American Trade

Nowadays we may think of 18th century traders as moneymaking fiends exploiting savages on distant islands, but as it turns out, this was not the case. A book I'm reading for school, "Antibellum America", is a compilation of articles and papers written by authors of the present and past. One of it's chapters, written by Frank Dalzell, addresses this issue. In his short article, he focused on the travels of a specific ship, the Jefferson, a Boston fur and china trader. In it's journeys, it travelled to the Queen Charlotte islands, where they sold not only trinkets, but parts of the ship to the natives who were there, imparting a small part if the American culture into the natives lives. The natives themselves established the rates of trade as each trader came along. They controlled the bargaining, sometimes raising the rates to unfair levels, as they knew there was plenty of ships to choose from and that the current traders would have to accept the trades or move on empty handed. The author went on to show that these island dwellers were crafty and that the myth that they were exploited is false.