Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/19

 trade it found itself worried because of the rich packs taken out of the country by the opposition.

Both the A. F. C. and the opposition were one in not desiring immigration. The opposition, however, was not concerned with any problems of placating and conserving the Indian. One depended for trade on the good-will and efforts of the Indian, the other went in and secured pelts despite the Indian.

Lander was not given to analysis. He knew the steamboat had come to remain a fixture and that the days of the flatboat were over. He knew the keelboat still persisted as a great factor in the upper Missouri trade, but he did not realize it would have followed the flatboat long before his day had not the flimsy structure of the steam craft made steamboat travel hazardous. He worked for the inexorable A. F. C, a huge and smoothly running machine, and he admired the privateering of Ashley's men. He credited the A. F. C. with eliminating British influence in the Indian country. He should have given the credit to the advent of the American steamboat What neither State, Church, nor Army could effect had been brought about by superstition. The Indian had decided that those who used a "fire canoe" must be more mighty than those who did not.