The frontier was a zone of conflict — but it was also a zone of cultural exchange and trade. In fact, for the first couple of centuries of the European migration to North America, the fur trade was the dominant economic engine. In Africa, the ivory trade was a key motivator for European penetration of the interior.
Economic exchange works best when both parties have something the other wants. Europeans wanted furs or ivory, and the native peoples wanted manufactured goods that made their lives easier and better — brass cookware, steel knives and axes, cloth, firearms. A toxic element was added when trade whiskey was added to the mix, but the trade in its best form was beneficial to everyone — except fur-bearers and elephants.
Taken on the whole, there was probably a lot more trading than fighting going on most of the time. Here are some wonderful scenes of trade from the forest frontier of the eastern part of North America to the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Here was Economic Man in action; here was the great cultural exchange.
Mountain Men trade with Blackfeet in “Painted Robe For Powder and Ball,” by Z,.S. Liang.
The French built a robust trade network with the native tribes of Canada and the Great Lakes region. “Coming In To Trade,” by John Buxton.
Robert W. Griffing’s “Winter Trade.”
Comancheros are often depicted as degenerates who traded with savage Comanches, but that is a distortion born out of Texan-Comanche hostility. These New Mexico plainsmen of mixed, largely Hispanic ethnicity, were simply making a living in rough and dangerous world.
The trader was the key figure in frontier history — entrepreneur, cultural mediator, intelligence operative.
Paul McNamee says
Gorgeous paintings!