Trading expeditions were social events with specific protocols.

The people who traded had specific relationships with their counterparts on the other side of the mountains — relationships that might extend back generations and that were maintained through regular contact and reciprocal obligations.

The specific goods that moved in these networks are known from both the archaeological record and the ethnographic record of the contact period.

From the coast inland: marine products including dried fish, eulachon grease (a highly valued fat rendered from small smelt-like fish), shells, copper, and eventually European trade goods including iron, glass beads, and other materials.

From the interior to the coast: furs, hides, and other products of the interior subarctic economy.