numbers and reducing their enemy's. According to David Thompson, by 1787 the Blackfoot conquest of Shoshone territory was complete. The Shoshone moved across the Rockies or far to the south, and only rarely came onto the Plains to hunt or trade. The Blackfoot claimed an area from the North Saskatchewan River in the north to the upper reaches of the Missouri River in the south, and from the Rockies east for . Blackfoot control of the sources of horses was not secure, however, and neither were their hunting grounds. From the northeast the Iron Confederacy (mostly Cree and Assiniboine but also Stoney, Saulteaux and others) were losing their position as middlemen traders as the HBC and the North West Company moved inland, and they were instead taking up horse-mounted bison hunting on the very territory the Blackfoot had recently captured from the Shoshone. Pre-Confederation The first European to reach Alberta was likely a Frenchman such as Pierre La Vérendrye or one of his sons, who had travelled inland to Manitoba in 1730, establishing forts and trading furs directly with the native peoples there. Exploring the river system further, the French fur traders would have likely engaged the Blackfoot speaking people of Alberta directly; proof of this being that the word for "Frenchman" in the Blackfoot language means, "real white man". By the mid-eighteenth century, they were siphoning off most of the best furs before they could reach the Hudson's Bay trading posts further inland, sparking tension between the rival companies. The first written account of present-day Alberta comes to us from the fur trader Anthony Henday, who explored the vicinity of present-day Red Deer and Edmonton in 1754–55. He spent the winter with a group of Blackfoot, with whom he traded and went buffalo hunting. Other important early explorers of Alberta include Peter Fidler, David Thompson, Peter Pond, Alexander MacKenzie, and George Simpson. The first European settlement was founded at Fort Chipewyan by MacKenzie in 1788, although Fort Vermilion disputes this claim, having also been founded in 1788. The early history of Alberta is closely tied to the fur trade, and the rivalries associated with it. The first battle was between English and French traders, and often took the form of open warfare. Most of central and southern Alberta is part of the Hudson Bay watershed, and in 1670 was claimed by the English Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) as part