he sent out there had to depart.[75] Had this plan succeeded, Astor
would have been, as he rightly boasted, the richest man in the world;
and the present wealth of his descendants instead of being $450,000,000
would be manifold more.

MONOPOLY BASED ON FORCE.

Thwarted in his project to get a monopoly of the incalculable riches of
furs in the extreme Northwest, he concentrated his efforts on that vast
region extending along the Missouri River, far north to the Great Lakes,
west to the Rocky Mountains and into the Southwest. It was a region
abounding in immense numbers of fur animals and, at that time, was
inhabited by the Indian tribes, with here and there a settlement of
whites. By means of Government favoritism and the unconcealed exercise
of both fraud and force, he obtained a complete monopoly, as complete
and arbitrary as ever feudal baron held over seignorial estates.
Nominally, the United States Government ruled this great sweep of
territory and made the laws and professed to execute them. In reality,
Astor's company was a law unto itself. That it employed both force and
fraud and entirely ignored all laws enacted by Congress, is as clear as
daylight from the Government reports of that period.

The American Fur Company maintained three principal posts or depots of
receiving and distribution--one at St. Louis, one at Detroit, the third
at Mackinac. In response to an order from Lewis Cass, Secretary of War,
to send in complete reports of the fur trade, Joshua Pilcher reported
from St. Louis, December 1, 1831:

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.[76]

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 sho