Daniel H. Usner

A Cycle of Lowland Forest Efficiency: The Late Archaic-Woodland Economy of the Lower Mississippi Valley

Long before the innovations of the Mississippian Tradition, inhabitants of the lower Mississippi Valley had devised hunting-and-gathering strategies that had a lasting impact on economic life in the region. By combining wildlife and forest studies with ethnographic evidence, a cycle of food-procuring activities is outlined to illustrate how efficient exploitation of the lowland forest might have occurred from the late Archaic through the Woodland periods. During summer and fall, extensive occupation of levees scattered across the floodplain provided optimal access to the greatest variety of food sources in the region. Along lakes and bayous, winter camps concentrated on fewer resources over smaller areas. As spring flooding began, inhabitants maximized access to upland foods yet maintained proximity to the rich lowland habitat, through intensive occupation of Pleistocene bluffs. A summary of recent site studies and zooarchaeological analyses for the lower Mississippi Valley indicates that this seasonal and geographical pattern accurately characterizes the economic activities of late Archaic-Woodland occupants of the lowland forest and, furthermore, suggests that it contributed dynamically to the evolution of sedentism.

Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783

In this pioneering book Daniel Usner examines the economic and cultural interactions among the Indians, Europeans, and African slaves of colonial Louisiana, including the province of West Florida. Rather than focusing on a single cultural group or on a particular economic activity, this study traces the complex social linkages among Indian villages, colonial plantations, hunting camps, military outposts, and port towns across a large region of pre-cotton South. Usner begins by providing a chronological overview of events from French settlement of the area in 1699 to Spanish acquisition of West Florida after the Revolution. He then shows how early confrontations and transactions shaped the formation of Louisiana into a distinct colonial region with a social system based on mutual needs of subsistence. Usners focus on commerce allows him to illuminate the motives in the contest for empire among the French, English, and Spanish, as well as to trace the personal networks of communication and exchange that existed among the territorys inhabitants. By revealing the economic and social world of early Louisianians, he lays the groundwork for a better understanding of later Southern society.