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MISSOURI STORICAL REVI EW, The History of Fort Osage Kate L. Gregg Missouri Avenue and the Missouri State Lottery Samuel W. Rave net Missouriana Historical Notes and Comments Missouri History Not Found in Textbooks 5TATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ^MISSOURI VOL. JULY 1940 OFFICERS OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI, 1938-1941 ALLEN McREYNOLDS, Carthage, President. GEORGE A. ROZIER, Penyvilie, First Vice-President. L. M. WHITE, Mexico, Second Vice-President. MARION C. EARLY, St. Louis, Third Vice-President, B. M. LITTLE, Lexington, Fourth Vice-President. JOHN T. BARKER, Kansas City, Fifth Vice-President. ROY H. MONIER, Carrollton, Sixth Vice-President. R. B. PRICE, Columbia, Treasurer. FLOYD C. SHOEMAKER, Secretary and Librarian. BOARD OF TRUSTEES Term Expires at Annual Meeting, 1941 BEN L. EMMONS, St. Charles. ISIDOR LOEB, St. Louis. STEPHEN B. HUNTER, Cape E. E. SWAIN, Kirksville. Girardeau. CHAS. H. WHITAKER, WALDO P. JOHNSON, Osceola. Clinton. LANGDON R. JONES, Kennett. ROY D. WILLIAMS, Boonville. Term Expires at Annual Meeting, 1942 MORRIS ANDERSON, Hannibal WM. SOUTHERN, JR., LUDWIG FUERBRINGER, Independence. St. Louis. HENRY C. THOMPSON, HENRY KRUG, JR., St. Joseph. Bonne Terre. JUSTUS R. MOLL, Springfield. GEORGE H. WILLIAMS, JOHN F. RHODES, St. Louis. Kansas City. CHARLES L. WOODS, Rolla. Term Expires at Annual Meetingf 194S JESSE W. BARRETT, St. Louis. H. S. STURGIS, Neosho. ALBERT M. CLARK, Richmond. JAMES TODD, Moberly. HENRY J. HASKELL, Kansas City.* JONAS V1LES, Columbia. WM. R. PAINTER, Carrollton. L. M. WHITE, Mexico. JOSEPH PULITZER, St. Louis. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The twenty-six trustees, the President and the Secretary of th« Society, the Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and Presidenl of the University of Missouri constitute the Executive Committee. THE MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW VOL. XXXIV JULY 1940 NO. 4 CONTENTS Page The History of Fort Osage 439 KATE L. GREGG Missouri Avenue and the Missouri State Lottery 489 SAMUEL W. RAVBNEL Missouriana 498 Historical Notes and Comments 533 Missouri History Not Found in Textbooks 574 FLOYD C. SHOEMAKER, Editor The Missouri Historical Review is published quarterly. It is sent free to all members of the State Historical Society of Missouri. Membership dues in the Society are $1.00 a year. All communications should be addressed to Floyd C. Shoemaker, The State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. The Society assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors to the magazine. "Entered as second-class matter at the postoffice at Columbia, Missouri, under Act of Congress, October 3, 1917, Sec. ^22." CONTRIBUTORS GREGG, KATE L., is a native of the state of Washington. She received her Ph. D. degree from the University of Washington in 1916, and has been professor of English in Lindenwood college at St. Charles, Missouri, since 1924. She is an occasional contributor to the Missouri Historical Review and is the editor of William Clark's Journal of 1808, published under the title, Westward With Dragoons. RAVENEL, SAMUEL W., a native of South Carolina, came to Missouri in 1871 and won recognition as a civil engineer in the construction of the M. K. T. railroad and in his later service as city engineer of Boonville. He is the author of a Road Primer for school children. For six years, he served as manager and editor of the Boonville Advertiser, and for five addi tional years as publisher of The Topic. During his later years, he became interested in Missouri history and wrote a great deal on the history of Howard county and central Missouri. He died in New Franklin, April 30, 1922. MILLER, CLARENCE E., a native of Ohio, is assistant librarian of the St. Louis Mercantile Library association. He is the third generation of a family of writers. In recent years, he has been a frequent contributor to the Review. This issue includes in "Missouriana" his review of Shepard's Early History of St. Louis and Missouri. THE HISTORY OF FORT OSAGE1 BY KATE L. GREGG FIRST PERIOD, 18084815 Whoever essays to review the history of Fort Osage in an after-dinner speech is in a dilemma. The casual and charming touch-and-go that ought to follow dessert—a facile flight over matters of slight consequence—here meets with a subject that involves international complications and what we are pleased to call national destiny. When Fort Osage was established in 1808 at the big eddy on the Missouri, our national hold on the West was feeble. The boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase were undefined; England was en croaching from the north; Spain was nibbling from the south west; and the Pacific coast might belong to any who would have it. By the time that Fort Osage had yielded its pre eminence to Independence, county seat of Jackson county, our national future was more apparent. The War of 1812 and the consequent Treaty of Ghent had pretty well settled the danger of English encroachment on the old Northwest; a treaty with Spain in 1819 had defined our boundaries on the southwest, boundaries which the opening of the Santa Fe trade in 1821 had more or less obscured; American trappers and traders gazed upon the Pacific in the North, West, and South. The way was open. The way was plain. The land was desirable. Fort Osage had its part in these great matters. Anyone who drives on a Sunday afternoon to the sleepy village of old Sibley and stands again upon the site of the frontier fort must remember that it was built upon a bank seventy feet high commanding the great eddy. When Lewis and Clark first gazed upon the site on June 23, 1804, the river at this point was narrow. The swift current on the north and in the middle forced boats to seek the more quiet waters of the eddy. "This," wrote Clark, "will be a good site for a fort and trading 1A part of this article was given in an address before the Native Sons of Kansas City, on March 8, 1940. (439) 440 MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW house with the Indians."2 He could see that whoever passed up the river would have to swing in under the guns of the fort. The river was the road—the great road—the easy road that led to the Rocky mountains and whatever lay beyond. Only our traders should pass. Only those with American licenses should have access to the streams rich in beaver. Fort Osage, in other words, was a frontier Gibralter. But William Clark's pithy remark concerned more than a frontier post controlling traffic on the Missouri. In the words, "trading house with the Indians," spoken in the same breath, was the key to our treatment of the Indians, which at that time was part and parcel of our foreign policy. To meet the competition of the English fur trader with his better goods and superior organization, Washington's administra tion had invented the government trading house to be run at cost for the benefit of the red man. Such an institution, pay ing more and charging less than a private enterprise could afford, would, it was argued, engender among the Indians an allegiance to the American government; and, in the day of conflict between nations, ours would be the voice that could command or withhold the raising of the tomahawk. The government trading house on the big eddy was specifically for the control of the Osages, the Kansas, and the Iowas—control in days of peace lest they interfere with the private American trader—control in days of war lest they aid the enemy. On August 7, 1808, a mountain trapper, bewhiskered and grimy, floating down the Missouri on his way to the fur market, might have noticed as he approached the junction of the great rivers, an unusual commotion on the wharf at Fort Belle- fontaine. Captain Eli Clemson and his company of eighty- one men were embarking to establish a new post 240 miles up the Missouri. As the six keelboats swung out and headed upstream, the mountain man might very well have looked disgusted and muttered to himself, "Frontier moving out. Wagh!" Four of the keelboats carried George C. Sibley's $20,000 worth of goods for Indian trade; one carried the goods of Mr. Prince, the sutler for the garrison; and the sixth, owned ^History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, edited by Dr. Elliott Coues, Vol. I, p. 30. THE HISTORY OF FORT OSAGE 441 by the Morrison brothers of Kaskaskia, carried the com missary. But impressive as the company may have seemed to the mountaineer, it was not deemed strong enough to cope with the dangers that lay ahead. William Clark, who had become brigadier general of the militia in upper Louisiana, had asked for and received the volunteer services of the St. Charles dragoons for the expedition. This company, eighty strong, commanded by General Clark and guided by Nathan Boone, set out cross-country from St. Charles on the afternoon of August 25, and followed more or less the route now taken by Highway 40. Within ten days, they were building a brush bridge to cross Fire Prairie creek. As Sibley kept a journal of the expedition moving upward on the river, so Clark kept one for the expedition moving by land. The latter is filled with descriptions of what was then a primitive wilderness—forests, beautiful prairies, out-croppings of coal, fresh and salt springs —all, possible locations for later settlement. Inasmuch as the Journal is the first detailed description of a land route across what became Missouri, it will always be of interest to all native sons and daughters. On Sunday, September 4, Clark arrived at Fire Prairie, was met by a messenger from Captain Eli Clemson, and moved up to join the other company encamped in the Bad Luck hills beside the great eddy.