| 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. |
