Artisans

The artisan was a ubiquitous and pivotal figure in colonial America. Whether crafting such simple and commonplace items as shoes, coats, and nails or producing more complex commodities such as homes, furniture, and transatlantic sailing vessels, early American society depended on the labor of the skilled craftsperson. Together with commerce and agriculture, artisan production lay at the heart of the North American colonial economy.

Within a generation of their founding, each of the major European-American settlements supported thriving craft economies. In rural areas farmer-artisans supplied the local milling, blacksmithing, and construction needs of their communities, while in the 17th - and 18th-century cities contemporaries pointed to the fact that American artisans produced virtually any article available in England or continental Europe.

At any time during the colonial era, the surest way to define an artisan was by reference to his or her possession of a skill. It was the knowledge of materials, tools, techniques, production processes, and marketing strategies that set artisans apart from those whose incomes depended on their brawn alone. In a world already divided into those who worked with their heads and others who worked with their hands, artisans occupied a middle ground, combining in their trade a degree of manual labor with the intellectual refinement of rigorous training, thought, and planning.

Artisans purchased this skill through a long period of apprenticeship to their craft. As potential artisans reached the age of 13 or 14, their parents sought to secure their future by placing them with a master craftsperson in whose shop they would learn the “mysteries of the trade” that would make them full-fledged craftsmen and crafts-women. Most apprenticeships involved written contracts negotiated between parents and masters that stipulated that the apprentice live in the home of the master until adulthood, learn the skills of the craft as well as fundamentals of reading, writing, and basic mathematics, and receive a gift of clothing and often tools at the expiration of their term.

Apprenticeships lasted through the adolescent years and generally ended by the age of 21. The average period of apprenticeship thus lasted about seven years. Trades requiring less skill often ended earlier, while those that required highly refined skills, such as instrument making and engraving, generally lasted a year or two longer. By the time they approached the end of their service, apprentices were well versed in the everyday operations of their crafts and possessed most of the skills necessary for the practice of their trades. With their “freedom dues” in hand, young craftspersons were ready to embark on the next stage of their training.

In the journeyman phase of their careers, young American artisans who possessed skills but few funds spent the years immediately after their apprenticeships saving the money that would allow them to marry and enter their trade as full-fledged masters. In English America this meant working for a few years on a piecework basis for an established artisan in one of the seaport cities or larger country towns. When the journeymen had accumulated the savings and credit necessary to rent a shop, buy tools and materials, and set up a home, they were ready to join the ranks of the community’s master craftsmen. This was the path followed successfully by most young craftspeople before the turn of the 18th century. However, after 1700, especially in urban centers, growing numbers of journeymen found it difficult and often impossible to procure sufficient capital or skills to become independent masters.

Before the end of the 18th century, most masters operated as independent producers, owning their own tools, purchasing their own materials, and relying on the help of their families, journeymen, apprentices, and, less frequently, free or bound laborers to fashion their goods. Most worked in small shops (often attached to their homes) that in urban areas they rented and in rural areas they generally owned. The workday, which typically ran from 10 to 12 hours in winter and 14 to 16 hours in summer, was regulated by the available hours of sunlight, candles being too expensive for nighttime work. Most artisans worked five and a half days during the week, reserving Sundays for rest, recreation, and worship. The artisan’s tools were hand-held, and machinery was primitive, usually nothing more elaborate than a foot-driven potter’s wheel or a hand-cranked wood lathe. Power thus came from the exercise of human muscle, and the pace of work was governed as much by the strength and endurance of the producers as by the nature of the work itself.

While most colonial products came directly from the shops of small masters, some were too large, complex, or expensive to be produced by a single artisan. In some of the more capital-intensive enterprises, such as shipyards, individual artisans worked as subcontractors to the owners of the concern, providing their own tools and hiring their own journeymen and apprentices to work beside them. In others, such as iron foundries, ropewalks, and tanneries, artisans simply hired their time for an agreed-upon amount. In both cases, however, artisans retained the personal and work autonomy that marked the life of skilled craftspeople everywhere in colonial America.

Defined in these ways, artisans were found throughout colonial America. Craftspeople were located in the countryside as well as the city, in the South as well as the North, and on the high seas as well as on terra firma. In short, artisans were present wherever more than a small handful of colonists congregated for trade and settlement.

Colonial artisans shared with their European counterparts a body of moral precepts and a distinctive view of the world. The cornerstone of the artisan moral tradition was labor, and from this foundation flowed related notions of democracy, competency, independence, and community. Given the critical services rendered by early American artisans, it is easy to understand why they thought of their skilled labor as a central element in the smooth functioning of colonial society. The time spent in apprenticeship, the skills laboriously learned and honed through years of practice, and the lifelong contribution to the well-being of the community gave the artisan a deep-seated feeling of pride, purpose, and social respectability. In practicing their trades, artisans saw themselves as performing a service not only to their families and customers but also to the larger community in which they lived. Colonial artisans thus viewed skilled labor as at once a social, moral, and economic act. To work was to employ their skills in service equally to self, family, and the community at large.

Further reading: Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class, 1720-1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Billy G. Smith, The Lower Sort: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750-1800 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990).

—Ronald Schultz

Attakullakulla (1708?-1780?) peace chief, ally of colonists

Attakullakulla, known as Little Carpenter among the English, was a Cherokee warrior and diplomat. His membership in the prominent Overhill family led to his being chosen as one of seven Cherokee “Chiefs” to accompany Sir Alexander Cumming (who had been sent by the British government to negotiate a treaty with the Cherokee) to England in 1730. In 1743 Attakullakulla joined a British force fighting in Canada, where he was captured by Ottawas and remained a prisoner for the next five years.

Atttakullakulla gained a reputation as a skilled diplomat after successfully negotiating improved trade relations with South Carolina and Virginia. He convinced British authorities to build Fort Loudoun, Fort Prince George, and Fort Dobbs near the Overhill villages in return for a Cherokee alliance against the French. He could not, however, prevent deteriorating relations between Cherokee and European colonists from escalating into the Anglo-Cherokee War in 1759-60. Attakullakulla attempted to mediate the conflict without success. He was probably responsible for saving the life of John Stuart, later the southern superintendent of Indian affairs, during the Cherokee siege of Fort Loudoun in 1759.

Attakullakulla continued to act as a principal negotiator for the Cherokee with colonial officials. His last service came in the early years of the Revolutionary War, when he successfully convinced militia commander William Christian to withdraw his occupation of Overhill villages.

His influence, however, began to wane among younger members of the Cherokee, who wished to mount a vigorous resistance to encroaching Euro-Americans. Attakullakulla died sometime between 1777 and 1780.

Further reading: Thomas Halley, The Dividing Paths: Cherokee and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

—Thomas R. Wessel