Like all other propertied interests, Astor's company regarded the law as a thing to be rigorously invoked against the poor, the helpless and defenseless, but as not to be considered when it stood in the way of the claims, designs and pretensions of property. Superintendent McKenney reported that all laws in the Indian country were inoperative—so much dead matter. Andrew S. Hughes, reporting from St. Louis, Oct. 31, 1831, to Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, wrote:
.... The traders that occupy the largest and most important space in the Indian country are the agents and engagees of the American Fur Trade Company. They entertain, as I know to be the fact, no sort of respect for our citizens, agents, officers or the Government, or its laws or general policy.
After describing the "baneful influence of these persons," Hughes went on:
The capital employed in the Indian trade must be very large, especially that portion which is employed in the annual