American Indians in the Marketplace: Persistence and Innovation among the Menominees and Metlakatlans, 1870–1920. By Brian C. Hosmer. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. Pp. xvi, 309. $35.00

In recent years the study of native Americans has emphasized their response to incentives, among them the economic incentives associated with European contact. Despite the initial cultural and religious divide between aboriginals and the newcomers, historians are becoming increasingly of the view that, in many dimensions, Indians approached the market much as did nonnative consumers and producers. Brian Hosmer's American Indians in the Marketplace is firmly in this once-revisionist tradition. Hosmer presents case studies of two bands that developed successful, resource-based, economies; the Menominees of north-eastern Wisconsin, and the Tsimshians of Metlakatla, on the northern coast of British Columbia. Central to the economic and social development of these groups were the relations between band members and nonaboriginals, relations that are the focus of Hosmer's narrative.