Economic beginnings of the Far West: how we won the land beyond the Mississippi . he Missouri and of the upperMississippi as far as the St. Peters, and Lacledeselected as the best site for a trading post the bluffthat overhangs the Mississippi just below the de-bouchure of the Missouri. Here a palisaded fortwas erected, Auguste Chouteau, then a lad of thir-teen, overseeing its construction. Laclede namedhis post St. Louis and thought it destined to becomeone of the finest cities in America. When theSpanish governor arrived (1770), he found a town ofone hundred wooden and fifteen stone houses,
Economic beginnings of the Far West: how we won the land beyond the Mississippi . he Missouri and of the upperMississippi as far as the St. Peters, and Lacledeselected as the best site for a trading post the bluffthat overhangs the Mississippi just below the de-bouchure of the Missouri. Here a palisaded fortwas erected, Auguste Chouteau, then a lad of thir-teen, overseeing its construction. Laclede namedhis post St. Louis and thought it destined to becomeone of the finest cities in America. When theSpanish governor arrived (1770), he found a town ofone hundred wooden and fifteen stone houses, butthe men that gathered at the post were voyageurs, 90 EXPLORERS AND COLONIZERS engagers, and coureurs de bois, who spent their daysin trapping and trading and had no liking for thecultivation of the soil. To provide sustenance forthis force, Laclede had recourse to the habitants ofVincennes, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia. Outraged bythe cession of the Illinois Country to Great Britain(1763), several hundred of these loyal Frenchmenresponded to Lacledes invitation and, to be free of. W,Ci.»iE.|. Fbench Villages with their Common Fields. the jurisdiction of King Georges men, crossed theMississippi with their families and their found good farming land on the bottoms atthe mouth of the Missouri, and there in a series ofagricultural villages—Portage des Sioux, St. Charles,St. Ferdinand or Florissant — soon reproduced thepeace and plenty of the abandoned possessions. The French villages were little communes, for theinhabitants continued the customs they had known onthe Wabash,—on the St. Lawrence, — in old householder had his bit of garden about hiscabin on the one street of the village, his allotment THE COLONIZERS 91 in the plough field, his right to pasture cattle and hogsin the unfenced land and to gather wood in the forestback of the clearing. At Ste. Genevieve on theMississippi, the bottom for five miles along theriver was common field; at Ca
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmormons, bookyear1912
