North American Clothing after 1500
Algonquin men about 1530 AD
Ever since the first European invaders came to North America
about 1500 AD, people in North America have been changing how they dress - North
American people have started to dress more like Europeans, while European people have started
to dress more like North Americans.
In 1500 AD, most people
in North America wore leather
clothes made of deerskin. These clothes were very expensive, because it
was hard to hunt enough deer to make enough clothes for everyone. People
often went naked in warm weather to save their clothes (and because leather
clothes are too hot in the summer).
On the other hand, these leather clothes were very tough and warm, and they would last a long time. You could just wear the same outfit every day, all year.
In some places in the southern part of North America, people also grew cotton for their clothes.
On the other hand, these leather clothes were very tough and warm, and they would last a long time. You could just wear the same outfit every day, all year.
In some places in the southern part of North America, people also grew cotton for their clothes.
When European explorers and hunters came to North America
in the 1500's, many of them also started wearing deerskin clothes, because
they were so tough and would last a long time. On the other hand, Iroquois
and Cherokee and Algonquin
people were eager to buy wool and
linen clothing from European traders.
This clothing was lighter and cheaper than deerskins, and easier to wash.
People were also happy to buy European glass
beads to decorate their clothes, because European beads were much cheaper
than making their own beads out of animal bone or shells.
By the 1600's, many Pueblo and Navaho
people had bought (or stolen) sheep
and were beginning to grow their own wool
to make their own clothes, instead of buying cloth from Spanish traders.
At the same time, English settlers along the East Coast were also beginning
to keep sheep and make their own wool clothing there. In Jamestown, Virginia,
English settlers planted cotton
beginning in 1607. But most English settlers were still buying their clothes
from English traders, and in most of North America people (both native and
European) were still wearing deerskin.
During the 1700's AD, as the English settlers in North
America began to want to be more independent of England, they began to grow
flax for linen and keep sheep
for wool so they could make their
own clothes. There were too many people now for them to all wear deerskin
- there just weren't that many deer. All along the East Coast, in the English
colonies, people were proud of wearing homespun cloth that showed you had
not bought from English traders. After the Revolutionary War, in 1790, Samuel
Slater came from England and built the first automated cotton mill in North
America. Three years later, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin (short for
cotton engine), a machine that got the cotton ready for milling by taking
the seeds out.
Now that people could mill cotton in North America, they
began to grow a lot more of it in the 1800's. Thousands of African
people were forced to come to North America as slaves
to plant and pick cotton. All over the southern part of North America, in
the land that had belonged to the Cherokee
and the Mississippians, English
settlers and enslaved African people planted cotton. Traders took this cheap cotton all over North America,
and so most people began to wear mostly cotton and wool instead of deerskin
and linen. You got the cotton plain white
and then you dyed it yourself at home, and then you sewed it into clothes.
Also in the 1800's, people began to buy more and more of their
cloth in stores instead of spinning and weaving their cloth at home (but they still
had to sew it into clothes themselves). This store-made
cloth was made using machinery in factories, and it was much cheaper than hand-made
cloth. So people began to be able to afford more than one outfit at a time. By 1900,
most people had at least one every-day outfit and one good outfit (for example, to
wear to church on Sundays). Now that people could change their clothes, they also
started to wash them more often.
After 1900, pretty much all cloth was made in factories. People began
to buy their clothes ready-made, already sewn together, instead of sewing them themselves.
With the use of gasoline and coal to power the factories, clothing got cheaper and cheaper,
until by the 1920's it was getting pretty normal for people to change their clothes
every day.
Click here to find out more about the styles of clothes
North American
clothing before 1500 AD
North American Economy
Main clothing page
Main North America page (after 1500)
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