Because I have many new readers, I hoped that you will find this earlier piece on the deerskin trade is filled with surprises and offers a view of phrase that is familiar but misleading in some ways.
White Tail Empire: The Deerskin Trade in the Southern Colonies (Part One: How the Trade Worked)
01.07.2019 / JOSEPH KITCHENS / CREEKS AND CHEROKEES OF THE OLD SOUTH
Trade in the southern backcountry was largely based on Britain’s need for hides-deerskins to be specific. That trade flourished in the early eighteenth century in part as a successor to the traffic in Indian slaves-yes, there was a trade in which some tribes satisfied the demand for cheap labor for the tobacco, indigo and rice plantations in Carolina by kidnapping other Native Americans. The victims were often Christianized Indians in the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida. The traffic often passed through the no-man’s region that would become Georgia. With the rise of African slavery, first in the English-settled Bahamas, but increasingly in their North American colonies, the trade in Native American slaves was supplemented, then replaced by the deerskin trade.
An epidemic swept the herding regions of England in the early 18th century, killing off the source of England’s leather—critical in a horse-drawn age. While deerskins could not replace the thicker steerhides used in machine belts and harnesses, it was useful for riding pants, gloves, light jackets and the popular buckskin pants that were precursors of snug-fitting, good-wearing denim “jeans” of centuries to come. Carolina and Virginia traders dominated this commerce and it was the source of many frontier fortunes, providing the capital for development of the plantation system in the cash-strapped southern colonies.
The “Indian Trade” required heavy, up-front investment in the supplies Native People were eager to purchase. Not beads or baubles, but practical goods, goods that were manufactured in the nascent iron and textile industries of England -colorfully died cloth, wool blankets, hatchets, scissors, iron and copper cooking pots, and, most of all guns. Guns in the hands of tribal hunters meant more deerskins on the market. More guns required more black powder. Colonial officials routinely spoke of “gunmen” as an indication of the number of adult Indian/Native American males engaged in hunting. Owning a musket or rifle made them potential warriors. Joint stock companies back in England and Scotland vied for royal charters to enter the trade. Warehouses had to be procured to store trade goods in Charleston and later Savannah and Augusta. There was a language barrier that had to be overcome. Men familiar with the language and ways of the Creeks, Cherokees and Chickasaws had to be hired or enticed into the trade. Some would have to live among the tribes.
Many assumptions about how the trade worked are far off the mark. The notion of a rugged white hunter packing up a few trade goods and heading into Indian Country does not begin to describe the complexity or reality of the business. The Davy Crockett stereotype has been conflated with Indian traders in popular media. Crockett was a long-hunter, explorer and often employed by land developers to lead settlement parties or provide on-the-ground information about developers’ lands . Trading with the native tribes often required establishing a store (or storehouse), often referred to as a trading post in the Indian towns where goods could be housed and protected, and where cured hides could be accepted in payment for goods and stored for transport back to Charleston and later Savannah in the new colony of Georgia founded in 1733.
There were trading posts that catered to independent white traders, but such “wildcat” operations could run counter to the interests of financiers and suppliers. Especially in Georgia, the matter of licensing traders was critical. Georgia’s founder, General james Oglethorpe founded the town of Augusta intentionally to interdict the South Carolina’s trade expeditions. Company records of depts unpaid by Native Americans would become leverage in treaty negotiations in effect forcing the Creeks chiefs and other southeastern tribal leaders to surrender vast parcels of land to settle their debts with traders-trading companies were the advance agents of empire in this system.
It was not a transitory business. There had to be sureties for both parties and marriages between Indian women and white traders became the best guarantee for all concerned. Native People were initially showered with gifts to establish good will. Marriage to these “bringers of gifts” brought prestige to the families and clans whose daughters married traders or military men -British or French soldiers-stationed along the frontier.
Marriages were critical because among the southeastern peoples, property was owned by women in a complex matriarchal social system. Households were the domain of women and marriage brought husbands-whether white or Native American- into the wife’s households. In Creek and Cherokee societies, rigid gender-defined roles prevailed and women effectively controlled the property. Children were reared in the household of their mother—and, indeed, descent from a native mother (not the white father) established a child’s ethnicity. Initially, the Creeks objected to intermarriage with whites if it meant the wife left a void in the close family and clan relationships by living in the white husband’s household
It is also helpful to keep in mind that the trade could not have flourished if the Southeastern Native People were nomadic or their populations were scattered. The Cherokees and Creeks were hunters, traders, small farmers, and food gatherers. Villages and clusters of villages were essential to the trade and coincided with other needs of tribal societies: mutual protection, shared responsibilities of child rearing and coordination of military and hunting endeavors. When the Cherokee become concentrated in Georgia after the American Revolution, US federal policy encouraged them to abandon village life in favor of the life of the small, freeholder farmer. Clanship and gender roles were eroded when village life diminished.
It is unfair to regard these marriages as only matters of convenience. Hollywood and television stereotypes of these relationships portray to romantic entanglements or servile dependency by Native women. In the Southeast , traders were expected t to live in the Indian world and they often established loving relationships that produced children, a source of mutual affection.
In the storekeeper/trader’s world, honesty and adherence to Indian ways, customs and etiquette were indispensable if he hoped to prosper and some profited immensely. Native villagers expected the trader to serve as a source of information about Europeans, their practices and expectations. Not surprisingly, major traders often became the diplomatic agents of colonial governments.
The children of these marriages sometimes enjoyed advantages: they were familiar with two universes, the language and habits of their father’s commercial world and the society and family relationships of their mother’s extended family. Such advantages could bring them to places of honor and leadership—one example is William Weatherford (Red Eagle), military leader of the upper Creeks. John Ross, the great Principle Chief of the Cherokee, would not be considered Cherokee in a patriarchal society and was in fact Cherokee entirely because his mother was Cherokee.
We should be wary of generalizations about the roles of these men of mixed blood however, for there are many stereotypes and racial assumptions that skew our perspective. Bear in mind that they chose to remain Native Americans for the most part.
It requires an adjustment in our perspective when we learn that in early colonial settlements rules were adopted forbidding whites from choosing to move away from the hardships of poorly adapted European communities into Indian towns where there was less forced compliance to religious and political practices and where native savvy of how to exploit natural materials, hunt and fish, and process readily available food resources such as mast, nuts, greens and wild potatoes reduced the chance of starving. Native farming techniques focused on subsistence crops made day-to-day life easier. Instead of extensive fields which had to be cleared by hand and ox, Native Americans tended relatively small plots for food. Cash crop economies and practices were stressful in the colonies. Period literature and records ares full of examples of whites either running off to join the Native People, or, having been captured by them, becoming reluctant to return to white society given their freedom.
How did the trader receive the goods for his business? How did the hides—reportedly in the millions- reach the deerskin factor’s warehouse.? Elaborate pack trains carried the goods in and the hides out seasonally during the warmer months. In the case of the Creeks, this required enduring subtropical heat and annoying insects, as well as fording powerful rivers that still today bear native names: Savannah, Ogeechee, Ocmulgee and Chattahoochee, among others. This had to be done with heavily loaded ponies in trains of 25, 50 and at times 100 animals. Crossings were hazardous even if undertaken where there were shallows, or “fords” as they were known. These main- traveled routes were along the geological “fall line” where waters were thin-but inevitably swift-and the riverbed was firm, if rocky. The British government through its colonial administrators tried to regulate the trade by licensing and setting fair trade values. For example, a trade musket could be had for about twenty tanned deerskins. This proved difficult in a vast country filled with adventurous and sometimes desperate people trying to eek out an existence. But the big trading companies demanded reliability, honesty and initiative. In the next installment of this story, I will introduce you to George Galphin, one of the most remarkable-as well as successful- traders and his native family. And we will discover what happens when the trade eventfully collapses