About this time [1823] the American Fur Company had turned their attention to the Missouri trade, and, as might have been expected, soon put an end to all opposition. Backed, as it was, by any amount of capital, and with skillful agents to conduct its affairs at every point, it succeeded by the year 1827, in monopolizing the trade of the Indians on the Missouri, and I have but little doubt will continue to do so for years to come, as it would be rather a hazardous business for small adventurers to rise in opposition to it.5
In that wild country where the Government, at best, had an insufficient force of troops, and where the agents of the company went heavily armed, it was distinctly recognized, and accepted as a fact, that no possible competitor's men, or individual trader, dare intrude. To do it was to invite the severest reprisals, not stopping short of outright murder. The American Fur Company overawed and dominated everything; it defied the Government's representatives and acknowledged no authority superior to itself and no law other than what its own interests demanded. The exploitation that