"What induced (American) Indians to go out of their way to trap beaver and trade the skins for glass beads, mirrors, copper kettles, and other goods?... Recent scholarship on (American]
Indians' motives in this earliest stage of the trade indicates that they regarded such objects as
the equivalents of the quartz, mica, shell, and other sacred substances that had formed the
heart of long-distance exchange in North America for millennia While northeastern
[American] Indians recognized Europeans as different from themselves, they interacted with
them and their materials in ways that were consistent with their own customs and beliefs."
Neal Salisbury, historian, "The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of
Europeans," 1996
A direct result of European exploration of North America during the 1500s and early 1600s
was the