Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of guerilla warfare. Brigades were sent eastward to the fishing-ground of Cook's Inlet for supplies. Incipient mutiny was quelled by sending more hunters off with Ismyloff to explore new sea-otter fields in Prince William Sound. As for the foreign fur traders, he conceived the brilliant plan of buying food from them in exchange for Russian furs and of supplying them with brigades of Aleut Island hunters to scour the Pacific for sea-otter from Nootka and the Columbia to southern California. This would not only add to stores of Russian furs, but push Russian dominion southward, and keep other nations off the field. That it was not all plain sailing on a summer day may be inferred from one incident. He had led out a brigade of several hundred canoes, Indians and Russians, to Nuchek Island, off Prince William Sound. Though he had tried to win the friendship of the coast Indians by gifts, it was necessary to steal from point {323} to point at night, and to hide at many places as he coasted the mainland. Throwing up some sort of rough barricade at Nuchek Island, he sent the most of his men off to fish and remained with only sixteen Aleuts and Russians. It was perfectly natural that the Alaskan Indians should resent the Aleuts intruding on the hunting-grounds of the main coast, one thousand miles from the Aleutian Islands. Besides, the mainland Indians had now learned unscrupulous brutality from foreign traders. Baranof knew his danger and never relaxed vigilance. Of the sixteen men, five always stood sentry at night.