Under English rule, local agents were authorised, in the name of the king, to oversee Indian affairs, grant licences, and exercise a general supervision over the trade. Serious difficulties arose in acquiring the confidence of the northern Indians after the fall of Quebec. But, after an interruption of four or five years, (say from ’59 to ’64,) including the period of Pontiac’s war, the trade gradually resumed its healthful action. French enterprise had spread it through the region of Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi, to the banks of the Saskatchawine. Scottish intrepidity carried it to the mouths of the Mackenzie, and the Columbia. The date of American authority in the lake country, may be placed in 1796. It was, however, but feebly felt in its influence on the northwest fur trade, for several years. Congress first legislated on the subject in 1802, but four years afterwards Lieut. Pike, on reaching the Upper Mississippi, found it in the exclusive possession of the North West Company. The Indians were then as much attached to the English, as they had been to the French, in 1759. It cost the British crown the expenses of a war to gain this ascendancy, and the Americans were not permitted to succeed them, as the sovereign power over Indian territory, at a less hazard. The war of 1812, found all the northern tribes confederated with the English. Tecumseh had risen to re-act the part which Pontiac had failed to accomplish, fifty-two years before, namely, driving back the infringing power. This happened, in 1759, to be Great Britain; but in 1812, it was the United States. With less sterling capacity to organise and command, however, than his great predecessor had, and with the powerful resources of England to back him, he utterly failed. It was not till after this failure, and the re-establishment of American garrisons at Detroit and Michilimackinac, that the Jeffersonian Indian code of 1802, began to be put into effect in the north-west. In 1816, a law was passed by Congress to exclude foreigners from the trade. In 1819 St. Peter’s was established. In 1820, Gov. Cass personally visited the tribes, and in 1822, a military post was advanced to St. Mary’s Falls, the most northern point occupied by the United States army.