ABSTRACT
By 1720, French imperial forces had long since established a serious presence in North America. Top-down French applications of coercion, commerce, and commitment transformed Indian life, but did not insert Indians neatly into the French system of rule. Confrontations of Indians with French around the American Great Lakes during that period surely included repeated encounters between regimes and trust networks. They illustrate a middle ground between total segregation and complete integration of trust networks. From the top down, we see French officials experimenting with different combinations of coercion, capital, and commitment, sometimes achieving patronage or brokered autonomy, but never reaching full integration of Indians' trust networks into their system of rule. Trust networks in the form of religious sects, kinship groups, or mercantile networks have occasionally established their own systems of rule.
