BEAVER HATS, BUCKSKINS AND MORE
Enthäsiastic trading between Native Americans and 17th-century Euro settlers benefited both parties- but decimated the region's wildlife in onle a few decades.
South Carolina
State Park Service
How much will three bucks buy?
The answer depends on who's counting. In the colony of Carolina, deer hides (buckskins) soon became a popular item for trading.
Native Americans traded deer skins and other animal pelts for sharp, English- made hatchets and knives, colorful textiles, guns, or iron cooking pots to outlast their pottery bowls. Charles Towne settlers, in turn, sold animal hides for cash to meet a growing European demand for leather.
Early settlers "harvested" Carolina's plentiful natural resources-white-tailed deer, beavers, bobcats, bears, otters, foxes and wolves-as though the supply would last forever.