Charleston Indian Trade

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CHARLESTON INDIAN TRADE

CHARLESTON INDIAN TRADE. As the largest English city on the southern coast, Charleston, South Carolina, became the center of trade between colonists and Indians from the time of its settlement in the late seventeenth century. English products such as woolens, tools, and weapons were cheaper and better than comparable Spanish and French items and became indispensable to the Indians. Carolinians not only amassed wealth through trade, but they created economic and military alliances with Indian trading partners, which helped them stave off Spanish and French control of Atlantic and Gulf Coast mercantile networks. After the French and Indian War (1754–1763), Charleston lost prominence as the center of the southern Indian trade shifted westward, encompassing the Newer British settlements of Savannah and Pensacola.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hatley, Tom. The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians Through the Era of Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Merrell, James H. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal. New York: Norton, 1989.

Usner, Daniel H., Jr. Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

R. L.Meriwether/s. b.

See alsoCatawba ; Cherokee ; Colonial Commerce ; Colonial Settlements ; South Carolina .

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Charleston Indian Trade

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