pureamericanism:

The northern trade in fine furs gets all the press when it comes to early European inroads into the North American interior. To be sure, it deserves it, as the huge prices that beaver and mink pelts fetched drew French, Dutch, and English traders more effectively than anything else. But in terms of impact on everyday life in Europe, the relatively unsung southern trade in deerskins was gigantic. The buckskin trouser was the 18th century equivalent of the blue jean. Sturdy and long lasting, every British workingman and farm laborer had a couple pairs*, and almost all of them came from white tail deer hunted by Cherokees and Creeks in what is today the American southeast. It was an idea that took me some getting used to, in the context of the colonial trade and early modern “globalization,” that animals killed beneath the gigantic pines and hemlocks of the Great Smoky Mountains formed the raw material for the most quotidian article of clothing in early modern Britain.

*not to mention the wealthy Georgian rakes who wore them because, you know, buckskin trousers.