A few years later a third company was organized, with its principal station at Michilimackinac, near Lake Huron. It was called the Mackinaw Company, and its field of operations was the country bordering Lake Superior, and that lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The company was English, but did not hesitate to operate in American territory, so little regard did Great Britain pay to the rights of the infant republic.
"Although peace had been concluded, the frontier forts had not been given up. Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and other posts were still in the hands of the English. The Indian tribes continued hostile, being under English influence. No company had as yet been formed in the United States. Several French houses at St. Louis traded with the Indians, but it was not until 1807 that an association of twelve partners, with a capital of forty thousand dollars, was formed at St. Louis, under the name of the Missouri Company.
"The trade, it will thus be seen, was almost wholly in the hands of the English companies—the Hudson's Bay Company in the north, the North-west Company in the Canadas, the Mackinaw Company in the territories of the United States—and the few American traders in the field had to rely on their individual resources, with no aid from a Government too feeble in its infancy to do more than establish a few Indian agencies, and without constitutional power to confer charter privileges."
The voyage of Captain Cook had brought to the notice of the fur dealers of the world the sea otter of the northern Pacific, and the announcement made upon the return of the expedition drew large numbers of adventurers to the west coast of America, in search of the valuable skins of these animals. In 1792, there were twenty-one vessels, principally American, on the coast.