Contact and Conflict

Originally published in 1977, Contact and Conflict has remained an important book, which has inspired numerous scholars to examine further the relationships between the Indians and the Europeans – fur traders as well as settlers. For this edition, Robin Fisher has written a new introduction in which he surveys the literature since 1977 and comments on any new insights into these relationships.

Fisher contends that the fur trade had originally brought minimal cultural change to the Indians. In 1858 it essentially came to an end, and with the beginning of white settlement, there was a fundamental change in the relationship between Indians and Europeans. What had been a reciprocal system between the two civilizations became a pattern of white dominance. He shows that while the Indians had been able to adjust gradually to the changes introduced by the traders in the contact period, they lost control of their culture under the impact of colonization.