Trade: Panton, Leslie & Company of Pensacola, Florida

Long before Europeans made contact with Natives, the peoples of North America had a vital trading economy.  The paths known today as warriors paths also facilitated trade and communication.  When Europeans arrived in North America, they were about to relearn a system that had not been practiced in Europe for centuries, an economy based not on money, but on barter.  And the Natives had a ready commodity, beaver skins.  The Hudson's Bay Company was established in 1670 and still exists today.  They and their nearest rival, John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, established in 1805 and now defunct, held the monopoly of the trade in Beaver skins throughout Canada and most of the United States, but they had an important rival in the South up to the time of Indian Removal, Panton, Leslie & Co., Later John Forbes & Co. 

The further South along the frontier one went, the main commodity changed from beavers skins to deerskin or buckskin, which was also a hot commodity in Europe.  Cattle diseases had decreased the bovine population in Europe, making skins there scarce and the British government had issued frequent edicts forbidding trade in cattle skin from Europe to the New World.  Buckskin, first considered garments worthy only of the poor immigrants in the backcountry, soon appealed to the wealthy upper classes.  Every gentleman had one or more pair of good buckskin riding breeches, and every workman who could afford them had work breeches made of the same material.  Middlemen were eager to capitalize on this trade, obtaining buckskins from Natives who knew how to hunt deer and cure the skins in exchange for trade goods which could be bought cheaply in Europe or the larger cities of North American and used as currency in trade.

Enter immigrants from Scotland, who had already had years of experience as traders and middlemen.  Even before the Jacobite Revolt in 1745, traders such as Lachlan McGillivray had made their way into Georgia, established links with the Creeks and other tribes through marriage to prominent Native women, and set themselves up as traders.  McGillivray's nearest rival, William Powell, who may also have been Scottish, did likewise.  Although the Scots were prominent as traders, others such as Hispanic families with links to Spain, Cuba and Florida were doing the like, including the Coppingers.  If the names Powell and Coppinger sound familiar like we're going somewhere important, we are.  Osceola's father/stepfather was William Powell, and his grandfather's last name was Coppinger, making him, according to his biographer Patricia Wickman, as being part Scots and (maybe) Cubano or Black as a descendant of the Coppinger family.  Nor were the Powells and the McGillivrays the only families who intermarried with Natives, there were others.  Trade with Creeks, Seminoles, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws and other tribes was booming business.

Then the American Revolutionary War hit the South was as much fury as Sherman's march later did.  The Scots were mostly Loyalists, who were subject to property confiscation and assassination for their loyalty to the King.  Most of these traders headed to the British possessions in the Caribbean to make their mark there, a few hung on as independents, but most headed to Spanish Florida, where they could establish a base in friendly territory, still exploit their contacts in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, and recoup some of their lost fortune.  A group of these traders coalesced as a trading firm, Panton, Leslie & Co.  And, if this name sounds familiar, it is.  We discussed their arch-enemy, William Augustus Bowles, in a previous post.

William Panton and John Leslie were two of five trading partners that headed this firm, all Scots, all Loyalists, and all willing to tolerate British and Spanish intervention in their activities only so much as it suited them to do so.  They based in the Spanish garrison town of Pensacola, Florida, from where they could reach their biggest suppliers, the Creeks and Seminoles.  They also reached out to the Cherokee, the Chickasaw and Choctaw, though their monopoly with these tribes wasn't as strong and they did face competition from independents, such as William Holland Thomas, whom we've also met, and other trading companies including Astor's.  When their Creek clientele complained about the long distances they had to travel to reach trading posts, Panton, Leslie obliged with posts in Georgia, Alabama and as far south as Louisiana, where the French had their own trading concerns and would not have tolerated interlopers. 

Like all good traders, the firm had several projects going at once.  They would take in the Native deerskins and determine the value in trade goods.  Since there was no viable completion except from an occasional independent, there was no one to challenge their estimate of how much the skins would buy in trade goods.  Natives soon began acquiring trade goods on a credit system.  The firm would front them the goods on promise of a continued supply of skins, which would never be enough to cancel out the debt.  The firm would ship the skins to Nassau, in the Bahamas, then offer them for sale in Europe and North America, either as finished products in the form of breeches, jackets, etc., or as raw material that tailors could work with.  They soon spread their interest to other commodities, such as timber, and to American cash crops such as cotton, indigo and the like.  To work up these resources, the firm owned black slaves and maintained plantations.  They also dealt in the slave trade.  For awhile, the process worked well for both Natives and the firm.  Panton, Leslie & Co. had allies in Native leaders such as Alexander McGillivray, himself part Scottish and a stockholder in the firm.  It was he who threatened Bowles with loss of his ears, or worse, if the imposter and adventurer didn't vacate Florida and stay out of Georgia.  There was no altruism on anyone's part here.  Bowles had an authority problem and wanted to operate his own trading schemes under the noses of British, Spanish, Creeks or anyone else out to stop him, so he was the enemy of Panton, Leslie, one of whose storehouses he managed to burn, and didn't like Alexander McGillivray very much either. 

This system worked very well until Indian Removal, when some tribes, such as the Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw, were compensated with money, pennies on the dollar, for the land they'd been forced to cede.  But they weren't allowed to keep the money.  The firm held meticulous records of who owed what and called their notes due on both tribes and individuals, who often had to pay crushing debts incurred by years of fronted trade goods on credit, much like a company store during the Depression Era.  Then, too late, the firm realized that by being so keen to press for Indian Removal to cash in these debts, they'd lost their best suppliers and customers.  Panton, Leslie, now John Forbes & Co. pulled out of Florida before the Civil War and soon lost their assets in the Caribbean.  Unlike the Hudson's Bay Company, which set more of a priority on how it treated its Native client base, the firm no longer exists.