The deerskin trade between Colonial Americans, Europeans, and Native Americans was an important trading relationship between Europeans and Native Americans, particularly in the southeastern colonies, engaging the Catawba, Shawnee, Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw peoples. It began in the 1680s due to fashion changes in Europe and boomed in the 1800s when the beaver trade decline.[ citation needed ] It was a part of the fur trade, but less known since deer skins were not as valuable as furs from the north (such as beaver). Cherokee mainly traded their deer skins to the English, while the Shawnee traded deer skins to both the French and English colonies prior to 1760.
Deerskin was used to produce buckskin, as well as a chamois-like leather, used for the making of gloves, bookbinding, and many other things.[ citation needed ]
In the early 18th century, after King William's War, the beaver fur trade declined dramatically while the deerskin trade boomed. This was in part due to a shift in London fashions, where a new kind of hat made from leather became popular. This new hat required deerskin and South Carolina increased the scale of its deerskin exports dramatically. Trade in other furs fell sharply. The end of a diversified fur trade altered the relationship between colonists and Native Americans and, in many cases caused an increase in tension and conflict. For example, it was an important factor in the events leading up to the Yamasee War. [1]
For Native Americans, the trade lessened independence and pulled hunting away from home for long periods, which led to change in family structure. The Catawba, Shawnee, Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw were mainly affected, because they lived around the main habitat for the white-tailed deer that were most popular for trading. This area has easy ocean access that simplified trading with Europe. [2]
The focus on deerskin led to improved hunting techniques and the use of guns. [3] Guns made hunting faster and easier. This accelerated hunting led to a rapid decline in White-tail deer populations. By 1750, deer were becoming harder to find in Cherokee territory. The trade nearly eliminated deer in the southeast.
The deerskin trade also led to the enslavement of some Native Americans. After the Europeans bought deerskin, they had to haul it to the coast, initially using pack horses, but this was expensive, so some English settlers encouraged Chickasaw to raid and enslave neighboring tribes to lower their costs. [4]
Concurrently, Cherokee were increasingly adopting European trade goods. Since so many Native American families participated in the deer trade, they had access to the European economy and soon were completely reliant on it for goods. These events contributed to growing tensions and conflict between the tribes, as well as with the Europeans. [5]
The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek or just Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy, are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands in the United States. Their historical homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, much of Alabama, western Georgia and parts of northern Florida.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans of the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
Muskogean is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally divided into two branches, Eastern Muskogean and Western Muskogean. Typologically, Muskogean languages are agglutinative. One documented language, Apalachee, is extinct and the remaining languages are critically endangered.
The Anglo-Cherokee War, was also known from the Anglo-European perspective as the Cherokee War, the Cherokee Uprising, or the Cherokee Rebellion. The war was a conflict between British forces in North America and Cherokee bands during the French and Indian War.
The Yamasee War was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee, who were supported by a number of allied Native American peoples, including the Muscogee, Cherokee, Catawba, Apalachee, Apalachicola, Yuchi, Savannah River Shawnee, Congaree, Waxhaw, Pee Dee, Cape Fear, Cheraw, and others. Some of the Native American groups played a minor role, while others launched attacks throughout South Carolina in an attempt to destroy the colony.
The trans-Atlantic trade in deerskins was a significant commercial activity in Colonial America that was greatly influenced, and at least partially dominated, by Scottish traders and their firms. This trade, primarily in deerskins but also in beaver and other animal pelts, was carried on with Native American tribes and is usually referred to as the Indian Trade. The Indian trade was conducted largely to fill the high European and later colonial demand for deerskins and other animal pelts trapped by Indians in return for European trade goods. These pelts were shipped to Europe and used in the leather-making industry. The trade had been developing since the seventeenth century and Scottish traders played an important part in its advance.
The Cherokee–American wars, also known as the Chickamauga Wars, were a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles in the Old Southwest from 1776 to 1794 between the Cherokee and American settlers on the frontier. Most of the events took place in the Upper South region. While the fighting stretched across the entire period, there were extended periods with little or no action.
The Cusabo were a group of American Indian tribes who lived along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in what is now South Carolina, approximately between present-day Charleston and south to the Savannah River, at the time of European colonization. English colonists often referred to them as one of the Settlement Indians of South Carolina, tribes who "settled" among the colonists.
Henry Woodward, was a Barbados-born merchant and colonist who was one of the first white settlers in the Carolinas. He established relationships with many Native American Tribes in the American southeast. He initiated trade, primarily in deerskins and slaves, with many Indian towns and tribes.
The North American fur trade is the (typically) historical commercial trade of furs and other goods in North America, predominantly in the eastern provinces of Canada and the northeastern American colonies. The trade was initiated mainly through French, Dutch and English settlers and explorers in collaboration with various First Nations tribes of the region, such as the Wyandot-Huron and the Iroquois; ultimately, the fur trade's financial and cultural benefits would see the operation quickly expanding coast-to-coast and into more of the continental United States and Alaska.
The Six Nations land cessions were a series of land cessions by the Haudenosaunee and Lenape which ceded large amounts of land, including both recently conquered territories acquired from other indigenous peoples in the Beaver Wars, and ancestral lands to the Thirteen Colonies and the United States. The land ceded covered, partially or in the entire, the U.S. states of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina. They were bordered to the west by the Algonquian lands in the Ohio Country, Cherokee lands to the south, and Muscogee and Choctaw lands to the southeast.
Red Shoes was a Choctaw chief who traded with British fur traders based in South Carolina in the 1740s and ignited the Choctaw Civil War. The French countered by arranging the assassination of Red Shoes. He was also known as Red Moccasin and was known in French as le Soulier Rouge.
Slavery among Native Americans in the United States includes slavery by and enslavement of Native Americans roughly within what is currently the United States of America.
The Cherokee people of the southeastern United States, and later Oklahoma and surrounding areas, have a long military history. Since European contact, Cherokee military activity has been documented in European records. Cherokee tribes and bands had a number of conflicts during the 18th century with Europeans, primarily British colonists from the Southern Colonies. The Eastern Band and Cherokees from the Indian Territory fought in the American Civil War, with bands allying with the Union or the Confederacy. Because many Cherokees allied with the Confederacy, the United States government required a new treaty with the nation after the war. Cherokees have also served in the United States military during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Cherokee history is the written and oral lore, traditions, and historical record maintained by the living Cherokee people and their ancestors. In the 21st century, leaders of the Cherokee people define themselves as those persons enrolled in one of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes: The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, The Cherokee Nation, and The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
Indian commercial development is defined as the economic evolution of Native American tribes from hunter-gatherer based societies into fur-trade-based industries. From the early 1500s to the 1800s, intertribal and European relationships evolved in response to the growth of English settlements into the United States.
The ownership of enslaved people by indigenous peoples of the Americas extended throughout the colonial period up to the abolition of slavery. Indigenous people enslaved Amerindians, Africans, and —occasionally— Europeans.
The Mississippian shatter zone describes the period from 1540 to 1730 in the southeastern part of the present United States. During that time, the interaction between European explorers and colonists transformed the Native American cultures of that region. In 1540 dozens of chiefdoms and several paramount chiefdoms were scattered throughout the southeast. Chiefdoms featured a noble class ruling a large number of commoners and were characterized by villages and towns with large earthen mounds and complex religious practices. Some chiefdoms, known as paramount chieftains, ruled or influenced large areas. The chiefdoms were ravaged by the de Soto and other Spanish exploratory missions in the 1540s through the 1560s and their decline began.