Trade

The relations between the Indians and the whites were commercial long before they were ever domestic. Alcohol, guns and ammunition did not provide the thrilling adventures we often imagine today; they were a way to make a living. Traders traveling north on their way to the Allegheny region always stopped in Shamokin on their way up the Susquehanna.

The first Englishman to reach the confluence of the North and West branches of the Susquehanna River and live there as a trader was John Skull. Although a formal building was never built, ‘John Scull’s store’ is pictured on the east bank of the main river on Isaac Taylor’s 1701 map of Pennsylvania.

There was also an Indian trading house established within Fort Augusta in 1757 to facilitate fur trade with the Native Americans. However in 1763 when active military operation suggested that the fort might be attacked it was declared that no man woman or child was allowed on the ramparts and no soldiers were to have dealings with the Indians. Thus the trading house was closed. Both sides of the Susquehanna were attacked at this time, but the fort was never touched.

For the most part trading between the Indians and the Europeans was a friendly affair. Problems were posed when alcohol became involved. In 1731 the rum trade was out of control. Shikellamy threatened that “Friendly relations would have to be terminated between the Indians and the Whites”. “These people who sell it have no eyes. Now there is a people called Quakers who have come to live among us that have eyes; they see it to be for our hurt; they are willing to deny themselves the profit of it for our good. These people have eyes,” said another. In fact it was alcohol that created fissures between Shikellamy and his Delaware subjects, particularly the chief Allummapees.

 

 

Everts and Stewart History of NU County, 27

Dunkel, An Observation by an Indian in 1687, 207.