殖民地时代北美东部林地印第安人与白人礼物互赠活动及其意义

On gift-giving between Indians and the White of the eastern wood's frontiers in the Colonial time in North America

交换礼物是印第安人文化的重要组成部分。北美殖民地时代,随着印第安人与白人文化交流的深入,双方创造出一些彼此都能够接受的礼仪,赋予其"共同意义"。印第安文化中的礼物赠予习俗逐渐为殖民地白人接受,成为双方交往的重要礼节。这种礼物互赠活动不仅有助于双方文化交流规模的扩大,而且对双方关系后来的发展有着深远的影响。

Gift-giving is one of important parts in Indian culture. Due to the cultural contact between Indians and Whites, there were increasingly numbers of relations found among the Indians, as well as between the Indians and White. When the New World was found, both the Indians and White wanted to reorder this New World in their own orders. As a result of power balance between the Indians and the Whites, they had to find some cultural tools to achieve their own ends. Gift-giving was one of these tools, and the activities of gift-giving between the Indians and Whites made the theory of Middle Ground rational, which effected their cultural relations profoundly.