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 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 ensued was one of the most deliberate, cruel and appalling that has ever taken place in any country. THE DEBAUCHING OF INDIANS.