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The Founding of St. Louis: The Seven Years War, also called the French and Indian War in America, was fought between 1754 and 1763. The war was disastrous for New Orleans merchants, for trade fell off and there were shortages and inflation. In the summer of 1763 the French governor of Louisiana granted trading monopolies to merchants, hoping to stimulate trade. He awarded trade with the tribes on the Missouri River and the western bank of the Mississippi for six years to Gilbert Antoine Maxent. Maxent entered into a partnership with Pierre Laclede Liguest (see blocks 33 and 34), who agreed to establish and manage a trading post somewhere in the Illinois country (also called Upper Louisiana). In August 1763, Laclede started upriver with his 13-year-old clerk and "stepson," Auguste Chouteau. It took until December for the burly batteaumen to pole and haul their boats up the Mississippi to its confluence with the Missouri. Because the land was too low and swampy where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers met for a town to exist, they retraced their route, drifting about 18 miles down the Mississippi until they spotted limestone bluffs on the west side where St. Louis stands today. They selected a site for their new fur-trading town on top of a gently sloping plateau, where a break in the bluff gave easy access to the river. The site's other advantages included plenty of timber, outcroppings of stone for building, flowing springs, and good drainage. Laclede and Chouteau returned downriver and spent the winter at Fort de Chartres (located near modern Chester, Illinois) recruiting workers and buying tools and supplies.
Who lived in St. Louis in 1804? In early St. Louis, a visitor would have encountered hunters, voyageurs, fur trappers, rivermen, and a small elite class of fur traders. It is said that living apart and isolated made early St. Louis a true community, a place where good will and good feelings were evident. Merchant-traders like Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau formed an aristocracy that dominated the town (see block 34). They brought fine wines, silks, linen, lace, silverware, fancy clothes, dresses, books, furniture and mirrors with them to the wilderness. An assortment of boatmen, traders, trappers, and common laborers also lived in St. Louis. Most were French-Canadians, but a few were free blacks. The Spanish population was limited to scattered traders and small number of soldiers and officials stationed in the town (see blocks 6 and 100). People born in the West Indies, New Orleans, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, France and Italy also lived in colonial St. Louis. A priest saw to the social welfare of the community. At the bottom of the social scale were slaves; most were Africans but some were American Indians. The religion was exclusively Roman Catholic. Payment for services or goods was generally made with pelts, although the French Livre, a coin worth about 18½ cents in U.S. money, was also in circulation, as was the Spanish Dolare, equal to one U.S. dollar. St. Louis at the beginning of 1804 was a colony administered by the Spanish, despite the fact that most of its citizens were French. At the end of the French and Indian War, the French knew that they were going to lose to Great Britain. Since the French did not want the English to have Louisiana, they ceded the colony to the Spanish before the end of the war. By 1770, when the first Spanish governor arrived, the small community of St. Louis had already taken shape under Pierre Laclede. Many French settlers moved from the east bank of the river, even bringing windows, doors and other parts of their houses with them, to take advantage of the protection that the new town offered from the English and Anglo-Americans who moved into Illinois. Other Frenchmen moved to St. Louis from Canada, New Orleans, the Caribbean and Europe. The inhabitants referred to themselves as Creoles, a term that included anyone of French, Spanish or African ancestry born in the Americas. Layout of the town: Pierre Laclede and his men patterned St. Louis after other French colonial cities of the day, especially New Orleans, following a gridiron pattern in marking out the streets. Parallel to the river were three long streets of 36 French feet (38.37' English feet) in width: La Rue Royale or Le Grande Rue (Royal Street or Grand Street in English. This street was later called Main Street or First Street by the Americans); La Rue d'Eglise (Church Street in English, later renamed Second Street); and La Rue des Granges (Barn Street in English, later called Third Street). Crossing these were short streets, each 30' wide: La Rue de la Place (Market); La Rue de la Tour (later called Walnut); and La Rue Missouri (called Chestnut Street by the Americans).
Blocks were 240' x 300' rectangles, divided
into 120' x 150' lots. There were a total of 49 blocks in the village.
Owners were expected to surround their property with tall fences
in such a way as to form an enclosure around the whole village.
In St. Louis, everyone lived in town, even those few who were farmers.
Outside the gridiron of streets were the pastures and cultivated
fields. In many ways, early St. Louis resembled the old medieval
villages of Europe, with the town separate from common fields and
no outlying farms. A sawmill and two Courtesy Missouri Historical Society |
windmills
for grinding grain were built, there was a bakery and a maple sugar
works, a few stores, and of course, in a town based on the fur trade,
there were tanneries. Other than the