As early as June 10, 1854, the Missourians held a meeting at Salt Creek Valley, a trading post west from Fort Leavenworth, at which a "Squatter's Claim Association" was organized. In newspaper articles they said they were in favor of making Kansas a slave state "if it should require half the citizens of Missouri, musket in hand, to emigrate there, and even sacrifice their lives in accomplishing so desirable an end." In another paper they warned: "The abolitionists will probably not be interrupted if they settle north of the fortieth parallel of north latitude, but south of that line, and within Kansas Territory they need not set foot. It is decreed by the people who live adjacent that their institutions are to be established, and candor compels us to advise accordingly."