St. Louis' fur trade
Before Lewis and Clark : the story of the Chouteaus, the French dynasty that ruled America's frontier
Shirley Christian.
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
Shortly after Meriweather Lewis reached St. Louis in 1803 to plan for his voyage to the Pacific with William Clark, he prepared his first packet of flora and fauna from west of the Mississippi and dispatched it to President Jefferson. The cuttings, which were later planted in Philadelphia and Virginia, were supplied by Lewis's new French friend Pierre Chouteau, who took them from a tree growing in the garden of his mansion. One of the best-known families in French America, the Chouteaus had guarded the gates to the West for generations and had built fortunes from fur trading, land speculation, finance, and railroads, and from supplying anything needed to survive in the region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. From their St. Louis base, the Chouteaus conquered the two-thousand-plus-mile length of the Missouri River, put down the first European roots at the future site of Kansas City and in present-day Oklahoma, and left their names and imprints on lands stretching to the Canadian border. Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier is the extraordinary story of a wealthy, powerful, charming, and manipulative family who dominated business and politics in the Louisiana Purchase territory before the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, and for decades afterward.
The first Chouteaus : river barons of early St. Louis
William E. Foley and C. David Rice.
Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2000.
For more than half a century, Auguste and Pierre Chouteau dominated trade and enterprise in the Mississippi Valley. In their various roles as merchants, Indian traders, bankers, land speculators, governmental advisors, public officials, and community leaders, the Chouteau brothers exerted a tremendous influence on westward expansion. This is the first full account of their lives and illustrious careers.
Heaven is a long way off : a novel of the mountain men
Win Blevins.
New York : Forge, 2006.
"A Tom Doherty Associates Book."
Three western narratives
Washington Irving.
New York : Library of America ; [New York] : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Putnam, c2004.
America's first internationally acclaimed author, Washington Irving established his fame with tales of the Hudson Valley in the days of Dutch rule, and then spent 17 years in Europe mining the Old World for stories. When he finally returned to the United States, he embarked on a trilogy of books on the American West that would prove decisive in molding his compatriots' conception of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Northwest. Irving's own encounter with the West came in 1832 when he accompanied the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on a month-long journey to what is now eastern Oklahoma. His account of that trip, A Tour on the Prairies (1835), described wild landscape, rugged inhabitants, and dramatic chases and hunts with an eye for romantic sublimity and a keen appreciation of the frontiersman's "secret of personal freedom."
Today St. Louis has a very diverse economy. It is a major center of transportation, medical science, botany, brewing, and other industries. But 240 years ago, there was only one major industry. The city was founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclede and his stepson, Auguste Chouteau, as a furtrading village.
Laclede was a French trader eager to obtain furs from the Indians who lived along the Missouri River. In August 1763 he led a flotilla of men and supplies from New Orleans up the Mississippi to find a site for the village where much of this business would take place. Several miles below where the two mighty rivers meet, they found a bluff on the west bank of the Mississippi that was safe from flooding. They decided to build there. On February 14, 1764 the 14-year-old Chouteau led the crew of men in clearing land and building houses where the Arch grounds now stand.
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Which Louis?
Many people may be aware that St. Louis was named after a French king named Louis. But which one? There were 19 French kings with that name (the famous French creativity seems to have failed them when it came to naming kings!). |
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Historians used to believe the city was named after Louis XV, since he reigned when Laclede founded it. But it's now thought that the Louis in question was actually Louis IX, an actual saint who was canonized in 1297. |
In early St. Louis, fur pelts were actually used as money, since few people had gold or silver coins. Almost everyone was involved in the fur trade. Few farmed, though the soil was fertile. As a result, St. Louis often had to import food from Ste. Genevieve. The village was nicknamed "Paincourt", French for "short of bread (food)".
St. Louis has grown into a major city from a frontier village. Its economy has also grown, becoming more diversified. And with plenty of St. Louisans in the food industry, hopefully there is little possibility that the city will run short of food again!
Article by: St. Louis Public Library staff.
