On 31 December 1758, the leaders of the Louisiana colony submitted their yearly “Statement of Requests” for supplies to the French king. Some 127 notations in all (of a total of about 400), the listings of cloth, clothing, adornments, and associated items included 25 designated for “Annual Presents that are Given to the Indians”; another 8 for “Extraordinary presents”; 16 to exchange with Choctaws; 15 for commerce with Alabama, Attacapa, Kickapoo, Mascoutern, and Shawnee Indians together; and 14 “For the Projected Trade with the Cherokee Indians.” A further 43 items would be for officials, their enslaved laborers, and the military, while a final 6 would furnish hospitals and pay the nuns who staffed them.

This order from a remote corner of the Atlantic world opens a window onto the abundance of textile goods available to early modern consumers throughout that space. The entries suggest – if barely – the great variety of types, colors, qualities, and finishes of woven-fiber fabrics, garments, and notions distributed throughout the Atlantic world; the diverse consumers of those goods; the configurations of their particular cloth and clothing demand; and the commercial and non-commercial ways by which that demand would be satisfied: gifting, market exchange, compulsory attiring, recompense for services rendered. Fleshing out clues provided by the Louisiana document, this chapter investigates the venues, occasions, participants, and procedures involved in supplying cloth and clothing to sites around the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic; the composition of the merchant textile stocks thereby assembled; and the ways by which consumers acquired them.