boasted
that although he was only twenty-five years old at the time, he had
already killed six Chippewas when Fort Snelling was erected, and added:
"Had it not been for that I should have killed many more, or have
been myself killed ere this."[360] It is interesting to note in
connection with the sacredness of these treaties the comment of Major
Taliaferro that "much more reliance is to be placed in the good faith of
the Chippeways than in that of the Sioux."[361]

These spasmodic successes at least acquainted the Indians with
governmental restraint. A paragraph from the manuscript diary of the
agent refutes the argument that Fort Snelling intensified rather than
alleviated these struggles. "From January 1833 up to this day", wrote
Taliaferro, "there has been no difficulty between the Sioux and
Chippeways--I once kept these tribes at peace for two years and Six
Months lacking 15 days. And this between the years 1821 & 1825 till June
8th of the latter year. Colonel Robert Dickson remarked to me that Such
a thing had never occurred before even when he headed the tribes against
Us in the War of 1812."[362]

IX

THE FUR TRADE

The Indian trading-house which had been planned for the agency at Fort
Snelling never materialized. Failure of the houses in operation to pay
expenses and the opposition of the private traders led to their
abolition in 1822. Thereafter, whatever attention the government
directed toward the trade was influenced by the desire to prevent
tampering with the allegiance of the Indians on the part of foreigners
and to control this traffic which could contribute so much good or so
much evil to the lives of the government's wards.[363]

With the Indian trade left to the private traders, great trading
companies developed, since the fur trade easily lent itself to the
corporation system. Cooeperation in the marketing of furs and in the
buying of goods eliminated many of the difficulties which a single
individual would meet. The American Fur Company, so long guided by John
Jacob Astor, had a practical monopoly of the trade during the time that
Old Fort Snelling was in existence. Mendota was the headquarters of a
vast region which extended from the Mississippi to the headwaters of the
streams flowing into the Missouri. At various places throughout this
territory were trading posts called "forts", although they
consisted of no more than a few huts within a stockade. These were all
subsidiary to the p