In the 1600s, most people still dressed the same as they had before, in deerskins. But in the south-west, Pueblo and Navajo people began to buy wool clothing from the Spanish settlers. Europeans produced a lot of wool to sell, so they wanted to sell it to Americans. The wool clothes were cheaper than deerskin, so more people were able to wear more clothes more of the time.
People who lived on the East Coast, like the Iroquois and the Cherokee and the Algonquin, also began to get wool clothes and blankets by trading with English, French, and Dutch traders. Everyone started to wear more clothing. But women still wore shirts and skirts, or dresses, and the men still wore shirts and pants.
Just as many Native American people got new wool clothes from the settlers, many European hunters and settlers learned to wear deerskin from the Native Americans. Deerskin lasted better than wool clothes, and you could get right where you were, even if you were nowhere near a store. And you didn’t have to sew hems on it, either.