Page:Early History St Louis and Missouri.djvu/16

10 of August, 1866, being the centenary anniversary of the first grant of land in Missouri.

The same object which induced them to form it has since prompted them to support it, and collect such materials as will enable them by degrees to present a history of the State and of the city which may challenge the scrutinizing view and the austere judgment of the historian on its merit.

We will begin when Missouri was the hereditary domain of the red man, living in scattered bands over this magnificent State, in huts without chimneys, walls, or one stone upon another for protection against enemies or elements.

They obtained their precarious subsistence chiefly by pursuing the inhabitants of the earth and water; had dogs, but no other domestic animals; spoke different languages, and occasionally warred fiercely with each other. Such was its condition when, on the 7th day of July, 1673, a small band of Europeans and Canadians, from Quebec, led by Father Marquette, a monk, and Joliet, a merchant, reached the Mississippi river.

It is evident the red men of Missouri had no hostility or prejudices against strangers, as they allowed them to descend the river to the junction of the Arkansas and to return in peace and publish to the world a description of the most wonderful and mighty river of the world, whether its waters, its length, its magnificence, its branches, or its banks are considered.

Five years later LaSalle, in 1668, navigated the Mississippi to the mouth without meeting with any opposition from the natives dwelling in Missouri, and from that time to the present the aborigines of Missouri have manifested an unusual confidence in strangers from all parts of the world. Hence their country was never made a battle field on which to settle those dreadful controversies which have distracted other sections of our country and filled them with desolation and mourning, while this enjoyed the enviable position of being an asylum.

This state of peace and quietude over the territory now included in the State of Missouri arose from its remoteness from points where the cupidity of wealth had attracted its votaries and kept their attention employed on objects that seemed to promise a more immediate reward.

This continued seventy-three years after LaSalle had