Seventeenth-Century Trade in the Colonial Southeast

Abstract

During the seventeenth century, the Spanish colonists and Indians of northern Florida engaged in a substantial trade for deerskins and other products obtained from interior southeastern tribes, which received brass ornaments, glass beads, iron hoes, guns, and other trade goods in exchange. For eastern Muskogeans, this was a period of cultural reorganization and experimentation following the drastic population losses and sociopolitical devolution of the midto-late sixteenth century.