<P> Competition between the two powers escalated over dominance in the trade, with the United States eventually gaining the upper hand . The flourishing company of Bryant and Sturgis itself grew to become the most influential private business venture, facilitated by its associate William Gale, taking in four fifths of all hides from California . The influence of Bryant and Sturgis proved so pervasive that locals equated the company's city of headquarters, Boston, with the entire United States . Thus, American influence in the region can be traced back as far as the 1820s . </P> <P> California, during the tenure of the successful hide trade, represented a significant crossroads of various cultures, a frontier shaped by diverse peoples from around the world . Native Americans including the Tlingit, Chinook, Kodiak, Haida, Aleut and Tsimshian groups as well as others often interacted with white traders, at times giving way to positive and negative experiences . Often seeking areas where their trade was less prominent, otter - hunting Tlingit Native Americans would board the ships of foreign captains to travel from Alaska elsewhere . Undoubtedly, Tlingits benefited from commercial trade as well, obtaining objects like copper, porcelain, buttons, and dishes that they may not have come upon otherwise . Often, American or British traders and sailors from the east would stay in California, becoming some of the first Americans to settle in the region, living and intermarrying with Spanish families as a result of Mexico's relaxed and welcoming laws regarding resident aliens . Eventually, by the 1840s, the originally booming hide and tallow trade began to diminish in significance, the cause proving to be the overabundance of hides now in the eastern markets of Boston created by the trade itself . </P> <P> Stories and accounts of the region such as Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s Two Years Before the Mast and Alfred Robinson's Life in California, seen through the eyes of sailors and voyagers, gave rise to a great fascination and recognition of the California region . Setting an important historical antecedent, the California hide trade contributed to a dream of Western promise and success in the minds of Americans back East which helped inspire droves of immigrants during the Gold Rush, according to the historian John Caughey, who states, "The hide and tallow trade had made California an outpost of New England". Ultimately, the California hide trade set an important precedent which would impact the way the people looked at the West for decades to come . For those interested in further information, The Peabody Essex Museum located in Salem, Massachusetts provides one of many, unique places where one can learn firsthand about the California hide trade . </P>

What was the name for native hawaiians who worked as hide droghers