trade be raised to $500,000 in order that factories be planted on the upper Missouri, and urged that more effective restraints be placed on the private traders; that a license fee of $200 be imposed and a bond of $10,000 required; that whiskey be excluded under heavy penalty; and that the several firms engaged be under obligation to submit detailed accounts of their transactions with the Indians.

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As the unparalleled resources of the Louisiana Territory became apparent, the private interests involved grew more powerful and insistent. Their special representative was Thomas H. Benton, the eloquent and influential senator from the new state of Missouri. In his "Thirty Years' View", Benton narrates the unequal battle, making no attempt to withhold his own prepossessions. "The experience of the Indian factory system is an illustration of the unfitness of the federal government to carry on any system of trade, the liability of the benevolent designs of the government to be abused, and the difficulty of detecting and redressing abuses in the management of our Indian affairs......As a citizen of a frontier state, I had seen the working of the system-seen its inside working, and knew its operation to be entirely contrary to the benevolent designs of its projectors. He had communicated his views to the Secretary of War in 1820, "but he had too good an opinion of the superintendent (then Mr. Thomas L. McKinney) to believe that anything was wrong with the business and refused to countenance my proposition. Confident that I was right, I determined to bring the question before the Senate -did so brought in a bill to abolish the factories and throw open the fur trade to individual enterprise, and supported the bill with all the facts and reasons of which I was master."14 The matter was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs, which examined a number of witnesses, fur traders, Indian agents, factors, and the Superintendent of Indian Trade, and finally brought a bill providing for the abolition of the United States trading establishment with the Indian tribes, and the opening of the trade to licensed individuals. In support of this bill, Benton brought to bear his exhaustive knowledge of the men and interests involved and a fervid frontier enthusiam that carried the Senate by storm. He proved that the goods offered by the government agents were not adapted to the wants of the Indians, citing in evidence the official invoices, and descanting at length and with truly Ben14 Benson's Thirty Years' View. I, chap. ix.

tonian eloquence on the civilizing influence of the eight gross of Jews'-harps found in the list. He demonstrated that the goods had been bought at extravagant rates and unsuitable places of certain eastern firms, when they might be had at lower cost in Pittsburg or St. Louis. For example, shot was purchased at Georgetown for 122 cents a pound when it was being manufactured at Herculaneum, thirty miles below St. Louis, for five cents; iron implements were purchased at Georgetown and were transported across the Alleghanies at heavy cost when the same articles could have been had at Pittsburg at lower prices. Fully one third the value of the goods, which the government undertook to sell at cost, consisted in transportation charges. 15 Moreover, the furs received through the government factories were habitually sold at Georgetown, by no means the best fur market in the country, and at private contract, not at auction; a practice against which Mr. Astor had put in a vigorous protest. Beaver skins were sold at Georgetown for $2 a pound which would have brought $3 at St. Louis. The cost of getting the pelts to this eastern market amounted to 56 per cent of their selling price.16 This extravagant policy necessitated a scale of prices in factory sales that meant an advance of 40 to 60 per cent on the initial cost of the goods and enabled the private trader to underbid the government agent. The effect was that the Indians preferred to trade with the coureurs du bois sent out by the fur companies. Because of unbusinesslike and unenterprising methods, the government operations had dwindled from year to year until the business transacted at the factories was not sufficient to justify their existence. John R. Bell, one of the scientists of the Long expedition, testified before the Committee on Indian Affairs that he had noticed that the Indians, even in the immediate vicinity of the Missouri and the Kansas River posts, preferred to deal with private traders because these offered better goods at lower prices, while Ramsay Crooks stated that nine tenths of the Indian trade was in private hands. The operations of the year 1821, Benton summarized as "Freightage from Georgetown to St. Louis via New Orleans amounted to 42 cents per lb., via Pittsburg, 9 cents. During the years 1811-1820, the Cost of goods furnished to the factories amounted to.... $466,874 Cost of transportation..

110,542

20,728

$474,007

159,348

Contingent expenses..

39,399

follows: "Green Bay sent nothing and no excuse. Red River sent nothing, factor dead. Marais des Cygnes sent nothing, just established. Fort Edwards does some better, sends $44 worth of beeswax. Chicago does better still, sends $329.98 worth of mink, raccoon, and muskrat skins. Osage better still, sends $1,544.64 worth of skins, being $444 less than the salary paid by the United States to the factor and sub-factor for their personal attention to this important concern. The other three, Prairie du Chien, Choctaw, and Arkansas, sent between them to the amount of about $30,000."17 The total receipts for the year were $31,452.74, not a large showing for a capital of $300,000 and a salary list of $19,250.

The witnesses cited by Senator Benton can hardly be regarded as disinterested. Ramsay Cooks, who gave the most damaging testimony as to the inefficiency of the official agents, was Astor's right hand in the extension of the business of the American Fur Company into the Missouri River field, while Benjamin O'Fallon, Agent of Indian Affairs on the Missouri, had been appointed at the instance of Mr. Astor himself. His invective against the government factory did not stop at inefficiency. "It is generally believed in Missouri, Illinois, and I believe in Michigan, and by almost every officer with whom I have been stationed, that the superintendent and factors are growing rich in the service.”18 John Biddle, the newly appointed Indian agent at Green Bay, was hardly less severe. He said, "A useless institution has been kept up for years by plausible statements on paper, and by general declamation about atrocities which were never committed and horrors to be apprehended which must have excited the smile of the orator himself."19 There was evidently some antagonism between the Office of Indian Trade and the Indian agents, to whom was entrusted the function of licensing the individual traders, while between these last frontier interests there was a suspicious harmony.

The Superintendent of Indian Trade made before the Committee an able defence of the conduct of his office, calling attention to the fact that Congress had imposed a heavy handicap upon the official trade by requiring that goods be bought and

17 Benton's Abridgment of Congressional Debates. VII, 181-6. Cf. American State Papers. Indian Affairs. II, 352.

"American State Papers. Indian Affairs. II, 328.

19 Ibid.

furs sold in the home markets. It was quite true that the stock in trade of the government factory was poor and costly. Some of the goods had been on hand for ten or twenty years. Many of the purchases had been made during and directly following on the recent war and at prices double or treble those now prevailing. The prices charged at the factories were not extravagant when the actual costs of transportation and incidental expenses were taken into account. An effort had been made to meet the criticism as to the stationary nature of the factory business by furnishing goods on credit to certain agents who carried them to the hunting grounds. The machination of private traders, notably of the American Fur Company, had prejudiced the oper ations of the government factories, particularly at Chicago and Green Bay, and these posts were about to be abandoned because the factors were thoroughly discouraged. Mr. McKinney quoted the former factor at Green Bay in proof of this assertion: "The agents of Mr. Astor hold out the idea that they will, ere long, be able to break down the factories; and they menace the Indian agents, and others who may interfere with them, with dismission from office through Mr. Astor."20 The use of liquor in their commerce with the Indians gave the private traders an illicit but all-prevailing advantage, and the government had no machinery adequate to the preventing of this traffic. One Kenzie, an agent of the American Fur Company was detected selling whiskey to the Indians at "Milwalky", but no measures had been taken to stop him. "The Indians are frequently kept in a state of intoxication, giving their furs, etc., at great sacrifice for whiskey. A return to reason will induce many of them to say who sold them whiskey; but Indian testimony is not received." conditions and taking into account the fact that the system had never been finally established but merely continued from one three year period to another, it was not surprising that the gov ernment trade was declining, to quote George C. Sibley, the factor at Fort Osage (1811-1821) "like a wretch under sentence of death."

Under these

This defence of the policy recommended by Washington and maintained for a quarter of a century was but feebly seconded in the debate on the bill. In matter of fact, few of the eastern representatives knew anything about the business and the western men were much of Benton's mind. Lowrie of Pennsylvania stated 20 American State Papers. Indian Affairs. II, 360.

his conviction that the Superintendent was an able and upright administrator, but he conceded that the system had proven ineffective, to some degree for lack of capital, but more from lack of enterprise. "Nothing but individual industry and attention is equal to such a business." The bill abolishing the government trading houses became law March 31, 1821; but a year was allowed for the winding up of the business.21 Benton forced through a supplementary act (May 6, 1822) providing that this task be entrusted not to the present incumbents, but to agents especially appointed for the purpose. He was well satisfied with the result. "When the system was closed up, and the inside of it seen, and the balance struck, it was found how true all the representations were which had been made against it. The Indians had been imposed upon in the quality and prices of the goods sold them; a general trade had been carried on with the whites as well as with the Indians; large per centums had been charged upon everything sold, and the total capital of $300,000 was lost and gone.

9922

The committee appointed to investigate McKinney's conduct of the Indian trade and to ascertain if possible what had become of the invested funds reported (March 1, 1823) that it was believed "the conductors of the Indian Trade were generally men of integrity and honesty, not deficient in talent or enterprise, or any of the requisite qualifications for discharging the duties of their respective stations,"28 hence the failure to recover a sum equal to the original stock seemed "inexplicable." The exSuperintendent proved by cross-examination of the government witnesses and by business correspondence submitted that he had not, during the eight years of his incumbency, engaged in private trade nor had he been under any form of obligation to the merchants who had furnished the major portion of the supplies; that in the estimation of men of experience Georgetown was the best place in the country to purchase Indian goods and to sell furs; that articles so bulky as to mean costly transportation had been purchased, so far as possible, at Pittsburg or St. Louis; that all purchases had been made in the open market and with rigid scrutiny of quantity and quality of goods furnished, while the system of accounting adopted was well calculated to preclude

21 "The law of 1811 was continued to June 3, 1822, and no longer." "Benton's Thirty Years' View. I, ch. ix.

23 American State Papers. Indian Affairs. II, 417.