Note 216 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE KATAHBA, CHEERAKE, MUSKOHGE, CHOKTAH, AND CHIKKASAH NATIONS: (continued 4)
Reading edition
Charles Town was the first center of the Indian trade. From that place prior to 1700 traders had reached the Indian tribes on the Mississippi; in that year they were found there by the French. McCrady says that many of the early fortunes of Charleston families were built up by the Indian trade. This is more than can be said of the traders, who adventured themselves into the wilderness encompassed by manifold dangers to make possible the merchants’ fortunes. Augusta followed as chief mart. “It was laid out in the beginning of the year 1736, and thrives prodigiously. It is the chief place of trade with the Indians. There are several warehouses in it well furnished with goods for the Indian trade.... There are five large boats which belong to different inhabitants of the town, and carry about nine thousand weight of deer skins, each; and last year about one hundred thousand weight of skins was brought from there. All the Indian traders from both provinces of South Carolina and Georgia, resort thither in the spring. In June, 1739, the traders, pack-horsemen, servants, townsmen and others dependent upon that business, made about six hundred whites who live by the trade in the Indian nations. Each hunter is reckoned to get three hundred weight of deer skins in a year, which is a very advantageous trade to England, for the deer skins, beaver and other furs are chiefly paid for in woolen goods and iron.” An Impartial Inquiry, London, 1741, also in Ga. Hist. Coll. I, 153 et seq. Among the traders of Adair’s early period as a trader may be mentioned a few not elsewhere named who traded to the Chickasaws: Thos. Welch, James Alford, John Chester, James Welch, John Buckles, John Brown, Thomas Andrews, Wm. McMullian, Augustine Smith, Jerome Courtonne, John Tanner, Benj. Sealey, John Smith, Richard McCully and Francis Underwood. For traders to the Cherokees: Rothrock, Carolina Traders Among the Overhill Cherokees, 1690-1760, E. T. Hist. Soc. Pub., I, 3 et seq.