Summary
Circa fourth grade, most everyone learned the story of the Lewis and Clark exploration of the Louisiana Territory. The appeal of Before Lewis and Clark is that the focus is not on Lewis and Clark's journey but rather on the lesser-told story of the Chouteau family, the French founders of St. Louis who facilitated not only Lewis and Clark's journey, but also nothing less than American holdings in the new territory. In [Shirley Christian]'s words, "Starting with the Jefferson Administration and Lewis and Clark, the United States government ... piggybacked on the skills and knowledge of the Chouteaus and other fur traders in the Louisiana Purchase region."
Pierre Lacl de Liguest was the Frenchman who founded the city of St. Louis and the ironic patriarch of the Chouteau clan. (With his lifelong companion, Madame Chouteau--the abandoned wife of another man--Lacl de Liguest fathered four of Madame Chouteau's five children, though due to the strict code of French Catholic society, the children were "officially" Ren Augustin Chouteau's.) Surviving the region's passing from French to Spanish to United States occupation, three generations of Chouteaus unveiled in Before Lewis and Clark display a soap opera-like family evolution from humble fur trappers into a social, economic and political dynasty. Among the notables are not only Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, but presidents from Jefferson to Lincoln and iconic figures like Sam Houston, Daniel Boone, the Marquis de Lafayette and Washington Irving.See the full content of this document
Extract
Before Lewis and Clark& Trivia, Particulars, No Big Picture
On the cover of Shirley Christian's recent book, Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty that Ruled America's Frontier, is a detail from Karl Bodmer's idyllic painting, Herd of Bisons on the Upper Missouri...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
