Celebrating Life Our name comes from a powerful yet simple practice—trading on blankets—that literally transformed two disparate cultures, a world apart, into the earliest American "melting pot." We are named for the common ways of trading between Native American People and Europeans in North America, dating from the 17th century. In that infant culture, people traded furs and skins for tools and implements while seated on a blanket as the trading place. European traders introduced blankets to Native American people. A wondrous invention, blankets replaced hides as a source of warmth and comfort. Blankets quickly became a measure of wealth among native people, then took an important place in the "cycle of life and death" sacred belief system. Blankets were used to sustain life and to wrap people for burial. MORE > >