Commercial activities

European merchants had already organised voyages for cod fishing in the Gulf of the Saint-Laurent, well before the period called «contact».  These were the fishers/dryers of cod, installed on the coast of the Saint-Laurent River catching their fish, who first established merchant contact with our populations who frequented the coast.  Thus it is just to say that the first relations between the Aboriginal people and the strangers, were relations based on commerce.  However it should be noted that there was already commercial bartering, between the Aboriginal Nations.