USA > Missouri > A history of Missouri from the earliest explorations and settlements until the admission of the state into the union, Volume II > Part 33
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These religious festivals and processions were admirably calcu- lated to divert the minds of the people from discontent with the estab- lished paternal despotism. Great was the excitement which such occasions would cause in these French settlements. The Christmas holidays, especially, were always splendidly celebrated. Then the village church was open all night, the altar illuminated with the larg- est wax candles the village could afford, and to the young assembled in the church, the sacred images on the walls, with crosses in their hands, lent an indescribable awe, the spectacle, appearing to them as though in reality what they but represented. 46
The French have always been famous for their cooking. They enjoyed the pleasures of the table. With the poorest French, cooking is an art well understood.47 They made use of many vegetables and prepared them "in a manner wholesome and palatable." Fried and roasted meats were not always on the table, neither was fat hog meat, hot corn bread, nor cold pones, hard as a brick, as in the homes of many American settlers. Instead, they had soups, fricasses, salads, chickens, game, etc., prepared as well as by the chefs of Paris. Yet they were not acquainted with the use of the churn, and made their butter by beating the cream in a bowl or shaking it in a bottle.48
45 Stoddard's Louisiana, p. 316.
46 Recollections of the West, Brackenridge, p. 25.
47 Brackenridge's Recollections of the West, p. 21.
48 Views of Louisiana, p. 239.
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They extracted "a syrup from a certain tree"- that is to say, they made maple syrup. They raised wheat and had flour, and " did not use Indian Corn meal for bread to any great extent." Hominy corn was raised for the voyageurs. It was hard, flinty and ripened early in the fall. Through the simple luxuries of their tables many of the Americans became enticed by the lives, habits and charms of the daughters of the French pioneers. The daughters like their mothers, were generally good and thrifty managers, and neat house- keepers.49 On the other hand, only on rare occasions did a French settler intermarry with an American family.
Stoddard attributes the sallow complexion and sickly aspects which characterized some of these French pioneers, "though they experience a good degree of health, in a great measure to the nature of their foods, mostly of a vegetable kind, and their manner of preparing it." Evidently he did not relish the French cuisine now so popular. But the suggestion, that the use of a vege- table diet caused their "sallow complexion and sickly aspect" though "they experienced a good degree of health," clearly shows that Stoddard did not know that in a new country, where the bottoms were covered with heavy timber and malaria necessarily prevailed more or less, a vegetable diet was most beneficial. These old French settlers were wiser than he. He also says that "they are temperate; they mostly limit their desires to vegetables, soups and coffee." This is characteristic of the French everywhere, He also further observes that "they are great smokers of tobacco" that this practice "no doubt gives a yellow tinge to their skins," and contradicting Gen. Collot directly, states that "ardent spirits are seldom used except by the most laborious class of so- ciety. They even dislike white wines, because they possess too much spirit. Clarets and other light red wines are common among them, and those who can afford it, are not sparing of this bever- age." 50 They also made "a sourish wine in the Illinois country" which was consumed by those not able to afford imported wines.
These French settlers were not extravagant or wasteful. It is
49 But see statement of Alvord in Ills. Hist. Coll. vol. 2, p. 22, that the French women were poor, careless and extravagant housekeepers, citing Vol- ney's Views, p. 336. Volney quotes the apology of the Americans who natural- ly placed all the losses the French had suffered by the change of government on the French themselves. Stoddard says " this passion for cleanliness is particu- larly exhibited by the women, who frequently carry it to excess." Stoddard's Louisiana, p. 328.
50 Stoddard's Louisiana, p. 325.
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POLITICIANS UNKNOWN
remarkable that the use of the spinning wheel and loom was unknown among them, and that no domestic manufacture was carried on in their homes.51 They displayed "great economy in their family matters, not however, because of a miserly disposition, nor always because of a want of means but rather as the result of a conviction that their constitutions" required it. They readily sacrificed "what may be termed luxury for the preservation of health." They seldom contracted the diseases that are the result of excess. Nor need it be thought that these statements, made on the authority of Stoddard, applied only to the rich or wealthier class of the French pioneers of Missouri. Any one will recognize the most salient features of French character in all the accounts given by early travelers of the habits and customs of the first French settlers in this country. It is true that the French Cana- dian voyageurs and coureurs des bois coming from long voyages or from the hunts, often freely imbibed taffia and other strong and intoxicating beverages, for a day or more, (and it is probable that Lieutenant Frazier referred to this class in his letter) but nevertheless, even among this class, drunkards were few. Although laboring hard for months and years, far up the Mississippi and Missouri, and their hundreds of tributary streams, on their return to St. Louis, St. Charles and Ste. Genevieve, they quickly spent their earnings. Plain and simple in their wants, without guile, and gen- erally without ambition to acquire wealth or property, these people easily fell a prey to their more calculating countrymen, and the many Americans who, even before the Louisiana purchase, began to invade the country, and used this harmless and unsuspecting folk as tools to accomplish their purposes. They were as a class, neither a persistent, industrious nor money-saving people. But they were content and happy.
The people were not allowed to participate in public affairs. Politics and politicians were unknown. The Commandant of the post was supposed to look after matters concerning the welfare of the community. The French residents generally were very ignorant on all such matters. Of an extremely peaceful disposition as to political subjects, they were also devoid of public spirit. Enterprises necessary to build up a country, found little support among them.
The houses in which they lived were built of logs planted upright
51 Reynolds' Pioneer History of Illinois, p. 88; Brackenridge's Views of Louisiana, p. 218.
.
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in the ground or erected on top of a wall. Sometimes instead of posts they were made on a frame work, with corner posts, and studs hori- zontally connected with cross pieces and the intervening spaces filled with stone or mortar. These houses so constructed were white washed. "The French houses," says Ford, "were mostly of hewn timber set upright in the ground or upon plates laid upon a wall, the intervals between the upright pieces being filled with stone and mortar. Scarcely any of the houses were more than one story high, with a porch on one or two sides, and sometimes all around, with low roofs, extending with slants of different steepness from the comb to the side of the lowest part of the porch. They were generally placed in a garden and surrounded by fruit trees, apples, cherries and peaches and in the village, generally each inclosure of the house or garden occupied a whole block or square." On the ridge of the house, or over the gates, one frequently saw a wooden cross.52
These long and low dwellings, when owned by the wealthier and more prosperous, had a chimney in the center of the house, thus divid- ing it into two parts, and giving a great fire place to each room. One end served as a dining-room, parlor and principal bed chamber ; the other was the kitchen. From each of these rooms, however, a small room was often cut off for a private chamber. But some had spacious halls in the centre and chimneys at both ends.53 While many of the houses had no garrets, or stairs leading to the garret, stairs being rare in the French villages of the time, some houses like the Vallé house, and other houses owned by the richer habitans, had large garrets with dormer windows or windows at the gable end, thus lighting up the garrets. The furniture was simple, consisting of beds, looking-glasses, a table or two, some chairs and an armoire. The
whole house was one ponderous frame, with walls often not weather- boarded, but spaces between the timber filled in with clay and rock and white-washed, presenting a neat and attractive appearance.54 Very few nails were used in the construction, the timbers being tenented and mortised and wooden pegs driven to fasten the whole structure together. Nails being made by hand were scarce. The roofs were fastened down by wooden pegs or pins. The chimney generally was made by planting four posts converging toward the top so that the
52 Flint's Recollections, p. 100.
53 Stoddard's Louisiana, p. 329.
54 See pictures of Vallé and other houses at Ste. Genevieve, in vol. 1. p. 350, et seq. Also the Chouteau and other houses at St. Louis, pp. 48 and 60, ante.
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HOUSES
diameter of the chimney at the top was not more than one half as great as at the hearth, and the space between these posts was also filled with rock and mortar. But in Ste. Genevieve many of the houses of the wealthier class had stone chimneys with fire-places four or five feet wide. In such fire-places in the kitchen the culinary preparations were carried on. When the family owned servants, the kitchen was usually located in a detached building several steps from the main house. The house had one window of eight or ten panes of glass to each room. The windows opened like doors, and were protected on the outside by heavy, solid wooden shutters. This was a protection against the neighboring Indians, who in Ste. Genevieve would sometimes, when in an ugly mood, and half drunk, take the town.55 "The insolence of the other nations who came openly to their villages, the Peorias, Loups, Kickapoos, Chickasaws, Cherokees, etc., is inconceivable. They were sometimes perfect masters of the village, and excited general consternation. I have seen the houses on some occasions closed up, and the doors barred by the terrified inhabitants." 56 It can hardly be imagined now that such conduct would not lead to bloody encounters. Under such circumstances, however, well pro- tected windows, heavy doors and high picket fences were necessary it would seem. In St. Louis some of the houses of the wealthier residents were built out of stone.
The better houses had spacious galleries. In such houses the floors were made of plank nicely jointed, but those not able to afford such luxury had puncheons, that is to say, heavy timber hewed and joined together. The joists were made out of logs hewn square. All timber was then sawed by hand. The houses were in enclosed yards, fenced off by pickets seven feet high and eight or ten inches in diameter, driven into the ground and sharpened to a point on top, but the Chouteau house in St. Louis was after- ward surrounded by a stone wall. The yards in front of the houses were small, but in the rear large, according to the wealth of the owner and the number of slaves owned, and the amount of stock and stable- room required. Beyond this enclosure large and spacious gardens enclosed in pickets in the same manner as the yard, were situated. In these gardens every variety of the finest vegetables were cultivated together with flowers and shrubs. There was also an orchard on one side filled with choicest fruit trees. Thus lived many of the richer
55 Views of Louisiana, p. 245.
56 Views of Louisiana, p. 146.
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French pioneers in their villages, far more comfortable, and relatively almost in elegance, as compared with the Anglo-Saxon pioneers, who dwelt on isolated homesteads on their land-grants. .
The first dwellings of the American settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as from Pennsylvania, were similar in construc- tion in all sections of the west. Both before and after the cession of Louisiana they were usually double cabins, or two distinct log pens, the logs being laid longitudinally upon each other eight or ten feet high. The log houses consisted of two single rooms with an open space between. This space was equal in size to one of the cabins, or rooms, the roof covering each of the log rooms being extended over this space, or hall-way. Sometimes too, the roof extended over the
3
CHOUTEAU RESIDENCE IN ST. LOUIS
walls of the houses so as to form a shed or porch in front and in therear. The space between the log rooms being thus covered was left open as a passage-way with the bare earth as a floor, and here, in the sum- mer time, the family found a cool and airy retreat from the heat of the day. The roof was made from pole rafters, across which logs were laid and fastened with wooden pins, or by notches, and on these logs were laid clap-boards four or five feet long, and upon these three or four heavy logs, called "weight logs," fastened down at the ends with withes, holding down by their weight the clap-board roof, thus sup- plying the place of nails. One or two doors were cut into these rooms, the spaces between the logs were chinked or daubed with clay and a few small openings were left for light and air, or when glass could be procured, for windows. The floor consisted of
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ANGLO-AMERICANS
puncheons laid on heavy logs. Each cabin had a broad fire-place built of wood and clay, or made out of rock whenever accessible. One cabin or room, served as a kitchen, while in the other, in the winter, before huge log fires, the men and boys assembled to discuss the news, the latest arrivals in the settlement, the exploits in the field or chase, the wars and rumors of wars that then were current, and above all, the Indians and their forays.
In case the family owned slaves another log room, or cabin, was built for a kitchen, usually in the rear of the hall-way and about the width of the hall-way from the dwelling. Here the colored women did their work under the supervision and instruction of the mistress, who trained them to industry and order. The cabins of these servants usually, were near by in the same lot. The wealth, industry and enter- prise of an American pioneer was shown by the number of his corn cribs, the size of his smoke house, the number of his live-stock, cattle, hogs and horses. Trudeau evidently speaking of poorer classes of French settlers observes, in 1798, that the houses of the new American settlers were better than the houses of Creoles and Canadians " who were settled in the villages thirty years ago." 57
The first considerable Anglo-American emigration into upper Louisiana dates from the visit of Colonel George Morgan in 1788-89, already mentioned. The immigrants came principally from Penn- sylvania and followed Colonel Israel Shreeve, Peter Light, Colonel Christopher Hays,- all surveyors - Captain Hulings, John Ward, and many others who had accompanied Morgan. That the country attracted them is shown by the fact that they nearly all remained, or, if they returned home up the Ohio, soon came back with others. In fact, these explorers with Morgan first spread abroad on the forks of the Ohio and through what was then the western portion of the United States, the fame of the beauty and fertility of the soil of what is now Missouri; they set in motion that stream of immi- gration which, a few years afterwards, began to move into Louisiana and caused Dr. Saugrain to tell Brissot, that the Spaniards sooner or later would be forced to quit the Mississippi, that the Americans would pass it and establish themselves in Louisiana, a country which he said he had seen, and considered "one of the finest countries in the universe." 58 Yet even before Morgan and his adventurers came,
57 Trudeau Report of 1798; General Archives of the Indies, Seville.
58 Brissot's New Travels, p. 261. Brissot de Warville was a relative of Genet.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
English speaking people had settled in the colony. Thus we find in 1771, Mathew Kennedy in Ste. Genevieve, engaged in trade.59 In the village of St. Louis, Marie Newby, the widow of John Claiborn, evidently an Anglo-American family or of Anglo-American descent, married one Philibert Gagnon in 1778, and afterward Philip Fine. This Fine in 1786 settled between the Maramec and the Mississippi. In the same year Captain John Dodge settled at New Bourbon in the Ste. Genevieve district not far from Kaskaskia. A family named " Reed" lived in St. Louis, from the foundation of the settlement and if they were Anglo-Americans, as the name would certainly indicate, must be considered the oldest English-speaking family of upper Louisiana. Laurent Reed said that when the Indians attacked St. Louis in 1780, he was seventeen years old, that he had lived in St. Louis all his life, and that he was born there. This latter statement, however, must be an error, as St. Louis was not founded until 1764, and if Reed was seventeen years old when the Indians attacked St. Louis, he was born there before the town was settled. Reed evidently was mistaken as to his age.
As early as 1774, John Helderbrand (or Hildebrand), by the Spaniards called "Albran," settled on the Maramec.60 In 1780, Pierre Chouteau went to his place to warn him and others of the dangers of Indian attacks and depredations. In the same year this Helderbrand, living on the Negro Fork of the Maramec, was killed by the Indians, (in 1788 according to a statement of William Bellew) while in the woods hunting his horses. This William Bellew, who was on the Maramec as early as 1788, was probably an American hunter or trapper. The family of Rev. Ichabod Camp must be included among the earliest English-speaking residents of St. Louis. Dr. Camp was a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal church, born in Durham, Connecticut, in 1726; he graduated at Yale college 1743; then went to England and was ordained a priest by the Bishop of London in 1752; he returned to the United States in August, 1752, and commenced his ministry at Christ church, Mid- dleton. He was married twice, his first wife being Content Ward, who died in 1754. In 1757 he married Ann Oliver, who survived him, dying October 27, 1803 at St. Louis. The Camps came down the Ohio with General George Rogers Clark on a flat-boat, but they did not stop at the Falls of the Ohio as most of the others did who
5º See vol. I, p. 352, note 39.
60 See his petition for land, American State Papers, 5 Public Land.
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REV. CAMP
came down the Ohio at that time, but passed on to Natchez ; one of the daughters dying there, Rev. Camp moved up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia. At this place it seems he was intimately associated with the early American residents of Kaskaskia, such as Shadrach Bond, Joseph Hunter (who afterward settled in the New Madrid district), and James Wiley. While at Kaskaskia in 1785, one of the daughters, Catherine, married a French-Canadian named J. B. Guion; but being ill-treated she returned to her father's house. This incensed Guion and one night while somewhat intoxicated, he went to the house and endeavored to force her to return to him. Rev. Camp stood at the door and remonstrated with him, but he drew a pistol and shot Camp, and he died of the wound almost immediately, on April 20, 1786, and was buried at Kaskaskia. Mrs. Camp shortly afterward removed to St. Louis. Here she purchased property at the corner of what is now Spruce and Second streets. In 1791 she received a grant of a lot from Lieutenant-Governor Perez on Third and Almond streets, and in 1797, another concession from Trudeau of 2,600 arpens on the Riviére des Peres, at a place which at a later period, by reason of a spring thereon, became known as "Camp's Spring." She also owned a mill on property on the Cul de Sac in 1800.61
James Richardson, long a deputy surveyor under Soulard, an- other early American settler, came to the St. Louis district in 1787, settling near St. Ferdinand. In 1795 he was a resident of the Village à Robert, but also owned property on the Maramec in 1796, and built a still house on the Maline in 1799. Richardson had killed a man in Kentucky and fled from that state to upper Louisiana. Thomas Jones was an early American resident on the Maramec. In 1780 he received a grant on Richard creek from de Leyba but later he was driven away by the Indians. His son, John Jones, was a witness before the Board of Commissioners as to the dates of
61 Her daughter Louise married Mackay Wherry of Pennsylvania, March 19, 1800; another daughter, Charlotte, married Moses Bates in 1805. Bates then lived in Ste. Genevieve, but afterwards removed to St. Charles, and Catherine the widow of John B. Guion, married Israel Dodge January 4, 1804, then residing at New Bourbon in Ste. Genevieve county. He settled on her, by marriage contract, "a house and grounds in New Bourbon, one thousand silver dollars, two young slaves and one thousand arpens of land." The second daughter married Antoine Reihle and died in St. Louis in 1793. The heirs of Mrs. Camp April 15, 1804, petitioned Captain Stoddard, the acting Governor of Louisiana Territory, to amicably partition the estate of Mrs. Camp, which petition was granted and is the first official act under the American government in upper Louisiana.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
settlements as far back as 1786, and events in that locality. No doubt this Jones and his family were among the earliest Anglo-American settlers of the country. It also appears from the records, that Gre- goire Davy in 1786, and John Gregor in 1787 resided on the Mara- mec; Jesse Raynor, from Kaskaskia who served in the militia there, resided on Sandy creek in St. Louis district in 1785, but removed from Louisiana in 1799. On June 21, 1788, an Englishman named Keer resided with his wife and family, about six miles north of St. Louis on Bellefontaine, but he, his wife, one son and two daughters were killed, a son of fifteen or sixteen and a daughter two years old escaped. This Keer had just moved from the American settle- ments across the river, and from the inventory made under the direc- tion of the Lieutenant-Governor, Don Manuel Perez, it would appear that he was possessed of ample house-hold effects, valued at 1,773 livres.62 After 1790 English names among the settlers became more numerous, and in a few years large, exclusively American settlements rapidily sprang up in the several districts.
No considerable number of Spaniards settled in upper Louisiana. Most of the Spanish soldiers who were sent up from New Orleans returned. Spanish names in the records of upper Louisiana are, Ortes (Hortez), Alvarez, Vasquez, in St. Louis; Manuel Blanco, a soldier who took up his residence at Mine à Breton, was at New Madrid in 1794. These are about the only names of Spanish residents which occur. The prevailing language in the villages was French, because the villages were almost occupied exclusively by them. The Americans residing on the land outside of these villages were en- gaged in farm work, so as to perfect the titles to their lands by actual cultivation, as required by the rules and ordinances. These land titles always were a matter of more consequence to the American settlers than to their French neighbors.
62 Billon's Annals of St. Louis, vol. I, p. 249.
CHAPTER XIX.
Activity of French Missionaries - Marquette in Missouri - Fathers Allouez and Gravier - Father Gabriel Marest - Conflict of Early Church Author- ities - Friendly Relations Between Missionaries and Indians - Voyage Down the Mississippi, in 1699, of Fathers Davion, Montigny and St. Cosme - Fathers Vivier, Tartarin, Aubert, Wattrin and DeGuyenne -First Resident Priests of Ste. Genevieve - Perils Incurred by Priests Visit- ing Settlements - Father Meurin - Father Gibault - His Unique List of Baggage - His Influence Causes the French to Espouse the American Cause - Denounced by the British Commander -Tribute to, by Patrick Henry - Father Hilaire and his Controversy with his Parishioners - Father James Maxwell - "Maxwell's Hill" Near Ste. Genevieve - Father Valen- tine, First Resident Priest of St. Louis - Ceremony of Dedication of First Church Bell of St. Louis - Building a New Church in St. Louis, 1776 - Report on Condition of St. Louis Church Building in 1797 -- The Church of Florissant - The Parish of St. Isidore- Salaries of Parish Priests-Cession of Louisiana Affects the Church -Church Property Ceded to Congregations - Church Authorities and Eminent Catholic Dignitaries at Time of Cession-Tour of Bishop Flaget, 1814- Bishop Dubourg- Father Felix De Andreis- His Marvelous Talents and Acquire- ments - Colony of Priests of the Congregation of the Missions in Missouri - Establishment of St. Mary's Seminary - First Colony of the Order of the Sacred Heart at St. Charles-Removed to Florissant in 1809-Madame Duchesne - The Germ of the St. Louis University.
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