Settlements of the Missouri Shawnee, 1793-1825 RODNEY STAAB Kansas State Historical Society ARRIVAL OF THE SHAWNEE WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI Several standard histories (Mooney 1910; McKenney & Hall 1858, 1:39; Harvey 1855:84, 161; Alford 1979:10-11) recount the arrival of the Shawnee at sites west of the Mississippi river. One firm point in all the narratives is the 1793 concession by the Baron of Carondelet, governor of Spanish Louisiana, to Louis Lorimier, in which Lorimier was permitted to establish himself with the Delawares and Shawnese who are under his care, in such places as he may think proper in the province of Louisiana on the west bank of the Mississippi, from the Missouri to the River Arkansas which may be unoccupied, with the right to hunt, and cultivated for the maintenance of their families... and be it further understood that in case they should remove elsewhere, the said lands shall become vacant. [Goodspeed 1888:260-1] The original 4 January 1793 document reposes today in the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis. A second firm point is the transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France on 1 October 1800, and a third is of course the formal transfer of Louisiana to the United States, with ceremonies taking place at New Orleans on 20 December 1803 and at St. Louis on 9 March 1804. It is well to understand in advance that such a migration is not a single event from a single location to a single destination. The actual first date of arrival of the Shawnee west of the Mississippi with the intent to settle was probably 1788-90, while the arrival of a Delaware chief and 57 men of his nation in St. Louis can be dated precisely to August 23, 1786 (Kinnaird 1946, 3:186). A lawsuit later filed against Lorimier at Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, contained a 4 May 1787 letter from two Miami Company employees stating "the Spaniards have invited the Delawares and Shawnese to their side of the Mississippi. With a tribe of the latter Mr. Lorimier goes, and expects the Spaniards will allow him to follow them" (Goodspeed 1888:259-260). In February 1789 George Morgan found 20 Delaware in what is now Mississippi county, Missouri, opposite the mouth of the Ohio River (Houck 1909, 1: 292); it is signifi­ cant that Morgan makes no mention of having met any Shawnee between there and St. Louis. The Shawnee were definitely settled near Ste. Gene- 352 RODNEY STAAB ^ortage oes S*OL ILLINOIS [TERR] TENNESSEE First ChicKasaw j Sluffs [Memphis] Map 1. Shawnee, Delaware and Peoria settlements in territorial Missouri 1804-1820. SETTLEMENTS OF THE MISSOURI SHAWNEE, 1793-1825 353 vieve by May 1790 (Kinnaird 1946, 3:335). A January 1816 petition submitted to Congress from the Missouri territorial legislature, itself deriving from a petition of the citizens of Cape Girardeau and Ste. Genevieve counties, clearly states the Shawnee and Delaware Indians "Emigrated to this Country about Twenty eight years ago" (Carter 1934-51, 15:105-7). That the Ohio Valley Shawnee had experiential knowledge of the lands on the west bank of the Mississippi before 1788 is scarcely to be doubted; the documentary proof of this knowledge will therefore not be discussed in this paper. DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION OF THE SETTLEMENTS By 1796 all the country from Kaskaskia to the mouth of the Ohio was "a good deal frequented by the Shawanese and Delawares from the Spanish side" (Carter 1934-51, 2:547). A 1796 pamphlet published in Lexington, Kentucky, affirmed that the Indian nations living west of the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Madrid were all friendly to Spain and "not only contribute to the success of the fur trade, but also to the subsistence of the inhabitants for three fourths of the year, by furnishing meat, tallow & oil in abundance to the garrisons and villages" (Delassus Deluzieres 1958). A more critical view, written by Peter Anthony LaForge on the last day of 1796 at New Madrid, held that this trade with local Indians initially supplied all the white inhabitants with the necessities until about 1793, when local game became scarce and "grease, suet, meat and peltries" were more rarely brought to the settlers, forcing the New Madrid inhabitants to turn to agriculture for subsistence. Traders who continued obtaining the skins from the local Indians included "Messrs. Francis and Joseph Lesieur, Ambrose Dumay, Chatoillier, and others" (Billon 1886:263-273). Escapades from this colonial and fur-trading period, primarily involving the Delaware, are recounted in Ekberg (1985:91-100). Medad Mitchell visited the Mississippi country in early 1793 and reported to Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury: 2000 Indians received their supplies at New Madrid [and primarily from Canadian traders]. The tribes which those savages belong to are, Shawo- nee, Deleware, and Cherokee, they keep runners from and to Detroit, and whenever a Campaigner goes out, I was informed, these savages joined their Countrymen. They frequently make excursions into Cumberland and return to this market with their plunder, I have seen them bring in horses, to New Madrid, which they had taken from the Settlement on 354 RODNEY STAAB Cumberland River, I have seen the Commanding officer purchase them, as well as others, I have heard them exult in their success, and receive applause for their conduct. [Syrert 1961-87, 15:289, 292] There were at least eight sets of Shawnee settlements in Missouri. There are no absolute initial dates for any of them, and the existence of some (such as the first one here) may have completely terminated before the subsequent post-1825 emigrations. Some of the more southerly settlements may have been offshoots of the Big and Little Shawnee villages after the great earthquake of 1811-12. Perhaps the earliest settlement, said to have been occupied by both Shawnee and Delaware, was on a Missouri-side tract between that of Silas Bent and the ferry to Cahokia. This land was conceded by the governor to Joseph Papin in 1787, and was eventually conveyed to the United States. The arsenal buildings and a stone wall were built on this ground after 1817 (Billon 1886:408-9). In his notes taken about April 1810 from William Clark while the explorer was living in Virginia, Nicholas Biddle said there were a few scattered Delaware about St. Louis (Jackson 1978, 2:522), perhaps a remnant of this group. Rogers' Town The best-documented settlements, and the most peripatetic, were those of Rogers' Town. The first location of Rogers' Town was near Bridgeton or Florissant, in the northern part of current metropolitan St. Louis. The Baptist missionary John Mason Peck recollected that Rogers was a white man taken prisoner by the Shawnee in boyhood, that in gaining a high status among them he and his followers had plundered riverboats on the Ohio, and that to escape vengeful whites he had relocated west of the Mississippi prior to 1794. Peck said Rogers' first settlement was at "Village-a-Robert, afterwards called Owen's Station, and now Bridgton" (Babcock 1864:112). An 1823 gazetteer of Missouri reported that" Village a Robert, or Village du Marais des Liards... was formerly the residence of a part of the Delaware and Shawnee tribes of Indians" (Beck 1823:334). A German travel writer of 1826 recalled that about 15 English miles from St. Louis "on the south side of the Missouri a Shawnee town of about fifty houses existed. Some time ago they abandoned their settlement and moved about a hundred miles west" (Duden 1980:88). In response to questions put to him by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in February 1831, SETTLEMENTS OF THE MISSOURI SHAWNEE, 1793-1825 355 William Clark affirmed that in the early days of St. Louis a band of Shawnees "called Rogers' band, were settled near Florisant" (United States Telegraph, 23 February 1831). Peck says that shortly before the cession of Louisiana to the United States, Rogers and his band moved to the Big Spring at the head of the main Merrimac. Here the water suddenly bursts from the earth into a large basin from which flows a river more than fifty yards in width, and from two to three feet deep. It proved very sickly to the newcomers, and sev­ eral died. I think probably Captain Rogers was of the number. Supposing they had intruded upon the domain of a Matchee Monito, or Evil Spirit, they broke up their lodges, came down the country, and built their cabins on the borders of Indian prairie in Franklin county. This spot is a few miles south of Union. [Babcock 1864:113] There is a series of springs on the upper Meramec, ranging from Meramec Spring (one of the largest in the state) in Phelps county near the present-day junction of Highways 8 and 68, about ten miles west of Rolla, to Roaring Springs, in Franklin county a few miles north of Meramec State Park and about 15 miles south of Union (Hawksley 1985:52-57). Meramec Spring may perhaps be the location of Roger's short-lived second settlement. The move to the third location of Rogers' Town probably took place by 1807, by which time Lewis Rogers, the son of the imprisoned white boy turned Shawnee, was nominal head of the settlement. In April 1807 Gov. Frederick Bates spoke of "Rogers a Shawanoe chief whose town is at the head of the Meramec", and said that not more than 20 people of the village were fighting men, indicating a population of perhaps 80 (Marshall 1926, 1:105). In April 1809 Bates' successor, Gov.