the creation of the earth. Thunderbird has homes in the Rocky Mountains and in certain buttes that dot the Missouri River Trench. Origin stories indicate that this god was not always benevolent. Yet it gifted humans with their most powerful objects, such as the Blackfoot Thunder Pipe. According to the pipe origin story, Thunderbird was known for stealing women and blinding their husbands with lightning. Men engaged the help of Raven to confront Thunderbird, and Raven won the battle. In restitution, Thunderbird gave his pipe to the Blackfoot (McClintock 1999:251). Humans, too, helped Thunderbird in times of need, as when the Hidatsa culture hero Pack’s Antelope rescued Thunderbird’s eaglets from being eaten by evil snakes (water gods). In return, Thunderbird transformed the great hunter into a bird and, after giving him his sacred songs, sent him to the prairie to kill and eat evil snakes. After a time, Pack’s Antelope took on a male human form and brought all his sacred songs and powers back to his people (Beckwith 1930:92–95). These origin stories illustrate the fundamentally reciprocal relationship between humans and gods; each interaction involves the gifting of objects, knowledge, and services and both parties enter into an alliance where mutual rights and obligations exist. In this alliance, only the pure form of a god’s power is inalienable; his gifts of hunting and song are not, in the sense that they can be transferred from one individual to another along with sizable amounts of property.

Although humans may obtain power from many elements of the natural and supernatural worlds, the communicative nature of birds gives them an uncanny ability to transfer knowledge and power to people, animals, and other things. Certain birds (eagle, loon, owl, meadowlark, duck) are considered to be very ancient and thus wiser than others, but any bird, even the tiny chickadee, has the potential to transfer something to others (Chandler et al. 2017). Birds may engage individuals who seek their help through fasting and vision quests and transfer to them a song, a piece of magical knowledge, or a particular object along with rules and rights of use. The seeker, in return, agrees to use his or her transfer to exert good deeds among the people (Wissler and Duvall 1912). The newly acquired gift binds the individual and the bird in a reciprocal, inalienable relationship (in Weiner’s 1992 strict sense of the term) that lasts as long as the rules of engagement (including liturgical order, specific votive offerings, and behavioral taboos) are observed. In general, this kind of gift has a singularized life history in that it does not transfer but stays with an individual throughout the person’s life, although on occasion a part of this personal “medicine” or magical knowledge may be passed on to another. Also inalienable are the offerings made to the bird spirit in acknowledgment of its help.

Birds also contribute pure power to sacred bundles, and they do so in body and spirit (Bowers 1992, 2004; McClintock 1999; Wissler and Duvall 1912). These inalienable contributions generate complementary and reciprocal relationships among things inside the bundle, magnifying its power and the ability of the bundle holder to achieve a lofty goal. While ceremonial bundles are social patrimony, they, too, circulate among initiated individuals, often accompanied by sizable property exchange. Some bundle items can also circulate in a restricted context. In the past, this exchange involved items with the capacity for personhood, such as beaver pelts, buffalo hides, and horses, as well other valuables including blankets, star quilts, and foodstuffs; today, transfers are paid in cash. In the transfer from one bundle holder to another, the giver accrues social and ritual prestige (as well as property commensurate with the importance of that being transferred) while the receiver gets the rights and duties of the bundle. Bundles have the ability to give visions that the receiver may use to his or her own ends or to help people, thus opening another door for accumulation of goods; in time, he or she will transfer the bundle yet again (Lowie 1919). Among the Blackfoot, the more social patrimony an individual transfers to others, the more knowledgeable and powerful he or she becomes, until all possible transfers available in society have been received and subsequently passed on to another person: that is the highest status an individual can achieve in society.

Precious Birds

Missouri River tribes traditionally kept closed systems of knowledge that were vital to the reproduction of society. These closed systems not only applied to the transfer of supernatural powers and social patrimony, but in some societies they also extended to the manufacture of everyday objects such as arrows and pottery (Hollenback 2012). Knowledge was held individually, as part of corporate institutions such as secret societies and bundle groups, and in farming tribes (e.g., Mandan, Arikara), clans, and moieties (Bowers 1992, 2004; Wissler 1916). In some cases it continues to be so. As a result, the mere act of wanting to know something others have mastered requires a formal transfer in which the receiver of knowledge brings “gifts” in payment for the rights to know and to act on that knowledge. While many of these exchanges are nominal, those associated with precious goods are expensive and complex. Control mechanisms may be instituted to strictly limit access to valuables, and they can differ from one society to another. One context of exchange that involves the strictly controlled formal transfer of practices and rights relating to birds from a master to an apprentice is eagle knowledge.

As representatives of the god Thunderbird, eagle persons are supremely powerful and thus occupy the highest place in the order of birds; according to Mandan tradition, they lived in sky villages with the Sun and the Moon while the world below was just being created (Bowers 2004:117). Eagles also have the ability to impersonate human culture heroes and to transform everything they touch—their power is distributive (Beckwith 1930; Murray 2009, 2011; Wilson 1928). A complex of bird stories explains how eagles came from the sky and brought many gifts to the people. Eagle-thunderbirds are central characters in the Mandan Okipa Ceremony (Warren 2007:12); in the Assiniboine, Crow, and Hidatsa Sun Dance; and in the Blackfoot Okan, or Medicine Lodge, as well as many other rites and bundles associated with thunder rituals and eagle trapping (Chandler et al. 2017; Murray 2009, 2011). Not surprisingly, eagles and their parts are precious and much coveted for a variety of practices; thus, their transfer value was once very high. Feathers of the golden eagle and less so of the bald eagle were indispensable in ceremonial paraphernalia as well as in war. They were worn by men as insignias of leadership and bravery; they also signified personal wealth. Eagle bones were fashioned into ceremonial and medicinal whistles believed to be more powerful than any other whistle. Talons were kept as personal amulets or affixed to regalia (Murray 2009). Those who possessed the rights to eagles were highly regarded in society.

The possession of eagle rights meant the catcher had the knowledge and ability to attract a specific type of eagle (golden or bald, depending on the intended use) at a specific point in its biological life (immaturity). In this sense, the eagle presented itself to the catcher. The act of catching was in itself the receipt of a gift from the captured to the capturer. Among the Mandan and Hidatsa, eagle trapping was a gift of black bear spirits. Bear-trapping pits dotted the Missouri River bluffs, and so do those used by the people. The bears gifted eagle-trapping rights and duties to the people in exchange for plant medicine. These rights included songs, rituals such as the sweat lodge, fasting, self-torture, trapping techniques, and eagle power. All this knowledge was aided by the power of the eagle-trapping bundle, which generally included the foot of a black bear, an ash digging stick wrapped in bear hide and buffalo hair, a buffalo skull, eagle tail feathers and plumes, and a sacred snare (Wilson 1928:145). The transfer of eagle rights was a long-term process of exchange between master and apprentice—over a period of many years, the apprentice provided gifts and commodities to the master in exchange for portions of the eagle rights until the transfer was complete. Cultural protocols dictated that eagle-trapping rights could only be transferred four times over the course of a lifetime, after which the owner lost the authority to make such transfers. These protocols remain in place for the transfer of eagle medicine today, even though trapping was severely restricted in the early twentieth century and later forbidden under the Endangered Species Act (1973) and the Eagle Protection Act (1962) (Murray 2009, 2011).

The origin and transfer protocols of eagle trapping among the Blackfoot are less known, even though they trapped extensively in the richest golden eagle habitat at the foothills of the Rocky Mountain front and adjacent prairie. Stories told to McClintock (1999:428) suggest that it may have been an individual right passed on from father to son. Eagle trapping was a highly prestigious and holy activity imbued with taboo and ceremony. It had associations with coyote and coyote medicine songs as well as ghosts. Trapping pits are found in great numbers on the northern portion of Blackfoot territory in southern Saskatchewan (Kennedy and Reeves 2013) and the Porcupine Hills in southern Alberta. Several pit locations are known in Montana in what is now the Blackfeet Indian Reservation (McClintock 1999).

Trapping techniques, including the construction of a large pit where the trapper would lie in wait for an eagle to eat the bait placed on the brush disguising the pit, were fairly similar among the Missouri River tribes. Other protocols varied. For example, the Mandan and Hidatsa organized winter eagle-trapping expeditions led by a bundle holder; they built conical wooden lodges near eagle-trapping sites to perform their ceremonies and place eagle offerings (Wilson 1928). Among the Blackfoot, eagle trapping was carried out by an individual with rights, perhaps accompanied by an apprentice. The night before the expedition, the trapper and his wife consumed berry soup and sang ghost songs and eagle songs; the trapper then rubbed his body with the smoke of sweetgrass to mask his body odor. Sexual intercourse and sewing with awls were not permitted. In the morning the trapper headed for the pit carrying a human skull whose ghost would protect him and a six-foot-long stick to keep other birds and animals away. An expedition could fetch up to forty eagles, but one to eight eagles were brought back on average. Eagles were trapped and killed and then brought back home for a thanking feast. An eagle tipi lodge was erected just outside the camp. Eagles were placed on upright forked sticks inside the tipi and left to rot until the feathers could be plucked without damaging them. While on the poles, the eagles were fed by stuffing pemmican inside their beaks as a thanking offering and gesture of generosity to incur the beneficence of future eagles (Grinnell 1920:237–40).

The Multivalent Tail Feather

The gift of eagle feathers originates in Mandan creation stories (Bowers 2004) and continues to be a highly regarded and honorable gift. Eagle feathers have diverse trajectories; their widespread value and popularity rests on the fact that feathers carry the inalienable power of the eagle and the thunderbird, as described by Murray (2009:42), and thus are considered persons. Feather fans are often used ceremonially to direct the incense smoke. Among the Mandan and Hidatsa, bald eagle feathers were used on the sacred child’s pipe and in the associated ceremony (Wilson 1928:141). Eagle feathers were required in naming and adoption ceremonies and to cleanse or repair bundles. The calumet pipe was adorned with the feathers of mature and immature eagles (Allen 1983:4; Jenkinson 2003:57). They were also used in the Grass Dance that was bought from the Santee Sioux during the 1780s; society members wore feather bustles while dancing and carried small wooden guns decorated with eagle feathers to signify their wartime accomplishments (Gilman and Schneider 1987:159). Eagle feathers were in huge demand during ceremonial giveaways, when victorious warriors danced with and distributed several war bonnets to the participants (Zedeño et al. 2006). A war bonnet required thirty-six black-tipped tail feathers of a golden eagle and each eagle only has twelve such feathers, so eagle-trapping rights could fetch material wealth for those who held them (Murray 2009).

The Blackfoot used golden “war” eagle feathers to make their upright war bonnets (figure 5.3) and dancing bustles for the men and for distinguished horses, as well as for healing implements and other ceremonial items. Scriver (1990) cataloged the contents of a number of Blackfoot bundles, many of which contain eagle feathers and bone artifacts. Tail feathers were only associated with men, except for the feathers found in the Natoas (Okan, or Medicine Lodge) Bundle and the headdress worn by the Holy Woman of the Okan. Eagle wing feathers were found in the Crow-Has-Water Society Bundle and eagle wing bone whistles in the Iniskim Bundle. Personal and healing bundles also had eagle bone whistles and sucking tubes for extracting poison. Women’s bundles usually only had ocher-dyed plumes, which were also found in the Ghost Bundle. The Holy Feather hand game included game pieces ornamented with dyed plumes. The Beaver Bundle, which explains the mysteries of the Blackfoot cosmos, contained mummified bodies of several water and sky birds and animals as well as an eagle feather fan. Its Water Pipe was sometimes adorned with underwing eagle feathers.

Figure 5.3. Blackfoot straight-up bonnet with double feather trailer. From Scriver 1990:49.

Bird Commodities

The widespread value and popularity of eagle feathers coupled with unequal distribution of eagles and eagle rights within and across the Missouri River tribes created a huge demand for them. Long-distance trade networks had been in place probably since the tenth century, but they flourished and expanded shortly before Europeans arrived in the region (Mitchell 2012). Archaeological excavations in ancestral Mandan lodges attest to the diversity of birds (more than 20 species) found in certain households that presumably specialized in processing birds and feathers for ceremonies and trade (Falk 2002). In the earliest contact account, La Vérendrye visited the Mandan in 1738 and commented that “these people dress leather better than do any other tribes, and do very fine work on furs and feathers” (quoted in Thwaites 1904:221; see also, Burpee 1927). He also noted the importance of trading bird parts within and between tribes, explaining that the Mandan “knew well how to profit thereby in trading their grain, tobacco, peltries, and painted feathers, which they know the Assiliboille [Assiniboine] highly value” and that the latter “had purchased everything which their means permitted, such as painted buffalo-robes; skins of deer and antelope well dressed and ornamented with fur; bunches of painted feathers; peltries; wrought garters, headdresses, and girdles” from the Mandan (quoted in Thwaites 1904:221, emphasis added). The trade of feathers for agricultural products and other goods fostered an intricate social and economic network among the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Crow, Assiniboine, and Blackfoot tribes, based on the strengths and wants of each tribe (Chandler et al. 2017). Such wants and needs ranged from basic subsistence to esoteric knowledge and power objects or persons.

Hudson Bay Company records dating to the turn of the nineteenth century note that European traders relied on waterfowl and other non-migratory bird species as a food source, as well as for trade (Hudson Bay Company Archives n.d.). Goose and partridge feathers; crane, eagle, goose, and swan quills; and swans skins were also frequent trade items across the northern Plains. The Assiniboine served as middlemen between the Europeans and other tribes during early inland trade by the Hudson Bay Company’s York Factory (Ray 1974:68–69). Having adopted certain notions of trade from their European partners, they acquired European trade goods and passed them on to other Plains tribes at a significant markup, exchanging their “used and deteriorated kettles, axes, knives, guns, and other trade goods” for corn, leather, feathers, and other material less abundant in their territory (Ray 1974:88; Rodnick 1938). In this way they obtained valued eagle feathers for use in dress, regalia, and ceremonial items (Denig 2000:195; Will and Hyde 1964:179–80). In time of need, such precious goods could also be exchanged for staples and medicine without loss of personhood on the part of the precious good. The same type of eagle tail feathers formally transferred to an eagle-trapping apprentice within strictly ritualized parameters could also be traded to an Assiniboine partner for the price of a horse, a gun, or a number of bison robes (Chandler et al. 2017). Accounts of the Columbia Dalles trade center compiled by Griswold (1954) further indicate that golden eagle feathers were traded to the northwestern tribes.

The Blackfoot’s most prized possession was a good buffalo runner that could partner with the hunter in a successful bison kill. Trade in these horses provides a clear picture of just how valuable eagle feathers were in the commodity market. Grinnell (1920:240) noted that in the north, where golden eagles abounded, the Blackfoot could purchase a good horse with five golden eagles, compared to further south where only two eagles could purchase the same. A Blackfoot (North Peigan) consultant explained that his male ancestors were eagle trappers by occupation and that the golden eagle feathers were prized so highly for their godly power and the prestige they imparted to their owners that only one eagle feather might be traded for a horse in certain contexts. Matthews (1877:28) also reported that the Mandan could trade a single tail feather from a golden eagle to another tribe for a “buffalo-horse, i.e., a horse swift enough to outrun a young adult buffalo in the fall.”

Clearly, individuals with eagle-trapping rights could amass large fortunes as a corollary of their profession (Hungry-Wolf 2006:136). For example, Brings-down-the-Sun, “a celebrated medicine man of the north,” according to McClintock (1999:312), supported his family through eagle trapping by trading the feathers he acquired to the Piikani (Blackfeet) in the south. The Piikani used them for regalia and ceremonial objects (McClintock 1999:428, 432), as well as to fund other important projects such as the horse trade. His descendant told the authors that through the eagle feather trade, Brings-down-the-Sun was able to support seventeen wives, each of whom gave him children for ten straight years. Indisputably, as Grinnell (1920:236) states, “before the Whites came to Blackfoot country, the Indian standard of value was the eagle tail-feathers.”

Other precious birds also circulated in economic and social networks. Red birds (mostly woodpeckers), for example, are associated with the origin of rainbows (Thwaites 1906:374), and they also appear in the Mandan story of “Brown Old Man” as the leader of the birds a long time ago when black bears trapped eagles (Bowers 2004:382). Red Bird was captured by Old Black Bear but explained to the bear that if he was killed, no more birds would be left. Old Black Bear released him, but birds like Red Bird were never seen again. Red Bird’s son, Brown Old Man, could turn himself into a spotted eagle and brought buffalo and rain to the people (Bowers 2004:376). This story reveals both the importance of red birds in Mandan culture and their value as exotic trade items in native networks. Maximilian recorded the trade of pileated woodpecker heads to be used on the pipe in the Mandan Adoption Ceremony (cited in Bowers 2004:329; Thwaites 1906:319). The pileated woodpecker’s historical range did not reach far above the mouth of the Missouri River, although its range has expanded over the past forty years. The scarcity of this type of woodpecker added “a considerable expense” to the acquisition of such a pipe, which required the bird’s upper bill and distinctive red crown (Thwaites 1906:319). The birds’ heads are associated with Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies and corn, perhaps because they live far to the south where Old-Woman resides. The head of a pileated woodpecker had to be brought from St. Louis, and it was traded for a large buffalo robe, horses, and corn (Bowers 2004:330; Thwaites 1906:320). The Blackfoot valued the exotic Carolina parakeet, also from the south, which was occasionally found inside personal bundles or affixed to the stem of a ceremonial pipe (figure 5.4) (Scriver 1990).

Figure 5.4. Little Dog Thunder Medicine Pipe (a) decorated with a Carolina parakeet (b) (Blackfoot). From Scriver 1990:262–63.

Stories also tell that the ancient Mandan traded the yellow crescent of meadowlarks for shell bowls from a (mythological?) tribe they called the Maniga, which lived on the opposite side of the Mississippi at the point where it flows into the ocean (Bowers 2004:132, 156). Meadowlarks were sometimes dropped into the river as people crossed it to calm rough waters. The meadowlark was also valued because it warned war parties of nearby enemies, and it was a predominant character in the Okipa Ceremony. In the past, when white buffalo robes were very scarce, they were a highly valued trade item. When a visiting tribe came to a village offering one of these robes, the Mandan would bring the most prized items in their possession; among them were “skins of red birds, buffalo robes tanned, heads of meadow larks and dried bears’ intestines which they used as ribbons” (Beckwith 1938:107, emphasis added).

Waterfowl furnish yet another example of the complexity of aboriginal value systems. Waterfowl figure prominently in stories of emergence across the Plains. Geese, loons, trumpeter swans, and various ducks are ubiquitous elements in bundles; their heads were affixed to calumets, and their likeness was carved in bone and stone (Chandler et al. 2017). The late Blackfoot linguist Darrell Kipp observed that in ancient Blackfoot society, loons were even more valuable than eagles (Kipp, personal communication, 2004). Among the Blackfoot, loons and ducks were an intrinsic component of the Beaver Bundle. Duck eggs were sacred food consumed during ceremonies. For the Mandan, waterfowl are the children of Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies because female souls reincarnate in waterfowl after death. They, too, belong in various Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Crow bundles and ceremonial paraphernalia (Bowers 1992, 2004; Lowie 1919).

And yet, Hudson Bay Company records indicate that European traders relied on waterfowl as a food source obtained through trade with native hunters. Europeans also procured goose and partridge feathers; crane, eagle, goose, and swan quills; beaks, talons, and swan skins from natives and traded them for furs, with the Assiniboine serving as middlemen between the Europeans and other tribes (Chandler et al. 2017). Painted feathers of various birds were ubiquitously dyed for inclusion in bundles as well as in regalia. European traders introduced Old World natural and chemical dyes to the tribes, which became very popular over time. Magenta, indigo, violet, yellow, and bright green were the most common colors found in historical bundle contents. Packets of European dyes, which were highly regarded for the brilliant colors they lent to bird feathers and quills, also became a part of the bundles just as the holiest and most transformative native paints were, thus completing the inalienable-commodity–inalienable continuum.

Conclusion

Birds are foremost of the many resources encompassed by native Missouri River cosmologies. Collectively, birds and complementary resources, including animals, plants, minerals, and landforms, are all engaged in cultural and social reproduction. Some of these complementary resources are persons by birthright (e.g., bears), while others have the potential to become persons at some point in their trajectory. Some resources are valued as subsistence staples, while others are not. Together they sustain crucial links between the natural and spiritual worlds, shape or influence the life histories of people and other objects, and occupy a central position in the matrix of cultural belief and practice—all of which come to bear in the economic, social, and political web created in the process of trade or exchange.

Just as classic anthropological models of trade and exchange essentialize the inalienable-commodity continuum and attach the resulting categories to certain types of social organization, archaeologies of material culture tend to fix objects into systems of meaning and value that do not consider the malleable disposition of goods, their capacity for personhood either as intrinsically powerful objects or as objects that may become alive through ritual protocols, and the impact historical events and cultural contexts have on their value. The ultimate and perhaps the only inalienable possession is the pure power the gods imbue in people and goods; not even the dispositions of personhood are fully inalienable, as they are for the most part historically and contextually contingent. Among the Missouri River tribes, gifts, commodities, and inalienable possessions may be best understood as situational roles in a fluid, dynamic social world not unlike that found in Highland New Guinea (Godelier 1999) or New Georgia (Thomas 1991), while social patrimony lends those roles an inalienable quality in the order of things.

Whereas there are goods (notably, feathers from powerful birds such as the eagle) generally recognized as always precious or valuable gifts and earned honors, others can accumulate value in the course of their historical trajectories. The exotic Carolina parakeet, for example, is a bird not found in Blackfoot mythology or ritual, yet it could be “adopted” into the life history of a bundle or a sacred object; by the same token, certain gifts from the gods may enter the commodity exchange by virtue of their place in the order of things. Weiner (1992) concludes that object inalienability is an exclusive and cumulative identity associated with its owners’ life histories and authenticated by myth and genealogy. In contrast, following Inomata (2013) and Aswani and Sheppard (2003), we suggest that strict inalienability is an extremely difficult status for any object to permanently achieve. The alternative Ferry (2002) provides to this conundrum is to realize that inalienability may be found not in the object itself but in the social patrimony (the greater good) gift exchange and commodity trade create and return, sometimes multiplied, to those who procured and circulated the goods in the first place.

In our case study, “keeping while giving” (sensu Weiner 1992) is manifested in the act of transfer, where unevenly distributed power and knowledge may be tapped by potentially anyone who has the fortitude and the means to enter the gift exchange that it requires. Through transfer, the pure power of the gods spreads from person to person, from group to group, and from people to thing and vice versa, but it is not lost to the giver unless the rules that accompany that which is powerful are broken. The Blackfoot, for one, are convinced that the power of sacred objects is not intrinsic to them: it is the god-given knowledge about things obtained through the transfer that imbues them with life force. Anyone could possess anything, but without the transfer the possession is inert. Transgressing the rules of the transfer would thus kill an object’s power and potential for personhood. The very nature of the transfer implies that the circulation of powerful and precious goods, not simply as gifts but as commodities, may bring economic gain to the giver while allowing the receiver to participate in social and religious activities that require the possession of such goods. However, if the goods were procured by the giver outside the rules of the transfer, then the receiver may end up with something that has no power and thus no value.

Transfer is also a means to attain economic wealth, prestige, and political authority through the possession of ritual knowledge and corresponding bundles and objects by certain individuals and corporate institutions with expensive and exclusive membership. Participation in formal transfers, in theory, opens the possibility for upward mobility; in practice, the cost of the transfer, in particular the transfer of sacred bundles and eagle rights, can be prohibitive. The transfer thus serves an important role in social organization and reproduction because it is used to institute control mechanisms in the circulation of goods; consequently, it helps preserve the value system and the hierarchical position between those who hold powerful knowledge and those who cannot acquire such knowledge. Before the spread of the fur trade, corporate institutions held individual aggrandizement in check by keeping certain knowledge and rights within the institution and regulating the transfer. In the historic period, however, trading partnerships spread and concepts of the exchange value of goods evolved as a result of European influence, thus providing opportunities to aggrandize through wealth accumulation. Acquisitive power could, in turn, allow individuals to enter into expensive and exclusive transfers that would otherwise have been beyond their reach (Zedeño 2017). This case challenges Weiner’s (1992) position that relinquishing inalienable possessions somehow results in either the loss or the temporary shift of hierarchical position; to the contrary, as Mosko (2000:381) observes in the Trobriand Islands case, the fluid disposition of supposedly inalienable goods in the context of exchange does not always defeat hierarchy.

Eagle feathers provide the clearest example of a valuation system centered in the situational and historical roles feathers play in the transfer. Eagles come from the gods and are thus inalienable; feathers carry the communicative, performative, and transformative power of the gods. People obtain rights to eagle trapping and feather handling through transfers from the gods or from those who hold those rights; through these rights, they are able to obtain and circulate feathers in the commodity exchange for economic gain. Those who acquire the feathers can continue trading them for other valuables and goods (e.g., horses) or can reincorporate them into insignias of identity and prestige, ceremonial objects, and sacred bundles, the latter of which are social patrimony. Unless they are desecrated, eagle feathers conserve their dispositions of personhood (as alive and possessors of pure power) and their value to society. Within the contextual and relational approach to trade and exchange we presented here, a given good may shift roles along a continuum of value that oscillates between two extremes—the commodity and the inalienable possession—or that can simultaneously become an inalienable commodity.

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