An abundance of game animals across Cumberland Gap drew long hunters into the region for months and sometimes years to harvest deer, beaver, bear, elk, and other animals for profitable pelts. As the supply of game animals declined, competition for meat and pelts between American Indian tribes and the long hunters intensified, and friction grew further as more colonists entered the territory hoping to settle it. Colonel Richard Henderson, a land speculator and leader of the Transylvania Company, sought to settle in Kentucky and in the treaty at Sycamore Shoals in 1775 exchanged weapons, tools, and other goods with the Cherokee Indians for 20 million acres, including the right of way through Cumberland Gap. Henderson then hired Daniel Boone to blaze a trail through the wilderness to Kentucky, a route that became known to thousands of pioneers as the Wilderness Trail.