Shortly after the Jamestown colony was planted the English adventurers explored the rivers and bays in the vicinity of the settlement, visited many Indian villages, and traded colorful articles to the natives in exchange for foods, furs, and other commodities.

The first exploring party left Jamestown a week after the establishment of the colony. Twenty-four of the settlers sailed up the James River as far as the falls, a distance of about ninety miles. At Arahatteak (near present-day Richmond) the explorers gave the Indians "penny knyves, sheeres, belles, beades, glass toyes &c ..." for mulberries, wheat, beans, tobacco, and a "crowne which was of deares hayre, dyed redd." Before leaving the village Captain Newport presented the Indian chief with a hatchet and a red waistcoat.

On the return trip to Jamestown the exploring party visited other Indian towns on the James River, including one whose chieftain was Powhatan's brother—the wily and crafty Opechancanough. Gabriel Archer, a member of the group, recorded that the chief's "kyngdome is full of deare (so also is most of all the kyngdomes:) he hath (as the rest likewise) many ryche furres."

Many of the early settlers listed the fur-bearing animals that inhabited the dense woods near Jamestown. George Percy, an original planter, observed that:

There is also great store of deere both red and fallow. There are beares, foxes, otters, bevers, muskats, and wild beasts unknowne.

John Smith, in one of his early books describing Virginia (A Map of Virginia, With a Description of the Country, Oxford, 1612), gives brief descriptions of deer, squirrels, opossums, muskrats, bears, beavers, otters, foxes, and others. With the exception of bears, these fur-bearing animals still inhabit Jamestown Island—protected by the National Park Service.

For inexpensive beads and trinkets the colonists received furs, foods, and other commodities from the aborigines.

It appears that early in the century some profit was being made from the sale of furs in England, for Thomas Studley, who was in charge of the first storehouse at Jamestown, wrote that "one mariner in one voyage hath got so many [furs] as he confessed to have solde in England for £30."

William Strachey, who lived at Jamestown in 1610-1611, described a trading expedition made by Captain Samuel Argall in 1610:

Within this river, Captayne Samuell Argoll in a smale river which the Indians call Oquiho. Anno 1610. trading (in a bark called the Discovery) for corne, with the great king of Patawomeck, from him obteyned well neere 400. bushells of wheat, pease and beanes (besyde many kind of furrs) for 9. powndes of copper, 4. bunches of beades, 8 dozen of hatchetts, 5 dozen of knives, 4 bunches of bells, 1. dozen Sizers, all not much more worth than 40s. English....

It is evident, therefore, that the Jamestown colonists who traded their colorful beads and trinkets to the woodland Indians in exchange for food and other commodities—including furs and hides—were the pioneer English fur traders in the New World. The experiences which adventurers like Christopher Newport, John Smith, and Samuel Argall had with the cunning Virginia aborigines were just as exciting and stirring as those shared by the hardened trappers and traders who searched the Rocky Mountain streams for beaver two hundred years later. The hunt for furs which began at Jamestown in 1607 did not diminish until the western boundary of the United States had expanded to the shores of the Pacific Ocean during the middle of the nineteenth century.

Objects Found At Jamestown Which Were Used For Trading With The Indians Shown are glass beads, bell fragments, a hatchet, scissors, knives, and an incomplete brass pan.