Fur Trade: ST Louis and Missouri

In the late eighteenth century, the vast, pristine land that lay west of the Mississippi River remained largely unknown to the outside world. Stan Hoig provides an intimate look into the lives of four generations of the Chouteau family as they voyaged up the Western rivers to conduct trade, at times taking wives among the native tribes. They provided valuable aid to the Lewis and Clark expedition and assisted government officials in developing Indian treaties. National leaders, tribal heads, and men of frontier fame sought their counsel. In establishing their network of trading posts and opening trade routes throughout the Central Plains and Rocky Mountains, the Chouteaus contributed enormously to the nation's westward movement.

Before Lewis and Clark relates the extraordinary saga of the Chouteaus, the dynastic family that guarded the gates to the West for three generations. From their St. Louis base, the Chouteaus, patrician and French in their origins, made their fortunes along the two-thousand-mile length of the Missouri River. Led by the brothers Auguste and Pierre, the family not only engaged in land speculation, finance, and the fur trade but also acted as suppliers and advisers to expeditions and enterprises between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains--including the famous expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from 1804 to 1806.

Jay Gitlin believes that the activities of the French are crucial to understanding the phenomenon of westward expansion. The Seven Years War brought an end to the French colonial enterprise in North America, but the French in towns such as New Orleans, St. Louis, and Detroit survived the transition to American rule. French traders from Mid-America such as the Chouteaus and Robidouxs of St. Louis then became agents of change in the West: by pursuing alliances within Indian and Mexican communities in advance of American settlement and re-investing fur trade profits in land, town sites, banks, and transportation.

Manuel Lisa, also known as Manuel de Lisa (September 8, 1772 in New Orleans, Louisiana – August 12, 1820 in St. Louis, Missouri), was a Spanish citizen and later, became an American citizen who, while living on the western frontier, became a land owner, merchant, fur trader, United States Indian agent, and explorer. Lisa was among the founders, in St. Louis, of the Missouri Fur Company, an early fur trading company.

Compiled by Lindenwood history professor Jeffrey Smith, the fascinating writings of George Sibley, who co-founded Lindenwood with his wife, Mary Easton Sibley, take us inside the period in which the Sibleys lived and Lindenwood was born.