The Muscogee traded pelts of white tailed deer and Native American slaves captured in traditional raids against other tribes. They received West Indian rum, European cloth, glass beads, hatchets, swords, and flintlock rifles from the colonial traders. Carolinian fur traders, who were men of capital, took Muscogee wives, often the daughters of chiefs. It was a practice common also among the British fur traders in Canada; both the fur traders and Aboriginal Canadians saw such marriages as a way to increase the alliances among the elite of both cultures. The fur traders encouraged the Muscogee slaving raids against Spanish "Mission Indians." British colonists were so few in number in the region that they depended on Native American alliances for security and survival.