Indian Trade

The Indian Trade refers to historic trade between Europeans and their North American descendants and the Indigenous people of North America (today known as Native Americans in the United States, and First Nations in Canada, but formerly as "Indians"), beginning before the colonial period and continuing through the nineteenth century, declining by around 1937.

The term Indian Trade describes the people involved in the trade.

The products involved vary by region and era.

In most of Canada the term is synonymous with the fur trade, since fur for making beaver hats is by far the most valuable product of the trade, from the European point of view.

Demand for other products results in trade in those items: Europeans ask for deerskin in the Southeast coast of the United States, and for buffalo skins and meat, and pemmican on the Great Plains.

In turn, Native American demand influences the trade goods brought by Europeans.

Economic contact between Native Americans and European colonists begins in the sixteenth century and lasts until the late nineteenth century.

Although the relationship between Europeans and Indians is often marred by conflicts, many tribes establish peaceful trade relations with the new colonists during the early stages of European settlement.

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the English and French mainly trade for animal pelts and fur with Native Americans.

On the other hand, trading between the Spanish and Native Americans is sporadic and lasts only for a couple of decades.

Eventually, wars, the dwindling of Native American populations and the westward expansion of the United States leads to the confinement of tribes to reservations and the end of this kind of economic relations between Indians and European Americans.

Other economic relations continue, especially in the alcohol trade around many reservations, and for Native arts and crafts.

Today, many Native Americans satisfy a different kind of demand with the associated trades of their gaming casinos on sovereign land.

These have been developed as entertainment and conference resorts, serving a wide market of customers, and generating substantial 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 are Giovanni da Verrazano and Jacques Cartier in the 1520s-1540s.

Verrazano notes 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.”

As visits from Europeans become more frequent and some Europeans begin to settle in North America, Indians begin to establish regular trade relations with these new colonists.

The ideal locations for fur trading are near harbors where ships can come in.

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