In 1807 one of these restless adventurers reached Yellowstone Lake, and another Lake Itasca; and their little trading stations were built far up the Missouri and the Platte.
The West Gradually Fills with Population.
While these first rough explorations of the far West were taking place, the old West was steadily filling with population and becoming more and more a coherent portion of the Union.

In the treaties made from time to time with the Northwestern Indians, they ceded so much land that at last the entire northern bank of the Ohio was in the hands of the settlers.
But the Indians still held Northwestern Ohio and the northern portions of what are now Indiana and Illinois, so that the settlement at Detroit was quite isolated; as were the few little stockades, or groups of fur-traders' huts, in what are now northern Illinois and Wisconsin.

The Southern Indians also surrendered much territory, in various treaties.
Georgia got control of much of the Indian land within her State limits.
All the country between Knoxville and Nashville became part of Tennessee, so that the eastern and middle portions of the State were no longer sundered by a jutting fragment of wilderness, infested by Indian war parties whenever there were hostilities with the savages.

The only Indian lands in Tennessee or Kentucky were those held by the Chickasaws, between the Tennessee and the Mississippi; and the Chickasaws were friendly to the Americans.
Power of the West.
Year by year the West grew better able to defend itself if attacked, and more formidable in the event of its being necessary to undertake offensive warfare.

Kentucky and Tennessee had become populous States, no longer fearing Indian inroads; but able on the contrary to equip powerful armies for the aid of the settlers in the more scantily peopled regions north and south of them.