Thomas Forsyth, who had long experience among the people of the Wilderness, said he thought that in most misunderstandings the fault was with the white people. He told of a young agent on the Missouri River who cut off the ears of a half-breed because, when drunk, he had spoken disrespectfully of the Americans. Another agent on the Mississippi turned out of the guard-house an innocent Indian to others, his enemies, who butchered him in the presence of the whole garrison. Forsyth remarks, also: "In my intercourse with the Indians for the last forty years I never found that coercive measures ever had any good effect with them, but that conciliatory measures always tended to produce every purpose required." The intercourse between the tribes of the Wilderness and the whites was rapidly increasing, and this period—1830 to 1840—saw many hard conflicts and much bloodshed, some of it, at least, entirely unnecessary. The whites came with the firm belief that every native was an enemy, and they sometimes took the precaution to shoot first and apologise, if at all, afterwards. Trappers and traders were now operating over all the Wilderness excepting the portion which at present forms the central part of the State of Nevada. As yet this had not been traversed by any but Jedediah Smith for it was generally barren and streamless, with no beaver. Of course, much of the remainder was still unexplored, yet the general character was understood. Books on the fur trade are apt to give so little account of the trapping operations in the South-west that the reader obtains the impression that there was nothing done there, but while no large company operated, bands of trappers for years ranged the Gila and its tributaries, the lower Colorado, the Virgin, the Rio Grande, the Sevier, and other streams in the south-western country where beaver abounded and where some rich hauls were made, sometimes to be confiscated by the Mexican officials or lost through the difficulties of travel in that country.