Line | Exactly when in the early modern era Native |
Americans began exchanging animal furs with | |
Europeans for European-made goods is uncertain. | |
What is fairly certain, even though they left | |
(5) | no written evidence of having done so, is that |
the first Europeans to conduct such trade during | |
the modern period were fishing crews working the | |
waters around Newfoundland. Archaeologists had | |
noticed that sixteenth-century Native American | |
(10) | sites were strewn with iron bolts and metal |
pins. Only later, upon reading Nicolas Denys’s | |
1672 account of seventeenth-century European | |
settlements in North America, did archaeologists | |
realize that sixteenth-century European fishing | |
(15) | crews had dismantled and exchanged parts of their |
ships for furs. | |
By the time Europeans sailing the Atlantic coast | |
of North America first documented the fur trade, it | |
was apparently well underway. The first to record | |
(20) | such trade—the captain of a Portuguese vessel |
sailing from Newfoundland in 1501—observed that a | |
Native American aboard the ship wore Venetian silver | |
earrings. Another early chronicler noted in 1524 that | |
Native Americans living along the coast of what is now | |
(25) | New England had become selective about European |
trade goods: they accepted only knives, fishhooks, | |
and sharp metal. By the time Cartier sailed the Saint | |
Lawrence River ten years later, Native Americans had | |
traded with Europeans for more than thirty years, | |
(30) | perhaps half a century. |