"That's right," said Uncle Dick. "First came the explorers; then the fur traders; then the miners; then the cow men; then the farmers. The end of the buffalo came in 1883--a million robes that year; and the next, none at all--the most terrible wild-life tragedy that ever was known. After that came the cattle and the sheep and the irrigation men." He sat musing for the time. "But listen now to a little more of the early stuff. You, Jesse, do you follow up the Yellowstone with your finger till you come to the mouth of the Big Horn River. Got it?" "Yes, sir," replied Jesse. "Here she is." "All right. Now, at that place, in the year 1807--the next year after Lewis and Clark got back home--a shrewd St. Louis trader by name of Manuel Lisa, of Spanish descent he was, heard all those beaver stories, and he pushed up the Missouri and up the Yellowstone, and built a post called Fort Manuel there. He wanted to trade with the Blackfeet and Crows both, but found those tribes were enemies. He couldn't hold the fort. He dropped back to St. Louis and formed the first of the great fur companies, the Missouri River Company. They were the pioneers of many later companies. "The Missouri River Company had their post at the Three Forks of the Missouri--away up yonder, eight hundred miles from here--as early as 1810; that was crowding Lewis and Clark pretty fairly close, eh? Well, then came the Rocky Mountain Company, and the American Fur Company, and the Pacific Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and I don't know how many other St. Louis partnerships up-river--not mentioning the pack-train outfits under many names--and so all at once, as though by magic, there were posts strung clear to the head of the river--one hundred and forty of them, as I have told you. And of them all you could hardly find a trace of one of them to-day. "There's dispute even as to the site of Fort Union, which was just above here and up the river a little above the Yellowstone. That was built in 1828. "Long before that, and for twenty years after that, the fur traders kept on building, until the mouth of every good-sized river running into the Missouri had not only one, but sometimes three or four posts, all competing all or part of the time! Risky business it was. Some made fortunes; most of them died broke. Well, I reckon they had a good run for their money, eh?" "And when did it end?" asked the Mandan friend, who had sat an absorbed listener to a story, the most of which was new to him.