History of Carroll County, Missouri : carefully written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources, including a history of its townships, cities, towns and villages, together with a condensed history of Missouri ; the Constitution of the United States, and State of Missouri ; a military record of its volunteers in either army of the Great Civil War ; general and local statistics ; miscellany ; reminiscences, grave, tragic and humorous ; biographical sketches of prominent men and citizens identified with the interests of the country, Part 2

Author: Missouri Historical Company
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: St. Louis : Missouri Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 732

USA > Missouri > Carroll County > History of Carroll County, Missouri : carefully written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources, including a history of its townships, cities, towns and villages, together with a condensed history of Missouri ; the Constitution of the United States, and State of Missouri ; a military record of its volunteers in either army of the Great Civil War ; general and local statistics ; miscellany ; reminiscences, grave, tragic and humorous ; biographical sketches of prominent men and citizens identified with the interests of the country > Part 2

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

None of the other walls examined were so skilfully laid as this one. The bones were crumbly, and only a few fragments were preserved by coating them well with varnish as quickly as possible after they were exposed to the air. One stone enclosure was found full of ashes, char- coal and burnt human bones, and the stones and earth of which the mound was composed all showed the effects of fire. Hence it is pre- sumed that this was either a cremation furnace or else an altar for human sacrifices- most probably the latter. Some fragments of pottery were found in the vicinity.

L. C. Beck in 1823+ reported some remains in the territory now con- stituting Crawford county, Missouri, which he thought showed that there

* Smithsonian Report, 1877, p. 252.

+ Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri, published by L. C. Beck, in 1820-28.

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

was in old time a town there, with streets, squares, and houses built with stone foundations and mud walls. He also mentions the ruins of an ancient stone building described to him by Gen. Ashley, as situated on a high cliff on the west side of the Gasconade river. And another one said to be in Pike county, is thus described: " It presents the dilapidated remains of a building constructed of rough, unhewn stones, fifty-six feet long and twenty-two broad, embracing several divisions and chambers. The walls are from two to five feet high. Eighty rods eastward of this structure is found a smaller one of similar construction. The narrow apartments are said to be arched with stone, one course overlapping the other, after the manner of the edifices of Central America."

I. Dille, Esq., of Newark, Ohio, reported that he had examined some of these pre-historic town ruins, in the vicinity of Mine-la-Motte and Fredericktown, in Madison county, Missouri. He speaks of them as groups of small tumuli, and says: "I have concluded they are the remains of mud houses. They are always arranged in straight lines, with broad streets intervening between them, crossing each other at right angles. The distance apart varies in different groups, but it is always uniform in the same group. ** * I have counted upwards of two hundred of these mounds in a single group. Arrow heads of jasper and agate, and axes of sienite and porphyry have been found in their vicinity." *

Mounds or other pre-historic structures have been found on Spencer's creek in Ralls county; on Cedar creek in Boone county; on Crow's Fork and other places in Callaway county; near Berger Station in Franklin county; near Miami in Saline county; on Blackwater river in John- son county; on Salt river in Pike county; on Prairie Fork in Mont- gomery county; near New Madrid; and in many other parts of the State.

The class of ancient ruins, partly built of stone, said to exist in Clay, Crawford, Pike and Gasconade counties, Missouri, are not found further north, but are frequent enough further south, and are supposed to indicate a transitional period in the development of architectural knowledge and skill, from the grotesque earth-mounds of Wisconsin to the well-finished adobe structures of New Mexico, and the grander stone ruins of Yucatan. But, no matter what theory we adopt with regard to these pre-historic relics, the present citizens of Missouri can rest assured that a different race of human beings lived and flourished all over. this region of country, hundreds-yes, thousands of years ago, and that they were markedly different in their modes of life from our modern Indians.

* Many large and costly works have been published by scientists, devoted to the general subject of Pre-Historic Man; but of cheap und popular works for the general reader, the best are Foster's "Pre Historic Races of the United States"; and Baldwin's "Ancient America".

HISTORY . OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

And there are at least two discoveries known which show that these people were here before the extinction of the mastodon, or great American elephant. In the "Transactions of the St. Louis Academy of Sciences," 1857, Dr. Kock reports that in the year 1839 he dug up in Gasconade county [as that county then was] the bones of a mastodon, near the Bourbeuse river. The skeleton of this gigantic creature was buried in such a position as to show that it had got its hind legs down in a bog so deeply that it could not climb out, although its fore feet were on dry ground. The natives had attacked it with their flint arrows and spears, most of which were found in a broken condition; but they had finally managed to build a big fire so close to its head as to burn it to death, the head-bones and tusks being found all burnt to coals. The account of. this discovery was first printed in the Philadelphia Presbyterian, Jan. 12, 1839, and copied into the " American Journal of Science " the same year. The authenticity of the incident has been disputed, on the assumed ground that man did not exist as long ago as when the mastodon roamed over these pre-historic plains; but science now has indisputable evidence that nian existed even in the Tertiary age of the geological scale, ( see note to chart in chapter on Geology ) long before the glacial epoch; hence that objection has no force at present.

Dr. Koch further reports that about a year after unearthing the Gas- conade county monster, he again found in the bottom land of the Pom- me-de-Terre river, in Benton county, a nearly complete skeleton of the great extinct beast called Missourium, with arrow-heads under it in such a way as to show beyond question that they were made and used while the animal was alive. This skeleton is now in the British Museum. *

Human footprints have been found in the rocks at De Soto in Jefferson county, also in Gasconade county, and at St. Louis. H. R. Schoolcraft, in his book of travels in the Mississippi river country in 1821, said of these footprints: "The impressions in the stone are, to all appearance, those of a man standing in an erect posture, with the left foot a little advanced, and the heels drawn in. The distance between the heels, by accurate measurement, is 62 inches and between the extremities of the toes 133 inches. The length of these tracks is 10} inches; across the toes 43 inches as spread out, and but 2} at the heel."

Our eminent U. S. Senator, Thomas H. Benton, wrote a letter April 29th, 1822, in which he says: "The prints of the human feet which you mention, I have seen hundreds of times. They were on the uncovered limestone rock in front of the town of St. Louis. The prints were seen when the country was first settled, and had the same appearance then as now. No .tradition can tell anything about them. They look as old as the rock. They have the same fine polish which the attrition of the

* See Foster's "Pre-Historic Races of the United States," pp. 62-8-4-5-6.

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

sand and water has made upon the rest of the rock which is exposed to their action. I have examined them often with great attention. They are not handsome, but exquisitely natural, both in the form and position. * * A block 6 or 8 feet long and 3 or 4 feet wide, containing the prints, was cut out by Mr. John Jones, in St. Louis, and sold to Mr: Rappe, of New Harmony, Indiana."*

Prof. G. C. Broadhead, and some other writers, think these were not natural impression of human feet, but sculptures made by hand. This theory requires a belief that the pre-historic men of Missouri had tools with which they could cut the most delicate lines in hard rocks; and that they studied the human form in its finest details of muscular action and attitude, and had the art of sculpturing these things so as to look " exqui- sitely natural," as Col. Benton expresses it-thus rivalling, if not excelling the most famous sculptors of ancient Greece; all of which is wholly incon- sistent with the known facts. And besides this, there is no better geolog- ical reason for doubting their genuineness as natural footprints, than there is in the case of the famous bird and reptile tracks in the sandstones of Connecticut, or those found by Prof. Mudge in Kansas, in 1873. There is no valid reason, either of an æsthetic, historical, or scientific nature, for pronouncing them anything but just what they show themselves to be - fossil footprints of a man who stood in the mud barefooted; and in course of time that mud became solid stone, preserving his footprints just as he left their exact impression in the plastic material.

THE WHITE RACE IN MISSOURI.

SPANISH AND FRENCH DISCOVERERS.

In 1512 the Spanish adventurer Ponce de Leon discovered Florida; and at this time and for some years after the old countries of Europe were filled with the wildest and most extravagant stories about the inexhaustible mines of gold, silver and precious stones that existed in the country north of the Gulf of Mexico; also of great and populous cities containing fabulous wealth, beyond what Pizarro and Cortes had found in Peru and . Mexico. And besides all this, the "fountain of perpetual youth," which all Europe had gone crazy after, about this time, was supposed to be in that region. Indeed, it can hardly be doubted that the Spaniards in Mexico had gathered from the natives some inkling of the wonderful healing waters now known as

* Sec Smithsonian Report, 1879, pp. 357-58. Also " American Antiquities," by Josiah Priest, 1833, pp. 1850-51-52.

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the brilliant quartz crystals found in that region, as well as the glittering ores of Missiouri.

Ferdinand de Soto was a wealthy cavalier who had won fame as a leading commander in Pizarro's conquest of Peru; he imbibed deeply the current imaginings about the undiscovered wonders of the new world, and was eager to immortalize his name by bringing to his king and coun- try the glory of still more important conquests and discoveries; and he especially desired to find the supposed " fountain_ of perpetual youth." Accordingly, in 1538 he received permission from the king of Spain to conquer Florida at his own cost-"Florida " then meaning all the unknown country from the Gulf of Mexico to the Northern ocean. He collected a band of more than six hundred young bloods who were able to equip themselves in all the gorgeous trappings and splendor of a Span- ish cavalier dress parade, and with this plumed and tinselled troupe, very like the grand entrec riders of a modern circus, he landed in Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1539. From here he boldly struck out into the interior, wan- dering about and pushing forward with dogged perseverance, in spite of bogs and streams and bluffs; in spite of tangling thickets and dense for- ests; in spite of heats and rains; in spite of the determined hostility of the natives-until in May, 1541, he discovered the Great River, a few miles below where the city of Memphis now stands; and thus he made his name memorable for all time. After some delay, to construct boats, they crossed the river and pushed on northward as far as where the city of New Madrid now stands; and this was the first time that the eyes of white men looked upon any portion of the soil now comprised within the State of Missouri .* But, so fruitless was this visit that no white man set foot within our present State boundary again until one hundred and thirty-two years afterward, when the French missionaries, Marquette and Joliet, came from the great lakes down the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, to the mouth of the Missouri, in June, 1673. This was the first time white men had beheld the waters of this great stream, and they named it Peki- tononi, or " Muddy Water River". It was known by this name until about 1710 or 1712, when it began to be called "the river of the Mis- souris," referring to a tribe of Indians that dwelt at its mouth, chiefly on the lands now.comprised in St. Louis county. Marquette and Joliet went on down the river as far south as the mouth of the Arkansas river, of course making several camping stops on Missouri soil, and discovering the Ohio river. From the Arkansas they returned northward the same way they

* De Soto and his army came into Missouri from the south, twice crossing the Ozark mountains. He spent the winter of 1541-42 in Vernon county, in the extreme western part of the State. Ruins of their winter camp structures and smelting operations are still found there. They melted lead ore for silver, and the glittering, lustrous, yellow, zinc blende or Smithsonite for gold; but were deeply disgusted to find at last that they had been handling only the basest metals.

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

came down, and reached Green Bay, Wisconsin, again in September of that year - 1673.

The next visit of white men to this State was in 1682. In 1678 the French had built a fort with a missionary station and trading post, near where the city of Peoria, Ills., now stands. During the winter of 1681 -82, Robert de la Salle made preparations, first in Canada, and then at this Illinois fort, to explore the Mississippi river to its mouth. He left the fort with a company of twenty Frenchmen, eighteen Indian men and ten squaws, in such boats and canoes as he could provide. They rowed down the Illinois river and reached its mouth on the 6th of February; a few days were spent here making observations, repairing boats, preparing food, and establishing signals that they had been there and taken posses- sion of the land in the name of their great king. By February 13th La Salle was ready to push on, and started with his little fleet to solve the great mystery of a navigable waterway to the Gulf of Mexico. Of course this expedition passed along the eastern border of Missouri, but no points are mentioned to identify any landing which they may have made within our State. Early in April La Salle accomplished the grand object of his ven- ture by discovering the three principal mouths of the Mississippi; and on the nearest firm dry land he could find from the mouth he set up a col- umn bearing the cross and the royal arms of France, while the whole company performed the military and religious rites of loyalty to their king and country- and La Salle himself, acting as chief master of cere- monies, in a clear, loud voice proclaimed that: he took possession of all the country between the great gulf and the frozen ocean, "in the name of the most high, mighty and victorious prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God king of France and Navarre, 14th of the name, this 9th day of April, 1682.". In honor of his sovereign he named the whole vast region Louisiana -that is, Louis' land, and named the river itself St. Louis. And thus it was that our State of Missouri first became a part of historic Louisiana, and passed under the nominal ownership and authority of France.

The next historic appearance of white men within our State was in 1705. The French settlers in this, vast new country had kept themselves entirely on the east side of the Mississippi river; but during this year they sent an exploring party up the Missouri river in search of gold; it prospected as far as the mouth of the Kansas river, where Kansas City now stands, without finding anything valuable, and returned disheartened and disgusted. On September 14, 1712, the king of France, Louis XIV, gave to a wealthy French merchant named Anthony Crozat, a royal patent of " all the country drained by the waters emptying directly or indirectly into the Mississippi, which is all included in the boundaries of Louisiana." Crozat appointed his business partner, M. de la Motte, governor, and he

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

arrived in 1713; Kaskaskia, Illinois, was then the provincial headquarters, and source of supplies for Upper Louisiana, which was also sometimes called Illinois; but New Orleans was the nominal seat of government for the whole Louisiana territory. The old town of Mine-la-Motte, in Mad- ison county, commemorates this first governor. Crozat expected to find inexhaustible mines of gold and silver in this territory, and spent immense sums of money in vain efforts to attain his object. Practical miners were sent everywhere that the natives reported any glittering substance to exist. The explorers found iron, zinc, copper, lead, mica, pyrites, quartz crystals, etc., in great abundance, but no gold, silver or diamonds; and after five years of disastrous failure and disappointment, in 1717, Crozat returned his luckless charter to the king.

· Next, in 1716 an adventurous Scotchman named John Law, got up a grand scheme for making everybody rich without work, and induced the French king and court and people to engage in it. This wild financial venture is known in history as the " Mississippi bubble," the "South Sea bubble," etc. The charter of Louisiana and monopoly of all its trade was given to a corporation, called the " Company of the West," whose cap- ital stock was to be 100,000,000 francs, with power to issue stock in small shares, and establish a bank, etc. Shares rose to twenty times their original value, and the bank's notes, though essentially worthless, were in circulation to the amount of more than $200,000,000. Law himself sunk $500,000 in the scheme; but it bursted, as bodiless as a bag of wind; while he, the originator and manager of it, had to escape from Paris for his life, and died poor at Venice in 1729. In 1731 the charter of Louis- iana was again returned to the crown. . However, the excitement over this great scheme for making fabulous wealth out of nothing, had brought many adventurous Frenchmen into the territory as gold-hunters, who failing in that, worked some of the lead mines, and sent their pro- ducts back to Europe.

In 1720 or 1721, an enterprising Frenchman named Renault took charge of a large lead mining enterprise. He brought M. La Motte, who was a professional mineralogist, with about two hundred expert miners and metallurgists, and five hundred negroes, to develop the mineral wealth that actually did exist. He made his headquarters at Fort de Char- tres, on the Illinois side, ten miles above St. Genevieve, and sent out explor- ing and working parties to locate mining camps west of the Great River. Mine-la-Motte, in Madison county, was one of the first of these loca- tions; also Potosi and Old Mine in Washington county; and many others. In 1765 a few families located at Potosi. Much of the mining was surface work- hence, scattered and transitory; and their smelting operations were merely to melt the ore in a wood fire and then clear away the ashes and gather up the lumps of lead. This was carried to

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

the river on pack-horses or on rude ox-carts, and thence shipped to New Orleans by fleets of drifting keel-boats, which returned laden with for- eign goods. Many of the immigrants of this period also engaged in agriculture, especially in Illinois, so that there really began to be a settled occupation of the country, as a final outcome of the greatest speculative delusion known to history: Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World says: " Fort Orleans, near where Jefferson City now stands, was built by the French in 1719"; this was a temporary safeguard for John Law's crazy gold-hunters, but did not make a permanent settlement. Kaskaskia, now in Randolph county, Ills., was settled by the French in 1673, and was for about a century the metropolis of the vast territory sometimes called "Upper Louisiana," sometimes "Illinois," and sometimes the "Northwestern Territory." And in 1735 some emigrants from Kaskaskia, moved across the Great River and made a settlement at what is now St. Genevieve, Missouri, which was the first permanent white settlement made and maintained within the State; the previous adventurers in search of min- eral wealth had located mining camps at several points, but had not established any permanent town or trading post.

The next settlement that can be historically traced to its origin was that of St. Louis. A Frenchman named Pierre Liguest Laclede,* who lived in New Orleans in 1762, organized the " Louisiana Fur Company," under a charter from the director-general of the province of Louisiana; this charter gave them the exclusive right to carry on the fur trade with the Indians bordering on the Missouri river, and west of the Mississippi, " as far north as the river St. Peter" (the same that is now called the Min- nesota river, and empties into the Mississippi at Fort Snelling). Laclede seems to have formed a definite plan and purpose to establish a permanent trading post at some point in Upper Louisiana, for he made up a company of professional trappers, hunters, mechanics, laborers, and boatmen, and with a supply of goods suitable for the Indian trade, they left New Orleans in August, 1763, bound for the mouth of the Missouri river. The manner of navigating these boats against the current of the Missis- sippi for a distance of 1,194 miles, was of the most rude, primitive and laborious sort. Sometimes when the wind was favorable they could sail a little; but the main dependence was by means of push-poles and tow- ropes. The boats were long and narrow, with a plank projecting six or eight inches on each side. The boat would of course keep near the shore; a man at each side, near the bow of the boat, would set his pole on the river bottom, then brace his shoulder against the top of the pole with

* Campbell's Gazetteer of Missouri says this man's family name was Liguest; B. Gratz Brown gives it in Johnson's Cyclopedia as Lingueste; but the man himself appears to have written his name Laclede, of the firm of Laclede, Moxan & Co., who constituted the historic "Louisiana Fur Company."

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

all his might, and as the boat moved under him he would walk along the narrow plank until he reached the stern, and the boat had thus been propelled forward the distance of its length; then he would walk back to the bow, dragging his pole along in the water, set it on the bottom and push again as before. And thus it was that the rugged pioneers of civilization in the new world for more that a hundred years navigated the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and some other rivers, with what were in later years called keel-boats. But sometimes, for a rest, or when the beach was favorable, a gang of men would go ashore with a long rope attached to the boat, and thus tow it along against the current, or they would tie the forward end to a tree or snag and let those on the boat pull in the rope and thus draw the boat along-meanwhile those on shore going ahead with another rope, making another tie-and so on; this was called "warping"; but when it was necessary to cross the stream they had recourse to oars or paddles. It took Laclede three months in this way to get from New Orleans up to St. Genevieve, or Fort de Chartres, the military post on the east side a few miles further up the river, where he arrived on the third of November. Here he left his goods and part of his company, but taking a few picked men, he himself pushed on to the mouth of the Missouri. He seems to have had a sort of prophetic forecast that this was the right spot to locate the future trading post for all that vast region of country which was drained by the two prin- cipal great rivers of the new world. At the mouth of the Missouri he found no site that suited him for a town, and he turned back down the Mississippi, carefully exploring the west bank until he reached the high, well protected and well drained location where the city of St. Louis now stands. This was the nearest spot to the mouth of the Missouri which at all met his idea, and he began at once to mark the place by chopping notches in some of the principal trees. This was in December, 1763. He then returned to the fort and pushed on his preparations for the new settlement, saying enthusiastically to the officers of the fort that he had "found a situation where he was going to plant his colony; and the site was so fine, and had so many advantages of position for trade with all this region of country, that it might in time become one of the finest cities in America."

Early in February, 1764, a company of thirty men, in charge of Auguste Chouteau, set out from Fort de Chartres and arrived at the chosen spot on the 14th. The next day all hands went to work clearing the ground and building a storehouse for the goods and tools, and cabins for their own habitation. In April Laclede himself joined them and pro- ceeded to lay out the village plat, select a site for his own residence, and name the town Saint Louis, in honor of his supposed sovereign, Louis XV. This very territory had been yielded up to Spain in 1762, but these loyal

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

Frenchmen in naming their new town after the French king never dreamed that they were then and for nearly two years had been Spanish subjects, instead of French; the unwelcome news had reached New Orleans in the same month, April, but did not arrive at St. Louis until late in the year; and when it came the inhabitants were appropriately wroth and indignant, for they hated Spain with a fighting hatred. However, the change made very little practical difference to the town or its people. In 1763 all the French possessions on the east side of the Mississippi river, and also Canada, had been ceded to England, but it was late in 1764 before the English authorities arrived to take possession of Kaskaskia, or Fort de Chartres, and other military posts; and when they did come, many of the French settlers moved over to St. Louis, giving it a consid- erable start, both in population and business. The Indians, too, being generally more friendly toward the French than the English, came over to St. Louis to trade their peltries, instead of going to Kaskaskia, as they had formerly done; and this fact gave the new town a powerful impulse.

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Author: Missouri Historical Company Publication date: 1881 Publisher: St. Louis : Missouri Historical Co. Number of Pages: 732

Author: Missouri Historical Company
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: St. Louis : Missouri Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 732