Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/669

 of the place, nine in ten of whom were Secessionists. Reason: It was the loyal and democratic Germans who, in 1861, saved the city from falling into the hands of the Rebels, and it is the Germans who, to-day, constitute the strength of the United States in the State of Missouri. Let us drink, at all future Union banquets, in foaming lager, to the "Damned Dutch of St. Louis," for truly we owe them honor and gratitude.

The many evidences which meet the eye, in this city, of solid and ancient wealth, are a constant marvel to visitors accustomed to the recentness of other Western cities. How was the money gained which built those hundred-thousand-dollar residences, these numerous and spacious churches, colleges, convents, hospitals, and filled them with pictures, books, and apparatus? The capital which has created, renewed, and adorned this city was gained here, upon the spot, by her own people; not borrowed from abroad.

St. Louis is just one hundred and four years old. In the summer of 1763, Pierre Laclede Liguest, a vigorous and enterprising Frenchman, led from New Orleans a large party of French trappers and traders, for the purpose of founding at the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri a depot for the furs of the vast region watered by those rivers. In December, after five months of toil, he saw the mouth of the muddy Missouri, but preferred for the site of his settlement the fine bend of the Mississippi, twenty miles below, which he had observed on his way up. Landing there, he marked the spot by "blazing" some of the trees, and, in the following February, sent, from his winter quarters below, a party of thirty young fellows to build sheds and cabins for the settlement. The 15th of February, 1764, the day on which this little band landed, was the birthday of St. Louis. In the course of the year, the main body of adventurers arrived, the Indians were conciliated, cabins of upright poles were built, a little corn was planted, trade was begun, and the settlement fully established.

A Frenchman was a popular personage with the Indians in those days. He had no conscientious scruples against taking a squaw; and his religion had much in it that was imposing to the savage mind. There was usually a fiddle in French settlements, and it was not idle on festive days. The Frenchman of that day had not familiarized his mind with the history of Joshua, and it did not give him much concern to know that the Indians were heathen. He took the business of settling the new country lightly, and accommodated himself in the wild life of the prairie and the river, instead of attempting to subdue them, and found upon them a Christian state, "to the glory of God." He did not even take the trouble to build a good solid loghouse, such as the men of our race built, but was content to stick poles in the ground, and cover the roof with bark. and skins,—a slight improvement upon the wigwam. Never, never would those gay and pleasant Frenchmen have conquered the continent from savage man and savage nature; but they got along very peaceably with the Indians, had a dance on Sunday afternoons, and made the best of their lot. It is quite true, as the good people of St. Louis often say, that, if the English had settled St. Louis, there would have been massacres and wars without end. Yes; the white men who do not hate and exterminate Indians, the white men who can find solace in the arms of squaws, and build wigwams instead of houses, may possess delightful qualities of head and heart, but they are not the men who found empires.

European politics, strange to say, had a powerful influence upon this little settlement of fur-traders. The peace of 1763 gave all the country east of the Mississippi to the English. As soon as tidings of this dreadful event reached the Frenchmen who had settled upon the Illinois, they made haste to remove to St. Louis, so as to avoid the infamy of living under the rule of their