Gifts have the potential to release social energy: offering a gift strengthens relations and builds trust. They are the opposite of commodities, which can be either bought or sold and do not help create communities.  

The Puritan settlers who arrived in North America in the early eighteenth century were happy to accept gifts from the locals. In subsequent dealings, however, they noted with surprise that they were expected to either return the gifts they received or offer reciprocal gifts. The confusion was so great that it gave rise to the pejorative expression “Indian giver,” used to describe a person who gives something in the hope of being offered the same, or better yet, in the hope of making a profit.  

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the pioneers who established a land route from the East Coast of North America westward, wrote in their diaries that at first the principle of gift-giving seemed pleasant, but later on they often preferred to reject certain gifts because they could not afford to offer anything equally costly in return. They viewed the hosts of the land as brash people with a thieving nature.  

This prejudice stemmed from different understandings of the notion of the gift. For Native Americans, gifts begin a cycle of social exchange, and the circulation of gifts sustains ties between the gifting parties. Someone who refuses to accept a gift or, alternatively, accepts a gift but does not reciprocate was deemed an untrustworthy boor. Meanwhile the Europeans, who were already rooted in the individualistic ideology of early capitalism, considered gift-giving to be a voluntary act that entailed no obligations. Reciprocity as one of the most common principles of the gift economy was still waiting to be (re)discovered. 

The Principle of Reciprocity  

The exchange of gifts a