Trade

Sources

Intra-Indian Activity. Archaeological evidence clearly establishes that by the time of the Hopewell people, about 200 b.c. to a.d. 500, Native Americans engaged in trade on a continentwide basis. Artists in the Ohio Valley used shells from the Gulf Coast, mica from the Pacific Northwest, and copper from the Great Lakes. Furthermore, art objects traveled thousands of miles through many hands to end up in the burials of native leaders of many cultures. Over the centuries small family-based groups came together to trade goods and find mates. Some particularly popular locations, such as The Dalles on the Columbia River, apparently attracted crowds numbering into the thousands. As Europeans entered North America, their metal, glass, and textile objects

all entered native commerce and were widely traded among the Indians.

Furs. The trade in the Great Lakes area was the initial entry of North American goods into the world economy. Great Lakes Indians swapped their beaver robes for technologically advanced goods ranging from guns and kettles to beads and cloth. The fur trade set the pattern for other trade relationships between natives and Europeans, as both sides maneuvered and negotiated for the best price. Typically, as the populations of fur-bearing animals died out, Europeans wanted to trade directly with the Indians whose furs were still plentiful. At the same time, native peoples whose own fur stocks were depleted positioned themselves as middlemen to broker deals and continue their involvement in the trade. In the Southeast the pattern was repeated, with deerskins replacing furs, in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Luxury and Necessity. In a relatively brief time what had been novelties became essential parts of native culture. Guns supplanted the bow and arrow; woolen cloth substituted for buckskin; and glass beads took the place of natural adornments. Durable castiron pots soon replaced fragile pottery. When the pots reached the end of their lives, warriors flaked the metal to make knives, arrowheads, and other tools. By the early eighteenth century native groups from Maine to Louisiana were culturally dependent upon goods—everything from fishhooks to gunpowder—which they had no way to make for themselves. With no market for their products, many craftsmen died without passing on their skills, so that within a few generations many arts and crafts were all but lost in many native groups.

CHEATING THE INDIANS

During the colonial period unscrupulous whites frequently robbed intoxicated Indians of trade goods and defrauded them of their lands. Such a case arose in New Jersey in 1716, and fortunately for the Native Americans involved, the governor restored their lands.

Myself [John Kay] with several others sent for John Weitherill and heard the Indian’s complaint against him, which was that said John Weitherill had come to said Indian King and treated him with cyder and made him drunk, and that he came again to him the next morning and would have given him more cider and told him he sold him some land the night before, being land which said Indian King and other Indians lived on, and had set his hand to a deed or writing for the sale of said land. The said Indian King declared he remembered nothing of selling any land to said John Weitherill or setting his hand to any paper and further said he had always refused to sell that land and had reserved it for himself and the Indians to live upon and that the Indians had a right in it and would never suffer him to sell it.... If John Weitherill had got him to sign any paper it was by defraud and cheating him and that he could neither eat, drink, nor rest with quiet until that writing or paper was destroyed.

Source: W. Keith Kavenagh, ed., Foundations of Colonial America: A Documentary History, 3 volumes (New York: Chelsea House, 1973),

Alcohol. By far the most destructive aspect of the Indian trade was alcohol. Native Americans had virtually no exposure to beverage alcohol before 1500 and were as vulnerable to alcoholism as they were to smallpox, measles, and other diseases. Alcohol became an important medium of exchange by the late seventeenth century, and virtually every Indian trader sold it. Usually consumed in the form of rum or brandy, alcohol played a destructive role in native culture. Many Indians found alcohol highly addictive and were willing to do anything to get it. In 1774 William Bartram described a group of Creek warriors who were carrying twenty five-gallon kegs of liquor as trade goods. They kept it intact until reaching a trading post, where traders persuaded them to have drinks in celebration. They remained drunk for ten days. Bartram described the ensuing events: “White and red men and women without distinction, passed the day merrily with

these jovial, amorous topers, and the nights in convivial songs, dances, and sacrifices to Venus, as long as they could stand or move; for in these frolicks both sexes take such liberties with each other, and act, without constraint or shame.” When they ran low, women would sell recycled rum, which they had covertly spat out into a bottle after pretending to drink. The demand for alcohol caused distortions in the native economy, as hunters would trade skins for alcohol and go into debt for the trade goods that had become necessities. In the Southeast so much debt accumulated by the early 1770s that the London merchants withheld shipments of goods until receiving two million acres as payment.

Land. Trade provided a framework for negotiations between native peoples and Europeans in which land was a principal topic. Europeans and native peoples fundamentally misunderstood each other’s ideas about land ownership. In general, native peoples did not consider land something that any could own, buy, or sell. In their view land was given to the people to live on and was often revered as sacred and inseparable from the people who lived on it. Initially, at least, Native Americans were usually willing to share their land with Europeans. But the colonists mistook native willingness to share as an agreement to sell. They would draw up legal sales agreements, which Indians thought were agreements to live in peace. Plying native leaders with alcohol, colonists used so-called whiskey treaties to assert a claim to native lands. As white settlers moved in, conflicts often erupted in which native warriors demonstrated great courage, organization, and skill. Eventually, however, the superior weaponry of the Europeans produced military victories and a steady westward movement of the line of white settlement.

Sources

William Bartram, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida... (Philadelphia: Printed by James & Johnson, 1791);

Christopher S. Peebles, “Moundville from 1000 to 1500 AD as Seen from 1840 to 1985 AD,” in Chiefdoms in the Americas, edited by Robert D. Drennan and Carlos A. Uribe (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 33–36;

Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).