CHAPTER 1 Missouri Almanac Couple Eating at the State Fair. (Missouri State Archives) (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia) MAKING MISSOURI AMERICAN 13 Meriwether Lewis reached Missouri in 1808 ready to take charge. His goal was simple but hardly easy: to build a society on a frontier that seemed distant, detached, and disorganized from the rest of the United States. To realize this vision, Lewis planned nothing less than a trans- formation of the local economy, government, and military institutions. Lewis should have known better. People throughout North America had their own goals when it came to the place that became Missouri. And Lewis, he had spent the winter of 1803–1804 in St. Louis and in western Illinois, during which he observed the entrenched cultural traditions of western residents. From 1804–1806, he had led an expedition that he called the “Corps of Discovery” across the North American West, during which he met people who were themselves interested in Missouri, even from great distances. No sooner did Meriwether Lewis set to work in 1808 than he faced challenges that exceeded his abilities. The very solutions he proposed would actually be his undoing. His close friend and colleague, William Map of Missouri, 1821. Clark, watched the self-destruction that followed (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia) with sadness and occasional disbelief. But Clark was busy as well, pursuing many of the same And the challenges of government two cen- tasks—building a government, fostering prosperity, turies ago may seem quite familiar today. Public establishing stability—that so overwhelmed Lewis. officials faced numerous demands with limited As far as Lewis and Clark were concerned, resources. The energies of a healthy democracy the primary task in Missouri was to establish created a government accountable to its elec- American sovereignty in a place that had only torate, but also forced officials at all level to nav- recently become American. But the difficulties igate potentially explosive political situations. they faced revealed a quandary: what was Local officials had to find ways of working with Missouri? That was no abstract question at the the federal government, a task that remains turn of the nineteenth century. People through- today but one that was all the more puzzling at out North America were paying attention to the a time when the Constitution itself was still a place that became Missouri. Their attention new document. Finally, local residents had their eventually brought Lewis and Clark to Missouri own opinions and expressed them in ways that upset and even frightened public officials, and helps explain their experiences. because those opinions seemed likely to upset Yet if Missouri is crucial to understanding vital objectives of public policy. Lewis and Clark, their own lives are no less Yet for all those similarities, two centuries ago important for understanding Missouri. So at the people faced the bigger question of defining bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Missouri. The lives of Lewis and Clark straddled it is particularly appropriate to consider their four distinct visions of Missouri exemplified by lives in Missouri. For Lewis, it was a dispiriting four different terms that people used to define the period that finally led to his downfall. For Clark, region: Upper Louisiana, the Louisiana Territory, Missouri became a home, the center of public the Missouri Territory, and the State of Missouri. and domestic successes that lasted far longer Lewis and Clark were at the vanguard of the fed- than the Expedition. eral government’s efforts to establish its sover- Lewis and Clark also help explain a particu- eignty in the West. Lewis died in the middle of lar aspect of life in Missouri. They provide a way this process, but Clark remained, motivated by to make sense of the government that took form many of the same concerns that had shaped in Missouri, and that government is the focus of Lewis’ public life. By the time Congress created this essay. While Missouri was the home to rich, the State of Missouri with boundaries similar to evolving forms of culture that reflected the those which still exist today, those boundaries tremendous diversity of its population, the story seemed to be the logical reflection of the world of government in Missouri in the age of Lewis that Lewis and Clark had helped to create. By and Clark constitutes a particularly appropriate 1821 people believed there was, in fact, a place way to begin the state’s official manual, a book called “Missouri.” But creating Missouri required which, after all, explains that government in its a transformation in population, in government, contemporary form. and in culture. It meant changing a place that 14 OFFICIAL MANUAL had seemed like the intersection of numerous alone. Indians from the northwest were regular places into something unquestionably American. arrivals. Descending the Missouri River from the Central and Northern Plains, they sought their own commercial opportunities in the Lower Missouri Valley. As warfare ravaged the Great Lakes region, the Sauc and Fox Indians of In 1800, nobody was talking about Missouri. Wisconsin eventually moved to the area that now But that does not mean they were not interested constitutes northwestern Missouri and southern in the place that became Missouri. The people Iowa. And on the eastern fringes of this region, a who lived there were, of course, deeply invested growing number of people with European ances- in the place they called home. Meanwhile, four try began to arrive. The largest number of those Virginians—Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, newcomers were of French decent. Those born in Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark—were America called themselves Creole, and while eyeing the region as well. Although Jefferson and Creoles eventually became the largest number of Madison chose different career paths from Lewis French speaking—or “Francophone”—settlers, and Clark, all four men found their lives shaped they were hardly the entire population. Other by the same political upheavals, international Francophone migrants came from Canada, the war, and local conflicts between frontier resi- Caribbean, or France itself. And as the number of dents that defined life in Missouri. But they did Europeans increased, so too did the number of not use the word “Missouri.” Instead, people people with mixed European and Indian ances- used a variety of terms to describe a place that try, often called métis. seemed incredibly important but which seemed to defy a single definition. By the late eighteenth All of these places overlapped in an area that century, what became the State of Missouri was eventually became the State of Missouri. It was the center of a European colony called Upper typical of the frontiers in North America, a place Louisiana. Even that name was more of a without clear boundaries or clear forms of power. European aspiration than a reality. The place that The number of Europeans remained small became Missouri was a crossroads of places because few Europeans were interested in the with different names and different residents. region. The place that became Missouri was part As all these people conceived of the place of the larger French colony of Louisiana. In real they called home, various terms came to mind. terms, French power was limited to Lower And those many terms are the key to under- Louisiana, the area immediately surrounding the standing how people thought about the place burgeoning town of New Orleans and the near- that eventually became “Missouri.” In the sim- by settlements. The rest of France’s possessions plest terms, there was no place called Missouri in Upper Louisiana, including what became in 1800. There was a Missouri River, of course, Missouri, remained an area of limited control and people followed activities on the river with and even less concern. By the mid-eighteenth great interest. The river took its name from century, however, a number of French officials Indians who the French called “Missouri,” but and French entrepreneurs were making the case their numbers had been decimated by European that Upper Louisiana could create commercial disease and local warfare. The area where the opportunities while reinforcing French security Missouri and Mississippi Rivers met seemed to against potential threats from Spanish colonies be the fringe of other places rather than a clear to the south, British colonies to the east, and place unto itself. To the north was the Great Indian villages in every direction. Lakes region, occupied by numerous Indian vil- The solution for all concerned was to create lages and the site of vigorous trade between a town. That town was St. Louis, and it started in Europeans and Indians. To the east was the 1764 as a small trading and administrative out- Illinois Country, the site of far greater French set- post easily overshadowed by the larger downriv- tlement than the lands west of the Mississippi. To er village of Ste. Genevieve. The men who the west of the Illinois Country there was a place founded St. Louis are useful examples of the sort that Europeans referred to as Indian Country. of Europeans who came to the intersection of Well beyond European control or much of a Indian Country and the Illinois Country. Gilbert European presence, the land from the eastern Antoine Maxent, who organized and helped Plains to the Pacific was the site of Indian vil- finance the project, was a Creole. But Pierre lages and complex Indian relations. Laclède was originally from France. Laclede By 1800, the most powerful people in what brought with him a teenager named Auguste became the State of Missouri were the Osage Chouteau, who he treated as a stepson since Indians. Europeans often referred to the “Great meeting him in New Orleans, Chouteau’s birth- and Little Osage,” but these titles belied the fact place and Laclède’s first home in America.