However, the contemporary documents of the day were full of details concerning the companies; and they did possess considerable importance at certain times in the settlement of the West, both because they in places stimulated that settlement, and because in other places they retarded it, inasmuch as they kept out actual settlers, who could not pre-empt land which had been purchased at low rates from some legislative body by the speculators.

The companies were sometimes formed by men who wished themselves to lead emigrants into the longed-for region, but more often they were purely speculative in character, and those who founded them wished only to dispose of them at an advantage to third parties.

Their history is inextricably mixed with the history of the intrigues with and against the Spaniards and British in the West.

The men who organized them wished to make money.

Their object was to obtain title to or possession of the lands, and it was quite a secondary matter with them whether their title came from the United States, England, or Spain.