Page:Early History St Louis and Missouri.djvu/18

12 He, however, manifested a proper respect for religion and sacred things, which is commended at this late day, but which it would then have pained him to have been persuaded that, within one century, it would be so perverted from his design as to quite change its sacred character and nearly obliterate his labor. Having drawn his plan he dedicated the third block from the river, one hundred yards square, adjoining the south line of Market street, to the use of a Catholic church and a cemetery, and it was so used for more than half a century, when nearly every one who had ever seen Pierre Laclede Liguest had been buried in the cemetery.

All those patriarchal remains are now removed and buried under the Cathedral, which, with the Bishop's house, occupies a portion of the south part of the block on Walnut street; the residue is occupied by the most attractive business houses in the heart of the city.

Mr. Liguest was a merchant of no ordinary mind. Others have acquired vastly larger estates than he, but no one has excelled him in pushing forward commercial enterprises in person and planting the seed of a city in more fertile soil and cultivating it with greater success. His scrutinizing eye and sound judgment directed him to the point on the block on Main street directly in front of where the Merchants' Exchange of St. Louis now stands, as being the best place to sell goods on the west side of the Mississippi, in 1764. More than a century has since elapsed and it is the best place yet. On this celebrated block, on which Barnum's Hotel now stands, and on which other stupendous structures unite to cover the whole block, Mr. Liguest erected his dwelling house and store.

When Mr. Liguest had his plans matured to commence the erection of his house, he encountered a peaceful, but most untoward, frightful, annoying and expensive occurrence, that taxed all his patience, prudence, courage, wisdom and perseverance to overcome, but which developed his character and left it to the admiration of posterity. The acknowledged owners, among red men, of all the west bank of the Mississippi, from the Missouri to the mouth of the Ohio, were the Illinois Indians. A village of Missouri Indians, residing beyond this tract, having heard of the advent of the merchant, broke up their winter quarters and came on a begging excursion, to the