Part 19 (1/2)

”THE FUTURE GREAT”

BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY

Situated at the heart of the continent, midway between the East and West, the North and South, St. Louis is a unique mixture of the characteristics of all sections of the United States. In the early seventies a weird character named L.U. Reavis wrote a book called _St. Louis, the Future Great City of the West_, in which he advocated the removal hither of the seat of the national Government and predicted great things for the city.

The fourth of American cities in population, St. Louis is preparing to hold a World's Fair in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the purchase of the Louisiana territory, on a scale of magnificence which attracts universal attention. With the completion of the Chicago drainage ca.n.a.l, destined soon to be a s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l connecting Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River, with the necessary improvement of the Mississippi to its mouth, and with the certain construction of an Isthmian ca.n.a.l, St.

Louis is sure to be in as close touch with the world at large as if it were a seacoast city. Always the natural commercial centre of the Mississippi Valley, since it became the focus of a mighty network of railroads St.

Louis has been the market of the prosperous West, the new South and the great Southwest, with its wealth of agriculture, mining, manufactures, and its almost magic development, shown, for instance, in the fact that Texas is now only a few thousand behind Missouri in population, and must in consequence of the recent discoveries of enormous oil lands soon overtake States like Illinois and Ohio and Pennsylvania. The prophecies of the city's greatness are coming to realization. Its future is here, but bright as the future is, it is not so bright as to allure us into forgetting the picturesque past.

The old town on the Mississippi has ever been modest to a degree that has caused the thoughtless to make mock of its conservatism, but the steadiness of character and the regard only for the realities of progress which have marked St. Louis have their justification in that they have resulted in a city known in times of depression and panic as ”the solid city.” A city that owns itself, with a proper sense of dignity, it has never advertised itself in the modern meretricious fas.h.i.+on. And so the story of St. Louis, an honest tale, will speed best being simply told.

[Ill.u.s.tration COLONEL AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU, ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF ST. LOUIS.

FROM A PAINTING IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]

St. Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede Liguest and a few companions, all French _voyageurs_, in 1764; at least it was in that year that Laclede's lieutenant, Auguste Chouteau, cleared away the site of the present city.

Laclede Liguest, or, as he is sometimes known, Liguest Laclede, a merchant of New Orleans, had from the French Government a monopoly of the fur trade in the Missouri River country. He left New Orleans with his family and a small party in August, 1763, with the intention of founding a town near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Shortly after the town was laid out occurred the cession to Great Britain of the Illinois country, on the east bank of the Mississippi. The French inhabitants of that country having followed from the north in the wake of Marquette in 1673, and of La Salle in 1678, hated the English, and began to move over to the new town, which soon grew into importance. A trading point for the Indians, Laclede and his companions so managed them that there was none of the friction which marked the contact elsewhere of the English and the natives. When the laying out of the city began a band of one hundred and fifty warriors, with their squaws and papooses, outnumbering the whites five to one, appeared and camped near the strangers. The Frenchmen treated the savages with such tact and kindness that they not only did no harm, but even of their own volition a.s.sisted in the work. The first cellar was excavated with the aid of the squaws, who carried off the clay in baskets, and were paid in beads and other trinkets which Laclede had brought up from New Orleans. The Indians became so friendly that they were a hindrance rather than a help, and finally, to induce them to depart, Laclede hinted that the French soldiers at Fort Chartres were to be summoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration THE OLD CHOUTEAU MANSION BUILT FOR LACLEDE IN 1765. FROM DAGUERREOTYPE IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]

Shortly after the little village was begun, news came that the territory of Louisiana had been ceded to Spain. The French Governor, M. d'Abadie, who announced the fact to the people with tears, is said to have died of grief.

St. Ange de Bellerive became Commandant or Governor-General in 1765, inst.i.tuted a government, and demeaned himself in such manner generally that unto this day he is remembered affectionately in every published history of the town. The first two grants of land in the village were made to Laclede by De Bellerive, August 11, 1766. The Spaniards do not appear to have paid much attention to the village of St. Louis, for there was some doubt whether De Bellerive had any authority to make grants. Although the best authorities agree that De Bellerive acted with the authority and consent of the Commandant-General of New Orleans, it seems that he was practically elected Governor by the inhabitants. It is amusing to read in a history of St. Louis and Missouri, published in 1870, that De Bellerive in 1776, began to make grants, ”hoping for a retrocession of the country to France, when the grants would be legalized by confirmation.” The first marriage in the new colony was celebrated April 20, 1766, the contracting parties being Toussaint Honen and Marie Baugenon. The first mortgage was recorded September, 1766. It was specified that payment should be made in peltries, though no definite value was attached to the number of deer hides to be delivered by Pierre Berger to Francis Latour.

August 11, 1767, news came that Spain was making ready to take possession of the country. The transfer had been made by secret treaty in 1762. The people accepted the situation in a sort of dumb rage. The following year a body of troops arrived under the command of a man named Rios, acting under the authority of Don Antonio d'Ulloa, Governor of Louisiana. To the joy of the inhabitants, De Bellerive was not disturbed in his office, and the Spanish troops left in the summer of 1769.

It was the great distinction of De Bellerive that he was the friend of Pontiac, the Ottawa chieftain, and about the time of the departure of the Spaniards, Pontiac arrived at St. Louis. He represented all the poetry and n.o.bility, the grandeur and genius of the Indian character. After Red Jacket, he was the greatest Indian the New World had known. Dreaming of driving the English into the sea he had confederated the tribes between the Allegheny and the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Lakes into a league against them. He had been known and beloved by the gallant but unfortunate Montcalm at Quebec. He had partic.i.p.ated in the ambuscade in which Braddock with his life had paid the penalty of narrow-mindedness, and had planned the ma.s.sacre of Michilimackinack, in which more than two thousand of the English had lost their lives. The French ”loved him for the enemies he had made,” and he was ”feted and caressed,” says an early chronicler, ”by many of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of the village.” St. Ange de Bellerive entertained the warrior at the house of Madame Chouteau, but Pontiac was now a broken man. His dream of driving back the English beyond the c.u.mberland had faded. His allies had been seduced from his support by presents and by firewater. He, too, had made the acquaintance of the fiery liquor, and drink was then such a pa.s.sion with him that De Bellerive and his friends not only endeavored to prevent the sale thereof to him in the village, but tried to dissuade him from crossing the river to Cahokia in response to the invitations of certain of his friends there. Not to be dissuaded, Pontiac crossed the river in the uniform of a French officer, which had been given him by Montcalm. Wandering on the outskirts of the village of Cahokia, he was tomahawked by a Kaskaskia Indian, who had been given a barrel of whiskey to do the deed by an English trader named Williamson. His friend De Bellerive had the chief's remains brought to St.

Louis, and they were buried somewhere in the vicinity of the site of the present Southern Hotel, in the corridor of which was placed, in 1901, a handsome tablet to the unfortunate warrior's memory. Whether Pontiac was a.s.sa.s.sinated in accordance with official English instructions, or met his death in consequence of a private grudge, was long a matter of dispute, but there is no doubt that the pa.s.sionate and sympathetic Frenchmen believed for many long years that the chief was killed to relieve the English of the danger of his presence and a possible utilization of his undoubted abilities by the Power in possession of the west bank of the Mississippi.

Pontiac's death, however, was promptly avenged upon the Illinois Indians by members of the tribes with which he had been in alliance.

Next came Don Alexander O'Reilly to take charge of the territory of Louisiana. He arrived at New Orleans at the head of three thousand men to enforce his authority. There was need for the soldiery, for though seven years had elapsed since the cession of the territory, the Spaniards had never actually taken possession. The people were still French to the core.

When they heard that Don O'Reilly was coming they even conferred together upon the advisability of meeting him with force and preventing his landing.

The head men of the town counselled against this, however, and their advice prevailed, but such was the spirit of insubordination, so many were the execrations heaped upon the Spaniards, so frequent were the threats of violence against them that Don Alexander had at once to adopt stern measures. He promptly arrested a dozen of the ringleaders, had five of them publicly shot, and the others, except one who committed suicide, sent as prisoners to Cuba. The Spanish code was put into operation throughout the territory, and O'Reilly's deputy, Lieutenant-Governor Piernas, arriving in St. Louis in 1770, took possession of St. Louis, with the help of De Bellerive, wisely conciliating the villagers. The village settled into peace. The church, for which ground had been set aside even before the founders of the town had prepared to build their own homes, was dedicated, June 24, 1770, with solemn ceremonies. Where that first church of flattened logs set on end with the interstices filled with mortar stood, there stands a church to-day, and, says Elihu Shepard, since that time ”the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d on that block has not been suspended for a single day.” All De Bellerive's acts were formally confirmed by Piernas, and the little settlement forgot its woes under a benign administration, which recognized village prejudices, and shut its eyes to the loyalty everywhere apparent to France.

[Ill.u.s.tration OLD FRENCH POST-HOUSE. BUILT IN 1770. INHABITED UNTIL 1870.]

Piernas narrowly escaped a.s.sa.s.sination at the hands of an Osage chieftain who thought himself insulted at a meeting at the Commandant's house. The Osage, while drinking with other Indians, divulged his intention to kill the Governor, whereupon a Shawnee warrior stabbed him to the heart. The slain chief was buried with honors in the big mound to the north of the village, an eminence that gave to St. Louis for many years the name of ”The Mound City.”

For twelve years the village was orderly and quiet. The people liked the Governor who succeeded Piernas, but the next, Don Fernando de Leyba,--”a drunken, avaricious, and feeble-minded man, without a single redeeming qualification,” they did not like. He came upon the scene in 1778, at a critical time. The American Revolution was on. The French and Spaniards, hating the English, were inclined to sympathize with the colonists, so far as they knew or cared about things happening so far away. Fearing an attack of English and Indians, the villagers threw up a trench and stockade about the town, having three gates on the sides other than the one on the river, and built a fort in the centre of the city at what is now, approximately, Fourth and Walnut streets, and supplied it with four small cannon and one company of soldiers. The people were afraid to till the fields outside the trench and stockade, and the men who might have braved attack were busy building the defences. In the spring of 1780 fears of a famine forced the men into the fields to plant the spring seeds.

On the morning of May 26, 1780, the attack came. It was led by Canadian-French renegades, the main body being made up of about one thousand Upper Mississippi Indians. The attacking party came from the north, slew forty of the workers, carried fifteen up the river as prisoners, in their war canoes, while the rest made their way back to the fortifications, amid the booming of the cannon, which saved the fort.

Leyba, who was drunk, appeared upon the scene, it is said, sprawling in a wheelbarrow and muttering incoherently, after the Indians had been repulsed. He died a month later, covered with ignominy.

The succeeding Lieutenant-Governor, Francisco Cruzat, thoroughly fortified the town, which was never afterwards molested by the savages. While the more extensive fortifications were in process of construction, indeed to the peace of 1783, the price of provisions in St. Louis was high, and visitors from New Orleans, Ste. Genevieve, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and other settlements nicknamed the place ”_Pain Court_,” or ”short of bread.” Still, it was a time of prosperity. The town grew, and nothing alarming happened until, in 1785, when the people were terrified by their first sight of the ”June rise” of the Mississippi. They saw the great yellow stream spread out over the American Bottoms on the east bank and the Columbia Bottom on the west bank to the north, until it became a vast lake reaching farther than the eye could distinctly see. They saw the mighty flood go raging past, black with the trunks of mighty trees torn up by the wild waters, the villages of Cahokia and Kaskaskia submerged, crops ruined, cattle drowned, and houses melting into the yellow sea. St. Louis was flooded to what is now Main Street, and part of the people were preparing to move farther up the high bank that ran back from the stream, when the waters began to recede, and the anxiety of the town was relieved. The people called this ”_l'annee des grands eaux_,”--”the year of the great waters.” There have been many such floods since, but none more awe-inspiring than this, seen in a setting of virgin wilderness. The flood increased the population of the city, however, for the settlers in the bottoms went to town and joined in its upbuilding. In those days, notwithstanding all the dangers of war and flood, St. Louis seems to have been a gay place. Society was simple, yet retaining an indefinable air of elegance that bore the flavor of old France. Even if they were ”short of bread,” the people were hospitable, a trait which still persists characteristic and conspicuous. The French element has almost wholly disappeared in newer elements, but there yet lingers, somehow, the atmosphere of deliberate ease among the people, even in the pressure of modern business. So orderly was this frontier town that during the entire period of the French and Spanish dominations but one murder was reported.

[Ill.u.s.tration OLD MOUND, ST. LOUIS, REMOVED IN 1869. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]

Following the annalists we learn that the city's commerce in those early days was much hampered by a band of pirates that infested the river at a place called Grand Tower, midway between the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Lurking at this point, where the stream is very swift, the pirates would dart out and attack the boats plying between New Orleans and St.

Louis, kill the boatmen and seize the goods. They secured rich spoil of hides from the down trade, and many luxurious articles from the up trade--treasures even from distant France. One _voyageur_ north bound escaped the pirates through the strategy and courage of a negro who won the confidence of the captors of the barge and the sympathy of two negro slaves of the pirates. At a signal the negroes hurled the buccaneers off the barge, and either shot them or left them to drown. The barge crew then took the boat once more, went back to New Orleans, and told their story to the Governor, who issued an order that all boats leaving for St. Louis should go in company. In obedience in the spring of 1788 ten barges started up the river with crews well armed. Arrived at the rendezvous of the robbers they found none, but they recovered, however, much of the plunder that had been stored away and brought it to St. Louis. The year of their arrival was known for generations as ”_l'annee des dix bateaux_,”--”the year of the ten boats.”

St. Louis traded not only with New Orleans but with Canada as well. The Indians gave no trouble up stream or down. The Spanish Government wanted settlers, and was liberal in granting land. We read that ”there were no mails or taverns, but every house was a welcome house to new comers.” In 1798 the population of Upper Louisiana was 6028, of whom 1080 were colored. The population had risen in 1804 to 10,340. In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase was made, and in 1804 St. Louis ”contained one hundred and eighty houses built of hewn logs and stone, the latter being generally the rendezvous of the most wealthy, and surrounded by a wall of the same material, enclosing the whole block, which continued in use many years, protecting the fine fruit trees, which shaded the mansion.” Frame houses became fas.h.i.+onable after the transfer to the United States. ”There were but one bakery, two small taverns, three blacksmiths, two mills, and one doctor in the town.” Coffee and sugar were $2.00 per pound, and everything else was costly in proportion. The United States took possession March 10, 1804, when Major Amos Stoddard a.s.sumed the duties of Governor of Upper Louisiana.

Then history began to make quickly.

Near St. Louis, Lewis and Clark organized their expedition via the Missouri and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean, departing in May, 1804. In August Lieutenant Zebulon Pike started to explore the Mississippi to its source.

The Mississippi was opened up to free navigation. General William Henry Harrison came from Indiana to preside over the district. He was succeeded by General James Wilkinson, and the region formerly known as the District of Louisiana became known as the Territory of Louisiana. Later a strangely handsome, dark, romantic man, much honored by every one and indescribably fascinating in manner, visited the town and was feted. He was entertained by General Wilkinson, through whom it is believed the authorities at Was.h.i.+ngton first learned of that vast, vague treason which Burr--for it was he--conceived in his restless brain. Wilkinson was later appointed to watch Burr and was succeeded as Governor by Captain Meriwether Lewis, fresh from his adventures in the mysterious Northwest. A ferry had been established in 1797, and at the same spot there is to-day a ferry operating, one of the most profitable of the vested interests of St. Louis.

The post-office was established in 1804. In 1810 the population was fourteen thousand. In 1808 was founded the first newspaper, which exists to-day as the _St. Louis Republic_, a daring enterprise begun when the whole country was suffering from the embargo and non-intercourse with England. The great New Madrid earthquake shook the little city in 1811. The battle of Tippecanoe had been fought a little before the earthquake, and in the same year appeared the first steamboat in Western waters. In 1813 the Territory of Louisiana became the Territory of Missouri, and in June of that year the Bank of St. Louis was founded. The year before that the Governor of the Territory had gathered in the city of St. Louis the chiefs of the Great and Little Osages, the Sacs, Foxes, Delawares, and Shawnees, made peace with them, then conducted them to Was.h.i.+ngton, arriving there just before the declaration of war against Great Britain, in time to conclude a peace which saved the country from any such conspiracy as had been formed among the Indian tribes to the east, under the leaders.h.i.+p of the great Tec.u.mseh.