IX. Traditional Way of Life
E. Trade and Transportation

To all Native Americans, trade was an important economic activity.

The early empire of Teotihuacán in Mexico was founded on the manufacture and export of blades of obsidian, a natural volcanic glass that made the best stone knives.

Several centuries later, the Aztecs organized their conquests by sending merchants into other kingdoms to develop trade, act as spies, and help plan conquest if the foreign ruler failed to give favorable terms to Aztec trade.

In the Inca Empire excellent highways were built over difficult mountain terrain in order to move quantities of local specialty products in pack trains of llamas. Trade was also conducted by sea along South America and around Mexico and the Caribbean.

Much sea trade was carried in large sailing rafts or, in the Caribbean, in canoes made from huge logs.

Trade goods in Mesoamerica and the Andes included foodstuffs, manufactured items such as cloth, knives, and pottery, and luxuries such as jewelry, brilliant tropical bird feathers, and chocolate. Both medicinal and hallucinogenic drugs were widely traded. Goods were bought and sold in large open markets in towns and cities.

Outside the kingdoms of Mesoamerica and the Andes, trade was often carried on by traveling parties who were received in each village by its chief, who supervised business as the people gathered around the trader. In many areas, including California and the Eastern Woodlands, small shells or shell beads-called wampum in the Eastern Woodlands-were used as money.

Because traders carried their goods on their backs or in canoes, trade goods were usually relatively light, small items. Furs and bright-colored feathers were valued in trade nearly everywhere.

In western North America dried salmon, fish oil, and fine baskets were major trade products, and in eastern North America expertly tanned deer hides, copper, catlinite pipe-bowl stone, pearls, and conch shells were widely traded.

Archive Photos

White traders and Native Americans exchanged many items, including food, guns, and blankets. Among the most profitable trading items were furs from animals such as the beaver. Usually Native Americans would trap the animals, skin them, and then bring the furs to the traders who would ship them to Europe. The French dominated the early years of the trade, but competition with the British and American colonists grew more intense during the years before the French and Indian War.

- see also Pre Columbian Art & Architecture -