fort. Tolmie spent the year there and wrote about the region extensively. The men were dependent upon the surrounding native villages for sustenance because they were unable to find much game to hunt. Relations with neighboring Indigenous people began to deepen, the officers of the post meeting with Chief Gray Head of the Steilacooms in 1833. Trading with the nearby Puyallup tribe and more distant S'Klallams developed in the same year. Fort Nisqually was operated and served by Scottish gentlemen, Native Americans, Hawaiian Kanakas, French-Canadians, Métis, West Indians, Englishmen and, in later years, a handful of Americans. Fort Nisqually grew from an obscure trading post to a major international trading establishment, despite not being a true military outpost. The fort's main export was beaver pelts that could be used for making a beaver-pelt top hat. Over the time Fort Nisqually functioned as a trading post, about 5,000 beaver, 3,000 muskrat, 2,000 raccoon and 1,500 river otter furs were collected. Puget Sound Agricultural Company Founded in 1840, the Pugets Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC) was formed as a subsidiary of the HBC to meet its contractual obligations with the Russian-American Company in the RAC-HBC Agreement. Fort Nisqually and Cowlitz Farm were attached to the new venture, though it remained staffed and managed by HBC personnel. In 1841 mostly Métis families from the Red River colony were hired by the PSAC to become pastoralists and farmers upon its two stations. After traveling overland to Fort Vancouver with James Sinclair, 14 emigrant families from the Red River colony chose Fort Nisqually as their final destination. The station was removed in 1843 to be closer to Edmonds Marsh and Sequalitchew Creek, putting it in proximity of a water source and timber. Fort Nisqually started to export livestock and crops for local consumption and export to principally to Russian Alaska, the Kingdom of Hawaii and Alta California. The herds of cattle, originally from Mexico, numbered over 2,000 in 1845 and supplied many of the HBC forts in the region. The sheep herds maintained were "aristocrats of the wool breeds", being composed of mixtures of Chevoit, Leicester and Southdown breeds. The flocks numbered almost 6,000 in 1845, doubled in size by 1849 but began a decrease of numbers until by 1856 the station had a little over 5,000. Tolmie was the manager of the PSAC from 1843 to 1857, overseeing the pastoral and agricultural projects from Fort