Existing comment:
"In addition to providing necessary and desired goods, the trading ritual helped maintain peace by giving tangible form to values such as reciprocity, friendship, and alliance.
In the long intervals of peace, a small barter-commerce was widespread. Objects of trade and exchange often passed from hand to hand and from tribe to tribe, ultimately covering long distances and reaching regions for remote... Certain materials were in universal and constant demand for ornaments, pipes, weapons, or household implements. Among them were conch shells from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes... steatite and mica from the Appalachians... and certain especially fine varieties of flint from quarries in Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois,and other places."
-- William E. Myer, "Indian Trails of the Southeast," 42nd Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1924-1925 |