How widespread and how strong was the influence of these traders upon the savages may be easily imagined, and this commercial control was strengthened by the annual presents made to the Indians by the British at their posts. At a time when our relations with Great Britain were growing strained, such a power in the Northwest was a serious menace.[201] In 1809 John Jacob Astor secured a charter from the State of New York, incorporating the American Fur Company. He proposed to consolidate the fur trade of the United States, plant an establishment in the contested Oregon territory, and link it with Michillimackinac (Mackinaw island) by way of the Missouri through a series of trading posts. In 1810 two expeditions of his Pacific Fur Company set out for the Columbia, the one around Cape Horn and the other by way of Green bay and the Missouri. In 1811 he bought a half interest in the Mackinaw Company, a rival of the Northwest Company and the one that had especial power in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and this new organization he called the Southwest Company. But the war of 1812 came; Astoria, the Pacific post, fell into the hands of the Northwest Company, while the Southwest Company's trade was ruined. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 193: On this company see Mackenzie, Voyages; Bancroft, Northwest Coast, I., 378-616, and citations; _Hunt's Merch. Mag._, III., 185; Irving, Astoria; Ross, The Fur Hunters of the Far West; Harmon, Journal; Report on the Canadian Archives, 1881, p. 61 et seq. This fur-trading life still goes on in the more remote regions of British America. See Robinson, Great Fur Land, ch. xv.] [Footnote 194: Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 123-5.] [Footnote 195: Mackenzie, Voyages, xxxix. Harmon, Journal, 36. In the fall of 1784, Haldimand granted permission to the Northwest Company to build a small vessel at Detroit, to be employed next year on Lake Superior. Calendar of Canadian Archives, 1888, p. 72.] [Footnote 196: Besides the authorities cited above, see "Anderson's Narrative," in Wis. Hist. Colls., IX., 137-206.]