Following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, large numbers of Native Americans were forcibly relocated to designated lands west of the Mississippi River. This created concentrated populations of displaced, demoralized, and often traumatized Indians, frequently resettled in desolate, barren country where hunting and farming were difficult. In this environment of an already-disrupted, fragmented society, the demand for alcohol was high, and white businessmen quickly discovered that bison hunters would trade hides for alcohol at a fraction of their commercial value. Hundreds of new businesses were established to take advantage of the growing market for buffalo hide, used for machinery belts, army boots, robes and rugs. On his wagon trip from the Arkansas to the South Platte in the winter of 1839–1840, Indian trader James Beckwourth bartered twenty gallons of whiskey for sixteen horses and over two hundred buffalo robes from the Indians. Beckwourth reported that "one pint of alcohol, costing no more than six cents [in Missouri], was [diluted] into five times the quantity of whiskey, usually one pint for one buffalo robe," which would sell for more than ten dollars in St. Louis. By 1841, businessman William Bent was shipping over 27,000 buffalo hides annually to St. Louis, most of them traded from Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Kiowa hunters in exchange for whiskey. To evade federal laws prohibiting whites from selling alcohol to Indians, many traders (including Bent) married Native American women and were formally inducted into their tribes.