A thriving business developed around colonial traders, many of them Scots-Irish, who used pack horses to carry their goods and travel throughout Native American communities in what was then considered the interior, western wilderness away from Low Country settlements. In 1692 the South Carolina Proprietors expressed their hope that traders would reside at "Savannah town" (McCrady p. 237). In 1698, Colonel Thomas Welch reached the Mississippi River on a Native American trail, which came to be known as the Upper Trading Path to the Chickasaw homeland (Atkinson p. 25). Traders offered the Shawnee and other Indians iron and woolen goods in exchange for the dressed skins (mostly deer) which they shipped by the thousands from Savannah Town via oared 'periagoe' ("pirogue" in French) to Charles Town, and thence to Europe. The colonial authorities built Fort Moore nearby in 1715 and garrisoned it with perhaps twenty-five soldiers. In 1740 settlers established a ferry service across the Savannah River.