Jean Barman, Iroquois in the West

In Iroquois in the West, historian Jean Barman provides a highly detailed account of how Haudenosaunee men departed Kahnawà:ke and their homelands and travelled to various regions, which are known today as Montana, the Pacific Northwest, and Jasper, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Fur trading contracts and the prospect of improving their quality of life were key factors in their decision to depart their communities, leave family members, and sojourn long distances.Barman argues that "Iroquois engaging the West, be it briefly or forever, were ambitious and determined" (4) and that they "accommodated themselves to their circumstances even as they held on to their senses of self " (6).Over the course of eight chapters, Barman relies on written archival documents, based on sources created by fur trading companies, as well as religious and government bodies, to better understand how Haudenosaunee men were integral to "a West in the making" (106).Barman contends although these archival documents are "slivers from the shadows of the past, the stories that survive are all the same powerful, attesting to the self-confidence of Iroquois and their descendants who shared their selves with others."(9) In other words, Barman's history is derived solely from colonial records, void from the voices of Haudenosaunee people themselves.This book provides readers with in-depth understanding of the nineteenth-century fur trade and the role that Haudenosaunee men played, according to fur trading partners, missionaries, and colonial officials.Barman argues that trapping and trading skills were strong in the Kahnawà:ke region and the fur trading companies valued this expertise, thereby well positioning Haudenosaunee men to obtain and sustain contracts.She asserts that they were "welcomed into the fur trade on a par with whites" (52).The main sentiment throughout is that Haudenosaunee men largely benefitted from their work in the fur trade, but Barman notes that some were victimized by the economic practices of the fur trade.Despite this, she highlights Haudenosaunee employees' "persistence in making known their disagreements face-to-face on a rational basis," "unsettled the superiority that those in charge took for granted" (79), and prompted structural change for the Hudson's Bay Company through the rewriting of finance policies.It is a stretch, however, to think these HBC employees upended the fur trade.The argument that Haudenosaunee men were "integral to the fur trade's expansion across the Rocky Mountains and into the Pacific Northwest" (117) and engaged the "fur trade on their own terms" (143) is plausible.Moving into the later eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, a local population of Haudenosaunee people settled in Jasper and the Pacific Northwest rather than returning home to Kahnawà:ke.A new generation of Haudenosaunee descendants arrived and, Barman argues, continued to maintain "strong senses of self " (152) and that "markers of identity long survived in the West" (171).Into the early twentieth century, the Haudenosaunee families

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