Historical interpretive essay by Ray Breun, October 1981. The author’s period terminology and claims about colonial society, families and race are preserved and attributed; they require independent verification before factual reuse.
A cascade of explorers came down the central Mississippi Valley in the seventeenth century. Marquette, Joliet, Duluth. Cadillac, Hennepin and LaSalle are just a few names from those early days. Actually. Cadillac did not make it to the Mississippi. but he was governor of Louisiana Territory from 1712 to 1716 and he also founded Detroit. Hennepin was really more Belgium than French, but he and LaSalle were the team that founded Fort Crevecoeur near what is now Peoria. Illinois. Hennepin left the fort ahead of LaSalle. was captured by Indians just south of where the Illinois River enters the Mississippi, and taken to the north where he is immortalized in county and street names in Minnesota. LaSalle continued down the Mississippi unaware that Hennepin had been captured and came to the mouth of the great river on 9 April 1682.
He claimed all the land for France and was the first to give it the name Louisiiana. Ironically he was killed by his own men while seeking the mouth of the river from the Gulf of Mexico in 1687.
The English and the Spanish were putting the squeeze on the French when Laclede, Maxent and company arranged for a trade monopoly with the Osage Indians at the mouth of the Missouri in 1763. Maxent stayed in New Orleans while Pierre Laclede headed north before winter set in.
In November he picked his spot and settled in at Fort Chartres. Late on Tuesday, 14 February 1764, his crew of engages landed at what would become St. Louis.
He was not there when, on 15 February, they began to clear the bluff and sort out the homesites from the trading post buildings.
He was busy marketing his location on the west side of the river out of English control now that the French had lost the French and Indian War and had to surrender all lands east of the river to the British.
Some of the people from Fort Crevecoeur were among the emigres who moved west over the next few months to turn the trading post into a medium sized (for that time) river village.
It was west of the British lands, near the Missouri River and above flood waters on the limestone bluff which later was to become part of the bedrock for the Gateway Arch.
When Laclede finally did settle down, he brought his paramour, the estranged wife of one Rene (Renatus) Chouteau, to live with him and his new neighbors.
He built her a separate house and her single legitimate son, Auguste, lived with her. Laclede had four children by her, all named Chouteau and all eventually to become the aristocracy of that era.
He died in 1778 near the mouth of the Arkansas River where he was buried.
He was apparently on his way back to St. Louis after two years of business in New Orleans.
From Laclede’s time until well into the 1840’s, the French influence was central to the “spirit” of “the city.
The opposite of curmudgeon, the French were at least gregarious — with anyone who happened to be around. Early American Puritan missionaries who passed through the city always commented on the French parties. Men and women would party together in the streets and on top of that, they apparently preferred to party on Sunday.
Even the blacks who lived in the town partied with the French.
They had no social distinctions – except that their parties were with distinction and known up and down the river .
The fur traders were friendly even with the Indians. Jacques Clamorgan has been reputed to have had 23 wives — 19 of them among the Indian tribes he visited when he collected his furs.
He probably did not have quite that many, but everyone is sure he had at least four. Clamorgan provided for all and the children were educated.
He gave Esther, a black woman, a block of what is now Laclede’s Landing and she was a free landowner in St. Louis in 1793.
The French were the only European group to forthrightly mix with all the inhabitants of any land they came upon.
They did not disparage “half-breeds” as the English and Spanish.
They did not name locations for Dry Gulch or Snake River, but preferred the names of saints or rulers.
Some have said they named their cities after saints to help make up for all their gregarious sins!
But it would be a mistake to consider that era one of idyllic charm if not virtuous. Laclede was not the only one to die of malaria (ague, as it was called).
The British attacked in 1780 the day after the Corpus Christi party, finding a lot of the village suffering from a hangover. George Rogers Clark came to the village in 1778 and brought the American Revolution to the Mississippi. Rumors of Indian wars disturbed the river constantly.
When Napoleon sold Louisiana to Jefferson, the French wept openly.
When Amos Stoddard claimed St. Louis on 9-10 March 1804, the French cried in the streets — but still had another party to help overcome their sadness. Old Clamorgan eventually became a federal judge and one of his daughters, Pelagie, has Rutger Street name after her. Cyprian Clamorgan, another decendent,• wrote about the Negro Aristocracy of St. Louis a few decades later.
They became their own historians and made up a lot of the stories we take for truth.
There were two kinds’ of French, the French-French and the Canadian French.
We have talked about the French-French from New Orleans and France.
The Canadian French never quite made it in St. Louis.
There is no Robidoux Street, yet Joseph Robidoux II came to St. Louis quite early from Montreal, and his son, Joseph Robidoux III, founded St. Joseph, Missouri, in plain competition with the Chouteaus of St. Louis.
In fact, one of the Chouteau boys had to go found Kansas City to undercut St. Joseph.
If there was any quarrelsomeness among the French, it was this “class” hatred between the French and the Canadian French.
All across the West one can find where one disrupts the financial plans of the other, often by getting the Spanish to put them in jail and ship them to Mexico. Several international incidents happened – this way, but more of that in other articles.
The Romans used to say, In Vino Veritas.
This is quite true of the French.
They were indeed fermented wine — not at all curmudgeon.
After all, who invented soiree?
Originally published in The Paper, October 1981.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: The essay’s sweeping claims about French racial and class relations, family histories and dates are historical interpretations, not independently verified conclusions. Period terminology retained and attributed.
Original source: SD_Times1981_10.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
