The Wild West Frontier? - U.S. East Coast was Wilder First!

Virginia, Carolina and Florida were all very wild places on the Eastern seaboard of America to live way back in the 1500s and earlier - perhaps some 250 years plus before the Western Frontier became the familiar American "wild west frontier". **

The impetus for the push into the west is well known - as the greed for beaver pelts - that were in much demand for their short 'under fur' that made the very best felt for the tall hats that European fashion of the day demanded. - 'Mountain Men' are often presented as wild misfit loners on the run from civilisation - but were in fact mostly keen business-men grasping at the opportunity to trap and trade fur-skins for massive profits - provided they survived long enough to enjoy the money and take it back to a settled area.

Beaver Skin

Carolina and other neighbouring areas missed-out by not having as many beaver populations to exploit - but what they did have was the white-tailed deer. - The mottled crew of  pirates, slavers, plantation raiders, and unwashed thieves that operated in these (later) Southern States were pleased to prey on both the local 'indian' population and the huge herds of white-tail.

- Yes folk, the southern states were founded on slavery and buck-skins. - In the 1580s Thomas Harlot of Roanoke wrote .."Deare skinnes dressed after the manner of Chamoes or undressed are to be had of the natural inhabitants thousands yeerely by way of trafficke for trifles: and no more wast or spoyle of deare then is and hath beene ordinarily in time before."

Matchlock Musket

A full hundred years later - a Thomas Ashe wrote.."white-tailed deer were in such infinite herds, that the whole Country seems but one continued Park."

60,000 skins a year exported - but this had doubled by 1706. - A single hide bought thirty musket balls, - 16 hides bought a woollen blanket. - A musket cost 35 white-tail skins - from traders making huge profits of over four hundred per-cent from the sale of such goods as a hoe blade.

- The term for the enriching "buckskin" - shortened to "buck" - became, to this day, the accepted slang for US currency.

 - Amerindian slaves were even more valuable than deerskins (but you couldn't call a dollar a "slave" could you?)

It wasn't only the Africans who were traded into captivity in the Americas - while the local tribes through-out the continent fell and died from introduced hairy white-mans diseases - their numbers were literally decimated (reduced to one tenth) - but they were still taken and sold into plantation slavery in huge numbers - being shipped to many other areas including Barbados.

- All this trade driven murder and mayhem was excused as being diplomacy with the previous Spanish conquistadors and their Jesuit run Mission corn plantations. - Oh yes - the 'power of the dollar' right from the beginnings. ( - let's hear it for the GOP !)

** The First Frontier: The Forgotten History.." by Scott Weidensaul. - A great read - and a true 'eye-opener'.

Marty K.