The new opposition developed without delay. Striking at all the salient points, the new Company in 1797 erected its trading house at Grand Portage, somewhat more than half-a-mile from the North-West trading house and on the other side of the small stream that there falls into the Bay. A few years after, when the North-West Company moved to Kaministiquia, the X Y also erected a building within a mile of the new fort. The new Company was at some time in its history known as the New North-West Company, but was more commonly called the X Y Company. The origin of this name is accounted for as follows. On the bales which were made up for transport, it was the custom to mark the North-West Company's initials N.W. When the new Company, which was an offshoot of the old, wished to mark their bales, they simply employed the next letters of the alphabet, X Y. They are accordingly not contractions, and should not be written as such. It was the habit of members of the older Company to express their contempt for the secessionists by calling them the "Little Company" or "the Little Society." In the Athabasca country the rebellious traders were called by their opponents "Potties," probably a corruption of "Les Petits," meaning members of "La Petite Compagnie." When these names were used by the French Canadian voyageurs, the X Y Company was referred to. However disrespectfully they may have been addressed, the traders of the new Company caused great anxiety both to the North-West Company and to the Hudson's Bay Company, though they regarded themselves chiefly as rivals of the former. Pushing out into the country nearest their base of supplies on Lake Superior, they took hold of the Red River and Assiniboine region, as well as of the Red Lake country immediately south of and connected with it. The point where the Souris empties into the Assiniboine was occupied in the same year (1798) by the X Y Company. It had been a favourite resort for all classes of fur-traders, there having been no less than five opposing trading houses at this point four years before. No doubt the presence of the free-trading element such as McCracken and Jussaume, whom we find in the Souris region thus early, made it easier for smaller concerns to carry on a kind of business in which the great North-West Company would not care to be engaged.