The year after Bonneville went out to the mountains (1833), a distinguished foreigner, Maximilian, Prince of Wied, made the journey up the Missouri[98] with Kenneth McKenzie, on the steamboat _Yellowstone_ to Fort Pierre and thence to Fort Union on the new _Assiniboine_. The _Yellowstone_ was a boat with the distinction of having been the first steamboat to go above Council Bluffs. In 1831 she was taken to Fort Tecumseh, a little above where Pierre, South Dakota, now stands (named from Fort Pierre, which was named for Pierre Chouteau, Jr.), and in 1832 went as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone. On board at this time was Catlin, the artist whose paintings of Amerinds and whose extensive travels through the Wilderness have made him forever famous.[99] The natives called the boat the "Big Thunder Canoe," and the "Big Medicine Canoe with Eyes." It was an object of wonder with them for a time, but they soon accepted in a matter-of-fact way the new things the whites brought to them. The steamboat on the Missouri was a great boon to the traders and fur companies as it enabled goods to be taken into the North-west with far greater ease and consequently at less price. There was much rivalry among the companies as heretofore. New ones were formed and the competition was great. All sorts of methods were adopted, many of them questionable, often dishonourable, to secure advantage. As whiskey was prohibited by the Government, and a rigid examination was made of every ascending boat, there were many schemes for smuggling it; for every trader used it, if he could, in his dealings with the natives. It was the most profitable medium of exchange, and by means of it a tribe could be literally skinned for a song. The traders were there to take every advantage of the natives, and, except the Hudson Bay Company, they hesitated at nothing that would bring them money. They would have been perfectly willing to exterminate the whole Amerind population in twenty-four hours if they could have done it with great profit. In other words, their sole care was to fleece the native for a company's benefit. The beaver by 1835 were beginning to be alarmingly scarce and attention was turned more and more to buffalo robes and other furs, but there was yet much money to be made in this field.