Lesson Plan 5: How to Establish Successful Trade

OBJECTIVES

Students will:

• recognize that trade follows different customs in different cultures
• identify aspects of Euro-American trading practices
• identify aspects of American Indian trading practices
• Compare, analyze, and draw conclusions from two quotations

MATERIALS

BACKGROUND

Lewis was harsh about coastal Indian trading habits. He wrote, "They are great higlers in trade and if they conceive you anxious to purchase will be a whole day bargaining for a handfull of roots ;ƒ they invariably refuse the price first offered themƒ.I therefore believe this trait in their character proceeds from an avaricious all grasping disposition." What he didn't understand was that trade occupied a different role in Indian society than it did in his own. To him, trade was an impersonal exchange of goods, something he did to meet material needs. To Indians, trade was a relationship. The goods expressed the participants' feelings, their character, and their roles in the community. Different rules applied to trade with friends and trade with non-friends. Friendly trade was based on generosity. But in trade with non-friends, the relationship was competitive and adversarial, and the object was to win. It was a kind of game. Lewis and Clark had gotten themselves labeled as non-friends. The Clatsop wanted to sound out a trading partner, learn his character, and build friendship or kinship. The captains were too impatient for such time-consuming interaction. Goodwill and a good reputation were not the sorts of capital their commerce hinged on.

OPENING

If you have something to sell and I have enough money to buy it, is that all that's necessary for a successful trade? Was that true of American Indian trade?

PROCEDURE

1. Tell the students they will have the opportunity to make a trade in a simulation on the Web.
2. Introduce the Help Lewis and Clark Buy a Canoe Web activity. This activity is based on real events that Lewis and Clark record in their journals. The interactive asks students to put themselves in the shoes of Lewis and Clark in three different "trade" scenarios. Students choose between two answers for each scenario and then find out if the Clatsop Indians would have sold them a canoe based on their answers.
3. Read the two quotes on the student reading, Lewis's journal entry for January 4, 1806, and the quote by Stwire Waters, an American Indian. Answer these questions individually or as part of group discussion.
   • what differences do these quotes describe between American Indian and Euro-American trading practices?
   • what is most important to American Indians about the trade process? To Euro-Americans?

CLOSING

Using a Venn diagram, compare and contrast American Indian and American trading practices.

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