of kinship. Time-constrained travelers could perform a more limited “Freind dance” that included exchanging weapons and clothing. These bonds, Nairne was surprised to find, could even be created between men and women.27
Nairne’s interest in the connections that held together Native societies also led him to make the first extended European investigation of the clan system. These ties, he wrote, had “pu[zz]led” him at first. Despite being separated by different languages and “constant quarells,” Indians recognized kinship ties with people throughout the entire southeast, even in nations they otherwise considered enemies. These clans, Nairne noted, were not simply anthropological curiosities. Carolinian traders took Indian “mistresses” in the villages where they worked, not only to connect themselves with her family and the local community, but to make “relations in each Village, from Charles Town to the Missisipi.”28
The clan system also shed light on contemporary European political discussions. The smaller Indian societies he visited, he argued, tested the argument that parental power was the foundation of monarchical authority. John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, published less than two decades before, had challenged this belief using logic, theory, and biblical example. Nairne’s discussion rested instead on Indian prohibitions against marrying inside one’s own clan. As a result, Nairne noted, even the smallest new society could not operate for long without bringing in members outside the authority of a single father. As another late seventeenth-century political theorist, Algernon Sidney, had argued of all legitimate governments, Indian polities required the “consent of a willing people.” Nairne’s speculation about the origin of this prohibition, however, extends his discussion further. He suggests it also meant to encourage respectful social ties, “a politick contrivance” not only to “keep peace” but “to encrease Freindship”—in short, an example of the politics of politeness.29
Nairne displays these ideals even more clearly in a comparison among tribes he visited. The Chickasaw, he noted, looked and carried themselves better than the less-wealthy eastern nations of the Tallapoosas and Ochesses, much as British “men of Quality” differ from “peasants.” Yet Nairne did not consider the Chickasaws superior. Although outwardly more impressive, they were also so “arrogant” they could not “be[a]r the least affront.” Carolinians, he recommended, would need to make allowance for the “roughness of [the Chickasaws’] temper” until they could be made more “pliable.” Fortunately, their eastern neighbors were more “mannerly and Complaesant,” more “quiet and good Natured.”30
Although Nairne admired Native societies, he was not uncritical. He noted that they lacked “religion, law or useful Arts.” Their government was “mean” and inadequate, especially because it lacked a mechanism for punishing crimes. The last seemed so significant that Nairne paid a subordinate leader to visit nearby villages and encourage them to impose “punishments.” Still, he argued, Indian governments were “much better than none at all.”31
In praising limited governments and social cohesion, Nairne was partly playing to his audience. His first letter was addressed to Thomas Smith, speaker of Carolina’s Commons House. Smith was a central leader of the Dissenters’ Party, a group that had allied itself with British Whigs (including Nairne’s jail-cell correspondent Sunderland) to oppose Governor Johnson’s authoritarian actions.32 Nairne’s account of “Whiggish” Indians may also have sought to build sympathy for Native Americans. But Nairne’s letters did not simply seek to curry favor from his colleagues—or to encourage them to support his Indian policies. Nairne did more than theorize about restrained power, sympathetic interaction, and good nature. As agent, he attempted to make them a reality.
In 1705, Nairne called on English leaders to sponsor a missionary among the Indians surrounding South Carolina. Such a person, he wrote, could gain their “fidelity & friendship,” allowing Carolinians to learn more about attitudes and events in Indian country. Indians themselves would gain greater “Ease and Satisfaction” by having “a good man live among them … who would be a Protector to represent their Grievances to.” Nairne recognized that this would be a challenging assignment. Besides being willing to take up the “hardship & Troubles” of living among the Indians, the missionary could not be allowed to profit from his position. He would instead need to be “disinterested from all the wrangles of Trade.”33
Two years later, Nairne took up the task himself. Although the new post of Indian agent did not include religious responsibilities, it sought to fulfill the goals he had sketched out earlier. Although he too was barred from the Indian trade, Nairne threw himself into the role of “Protector,” displaying the missionary zeal he had expected from an English priest. The new agent worked so hard to restrain the attempts of European traders to take advantage of Indians that some came to see him as a traitor to his nation.
The position of agent that Nairne shaped first in the legislature and then in the field gave him legal oversight over the Carolinian middlemen who operated in Indian villages. These traders exchanged European goods for deerskins and slaves in transactions that formed the largest single part of Carolina’s economy. But, as Nairne recognized, this commerce also shaped the colony’s military and diplomatic ties. The region’s Native peoples, he explained in a 1708 letter, chose their allies in large part based on trade, generally aligning themselves with the European trading partners that “sell them the best pennyworths.” Though the French had offered substantial presents to gain the favor of the Chickasaw, he noted, the group had maintained their loyalties to Carolina because of its “much beter trade.”34
Despite its importance, however, the Indian trade that contributed so much to Carolina’s economy and its security was not committed to the hands of self-denying missionaries or seasoned diplomats seeking the broader public good. Instead, the colony’s commerce was carried out by a somewhat less reassuring group of one or two hundred traders. These men, who generally worked for wealthy Charles Town merchants and planters, could be thoughtful and responsible. Thomas Welch advised the legislature on dealing with the French in 1707 and then accompanied Nairne on the outward-bound leg of his journey. He then headed even farther west to the nations along the Mississippi. But many traders richly deserved their reputation for disreputable behavior. As Nairne noted in 1708, their actions “hath been much and long complained of.” Traders defied Carolina’s authority, refusing to take out the licenses required by the trade reform act, pretending not to have seen governor’s orders when they were inconvenient, and even tearing up official notices after they were served.35
Traders were no more respectful to Indians. Even though they lived in Native villages for much of the year, establishing themselves by taking an Indian mistress and thereby claiming membership in family, village, and clan, they often refused to accept community expectations. The Board of Commissioners established by the trade act heard numerous cases against traders, including such misdeeds as taking “a young Indian against her Will for his Wife” and attacking an Indian he suspected of involvement with his sexual partner. After John Frazer had been accused of attacking a town’s leader, another trader called in to testify noted that it was common knowledge that Frazier “was apt to beat and abuse the Indians.”36
Traders also challenged the accepted standards of the slave trade. Customary Native practices such as the sorting of captives during the first several days after the return of a war party or the institution of a peace chief who discouraged fighting often seemed only barriers to further profits. Traders provided guns, ammunition, and encouragement for raids in return for a portion of the captives (and the right to sell the others). Less scrupulous traders even sponsored attacks on Carolina’s allies. The trader James Child arranged an attack on friendly Cherokee villages in 1706, an action that deeply troubled legislators and spurred the desire for reform. Nairne called Child’s actions “kidnapping.”37
The office of agent created by the Indian Trade Act passed the next year responded to these concerns. His job, Nairne explained a year later, was
