Native American trade

The Native American Trade refers to the historic trade between the Indigenous people of North America, First Nations in Canada, and European settlers. The period begins before the colonial period, continuing through the 19th century and declining around 1937.

The term Native American Trade in this context describes the people involved in the trade. The products involved varied by region and era. In most of Canada, the term is synonymous with the fur trade, since fur for making beaver hats was by far the most valuable product of the trade, from the European point of view. Demand for other products resulted in trade in those items: Europeans asked for deerskin on the Southeast coast of the United States, and buffalo skins and meat, and pemmican on the Great Plains. In turn, Native American demand influenced the trade of goods brought by Europeans.

Economic contact between Native Americans and European colonists began in the early stages of European settlement. From the 17th to the 19th century, the English and French mainly traded for animal pelts and fur with Native Americans.^[1] In the late 1700s, Spanish explorers started settling in Southern California and initiated the establishment of missions. These missions served as focal points for interactions between Native Americans and Spanish settlers, encompassing cultural exchanges, political negotiations, trade activities, and economic developments. Evidence of these exchanges and developments were kept by the Spanish who maintained detailed ledgers documenting items that were traded in Santa Barbara between them and the Chumash natives that lived in the missions.^[2] Eventually, wars, the dwindling of Native American populations, and the westward expansion of the United States led to the confinement of tribes to reservations and the end of this kind of economic relations between Indians and European Americans.

Other economic relations continued, especially in the alcohol trade around many reservations, and for Native American arts and crafts that are now shown for everyone to see. Today, many Native Americans satisfy a different kind of demand with the associated trades of their gaming casinos on reservations. These have been developed as entertainment and conference resorts, serving a wide market of customers, and generating very little revenues for tribes to use for economic development, as well as welfare and education of their people.

The first explorers to conduct trade with Native Americans were Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier in the 1520s-1540s. Verrazzano noted in his book, "If we wanted to trade with them for some of their things, they would come to the seashore on some rocks where the breakers were most violent while we remained on the little boat, and they sent us what they wanted to give on a rope, continually shouting to us not to approach the land."^[3] As visits from Europeans became more frequent and some Europeans began to settle in North America, Natives began to establish regular trade relations with these new colonists. The ideal locations for fur trading were near harbors where ships could come in.