Wills de Haas contends, from observation, that nowhere in the United States are the mounds so large and numerous and arranged with so much system as those on the American Bottom. "They present, indeed, a city of mounds, a vast and mysterious collection of monumental remains." This system is repeated and continued on a scale almost equally large at New Madrid. The American Bottom is the most extensive and valuable alluvial in the United States. It stretches from opposite the mouth of the Missouri to the Kaskaskia, a distance of over eighty miles, with an average breadth of seven miles. Its fertility is inexhaustible; its scenery is varied and picturesque; and the prehistoric races made it their favorite abode, built their mounds, and gathered their dwellings upon it. The Indians found by the whites upon these sites did not even pretend to any knowledge of the builders of the mounds. They had no traditions concerning them.

To their superstitious souls these great works were simply manitou, — supernatural, — because mysterious and inexplicable. Nor has the acute and scientific investigation of the present day thrown any real light upon the history of the mounds, who built them, and how and when they were constructed. We do not know, we may almost despair of ever learning whether the Mound-builders were autochthones or immigrants, or from whence they derived their knowledge of agriculture, working stone, making cloth and fictilia. Mr. de Haas remarks that:

"Two grand groups of ancient tumuli loom up on the broad surface of the American Bottom. They are distant from the central figures about six miles, but connected by a series of smaller mounds, forming a continuous chain, and constituting one grand and extensive system of tumular works, — unequaled for size, number, and interesting feature on either the sub-continents of America.

"One of these groups stands within the city limits, and adjacent to East St. Louis; the other six miles to the northeast, lying chiefly north of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway. These are connected, a series of tumuli, stretching along Indian Lake and Cahokia Creek; the entire system, including those along the bluff, numbering over two hundred.

"These, collectively, present a vast city of mounds in ruin. They undoubtedly constituted the seat of a great power, — a community little less populous perhaps than that now centring within an area, of twenty miles of this great modern metropolis of the West. The upper group, containing the most important monuments, was doubtless the citadel of the ancient empire. It comprises over sixty mounds, arranged with great system, and in marked position toward each other. The great mound, constituting the principal feature, is supported by four elevated squares, and numerous large tumuli of manifest importance in the system.

"The mounds comprising these respective groups are conical, ellipsoidal, square, and parallelogram. Some are perfect cones, others the frustrum. They vary in height from five to ninety feet, in some instances presenting an angle of nearly sixty degrees. They are all of earth taken from the surrounding plain or bluff, and constructed with symmetry, neatness, and manifest design.

"It is claimed as a noticeable fact that corresponding excavations can be observed near most of the mounds. I have noticed this quite marked in some instances, but only in such localities where the vegetable mound was found underlaid with a deposit of sand. With their rude implements and facilities for removing soil the Mound-builders could not make heavy excavations, but would rather avail themselves of that most readily removed.

"I have failed to detect near any of these mounds thefosse so frequently noticed near the Ohio valley tumuli. They compared in general external appearance, internal structure, and arrangement to the ancient tumuli of other parts of the country, except those of an elliptical type. This class occurs more frequently here than elsewhere. The square mounds find counterparts in the elevated squares at Marietta, Ohio.

"A general design is manifest in all the ancient earth-works of America. In the Ohio valley they are found in connected systems. In the Mississippi valley, or that part lying opposite this city, they occur alone in tumular erections, arranged in groups, with outstanding guards, system, and unmistakable design.

"The remains of art found among these mounds — stone implements, fictilia, etc. — indicate a knowledge quite equal if not in advance of art remains from the mounds of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, etc. There is a decided difference between some of their stone implements, which will be more particularly noticed hereafter. This fact induces the belief that they belong to a different people. As to the object of the mound, without attempting to advance a hypothesis based on incomplete observations, it may be safely assumed that all mounds wherever, whenever, or by whomever constructed, were primarily designed as places of sepulture. This we read alike in the simple and often scarcely distinguishable tumuli in the valley of the Mississippi or the isles of Britain, as we do in the huge tumuli on the Cahokia or the vast earthen and

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megalithic monuments of Northern Europe or the valley of the Nile. They were often devoted to other uses, but the great first purpose was sepulchral. They doubtless often served a triple purpose, — tomb, temple, dwelling-place. The large square works possibly supported the houses of important personages, or picketed around as places of defense. The great mound probably supported the principal temple, also the house of their cazique or king. Others served as guard-posts, and still others as places of defense."

The early inhabitants on the Mississippi had three modes of burial: inhumation in a horizontal position, the body having a regular grave, generally stone-lined; inhumation in a standing or sitting position; and cremation, the body burnt and the ashes and carbonized bones preserved in a vase or urn. Many cinerary urns have been discovered in the course of the exploration of barrows and mounds. All the art and industrial remains of the Mound-builders show them to have belonged to what is called the Stone Age. But few metallic remains have been found in the mounds of St. Louis and the American Bottom, and these only copper and for ornament. Various curved shells have been found, showing the use of wampum and the fact that the Mound-builders had intercourse with the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. The Mound-builders had attained great proficiency in working stone. Their weapons are often of exquisite design and perfect workmanship. Their tools were rude, chisels and hatchets, hammers and knives of granite, hornblende, nephrite, and their arrow-heads, spear-points, knives, fluting instruments, etc., are of quartz of every grade, from black chert to opalescent chalcedony. Mr. de Haas remarks that:

"One type of these flint implements is most universal. These are agricultural, proving beyond doubt that the people who used them tilled the soil. Two distinct styles prevail, — one long, like the blade of a spade; and the other identically our modern hoe, the eye being substituted by a double notch. These vary in size, — the longer from six to fifteen inches and four or five inches broad; the other about the diameter of an ordinary garden hoe. These implements show usage, — the parts entering the soil being highly polished, such as nothing would so readily effect as attrition in sand and loam. These implements are quite anomalous, — nothing of the kind having been discovered in the Ohio valley, or, so far as I am aware, east of the Mississippi or in Europe.

"A variety of other flint implements have been discovered, unlike any heretofore found. Also, a large granite implement, which may have served for dressing hides or crushing corn. I notice, however, a total absence of steatite and serpentine ornaments and amulets, so common in Ohio valley mounds."

The pottery found in connection with the mounds of St. Louis and the American Bottom presents a great number of curious and instructive examples of the fictile art. Mr. de Haas thinks that the ancient potter of the Mississippi valley was but little inferior in skill to the potters among the ancient Egyptians. The Mound-builder did not use the potter's wheel: his ware was all hand made; and much of it was only sun-dried or fire-baked in a very inadequate and inefficient manner. Two or three different styles of manufacture have been discovered, — one, a breccia on clay and pulverized mussel-shell or white spathic carbonate of lime. The ware is of irregular thickness, tough and capable of resisting the effects of moisture, dilatation, and shrinking. The ornamentation is neat and plain, rude lines, dots, chevrons, and zigzags being the chief patterns. The vessels found comprise urns, vases, cups, dishes, etc., and some of them have handles made in imitation of familiar animals. They are chiefly mortuary in their purposes, it is probable.

A. J. Conant, of St. Louis, who is probably as competent as any scientist in the country to discuss the subject, has written an excellent monograph on the Mound-builders as representatives of the prehistoric man in the Mississippi valley. He divides the mounds of Missouri and the American Bottom into four general classes: burial mounds, caves, or artificial caverns; sacrificial or temple mounds; garden mounds; and miscellaneous works. He first considers mounds in their relations to town sites, producing very good evidence, from the explorations of Dr. Beck, in 1822-23, that St. Louis was a town site with numerous sacrificial and burial mounds. In Dr. Beck's diagram we find two square pyramids, three large conical mounds, and six smaller cones, forming a rude parallelogram, the Big Mound covering its left flank at a distance of six hundred yards. The late Col. John O'Fallon's mansion, on the Bellefontaine road, was built on one of these Indian mounds, and he reported that, in excavating the foundations, human bones by the cart-load, with stone axes and arrowheads in great numbers, were taken out. The woods west of the dwelling were full of small mounds, thrown up apparently by the Mound-builders as sites for their houses, all having hearth-places, whereon were vestiges of charcoal and ashes.

Mr. Conant looks upon the Big Mound of St. Louis as a typical burial mound. If its magnitude or the size of its vault is to be taken for a standard, he thinks it would seem to have been the tomb of the most holy prophet or the royal race. The sepulchral chamber within it, which long ago fell in, was of unknown length, but could be traced for seventy-two feet. The manner of its construction seems to have been as follows: the surface of the ground was first made perfectly level and hard; then the walls were raised with an outward inclination, made compact and solid, and plastered over with moist clay. Over these a roof was formed of heavy timbers, and above all the

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The great Monk's Mound at Cahokia is looked upon as the most perfect specimen of a temple mound in the United States. It is better preserved and the most finished model we have of the forms of the Mexican teocallis and the temples of Yucatan. On the top of these mounds, in one corner, was always a smaller elevation, upon which the sacred fire was kept burning, and in front of which all sacrifices were made.

The garden mounds, small, flat elevations, Mr. Conant thinks were thrown up by the Mound-builders for the cultivation of maize and other crops. In thin lands a richer soil was thus obtained; in flat lands the disasters of flood and moisture were avoided. It is possible also that the edges of these garden mounds were defended by stakes, to prevent them from being trampled down by the deer and the immense herds of bison which roamed everywhere. Wheat found in an urn in one of these garden mounds in Utah is said to have germinated and returned a good yield of a new and prolific variety.

Among the potteries found in the Missouri mounds are drinking vessels, moulded in the form of owls, of gourds, etc. Dr. Foster, in his excursus upon the prehistoric races of North America, thinks that the Mound-builders attained a perfection in the ceramic arts that places them far ahead of the people of the Stone and Bronze Ages in Europe. "We can readily conceive," he says, "that in the absence of metallic vessels pottery would be employed as a substitute, and the potter's art would be held in the highest esteem. From making useful forms, it would be natural to advance to the ornamental." The commonest forms of the Mound-builders' pottery represent kettles, cups, water-jugs, pipes, vases. They ornamented the surfaces of these with curved lines and fretwork, and moulded them or their parts in the image of birds, quadrupeds, and the human figure. The clay which they used was finely tempered, and did not crack or warp in baking. Some of their designs are said to be true to nature, tasteful, and show a degree of refined feeling which approximates to the sense of beauty. Some of the human figures indicate a study of the living model and a distinction of form and attitude such as reveal, in a rudimentary fashion, the artistic feeling. There is a very interesting collection of these fictile treasures in the museum of the St. Louis Academy of Sciences and in the Missouri Historical Society. Oscar W. Collet, Secretary of the Missouri Historical Society, who has paid great attention to such subjects, has made by his own personal unaided efforts a collection of Indian antiquities, which in some respects is considered the finest in the country. The specimens of stone implements of war and the chase are thought to be the largest and best preserved, the handsomest and most characteristic anywhere to be seen. They are arranged upon an excellent plan. The efforts of Mr. Collet, the Historical Society, the Academy of Sciences, F. F. Hilder, Mr. Conant, and others in this direction, will effectually repair to Missouri the loss the State suffered by the dispersion of the splendid Indian Museum begun by Meriweather Lewis, and added to during twenty years by Gen. William Clark.

We have no space to follow Mr. Conant in his comments upon the craniology of the Mound-builders, nor in his speculations in regard to the origin of this extinct race. Enough has been presented to prove that the mounds of St. Louis and the adjacent country are the work of human hands, and that they were the products of the patient labor of a people who had but the slightest resemblance to the Indians whom the white men found in this country when they discovered and settled it. A few important conclusions are obvious from the various facts which have been adduced. There are traces sufficient of occupation and settled inhabitancy to make it apparent that the entire valley of the Mississippi, and especially the vicinity of St. Louis, was the seat of an extensive if not crowded population, which was not nomadic but fixed, and which must have had permanent dwellings, cities, and a stable government and well-defined religion. This population was industrial, and had acquired the rudiments of many arts. For example, the Mound-builders used and knew how to manufacture salt by the process of boiling. The evidence is found in the masses of broken pottery about the salt-springs of Gallatin, Ill., among which are fragments of kettles of a very large size. Brackenridge noted the same sort of remains about the salines of Ste. Genevieve, Mo., as early as 1811. Some of the fragments here showed the kettles to have been as big round as barrels. Our American Indians, when the country was first

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In the next place, the Mound-builders made textile fabrics and wove cloth out of the cortex of various herbaceous plants, such as the nettle and wild hemp. They cooked their food and regularly used cooking utensils. They pounded their maize in stone mortars (as the Algonkins did also), and the pestles and mortars, of sienite and quartzite, were highly polished, and finished with particular care. Maize was the staple of their food, but was not the only grain they used, for wheat, rice, and a cereal resembling rye have all been found in the mounds. They cultivated a great variety of melons, squashes, and cucumbers, and gathered the pecan, the shellbark, hickory-nut, and the walnut. Using so much farinaceous and vegetable food, it is obvious that the chase was by no means their chief dependence, and, cultivating a wide area of soil, they were able to maintain large populations upon comparatively limited areas of territory.

The Mound-builders had a species of manufacture and of commerce of their own. Copper ornaments and implements made on Lake Superior have been found in Alabama and Mississippi. The Mound-builders are thought to have wrought the mica-beds of North Carolina extensively, and specimens of this mica have been found at New Madrid. They imported marine shells from the Gulf of Mexico and from Long Island Sound. They procured obsidian from beyond the Rio Grande to make arrow-heads and knives, specimens of which are found in Mississippi mounds. The Mound-builders knew something of astronomy and a good deal about practical military and civil engineering. Pyramidal mounds always have their sides to the cardinal points of the compass, and in inclosures the gate generally was on the eastern side. The dams erected by them and the canals they cut show a familiarity with the principles of hydraulics. Their defensive works are admirably calculated to serve the purpose for which they were intended. The sites were invariably well chosen, and the defensive lines to cover and protect these fortresses would have won the admiration of a Vauban.

The Mound-builders were an agricultural people. They selected the most fertile sites for their habitations, and their population was always most dense in sections most prolific in the cereals, and particularly maize. The granaries of the West to-day are those spots where the tumuli of the Mound-builders most abound. In conclusion, all the evidence in regard to this prehistoric race which has been so far collected tends to show, —

1. That the Mound-builders had an organized autocratic government, in which the individual was merged in the state, and thus their rulers could undertake and complete the great works, the remains of which are found in this age.

2. The Mound-builders were a laborious people. Nothing but the united labor of many thousands of men could accomplish such great works as have survived the leveling influence of time through thousands of years.

3. The Mound-builders were not nomads, but had fixed habitations.

4. They were numerous and gregarious, dwelling in populous cities, as attested by the grouping of the mounds.

5. The Mound-builders were acquainted with many of the practical arts of civilized life. They smelted copper, wrought stone, moulded clay into useful forms, built houses, reared mounds, which, like those of Otolum, Uxmal, Palenque, and San Juan Tectihuacan, were no doubt temple-crowned in the distant past. They manufactured salt, made cloth, and had vessels fitted for many uses. They cultivated the soil, raised corn, melons, pumpkins and squashes, and subsisted in a large degree on the fruits of the earth.

Chapter VI.

VERY different from the Mound-builders in every respect were the Indians whom the white men found upon the soil of St. Louis and its vicinity, at the time of their first explorations and afterwards when the town was settled. We do not know positively which of the tribes had the best pretensions to the site of St. Louis; but it appears to be the case that while the Illinois Indians claimed the spot, visited it frequently, and may have occupied it permanently in the period of their greatest ascendancy and numbers, the Missouris were the nearest Indians to it, and camped and fished there; while, from the time of La Salle, it is probable that the more powerful Wawsatches or Osages exercised a sort of suzerainty over it. This they were the better able to do from the fact, recorded in the journals of Chevalier de Tonti, that this was a tribe of horsemen, and hunted and made war on horseback, getting their mounts from the wild horses of the plains and by trade with the Comanches and Apaches of Texas and New Mexico. Indian legends seem to concur that the ancestors of

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When Marquette and Joliet descended the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers in 1673, they encountered only the Illinois Indians within the limits of Missouri and Illinois, — and their expedition went no farther than the mouth of the Arkansas. In 1682, on the other hand, when La Salle and Tonti descended the Illinois and the Mississippi, and looked into the Missouri and the Ohio, they found both Illinois and Shawanese on the left or east side of the upper river, and on the west side, a short distance up the Missouri above St. Louis, they found the Missouri Indians, and above these the Osages, and probably the Panis or Pawnees. At the time of the establishment of the trading-post of St. Louis, in 1764, by Laclede, the remnant of the Illinois bands was permanently settled at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, a mere handful in comparison with what they had been, — a few families only of the Peorias still dwelling by the lake on the Illinois River which bears their name. They had been ravaged by pestilence and devastated by war. The Iroquois had driven them from their homes at old Kaskaskia and Peoria with fire and hatchet, and the Sacs and Foxes, the Ottawas, and the Miamis and their confederates kept them out. A few years later, as has been already set forth, they either contrived or consented to the murder of Pontiac, while that great chieftain was their guest in Cahokia, and the result was the literal extermination of the tribe. They numbered at least twelve thousand souls in 1670; they had sixty towns in 1700; in 1800 none of the blood survived except in the veins of French half-breeds and about two hundred Kaskaskias (with a few scattering Peorias divided between the east and west sides), afterwards removed to the Indian Territory, and the tribe name had disappeared except as a geographical title.

The Illinois belonged to the great Algonkin race, which held nearly all the temperate parts of North America at the time of the first colonization of this continent. They were the kindred of the Algonkins of Canada, the Chippeways, or Ojibways, of Michigan, the Mohegans of New England and New York, the Shawanese south and the Miamis north of the Ohio, the Powhatans and Nottaways of Virginia, and the Delawares, or Lenni-Lenapes, of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The name Illinois is a French corruption of a root-word identical with Lenni-Lenape, varying only in affix and suffix; and both nations gave the same meaning to the haughty title. — "We are the men." Neither nation, however, though skillful with arms and in the chase, could cope with the Iroquois in the field; and the journal of Tonti and the reports of La Salle and the French missionaries are full of thrilling accounts of how the Six Nations invaded their territory, captured their strongholds, massacred their women and children, and pursued their flagging warriors over the prairies for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

The Illinois lived well in a fat prairie country, yielding crops a hundred for one, and abounding with game of every sort. They were a comely and accomplished race, the women handsome, the men bold, versatile, vivacious, talkative, but treacherous, lazy, and licentious to such a degree that they had even adopted the unnatural vices which are commonly supposed to attach themselves only to the pampered civilization of outworn cities. When the Jesuits succeeded in converting them, and making them good Catholics, they became effeminate as well as idle, and lost concern for the chase as well as for arms.

About the time of the first white colonies in North America, there seems to have been a general movement among the Indian tribes, looking to the reform and consolidation of their political institutions. We cannot determine whether the impulse to this was received from within or without; but it is certain that the establishment of the confederacy of the Five Nations was either preceded, or very swiftly followed by confederacies of the New England, and the Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee tribes; by the Huron confederacy in Canada, the Miami confederacy in Ohio and Indiana, and the Illinois confederacy in Illinois. The latter tribal union comprehended the several bands of the Kaskaskias, the Tamaronos, the Mitchigamis, the Cahokias, and the Peorias. Their chief towns were on both sides of the Illinois river, from Chicago to the Mississippi, and their winter quarters were in the Great American Bottom, from Cahokia to Kaskaskia. Even before La Salle built

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The general Algonkin tradition, as preserved by Heckewelder (and also by Rafinesque, in the translation which he furnished to Nicollet of the so-called Walum-olum, or bark record of the Lenni-Lenape), points to a migration of that nation from the north into the country of the Missouri River, whence they crossed the Mississippi between the lakes and the Ohio, driving southwards the Alligewi, the original occupants of the soil. The latter, it is said, lived in towns, were very numerous, and had strong fortifications. This Walum-olum, a song learned by heart, the arrangement of the parts of which is determined by memoriter characters written on bark, would be a very remarkable chronicle if we could repose complete confidence in its genuineness; but that we cannot do upon the evidence vouchsafed to us by the brilliant but erratic Rafinesque. As it now stands, its authenticity is about upon a par with the poems of Ossian and the Book of Mormon, excepting that its internal evidence is rather in its favor, — that is to say, it does not contradict, it only amplifies the extant Indian legends; and it may be all very true, only we have no more than Rafinesque's word for it, and the concordance of the symbols used with the well-known picture-writing of the Delawares and Ojibways. The Walum-olum (meaning literally "painted sticks") consists of five divisions, two devoted to Indian cosmogony and a diluvial legend, the other three recording the migrations, battles, resting-places, and names and order of succession of the chiefs of the Algonkins. The song is said by Rafinesque to have been obtained by the late Dr. Ward, of Indiana, from the remnant of the Delawares on the White River. The metre is apparently that of Hiawatha, some at least of the verses terminating in homophones:

The legend goes on to relate that after the flood the true men (Lennapewi) were with the turtle, in the cave-house, the dwelling of Talli. It was cold, it snowed, and from the north plain they went south in search of milder land and game. In the new land the northlings separated from them, and the Snakes (enemies) fled and hid.

"In vast numbers, in a single night, they went to the Eastern or Snake Island, all of them marching by night in the darkness over the waters of the hard, stormy sea. The northlings, the easterlings, the southerlings (Shawanapi), the beaver-men, the wolf-men, the hunters or best men, the priests and medicine-men, with their wives and daughters, and their dogs. They all arrived at the land of firs, where they tarried; but the western-men, hesitating, wished to return to the old turtle-land." The next song tells of a long sojourn in the fir-land, under many chiefs making war on the Snakes, and slowly wending southward till they came to Shililaking, buffalo-land, in the plains beyond a hollow mountain. Here, on the Yellow (Missouri) River, they built towns and raised corn on the meadows. There Taminend reigned, the greatest and best of chiefs, and all was peace, because all men were his friends. But this golden age was not maintained under his successors; there was war north and south, until at last Opekasit (East-looking) said, "Let us go to the sun-rising," and many went eastward together. The Mississippi was reached, and the nation tarried long on its west bank. The contest with the Alligewi was long and doubtful after the river was crossed, but at last the enemy fled southward, "and all the people were pleased. South of the lakes they settled their council-fire, and north of the lakes were their friends the Talamatan. Next was Linniwalamen, who made war on the Talamatan (the Hurons)." The division and separation of the tribes is next described. The Nentegos (Nanticokes) and Shawanis went to the south-land. The country was occupied from Maine to Albemarle Sound, from Niagara to Kentucky, from Lake Erie to the Chesapeake, by the Algonkins, and the Iroquois and the Eries trembled. The Algonkins made war on the Cherokees and the Creeks. They had alliances with the Hilliniki (the Illinois), the Shawanis, and the Kenowikis (Kanawhas or Canoes), and were friends of the Wemiamik (Miamis, Weas, or Beaver-children), and the Tawas (Ottowas), and Talamatans, or Hurons. The wide range of these affinities and relationships is very noticeable. The record concludes as follows:

"Then the children divided into three parts, the Unamini(or Turtle tribe), the Minsimini (Wolf tribe), the Chickimini (Turkey tribe).

"Epallakchund was chief, and fought the Mahongwi (Mengwi, or Mingoes, or Iroquois), but failed.

"Langomuwi was chief, and the Mahongwi trembled.

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"Wapachikis (White-crab) was chief, and a friend of the Shore people.

"Nenachipat was chief towards the sea.

"Now from north and south came the Wapagachik (White-comers).

"Professing to be friends, in big-birds. Who are they?"

A supplementary and modern fragment tells, in the tones of a Jeremiah, who these Wapsinis (East-people) are, "who came out of the sea to rob us of our lands." It recounts the friendship of Penn, the subsequent wars, and how the Delawares were driven to Ohio and Indiana, ending with Kithtilkand and Lapabanit were the chiefs of our two tribes when we resolved to exchange our lands and return at last beyond the Masispek, to our old country.

"We shall be near our foes, the Wakon (Osages), but they are not worse than the Yankwisakon (English snakes), who want to possess the whole Big-island.

"Shall we be free and happy then, at the new Wapahani? We want rest and peace and wisdom."

There is a certain degree of verisimilitude about this narrative which gives it a great interest to every inquirer, and at least makes him wish its genuineness could be established. If that were done, it would at once take rank as one of the most valuable ethnic records in existence. Until that is done, however, we must be content to regard it with suspicion, and to hang no theories upon it.

The Indians on the west side of the Mississippi who had anything to do with St. Louis or its site at or previous to its settlement, were, as has been stated, the Missouris and the Osages, with now and then the Pawnees. The latter tribe were akin to the Tunicas, a southern Indian race, roaming originally south of the Arkansas, and probably of the same nation as the Comanches. At the period of the settlement of St. Louis their headquarters were on the Platte. The Osages certainly, and the Missouris probably, were of the great race of the Dacotahs or Sioux, a distinctive American nation whom the early French explorers found occupying all the region about the headwaters of the Mississippi, from Lakes Superior and Michigan across to the Missouri, and thence southward, on the west side of the Mississippi, as far as the Arkansas River. The main tribe had not yet become horsemen, but they were entirely a nomadic race.

The Missouri Indian bands, as has already been shown, paid Laclede and Chouteau a long and disagreeable visit while they were laying off the original town of St. Louis, and their squaws helped to dig the first cellar ever excavated within the limits of the present city. They appear to have been comparatively harmless savages, easily controlled and intimidated. The tribe was quite numerous at one time, its villages being situated on the Missouri east of Jefferson City, but it soon yielded to the pressure of civilization. The French fur-traders, trappers, voyageurs, and coureurs, ascending the Missouri River from New Orleans and Canada, early made their homes among these savages, and repaid their hospitality by corrupting them with drink and disease. Later, when the tribe was removed farther west and settled on the Platte, near the Otoes, it sunk into a truly deplorable condition. It had received much aid from the government in the shape of money and instruction; teachers, smiths, and fanners were attached to its service, but all to no good. The evil spirit seemed to have become domiciliated in its lodges, the people were jealous, discontented, and factious, and there were continual orgies and bloodshed. They finally conceived such a deep-rooted prejudice against the spot occupied by them, on the north side of the Platte, under the impression that an evil manitou infested the place, that, in a moment of drunken riot, they set fire to their village, and it was burned to ashes. They then pitched their lodges in the prairie, on the south side of the river, whence they were finally removed to the Indian Territory.

After Pontiac's war, there was a great commotion and many changes of location among the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi, the ultimate effect of which was to give much trouble to Missouri and St. Louis. The State never had a great Indian war, but it suffered continually from Indian raids and riots during a long period of time. The pressure of population into the western parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and the beginning of settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky, drove great numbers of the Eastern Indians into Ohio and Indiana. The Mohegans, Delawares, Wyandots, Nanticokes, Shawanese, Kanawhas, Five Nations, Cherokees, all made their way into the territory of the Miamis, while the restive Dacotahs pressed the Mascoutins, Sacs and Foxes, and Kickapoos down into the territory of the Illinois. At the same time land companies and land speculators began to purchase Indian titles by the wholesale. The French colonists did not seek such an occupancy of Indian lands as would expel the original proprietors from them, and they tilled the soil and built their cabins alongside of and at peace with the natives wherever they planted themselves. Not so, however, the colonists of English descent. They demanded a clear title, undisturbed possession, and no redskin neighbors, and they enforced these demands with their rifles. From the time of the treaty of Lancaster, in 1748, the most persistent efforts had been

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After the Revolution, the British having deserted their Indian allies in the West, they were left in a wretched condition of discontent and partisan and predatory war, constantly in collision with the numerous streams of immigration now pouring in from every quarter, and with border lines unsettled. Virginia claimed the whole of the Northwestern Territory, by right of original charter, and by conquest also, as the result of the daring and successful expeditions of George Rogers Clarke against Kaskaskia and Vincennes. The Spaniards also put in a claim to a part of Illinois, in consequence of the expedition from St. Louis up the Illinois River in 1781. Harmar, and

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But during all the interval between the cession of Louisiana, in 1804, and the end of Black Hawk's war, the growing town was greatly vexed by migrating or vagabond Indians, who infested its streets in the track of hunters and trappers, and made it a border town indeed. There were a good many murders by Indians during this period, some committed within the immediate precincts of the town. The first murder trial in St. Louis after the cession to the United States, was of an Indian for killing a white man. Several cases of this sort will be found referred to elsewhere, in the course of this volume. During this period the tribes and fragments of tribes that had been struggling against the ever-rising tide of white immigration between the Ohio and Mississippi had been gradually pressed westward, until nearly all of them had finally crossed the latter river, and were settled between it and Western Kansas. Several tribes pitched their wigwams within St. Louis County. As late as 1820 there were eighteen hundred Shawanese encamped within twenty miles of the city, and they were far from being good neighbors. Close contact for twenty years with the white man had corrupted and degraded them inconceivably. Jacob Burnet, in his "Notes on the Northwestern Territory," has given a graphic description of this sort of contamination, which took place under his own eyes. After speaking of the original happiness of the Indians, their dignity of character and simplicity of manners, he says, —

"Unconscious of the ruinous consequences that were to follow their intimacy with white men, they ceded to the American government large and valuable portions of their territory at nearly nominal prices. These lands were settled by Americans, in whose purity and friendship the unsuspecting savages had great confidence; nor did they awake from the delusion till their habits of sobriety and morality had been undermined by the unprincipled white men with whom they associated, and until the vices engendered by intemperance and idleness had contaminated every tribe.

"The consequences of this degeneracy very soon terminated in their ruin. The hunting excursion ceased to be pleasurable; the labor of raising their usual crops of corn and beans became a drudgery, and their chief delight was in the excitement produced by ardent spirits. The consequence was that their subsistence became precarious; they often suffered for food; their health declined; they raised but few of their children; their self-respect, their dignity of character and heroism, inherited from their ancestors, were lost; the ravages of intemperance and its kindred vices reduced their numbers and scattered their tribes; they became in their own estimation a degraded, dependent race. The government, availing itself of their weakness and want of energy, succeeded, by bribes and menaces, in obtaining the best portions of their country, and eventually in driving them from the land of their birth to a distant home in an unknown region.

"This distressing chapter of aboriginal history began at the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, and terminated in less than fifty years. The writer of these notes witnessed its commencement, progress, and close. Prior to that treaty there had been no friendly intercourse between the Indians and the white men of the United States, in consequence of the war which existed between them. That intercourse and its destructive consequences began immediately after the restoration of peace. Until that time the nations were numerous, powerful, and uncontaminated.

"The yearly journeys of the writer to attend the General Court of the Territory at Detroit made it necessary to go through some of their villages, and convenient to visit others, and often led him to their hunting-camps, which gave him many opportunities of seeing them in their villages and on their hunting excursions, and of becoming personally acquainted with some of their principal chiefs and warriors. At that time their hospitality was limited only by their means of indulging it. The corrupting influence of their new associates was just commencing, and had made but little progress. They retained the distinctive marks of their national character. Their deportment showed that they felt conscious of their strength.

"In their general intercourse with white people their manners and deportment manifested their consciousness of equality. They had lost nothing of the self-confidence which they possessed when the national and State governments admitted their independence, and met them in council as equals and friends. They were, however, unconscious of their comparative numerical weakness, and of the corrupting influence of their new associates. In a few short years their eyes were opened, their delusion vanished, and their last hopes sunk in despair.

"It would be unjust to form an opinion of the original inhabitants of this country by a reference to their descendants of the present day. In the short period of half a century they have been so changed that scarcely a trace remains of what they were when their country was first entered by the pioneers of our race, an event which sealed their destiny.

"In journeying more recently through the State, the writer has occasionally passed over the ground on which, many years before, he had seen Indian towns filled with families of that devoted race, contented and happy; but he could not perceive the slightest trace of those villages or the people who had occupied them. All the settlements through which he passed on the Maumee and Auglaize, from Fort Wayne to Defiance, and from thence to the foot of the Rapids, had been broken up and deserted. The battle-ground of General Wayne, which he had often seen in the rude state in which it was when the action of 1794 was fought, was so changed in its appearance that he could not recognize it, and not an indication remained of the many populous Indian villages he had formerly seen extending many miles on either side of the river. Flourishing towns and fields cultivated by white men covered the ground which, thirty years before, was the property and home of the nations of the forest.

"The contrast was striking, and excited a train of

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unpleasant recollections. It was a natural inquiry, ‘Where are the multitudes of people who were formerly seen here, amusing themselves on these Rapids, taking the swift muskelunge with their bows and arrows?’ They were then independent and undisturbed owners of the country, which had descended to them through a long line of heroic ancestors, and which they expected their children would continue to possess when they were gone. "It was far from their thoughts that in a few years they would be expelled from these homes and driven to herd with strangers in a strange land. They did not expect to hear so soon the same chilling salutation which was addressed to the eloquent bard of Mantua by the Roman soldiers to whom his paternal villa, had been allotted by the agrarian laws of Italy, — ‘Haec mea sunt; veteres migrate coloni.’ The final catastrophe of that noble race was witnessed by the people of Cincinnati a few years since, when the remnant of the Wyandots, the last of the braves of the Ohio tribes — ‘reliquias Danaum atque immitis Achillei’ — arrived at the landing and ascended the steamboats that were to convey them from the places of their nativity into hopeless banishment."

Such were the forlorn and degraded tribes and fragments of tribes which, between 1804 and 1825, poured across the Mississippi River at or near St. Louis. Nor were these hordes innumerous. Four tribes were represented at the treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785; the Six Nations at that of Fort Stanwix in 1784; the Shawanese, Wyandots, and Delawares at that of the mouth of the Great Miami in 1786; the Six Nations, Wyandots, Delawares, Ottawas, Chippeways, Sacs and Foxes, and Pottawattamies at Fort Harmar in 1789; and at Greenville, in 1794, there were present, among those who signed the treaty, members and representatives of the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese, Ottowas, Chippeways, Pottawattamies, Miamis, Eel Rivers, Weas, Kickapoos, Kaskaskias, and Piankeshaws, several of the tribes being in several branches and belonging to various localities. Between 1804 and 1825, twenty-one tribes crossed the Mississippi River at or about St. Louis, having an aggregate membership of over thirty thousand souls.

The best enumeration of the Indians west of the Mississippi at the beginning of this century with which we are acquainted is that made by H. M. Brackenridge, in 1811, in his "Views of Louisiana." He had traveled extensively among the savages himself, ascending the Missouri above its junction with the Yellowstone, and his statistics are at once trustworthy and concise. He begins his chapter by remarking the rapid decrease of the Indian populations. Tribes and nations which were populous along the river when the whites came had either become entirely extinct or dwindled away to a few individuals. The Tensas, the Bayou Goulas, the Natchez, all numerous in the days of Tonti, D'Iberville, and Charlevoix, were now extinct. So likewise were the Houmas, the Wabashes, the Abenakis, the Tarakas, the Kappas, and the Tacucas. The Illinois once numbered twenty thousand; there remained scarce forty families. Even the Osages, who once had twenty-two towns, had only fifteen hundred warriors left, and the Missouris numbered but four hundred and fifty souls all told. Brackenridge notes the Shawanese villages near St. Louis, and calls the tribe "a sober and orderly people." Stragglers from all the tribes might be seen in all the towns at every season, selling their game and fish. There were thirty thousand Indians on the Missouri. They had been much more numerous before the smallpox got among them. "All the tribes which at this day wander over the immense plains of the West are but wretched remnants, not probably more than the tenth part of the numbers which existed fifty years ago."

The following is an abstract of part of Brackenridge's table of the Indians in Upper and Lower Louisiana in his time:

The fixed agricultural villages on the Missouri were limited to those of the Osage, Omaha, Ponca, Pawnee, Mandan, and Aricaree tribes. The Pawnees at that time were located in the forks of the Kansas, the Otoes and Missouris below Wolf River. They were all, however, hunters, and roved the plains in the season of game, having great numbers of horse and dogs. They still used the bow and arrow principally in hunting, if not also in war, and the strong object of their veneration and worship was the buffalo head, looked upon as a powerful Manitou. The trade with the Indians Brackenridge did not find to be in a wholesome condition. The Spanish régime had countenanced shameless corruption and frightful abuses. The government farmed out the trade of localities to individuals, taxing it heavily; the monopolists in return extorted exorbitant prices for their goods. On the other hand, says Brackenridge, "the British policy has been to give their goods on a very

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Of the Osage or Wasatch Indians, Brackenridge mentions that their language is the root-tongue of adjacent tribes, but he does not seem to have found out that it is a dialect of the language of the Dacotahs. "These people," he remarks, "have been noted for their uncommon stature; this is somewhat exaggerated, though they are undoubtedly above the ordinary size of men. The wandering or semi-wandering nations of Louisiana may be characterized as exceeding in stature the whites. The Osages are reputed warlike, but this arises from their being at war with all their neighbors, and not from any uncommon degree of bravery. When compared with the Shawanese and the nations east of the Mississippi, they might with more propriety be regarded as a treacherous and cowardly race." The Kansas used to be the biggest rogues and scoundrels of the Missouri, says Brackenridge, but the Pawnees have beaten them so severely that they are better behaved. The Ottoes (Otoes, Wadooktada) are the descendants of the ancient Missouris, the remnant of that once numerous nation living with or near them. The language common to the two tribes is remarkably lofty and sonorous, and the tribes, greatly reduced in numbers, are brave and warlike, seeming to be kinsmen of the Pawnees, with whom their relations are extremely friendly. Brackenridge gives a better character to the Pawnees than they were generally credited with in his time. The Poncas and Omahas, quiet, industrious people, speak a dialect of the Osage; the Aricarees, our author says, were originally Pawnees. Of the Saukees, or Sacs and Foxes, he says that they were in his time located one hundred and forty leagues above St. Louis. They traded with the merchants both of Mackinaw and St. Louis. "The country which they claim lies principally on the east side of the Mississippi. On the west side they claim the country of the ancient Missouris by right of conquest, without defining any portion to the Ayuwas (the Des Moins Indians). To them may be ascribed the destruction of the Peorias. Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Missouris, and Illinois."

Du Pratz, the not very reliable early historian of Louisiana, gives a sketch of the travels of a sort of Indian Anacharsis whom he met about 1760, and describes as possessing a very solid understanding and great elevation of sentiment. This was a Yazoo Indian, Moncachtape, "pain-killer," whom the French called "the interpreter," from his familiarity with many native dialects. He lost his wife and children, and thereupon became a traveler, about the middle of the eighteenth century. He first sojourned among the Chickasaws, then went to the Chaouanons (Shawanese), in Tennessee and Southern Kentucky. From their country he proceeded to the mouth of the Wabash, and ascended the Ohio until he found himself in the territory of the Iroquois. After viewing the Falls of Niagara, he descended the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. On returning to the Ohio he constructed a canoe, and descended to the Mississippi and down to the Yazoo. In his next journey he ascended the Mississippi and the Missouri, being entertained by the Tamaroas (a band of the Illinois) and the Missouri Indians, dwelling among the latter long enough to acquire their language. He found them only a few days' voyage above the mouth of the river. Proceeding still farther westward, he came to the Kansas and then to the Otoes, ascending the Platte to their village. His journey did not end until he had reached the Western slope and the navigable waters of the Columbia River. It is noteworthy that he found the Missouris opposite the Illinois and not far from the Mississippi, and that the site of the Otoe village in 1750 was just about the same as that occupied by the tribe a hundred years later.

The Missouri Indians disappeared too early, and left too few and faint traces of their character to be associated with the history of St. Louis. The Osages were the most important tribe and the most distinctive people among the red men of Missouri, and of them we are able to furnish a pretty full and accurate account from the studies of persons who knew them well. We have already quoted what Brackenridge had to say of their stature. Their countenance is rather comely, with black, brilliant eyes, aquiline nose, and generally regular features. Tah-hrin-sca (or White Hair), the great chief of the Big Osages, is said, besides being a person of great good judgment, to have been the handsomest man of his nation. He was at the time we speak of forty years of age. An anecdote is related of him while he was with several braves in Washington City. The President, Gen. Taylor, wishing to pay him a deserved compliment, remarked that he believed he beheld in him the comeliest man of his nation. As the compliment was being interpreted, not a muscle of the noble chief's countenance was moved, but, bowing gravely, and with a show of approval to his host, he replied, "You have spoken the truth, my Father: I believe you!" The reply shows the readiness and absence of all ceremony with which an Indian usually

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The general character of the Osages is precisely that of the majority of Indian tribes. They are brave, but not to a fault. They see no impropriety in retreating, on ordinary occasions, from great personal danger. They are warm friends when a sufficient cause of liking is afforded them, and will endure severe privation and undergo serious suffering to render a service. Unlike many other Indians, they are not discreditably vindictive. Ever ready to resent an affront, they can with time, or with what they may deem a sufficient reparation, forget a serious injury.

Although the Osages was one of the first nations with whom the white traders dealt (the Chouteaus had a post on the Osage River long before the beginning of this century), they yet retained to a very late day, in all their purity, their original habits, callings, and general mode of life, discarding, despite the constant contact in which they were placed with the whites, every idea of turning their attention to agriculture or other useful pursuit. Until they were removed to the Indian Territory, they had a strip of land in Kansas fifty miles long, bordering on Bates and Jackson Counties, Mo., with an abundant hunting range westward. There were two principal tribes and several villages, and the soil and pasturage being good in their reservation, they were comfortably well off.

What the precise origin of the Osage nation is we cannot pretend to determine accurately. A tradition is extant among them that many years ago their forefathers lived on the borders of immense lakes, — our Northern lakes, — and that they frequently journeyed westward, for the purposes of hunting and making war upon the tribes who possessed the territory they now inhabit. The tradition may very possibly be true. Old traders now living remember well the day when they were scattered all through Missouri, even to the Mississippi River. Whatever particular locality they may have originally emigrated from, it is evident that the nation was formerly much more numerous than now, and that large bodies have left it, from time to time, since they crossed the Mississippi, to establish a distinct and separate government of their own. With other evidences, this is told us in the fact that many of their neighboring tribes speak, with some differences, their own language. Thus the Quapaws, who inhabited the prairie to the southwest; the Kansas tribe, over about Council Grove; the Arkansas, — now few in number, and promising soon to be quite extinct — who were scattered along the Arkansas line, all speak the language of the Osages, with, of course such variations as distance and difference of customs and callings will naturally bring about. The language of the Otoe tribe, formerly near Council Bluff, is also so like the Osage that the two nations readily understand each other. The probabilities are that they were all at one time a single nation. Some cause of dissension induced separation at various times. They are near neighbors, and live now on friendly terms, extending to one another every ordinary courtesy.

The government among the Osages is simple in the extreme, indeed, hardly deserving the name of government. Each great division (of the Big and Little Osages) has a "great chief," who nominally is the head of the nation, but whose authority, in fact, does not extend so far as that of many others below him. His official list of duties includes merely the presiding at councils, calling the attention of the nation to any subject which may require their immediate discussion, and entertaining distinguished guests. The great chief derives his distinction or his power — whatever name it is entitled to — hereditarily. After the principal division in the nation of Big and Little Osages follow several subdivisions, each of which has its particular chief, who is elected for some victorious deed or appointed by the great chief. This also is an honorable distinction merely, which gives them no power. Third and last in order are the "braves," who come in much greater number, and with whom the authority of government really lies. These are self-made men, who earn their distinction by their valorous deeds and brilliant achievements on the battle-field. No matter if he be the pauper of the nation, if he have scarcely attained the age of maturity, or if he be stooped and crippled with years, the person who will accomplish an act to entitle him to the distinction of brave becomes immediately invested with all its honors and all its benefits. A brave is the favorite of the nation, and his counsel will be blindly followed where the word of the chief above him would not be hearkened to.

To give an idea of the plan and appearance of all Osage villages, as also to impart an insight into the habits and mode of life of the entire nation, it is necessary only to select one especial village, with whose population, in our remarks about manners and customs, we shall more particularly familiarize the reader. We choose for this purpose to select the

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The village of the Big Osages numbered about two hundred lodges, distant generally from fifteen to twenty feet apart, and rising in every direction with but little regard to their order of arrangement. Before or after the oppressive heat of the day, when its population was in full life and motion, it presented quite a picturesque, if not an imposing appearance. Its numerous parties of savages, in wild accoutrement, were scattered here and there, some engaged in horse-racing, others earnestly disputing the victory in our own Christian game of "prisoner's base;" others, again, separated from the throng by some out of the way lodge, welcomed the recital of every ludicrous occurrence with renewed bursts of boisterous laughter. A little farther on, its many bands of wild horses were quietly enjoying the luxurious abundance which the prairie affords, or, in frolicsome humor, capered madly in every direction through the grass. From every quarter were heard the shouts of children, the sound of beating drums, and the songs of lovers and of warriors. The varied scene, in a word, equaled the wildest imaginings of Indian life, and must be seen to be fully appreciated. The lodges — every one of which is designed to accommodate a single family only — vary from seven to ten feet in breadth, and from twenty-five to a hundred feet in length, according to the number of its tenants. A family of five persons will occupy a lodge of twenty-five or thirty feet long. An Indian lodge is constructed after this fashion: The necessary number of small green hickories, eight or ten in number, are, in the first place, firmly secured in the ground in two parallel lines, whose length and distance from each other are the limits of the tent. The ends above are lashed together, so that the whole forms a continuous arch. These are afterwards overlaid with mats carefully fastened at short distances, and offering a reliable resistance to wind and rain during even the most severe storms. The low, marshy tracts occasionally encountered in the Osage prairies furnish a tall species of grass, which, when properly dried, serves as an excellent material for making these mats. The lodge having been erected, dirt is heaped against the matting at its foot, to secure it in the event of violent gusts of wind, and a few feet off a deep trench is dug to carry off the water. Holes are made at the roof of the lodge to allow the escape of smoke from the fires within, and over these holes dressed buffalo-skins are thrown loosely to prevent the rain from entering.

Though cleanliness is not an indispensable characteristic of the Indian, the interior of an Osage lodge presents, nevertheless, a remarkably neat and orderly appearance. While the Osage will make his most sumptuous repast on dog-meat, and while he will go about in times of mourning for months with probably half an inch of dirt daubed over his face, he never fails to expend some care on the cleanliness and comforts of his habitation. The lodge floor is spread with buffalo robes and bear-skins. Hunting accoutrements, horse trappings, kitchen utensils, clothing, etc., are ranged along the sides of the tent, where they will not interfere with the movements of the inmates. The head of the family has a fireplace in his lodge for each of his wives, at which she cooks, and near which she places her bedding and all the personal property and clothing, culinary utensils, etc., he may allow her. An utter stranger, in entering a lodge, may, by this domestic arrangement, know the precise number of wives maintained by his host. We may as well allude here, also, to a singular custom of hospitality. When a visitor has crossed the threshold, whatever fireplace he chooses to sit by, the wife whose fire it is, and whom he is supposed to honor by the preference, immediately rises to prepare him a collation. Her neglecting at any time to show her

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No difference occurs in the size or mode of construction of the lodges, other than that which may arise from the greater or less number of their inmates, or from the wealth of their owners. The same species of covering precisely shelters the great chief and his brave as that which protects the humblest pauper in the nation, and, on account of this similarity externally of all lodges, it is difficult, without being intimate with every walk, alley, and by-path in the village, to find the residence of an acquaintance who may live a little distance off.

In the old times, before the Osages lost their Kansas lands, two annual periods of intense activity broke up their life of quiet, indolent indulgence. These were in June and November, the time of their spring and winter hunt at each season, for buffalo on the plains, and deer, elk, and antelope in the timber. The summer hunt is for meat alone, the late fall hunt for meat and skins and furs. Each hunt used to occupy about eight weeks, including the journey of six or seven hundred miles to the Grand Saline or to Bent's Fort and back.

Although plunged in a state of ignorance and barbarism from which, like the majority of other Indian tribes, there is little hope that they will over be redeemed, the Osages have indeed a cause for self-congratulation in the abundance which meets them at every side. Neglecting the cultivation of the fertile soil they possess, and shunning, in fact, every industrious and useful employment, they seldom lack the necessaries of life, and frequently enjoy many of its luxuries. If anything could repay the loss of mental and moral improvement consequent on a civilized state, certainly their many advantages of climate, of soil, and of game of every description would repay these savages tenfold.

While they are at home, the Osages — we allude to the men in particular — do absolutely nothing that is useful and profitable. The history of a day in the Big Osage village is told in a few words. At early dawn, the time for rising, the singular and rather ludicrous custom of bemoaning whatever loss they may have sustained, or whatever evil, great or small, real or imaginary, may have befallen them, is indulged in by the population. An introductory moan in one lodge will be answered by a hysteric cry in the next, and the sounds of the two probably will be drowned by the violent sobs of a third yet more inconsolable mourner, who has chosen a position at his lodge door. In this way the work of sorrowing progresses until at last the entire village is in tears. The loss of a near relative, the death of a favorite dog, the illness of a hunting-horse, or any injury to some cherished trinket, all enter on the same footing in the category of legitimate themes for this species of mourning. Nay, as absurd as it may appear, should no nearer cause of sadness have occurred, an Osage will even shed tears as he leaves his bed, and bewail in the most pitiable terms the death of some remote ancestor whom he never knew. The time for such extraordinary ebullitions of sorrow is limited to fifteen or twenty minutes, after which every trace of care disappears, and the most light-hearted cheerfulness probably will follow.

How the matutinal mournings just described originated we can have no idea. It seems to be an ancient custom, however, and is religiously adhered to by every division in the nation. To proceed with the history of a day, the women busy themselves afterwards in preparing meals, while the men look after their horses that generally have been grazing in the prairie adjacent to the village. The remainder of the day is passed by the males as they may find most agreeable. While the women are engaged almost every hour in cooking (for an Osage will eat as many as ten or twelve meals during the day), or during short intervals, mayhap, in repairing the hunting accoutrements of their husbands, the men pass their time in racing, dancing, gambling, and other games of various descriptions. As night approaches they congregate in numerous parties at the largest and most convenient lodges, where, encircling a little fireplace, they remain frequently until within a few hours of dawn, engaged in dancing and in social conversation. Almost the sole topics of conversation with the men are women, war exploits, hunting, and horses. The night is rarely allowed to pass without several dances, accompanied generally by singing and by the beating of the drum. These drums, giving a dull, monotonous sound, are readily made from a keg half filled with water and overspread at one end with a dressed sheep-skin.

The ludicrous custom spoken of above of weeping for their ancestors, like Mark Twain shedding tears at the tomb of Adam, sufficiently demonstrates the fact that the Osages belong to the race of the Dacotahs. Among that nation this custom is universal, and has been noticed and commented upon by all travelers, from Hennepin down. It doubtless had its origin in some obscure superstition or tradition of the race, and must not be attributed, as some travelers have sought to do, to a tendency to hypocrisy. In point of fact, people are continually deceiving themselves about the manners and customs of savages, and there is no

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"When a party of savages visits one of our cities, where a crowd is constantly at its heels, and where there are an hundred eyes to stare at it from every side, it is but natural that these persons should be reserved, and that they should carefully conceal the many emotions of astonishment and admiration brought into play by the curious things they see. About two years ago we sat in a circus, near a party of six Sioux, none of whom, we knew, had ever before witnessed such feats of agility and equestrianism as were there shown them. To lend yet more interest to the entertainment, we learned from their interpreter that in a few minutes after their entrance every member of the party, believing the human frame altogether too frail to undergo such exertions, had convinced himself beyond the possibility of doubt that the performers were fictitious figures, made to ride, jump, and run by some ingenious mechanical contrivance which they did not understand. With such additional matter for wonderment, the party sat in almost utter silence, like so many statues, to all external appearances not at all surprised, and but poorly entertained. The feeling in this instance should be understood. The savage spectators were only carrying out one of our own wise saws, ‘to do in Rome as Romans do,’ and, no doubt, showed their good sense in this, as they do under other similar circumstances, by restraining every extraordinary manifestation of astonishment. This can give no correct idea, of the Indian at home. No race is more sociable, probably, and more impulsive than the Osage Indians; none receive the narration of an amusing anecdote with greater gusto, follow a tale of sorrow with more extravagant exclamations of sympathy, and, in a word, spend more of their time in sociable conversation than they. With an uncontrollable curiosity to know the history of those about them, and a desire ever awake of relating their own exploits in battle-field or hunting-ground, their most pleasant moments are those consumed in a social interchange of experience and sentiments.

"The only school for mental and moral improvement the Osage youth finds is the example set by his elders. He is assigned no teachers, and, so far as the mode of employing his time and the acquirements — either of good or evil — he chooses to master are concerned, he finds himself a free agent from his earliest infancy. Some attention, however, is paid the proper development of his physical powers, — indeed, some portions of the training he undergoes while preparing him for the hardships he is destined to encounter in after-life is characteristic of the general barbarity of his tribe.

"An infant has hardly inhaled the first breath of life when he is conveyed to the water-course nearest at hand, and, during the bitterest wintry weather as in the mildest day in summer, is given a copious bath. Afterwards, being swathed in suitable raiment, he is placed in the charge of some other nurse than his mother. A week ensues, when he is reclaimed by the parents, and is placed in his cradle, a curious and simple article of domestic convenience, which is then never left till the occupant has become old enough to learn to walk. The cradle consists simply of a plank about a foot, probably, longer than its intended occupant. The child, having been laid flat upon it, is secured firmly by strips of blanket and other bandages. These begin at the feet and end only about the shoulders. They are compressed more particularly about the loins and pit of the stomach, with a view to throw out as much as possible and to expand the chest. Secured snugly after this fashion, the child in the lodge is placed ‘on end’ out of harm's way; in mild, genial weather it is left without near the lodge door, or — during the temporary absence of its nurse — hung up to the limb of a tree, where it basks quietly in the sunshine, without danger of molestation from the dogs and wolves that may infest the vicinity. On a journey the cradle is hung to the saddle-bow, and, while still offering every security to its little prisoner, proves thus no inconvenience to the rider.

"After he has learned to walk, and until he is old enough to depend on his own exertions for maintenance, the child is allowed to remain about his parents' lodge, abstaining always from every species of onerous labor. When about twelve years of age he becomes herder to his father's drove of horses, and begins also to learn the use of the bow and fire-arms. At sixteen or eighteen years he is invested with the honors and responsibilities of manhood, and shares the labors and participates in the amusements of his ciders about him.

"The healthful tendency of the constant bodily exercise taken by the Osage Indians from their earliest youth is manifest in the extraordinary powers of endurance with which in time they become endowed. We need give, by way of illustration, only a single instance, that of an accouchment, — an alarming crisis in the lives of our own females, whose physical developments, in the majority of cases, have been retarded from the lack of necessary exercise.

"An Osage female is rarely confined to a sick-bed from the effects of child-birth. On the summer hunt of 1825, when the nation was only a few days out from their village on the Neosho, an elderly female, whose critical situation would have indicated an early confinement, followed in the rear of the train. An hour or two after the tents had been struck one sunshiny morning, a trader, the only white person among the population, heard some groans issuing from a small copse of wood, as he was about to pass it, and, hastening in its direction, found the woman on the point of giving birth to her child. To his proffered call for assistance the patient raised the most strenuous objections, and could only be prevailed on after repeated entreaties to accept some additional clothing, which was finally left her. The trader repaired to his party, and an hour more probably had ensued, when the woman overtook them, to all evidences in excellent health and spirits, and bearing in her arms a fat, bright-eyed little papoose. This is one only out of a hundred instances which occur daily to show the wholesome result of the frequent bodily exercise taken by the Osages."

The Osages are not subject to many diseases, which is fortunate for them, for their pharmacopoeia is not rich, and their practice both of physic and surgery is very primitive indeed.

If all the curatives included in the denomination "Indian remedies" had the majority of their properties in common with the remedies resorted to during illness by the Osage Indian, then would the system be a most absurd and dangerous species of quackery. The Osages have certain roots for the cure of snakebites, which occasionally are administered successfully, but which almost as often effect no satisfactory result; they resort in some diseases to vapor baths, taken in temporary lodges thrown up for the purpose, with or without result as the propriety of the remedy might determine; in local and other affections, attended with acute pain, they apply dry and wet cups, the cups being made of buffalo horn; and finally, wherever a

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The medicine-men of the Osages, while in the discharge of their professional duties, are invested with all the dignity and honors enjoyed among us by graduated doctors of medicine. The treatment, with its results, of a little girl, the daughter of a brave, who on a certain occasion, having been struck violently with some hard substance on the left arm, was threatened with its loss, may give an idea of their medical profession and their mode of practice:

The child, owing to an abundant secretion of pus in her wound, had suffered intensely for several days, when her case was at last submitted to one of the most distinguished medicine-men in the nation. An hour or two after he had been sent for, the doctor, accoutered in the most fanciful habiliments his wardrobe furnished, and having his face and arms well coated with green and red paints, made his appearance at the lodge door. He was received by the family with demonstrations of the most profound respect, and was left alone with his patient, the only uninterested spectator present being a white trader, who was allowed to remain by especial favor. Having inquired from his patient the seat of her disease, the medicine-man began his treatment with a species of solemn exorcism. Throwing his hands aloft, he abjured the evil spirit that possessed the invalid, in a kind of half-supplicating and half-threatening strain, to leave her. Afterwards lying at her side, and applying his lips and teeth to the spot which was most painful, he pulled the skin violently from one side to the other, keeping up all the while a very absurd and peculiar nasal grunt, interrupted now and then with a threatening exclamation against the disease. This continued for some ten or fifteen minutes, when, increasing the vehemence of his strange guttural murmurs, and pulling the flesh violently with his teeth, he sprang suddenly to his feet, and spat from his mouth a small frog, which when he entered he had kept carefully concealed for this purpose. The frog in this case was the evil spirit which had possessed the invalid. Pointing to it, and panting from his recent excitement, the doctor exclaimed in an exulting tone, "Rejoice, my daughter, you are now cured! Behold the bad spirit that infected you! You suffered much, because he is large: have no more fear, he is now quite harmless." Then producing a pinch of powdered root of aromatic flavor, he scattered it over a fire near the sick-bed. The remnants of the disease would be carried away, it was intended, by the smoke. Two days after this operation a young brother of the little invalid was seized with the idea of pricking her arm at several places with his knife. Thus, fortunately, he allowed the pus to discharge itself. Repeating this surgical operation several times, his sister soon became convalescent. The medicine-man, however, had in this as in all other similar instances, the credit of the cure. He was feasted and courted by the family; and, finally, as a more substantial remuneration for his professional services, presented with a beautiful hunting-horse.

In almost every disease the ridiculous ceremony described above takes place. The disease is always some evil spirit; and this evil spirit is, in turn, a frog, or a small pebble, or a grasshopper, or aught else which the medicine-man may choose to select. The incantation will, as a matter of course, invariably remove it. Afterwards nature, or the accidental adoption of some rational remedy, may effect a cure, which in all instances is attributed to the mystic powers of the medicine-man.

In the event of a death, the corpse is enveloped in a blanket and taken immediately to its place of interment, generally a mound or some other prominent spot. It is covered with earth and stones, and stakes are afterwards driven at either side and crossed over as a protection against the wolves. The nearest relatives only of the deceased go into mourning. The male mourners array themselves in their filthiest and most shabby habiliments, cover their faces with dirt, and allow their hair (which, with the exception of the scalp-lock, is always shaved closely) to grow. The females dress themselves likewise in their worst garments, and clip their hair close to the head. Both are reserved and morose during the entire season of mourning, abstaining from a participation in the amusements and employment of those about them, and leading, as much as their domestic ties will allow them, a secluded life.

When a death occurs among the Osages, the mourning of the nearest kinsmen of the deceased is not laid aside until they have made his or her spirit some species of offering. Oftentimes, for weeks and months together, the opportunity for a suitable sacrifice not having occurred, they will remain shorn of every ornament, and will religiously adhere to their tattered garments and soiled visages, — emblems of mourning, — continuing to shun the society of those about them. The nature of an offering may differ according to the character and achievements of the deceased. To steal the horse or burn the lodge of an enemy, to perform valorous deeds of any nature whatever, to sacrifice an animal or some cherished property, or, finally, to take the life of a fellow-creature, may (with all but a wife) each, under certain circumstances, prove sufficient

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When, after a death has occurred, a long time is allowed to elapse before an offering is made, the spirit of the deceased, it is supposed, fails to gain admission into the celestial hunting-grounds, and wanders restlessly about its old home on earth, haunting and annoying those from whom the sacrifice should come. Tradition records an incident to show that these spirits can wield a fearful power when it suits their purpose. A tattooer, who had left his lodge on a professional visit, while journeying through the forest, felt a warm breath exhaled several times upon his check and shoulders, like that of some invisible person near him. Being weakened and exhausted by fright, he sat himself upon a log, when on a sudden he saw a strange and unearthly figure make its appearance at his side. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth, and he would have fled; but another breath passed over him, and the mysterious stranger vanished. He resumed his course, and in due time, having finished the tattooing of the person who had called him, was just about to return. Just as the unfortunate man lost sight of the lodge he had left, the breath again touched him, and he was stricken dead. The legend, with many others, is religiously handed down among the Osages, to show the moral obligation of offerings to the dead.

An Indian entertains no idea of the connection between soul and body, and is not impressed by any fears in the contemplation of his approaching end. Without stopping to inquire into the manner of the transition from his earthly to his eternal home, and with not the least apprehension for the consequences of such a change, he hopes merely that his troubles may cease with the termination of his earthly journey, and he will meet his death with firmness. The Osage heaven is the heaven of nearly all American Indians. It is described as a well-timbered and well-watered country, blooming with fruits and vegetation at all seasons of the year, and abounding with every description of buffalo, deer, bear, birds, and other game. The dangers of starvation shall be unknown; the discomforts of a variable and inclement climate shall have passed away; the Indians, as the favorites of the great Master of life, shall occupy the first position among the nations; all men shall be at peace, and plenty and happiness shall smile on all. Many years ago it was customary at the death of an Osage to sacrifice on his tomb all the horses he had owned, and to destroy in the same place, also, all his hunting accoutrements and other property. These immolations, it was believed, supplied the wants of the dead on their journey to the new hunting-grounds. The brave whose tomb was buried in the ashes of a valuable amount of property, and streamed with the blood of a goodly number of horses, was supposed to enter the celestial hunting-grounds at the head of the cavalcade, mounted on his favorite charger, accoutered in his most magnificent costume, and surrounded with all the pomp and splendor that had attended him on earth. This custom is now almost entirely effaced. To this day, however, on certain occasions, the favorite

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A wife retains her mourning a full year nearly after her husband has died. The many obligations under which he placed her when living call for particular evidences of regret and gratitude when he is dead. Ten or twelve months after she experienced her loss, the occasion of laying aside the mourning is solemnized with a final ceremony in honor of the deceased. This, like all other religious rites and feasts among the Osages, is characterized with absurdities throughout, and, deprived of its general purpose of honor to the dead, evinces only their uncouthness and barbarity of ideas. A stake, streaming at one end with one or two blankets, calicoes, beads, and other articles of personal decoration, is driven in the ground. About the time the ceremony will begin, it is encircled by probably a score of friends of the deceased, all of whom are stripped of their ornaments and besmeared on their faces, chests, and arms with clay. The wife, surrounded by a number of volunteer female sympathizers, is stationed near at hand, and holds herself, with them, in readiness to set up a cry of pitiful lamentation at the first tap of the drum by a party in the circle. These lamentations are kept up to the end of the ceremony, the assistant weepers bewailing as loudly and as bitterly as the wife herself. Simultaneously with the first cry and the tap of the drum, one of the party who forms the circle, and who has an emblematic crow-skin suspended from a belt on his back, enters the ring and begins to dance, dropping an occasional word to the spirit of the person whose memory he is commemorating. Afterwards resuming his place in the circle, he passes the crowskin to his neighbor, who performs the same dance. All in turn follow after this fashion, when, as the last one has finished, the ceremony terminates by a distribution among the assistant female mourners of the calicoes and other presents hanging from the pole. Those who assist in bewailing on such occasions are supposed to pay a high tribute to the memory of the deceased, and are well paid by the surviving relatives. In fact, they represent exactly the hired mourners of some of our Christian countries, with the exception that they are generally better paid, and that they indulge in more extravagant demonstrations of grief.

Ingratitude and selfishness are two passions which among the Osages never fail to entail discredit. The most frightful personal perils, the most trying cravings of hunger, the most disheartening sufferings, cannot excuse a selfish act, neither will the most powerful causes be received as plea sufficient to explain away an ungrateful one. An occurrence which took place among the Blackfeet Indians some twelve or fifteen years ago might have taken place among the Osages as well, and will serve as an excellent example to illustrate the feeling with which in the latter tribe a manifestation of selfishness is received. A family, consisting of the father, wife, two children, and a little step-son, had strayed from their village one winter in search of game, and after an absence of two days, during which their efforts were attended with the worst success, while endeavoring to return they unfortunately took the wrong route. They wandered for some days without so much as a morsel to satisfy the gnawings of famine, when, to crown their distress, the fall of a heavy snow rendered a further prosecution of their toilsome march almost impossible. Hunger, fatigue, and distress had almost finished their work. The father began to speak of the hopelessness of their situation, the mother bewailed over her own sufferings, and lamented the approaching fate of the young ones, to whom she could no longer give nourishment, and the increasing debility of the children was an unmistakable evidence of their approaching end. The family had remained in camp a whole day, when, providentially as it were, the father succeeded in finding and killing a woodcock. Without evincing the least desire to minister to his own wants (a noble species of self-denial met with every day among the Indians), he passed the bird to his wife. The woman seized it with avidity, and after barely warming it over a fire, she served her own children each with its proportion; then, leaving out, despite his cries, the step-child, her husband's little son, she greedily consumed the remainder. All the while her husband, who sat on the opposite side, watched her closely and fiercely. As she had finished the last morsel, motioning her to his side, he spoke to her in purport as follows: She had acted selfishly, he said; she had deprived his boy, her step-son, of life when it laid in her power to restore it to him. He had himself felt quite as severely as she the sufferings of hunger, but, with the hope of serving her and the children equally, he had willingly given up his share of the food which the Great Spirit had thrown in his way. She ought to have done like him; she should at least have treated his child as well as she treated her own. She was very selfish, and she brought her doom upon herself. As he concluded his harangue, the maddened savage seized his tomahawk, and, one after the other butchered her and the three children about her, not making an exception in favor of his step-son, about

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An ungrateful trait, like a selfish one, is quickly noticed, and for years afterwards will be alluded to in terms of reproach. There are many modes of expressing gratitude, peculiar to the tribe. The matutinal lamentations, mentioned in a previous number, are at times a species of grateful tribute to some lost friend. Another instance is that of races, had in honor of some favorite horse or dog that may have been dead for several years. These races occur near the spot where the animal died. It may be at the village, or during a hunt, or on a war party. Presents are made by the mourner to the winner of the race, and the gratitude of the first is measured by the liberality of his gifts to the other. With not another claim, an Osage may bring himself into high favor by proving, so far as presents are concerned, nobly grateful whenever the opportunity occurs. The frequent tributes to the memory of the dead owe their origin in fact, in some measure, to the credit which they entail.

In Chapter IX. of the present volume will be found a very complete and authentic account of the only serious Indian attack upon St. Louis, the so-called "affair of 1780." But the early records and newspapers are full of stories of Indian outrages and trials of Indians, and during the war of 1812-14 even the peaceful remnant of the Illinois seem to have taken up arms and menaced the town. The fur trade and fur-traders made it a centre of attraction for the savages, and they could not lay aside their wild ways, even in the streets of the town, when excited by drink. There was generally an Indian prisoner or two in jail awaiting trial or sentence. Brackenridge, in his very entertaining "Recollections of the West," relates how, one day sauntering along the "second bank" in St. Louis, his attention was attracted to one of the towers near the old fort (in one of whose ruined barracks the court was still held) by an Indian who sat near the iron grate, confined as a prisoner for some high offense. The Indian challenged him to a match at checkers and beat him several games. Brackenridge found, on inquiry, that he belonged to the nearly extinct tribe of the Mascoutins, or Fire Indians, whose lodges used to be pitched on the west side of Lake Michigan, between the Illinois and Wisconsin Rivers. He had married a woman of the tribe of the Kickapoos; she had abandoned him for another Indian; he met her accidentally in the streets of St. Louis, pursued, overtook, and stabbed her to the heart. Brackenridge volunteered to defend the man. He had already been in prison eighteen months, and the head chief of the Kickapoos was in St. Louis to demand his surrender to him. The case came to trial, and Brackenridge was successful in his defense, his plea being that an Indian slaying another Indian could only be tried by Indian laws, as he had only violated these. The incident is referred to to show how common Indian disorders must have been in the town at this time, when savages from every part of the country were continually jostling one another in its streets. In the course of his ingenious and able speech for the defense, Brackenridge said, "There are several Indian villages in this county; there are many in different parts of the United States, surrounded on all sides by settlements of white people. Has any grand jury ever thought of examining and inquiring into their doings and actings in their villages? . . . It is not long since, in one of the villages on the Maramec, two women were put to death by order of an Indian council on the charge of sorcery!" Certainly we have the outline here of a rather unpleasant condition of affairs.

As early as 1778 we find a deposition among the records, made by Francis Viettole St. Cloux, to the effect that while hunting on the Illinois River, at Honore's camp, Louis Makas (the Omaha), being near by, took his gun and said he would kill a Frenchman anyhow. St. Cloux dodged the shot, got Louis round the body, called some river hunters to his aid, tied him, and took him down to St. Louis in the boat. "The next morning, arriving home, he went up into the loft and brought down his scalp-lock, saying he had dressed long enough as a Frenchman, he would now dress as an Indian warrior and take scalps." St. Cloux did not like such a savage about his house, so sent for the sergeant and the guard. The Governor sentenced Louis to perpetual banishment, and to be "sent below," — that is, sent to New Orleans to be sold for a slave to St. Domingo. But Louis filed his shackles loose, cut a hole in the prison wall, and made good his escape. He was pretty much of a desperado, had been a slave in Canada, and committed several murders. June 21, 1788, an Englishman named Kerr from the American side, his wife, son, and two daughters were murdered by Indians on Jacques Clamorgan's farm, six miles north of St. Louis, on the road to Bellefontaine. The Lieutenant-Governor appraised the effects of the Kerr family, which showed a pretty good line of household stuff. In March, 1800, the commandant at Carondelet, Pierre de Treget,

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In 1826 the city had begun to grow, but had not yet quite got out from under the hill. In proof of this take the following from the "Impressions du Voyage" of his Highness Karl Bernhardt, duke of Saxe-Weimar, who visited St. Louis in 1826, in the month of April:

"St. Louis lies upon a rather high rocky foundation on the right bank of the Mississippi, and stretches itself out nearly a mile in length in the direction of the river.

"The most of the houses have a garden towards the water; the earth is supported by walls, so that the gardens form so many terraces. The city contains about four thousand inhabitants. It consists of one long main street, running parallel with the river, from which several side streets run to the heights behind the city. Here single houses point out the space where another street parallel with the main street can one day be built. The generality of the houses are new, built of brick two stories high; some are of rough stone and others of wood and clay in the Spanish taste, resembling the old houses in New Orleans. Round the city along the heights formerly ran a wall, but it is now taken away. At the corners stood massive round guard-towers, the walls of which one still can see. In a northern direction from the city are seven artificial hillocks, in two rows, which form a parallelogram. They belong to the much talked of Indian mounds and fortifications, of which numbers are found on the shores of the Ohio and Mississippi, and which are dispersed over these regions from Lake Erie to New Mexico. There exist neither documents nor traditions concerning the erection of these works, or of the tribe of people who erected them. In some a great quantity of human bones have been discovered, in others, on the contrary, nothing."

But from this period it sprang forward rapidly, and has never since ceased from its process of expansion and growth.

Professor Waterhouse, aided by Mr. Billon's invaluable manuscripts, has written the following concise and accurate sketch of the early topography of St. Louis for the present volume:

"For four or five years after its settlement St. Louis was called a trading-post. This title formed a part of its official designation. Then for about forty years the young colony bore the name of village. Nov. 9, 1809, St. Louis was incorporated as a borough town, and Dec. 9, 1822, it was invested by the State Legislature with the title of city. For more than half a century the physical features of St. Louis remained untouched by the hand of improvement. No public system of grading was undertaken prior to 1823. No changes materially altering the general surface of the ground were made before the incorporation of St. Louis as a city. Accordingly, the following facts, observed in 1818, must present a substantially correct view of the site of St. Louis in its primitive condition. To avoid repetition and the employment of terms long since obsolete, the present names of streets and numbers of blocks are used in this description. A glance at Chouteau's map will show that some of the streets mentioned in this account were not in existence at that day, and are merely employed as a present means of identifying localities.

"In 1764 a steep limestone bluff occupied the place of our present Levee. It extended from the foot of Ashley to the foot of Poplar. Its height above the ordinary stage of the Mississippi was thirty-five or forty feet. From the Public Square between Market and Walnut there was a gradual descent to an

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alluvial bottom, which began in the vicinity of Poplar Street and extended down the river nearly two miles. It was through this valley that the waters of ‘La Petite Rivičre’ flowed to the Mississippi. The mouth of the Little River was a short distance below our present gas-works. Owing to a slight convexity of the river-front, the distance of Main Street from the edge of the bluff varied from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet.

"The highest ground on Main Street was in the rear of the Public Square, now block seven. From this central elevation there was a descent of about five feet to Market Street. From this point to the northern limits of Main Street the ground was level, or slightly rising. From the Public Square south there was a gradual slope to the foot of Plum Street, where, in consequence of a slight westward curvature in the river, Main Street terminated.

"With one important exception, Second Street had the same general outlines as Main Street, but from Chestnut Street to Vine Street there was a shallow depression, which after rains was muddy and almost impassable. In the street and in the lots on the east side the depth of the water was often over shoes. In 1778 this tract was drained into the gully which obliquely crossed Chestnut Street in its way to the river.

"On Third Street, from the centre of the village to Washington Avenue, there was a rise of twenty-five or thirty feet. From Washington Avenue to its northern extremity, Third Street was comparatively level. From the centre southward, Third Street followed the general slope of Main and Second Streets.

"In 1818, Fourth Street was not in existence. The line on which this street was subsequently laid out ran beyond the western limits of the village. Until about the time St. Louis assumed municipal honors Fourth Street terminated at Elm Street. About 1823, Col. Easton's land, situated at the intersection of these streets, was sold, the paling-fence which obstructed travel was removed, and Fourth Street was extended southward. The highest ground on this street was between Elm and Chestnut Streets; it was called ‘the hill.’ It was the water-shed between Ninth Street and the river. It was the most elevated land inclosed within the first limits of the city. From Chestnut Street there was a rapid descent to Pine Street. At this point a deep gully, which drained a large area lying northwest of the village, crossed Fourth Street in a southeasterly direction. North of Pine Street the surface of Fourth Street rose with a very slow and slight ascent. South of Elm Street the ground on Fourth Street gently declined to the valley of Mill Creek.

"The ground swell on Fourth Street was thirty-five or forty feet higher than the bluff, and consequently seventy or eighty feet higher than the river itself. In 1764, from Market Street down through the valley of Mill Creek, there was a heavy growth of forest-trees.

"In 1818 a low sand-bank, from four hundred to six hundred feet wide, extended from the foot of Market Street to the southern extremity of the village. At the lower end of this bank there was a slight elevation, covered with groups of bushes. In after-years this knoll, insulated by the action of the river and enlarged by alluvial deposits, became Duncan's Island. At the base of the bluff there was a flat rock about one hundred feet wide. In high stages of the river this rock was always submerged, but in low water it afforded a dry and unobstructed foot-path from Market Street to Morgan Street. During high water the boatmen were compelled to land on the bottoms, and to make a long détour to reach the village.

"The original bounds of St. Louis were narrow. According to the plat of 1764, the trading-post stretched from Chouteau Avenue to Cherry Street, and from the river to near Fourth Street.

"At that time there was no street fronting on the Mississippi, the rear yards of the first line of buildings extended to the edge of the bluffs. Three streets ran parallel with the river. They were named Main (or Royal), Church, and Barn Streets.

"The width of these streets was thirty-six French feet.

"Eighteen cross streets ran west from the river. Their width was thirty French feet. Walnut was then called La Rue de la Tour, because it led up to the tower on the hill, and Market was named La Rue de la Place, because it formed the northern border of the Public Square. Only two or three of the other streets running west had distinctive names. They were merely lanes, on which there were no houses. In 1818 the village was divided into forty-nine blocks. Block 7, in the centre of the river-front, was called La Place, or the Public Square. On this vacant space, after the cession to the United States, the

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first public market-house was built. Block 34, directly west of the Public Square, was selected by Laclede for his own residence. It was on this site that the spacious stone house called the Chouteau mansion was subsequently erected. Block 59, between Second and Third Streets, was reserved for the Catholic Church and cemetery. The blocks between Walnut and Market Streets were three hundred French feet square; all the rest of the blocks had a frontage of two hundred and forty by a depth of three hundred French feet. Within the limits of the village the original grants to settlers were commonly restricted to a quarter of a block; a few favored individuals obtained half-blocks, and in three or four instances official distinction, meritorious service, or social dignity secured the concession of a whole block. In 1818 there were only two approaches from the river to the town. These led up Market and Morgan Streets. The ascent was steep, rocky, and difficult. Under the town organization no steps were taken to provide additional means of access, but soon after the adoption of a municipal government other streets were cut down through the bluff to the river."

The boundaries of St. Louis County, as officially laid down in connection with the general land-office system of the United States, give the following limits: Beginning in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River, due east of the mouth of the river Maramec; thence due west to the middle of the main channel of the Maramec River, at the mouth thereof; thence up the Maramec River, and with the middle of the main channel thereof, to a point where the township line between T. 43 and 44 N. of the base-line crosses the same; thence west with said line to the main channel of the Maramec River, where the said channel again crosses the same; thence up the Maramec River, and with the middle of the main channel thereof, to a point where the range-line between R. 2 and 3 E. of the fifth principal meridian crosses the same; thence north with said line to the middle of the main channel of the Missouri River; thence down the Missouri River, and with the middle of the main channel of the said river, to the mouth thereof; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence down the Mississippi River, and with the middle of the main channel thereof, to the place of beginning.

The county of St. Louis is subdivided into five municipal townships, namely: Carondelet, St. Louis, St. Ferdinand, Bonhomme, and Maramec.

The township of St. Louis begins at a point in the main channel of the Mississippi River due east of the junction of Morin's Creek and river Gingras; thence due west across the river Gingras to the mouth of Morin's Creek; thence southwardly with said creek to where it crosses for the first time the northeast line of a New Madrid location, by virtue of certificate No. 94, in T. 45 N. R. 7 E.; thence northwestwardly with said line to the northwest corner of said claim; thence southwestwardly with the northwestern line of said claim to where it intersects the township line, between T. 45 and 46 N. of the base-line; thence west with said township line to where it crosses the range-line, between R. 5 and 6 E. of the fifth principal meridian; thence south with said range-line to the corner of T. 44 and 45 N., R. 5 and 6 E.; thence eastwardly with the boundary line of Carondelet township to the main channel of the Mississippi River; and in the main channel thereof to the place of beginning.

The township of Carondelet, which has been in part incorporated with St. Louis, begins at a point in the main channel of the Mississippi River due east of the southeast corner of the commons of the city of St. Louis; thence due west to the said southeast corner; thence westwardly with the southern boundary line of said commons to the southwest corner thereof; thence northwardly with the western line of said commons to where the same intersects the line dividing T. 44 and 45 N. of the base-line; thence west with said dividing line to the line dividing R. 5 and 6 E. of the fifth principal meridian; thence south with said range-line to its intersection with the southeast boundary line of survey No. 1933, in T. 44 N., R. 5 and 6 E.; thence southwestwardly with said southeast line, and following the course of said line, to the middle of the main channel of the Maramec River; thence down said Maramec River, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to its mouth; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence up said Mississippi River, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to the beginning.

The village or hamlet of St. Louis, as laid out by Laclede and Auguste Chouteau in 1764, and as mapped by the latter in 1780, was bounded by Third Street on the West and the Mississippi River on the east; by Cherry Street (now Franklin Avenue) on the north, and what is now Poplar Street on the south. It contained forty-nine blocks, — fifteen between the river bluffs and the first or principal street, extending from the present Poplar Street on the south to Cherry Street on the north; nineteen between the first and second streets, from our Lombard Street south to Cherry Street north; and fifteen between the second and third streets, from Lombard Street south to Vine Street north. Fourth Street almost exactly marked the line of fortifications drawn and began by Chouteau in 1780, and completed in 1794.

In 1804, and at the time of the town's incorporation in 1809, its boundaries were the following: The

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After the incorporation of the "town of St. Louis" by the Court of Common Pleas for the district of St. Louis, on the 9th of November, 1809, the board of trustees of the town, by an ordinance dated Feb. 25, 1811, established the following as the boundaries of the place for municipal purposes:

"Commence at the river Mississippi at low-water mark, at or near the windmill of Antoine Roy; then due west to the east line of the forty arpent lots on the hill back of St. Louis; thence along the line of said lots to Mill Creek; then down said creek to its mouth; thence up the river Mississippi along low-water mark to the place of beginning.

"WILLIAM CLARK, Chairman pro tem.

"CLEMENT B. PENROSE.

"BERNARD PRATTE."

This town incorporation of St. Louis was granted upon the petition of two-thirds of the taxable inhabitants to the court, which, by act of the Territorial Legislature, had discretionary power in the premises. The petition was presented Nov. 9, 1809, and on the same day the judges (Silas Bent, president, Bernard Pratte and Louis Labeaume, associates) granted the charter and franchises, and provided for five trustees, to be elected by the vote of the tax-payers, to act as town commissioners. The boundaries of St. Louis, as expressed in the charter, were as follows:

"Beginning at Antoine Roy's mill on the bank of the Mississippi, thence running sixty arpens west, thence south on said line of sixty arpens in the rear until the same crosses to the Barričre Denoyer; thence due south until it comes to the Sugar-Loaf; thence due east to the Mississippi; from thence by the Mississippi to the place mentioned."

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A further incorporation of the town as a city occurred Dec. 9, 1822. The extended boundaries were described as beginning at a point in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River, due east of the southern end of a bridge across Mill Creek, at the lower portion of the town of St. Louis; thence due west to a point at which the western line of Seventh Street extended southwardly and intersected the same; thence northwardly along the western side of Seventh Street, and continuing in that course to a point due west to the northern side of Roy's tower; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the river Mississippi; thence with the middle of the main channel of the said river to the beginning.

This boundary, in brief, was: On the north, Ashley Street to Broadway, thence west along Biddle Street to Seventh Street; the west line. Seventh Street, from Biddle Street to Labadie Street; and the south line, Labadie Street to Fourth Street, and Convent Street from Fourth Street to river.

Within these limits the town contained an area of 385 acres, on which there were 232 brick and 419 frame dwellings, containing a population of 5000. The taxable property was increased from $424,560 to $810,064, and the tax increased from $3763 to $3823.80 annually.

Besides extending the limits of the town this year, the rate of taxes was increased from one-third to one-half of one per cent.

Réné Paul, who was the first city engineer of St. Louis, surveyed and mapped out the city as it was in 1823. The original map, made by Mr. Paul, was lost ten or twelve years ago, but an authenticated copy has been preserved in the present street commissioners' office.

In 1851, to show the rapid growth the city had made in the interval of less than thirty years, its boundaries were as follows:

"All that district of country contained within the following limits, to wit: Beginning at a point in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River due east to the southeast corner of St. George, in St. Louis County; thence due west to the west line of Second Carondelet Avenue; thence north with the said west line of said avenue to the north line of Chouteau Avenue; thence northwardly in a direct line to the mouth of Stony Creek; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence southwardly with the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River to the place of beginning,"

The first survey of the town was made in accordance with the direction of Laclede, the founder, by Auguste Chouteau, under the Spanish government, and in 1781, the year succeeding l'année de grand coup, or the Indians' attack, a full account of which will be found in a succeeding chapter. The object of the map was to show the original grants of land by the French and Spanish governments, and also to illustrate the plan of fortification proposed by Chouteau, but never completed. The original map and field-notes are still preserved, and in the possession of Theophile Papin, of St. Louis, whose grandfather assisted in making the surveys. The map, which is inscribed in French, "St. Louis of the Illinois, fortified by Don Francisco de Cruzat, Lieutenant-Colonel and Lieutenant-Governor of the western part of the Illinois, in 1780," presents and locates the town, the demi-lunes, the bastions, the gates, the government house, the church, the Public Square, Mill Creek, and the several lots and blocks occupied by individuals and their residences. Chouteau himself said of this plat, in a memorandum over his own signature, dated in 1825, "In regard to the line of fortification, I only traced it in 1780, by order of the government." He also says that this plat made by him in 1764 was not by order of the government, but to commemorate his services as one of the founders of St. Louis. F. L. Billon furnishes the accompanying satisfactory diagram and description of the original fortifications of St. Louis:

The "Fort on the Hill" (so called by the old inhabitants of the village) was completed and occupied by the one company of Spanish soldiers usually kept at this post in the year 1794. It was a square inclosure of three hundred French feet on each of its four sides, inclosed with palisades firmly set in the ground. Its eastern front line was about in the centre of our present Fourth Street, extending west to about the east line of Fifth Street, and from the centre of the present Block No. 104 on the south to near the centre of Block No. 103 on the north, and embraced the ground covered by our present Walnut Street, from Fourth to Fifth, sixty feet wide, the north half of our present Block No. 104, on which

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The east line of the fortification was about forty feet from the brow of the hill, along which ran a road north and south, and in laying out Fourth Street, by Chouteau and Lucas, in 1816, it took these forty feet and about forty feet more from the east line of the fortification grounds for that purpose, and in extending Walnut Street west it took a piece sixty feet wide through the precise centre of the old fortification ground, leaving the stone tower in the centre of the street, with a roadway on each side. The buildings within the fortification were those designated on the plat. There were some eight or ten small cannon, principally field-pieces, kept, mounted, in the fort during the Spanish occupation of it, some ten years, which were removed by the Spanish commandant on the evacuation of the country.

After the transfer to the United States in 1804, the barracks were occupied by the United States soldiers for a couple of years, when, the cantonment at Bellefontaine having been established by Gen. James Wilkinson, in 1806, the troops were removed to that point, and these works were abandoned for military purposes. The commandant's house and the stone tower were subsequently made use of, for a time, for a very different purpose than that for which they were originally designed, as appears from the following extract from the records of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of the Territory, March term, 1806.

April 4th, "on application to Governor Wilkinson, he granted to the authorities of the village to make use of the military guard-house [the tower] in the fort on the hills as a jail until one could be built."

Dec. 19, 1806, "the court ordered the house in the garrison to be repaired for the use of the courts, and a stove and wood to be furnished for the jail."

This building was occupied by the Territorial Courts of Common Pleas and Oyer and Terminer

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The old round tower was the town jail until the county court built the jail, in 1817-19, on the southeast corner of Chestnut and Sixth Streets. William Sullivan, who purchased from Chouteau in 1816 the half-block upon which the Southern Hotel was subsequently erected, and had built a small frame and log house at the northeast corner of his lot, where he lived for a number of years, was the jailer at the old tower.

In a very complete and accurate digest by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (April 2, 1882) of the real estate history of the city, it is said that, in 1765, M. Aubri, the Governor at that time of the French

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When the territory came in possession of the Spanish government, Piernas, the Lieutenant-Governor, confirmed all of the grants made by St. Ange. A surveyor was appointed, and he assigned lands to parties petitioning for them, and also originated a system of confirming and making grants that continued for twenty-five years or longer.

"Under the provincial laws the title was not complete until after the confirmation of the grant by the Governor of the

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province. The provincial capital at that time was at New Orleans, and but a few St. Louis titles were fully confirmed, as the expense and time required to go to New Orleans was more than the majority of the inhabitants of the village of St. Louis could give. At that period in the history of St. Louis it took between five and six months to go to and return from New Orleans. The St. Louisians subsequently, in buying and selling land, waived the objection to a complete title. Subsequent proceedings in the United States courts confirmed many of these grants. Under the Spanish and French governments in St. Louis lands were granted upon personal petitions, and occupied similarly to the present homestead grants of the United States, except that no money payments were required, and it was necessary for the petitioner to be a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

"When the province in which St. Louis was situated was conveyed by the French to the United States, land speculators created a panic and ‘beared’ real estate by claiming that the local grants of land not confirmed in title by the Governor-General of the province would not be considered valid by the United States. The holders of such real estate immediately sold to the agents of the speculators at very low rates. Many alleged fraudulent land claims were created during this land panic, and these claims for over seventy years afterwards caused property litigation in the courts, but at present all of them have been finally settled, except in two or three instances."

This is a fair general statement of the subject, but still some qualifications and explanations are necessary in the premises. St. Ange probably had no authority of a definite character. He was acceptable to the French; his presence was necessary to the preservation of order, and he was willing to act, in connection with the notaries named in Chapter IV., as locum tenens until the Spanish authority should be established. His grants, with the sanction of the notaries as a proof of their regularity, thus became the acts of a de facto government, which it was good policy on every hand to recognize and uphold. But there would probably have been many difficulties, had it not been for the fact that real estate had little practical value and could be obtained by every one in the greatest abundance, and without any material outlay. Many of the first concessions of lots are very obscure and vague in the description of the location and the metes and bounds. There was no particular landmark for a starting-point, no base-line for surveys. French immigrants from Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, Fort Chartres, and other settlements on the east bank

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"Lands and lots originally were of little or no value in themselves, as they were freely bestowed upon any person on the sole condition that he would improve them for his own habitation within a year and a day from the date of his grant. If within that time he bestowed the least labor possible on the land, no matter how trivial, grubbing a small portion, cutting down a tree, or anything else, he had virtually complied with the conditions of the grant, and could dispose of it as he pleased; otherwise he had forfeited it, and it reverted to the domain, to be regranted to any other who might apply for it. Consequently lots had no other value for many years after the birth of the village than that of the improvements put upon them. When a sale of a house took place it was for the house only, the lot, no matter if large or small, even to the extent of a block, going with the house. There are several instances on record where a lot has been sold for ten or twelve dollars merely to repay the seller for the labor he might have bestowed on it.

"There were also not a few instances where houses and lots were sold verbally, without written deed, a verbal sale being good when the consideration had been paid. If sold on time it was considered mortgaged for the payment, if not paid for when due it was considered forfeited, and the first owner had a right to sell it again to a new party, and the title good. If it had been sold on time, and a third party had gone security for the payment, the party paying the money when due became the legal owner, and could sell it and make a valid title to the same. For these reasons the chain of title is broken in a number of cases."

Mr. Billon adds that after the affair of 1780 the village made so little progress

"For the next twenty years, and so few lots were applied for, that there was but little necessity for extending the village limits. Three blocks were added to the south end, with but one house on each; fourteen on the west side of the Third Street, with as many new houses on the ascent to the high land back of the village; and the four already mentioned in the northwest corner, without any improvements thereon, so that in 1804 the village plat stood thus:

A few years before the purchase by the United States, and when it was becoming daily more evident that before long the country would pass from the possession of Spain, many grants of lands were made by the Spanish officials throughout the country. There were no vacant lots left to concede in the village, all having been granted or in the possession of individuals. South of the village to Carondelet, and west, there were no more lots nor lands to grant; there remained contiguous to St. Louis but the piece of land north of the village above mentioned. This was conceded by Governor Delassus, in the years 1799-1800, to various individuals, viz.: Clamorgan, Soulard, Yosti, Egliz, and others, in pieces of from five to ten arpens fronting east on the river, and running back up the hill to the east line of the forty-arpent lots. These several pieces of land adjoined each other consecutively, there being no roads left between or through them, the northernmost cross-road from the river west then being our present Morgan Street. There was then no Cherry Street, it being but a narrow lane between what are now Blocks Nos. 24 and 25, the only road at that period through these lands being a continuation of the main street northwardly, and was called the road to Roy's mill.

The article in the Globe-Democrat proceeds to give a list of "the original property-owners in the old town and village of St. Louis prior to and at 1809, according to the survey of Auguste Chouteau, made in 1781 or 1782, and afterwards confirmed by surveys made in 1823 by Réné Paul for the city, and made in 1838 by Joseph C. Brown for the United States government." We owe it to Mr. Billon that we are here able to present, in a compact form and regular order, a full list of the lots, owners, and improvements in St. Louis during the whole period from 1764 to 1823, inclusive, with all the dates and every other circumstance requisite to perfect intelligibility and accuracy. The collection and arrangement of such a mass of material was a most laborious task, but to Mr. Billon it has been a labor of love. The lists may be trusted as giving an exhaustive history of real estate transactions in St. Louis during the first fifty-seven years of its existence, and we owe it to Mr. Billon to present his lists as he prepared them, without omitting any particular or neglecting any detail.

In 1764, when Chouteau traced out the original plat of the embryo village of St. Louis, under the direction and instruction of Laclede, his stepfather, the following were the only lots designated thereon as being then in possession of individuals:

In block now

No. 2, the north one-half.

No. 8, the south one-half, Jean de Lage

No. 16, the block, Louis Honore Tesson, concession Feb. 6, 1770, to Louis Honore Tesson.

No. 25, the block east half, John B. Cardinal.

No. 31, southwest one-fourth, John B. Provenchore, concession Feb. 15, 1768, to J. B. Provenchere.

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No. 34, block, Laclede Liguest, concession Aug. 11, 1766, to Laclede.

No. 44, block, Gabriel Descary.

No. 50, north one-half, concession Aug. 6, 1767, to Réné Buet.

No. 54, northwest one-fourth.

No. 58, northwest one-fourth, Michel Rollet.

No. 60, southwest one-fourth, concession Jan. 3, 1770, to Eugene Pouré.

No. 64, northwest one-fourth, Deshetres.

During the temporary French government eighty-one grants of lots in the village of St. Louis had been made by St. Ange and his associates, from No. 1, April 27, 1766, to No. 81, Feb. 7, 1770.

Upon the largest portion of these lots the grantees had built their residences. A few of these parties having neglected to comply with the conditions of the grant, viz., to commence some improvement on it within a year and a day, had forfeited it, and it reverted to the domain, to be granted to a second party. These eighty-one recorded grants added to those that had been previously verbally granted by St. Ange and his associates, about absorbed all the lots of the village.

As soon as the Spanish authority was established at New Orleans by Don O'Reilly in 1769, orders were sent up to St. Louis to stop the concession of lots and lands until the Spanish authority should be established in this upper region, accordingly the last French concession was made on Feb. 7, 1770.

On the arrival of Piernas, and his assumption of the government on May 20, 1770, his first step was to select a surveyor, which he did by appointing M. Martin Duralde to the office, with instructions to proceed at once to the survey of the lots which had been granted by the temporary French government. This duty he performed, and made report of his registry and plat on the 23d of May, 1772.

The first recorded concession of a village lot is by, —

And a few concessions north of and adjoining the village.

1. April 27, B. 13. To Joseph Labuscičre, procureur du Roi, 150 by 300 feet, from the principal street to the river, on one side Chancellier's lot, the other a street.

2. April 30, E. 1/2 of 61. To Joseph Calvé, 240 by 150, on the second grande rue, on each side a cross street. (Reverted to the crown.)

3. May, N. W. 1/4 of 27. To Jean Marie Thoulouze, 120 by 150, front on a street passing in rear of Laclede's lot, running to the lot of Bequette, on one side Honore Sans Souci, on the other the royal domain.

4. May 30, N. 1/2 of 8. François Bissonnet, 120 by 150, on the first main street to the Mississippi, on one side Rondeau, the other a cross-road.

5. June 2, E. 1/2 of 58. André Auguste Condé, Surgeon, 240 by 150, on west side of Second, on each side a cross street, running back to royal domain.

6. June 10, N. E. 1/4 of 29. François Eloy, 120 by 150, on Main, on one side Jean Baptiste Jacquemin, the other a cross street in rear royal domain.

7. June 30, S. E. 1/4 of 66. Louis Deshetres and Nicholas Leconte, 120 by 150, on Second opposite Sans Souci, one side a cross street, the other royal domain.

8. July 4, N. W. 1/4 of 37. Jean Prevot, 120 by 150, front on Bourbon Street, rear Du Breuil, one side Baccannet, the other a cross street.

9. July 20, N. E. 1/4 of 37. Louis Du Breuil, merchant, 120 by 150, on Royal Street, in rear Jean Prevost, on one side Jacques Labé, on the other side a cross street, going to the river. He also received a concession at same time for the north half of Block 4, which he had previously purchased from Jos. Marchetand.

10. Aug. 5, N. E. 1/4 of 43. Thomas Blondeau, 120 by 150, front on Royal Street, on one side M. De Volsay, on the other and the rear royal domain.

11. Aug. 5, S. E. 1/4 of 41. Jacques Lacroix, 120 by 15 , front on Royal Street, rear royal domain, on one side Martigny, the other a cross street from De Volsay.

12. Aug. 10, B. 13. Jos. Labuscičre, an additional 60 by 150, added to and in continuation of the first concession made him.

13. Aug. 11, B. 34. Laclede Liguest, 300 feet square, from Royal Street to Second, to the square reserved for the church on one side, on one side a cross street from Marcereau and Hubert, the other from Taillon.

14. Aug. 12, N. E. 1/4 of 33. Laclede Liguest, 120 by 150, front on Royal Street in rear Roger Taillon, on one side lot of Joseph Taillon, on the other a cross street separating it from Veuve Marechal.

15. Aug. 15, B. 42. Pierre François de Volsay, officer of marines, 240 by 300, from the river to the second grande rue, one side a cross street from the lot of Blondeau and Lamy, on the north another cross street.

16. Aug. 15, N. W. 1/4 of 43. Michel Lamy, 120 by 150, on second grande rue, east by Blondeau, one side the cross street from De Volsay, south the royal domain.

17. Aug. 20, W. 1/2 of 29. Jean Bap. Butand, 240 by 150, on one front Cotin and F. Eloy, on the other a grande rue, on each side a cross street.

18. Aug. 21, N. E. 1/4 of 30. Alexis Marie, 120 by 150, on grande rue, on rear lot of l'Arche, one side Langoumois, the other a cross street.

19. Aug. 23, N. E. 1/4 of 60. Louis Desloriers, a lot on a grande rue, on one side Jos. Calvé, on the other Francis Delin, in rear the royal domain.

20. Aug. 27, S. E. 1/4 of 28. To François La Chapelle, 120 by 150, on la grande rue, opposite Labuscičre, on one side cross street from F. Eloy, the other side lot of Laurent, near royal domain.

21. Aug. 27, N. E. 1/4 of 28. To Philibert Gagnon, dit Laurent, soldier, 180 by 150, on grande rue from Labuscičre, near royal domain, one side a cross street, the other La Chapelle.

22. Aug. 28, S. 1/2 of 5. Julien La Roy, 120 by 150, on Royal Street, east Mississippi, on one side a cross street from Du Breuil, the other lot of Guyon.

23. Oct. 1, centre of B. 41, on Second. Pierre Lacroix, a lot on grande rue, in rear Sans Quartier, one side Berger, the other royal domain.

24. Oct. 30, S. 1/2 of 12. Jean Bap. Hervieux, royal armorer, 120 by 150, on Main, to the Mississippi, one side Louis Chancellier, the other a street from Dechene.

25. Nov. 15, N. 1/2 of 12. Louis Chancellier, 120 by 150, on

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Main, opposite F. Eloy, to the river, one side Hervieux, the other a cross street from Labuscičre.

26. May 10, S. E. 1/4 of 27. Roger Taillon, 120 by 150, on Main, rear royal domain, one side cross street from Philibert Gaignon, the other Sieur Devin (Alexis Marie).

27. May 18, reverted S. 1/2 of 43. Jos. Labuscičre, 180 by 300, on the river street, rear royal domain, on one side Blondeau and Lamy, the other a cross street.

28. June 12, B. 15, reverted. Belestre, 240 by 150, on the river street, one side a cross street, the other Lefebvre Desbruisseau.

29. June 12, N. E. 1/4 of 27 and S. E. 1/4 of 26. Alexis Marie (Devin), 240 by 150, on the river street, rear royal domain, one side Roger Taillon, the other a cross street.

30. June 30, S. 1/2 of 14. Lefebvre Desbruisseau, 120 by 150, Main Street to river, one side lot of Belestre, the other a cross street from Labuscičre.

31. July 1, Block 50. Louis Lambert, dit Lafleur, 240 by 300, on one grande rue to another, on each side a cross street.

32. July 2, Pierre Fanché, merchant, 240 by 150, on the street west of Montardy, running back to hill, cross street each side. This grant reverted, and was granted to Dagobert, Feb. 2, 1769, and again to A. Marie, Sept. 7, 1769.

33. July 10, N. 1/2 of 56. Jean Ortes and Jean Cambas, 120 by 300, one side a cross street between Legrain, on the other Baccannet.

34. Aug. 6, N. E. 1/4 of 50. Réné Buet, 120 by 150, on Second, opposite Lamy, one side cross street from Lambert, the other and rear the royal domain.

35. Aug. 8, S. W. 1/4 of 57. Jean de Lage, 120 by 150, on Third, in rear Legrain, one side Beauvalet, the other a cross street.

36. Aug. 9, N. 1/2 of 14. Jean M. Toulouze, a lot ordinary size, on Main to the river, one side the cross street from Belestre, the other royal domain.

37. Aug. 10, S. W. 1/4 of 30. Claude Tinon, 120 by 150, on Second, rear Langoumois, on one side F. l'Arche, the other a cross street.

38. Aug. 10, N. W. 1/4 of 57. Lambert Beauvalet, 120 by 150, on Third Street, rear Jeannette, free negress, on one side Jean De Lage, the other a cross street from Placy.

39. Aug. 12, S. E. 1/2 of 52, reverted. Antoine Donnay St. Vincent, 120 by 150, on Second, one side Tinon's lot, the other cross street from Lambert, rear royal domain.

40. Sept. 15, N. E. 1/4 of 38. Jean Comparios, ou La Pierre, 120 by 150, Main, one side la Veuve Hebert, the other a cross street.

41. Sept. 20, N. W. 1/4 of 50. Réné Buet, 120 by 150, on a grande rue, one side Barsalou, the other a cross street, rear royal domain.

42. Sept. 20, S. 1/2 of 50. Nicholas Barsalou, 120 by 300, fronts on a grande rue, one side Réné Buet, the other a cross street.

43. Jan. 2, N. E. 1/4 of 61. Jean B. Valleau, surgeon in Spanish service, 120 by 150, on the street to the chapel, back to the hill, same lot to Calvé.

44. Feb. 15, S. W. 1/4 of 31. Jean B. Provenchere, 120 by 150, on Second, rear Gamache, one side the cross street from Paul Kiercereau, the other Thibault.

45. April 30, N. W. 1/4 of 40. Jean Salé Lajoie, 120 by 150, on Second, rear of Carrier, one side Petit, the other the lot of —— . This concession was first to Martin Duralde, and then to Salé, July 3, 1769.

46. April 3, S. E. 1/4 of 60. Francis Delain, 120 by 150, on Second, rear Eugene Pouré, dit. Beausoliet, one side Delorier, the other cross street from the church.

47. May 1, S. 1/2 of 9. Louis Beor, 120 by 150, on the grande rue, opposite Veuve Marechal, to the Mississippi, one side Renaud, the other cross street from Bissonnet.

48. May 1, N. 1/2 of 51. De Volsay, officier, 120 by 300, one side Belestre, the other a cross street, front on 2d, rear on the King's road.

49. May 1, E. 1/2 of 49. Guillaume Bizet, 240 by 150, from Second to Third, rear royal domain, one side Barsalou, the other side the creek.

50. Sept. 16, S. 1/2 of 51. Picoté Belestre, 120 by 300, front and rear large streets, one side De Volsay, the other a cross street from Buet.

51. Feb. 7, N. E. 1/4 of 53. Bouchard, 120 by 150, on Second, one side the Veuf Durant, the other a cross street, rear the royal domain.

52. Feb. 7, N. E. 1/4 of 26. Louis Dufresne, 120 by 150 north, one side Durcy, the other side Deshetres, front on grande rue, rear the hill royal domain.

53. Feb. 7, S. E. 1/4 25. Louis Deshetres, 120 by 150, on one side Amour Louvienne, the other Gagne, front a large street, rear royal domain to hill.

54. Feb. 7, S. E. 1/6 of 52, on Second. Laurent Trudeau, 120 by 150, one side Tinon, the other a cross street from De Volsay.

55. Feb. 7, S. E. 1/4 of 63. Joseph Langlois, 120 by 150, on one side Laroche, the other a cross street from Roy, rear royal domain.

56. Feb. 7, N. W. 1/4 of 27. Alexis Marie, 120 by 150, an additional piece to the first, rear the road to the barns, the two sides royal domain.

57. Feb. 7, S. 1/2 of 43. Antoine Morin, 120 by 300, from the Mississippi to Second, one side Blondeau and Lamy, the other royal domain.

58. Feb. 7, S. E. 1/4 of 84. Antoine Hubert, 150 feet square, one side the road to creek, another the street opposite the cemetery, the other the road to the Barričre ŕ Guyon.

59. Feb. 7, S. W. 1/4 of 28. François Durcy, 120 by 150, one side the lot he acquired from François Deschapelles, front the road or hill, one side Laurent, the other the cross street from Eloy, Jr.

60. Feb. 7, N. E. 1/4 of 83. ——— Chauvin, 150 by 120, a large street, between Laderoute, one side road to Taillon's Mill, the other and rear royal domain.

61. Feb. 7, S. W. 1/4 of 40. Pierre Lacroix, 120 by 150, at one end Jean Comparios, the other end Second Street, one side himself, the other a cross street from Durand.

62. July 17, N. E. 1/4 of 55. Kierq Marcheteau des Noyers, 120 by 150, for a barn, one side a cross street from Baccannet, the three other sides the royal domain.

63. July 17, S. W. 1/4 of 44. Jean Paille, 120 by 150, one end Second Street, the other royal domain to the Mississippi, one side Morin, the other a cross street.

64. July 17, N. 1/2 of 45. St. François, 120 by 150, one end Second Street, the other Mississippi, one side a cross street, the other the creek.

65. July 18, N. E. 1/4 of 84. Jacques Denis, 120 by 150, on 3d, opposite the church, west the Barn Hill, on one side Hubert, on the other a cross street from Beausoliel.

66. July 18, S. 1/2 of 38. Veuve Hebert, 120 by 150, Main to the Mississippi, one side Pierre Pery, dit Lapierre, the other a street from Veuve Beaugenou.

67. July 18, S. E. 1/4 of 83. Laville, tailor, 120 by 150, Third, near the Barn Hill, one side Chauvin, the other a cross street from Montardy.

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68. July 18, S. W. 1/4 of 27. Antoine Sans Souci, 120 by 150 at north part, at one end Valličre, the other end the hill, royal domain, one side Marie, the other a cross street from Phil. Gagnon Laurent.

69. July 18, N. W. 1/4 of 28. Philibert Gagnon, 180 by 150, behind his first piece, in front himself, rear Second Street, one side Durcy, the other a cross street from Sans Souci.

70. July 18, N. E. 1/4 of 35. Nicholas Choret, 120 by 150, on Main, rear lot of Hubert, one side Deschamps, the other a cross street from Laclede.

71. Jan. 10, S. 1/2 of 56. Au Rivičre, dit Bacca, 120 by 300, Second to Third, one side Cottin and Hortig, the other a cross street from Ant. Baccannet.

72. Jan. 10, S. W. 1/4 of 37. Antoine Baccannet, 120 by 150, on Second, rear Jacques l'Abbé, one side Lafleur, the other a cross street.

73. Jan. 12, S. 1/2 of 1. Pierre Roy, a lot, Main to the river, opposite Comparios, dit Gascon, one end Sarpy under Blondeau, the other end a cross street from Hunand's lot.

74. Jan. 31, S. W. 1/4 of 26. John B. Vifvarenne, 120 by 150, at one end La Chapelle, the other end the hill, one side a cross street from Marie, the other side Louis Dehetres.

75. Jan. 31, N. 1/2 of 60, should be the west half. Eugene Pouré, dit Beausoliet, 120 by 300, at one end Delin, the other end fronts a cross street between the Presbytery, in rear another cross street.

76. Feb. 1, I say S. E. 1/4 of 54. Nicholas Beaugenou, 120 by 150, one side Turgoy, N. E. of 54, the other cross street between Bouchart, front on Second.

77. Feb. 2, N. E. 1/4 of 3. Alexis Marie, 120 by 150, at the end of the Main Street, rear l'Arch, one side Langoumois, the other a cross street from Ortes.

78. Feb. 3, S. W. 1/4 of 61. Francis Bissonnet, 150 by 160, at the foot of the hill, one side a cross street or gully, the other side Jacques Marechal, one side Louis Bissonnet, the other royal domain.

79. Feb. 6, S. W. 1/4 of 62. François Marechal, 120 by 150, one end Moreau, the other royal domain, one side Roy, the other a cross street from Bissonnet.

80. Feb. 6, B. 16. Louis Honore Tesson, 240 by 150, from Main to river, one side a cross street from Guyon, the other a cross street from Beor.

81. Feb. 7, N. E. 1/4 of 31. John B. Bequet, le meunier, 120 by 150, on Main rear Thibault, one side Gamache, cross street from Langoumois.

The foregoing eighty-one concessions are recorded in "Livre Terrien" (land-book) No. 1, the first fourteen of which were granted by St. Ange, the military commandant, and Lefebvre, judge, and the remaining portion by St. Ange and Labuscičre. At the foot of the last page is written: "Arręté le sept Fevrier, mil-sept-cent-soixante-dit [stopped Feb. 7, 1770].

(Signed) "LABUSCIČRE."

The second book, Livre Terrien No. 2, contains no concessions of lots in the village as then called, but is made up of the notes of Martin Duralde, the king's surveyor, of his conveys of tracts of land in the surrounding country outside of the village.

1. July 13. To Amable Guyon, a lot 60 feet square for a barn, back of the village.

2. Jan. 20. Gillaume Bizet, a lot 60 feet square for a barn, back of the village.

3. April 25. Rivičre, dit Baccannet, a lot 60 feet square for a barn, back of the village.

4. June 10. Philibert Gagnon, a lot 60 feet square for a barn, back of the village.

5. June 21, S. E. 1/4 of 54. Chas. Bizet, 120 by 150, one side Roubidou, the other Durand.

6. Jan. 16. Jno. B. Hervieux, 60 feet square, adjoining Calvé and Chancellier, on two sides the royal domain.

7. Sept. 3, S. part of Block 7. Benito Basquez, 60 by 150, on Rue Principale, one side across street from Martigny, the other sides royal domain.

8. June 4, N. E. 1/4 of 52. Joseph l'Ardoise, 60 by 150.

9. April 11, S. W. 1/4 of 55. Gregoire Kiercereau, 150 by 150.

10. April 11, Block 61. Louis Bissonnet, 60 feet square for barn, back of village.

11. April 11, N. E. 1/6 of 52, on Second and Third. Nicholas Beaugenou, a lot for a house.

12. April 16, S. W. 40. Pedro Caillon, 120 by 150. I think the lot first conceded to Pierre Lacroix.

13. April 16, S. W. 1/4 of 52. Alexis Loise, 120 by 150, continuation of Laville's lot, one side a cross street from De Volsay, near Beaugenou, other side royal domain.

14. April 24, S. E. 1/4 of 64. Diego l'Arrivé, 120 by 150, near the Barn Hill, on a grande rue, one side Calvé, the other a cross street from Laroche.

15. Feb. 29. Louis l'Ardoise, 60 feet square for a barn, back of village.

16. March 11, S. W. 1/4 of 63. Alexandre Rondo, 60 feet square for barn, back of village.

17. March 12, Louis La Sudray. (Reunited to royal domain.)

18. Feb. 4. François Marechal, 120 by 150. The same lot to Caillou previously.

19. Sept. 4, not located. Pierre Bissonnet, 120 by 150, grande rue to the Mississippi, one side Rigauche, the others royal domain.

20. Sept. 4, N. E. of 25, reverted. Joseph Rivet, 120 by 150, grande rue, on one side Leconte, the other royal domain. Same lot to Deslorier.

21. July 23. Nicholas Lecompte, 240 by 150, Main to the river, Block 15.

22. Dec. 22, N. E. 1/4 of 25. François Deslorier, forgeron [smith], 120 by 150, north end of the village, on Main, one side Nicholas Lecompte, other side and rear royal domain.

23. March 11, N. W. 1/4 of 25. Jean B. Lepire (Lapierre), 120 by 150, north end of village, on Main, one side John B. Cardinal, cross street, the other royal domain.

24. April 15, S. 1/2 of 6, east part. Louis Ride, 80 by 120, one side the Mississippi, the other himself, one side cross street from A. Guyon, the other from Martigny.

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25. Aug. 10, S. W. 1/6 of 52. Pierre Montardy, 180 by 150, one end himself, the other royal domain, one side Nicholas Beaugenou, the other cross street from De Volsay.

26. Sept. 15, S. E. 1/2 of 24. Jean Bapt. Brugierre, 120 by 150, north end village, one end Main Street, opposite Guil. Lecompte, one side cross street from Desloriers, the others the royal domain.

Of the 26 concessions of village lots in St. Louis recorded in Livre Terrien No. 3, —

Nos. 1 to 14, from July 13, 1771, to April 24, 1775, were granted to Don Pedro Piernas.

Nos. 15 to 20, from Feb. 29, 1776, to Sept. 4, 1777, were granted to Don Francisco Cruzat.

Nos. 21 to 26, from July 23, 1778, to Sept. 15, 1779, were granted to Don Fernando de Leyba.

1. Jan. 20, S. 1/2 of 45. Alexis Cotté, 120 by 150, at south end on road to the bridge, east Mississippi, one side lot of St. François, deceased, the other the creek.

2. Sept. 7, N. E. 1/2 of 46. Auguste Amiot, 120 by 150, adjoining the above on the south to the creek.

3. May 30, N. W. of 54. Elizabeth Vijet Vachard, 120 by 150. one side cross street from Greg. Kiercereau, the other from Laurent and Taillon.

4. Aug. 11, N. E. 1/4 of 54. Francisco Flory, 60 by 150, one side Carlos Tayon, the other l'Ardoise.

5. Oct. H. Saucier, 180 feet square, near the gate and Sans Souci, Block 66.

6. June 25, N. E. 1/4 of 81. Regis Vasseur, 120 by 150, on grande rue (Third), a cross street from Botelar, other side royal domain.

7. March 1, N. W. 1/4 of 44. Carlos Leveille (colored), 60 by 150, near Louis Ride, the Mississippi, and royal domain.

8. Sept. 2. Augustin Amiot (colored), 120 by 150, adjoining the lot, in Block 45, of the negro Carlos above, on the road to Catalan.

9. Aug. 21. J. B. Martigny, 180 by 150, Rue Principal, for Baptiste Petit.

10. Aug. 27. Genevieve Rouzier, veuve Louis Bissonnet, 120 by 150, in Block 89, west of the village, near the barn of Cerré and Chouteau.

11. May 5. Pedro Troye, 120 by 150, near Fostin and Gabriel Melody and royal domain.

12. May 16. Jacinto San Cir, 180 by 150, adjoining Martigny on Main.

13. May 12, N. W. 1/4 of 79. Ann. Camp, veuve, 120 by 150, on a cross street, west royal domain.

14. Sept. 22, N. W. 1/4 of 85. Antoine Reynal, 80 feet square, on the hill.

15. July 20, Block 67. Ester, mulattress, 240 by 300, west side of Second, rear of Clamorgan, one side cross street from Veuve Dupuy, the other from Jas. Brazeau.

The concessions of village St. Louis lots in Book 4 are: No. 1, from Fernando de Leyba; No. 2, from Silvio Francisco de Cartabona; 3, 4, 5, from Francisco Cruzat; 6 to 14, Manuel Perez; and 15, Don Zeńon Trudeau.

"I, Don Zeńon Trudeau, captain in the regiment of Louisiana, Lieutenant-Governor and commander-in-chief of the western part of the Illinois, certify the present register of concessions, containing 76 pages of writing.

"St. Louis, Sept. 20, 1793. ZEŃON TRUDEAU."

In Book No. 5 of concessions I find but four of the lots in the village of St. Louis, as follows, viz.:

No. 1. Sept. 27, N. W. 1/4 of 28. To Ester, 120 by 150, on second main street, back of the residence of Clamorgan and opposite her first grant.

2. Oct. 20, N. E. part Block 65. Pierre Baribeau, 164 on Second by 220 deep west up the hill, and running south to St. André.

3. June 29, S. 1/2 of 85. Antoine Reynal, 150 feet on Third by 300 deep to the line of the "Rue du Fort," south Market St.

4. July 20, S. W. 1/4 of 79. Antonio Reihl, 120 by 150, one side lot of Pedro Labbadie, on another the Widow Camp.

These concessions were from Don Z. Trudeau.

Book No. 6 relates exclusively to concessions in the villages of San Fernando (St. Ferdinand) and ŕ Robert (now Bridgton).

NOTE. — The concessions of St. Ange and Lefebvre and Labuscičre are in the French language, being made prior to the assumption of the Spanish authority; those of the Spanish Governors, Piernas, Cruzat, De Leyba, Perez, and Trudeau, are chiefly in Spanish. In a few instances the same lot has been granted a second and a third time to different parties, the first perhaps not complying with the conditions of the grant, which in every case gave the party one year in which to enter into possession, by either inclosing it or improving it in some manner to indicate his intention of occupying it.

"General Notice to Frederick Bates, Esq., Recorder of Land Titles in and for the Territory of Missouri: Sir, — For the benefit of all parties interested, please to record the registered concessions of Livres Terriens Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, on file in your office. St. Louis, Nov. 28, 1812. Thomas F. Riddick, Pierre Chouteau, Gregoire Sarpy, Julius de Mun, Charles Gratiot, Bernard Pratte, B. G. Farrar, John McKnight, Alexander McNair, Win. C. Carr, John P. Cabanné, Auguste Chouteau, M. P. Leduc."

Block 1, south half, Pierre Roy, Jr., vacant lot, no house.

Block 1, north half, Charles Vachard, house 20 by 17, built by Gilles Chernin, 1765.

Block 2, south half, John Bap. Lebeme, house of posts, 30 by 20, built by Hortiz in 1795.

Block 2, north half, Pierre Gueret, Sr., stone house, 35 by 25, built by Alexis Cotte about 1770.

Block No. 3, north and south halves, Gregoire Sarpy, house of posts, 40 by 20, another, 20 by 15, built by Louis Marcheteau Denoyers, 1766, and south half house of posts, 23 by 20, built by Laroche about 1766.

Block 4, south half, Paul Guitard (2d), log house 20 feet square, another of 20 feet in rear, Marcheteau.

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Block 4, south 60, Hyacinthe Egliz, houses of posts, 25 square, built by Louis Marcheteau.

Block 4, north half No. 60, François Brichenette, house of posts, 20 by 18, built by Pedro Lupien, dit Baron. 1770.

Block 5, south half, François Liberge, stone house, 30 by 22; another, posts on wall, 20 by 23, Leroy, 1766; the stone, 1786.

Block 5, north half, Wm. Heberte Lecompte, stone, 40 by 26, built by Amable Guion, Sr., 1766.

Block 6, south half, Joseph Robidou (second), stone house 66 feet, by himself, with stone bake-house in the rear, and one of posts, 25 by 30, by L. Ride, 1770.

Block 6, north half, Auguste Chouteau, a stone house, 40 by 25, built by Jno. B. Martigny, first owner, about 1768.

Block 7, south part, Auguste Chouteau, an old house of posts, 58 by 32, and an old warehouse of posts 30 feet square.

Block 7, north part, Place Publique, house of posts on wall, 50 by 40, built by Robideau about 1770.

Block 8, south half, Bernard Pratte, Sr., the above line.

Block 8, north half, Jno. B. Truteau, stone house, 45 by 20, on south part, built by F. Bissonnet, first owner, 1768.

Block 9, south half, Veuve Sil Labadie, stone house, 50 by 25, built by Pepin, 1770; another, stone store, 32 by 36, at corner, 1785.

Block 9, north half, Benito Vasquez, house of posts, 30 by 25, built by Réné Kiersereau, first owner, 1766.

Block 10, south half, Ante Vincent Bouis, house of posts on walls, 40 by 20; also a store, 40 by 25, three stores built by Marie, 1776.

Block 10, north half, 47 1/2, A. V. Bouis, vacant lot, no house.

Block No. 10, north half, 72 half, Louis Brazeau, Sr., stone house, 38 1/2 by 24, on south part, built by Brazeau about 1790.

Block 11, south half, Regis Loisel, house of posts, 25 by 20, built by Bayet prior to 1786.

Block 11, north half, James Rankin, house of posts, 40 by 22, 30 feet south of corner, by Mainville, 1765 or 1766.

Block 12, south half, Andre Landreville, house of posts, 30 by 15, and in rear a stone horse-mill 30 by 40, 1783.

Block 12, north half, Auguste Chouteau, stone house, 30 by 24, built by Louis Chancellier, first owner, 1779.

Block 13, Gabriel Cerré, stone house, 60 by 30, 1708, and large stone warehouse, by Perraute, 1770.

Block 14, south half, Pierre Chouteau, Sr., house of posts, 30 by 20; another, 26 by 16, Deshetre, 1780, Debrusseau, 1766.

Block 14, north half, John and Nicholas St. André, house of posts, 20 by 18, blacksmith-shop, built by Thebault, 1768.

Block 15, Paschal L. Cerré, old house of posts, used as carpenter-shop.

Block 16, Nicholas Hebert Leeompte, house of posts, 20 by 18, at southwest corner, built by Louis Tesson Honore, 1770.

Block 17, south half, Margaret Laquaisse, original grantee, no house.

Block 24, south half, Genevieve Beauvais, original grantee, no house.

Block 25, northeast quarter, François Delorier, house of posts, 20 by 18.

Block 25, northwest quarter, Antoine Recontre, or Patrick Lee, no house, vacant ground.

Block 25, southeast quarter, 80 feet, Patrick Lee, stone house, 30 by 20, built by Clamorgan, 1800.

Block 25, southeast quarter, 40 feet, Jacques Clamorgan, children, small stone house on corner, 1800.

Block 25, southwest quarter, Jacques Clamorgan, vacant ground, no house.

Block 26, northeast quarter, Jacques Clamorgan, stone house, 35 by 20, built by Chancellier, 1781, small house posts, 20 by 15.

Block 26, northwest quarter, James (or Jacques) Clamorgan, small house of posts, by Dehetres, 1769.

Block 26, southeast quarter, James Clamorgan, house of posts, 25 by 20, by La Chapelle, about 1770.

Block 26, southwest quarter, James Clamorgan, old barn, built by John M. Cardinal, about 1777.

Block 27, north half, Joseph Brazeur, Sr., house, 25 by 40, 1786.

Block 27, southeast quarter, Ante V. Bouis, stone house, 67 by 40, unfinished, 1800, another, 40 by 12.

Block 27, southwest quarter, Auguste Chouteau, house of posts, 41 by 17, mill, 40 by 30, stone stable, 22 by 10.

Block 28, north half and southwest quarter, Pierre Chouteau, Sr., stone house. 75 by 45, built by Clamorgan, 1785, old house of posts, 20 by 25.

Block 28, southeast quarter, John Bap. Ortes, vacant lot, no house.

Block 29, north half, Antoine Soulard, on northwest quarter, house of posts, 20 by 30; on northeast quarter, small house of posts, log barn.

Block 29, south half, Antoine Roy, on southeast quarter, house of posts, 40 by 23; Cambas & Ortes, southwest quarter, house, 20 by 18.

Block 30, north half, Emilien Yosti, house posts, 30 by 22, Alexis Marie, 1766; on northwest quarter, small house posts.

Block 30, southeast quarter, Veuve Gen. Rou Bissonnet, house of posts, 15 by 20, by John B. Bidet Langoundis, 1766.

Block 30, southwest quarter, Auguste Chouteau, stone house, 34 by 25, by Jean Pepin Lachance, about 1773.

Block 31, northeast quarter, Charles Simoneau, small house of posts, about 15 feet square.

Block 31, northwest quarter, Paul Trimo, small house of posts, by Thibault, about 1770.

Block 31, southeast quarter, north 60 feet, pur Martin Ladouceur, south 60, Louis L. Torneau, old house of posts, built by Gamache, 1766.

Block 31, southwest quarter, John Bap. Provenchere, house of posts.

Block 32, northeast quarter, Joseph Marie Papin, stone house, 40 by 25, by Deshetres, first owner, 1766.

Block 32, northwest quarter, Jacques Chauvin, house of posts, 25 by 20, by Paul Greg. Kiersereau, first owner, 1766.

Block 32, southeast quarter, Charles Gratiot, stone house, 55 by 36, and stone kitchen, 25 by 20, by J. M. Papin, 1785, also a store by Gratiot in 1797.

Block 32, southwest quarter, Charles Gratiot; there had been on the southwest quarter house of posts, 18 by 15, and barn, by F. Bissonnet, 1766.

Block 33, northeast quarter, Veuve Chouteau; on northeast quarter, stone house, 50 by 34, built by Laclede, 1766.

Block 33, northwest quarter, Veuve Chouteau, stone house, 32 by 22, built by Labrose, 1767.

Block 33, south half, Pierre Chouteau, stone house, 48 by 30, built by Jos. Tay in 1765.

Block 34, Auguste Chouteau, stone dwelling, 60 by 23, warehouse, 50 by 30, cabin stables, all stone, by Laclede.

Block 35, northeast quarter, William Herbert Lecompte, stone house, built by himself, about 1783.

Block 35, northwest quarter, Jno. B. Dorral Desgrosselliers, house of posts, 40 by 20, by Jacques Denes, 1766.

Block 35, southeast quarter, François Valois, house of posts, 45 by 22, by Deschamps, 1766, small stone, 25 by 40, northeast corner.

Block 35, southwest quarter, Jno. B. Tison, joiner, house of posts, 20 feet, also an old horse mill.

Block 36, northeast quarter, Charles Sanguinet, Sr., house of

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Block 36, southeast quarter, Joseph A. Hortiz, house of posts, 20 by 16, and a smith's shop, same size, by J. B. Becquet, Sr.

Block 36, northwest quarter, Gregoire Sarpy, house of posts, 25 by 20, built by Ga. Dodier, Jr., about 1770.

Block 36, southwest quarter, Gregoire Sarpy, house of posts, 25 by 20, by Veuve Dodier, Sr., 1766.

Block 37, northwest quarter, Patrick Lee, house of posts, 40 by 25, Louis Dubreuil, 1766.

Block 37, northwest quarter, Patrick Lee, house of posts, 30 by 25, Provost or Leroy, 1766-70.

Block 37, southeast quarter, Philip Fine, house of posts, 22 by 30, Jacques Labbe Noise, first owner.

Block 37, southwest quarter, Louis Bonpart, Sr., stone house, 30 by 25, built by Antoine Rivičre, 1774.

Block 38, northeast quarter, north 60, Michel Rollet, small house of posts, built by Pierre Perq; same quarter south 60, Alexis Marie, Jr., vacant lot, no house.

Block 38, northwest quarter, Ann Camp, house of posts, 25 by 18, by Martin Barum, blacksmith, 1768.

Block 38, southeast quarter, Francis M. Benoit, stone house, 30 by 22, and stone kitchen, 20 by 25, 1768.

Block 38, southwest quarter, Veuve François Broz Charleville, stone house, 30 by 25, by Eugene Alvarez, 1780.

Block 39, north half, Antoine Flandrin, house of posts, 35 by 25, Nicholas Beaugeno, 1765.

Block 39, southeast quarter, Veuve Noise, dit Labbe, house of posts, by Joseph Hebert, 1765-66.

Block 39, southwest quarter, François Caillou, old house of posts, 27 by 16, by J. B. Petit, first owner.

Block 40, northeast quarter, Charles Vachard, house of posts, 25 by 20, by Chas. Carrier, prior to 1766.

Block 40, northwest quarter, Louis Beaudoin, house of posts, 18 by 15, barn, 20 by 30.

Block 40, southeast quarter, Calvin Adams, house of posts, 15 by 18, by François Marcheteau, 1766.

Block 40, southwest quarter, Louis Caillou, small house of posts.

Block 41, northeast sixth, Alexandre Grimeau, house of posts, 25 by 20, barn, 20 by 20, by T. Hunand, 1766.

Block 41, centre sixth, Joseph Guittare, house of posts, 20 by 18, by Joseph L. Martigny, first owner.

Block 41, southeast sixth, Antoine Smith, house of posts, 25 by 20, by Jacques Lacroix, first, 1766.

Block 41, 2d northwest sixth, John Bap. Marli, house of posts, 25 by 20, Pierre Berger, first owner, 1766.

Block 41, 2d centre sixth, Joseph Roy, house of posts, 14 feet square, Gilles Chemin, first, 1766.

Block 41, 2d southwest sixth, Flora (free mulattress), house of posts, 12 by 15, Gilles Cheman, first, 1766.

Block 52, Gabriel Cerré, house of posts, 30 by 20, Pierre François De Volsay, 1766.

Block 43, northeast quarter, John B. Latresse, house of posts, 30 by 20, Thomas Blondeau, first, 1766.

Block 43, northwest quarter, Louis Charbonneau, house of posts, 25 by 20, Michel Lami, first, 1766.

Block 43, south half, Eustache Caillou, house of posts.

Block 44, north half, Francis Tayon, house of posts, 23 by 20, by Gabriel Descary, first, 1766.

Block 44, south half, north 60, Charles Laveille (colored) small house of posts, built by himself in 1788.

Block 44, south half, south 60, vacant land, no house.

Block 45, north half, Andre Roy, house of posts, 20 by 20, by St. François, first owner, 1769.

Block 45, south half, A. Cotté, or Eus. Caillou, no house on it then.

Block 46, north half, Jno. B. Petit, no house had been built on it.

Blocks 47 and 48, Francis Tayon, owner, vacant ground, no house until 1812.

Block 49, south half, François Ride.

Block 49, north half, Antoine Morin, house of posts.

Block 50, Antoine F. Saugrain, stone house, 40 by 30, two or three other small buildings, by René Buet, 1767.

Block 51, south half, Pierre Duchouquette, house of posts, 20 by 25, built by Picoté Belestre, 1768.

Block 51, north half, Antoine Morin, house of posts built by himself, 1789-90.

Block 52, south half, 180 feet, Auguste Chouteau, to third.

Block 52, centre, 120 feet, François Liberge, to third, house of posts and an old barn, by Claude Tinon, 1766.

Block 52, north 60, François Duchouqette, to third, house of posts, 25 by 20, by Valets, 1778.

Block 53, southeast quarter, Antoine Flandrin, house of posts, 30 by 20, built by Simon Coussot, 1789.

Block 53, southwest quarter, Veuve P. Rigauche, house of posts, by Gabriel Becquet, about 1790

Block 53, northeast quarter, Philip Rivičre, house of posts, 20 by 18, by Joseph Bouchard, 1769.

Block 53, northwest quarter, Philip Rivičre, no house on the lot.

Block 54, south half and northwest quarter, Peter Didier, stone house, 40 by 20, built by Charles Dissette, 1773-74.

Block 54, northwest quarter, south 60 feet, Hyacinthe Amelin, small house of posts.

Block 54, northwest quarter, north 60 feet, John Bap. Domine, house of posts, 15 feet square, built by Fleury, dit Grenier, 1786.

Block 55, southeast quarter, Pierre Quenel's heirs, house of posts, 20 by 20.

Block 55, southwest quarter, Nicholas Beaugenou, house of posts.

Block 55, north half, Manuel Lisa, house of posts on a wall, 25 by 20, barn, etc., built by John B. Lorain.

Block 56, south, 50 by 175, John B. Girard, small house of posts, built by Antoine Baccanet, 1770.

Block 56, 50 by 125, Manuel Lisa, no house.

Block 56, 70 by 300, Joseph Descary, house of posts, 15 square, built by Dufaut about 1790.

Block 56, northeast quarter, Charles Gratiot, old house of posts, 22 by 18, built by Ortes about 1768.

Block 56, northwest quarter, Vincent Guitard, house of posts, 24 by 20, by Planche in 1771.

Block 57, southeast quarter, Alexis Lalande, house of posts, 20 by 17, built by Antoine Oliviere, 1782.

Block 57, northeast quarter, Marie Jeannette, free colored woman, a house of posts, 25 by 20, built by herself in 1766.

Block 57, west half, Marie Rose Sallé Dite Lajoye, house of posts on stone wall, 25 by 20, by Juan Sallé, 1770.

Block 58, east half, Charles Sanguinet, house of posts, 30 by 20, by Auguste Condé, 1766.

Block 58, northwest quarter, Charles Sanguinet, house of wood, 25 by 20, built by M. Rollet, Sr., about 1770.

Block 58, southwest quarter, Paul Guittard, Sr., shoemaker, small house of posts, 20 by 18, built by Joseph Rivard about 1774.

Block 60, southeast quarter, Joseph Robidou (2d), an old horse-mill of posts and a house, Reynal, 1794.

Block 60, northeast quarter, John B. Dumoulin, stone-mason, small house of posts, a small store, 20 by 30, 1794.

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Block 60, west half, Eugene Alvarez, house of posts on wall, 25 by 35, large barn, by Eug. Pouré, 1770.

Block 61, east half, Veuve Susan Dubreuil, stone house, 52 by 26, frame 20 feet, 1772.

Block 61, northwest quarter, Veuve Susan Dubreuil, barn, 30 feet.

Block 61, southwest quarter, Veuve Therese Chouteau, vacant lot, no house.

Block 62, south half, Arend Rutgers, house of posts, 31 by 23, built by Antoine Reilte, about 1790.

Block 62, northeast quarter, Francis Derouin, stone house and posts, built by Lacroix about 1800.

Block 62, northwest quarter, Joseph Lacroix, no house on the lot, being the orchard, etc., on the above.

Block 63, southeast quarter, Veuve François Bissonnet, stone house about twenty feet square, by Gingembre about 1793.

Block 63, southwest quarter, Antoine Reynal (St. Charles), vacant lot, no house.

Block 63, northeast quarter, Madame Margaret Laquaisse, small house of posts, 18 by 25, by Laroche, first owner, 1766.

Block 63, northwest quarter, Antoine V. Bouis, vacant lot, no house, an old barn.

Block 64, south half, Veuve Desantels (Louis Lemonde), small house of posts, by Julien Leroy, 1767.

Block 64, north half, François Jourdan Labrasse, log house, 15 by 18.

Block 65, south, 120 by 250, Joseph Laprise, log house, 20 by 18, built by Juan St. André, first owner.

Block 65, north, 164 by 220, Pierre Barribeau, house of posts, built by himself, 1795.

Block 66, Auguste Chouteau, vacant ground, no house.

Block 75, northeast quarter, John B. Duplesq, from E. Caillou, small log house by E. Caillou.

Block 75, claimed by James Mackay, vacant land.

Block 75, south half, claimed by Joseph Labrosse, vacant, no house.

Block 76, north half, Joseph Fayon (St. Charles).

Block 77, south third, Veuve F. B. Charleville, small house of posts.

Block 77, centre third, M. P. Leduc, vacant ground, no house.

Block 77, north third, Paschall Leon Cerré, house of posts, 45 by 33, barn, cabin, etc., built by Caillou about 1794.

Block 78, south half, Louis Delisle Bienvenue, house of posts, 25 by 20, built by Delisle, 1786.

Block 78, northeast quarter, Joseph Charleville, house of posts, 25 by 18.

Block 78, northwest quarter, Joseph A. Hortiz, house of posts, built by Louis Dumot, 1795.

Block 79, southeast quarter, Joseph Labbadie St. Pierre (colored), house of posts, 18 by 20, by Louis Vachard, 1797.

Block 79, southwest quarter, Joseph Labbadie St. Pierre (colored), vacant lot.

Block 79, northeast quarter, Esther Lorgan (free colored), small house of posts, built by herself, 1798.

Block 79, northwest quarter, Anna Camps' heirs, vacant lot.

Block 80, south half, Samuel Solomon, house of posts, 25 by 18, built by Réné Dodier, 1796.

Block 80, northeast quarter, Louis Bourq, vacant lot.

Block 80, northwest quarter, Cath. Crepeau Tougat Laviolette, vacant ground.

Block 81, south half, Gregoire Sarpy, vacant ground.

Block 81, northeast quarter, Regis Vasseur, house of posts.

Block 81, northwest quarter, Greg. Sarpy under Rivičre, vacant, no house.

Block 82, southeast quarter, Louis Bourq, house of posts, 22 by 20, built by Moulardq, first owner, 1770.

Block 82, southwest quarter, Louis Bourq, vacant lot.

Block 82, northeast quarter, Manuel Lisa, house of posts on a wall, 40 by 24, by Moulardq, 1766.

Block 82, northwest quarter, Gabriel Dodier (St. Charles), vacant lot.

Block 83, southeast quarter, David Rohrer, house of posts, 25 by 20.

Block 83, northeast quarter, Jean Derouine, house of posts, built by himself, 1795.

Block 83, west half, vacant land.

Block 84, southeast quarter, Marie La Bastille (free colored), small house of posts, built by Denaux, blacksmith, 1771.

Block 84, northeast quarter, Catharine Crepeau Tougard, small house of posts, very old.

Block 84, west half, public land, vacant.

Block 85, south half, Eugene Alvarez, his barn lot, no house.

Block 85, north half, Antoine Reynal, of St. Charles, eighty feet square at northwest corner, no house.

Block 85, balance of one-half, public land, no house.

Block 86, southeast quarter, Veuve Chouteau's barn, no house.

Block 86, northeast quarter, Veuve L. Chevallier's barn, no house.

Block 87, south half, Sanguinet and Vasquez, barn, no house.

Block 87, northeast quarter, Alexis Pecard, Sr., barn, no house.

Block 87, northwest quarter, Louis Brazeau, Sr., barn, no house.

Block 88, southeast quarter, Joseph Lacroix, small house of posts, built by himself about 1797.

Block 88, northeast quarter, Louis Buor, small house of posts, by Louis Buor, 1797.

Blocks 89 and 90 were barn lots of various persons, without houses.

Blocks 106 and 109, Alvarez and Marli, were vacant lots, no houses.

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This agrees substantially with Stoddard, who, in his "Louisiana," says that "when he received possession, March 10, 1804, St. Louis contained about 180 houses in all." He must have counted them.

Such was St. Louis of 1804, when it passed to the possession of the United States.

[The term "house of posts," which is so often used above, illustrates the French mode of building log houses as contradistinguished from the English. The latter lay the logs horizontally, joining them at the corners; but the French used the logs vertically, planting the bottom of the post in the ground like a palisade, and joining them by weatherboard ties, just as described by Dr. Simpson in another page in this chapter.]

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The following brick houses, although, not within the town limits, were in the near vicinity, and were the residences of parties whose business was in the town:

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153

154

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The first addition made to the town of St. Louis after its incorporation by the Court of Common Pleas was that of Chouteau and Lucas, referred to above. With the record of the sale of these lots we complete Mr. Billon's exhaustive catalogue of early real estate transactions in the city. His materials come down much later, and in the same complete shape as regards each lot, but there is not space in which to give them without injustice to other branches of the subject.

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James Sawyer to Salmon Giddings, May 1, 1817, 40 by 144, part of lot 6, F 242, south side Market above 4th.

Alexander Stuart to H. S. Geyer, Sept. 17, 1818, 120 by 270, part of 34 and 51, G 373, south side Market 5th to 6th.

Same to same, 24 by 270, balance of 34 and 51, H 419, south part of same lots.

Thomas Winstanley to Jacob Reed, March 16, 1819, 228 by 135, 57 and 58, H 229, east side of 6th, Myrtle to Spruce, $4000.

W. P. Leduc to Joshua Barton, June 1, 1819, 117 by 135, lot 67, J 22, N. W. cor. 6th and Market.

H. S. Geyer to John and Jeremiah Jones, July 29, 1819, 138 by 113, part of 51, H 435, S. E. cor. 6th and Market.

John Jones to Joshua Barton, Dec. 22, 1819, 138 by 113, the above, J 21, 22, $2500, K 43.

Joshua Barton to John Jones, Dec. 22, 1819, 117 by 135, lot 67, J 20, $2500, second above.

Joshua Barton to A. Gamble, May 8, 1820, 56 1/2 by 138, east 1/2 of 51, K 148, south side Market, between 5th and 6th.

H. S. Geyer to Arch. Gamble, Feb. 11, 1821, 16 by 77, part of 51, K 140, south side Market, between 5th and 6th.

(In Lucas') Eli B. Clemson to John Hall, Sept. 1, 1818. 228 by 270, lots 73, 74, 75, 76, for $7670, G 360, 6th to 7th, Olive to Locust.

John Campbell to Rufus Easton, May, 1819, undivided half of 29 and 30, H 331, west side 5th, Elm to Myrtle.

S. Gantt, by sheriff, to C. S. Hempstead, June 22, 1822, other half 29 and 30, L 197, west side 5th, Elm to Myrtle.

William Cabeen to William Rector, July 14, 1818, 120 feet on 4th, H 337, S. E. cor. 4th and Locust.

William Rector to Phineas Bartlet, Feb. 9, 1819, 120 by 59, H 337, S. E. cor. 4th and Locust (see note below).

Eulalie Guitard to P. Bonamie, June 16, 1818, 57 by 135, south 1/2 of 77, G 242, east side 7th between Pine and Oliver.

L. W. Boggs to Pryor Quarles.

Pryor Quarles to Lewis Learned, March 6, 1819, 115 by 135, lot 70, H 539, S. W. cor. 6th and Pine.

Wm. Rector to Baptist Godair, May 21. 1819, 115 by 67 1/2, west 1/2 of 13, H 408, S. E. cor. 5th and Locust.

Wm. Rector to Aug. Guibor, Oct. 19, 1819, 115 by 67 1/2, east 1/2 of 13, H 531, south side Locust east of 5th.

Geo. Cassner to Moses Broadwell, Jan. 22, 1820, 57 by 135, south 1/2 of 42, I 44, S. W. cor. 5th and Locust, $2100.

Geo. Cassner to Brit, and Sam'l Mount, Jan. 29, 1820, 57 by 135, north 1/2 of 42, I 46, S. W. cor. 5th and Locust, $1550.

Josiah Bright to Joseph C. Brown, March 13, 1820, 114 by 135, lot 48, J 106, N. E. cor. 6th and Chestnut, $600.

Joseph C Brown to Beriah Cleland, March 17, 1820, 114 by 135, lot 48, J 113, N. E. cor. 6th and Chestnut, $1200.

Phineas Bartlett to Chaun. Shepard, March 15, 1820, 120 by 59, J 212, S. E. cor. 4th and Locust, $565.

Chauncey Shepard to Jacob Fry, Aug. 11, 1820, 120 by 59, J 386, S. E. cor. 4th and Locust, $425.

Jacob Fry to David Shirtle, Oct. 5, 1820, 120 by 59, J 473, same lot, $1000.

Geo. C. Sibley to Eulalie Guitard, Jan. 13, 1825, 114 by 135, lot 72, M 224, S. W. cor. 6th and Olive, $300.

Same to Francis Giroux, June 20, 1826, 57 by 135, south 1/2 of 72, N 69, west side 6th between Pine and Olive.

John B. C. Lucas to Dr. Thos. Houghan, April 14, 1828, 114 by 135, lot 71, O 165, N. W. cor. 6th and Pine.

Dr. Houghan to Chas. R. Hall, Aug. 20, 1830, 114 by 135, lot 71, Q 174, same above, $1000.

Auguste Chouteau sold to Wm. Deakers, Sr., prior to 1820, the two lots Nos. 54 and 55, S. E. and N. E. cors. of 6th and Elm, deed not recorded. Deakers built a stone house on the N. E. cor. lot, and on the other had his brick-yard.

Deakers and Dorothy, his wife, mortgaged this property Feb. 22, 1820, to Matthew Maloney for $305, Book S, page 214. Deakers died that same year, 1820; the mortgage was foreclosed and the property sold by Sheriff Jos. C. Brown to Maloney, March 13, 1822, for $361.45.

These lots were sold for taxes, and purchased by John Shackford, his deed for same, April 18, 1825, recorded in Book M, page 289. Shackford relinquished it to the sons of Deakers for $50, Dec. 2, 1825, Book O, 548. These parties divided lot 54 March 17, 1827, as follows:

George, having purchased William's fourth, got the west half, 67 1/2 feet on Elm by 115 north on 6th Street; Lambert, 33.9 feet next east on Elm; and Richard, 33.9 feet next east to alley by 115 deep, Book O 546.

Mahoney having also died, David Shepard and Jonas Moore paid the mortgage debt to Keinlen, administrator, Feb. 17, 1835, and received a deed for the lot from Keinlen, Book U 263.

NOTE. — The eastern portion of this lot on Locust Street was Rector's property as late as Oct. 25, 1823, and had thereon at that date a frame stable of David Massie, who then kept Rector's City Hotel, Vine and Third. This hotel property, 80 by 150 feet, and the stable lot above, were mortgaged by Rector on that date for a loan of $12,000 for five years. The mortgage also included the east part of two lots Rector had acquired from Guibor and Godair in 1819, which lay across Third Street.

On Oct. 19, 1877, Mr. Richard Dowling read a very interesting paper before the Missouri Historical Society, in which he took occasion to speak from memory and personal recollection in regard to some of the real estate transactions so carefully catalogued above. The vein of his reminiscence ran back as far as 1817, at which time he claims that there were but two houses north of Franklin Avenue. Some of these reminiscences do not accord with other contemporary traditions, and we will not attempt to harmonize them. They stood near the four mounds there, which have since disappeared. There were but fifteen brick houses in the town, the largest being Kibbey's Hotel, built by Knight & Brady.

There were at that time two ferry-boats making regular trips, one at the foot of Market Street, and one near Morgan Street. In front of the city was a sand-bar, which in 1819 reached from Market to Morgan Streets, and extending two-thirds the way across the river.

The ferries were owned by Mr. Nash and E. M. Van Arsdel. One of the boats crossed above Bloody Island, and the other below. Skiffs and keel-boats were also much used in the transfer of freight and passengers.

Mr. Day started the first horse ferry-boat about 1824, which was also the first one that had any cover or protection from the weather. In 1827, Mr. Wiggins, of Cincinnati, came to St, Louis, and about a year afterwards brought here from that place the first steam ferry-boat ever run here.

The old jail, a very primitive structure, stood in the centre of the crossing of Fourth and Walnut Streets. The jailer was William Sullivan, a large and powerful man, weighing over three hundred pounds. In 1818, this jail being found inadequate, a new one was built on the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut Streets. It was of undressed stone, and consisted of a main story and basement, the latter being a sort of dungeon in which to confine dangerous or refractory prisoners. The stone-work was done by Thomas Reynolds, and the woodwork by Beriah Clelland. In after-years, and until recently this structure was known as the "Old Jail," a larger and more imposing building having been built in the rear and adjoining it.

The first building used as a court-house was James Beard's blacksmith-shop, altered for the purpose. It was situated on the west side of Third Street, between Almond and Spruce. It was about forty feet front by about seventy feet deep. When the court was not in session it was used as a place of amusement, and the first theatrical performance in St. Louis was given there in October, 1817, by Mr. Vos. He brought his company from Nashville, Tenn. It was the largest room in the city, and was therefore in demand for balls, Fourth of July dinners, etc.

About the year 1820 the court was moved to an old frame building on the southwest corner of Second and Walnut Streets, and some years afterwards to the Baptist Church, southwest corner of Market and Third Streets. The first court-house built by St. Louis County stood on Fourth Street, occupying a portion of the ground now covered by the east wing of the present structure. It was built by Morton & Laveille, and was commenced in 1826 and finished in 1828.

The principal part of the land surrounding St. Louis in those early days belonged to a half-dozen persons, viz.: Col. Auguste Chouteau, Judge John B. C. Lucas, Jeremiah Connor, William Christy, William C. Carr, and Robert Wash. They owned all the land west of Fourth Street, running forty arpens in length, to near where Grand Avenue now is, which joined the prairie common fields. The land west of Eleventh Street was all timbered. West of Chouteau's pond were dense thickets of hazel-bushes, oaks, and persimmons, reaching out to the prairie.

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There were three principal county roads. The road going south passed over Mill Creek bridge close by the present gasworks. About three hundred feet south of where Park Avenue is now there was another road leading southwest to Gravois.

The road north was a continuation of Main Street, running through what is now Bellefontaine Cemetery to Bellefontaine, which was then a military post. There was a beautiful spring there then which no longer exists, and which gave the title to the place.

The road west ran out St. Charles Street for about fifteen blocks, when it bore north until it came in a line with Franklin Avenue at what is now Twenty-second Street. Starting from St. Charles Street and running south of Lucas Place, there was a road leading to Manchester and other points.

Returning now to the article of the Globe-Democrat, we find that

"The principal additions of real estate blocked out with street and alley dedications by the owners during the first seventeen years of the existence of St. Louis as a city were as follows, as seen by the plat books in the office of the recorder of deeds. The locations are given according to the present designations of streets:

"John B. C. Lucas' addition of Sept. 6, 1833, was from Seventh to Ninth Street, between Market and St. Charles Streets.

"Julia C. Soulard's addition of May 18, 1836, was from the river to Carondelet Avenue, between Park and Geyer Avenues.

"J. J. O'Fallon, Feb. 1, 1836, the block between Seventh, Eighth, and Wash Streets and Franklin Avenue.

"E. T. Langham, September, 1836, from the present La Salle Street to Rutger Street, between Second and Fifth Streets.

"E. T. Christy's addition of 1836 was from Ninth to Twelfth Street, between Franklin and Lucas Avenues.

"J. J. O'Fallon's addition of July 17, 1837, between Seventh and Fourteenth Streets, from Franklin Avenue to Biddle Street.

"Julia C. Soulard's second addition, June 21, 1838. It included the area from Carondelet Avenue to Decatur Street, between Park and Geyer Avenues. The square where Soulard Market is was in this addition, dedicated to market purposes.

"Blow and Le Beaume's addition, Dec. 20, 1838, between the river and Carondelet Avenue, with a width of one hundred and forty-one feet north at Carondelet Avenue, and six hundred and sixty-three feet north at the river, from the north side of Victor Street.

"Feb. 8, 1839, the city limits were extended northwardly and described as follows: Beginning at a point in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River due east of the mouth of Mill Creek, so called; thence due west to the mouth of said creek; thence up the centre of the main channel of said creek to a point where the southern side of Rutger Street produced intersected the same; thence westwardly along the southern side of said street to the intersection of the same with the western line of Seventh Street, produced; thence northwardly along the western line of Seventh Street to the northern line of Biddle Street; thence eastwardly with the northern line of Biddle Street to the western line of Broadway; thence northwardly with the western line of Broadway to a point where the southern boundary of survey No. 671, produced, shall intersect the same; thence eastwardly along the southern boundary of said survey to the Mississippi River; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence down with the middle of the main channel of said river to the place of beginning.

"This change of boundary did not enlarge the area of the city more than five or six blocks; but the lines were made more definite and straighter. The southern side of survey No. 671 was afterwards Ashley Street, extended to Broadway. The city at this time had a population of about sixteen thousand, and the taxable property was assessed at $8,682,506, and the taxes paid amounted to $43,291.

"The property owners who during the succeeding years made the principal additions to the city were as follows:

"Edmund T. Christy's addition of March 18, 1839, was from Twelfth to Thirteenth Streets, between Franklin and Lucas Avenues.

"T. B. Lesperance's addition, May 15, 1839, from the river to Carondelet Avenue, between Allen and Russell Avenues, formerly Lesperance and Picotte Streets.

"The Duchouquette addition, Dec. 4, 1839, was made by Jean Baptiste Duchouquette, Theodore Papin, John B. Lesperance, and Brazil M. Alexander. The area was from the river to Carondelet Avenue, between Allen Avenue and Lami Street.

"Ann Biddle's addition, April 16, 1840, from Broadway to Thirteenth Street, between Biddle and O'Fallon Streets.

"John Stacker and Martin Thomas' addition, May 21, 1840, contained ten arpens of land, and was from O'Fallon to Howard Streets, between Broadway and East Seventeenth Street.

"Feb. 15, 1841, the city limits were extended southwardly, westwardly, and northwardly, and were described as beginning at a point in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River, thence due east to the southeast corner of St. George, in St. Louis County; thence due west to the west line of Second Carondelet Avenue; thence north with the said west line of said Avenue to the north line of Chouteau Avenue; thence northwardly in a direct line to the mouth of Stony Creek, above the present north line of the city of St. Louis; thence due east to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence southwardly with the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River to the place of beginning.

"The limits for 1841, and which continued for fourteen years, were briefly as follows: North line, from a point on Main Street, between Dock and Buchanan Streets, to the river, along the recent Rocky Branch; west line, a straight southwardly projected line from Main Street, near Dock, to Chouteau Avenue, one hundred feet west of Second Carondelet Avenue; thence south along Second Carondelet Avenue to Wyoming Street; south line, Wyoming Street, from Second Carondelet Avenue to First Carondelet Avenue, thence eastwardly to an intersection with the river at the foot of Anna Street.

"The area of the city within these limits was two thousand six hundred and thirty acres, or nearly four and one-ninth square miles. The assessment of property increased from $8,682,506 to $12,101,028, and taxes were increased from $43,291 to $45,088.

"This extension of the city took in the following additions:

"The incorporated town of North St. Louis, dedicated by William Chambers, W. T. Christy, and Thomas Wright, on June 29, 1816. This town was from the river to Twelfth Street, between Madison and Montgomery Streets. In the dedication by Messrs. Chambers, Christy, and Wright, they gave a market square and school park and church sites. These special gifts are now known as Exchange Square, at the foot of North Market Street, and the Webster School, Jackson Park, and Grace

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Episcopal Church site, between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, from Madison to Montgomery Street.

"The town of St. George, with streets and blocks, was dedicated Nov. 15, 1836, by Wm. Carr Lane. This town was located from the river to Carondelet Avenue, between Victor Street and the rear of lots on the north side of Lynch Street, formerly Harper. One of the conditions of St. George addition was that William Carr Lane's heirs and assigns should have the right to locate and maintain forever, free of charge or cost whatever, a railroad, with one or more tracks, through any street in said addition which they might select for that purpose. The dedicator also reserved the right of ownership in the ferry privileges, and in the addition of land deposited by the river.

"A village then known as Central St. Louis, located from the river to Eleventh Street, between O'Fallon and Tyler, formerly Webster Street, was also taken into the city by the extension of 1841. The dedicated additions in Central St. Louis were as follows:

"Thomas J. Payne's addition of Jan. 8, 1841, to Central St. Louis, was from the river to Broadway, between Mound and Bogy (formerly Brooklyn) Street. The dedicator reserved to himself the right of wharfage, ferriage, and Levee grading.

"Robert Moore's addition of June 6, 1840, was about seventy-five feet each side of Mound Street, from Broadway to the west end of the present street.

"Charles Collins' northern addition, July 1, 1839, was from the river to the rear of lots on the west side of Second Street, between Mound and Chambers Streets. This addition contained ten blocks or forty arpens of land.

"Charles Collins' western addition, Nov. 22, 1845, was both sides of Bogy (formerly Brooklyn) Street, from Broadway to Ninth Street.

"The other principal additions to St. Louis during the fourteen years preceding the next extension of the city boundary were as follows:

"H. M. Shreve's addition of July 8, 1840, was from Twelfth to Fourteenth Street, between Franklin Avenue and Biddle Street.

"Benjamin A. Soulard's addition of November, 1841, was from Buel to Morton Street, between Park Avenue and Marion Street, and from State to Morton, between Marion and Carroll Streets.

"Julia C. Soulard's third addition, Sept. 28, 1840, was from Decatur to Rosatti Streets, between Marion Street and Allen Avenue.

"Julia C. Soulard's fourth addition, Oct. 7, 1840, was from Rosatti to the rear of the lots on the west side of Closey Street, between Carroll and Soulard Streets.

"Louis A. Benoist's addition of Aug. 9, 1842, was from Laclede Avenue to lots on the north side of Locust Street, between Beaumont Street and Leffingwell Avenue.

"Julia C. Soulard's fifth addition, Sept. 15, 1841, was from Rosatti to Morton Streets, between Soulard Street and Geyer Avenue, and from Rosatti Street to rear of lots on the west side of Closey Street, between Geyer and Russell Avenues.

"William C. Carr, on Aug. 1, 1842, added the area from Fourteenth to Seventeenth Streets, between Franklin Avenue and Biddle Streets, and dedicated Carr Park, ‘to remain vacant and to serve forever for a pleasure-ground and public square, and for no other purpose whatever.’ In dedicating this addition factories, nine-pin alleys, or other then offensive institutions were prohibited within the limits of the addition.

"Gabriel Paul's addition of Sept. 6, 1842, was on the East side of Adolphe Street, from Market to Spruce Street, and in the rear of these lots was the western limit of Chouteau's pond.

"Réné Paul, Oct. 7, 1844, added the blocks between Market Street and Clark Avenue, from Seventeenth to Eighteenth Streets. At that time most of this area was represented as being in Chouteau's pond.

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"Theodore Papin and Honoré Picotté's addition, Sept. 9, 1842, was from De Kalb Street to Carondelet Avenue, between Russell Avenue and Shenandoah Street.

"John B. C. Lucas' addition of Feb. 7, 1843, was from Ninth to Eleventh Streets, between Market and St. Charles Streets.

"Réné Paul's addition, Dec. 24, 1845, was from Gratiot Street to Chouteau Avenue, between Beckwith and Barlow Streets.

"Dr. Hardage Lane's second addition, April 13, 1846, was from First Carondelet to Second Carondelet Avenue, between Wyoming and Arsenal Streets, containing about two arpens. At

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that time this addition formed the southwest corner of the city.

"Bernard G. Farrar's addition, Sept. 22, 1847, was from Eleventh to Eighteenth Street, between Hebert and Sullivan Streets.

"Susan La Beaume and Charles Collins' addition, Jan. 21, 1847, from Ninth to Eleventh Street, between Bogy, formerly Brooklyn, and Tyler, formerly Webster Street.

"Louis A. La Beuame and Archibald Gamble's addition of Aug. 9, 1847, was from Mercer Street to Jefferson Avenue, between Clark Avenue and Walnut Street.

"William C. Carr's third addition, July 10, 1847, from Eighteenth Street to Jefferson Avenue, between Franklin Avenue and Biddle Street. The recorded conditions of the dedication of the streets in this addition were that ‘there shall be no butchery, tallow chandlery, soap-factory, steam factory, tannery, nine-pin alley, or any other offensive business or occupation set up or carried on on any part of said addition, whereby the dwellings of any other lot-owners, proprietors, or occupants may be in any way annoyed or disturbed;’ that there shall be no change in the streets or alleys as laid off in the plot, and that all the fences and timber on the streets and alleys shall be reserved for the use of Wm. C. Carr.

"Adolphe Paul's addition, Jan. 30, 1846, between Market and Walnut Streets, from Adolphe Street to Twentieth.

"Dr. Hardage Lane's addition of October, 1839, revised March, 1846. This addition was from Austin to Poplar Street, between Fourteenth and Sixteenth Streets.

"Solomon H. Robbin's addition of Sept. 3, 1847, was from Seventeenth to Eighteenth Streets, between St. Charles Street and Lucas Avenue.

"Richard W. Ulrici's addition of Oct. 26, 1847, was from Twenty-third Street to Jefferson Avenue, between Market and Eugenia Streets.

"Thomas Allen's first addition, April 12, 1848, was from Carondelet Avenue to Fulton Street, between Geyer and Allen Avenues. Among the conditions of this dedication is the following: ‘There shall be no slaughter-house, bawdy-house, soap and candle factory, tannery, distillery, nine-pin alley, or any other offensive business or occupation set up or carried on upon any part of the addition.’

"The Fairview addition, made by Charles K. Dickson and John J. Murdoch, May 1, 1848, was between Sidney and Victor Streets, from Rosatti to Morton, formerly Summer Street.

"J. G. Shand's addition of June 12, 1848, was from Monroe to Montgomery Streets, between East Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets.

"Ed. Haven's addition of May 10, 1848, was eight blocks, within the area from Carondelet Avenue to Decatur Street, and between Victor and Shenandoah Streets.

"The Devolsy addition of June 9, 1848, was four blocks, two each side of Gravois Avenue, from Wisconsin, formerly McNair Avenue.

"The Labadie addition of June 28, 1848, was six blocks,

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within the area from Carondelet Avenue, two blocks west, between Sidney and Pestalozzi Streets.

"James H. Lucas and Ann L. Hunt's addition, Jan. 18, 1849, was from Twelfth to Seventeenth Street, between Market and Olive Streets.

"Isaac W. Taylor and E. R. Mason's addition of Oct. 6, 1848, was two and a half blocks, in the area from Carondelet Avenue west, between Barton and Sidney Streets.

"Thomas Allen's second addition of Dec. 13, 1848, was six blocks from Rosatti to Morton Street, between Victor and Shenandoah Streets.

"Among the conditions of this dedication were that there should not be any offensive business set up or carried on upon the addition, ‘such as a slaughter-house, bawdy-house, soap and candle factory, tannery, or distillery.’

"Dec. 5, 1855, the limits of the city were farther extended southwardly, westwardly, and northwardly, and described as beginning at a point in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River, where the continuation of the south side of Keokuk Street eastwardly would intersect said main channel; thence westwardly by the said line of the south side of Keokuk Street to a point six hundred and sixty feet west of Grand Avenue; thence northwardly and parallel to said Grand or Lindell Avenue, at a distance of six hundred and sixty feet therefrom, until it intersects the Bellefontaine road; thence northeast to the line dividing townships 45 and 46, range 7 west; thence eastwardly with said line and in the same direction to the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River; thence southwardly with the meanderings of the main channel of said river to the place of beginning.

"The new limits made Keokuk Street the southern boundary, and a line six hundred and sixty feet west and north of Grand Avenue as the west and north line. This made the area of the city about seventeen square miles. The assessment of property for taxation was increased from $42,991,812 to $59,609,289.

"This extension took in the town of Bremen. This town was incorporated April 6, 1845, under a dedication of blocks and streets made by George Buchanan, E. C. Angelrodt, N. N. Destrehan, and Mallinckrodt. It was located from the river to the Bellefontaine road, between Buchanan and Salisbury Streets.

"The village of Highland came in also under this extension. This village was dedicated by John R. Shepley, Aug. 1, 1848. It had an area of five blocks, extending from Jefferson to Leffingwell Avenues, between Laclede Avenue and Eugenia Street.

"James E. Yeatman and Robert S. Holmes' addition, dedicated March 28, 1851, five blocks, fronting on the south side of Angelica Street, from the river to the Bellefontaine road.

"Julie G. Cabanné's addition of ten blocks, dedicated April 24, 1849, between Decatur and Menard Streets, with Victor Street as the south line.

"William T. F. Wright's addition of four blocks, dedicated April 23, 1849, from Benton to Hebert Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets.

"Adam L. Mills' western addition of four blocks, dedicated July 10, 1869, from Laclede Avenue to the rear of the lots on the north side of Pine Street, between Jefferson Avenue and Beaumont Street.

"John J. Murdoch and Charles K. Dickson's addition of ten blocks, dedicated Jan. 19, 1850, between Randolph and Market Streets, with Adolphe Street as the eastern line.

"The Union addition, dedicated March 5, 1850, by John O'Fallon, Louis A. La Beaume, James Miller, Josiah Dent, John R. Shepley, L. A. Benoist, Albert Todd, Samuel Knox, B. B. Dayton, and others. This addition contained fifty-four present city blocks, and was between North Market and Hebert Streets, from East Sixteenth Street to Jefferson Avenue. One of the conditions of the dedication of the Union addition was the reservation of the park now known as St. Louis Place ‘for a public park or pleasure ground,’ to be kept in good order and to be improved by the city as a private park, for the use of the residents of the area comprised within the district designated as Union addition.

"Fairmount addition, dedicated by Wm. R. Price and John Ivory, April 11, 1850. This addition included six blocks on both sides of Liberty Street, from Sidney to Lynch Street.

"Ann C, T. Farrar's addition, dedicated Oct. 26, 1850, included seventeen blocks between Buchanan Street and Bremen Avenue, from Tenth to Sixteenth Street.

"The Arsenal addition, dedicated by J. S. Dougherty, J. W. Taylor, and E. R. Mason, Dec. 18, 1850, included eight blocks west of Carondelet Avenue and opposite to the present Lyon Park.

"Adam L. Mills' addition of May 15, 1844, from Jefferson Avenue to Beaumont Street, between Lucas and Franklin avenues.

"Lewis Bissell's addition of nine blocks, dedicated Jan. 8, 1852, from the river to Broadway, between Angelica and Bissell Streets.

"Stoddard addition, dedicated Sept. 9, 1851, by Henry Stoddard and John J. Murdock. This addition includes the area between Beaumont Street to Cardinal Avenue, from Laclede to Franklin Avenue, and from Jefferson to Compton Avenue, between Franklin Avenue and the rear of the lot on the north side of Thomas Street. It comprises about seventy-two present city blocks.

"Clement B. Penrose's addition of May 22, 1852, was between Eleventh and Sixteenth Streets, both sides of Penrose Street.

"William Glasgow, Jr.'s addition of March 28, 1853, was nine blocks, situated on both sides of Cass Avenue, from Garrison Avenue to Francis Street.

"Rock Point addition, made April 9, 1853, by Stephen D. Barlow as executor of the will of William C. Carr, extended from Main Street to Carondelet Avenue, between Dorcas and Lynch, formerly Harper.

"Florence village, dedicated by James S. Watson and Samuel D. South, April 20, 1853, on the west side of Garrison Avenue, between Thomas Street and Cass Avenue.

"Beaumont addition, made by Deborah and Israel G. Beaumont and Sarah Irwin, June 14, 1853, extended from Jefferson Avenue to Beaumont Street, from the rear of the lots on the south side of Olive Street to Lucas Avenue.

"West Bremen, an addition made by William C. and A. R. Taylor, Oct. 12, 1853, extending from West Sixteenth Street to Grand Avenue, on both sides of Bremen Avenue.

"George Mincke's addition, April 24, 1854, on the east side of Tayon Avenue, from Clark to Chouteau Avenue.

"Compton Hill addition, made by James S. Thomas, May 20, 1854, includes ten blocks from Park to Chouteau Avenue, between Compton and Grand Avenues.

"Mary L. Tyler's addition of July 10, 1854, from Eleventh to East Sixteenth Street, between Tyler, formerly Webster, and Clinton, formerly Exchange Street. One of the conditions of this dedication was a reservation of all surplus earth above established grades of streets for the purpose of filling up streets and lots below grade.

"South St. Louis, situated between the old Arsenal and the present Marine Hospital, dedicated by Samuel S. Rayburn, Wm. S. Stamps, John Withnell, and twenty others, May 11, 1836.

"Thomas F. Smith's first addition, Sept. 28, 1855, both sides of Ewing, formerly Summit Avenue, from Laclede Avenue to Randolph Street.

"North Stoddard addition, made by Thomas A. Buckland

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and Robert M. Funkhouser, March 24, 1856, included thirteen blocks, north of Stoddard Street to Benton, between Beaumont Street, formerly Elliot Avenue, and Glasgow Avenue.

"South Stoddard addition, made by R. A. S. and F. John Alexander, March 31, 1856, was from Laclede Avenue to Randolph Street, between Ewing and Glasgow Avenues.

"J. H. Lucas and Anne L. Hunt's addition of June 8, 1859, was from Seventeenth Street to Jefferson Avenue, between Market Street and the rear of the lots on the north side of Olive Street.

"La Monte addition, made by Robert Mc. O'Blenis, June 22, 1858, was ten blocks, included in the area from Chouteau to Park Avenue, west of Jefferson Avenue.

"James B. Eads' addition of four blocks, June 14, 1859, was south of Chouteau Avenue, both sides of Josephine.

"Edward Delano's addition, May 17, 1859, was six blocks along the south side of Arsenal Street, between Jefferson and California Avenues.

"Peter Lindell's first addition, made May 26, 1864, comprised fifteen blocks, from Laclede to Lindell Avenues, between Garrison and Grand Avenues.

"Ann C. T. Farrar's addition, made Aug. 4, 1864, from Eleventh to Sixteenth Streets, between Mallinckrodt Street and Bremen Avenue, included four blocks dedicated for park purposes. This park is now known as Hyde Park.

"Bryan addition of fifty-seven blocks, between Grand and Prairie Avenues, formerly Bryan, from Hall, formerly Water Street, to Penrose, formerly Belle Street, was made by John Cano Bryan's heirs, March 15, 1861, and by Eveline Bryan, Oct. 3, 1865, of fifteen blocks, between Grand and Prairie Avenues, from Hall Street to the river.

"Ranken addition, made by Thomas Ranken, Jr., David Ranken, Hugh L. Ranken, Robert Ranken, and Thomas R. Patton, Nov. 30, 1868, was between Chouteau Avenue and Manchester road, from Compton to Channing (formerly Ranken) Avenue, and both sides of Grand Avenue.

"Thomas Allen's western addition, May 17, 1869, was from Jefferson to California Avenue, from Lafayette Avenue to the rear of lots on the south side of Ann Avenue, and contained twelve blocks.

"Thomas Allen's central addition, of June 21, 1869, was twenty-two blocks, between South Carondelet Avenue and Jefferson Avenue, from Geyer's Avenue to the rear of lots on the south side of Ann Avenue.

"Gabriel S. Chouteau's addition of twelve blocks, June 8, 1870, from Garrison (formerly Montrose) to Compton Avenue, between the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Clark Avenue.

"Tower Grove Park and Grand Avenue additions of thirty blocks, from Louisiana to Gustine Avenue, along the south side of Arsenal Street, was dedicated by the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, June 18, 1881.

"April 5, 1870, St. Louis was farther extended south so as to include the section south of Keokuk Street and east of line six hundred and sixty feet west of Grand Avenue. Under this extension the assessed value of the real estate in the city increased from $113,426,410 to $123,833,950.

"By this extension, through a legislative enabling act, the city of Carondelet was taken into St. Louis. Carondelet had an area of about three square miles. It was founded in 1767, first incorporated as a town Nov. 4, 1833, and March 1, 1851, was formed into a city. The Carondelet municipal government organization took place April 9, 1851, when the place had twelve hundred and sixty-five inhabitants, twenty-six of whom were slaves. Mr. James B. Walsh, now clerk in Comptroller Adreon's office, was the first mayor of Carondelet. The present Walsh Street was about the northern limit of Carondelet.

"Besides adding Carondelet by this extension, a section was taken in lying between Keokuk and Osceola Streets, known as South St. Louis, that had been blocked off and dedicated in 1866 by several parties.

"Also, South St. Louis, suburban addition, dedicated by John C. Ivory, July 14, 1858. This addition was from Eichelberger to Osceola Streets, between the Stringtown and Cabanné Avenues, formerly Stringtown road and Seventeenth Street. This addition comprised sixty-three blocks.

"March 30, 1872, the city limits were extended farther west and north, so as to include Tower Grove, Forest and O'Fallon Parks, and so as to make districts for assessment of taxes for park purposes. On Feb. 4, 1874, the Legislature repealed the act of 1872, and placed the limits back to a line six hundred and sixty feet west of Grand Avenue.

"Aug. 22, 1876, the present city charter was adopted, the city was made separate and independent from the county, and invested with certain legislative rights formerly belonging to the State Legislature. This action made St. Louis a free city in local government, being the only one in the great valley in that condition.

"Under this new charter the limits of the city were farther extended, so as to include the Tower Grove, O'Fallon, and Forest Park districts, and increased the area of the city from nineteen and a half square miles to sixty-two and a quarter square miles.

"This last extension of the city limits increased the assessed value of the real estate from $166,009,660 to $181,345,560.

"Under this extension the following additions were made to the city:

"The town of Lowell, forty blocks, incorporated in 1849 by E. C. Hutchinson, Josephine Hall, Edward F. Pittman, Robert Hall, Wm. Garnett, and others. The town was between the river and Bellefontaine road, from Grand Avenue to Adelaide, formerly O'Fallon Avenue.

"Rock Springs, dedicated by John B. Sarpy, May 28, 1852.

"Cheltenham, dedicated by Derick A. January and others, in 1852.

"Quinette, dedicated by Oliver Quinette, Feb. 17, 1859.

"Mount Olive, dedicated by M. F. Hanley, May 10, 1854.

"These last four-named villages were between Forest Park and Shaw's Garden.

"Côte Brilliante, four hundred arpens, or a little over one square mile, dedicated by Charles Gibson, James C. Page, and Felix Coste, Dec. 14, 1853.

"McRee City, being an addition of fifteen blocks, made by the Laclede Race-Track Association, James J. O'Fallon, president, and Charles L. Hunt, secretary, June 29, 1869; and thirteen blocks added by Mrs. Mary McRee, Oct. 4, 1869. This city was between Cabanné Avenue, Manchester road, McRee and Chouteau Avenues.

"Fairmount, twenty-five blocks, dedicated June 10, 1869, from King's highway to Macklind, formerly St. Louis Avenue,between Bischoff, formerly Bernard Avenue, and Northrup Avenues. This dedication was made by Mary C. Hereford, Elizabeth Phare, Robert E. Pattison, Ashley R. Northrup, E.W. Pattison, Julia A. Letcher, Julia A. Ashbrook, and others.

"Rose Hill addition of thirty blocks, made by D. C. and Hamilton Gamble, June 8, 1871, between Union and Hodiamont Avenues, along the south side of Easton Avenue, formerly St. Charles rock road.

"Evans Place, twelve blocks along the north side of Page Avenue from Prairie to Taylor Avenues, dedicated in August, 1872, by B. D. Evans, Clara Evans, Lydia Evans (McCarty), Montgomery Blair, Walker Evans, and Amanda Evans.

"College Hill, a tract dedicated by the St. Louis University

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at various times since 1857, and located along the south side of the present O'Fallon Park, between the Bellefontaine road and Penrose, formerly Belle Street, and Prairie, formerly Bryan, and Adelaide, formerly O'Fallon Avenue.

The history of the "commons" and "common fields" of St. Louis would of itself suffice to establish the Latin-race origin of the old town, so different in manners and customs from those which distinguish our communities of English foundation and descent. This history takes the close student into a region filled with the romance of litigation. The lawyers of the city have enriched themselves in the process of quieting the innumerable disputed titles of individuals to tracts which were once, by common consent and usage and the tacit approval of law, the common property of the entire community. These tracts and sections belonging to the commons and common fields of St. Louis furnished between eight and nine miles of the present area of the city.

The history of these common fields, according to a recognized authority, is as follows:

"They consisted of a tract of land comprising a quantity of acres, according to the wants of the inhabitants, in which each inhabitant possessed a portion for the purpose of cultivation. They were inclosed at the joint expense, or, rather, each one furnished his proportion of labor. These lots were obtained by petition and grant, and belonged to the inhabitants as fee-simple property.

"The French and Spanish founders of new settlements invariably adopted this system of common fields, which were at some little distance from the town, and which the inhabitants jointly cultivated. It was done for protection, as it was necessary that the inhabitants should all reside in the village, so as to be ready to support each other in case of an attack from the Indians, and when engaged in their agricultural occupations, being together, they could the more readily resist any invasion."

These common fields were designated with French personal and descriptive names and as prairies.

The use and origin of commons and common fields were explained fully and lucidly by Col. Auguste Chouteau, in his testimony before the board of land commissioners in 1808. That testimony is as follows:

"Of those who were the first to come over to this from the other side, far the largest portion were tillers of the soil, who by their labor in the field produced their own subsistence and that of their stock. Some of them, in seasons when not engaged in their agricultural avocations, exercised the calling of rough artisans, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, stone-masons, hewers, etc., employed in building; others, procuring small outfits of merchandise, spent the winter trading with Indians and trapping; consequently, it was a matter of prime necessity with them, so soon as they had erected their domiciles in the village, to proceed at once to the production of their breadstuffs. For this purpose the land immediately adjoining the village on the northwest, being the most suitable, was set aside for cultivation, and conceded in strips of one arpent front by forty in depth, and each applicant allotted one or more, according to his ability to cultivate it. This was called the common-field lots, and the tract extended from a little below Market Street on the south, to opposite the big mound on the north, and from the Broadway to Jefferson Avenue, east to west. The land lying southwest of the village, being well watered with numerous springs and well covered with timber, was set aside for the village commons, in which the cattle and stock of the inhabitants were kept for safety and convenience. These two tracts of land were at once inclosed by the people in 1764-65, and their eastern fence formed the western boundary of the village for many years."

The "commons" were not inclosed; the "common fields" were, and were divided into what were called "forty-arpent lots." That is to say, the common field was inclosed in one common fence, and within this inclosure each head of a family had a lot to cultivate, which was one arpent wide and forty arpens long. The regulations for the management and care of the common fields were explicit and full. The people who settled St. Louis knew the entire unwritten law of the "prairie," and they put it in force forthwith. It was of course necessary to add continually to the common, and especially to the common field, by taking more land from the royal domain as the population increased, and this fact of itself restricted their communal privileges and customs to small towns and unprogressive villages. In St. Louis the common-field was fenced in as early as 1764-65, and this fence was several times extended. The evidence that the common was property of the village is found in a decree of Lieutenant-Governor Cruzat, Sept. 22, 1782. When the American jurisdiction was established in St. Louis, the inhabitants wished to have their common land confirmed to them. They claimed at that time 4293 arpens under the decree of Don Francisco Cruzat. The commons were taken care of by a syndic, and eight umpires, nominated in general assembly of the people the first day of each year. Their duty was to "watch together" the repairs of streets, bridges, and drains, and enforce the regulations in regard to the lands of the commune. The syndic and umpires for 1782 were Perrault, Brazeau, Cerré, Réné Kiercereau, Joseph Taillon, Joseph Mainville, Chauvin, and Auguste Chouteau. Their chief work, after seeing that water-courses were kept clear, was to view and preserve the common-field fence. The fence was to be viewed on January 1st, and to be in full repair by April 15th at farthest. On the first Sunday after this date the umpires were to "receive" the fence. "The aforesaid umpires shall not receive the fences unless they are constructed in such a way that cattle shall not be able to get out of the common and go into the town fields of the inhabitants, to injure them." When the umpires had reported to the syndic, it was his duty to appoint eight other umpires to test and verify their action; neglect

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Messrs. Clement B. Penrose, John B. C. Lucas, and James L. Donaldson, trustees of St. Louis in 1806, heard the claim of the people to the 4293 arpens of commons. Auguste Chouteau, Gregoire Sarpy, W. H. Le Compte, and many other citizens testified to the fact of the common and its conduct. The trustees were in doubt. The claim lacked the quality of inhabitancy, and there was no registered warrant or survey, but still the claim originated under the French government; such grants were usual under both the French and Spanish régimes; they were in conformity with the laws of the respective countries, and they seemed equitable under Spanish law. However, Messrs. Lucas and Frederick Bates voted for rejecting the commons claim, only Mr. Penrose favoring its confirmation. By act of Congress, however, of June 13, 1812, the right of St. Louis to its common lands was fully confirmed.

In 1835 the Missouri Legislature authorized the St. Louis authorities to sell the "commons" east of the present Twelfth Street, provided the majority of the resident property-holders in the city consented. These inhabitants gave their consent on condition that one-tenth of the proceeds of the sales be used for public school purposes, and the balance for municipal improvements.

About 4293 arpens, or 3735 acres, were sold at that time for nearly $425,000. Subsequently the purchasers imagined that they had agreed to pay too much, and therefore failed to make the payments on time, and the sales in most instances were set aside.

In 1843 the city authorities began to resell the "common fields," and realized nearly fifty dollars per acre. Between 1843 and 1850 about 3615 arpens of these commons were sold, and the city treasurer received $163,680. The lowest price fixed by the city was twenty-five dollars per acre, or about $21.75 per arpent. In 1860 the part of the city commons sold was estimated to be worth about $25,000,000. The purchasers platted the commons into blocks and small additions, and subsequently made them a part of the city's improved area. In 1860 the city held five hundred and ninety-one acres of the commons unsold, and this property was assessed at $581,391. Since then the city has sold or leased out most of the "common fields," and held the rest for public parks, sites for public buildings and markets.

The city now owns of the unimproved commons fifty-seven pieces, valued at $143,025. The improved real estate belonging to the city government for parks, markets, engine-houses, police stations, hospitals, city hall, court-houses, penal institutions, and water-works is estimated this year (1882) to be worth about $5,709,370. The value of the buildings and improvements on the city real estate is estimated at $12,789,145.

The United States government now owns property in real estate and buildings in St. Louis to the value of $5,787,800, and the St. Louis school board owns property valued at $2,382,342. The valuation of property owned by private schools and convents is $1,418,465, and by church corporations, $3,610,586. The total amount of real estate exempt from taxation in the city is about $35,000,000.

The street nomenclature of St. Louis has undergone several radical changes since the formation of the place. At first French designations were given to the streets in the old village. When the town was incorporated the streets running east and west were named in English after various trees or plants, and the streets running north and south were designated by letters of the alphabet, Market Street being the only street to retain its original name, and that being its translation from the old French name.

Five years after the town became a city, or in 1827, the City Council changed the north and south streets east of Seventh, between Biddle and Rutger Streets, to their present names, and amended Hazel to Chouteau Avenue, and Laurel to Washington Avenue, as now designated.

Occasionally, during the subsequent fifty years, a few street names were changed, and some streets, like the present Clinton Street, Lucas Avenue, and Grand Avenue, were changed three or four times.

During the past twelve years there became incorporated with the city of St. Louis the cities, towns and villages of Carondelet, Rock Spring, Cheltenham, Elleardsville, Côte Brilliante, Rinkelville, Ashland, Lowell, and Baden. Before these additions were made their territory was mapped out in blocks, with the streets named similarly to the ones in St. Louis.

After the extension of the city limits in 1855, the farms between Jefferson and Grand Avenues were platted into blocks, and became additions. In mapping out these additions the owners of the lands named the streets to suit their fancy, regardless as to whether the street names were similar to those in other parts of the city, or whether the streets were lineal connections of other streets previously named.

In consequence of the above circumstances, out of the two thousand one hundred street names in the city in 1881, over two hundred were duplicates, nearly

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The introduction of the present system of city delivery of post-office matter, and the establishment of the district system of registering voters and assessing public improvement taxes made it necessary for the street commissioner, under instruction of the Municipal Assembly and the Board of Public Improvements, to revise the street nomenclature. A revision was made, and it passed the Municipal Assembly. The ordinance was No. 11,693, approved March 31, 1881. After the approval of this ordinance the street commissioner found it necessary to make another revision, to correct omissions in naming continuous street lines, and therefore he postponed enforcing the ordinance. In October, 1881, the additional revision of street names was presented in the City Council, and went to the House of Delegates Nov. 29, 1881, and passed both houses March 21, 1882. The ordinance was approved March 22d, and is known as ordinance No. 11,966.

The names of streets is a sore subject to the genuine antiquarian, who cannot avoid a pang when he sees an old historical landmark in the way of a name ruthlessly wiped out by the carelessness, ignorance, or opinionativeness of a city alderman or a municipal clerk. Names mean something; when nothing else, they serve at least to fix dates in the public memory and revive or keep alive patriotic and national events and occurrences. The old Indian, French, and Spanish names of St. Louis and Missouri ought to be reverently treated as a venerable and valuable inheritance. To an outsider the idea of sinking such a name as "Carondelet" in the commonplace "Broadway" is almost inconceivable, yet it has been done.

There is a great deal of history in the Missouri names which have come down from the past. Even the nicknames won by the towns, such as "Pain Court," "Vide-poche," "Misčre," etc., have much of by no means unpleasant significance. In this view of the case the Missouri Historical Society is doing an excellent work in its efforts to preserve the orthography and keep on record the meaning of its geographical names. In many cases the French foible for abbreviation, followed by the English propensity to corrupt and misspell French words, has destroyed the intelligibility of names. Thus, the Des Moins River is spelt Des Moines, as if it were the Monks' River, whereas it is really la rivičre de Moingona, an Indian tribe of that name frequenting its banks. Maramec, the river forming the southern boundary of St. Louis County, is really Maniameck, "Catfish River." Gasconade, according to the late James A. Lucas, should really be "Gassonade," meaning raw sugar, a favorite article with the Delaware Indians once settled on the banks of that stream. "Pain Court," meaning a deficient loaf, is said to be the reminiscence of an ancient parish in France, and not simply an epithet originating in Kaskaskia. "Vide-poche," it has been suggested by Hon. Wilson Primm, referred to the skill of the Carondeletians at games of chance, and the fact that they were usually able to send their St. Louis visitors home with empty pockets.

As to names of streets and localities in connection with topography, a writer in a St. Louis journal of May 28, 1870, says, —

"In our own city we have mixed up several systems of naming our streets. The stereotype ‘principal street’ of all towns of French or Spanish origin on this continent is preserved in our Main Street, and Market Street still indicates the locality of the sole market-place of the French village of St Louis. But in the village itself, the first American settlers having been to a considerable extent from Pennsylvania, and the overland trade of Missouri with the Atlantic States having been mainly with Philadelphia, the system of that city was adopted. Accordingly the Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, and Pine Streets of the Quaker City have their namesakes here, and, with the exception of Market Street and Washington Avenue, all the old streets of French St. Louis running westwardly from the Mississippi River are named after trees; one, indeed, Olive, bears the scarcely appropriate designation of a stranger to our climate. With the extension of the city, the list of trees being soon exhausted, new streets were usually given the names of the owners of the various additions through which they were laid out. Occasionally the memory of some original settler, whose name had become too closely connected with the locality to be readily got rid of, has been preserved in the designation of a street, and more frequently some distinguished public man, as Benton, Geyer, etc., has received a like tribute of respect. In naming our streets parallel to the Mississippi River, we have followed, except in regard to some few great avenues, the sensible practical plan, general in American cities, of merely numbering them.

"But we have wholly neglected in naming our streets to preserve any remembrance of the old landmarks and lines of division which are of interest in the history of our city, and sometimes of importance for the understanding of its annals. The next generation will find no names, and, indeed, even few streets or avenues, to point out the boundaries of the common and the common fields which figured so largely in the public as well as in the private history of old St. Louis. Grand Avenue very nearly but not exactly marks the eastern boundary of the Grand Prairie, and ‘The King's Highway’ is still the designation of the old colonial main road. This is one of the very few instances in which historical reminiscences have been respected in the naming of streets or avenues. As the subject of our street names was before our last City Council, with a view to simplifying them, which is not unlikely to be revived, we wish to put in a plea for regard to the historical reminiscences

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of St. Louis in giving a general designation to the most important of our great avenues of communication which run parallel to the Mississippi River."

Among the oddities and curiosities in old local names we find "Kerry Patch," once used to designate a district between Seventeenth Street on the east and Twentieth west, between Mullanphy and Biddle Streets. It was settled by Irish immigrants about 1842, and being then commons, without street lines, the shanties were sprinkled in a very promiscuous fashion about the "Patch," all the occupants being alike squatters. "Duncan Island" in 1817 was nothing more than a common "towhead" in the river. The name was derived from "old Bob Duncan," who came from Pittsylvania County, Va., and planted a cabin on the island in order to insure a pre-emption claim. The sand-bar extended from the foot of Market Street to the south of Mill Creek, or La Petite Rivičre, as it was called by the French inhabitants, and kept on increasing by accretions until about the year 1829 or 1830. The old channel of the Mississippi River previous to about 1817 ran along the front of the city; above St. Louis the main channel ran on the east side of Gaberet Island. Then the channel changed, and it ran on the west side, scooping out hundreds of acres, and forming a chute since then called "Sawyer's Bend," on account of the numerous "sawyers" or snags that planted themselves there. The river then followed in its course to near where the old dry-docks were located at the foot of Ashley Street, and then the current shot across from the Point of Rocks, at the foot of Ashley Street, towards the Illinois shore, causing a bar to form along the whole front of the city, so that no boat could land south of what is known as the foot of Morgan Street. The channel then ran at the foot of Bloody Island, and hugging the Illinois shore kept that direction as far as Cahokia Bend, and then crossed over to the Missouri shore about a mile above Carondelet. The sand-bar at the foot of Market Street extended two-thirds the way across the river as far back as about 1828. About the year 1830 a member of the board of aldermen named Cotton M. Tabor had a contract with the city to build log cribs on the west side of Bloody Island in order to throw the channel again over to the Missouri side. The cribs were built of cottonwood logs, which he had cut off Gaberet Island and floated down to Bloody Island. He filled the interior of the cribs with sand instead of rock, and the first high water that came washed all the cribs down the river, not leaving a remnant behind.

The channel was first improved by Maj. Robert E. Lee, of the Engineer Department, in conjunction with Henry Kayser, the then city engineer. They constructed heavy dams of stone, and filling up the channel between the Illinois shore and Bloody Island had a tendency to throw the channel on this side, and dikes were thrown from this side out to straighten the line of the wharf, which is now the present line.

"Happy Hollow" was a name given in primitive times to the ravine commencing south of Spruce Street and west of Fifth. Chouteau's Mill Creek traversed it, and the banks were shaded by tall sycamore-trees, under which the colored "aunties," who were the precursors of "Ah Sin," did their washing and stretched their clothes-lines. On Sunday they used to have their "bush meetings" in the glade, at which they often got "happy." The "old race-track," a name which is still sometimes applied to the locality, long since built up, was on the Grand Prairie, on the Gallatin farm, afterwards known as Capt. Shreeve's place, three-fourths of a mile above Franklin Avenue. It was the earliest race-course near St. Louis, and some of the most famous thoroughbreds of Kentucky and Tennessee have tested their speed upon it.

"Vinegar Hill" was years ago given to an elevation near the then head of Morgan Street and Franklin Avenue, at Eighteenth Street. The name was derived from the well-known battle-field in Ireland, where the United Irishmen fell to pieces. "Clabber Alley" is a familiar name, but the spot is not so well known. It runs north and south from Franklin Avenue to Biddle Street, between Sixth and Seventh, has many tenement-houses, and a dense population of divers colors and nationalities. Years ago, when there were many dairies in the vicinity, the negroes and low whites in the alley used to subsist in a measure upon buttermilk and "clabber," and the police gave the name to the place from seeing the gutters generally half-full of sour milk. "Battle Row" notorious in old steamboating flush times, was on the Levee, between Morgan and Washington Streets. It comprised several low two-story stone houses, owned by the John Mullanphy estate, and was noted for scenes of turbulence and disorder, and for being the most dangerous locality in the city. Many a bloody fight came off there, and scarcely a day elapsed without a row, it needing generally a squad of policemen to make an arrest in the vicinity.

"Wild-Cat Chute" is the euphonious cognomen of an alley running north and south between Carr and Biddle and Seventh and Eighth Streets, filled with tenements, and peopled by a low class of negroes. The name originated about thirty years ago, when a large amount of what has been known as "wild-cat money" was in circulation, especially among

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"Castle Thunder" has long been applied to a large tenement-house in "Wild-Cat Chute." During the early part of the war the colored people, who came to the city in droves, generally settled in communities in the large tenement-houses, and were fond of calling their domiciles by the name of some fort, generally southern. Thus one such tenement-house was called "Fort Sumter," and another "Fort Pinckney," but the names did not stick. "Castle Thunder" received its name from the negroes in the same way, and is still known by it.

"Pond Fort" was a dance-house, so called because it was the nearest place of the kind to Chouteau's Pond. It was a two-story brick building, located on the northeast corner of Sixth and Spruce Streets, and was kept by a woman known as "Capt. Jack." The building is still standing, about opposite the Italian Church. It was a gathering-place for the fast people of that day as long as the "Fort" was held by Capt. Jack.

"Robber's Roost." This was an infamous resort on the river-bank, where Filley's foundry now stands. It was a roost for gamblers and other disreputable people of the worst description. The scenes enacted there gave it its name. In June, 1831, the citizens became incensed, and one night assembled together and burned it down, with all the furniture and other contents. Some of the inmates at the same time received a pretty severe handling, one feature of which consisted of tarring and feathering.

"Shakerag." Some years ago a locality in the upper end of the city obtained the nickname of "Shakerag," and it is sometimes so called at the present time. There was a slang meaning to the word at that day, which is now obsolete, and the name was fixed to the locality indicated when there were but few houses there, and the inmates of most of them were in the habit of shaking a rag held out of the window as a signal in certain cases.

"Vauxhall Gardens." There have been two places in St. Louis which at different times obtained some local celebrity as the Vauxhall Gardens, the first so called after the famous London resort of that name. It surrounded one of the oldest brick residences in the city, and which was built by Thomas C. Riddick, on the west side of Fourth Street, between Plum and Poplar. It was after Riddick's occupancy that it was turned into a public garden. In 1823, and for a number of years afterwards, it was a place of great public resort, and was famous for its Fourth of July celebrations.

The second "Vauxhall Gardens" was established at the old Soulard residence, on the east side of Carondelet Avenue, south of Miller Street. It was surrounded by a large orchard, bearing excellent fruit, and, like its predecessor, became a great public resort and place for political meetings. The garden has long ceased to exist, but the building still remains, although it has lost its name.

Chapter VIII.

IN the well-known fragment of Auguste Chouteau's Journal, in which he begins the narrative of the founding of St. Louis, he records some names which have a peculiar value for every one interested in the early settlement and the earlier settlers of that city. In addition to his own name and that of Laclede Liguest, his employer, he mentions the fact that he set out to plant the new post with a boat containing thirty men, "nearly all mechanics." There were also on the site, after the building of the first house began, some people who had come from "Caos" (Cahokia), but had fled when the Missouri Indians put in their appearance. Laclede was sent for, — he was at Fort Chartres, — and on his arrival found means to send the Indians away without any likelihood of their return. Thereupon "those persons who had fled to Caos on the coming of the savages, says Chouteau, "returned as soon as they knew that they had gone away, and commenced building their houses, or, to speak more correctly, their cabins, and entered their lands agreeably to the lines of the lots which I had drawn, following the plan which Monsieur Laclede had left with me."

The names of these persons of "Caos" are given in a note to the Journal as follows: Joseph Tayon, Roger Tayon, Dechene, Beauchamps, Morcerau (Marcheteau), Joseph Bequet (Becquet), André Becquet, Gabriel Dodier, Baptiste Martigny, Lemoine Martigny, Beaugenou, Cotté, Picket, Hervieux,

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When Capt. Rios came up to the mouth of the Missouri in 1768, he brought with him as surgeon, Dr. Jean B. Valleau, a Frenchman by birth. Valleau got a lot in the village (a concession from St. Ange), and contracted with Peter Tousignan to build him a house of posts upon it eighteen feet long by fourteen wide, shingle roof, stone chimney, partition in centre, door in partition, and door on the outside, two windows with shutters, well floored and ceiled with well-jointed cottonwood plank, the pay to be sixty silver dollars, and Valleau to provide the iron and nails. In addition to this house, Valleau bought an adjoining lot for six hundred livres, on which Calvé, an absconding debtor, had built a house of posts sixteen by sixteen feet. In November Valleau fell sick, and died on the 24th, having made his will the previous day. He had not occupied either of his new houses, dying in that of Desnoyers. He appointed Duralde, a Spanish officer, as his executor, and directed all his property to be made available for the benefit of Madame Valleau, his wife, and children, residing in La Rochelle, France. The witnesses were Francisco de Rive (Rios), and Joseph Papin, trader.

De Volsay's will, no less than his wife's character, reveals a not very excellent state of society in early St. Louis. He leaves the best part of his property to Françoise, a mulatto girl, his natural daughter, the wife of François Dupuy; sets free his colored man, Jean Louis, to whom he leaves $100; bequeaths his cross of the Order of St. Louis to Baron Carondelet, and his sword also, for his son, Don Renato Tudeau, and names Silvestre Sarpy and Charles Sanguinet as his executors. Wm. Hebert, dit Lecompte, left a will much more pleasant to read. Having no children by his wife, Blondeau, widow of Amable Guion, he leaves her all his estate. When they married, he records in the will, she brought in $900, of which her mother gave her $400, and $500 was the product of her own industry. He had $4000. Since then they had gained $600, and he left the whole $5500 to his wife; Auguste Chouteau and Charles Sanguinet, executors. Still, Madame Margaret Hebert-Lecompte, veuve Guion, née Blondeau, may not have been a very pleasant person to live with. Indeed, there is testamentary evidence that she was not, for her own father and mother went to die among strangers rather than live with her.

When Don Fernando de Leyba, "Captain of the regiment of Infantry of Louisiana, Commander-in-Chief and Lieutenant-Governor of the Western Part of Illinois," was on his death bed, June 9, 1780, he sent for his lieutenant, Don Francisco Cartabona, and executed his will. He named as executor François Vigo, merchant, and as his substitute Benito Vasquez, lieutenant of militia. (Vasquez had come to St. Louis in 1774, and married Julia Papin, then only ten years old, who bore him twelve children.)

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De Leyba left $1000 in hard money to his mother; the rest of his property to his two daughters, Pepita and Rita. The witnesses to his will were, besides officials, Diego Blanco, sergeant in the garrison, Jean Pousada, another sergeant, and Louis Richard, soldier.

Among other names and incidents to be gleaned from the record of wills may be mentioned Pierre Alexis Marie and his wife, Reine Gilgaud, first comers. Marie bought and improved several lots. In the winter of 1796-97, when he died, the house in which he resided, northeast corner of Main and Market Streets, was sold to Bernard Pratte, Sr., in whose family the property is still held. Joseph Verden, a cabinet-maker and turner, and a first comer, had married Victorie Richelet, widow of Jean Soyé, she having one child, Henrietta. Joseph and his wife lived together for twelve years, quarreling incessantly, but still having five children. At last they agreed to separate, Verden giving up children, house, and all, and taking with him nothing but his bed, his clothes, his gun, axe, and the tools of his trade.

The industry of Mr. Billon enables us to supply the following complete and satisfactory index to marriage contracts in the Archives:

Alvarez, Eugene, to Josephine Crepeau.
Barada, Antoine, to Eliza Tesson Honore.
Barada, Louis, to Marie Becquet Laroche.
Barrčre, Fran's, to Marie Gene, née Catoise, widow of Wm. Paille.
Barsalou, Nich's, to Magdalen Le Page.
Baudoin, Louis, to Marie Tes. Honore.
Becquet, Gabriel (2), to Marie Louise St. Françoise.
Belland, Jno. B., to Cath. Lalande, veuve Pierre Petteliar.
Bellisčme, Alex'r, to Marie Josepha, veuve P. Morriseau.

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The first and most striking thing to notice in connection with the marriage records of St. Louis is the great number of intermarriages among a few leading families of the early inhabitants. In 1804, when the United States took possession of the government of upper Louisiana, these marriage connections were so extensive that at least two-thirds of the people were cousins of one another. This sort of connection began with the founding of the city, and when old Grandma Chouteau died in 1814, all the first families of the place could legitimately put on mourning for her. This venerable lady probably had more to do with the founding of St. Louis than she seems to get credit for. She was a native of New Orleans, by name Therese Bourgeois, and in 1749 had married Auguste Réné Chouteau, of that city, bearing him one child, Auguste Chouteau, the "colonel," as he was called, and head of the house, who was born in September, 1750. Madame Therese Chouteau left her husband after the birth of her son, on account of ill treatment, returning to her family. After this she met Pierre Laclede Liguest and a mutual attachment sprang up between them. The rules of the Catholic Church forbade a divorce except under such special circumstances as could not be established in this case, and Madame Chouteau, with the advice and consent of her friends, contracted a civil marriage with Laclede and went to live with him. By him she had four children, — Jean Pierre, Pelagie, Marie Louise, and Victoire, — all of whom bore the name of Chouteau, in obedience to French law. In 1763, when Auguste was thirteen years old and Jean Pierre six, she went up the river to Fort Chartres, reaching St. Louis via Cahokia in the spring of 1764. A house was built for her, and she always resided in the village, looking after the business affairs of her husband and children, and her own likewise, with masculine energy and sagacity. Laclede was nearly all the time away, extending his trading operations in every direction, and Auguste Chouteau was frequently journeying from post to post in the Indian country, collecting furs and superintending trappers. In one of his trips to New Orleans, Laclede died, in July, 1778, at the mouth of the Arkansas River, where he was buried. Chouteau had at this time become a man of twenty-eight years, grown up with the village, known to all the inhabitants of this upper country; at the head of large business affairs, was acquiring property; prominent in the affairs of the village, a man of education, had drawn up the first plat of the village, etc. All this combined soon made him the most prominent man perhaps in the place, and in a very few years after the death of Laclede, when the memory of the man was almost forgotten, Chouteau grew to be considered the founder of the place. Such was the general belief of the inhabitants of the village at the period of Mr. Billon's advent here in 1818, and it was not until Mr. Billon had resided a number of years in the place that the existence of such an individual as Laclede was gradually brought out by researches into the early history of St. Louis.

The old lady probably knew that her eldest son could take care of his own interests sufficiently well. At any rate she made it her chief concern to look after her own affairs, add to her own fortune, and provide for and marry off her younger children. She was a thorough business woman, and drove a hard bargain now and then. We have seen that she took St. Ange de Bellerive to board with her, and it is on record that, when one of her negro men, Baptiste, was shot and accidentally killed in December, 1785, in an attempt to capture some runaway slaves, she sued her son-in-law, Joseph M. Papin, for damages, and finally compelled all the parties interested in the matter to pay pro rata an assessment of one thousand

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Madame Therese Chouteau's children married as follows: Auguste Chouteau, son of Auguste Réné Chouteau and Marie Therese Bourgeois, married, Sept. 21, 1786, being then thirty-six years old, Marie Therese Cerré, daughter of Gabriel Cerré and Catharine Geard. Gabriel Cerré was the leading merchant of Kaskaskia, and bitterly hostile to the American cause in the Revolution until Gen. George Rogers Clark procured an interview with him, and not only secured his friendship and sympathy, but obtained also the aid of his great influence with the Indians of Illinois. Auguste Chouteau died in St. Louis, Feb. 24, 1829, leaving seven children.

Jean Pierre Chouteau married Pelagie Kiercereau, daughter of Paul Kiercereau and Marie Taillon (daughter of Joseph M. Taillon), on July 26, 1783. Pelagie died in 1793, leaving four children, — Auguste P., Pierre, Jr., Paul Liguest, and Pelagie. This last, in 1811, married Barthelemi Berthold, who built the first brick house in St. Louis, to which to bring home his bride. Jean Pierre Chouteau married a second time on Feb. 14, 1794, to Brigitte Saucier, daughter of François Saucier and Marguerite Cardon, of St. Philippe.

Pelagie Chouteau, July 27, 1776, married Sylvestre Labbadie, a native of Tarbes, in Bearn, France, whose parents were Domingo Labbadie and Anne Béclac.

Marie Louis Chouteau, June 25, 1781, married Joseph Marie Papin, merchant, of Canada, son of Joseph Papin and Marguerite Laferne (or Laforce). Their children were
1. Joseph Papin, 1780, married Veuve Bradshaw, 1820.
2. Marguerite, 1781, to M. P. Leduc, 1802.
3. Alexander (Laforce), 1782, to Julie Brazeau, 1814.
4. Marie Therese, 1784, to Antoine Chenie, 1805 or 1806.
5. Marie Louis, 1785, to Ante Roy, 1812, and H. Renard, 1818.
6. Hypolite, 1787, Josephine Loisel, 1815.
7. Pelagie, 1789.
8. Sophie, 1791, died 1808.
9. P. Millecour, 1793.
10. Silvestre V., 1794, Clementine Loisel, 1817.
11. Emilie, 1796, François Chauvin, 1816.
12. Pierre Didier, 1798; Catharine L. Cerré, 1826.
13. Theodore (Dartine) 1799; Marie Celeste Duchouquet, 1820.
14. Joseph, died an infant in 1802.

Joseph M. Papin, Sr., died 1811, the widow in 1817.

Victoire Chouteau, June 25, 1781 (same day as that of her sister Pelagie's marriage), was married to Charles Gratiot, Sr., the founder of that family in the United States, born in 1753, in Lausanne, Pays de Vaud, Switzerland, his parents being Henry Gratiot and Marie Bernard. They had thirteen children, of whom nine — four sons and five daughters — grew to maturity, all marrying.

It will thus be seen that the blood of Veuve Chouteau and Pierre Laclede Liguest flows in the veins of the Labbadies, Papins, and Gratiots, as well as Chouteaus, and they are related by marriage, in the first generation, with the Cerrés, Kiercereaus, Taillons, Sauciers, etc. In the second and third generations these alliances were very widely extended, — Leduc, Brazeau, Chenie, Roy, Renard, Loisel, Didier, Cerré, Berthold, Pratte, Sarpy, Cabanné, Dorsičre, Lamq, Barrois, Duchoquet, Marchtand, Kierq, Denoyers, Sanguinet, Marcheteau, Chancellier, Tassier, Gauthier, Roasillar, Choret, Provencher, Dubreuil, etc.

Paul L. Chouteau, in 1813, married a daughter of Louis Dubreuil and Susanne Saintous, thus allying himself with Ceran de St. Vrain, and the Hempsteads, De la Beaumes, and Fremons de Launier at once. Antoine Soulard married a Mademoiselle Julie Cerré, sister of Auguste Chouteau's wife. Antoine Roy's first wife was a daughter of Benito Basquez; his second, a daughter of Pierre Chouteau. And all the other resident families in St. Louis were connected with one another in pretty much the same way.

The following biographical memoir of Charles P. Chouteau and his immediate ancestors has been furnished us by Frederick L. Billon:

"His great grandmother (née Marie Thérčse Bourgeois) was born in New Orleans, then a village of but

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"This lady came over to Laclede's newly-established ‘trading-post’ of St. Louis from Cahokia, on the Illinois side, where she had sojourned for some months, in the month of September, 1764, with her five children, — two sons (Auguste and Pierre) and three daughters (Pelagie, Marie Louise, and Victoire), — she being the first female that became a resident of this newly-established post.

"After a residence of half a century in our then little village, which had slowly increased to the number of fifteen hundred souls, with the proud satisfaction of having seen it and its surroundings emerge from a wilderness inhabited alone by Indian tribes and the wild animals of the forest to become a flourishing settlement around her, and leaving a numerous progeny of descendants, this old lady departed this life in her stone residence, in which she had resided during all these long years, at the southwest corner of our present Chestnut and Main Streets, on the 14th day of August, 1814, having attained the mature age of eighty-one years, universally esteemed and respected by the entire community, in the midst of whom she had passed far the largest portion of her protracted life.

"Her remains were consigned to the earth in the cemetery of the Catholic Church, then occupying the block on which the present cathedral now stands."

John Pierre Chouteau, Sr., "the second son of the above lady, and the paternal grandfather of our subject, was born in New Orleans, Oct. 10, 1758, and died in St. Louis, July 10, 1849, having attained the age of ninety years and nine months. He was twice married, — first on July 26, 1783, when a young man of twenty-five years, to Pelagie Kiersereau, a native of St. Louis, an orphan and an only child, whose parents had died in St. Louis, she being raised in the family of her maternal grandparents, Joseph Taillon, Sr.

"This first wife of John Pierre Chouteau, Sr., died after ten years of married life, a young woman of twenty-six years, on Feb. 9, 1793, leaving three sons, Auguste P., Pierre, Jr., and Paul Liguest, and one daughter, Pelagie, in after-years the wife of Bart. Berthold, from, the Italian Tyrol, who died here in April, 1831, and his widow, Mrs. Berthold, who survived him a number of years, dying but a very few years since.

"After a year of widowhood, Jean Pierre Chouteau, Sr., married a second wife, Miss Brigitte Saucier, born in the village of St. Phillippe (now extinct), on the Illinois side, in the southwest corner of the present Monroe County, daughter of a retired officer formerly in the service of France.

"This lady died May 18, 1829, leaving five sons, who, with those by his first wife, left Mr. Chouteau, Sr., with eight, all of whom lived to attain the age of manhood, and most of them leaving families of children. Mr. Pierre Chouteau, Sr., survived his second wife about twenty years, dying, as before stated, in 1849, at the residence of his only daughter, Mrs. Berthold, northwest corner of Fifth and Pine Streets.

"Pierre Chouteau, Sr., became of age, under the Spanish laws of that day, at twenty-five years, in 1783, after which we find him engaged in the Indian trade, almost the only business then pursued in the country, outside of agricultural and mechanical labor, by those who possessed or could obtain the little capital or credit requisite to embark in the business.

"His early trade at first was with the Osages, then inhabiting the country contiguous to where Fort Osage was subsequently built, on the south bank of the Missouri River, in Jackson County, Mo. With this tribe he traded for a number of years, under a special license granted him for that purpose, during which time he made himself familiar with their language and customs, and acquired very great influence over them, as also in after-years with all the various tribes inhabiting the Upper Missouri, the tribes of the Platte, Omahas, Sioux, Arickarees, Mandans, and others inhabiting the upper regions of the Missouri to the Great Falls, and likewise the tribes of the Mississippi.

"After being engaged in this Indian trade with varied success for some twenty years or more, until the transfer of the country to the United States in 1804 and the advent of the Americans, he gradually withdrew from this trade, and turned his attention to real estate, purchasing and selling extensively of lots in and near the town, and large tracts of land throughout the country, by which transactions he realized a handsome estate. Being a man of considerable attainments for that early period of our history, and withal a man of liberal and expanded views, he soon made himself popular with the new owners of the soil, and served in various capacities, civil and military, in the early Territorial days.

"After the organization of our State government in the year 1820, and our admission into the Union, having arrived at the age of sixty-two years, and in affluent circumstances, he abandoned active business altogether, and spent the balance of his days in ease and affluence, alternately at his city residence and at his well-improved country place in our near vicinity,

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"In the prime of his early manhood Mr. Chouteau, when actively engaged in the fur trade, was at times associated with his elder brother. Auguste Chouteau, his brother-in-law, Charles Gratiot, with Robert Thabaud and others. In the active pursuit of this business he was frequently called from his home; he made several voyages below to New Orleans and up the Mississippi to Mackinac, for long years the northern central mart of the fur trade of Canada, and was much of his time at his trading-post with the Osages on the Missouri.

"Mr. P. Chouteau, Sr., for a few years after his first marriage, continued to live at his mother's house, southwest corner of Main and Chestnut. In the year 1788 he purchased the northern portion of a block of ground in the northern part of the village, now City Block No. 28, with a stone house, one of the two largest in the place (the other being that of his brother), built by James Clamorgan in 1785. Subsequently he acquired the south part of the block, and on this he resided for over sixty years. During this period he had inclosed the whole block with a high stone wall on all sides, — his house was near the centre of the east front on Main Street, — and had added several buildings within his inclosure, for his own use and convenience, — a warehouse for his fur business, stables, barn, quarters for his numerous slaves, etc. This house and grounds of Mr. Chouteau was for many years one of the most noted in the place. His long intercourse and traffic with the tribes of the lower Missouri had given him great influence over them, and they held him in high respect. In their frequent visits to our village he kindly allowed them the use of his large grounds for their temporary abiding-place. Their visits to the place, particularly of the upper tribes, the Mandans, Arickarees, and others, were always in the summer season, coming down in their canoes in May and June, in company with the boats of the traders, who had spent the winter with them.

"The writer of this has frequently seen as many as a hundred and more in his grounds. They would at times promenade down our Main Street in Indian file to his brother, Col. A. Chouteau's residence, at Market Street, in parties of ten or twelve, rigged out in all their toggery, one or two of the principal chiefs in a United States uniform coat, with golden epaulettes, and military hat and plume, with bare legs, and the privates or braves following their head men, each one sweltering under his Mackinaw blankets in a scorching July sun, armed with a flaming scarlet umbrella, their fancy color, in one hand, and brandishing a palm-leaf fan in the other.

"Pierre Chouteau, Sr., was never called by his first name of Jean, which after he engaged in business appears to have been dropped, and was always thereafter called only ‘Pierre, Sr.,’ and his second son ‘Pierre, Jr.’

"A few notices of him from the Missouri Gazette, etc.:

"'May, 1807. — As Indian agent for the nation, he held a council with the Osages at his house in St. Louis, his large ground, inclosed with a high wall, being their usual resort when in St. Louis for many a year.

"'1807, Sept. 1. — Appointed a justice of the peace for St. Louis by acting Governor Frederick Bates, one of the first official acts of that functionary after his arrival here in July preceding.

"'1808. — Elected one of the trustees of the town of St. Louis, at the first election held in the place, and again in

"'1809. — Re-elected to the same position, and again in 1811.

"'1809. — In organizing the militia of the Territory in this year he raised the first troop of horse in St. Louis, and was appointed its captain by Governor M. Lewis.

"'In this year Pierre Chouteau, Sr., and his two sons, Auguste P. and Pierre, Jr., with A. A. Chouteau, the eldest son of his brother Auguste, ascended the Missouri to some of the upper nations of Indians. Returning, they reached home in St. Louis, Monday, Nov. 20, 1809.

"'For a few years after the transfer of the country to the United States our relations with the Indians of the West and North had been on an amicable footing, with the exception of an occasional murder of a white person by strolling Indians; but as these occurrences became more frequent, it became a necessity to organize the male population into militia for the better protection of our frontier settlers. This was accordingly done, and Auguste Chouteau, Sr., was appointed by Governor M. Lewis, Nov. 28, 1808, colonel of the St. Louis militia, and about the same time his brother, Pierre, Sr., was commissioned to raise and command the first St. Louis troop of horse. This was the first of the military titles of these two gentlemen.

"'In 1812. — At the breaking out of the war with England, Capt. Pierre Chouteau was promoted by Governor Benj. Howard to the rank of major in the St. Louis battalion of militia.

"'In the years 1820 and 1821, Maj. Chouteau served his fellow-citizens of St. Louis for two years in the office of chairman of the board of town trustees, at the expiration of which he declined further civic honors and retired to private life to enjoy his well-earned "otium cum dignitate."

"'In person, Maj. Chouteau was somewhat under medium height, but of a robust frame and iron constitution, evidenced by the length of years he attained, and withal an excellent horseman, the only mode of locomotion in the country at that day, and which was a chief recommendation to his appointment by Governor Lewis to the command of the St. Louis troop in 1808.

"'On the occasion of the visit of Gen. Lafayette to our then embryo city on April 29, 1825, spending but a single day with us (an important event in our early annals), he was entertained in a suitable manner at the hospitable mansion of the major in the northern part of our city, who had politely placed it at the disposition of the committee of arrangements for his reception, of whom the major was one who had the honor of riding with him in the carriage.

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"'Charles P. Chouteau, then in his sixth year, living at his father's on the opposite side of the street, crossed over to his grandfather to see the reception. He tells me that he was struck with surprise to see, for the first time in his life, the old gentleman in full military array, which he had long before laid away, as he supposed, for all time, but which he had donned once again to do honor to the nation's illustrious guest.’

"Pierre Chouteau, Jr., the second son of the foregoing Pierre, Sr., named after his father, and who was the father of Charles P., was born Jan. 19, 1789, and was married to Miss Emilie Anne Gratiot, a daughter of Charles Gratiot, Sr. (who came to the county from his native place, Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1777) on June 15, 1813.

"These were the parents of our subject.

"The children of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., were:

"1st. Emilie, born Feb. 13, 1814; was married to John F. A. Sanford, of Baltimore, in the year 1832; both now deceased.

"2d. Julia, born Feb. 28, 1816, widow of the late Dr. William Maffitt, deceased.

"3d. Pierre Charles, born Dec. 1, 1817, died an infant in 1818.

"4th. Charles Pierre, born Dec. 2, 1819, married to Julia Anne, daughter of Gen. Charles Gratiot, Nov. 27, 1845.

"5th. Benjamin Wilson, born Aug. 17, 1822, died an infant; Charles P. and sister, Julia Maffitt, being the only survivors. In the year 1804, after receiving the best instruction the place could furnish, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., then a youth of fifteen years, became a clerk of his uncle, Auguste Chouteau, Sr.

"In the year 1806 he accompanied Julien Dubuque up the Mississippi River to the present site of Dubuque, Iowa, where the well-known Dubuque Lead-Mines were located, in the capacity of clerk, with the promise of being made his sole heir to the same in the event of his death. He remained here two years, returning to St. Louis in 1808 at the age of nineteen years. In 1809, Pierre Chouteau accompanied his father and elder brother, Auguste P., on a voyage to some of the Indian tribes of the upper Missouri, reaching home on their return in November of that year.

"In 1813, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., entered into a copartnership with his brother-in-law, Bart. Berthold, under the style of ‘Berthold & Chouteau,’ merchants, and opened ‘their fresh stock of merchandise just from Philadelphia’ on May 1st, in Berthold's new brick house on Main Street, the first brick house built west of the Mississippi River. In the prosecution of their business one or the other of the firm made occasional trips to Philadelphia to replenish their stock. This business connection only ceased with the death of Mr. Berthold in April, 1831.

"In 1820, Pierre Chouteau was elected from the county of St. Louis a member of the convention that framed the Constitution of the State of Missouri, and took his seat in that body.

"About this period ‘Berthold & Chouteau’ relinquished their mercantile business and embarked extensively in the fur trade of the Missouri. Subsequently Messrs. Bernard Pratte, Sr., and John P. Cabanné became associated with them, forming the firm of ‘Berthold, Chouteau & Co., fur merchants,’ and for a number of years prosecuted an extensive and profitable trade in that line.

"Mr. Berthold died in April, 1831, and the style of the firm was changed to ‘Pratte, Chouteau & Co.’

"In 1837, Bernard Pratte departed this life, followed June 27, 1841, by the decease of Mr. John P. Cabanné, and leaving Pierre Chouteau, Jr., the sole survivor of the original company. In this trade he continued for many years thereafter with new associates until his own death, Oct. 6, 1865, having successfully prosecuted the business for almost half a century, and leaving a large estate to his surviving children.

"In the year 1838, P. Chouteau, Jr., associated with Kenneth Mackenzie, established the wholesale ‘grocery commission’ house of ‘Chouteau & Mackenzie,’ his interest in which he disposed of to Mackenzie in the year 1841, and in the same year established a branch of his fur house in the city of New York.

"In the year 1842, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., associated with him in his fur company in St. Louis. Messrs. John B. Sarpy, Joseph A. Sire, and his son-in-law, John F. A. Sanford, theretofore three of his principal clerks.

"In this same year (1842) Mr. Chouteau established in the city of New York the commission house of Chouteau, Merle & Sanford.

"In the year 1849, Pierre Chouteau and James Harrison, of St. Louis, with Felix Vallé, of Ste. Genevieve, became by purchase the sole owners of the ‘Iron Mountain’ in St. François County, and associated themselves together as the ‘American Iron Mountain Company,’ embarked extensively in the manufacture of iron, and from this originated in 1851-52 the establishment by the same parties of the ‘Chouteau, Harrison & Vallé’ rolling-mill in North St. Louis, in successful operation at the present day.

"In 1853, Pierre Chouteau established in New York the railroad iron house of ‘Pierre Chouteau, Jr., Sanford & Co.’ This was the last enterprise he set on foot.

"All the gentlemen so long associated with Pierre Chouteau in the prosecution of his fur trade were his kinsmen and near relatives by blood or marriage, and are all now dead, — Joseph A. Sire died in 1854; John B. Sarpy, April 1, 1857; and John F. A. Sanford in May, 1857, but a short month after Sarpy, — and a

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"Pierre Chouteau, Jr., died on October the 6th, 1865, in his seventy-seventh year, now some seventeen years since, leaving a large estate, the fruits of a long and very successful business life, pursued unremittingly through a period of exceeding fifty years. His wife had preceded him to the grave some two years previously.

"Charles P. Chouteau, born Dec. 2, 1819. In 1825, at the age of six years, he was placed at school with Mr. Savaré, in this place. In 1827, in his eighth year, his parents gave him in charge of the Jesuit Fathers at their newly-established seminary at St. Ferdinand.

"In 1833 he was sent to the civil and military institution of the Messrs. Peugnet Brothers in New York, with whom he remained about four years, completing his education and graduating in August, 1837, then in his eighteenth year.

"In 1838 to 1841 he assisted in the business house of Chouteau & Mackenzie, representing his father.

"1841-42 assisted in the business of his father's several houses in St. Louis and New York, then engaged largely in the fur trade throughout the Northwest, spending much of his time in the latter city.

"In the year 1843, his father's business relations with houses in London requiring the presence of some one to attend to his interests in that city, Charles P. embarked for Europe, where he spent some two or three years, a large portion of the time devoted to travel in the various countries of the Continent, returning home in 1845.

"Shortly after his return from Europe, Charles P. Chouteau was married, on Nov. 27, 1845, to Miss Julia Anne Gratiot, the youngest of the two daughters of Gen. Charles Gratiot, formerly of the United States Engineer Corps.

"During the latter part of the long period, running through so many years, in which Mr. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., connected with others, was so extensively engaged in the various enterprises already enumerated, requiring a large amount of capital and unceasing personal attention, Charles P. had personal charge of much of the operations of these multifarious enterprises, and since the death of his father, as the executor of the estate, he has devoted a large portion of his time and attention in bringing to a close this large estate and the various enterprises with which he had been identified during his long and active business life.

"Since the period that Charles P. Chouteau entered upon his business life as the representative of his father in his declining years, his transactions in that field have been so intimately interwoven with those of the latter down to the death of that gentleman, that but little more need be said of him in that connection, but simply to add that

"Charles P. Chouteau, having just completed his sixty-third year, is in the enjoyment of an ample fortune, inherited in part from the large acquisitions of his father, realized in his long and prosperous business life, but largely augmented by his own operations and speculations, in which he has invested from time to time more or less of his surplus capital. Charles P. and Mrs. Chouteau have a family of two sons and three daughters, of whom the eldest son and daughter are married."

The first street commissioners of St. Louis, so to speak, were a committee appointed, after mass, on Sunday, March 15, 1778, to provide for the drainage of the back lots, where the rain-water settled. The plan was to dig a ditch down the street or road between the lots of Bissonet and Conard to the river. The committee consisted of Lapierre, Taillon, Deschenes, Lachaise, and Baccané. Those sanctioning the plan were Lachaise, Baccané, Deschenes, Taillon, Bissonet, Conard, Dubreuil, A. Choateau, Labusciere, Barada, Ferrante, Benito, Joseph Labrosse, Ortes (Hortiz), Roubieu, Bargas, all good and leading citizens. Bargas died suddenly, so that there was a sort of inquest held, but nothing appeared to cause a doubt of his death being from natural causes. Deschenes, who came over in 1764, appears to have been the first man in St. Louis to burn lime for building purposes.

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In 1771, Dr. Valleau, one of the first physicians in St. Louis, died, and his effects were sold, including a case of playing-cards, at auction. Governor Piernas directed the vendue, assisted by Louis Dubreuil, Joseph Labuscičre, and Auguste Chouteau, whom the record calls "all traders in the village of St. Louis, in the Spanish part of Illinois," Martin Milong Duralde, "merchant of St. Louis," executor of Valleau's will, authorizing the sale. The cards were sold at auction because damaged by water. The average price paid for them was two packs for a livre, payable in deerskins. The bidders were "La Giroflée," a woman then in St. Louis, Dubreuil, Cottin, Vildieu, Valličre, Matard, Madame Piernas, Lapierre, Motard, Paul Gregoire, Alvarez, Valdy, Labuscičre, Condé, Hortez, Taillon, Jacques Labbé, Laville, and Vincent.

In 1768 the garrison at Fort Charles the Prince consisted of Capt. Rios, Lieut. Gomez, Ensign Barela (or Bareda), Surgeon Valleau, Corp. Michel Piguere, Manuel Martine, and Benito Moreau; soldiers, Jean M. Hoaline, François Tienda, Jean Mignon, Gaspard de Marque, Dominic Auterre, Alexandre Pegnolles, and Joseph Nicolas Navarré; Antonio Victorine, blacksmith; Guillaume Boyer, caulker; Joseph Maxon, Francisco Poteau, François Suspedes, and Manuel Augustin Abriňn, carpenters; Antonio Tagonais, mason; Joseph Seguin, stone-cutter; and Jourdan, baker.

April 19, 1775, "the third festival of Easter," the Cathedral at St. Louis was begun, an agreement having then been signed by sundry of the inhabitants to build a church, and a contract having been drawn up with the proper specifications. St. Louis parish had already been established, with Father Valentin, Capuchin missionary, for curé, and Messrs. Sarpy and Benito Basquez wardens of the parish.

In the earlier days of St. Louis, so far as the records go, surprisingly few names will be found indicating the presence of persons of other nationalities than those of France and Spain and Indians. Indeed, there are few but French names. As the list quoted just above shows, even half or more than half the garrison in the Spanish fort were French. So with the marriage records and the wills. English and American immigration had not set in yet, and did not begin at all, in fact, until after the close of the Revolutionary war. There were some few English and Americans at Kaskaskia, but not many, — Eulalie Basquez married a John Stotts (1795); Madeline Peterson married Tesson Honoré; J. B. Lachasse changed his name to Hunt; Antoine Honoré married Margaret Wells; Pierre Berger married Josette Mayer (but she was an Indian of the Omaha tribe); George Schultz, of Georgia, married Victoire Tesson Honoré; J. B. Bravier married Elizabeth Rice; Pierre Payant, blacksmith, married Elizabeth Creely; Peter Schultz married Marie Rose Chouquet; Christopher Schultz married Elizabeth Tesson Honoré (an illegitimate child); Francis Doyon Emmons married Pelagie Laplante; François Jourdain, dit Labrosse, married Sally Russell, daughter of John Russell and Polly Briggs; Peter Primm, of Stafford County, Va., married Marie Angelique Sallé (Leroix); Edward Hempstead, of New London, married Clarisse Dubreuil; Richard Dillon married Marie Therese Bouis; Israel Dodge, of Connecticut, married Madeline Camp; Patrick Lee married Constance Condé, — and that is about all; but Mr. Billon has dug out from the Archives the following formidable list of the American, English, and Irish names found there up to 1804:

Abbott, Daniel.
Adams, Calvin.
Allen, Deodat.
Andrews, Alexander.
Bacon, Ludwell.
Baldridge, James.
Ball, John.
Barton, Job.
Basye, John.
Baugh, Hugh.
Bay, Robert.
Bean, John.
Bell, John.
Bell, Mordecai.
Bellew, William.
Berry, James.
Biggs, John.
Bishop, John.
Bolly, John.
Brady, Thomas.
Brown, John.
Brown, Joseph.
Brown, Perry.
Bryan, David.
Buchanan, Robert.
Caldwell, Kincaid.
Callaway, Michael.
Camp, Ann.
Campbell, William.
Carpenter, Chris.
Carrico, Vincent.
Caulk, Richard.
Caulk, Thomas.
Chalfin, Thomas.
Clark, Chris.
Clark, Daniel.
Clark, William.
Clarke, Alexander.
Clay, Samuel.
Cochran, James.
Cole, David.
Colgin, John.
Collins, Patrick.
Colvin, Aaron.
Conner, Jeremiah.
Cook, Jno. B.

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The name of John Lewis is found in the above list, — a pioneer in the great American immigration, a native of Virginia, who came to Missouri by way of Kentucky, where he sojourned for a period, reaching St. Louis in January, 1797, with his wife and six children. He settled near St. Louis on a farm. His eldest daughter became the wife of Col. Daniel M. Boone, son of the Kentucky pioneer; his second daughter, Mrs. Corbin, lived until 1868. At one time she owned the "Stoddard addition" to St. Louis, a tract of land famous in the legal annals of the city.

Daniel Boone's name is not in the above list. The celebrated hunter and pioneer — the man who really opened the canebrakes of Kentucky to civilization and expelled the Shawanese and Miamis from their hunting-grounds — became very sore in his old age at the injustice of the law which expelled him from the land he had settled and cultivated, because he had not complied with every technicality as regards title. All his life he had been working to acquire land, — a homestead. His wanderings are typical of the impulses which have driven the American people to settle this continent in so brief a space of time. George Boone, his grandfather, had emigrated from Brandwich, near Exeter, England, in 1717, and settled in Bucks County, Pa., with his wife and eleven children. Squire Boone, Daniel's father, with wife and eleven children, removed to Berks County, on the frontier and in the Indian paths. Daniel was born in 1734, in Bucks, and got a few weeks' schooling in Berks, terminating his scholastic career abruptly by drubbing the teacher. In 1752-53, Squire Boone and family went South to North Carolina and settled on the Yadkin. Daniel married, and in time his wife brought him nine children. In 1769, Boone headed an exploring party into Kentucky, and from that time until 1790 his life was a battle, wonderful in every detail. He lost the land he had bought and suffered so much to secure, removed to the Kanawha Valley, near the old battle-field of Point Pleasant, and in 1795, irritated,

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Among these was the family of Col. Linn, who had often fought with the Shawanese in defense of the fort at Bryan's Station, and whose grandson, Dr. Linn, became United States senator. Capt. Joseph Conway was another. A native of Virginia, a Kentucky Indian-fighter and pioneer, a captive like Boone and Kenton among the savages, often tomahawked, once left for dead on the field, twice scalped, he came to Missouri in 1796, settling in Bonhomme township, St. Louis Co., where he died in 1831, aged sixty-nine years.

But it is impossible to follow up this immigration, so full of striking characters and pronounced individuality, filled with men like Merriwether Lewis and Thomas Hart Benton, each worth a portrait by himself, few traits distinguishable when we try to take them in the mass. Brackenridge, in his "Recollec-tions," has singled out two or three types of the people then pouring into Missouri and St. Louis, and his limning has the sharpness and distinctness of copperplate. There is the old "cracker" of the canebrakes, who, in 1812, after feeding his guests on hog and hominy and giving them a bear-skin to rest on, told of Braddock's defeat and the Presidency of John Adams, who never "fout," as the latest news that he had heard of. There is the famous Col. Smith (John Smith T.), the precursor of Bowie and the whole race of desperadoes of the Southwest, who made Brackenridge his guest, introduced him to his armory, and told him tales of his encounters with wild beasts and brave men. There was nothing in his

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