The 16th and 17th century encounters between Indigenous people in Turtle Island and merchant sailors coming from Europe constitutes the meeting of two very different ways of seeing and living in the world, two very different approaches to trade. The French, Dutch, and English who arrived at the mouths of rivers flowing into the Atlantic were the envoys of a new way of making wealth. These were not aristocrats who stood to inherit their fathers’ land and properties, they were sailors from Europe’s emerging merchant class who were looking for trade goods and resources—spices from Asia, minerals from “El Dorado,” manufactured items from China or India. They had recently developed the capacity to navigate across huge oceans, and they were learning that they could become independently wealthy by exploring the world’s coastlands and islands and bringing back objects they could sell at home.
