The extent of this westward movement is indicated by the provisions made for the political organization of these growing settlements. Indiana achieved statehood in 1816 and Illinois in 1818. Across the river in Missouri the population had grown from 20,000 in 1810 to 66,000 in 1820,[41] and the weighty questions concerning her admission were being discussed in Washington. With an expanding frontier brought into contact with hostile Indians, trouble was bound to result. Various plans were proposed to deal with the problem. It was reported that General Jackson would take charge of active military operations against the Indians of the upper Mississippi.[42] One agent suggested that "three or four months' full feeding on meat and bread, even without ardent spirit, will bring on disease, and, in six or eight months, great mortality.... I believe more Indians might be killed with the expense of $100,000 in this way, than $1,000,000 expended in the support of armies to go against them."[43] Fortunately, wiser counsels than either of these prevailed to control the Indians: the control of the fur trade was necessary. It was felt, and rightly, that much of the trouble in the West was due to the power of the British traders. Accordingly, by an act of Congress of April 29, 1816, it was provided that "licenses to trade with the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States shall not be granted to any but citizens of the United States, unless by the express direction of the President of the United States, and upon such terms and conditions as the public interest may, in his opinion, require." To carry this act into effect the president was authorized to call upon the military force.[44] This legislation was most opportune, since by the commercial convention of October 20, 1818, the northern boundary was definitely agreed upon as the forty-ninth parallel westward from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.[45] Ever since the negotiators of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 had inserted a geographical impossibility by declaring that the boundary should extend due west from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, there had existed a vagueness as to where the actual line should be drawn.[46] In 1806 the British traders thought it would be run from the lake to the source of the river;[47] and as late as 1818 Benjamin O'Fallon wrote from Prairie du Chien that Robert Dickson "is directed to build a fort on the highest land between Lac du Travers and Red river, which he supposes will be the established line between the two countries."[48] But with the boundary now defined, the area where the trade laws were to be enforced was evident.