Product Description

In the late eighteenth century, the vast, pristine land that lay west of the Mississippi River remained largely unknown to the outside world. The area beckoned to daring frontiersmen who produced the first major industry of the American West--the colorful but challenging, often dangerous fur trade. At the lead was an enterprising French Creole family that founded the city of St. Louis in 1763 and pushed forth to garner furs for world markets.

Stan Hoig provides an intimate look into the lives of four generations of the Chouteau family as they voyaged up the Western rivers to conduct trade, at times taking wives among the native tribes. They provided valuable aid to the Lewis and Clark expedition and assisted government officials in developing Indian treaties. National leaders, tribal heads, and men of frontier fame sought their counsel. In establishing their network of trading posts and opening trade routes throughout the Central Plains and Rocky Mountains, the Chouteaus contributed enormously to the nation's westward movement.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1215712 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 349 pages

About the Author
Stan Hoig is professor emeritus of journalism, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Oklahoma Historical Hall of Fame in 1998. Also among his numerous books are The Sand Creek Massacre, The Battle of the Washita, and Jesse Chisholm, Ambassador of the Plains.

Customer Reviews

colorful tale of generations of a family leading the opening of the American West
A movie of the life of the Chouteaus would have to be one of those generational epics running as a week-long series on channels such as HBO. "This family [featured] energetic, adventurous men destined to play significant roles in the advance of the United States and Euro-American civilization westward from the Mississippi River." The Chouteau men were active mostly before the Louisiana Purchase. By their explorations and commercial ventures in large parts of the area of the Purchase and contacts with Native Americans, they eased the growth of the United States beyond the Mississippi River. Some of the Chouteau men were prototypes of the mountain men who became legendary in American lore; though the Chouteau men were usually more entrepreneurial (rather than individualistic) in their activities and aims.

One of them spent time in a Spanish jail in the Southwest for misunderstandings with Spanish authorities about his presence in Spanish territory. And rather than trapping themselves and selling or trading the seasonal catch, most of the Chouteau men worked to create business networks of Native American tribes, European and American buyers, and varied commercial interests such as transportation and banking. In general, the Chouteau men also recognized the desirability and in some ways necessity of relations with governmental authorities.

The first of the Chouteau men were actually children of a man who has come to be known historically as Leclede and a Marie Therese, the wife of Rene Auguste Chouteau, who after some time in New Orleans returned to France abandoning her. The children were given the Chouteau name because the mother had to keep this name since the parents' Catholicism forbid them from divorcing. It was Laclede who set the pattern for the following two generations of the Chouteau men who had such an influence on opening the West for Euro-American settlement and development. In sympathy with French claims to upper parts of the Mississippi at the time of the French and Indian War, Laclede "committed himself to the proposition of constructing and operating one of the first franchised trading operations in the barely explored wilderness of the Mississippi Valley." In 1763 with his teenaged son Auguste a member of his crew, Laclede set out by keelboat up the Mississippi from New Orleans. During this trading venture, in the Spring 1764, Laclede named a site where cabins for shelter and sheds for storage of furs had been built Saint Louis in honor of the French king. This was the origin of the city of Saint Louis which at first an outpost, later became a key crossroad in trade between the western lands and the eastern towns and cities. Before long, Laclede's wife moved from New Orleans to Saint Louis with their children. One of these was named Pierre Chouteau.

Auguste and Pierre Chouteau and their male children carried on the tradition begun by their father Laclede. Pierre's eight sons especially had an incomparable role as sources of information about the areas and in advancing trade and other commercial interests as a prelude to settlement as they pursued their varied interests. Hoig--professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma--follows the adventures and accomplishments of the Chouteaus through developments relating to the Louisiana Purchase up to the Civil War.

There are many legendary explorers and pioneers in the story of the United States' westward expansion. But the Chouteau's are unique in that they were generations of one family whose combined efforts largely in pursuit of business opportunities and becoming wealthy are beyond compare.

Thorough and readable, if slightly juiceless
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the United States was a comparative infant of a country. Well established along the Atlantic coast, with adventurers and the settlers who invariably followed them just barely beginning to cross the Appalachians. There was nothing but three thousand miles of wilderness, about which practically nothing was known, when the largest portion of it was purchased from France.

But by then the a teenaged Auguste Chouteau and his stepfather Pierre Laclede had already spent many years in the fur trade, venturing in clumsy keelboats, up the river from their original home in New Orleans to establish a trading post and engage in commerce with the various Indian tribes along the Missouri River valley and daringly with those to the west of the Mississippi, that great water highway. In 1764, Laclede had selected a place for his trading post, near the mouth of the Missouri river, on the west bank of the Mississippi - St. Louis. His base of operations would become the keystone of the western fur trade. Auguste Chouteau, his younger brother Pierre and three generations of their descendants would be intimately involved in trade, exploration and development of the West, as merchants and as agents to various tribes. They would be friends with everyone - explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with Thomas Jefferson and William Henry Harrison, with the Sioux and Osage Indians, with the displaced Creeks and Cherokees, Sam Houston and Washington Irving, just to name a few.

This account is a thorough and readable, if slightly juiceless of a family whose various frontier exploits and adventures would make a fantastically eventful novel, not to mention fairly complicated marital histories. One might wish that the writer had more of a novelists touch in bringing the various Chouteaus more vividly to life, but as this seems to be the only one of two recent books dealing with such a quietly important family, enthusiasts for the history of the pre-Civil War west must take what they can get.