[Footnote 203: On this company consult Irving, Astoria; Bancroft, Northwest Coast, I., ch. xvi.; II., chs. vii-x; _Mag. Amer. Hist._ XIII., 269; Franchere, Narrative; Ross, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon, or Columbia River (1849); Wis. Fur Trade MSS. (State Hist. Sec.).]
[Footnote 204: U.S. Statutes at Large, III., 332. Cf. laws in 1802 and 1822.]
[Footnote 205: Wis. Hist. Colls., I., 103; Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 9. The Warren brothers, who came to Wisconsin in 1818, were descendants of the Pilgrims and related to Joseph Warren who fell at Bunker Hill; they came from Berkshire, Mass., and marrying the half-breed daughters of Michael Cadotte, of La Pointe, succeeded to his trade.]
[Footnote 206: See the objections of British traders, Mich. Pioneer Colls., XVI., 76 ff. The Northwest Company tried to induce the British government to construe the treaty so as to prevent the United States from erecting the forts, urging that a fort at Prairie du Chien would "deprive the Indians of their 'rights and privileges'", guaranteed by the treaty.]
The system of public trading houses goes back to colonial days. At first in Plymouth and Jamestown all industry was controlled by the commonwealth, and in Massachusetts Bay the stock company had reserved the trade in furs for themselves before leaving England.[207] The trade was frequently farmed out, but public "truck houses" were established by the latter colony as early as 1694-5.[208] Franklin, in his public dealings with the Ohio Indians, saw the importance of regulation of the trade, and in 1753 he wrote asking James Bowdoin of Massachusetts to procure him a copy of the truckhouse law of that colony, saying that if it had proved to work well he thought of proposing it for Pennsylvania.[209] The reply of Bowdoin showed that Massachusetts furnished goods to the Indians at wholesale prices and so drove out the French and the private traders. In 1757 Virginia adopted the system for a time,[210] and in 1776 the Continental Congress accepted a plan presented by a committee of which Franklin was a member,[211] whereby £140,000 sterling was expended at the charge of the United Colonies for Indian goods to be sold at moderate prices by factors of the congressional commissioners.[212] The bearing of this act upon the governmental powers of the Congress is worth noting.