Trade

Choctaw Trade and Coexistence in the Nation

Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, The women appear to be making dye to color the strips of cane beside them, by François Bernard, 1869

After the discovery of the new world, trade quickly became the most important interaction between the American natives and the colonists. For the Indians it was an extension and continuation of their inter-tribal practices. Reuben Gold Thwaites, an early nineteenth-century student of the American frontier, stated that “the love of trade was strong among the Indians,” and that they had a complex “system of inter-tribal barter.”  This existing trade system allowed the Europeans to quickly establish their own trade with the various tribes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. One of the foremost Indian trading nations was the Choctaw tribe, … Read more

Trade Routes in the Lower Southeast

The memoir of French explorer, René Goulaine de Laudonniére state that the predominate flow of trade in the Lower Southeast in the late 1500s was north-south.  Greenstone, gold, ocher, mica, crystals, precious stones and silver that was mined in the Southern Highlands, were traded for salt, shells, grain, skins, furs, colorful clays, dried fish and dyes obtained from lower altitudes.  He emphasized that the desire to control the cargos of greenstone and gold from the mountains was the cause of many wars. A major trade route passed through Track Rock Gap, but it was not the most important one. The … Read more

Indian Trade

“The moral condition of the Indians,” my commission states, ” will necessarily be very dependent on the character of the trade with them; and a subject so important will, of course, claim your attention. You will report such facts as may come within your knowledge, as will go to show the state of the trade with them, and the character of the traders, and will suggest such improvements in the present system of Indian trade, as in your opinion will render it better calculated to secure peace between them and us, and will contribute more efficiently to advance their moral … Read more