Northeastern Indians.

The Indian tribes of northeastern North America bartered extensively with one another and with the indigenous peoples of other regions long before Columbus's first voyage to the New World. The Hurons, Iroquois, Susquehannocks, Petuns, Neutrals, Montagnais, and others maintained extensive trade networks over which they exchanged surplus items— largely corn, dried fish, or furs—either with each other for necessities or with more-distant tribes for luxury goods such as tobacco and prized religious items such as sea shells. This complex trade network did more than just supply the Indians of the Northeast with luxury goods, however; it also ensured the peace by extending to intertribal relations the system of personal reciprocity on which harmonious Indian social relations rested.

Early Patterns.

Archaeological evidence suggests strongly that Native Americans living in the Northeast traded with each other and with Indians from other...