Historic St. Louis: 250 Years Exploring New Frontiers

Nineteenth-century animal hide coat with
Indian quill embroidery in Canadian metis
style, perhaps owned by Auguste Chouteau.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE MISSOURI HISTORY
MUSEUM, ST. LOUIS (OBJ 1906 013 0002).
H I S T O R I C S T . L O U I S
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successful of her five children, 52 grandchildren,
and 69 great-grandchildren when
she died in 1814. A Frenchman in the 1830s
observed that the Chouteau name remained
“a passport that commands safety and
hospitality among all of the Indian nations
of the United States, north and west,” as
two generations of family members had
founded fur posts and future towns in
Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota,
and Montana.
During his sixty-five-year residency along
the Mississippi, Chouteau had survived the
debts, doubts, and dangers of frontier fur
trading, merging business ties with bloodlines,
while St. Louis increased 2,000 percent
in population and expanded its commerce
“over a larger territory…than any other city
in the Union.” Auguste retired from active
fur trading in 1816 and devoted the remainder
of his life to civic service, philanthropy,
nurturing his many merchant kin, and
advising the U.S. government on Indian
issues. When he died in 1829, he left an
estate that included 21,500 acres of land and
another 39,000 acres of debatable legality—
not counting developed city properties.
He left $83,000 in IOUs, mortgages, and
promissory notes from 800 people and
over $17,000 worth of personal property,
which included 600 books and 50 slaves,
but only $32.12 in cash, which reflected a
fur trader’s traditional reliance on credit.
Subsequent generations of Americans have
found Chouteau’s most precious
possession to be his
“Narrative of the Founding
of St. Louis”—making his
city even more distinctive as
one of only a handful in history
to have an eyewitness
document on its beginnings
by a founder.
William Clark outlived
Chouteau by nine years and
died a revered local celebrity
and national hero on
September 1, 1838, at the
age of sixty-eight. The city’s
diverse citizenry honored
him with a mile-long funeral
procession. In addition to
being co-commander of the
famous, influential Corps of
Discovery, Clark had served
as brigadier general of
Missouri’s militia; territorial
governor from 1813 to
1820; and head of U.S.-
Indian affairs in the West
between 1807 and 1838,
under different titles. His
Indian museum and cartographical expertise
enhanced St. Louis’s reputation as the capital
of the American West. As a diplomat, he
personally negotiated thirty-seven treaties
that dispossessed Indians of their homelands
and played some role in 20 percent of all
370 U.S. treaties with native nations.
According to his biographer, Landon Y. Jones,
“the cruelties of Clark’s time and the
strengths of his character did not contradict
one another…. He was a man whose
complexity encompassed both.”