I reviewed the link “PBS Lewis & Clark:  The Native Americans” which consisted of a variety of documented encounters between Lewis and Clark and the native people of the United States.  For those that don’t know, Lewis and Clark embarked on an expedition across the United States and are known for being the first real documented explorers of the “untamed west”.  The link showed Lewis and Clark’s opinions and views of their initial contact with sixteen different Native American Tribes. 

What I learned from reading about the various tribes was that the native peoples already had an established form of trade.  As you can imagine, geography played a major part in directing the lifestyles each tribe.  Depending on what the geographical area the tribe lived offered for natural resources heavily influenced the manner in which that tribe survived.  I use the word survive because that appears to be the way Lewis and Clark classified each tribe by.  How did each tribe go about getting food and surviving?  Personally, I see this broken into two main categories, hunting and farming.  Some tribes strength was in hunting and their societies where dictated by the game in the area while others farmed for their food.  The tribes would trade goods (food) between each other and based on some of the stories, became dependent on the other tribe for survival, whether that preventing starvation in general or to remain on good terms with a tribe who’s strength may have been fighting.  An example of this is the Arikara Tribe (http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/native/ari.html) and how Lewis and Clark’s interaction with them identified the use of trade for survival and cooperation purposes. 

This created and unique challenge for the explorer’s as they were visiting tribe to tribe.  They must have recognized the importance of trade early in the travels and used trade to gain the confidence of the variety of native peoples they came into contact with.  However, one example showed how trading with the wrong tribe can create tension.  When Lewis and Clark first encountered members of the Blackfeet Tribe, they released information concerning the US Government’s intentions to create peace amongst all of the tribes.  When they explained to the Blackfeet members that two know enemies of the Blackfeet would be receiving weapons for agreeing to peace, the Blackfeet members took this as a hostile action and, unfortunately, resulted in violence between the explorers and the Blackfeet (http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/native/bla.html).