California, during the tenure of the successful hide trade, represented a significant crossroads of various cultures, a frontier shaped by diverse peoples from around the world. Native Americans including the Tlingit, Chinook, Kodiak, Haida, Aleut and Tsimshian groups as well as others often interacted with white traders, at times giving way to positive and negative experiences. Often seeking areas where their trade was less prominent, otter-hunting Tlingit Native Americans would board the ships of foreign captains to travel from Alaska elsewhere. Undoubtedly, Tlingits benefited from commercial trade as well, obtaining objects like copper, porcelain, buttons, and dishes that they may not have come upon otherwise. Often, American or British traders and sailors from the east would stay in California, becoming some of the first Americans to settle in the region, living and intermarrying with Spanish families as a result of Mexico’s relaxed and welcoming laws regarding resident aliens. Eventually, by the 1840s, the originally booming hide and tallow trade began to diminish in significance, the cause proving to be the overabundance of hides now in the eastern markets of Boston created by the trade itself.