Consuming Indians: Tsonnonthouan, colonialism, and the commodification of culture

During and following the Seven Years War, North American Indige nous people began to occupy a unique position in the British imaginary as com pelling yet contradictory subjects, existing outside the culture of con sum er ism that was rapidly rising in Britain. The satirical novel Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Tsonnonthouan (1763) mimicked both the ethnographic works that British people read in increasing num bers and the body of Grub Street texts imitating Tristram Shandy. The novel, which depicts "Indians" as consumers and worshippers of Europe an commodities, negotiates the entanglement of culture and consumerism in both Britain and the colonies.