Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier [Hardcover]

Shirley Christian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 2004

Shortly after Meriweather Lewis reached St. Louis in 1803 to plan for his voyage to the Pacific with William Clark, he prepared his first packet of flora and fauna from west of the Mississippi and dispatched it to President Jefferson. The cuttings, which were later planted in Philadelphia and Virginia, were supplied by Lewis's new French friend, Pierre Chouteau, who took them from a tree growing in the garden of his mansion.

One of the best-known families in French America, the Chouteaus had guarded the gates to the West for generations and had built fortunes from fur trading, land speculation, finance, and railroads, and by supplying anything needed to survive in the region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Patrician in their origins, they nevertheless won the respect and allegiance of dozens of Indian tribes. From their St. Louis base, the Chouteaus conquered the more-than-two-thousand-mile length of the Missouri River, put down the first European roots at the future site of Kansas City and in present-day Oklahoma, and left their names and imprints on lands stretching to the Canadian border.

Before Lewis and Clark: The French Dynasty that Ruled America's Frontier is the extraordinary story of a wealthy, powerful, charming, and manipulative family, who dominated business and politics in the Louisiana Purchase territory before the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, and for decades afterward.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before the United States' westward expansion, French settlers dominated a wide swath of territory west of the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis and beyond. Pulitzer-winning journalist Christian (Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family) chronicles several generations of one of the major French families occupying this frontier territory in her fast-paced historical portrait. Born into a wealthy family, young Auguste and Pierre Chouteau moved to the town that soon became St. Louis in 1763. Their father, Pierre, one of the town's founders, came to the region from New Orleans as an explorer, but soon prospered as a fur trader. He established a very good relationship with the Osages and other Indian tribes, and he taught his sons to respect them. Auguste and the younger Pierre moved easily among the tribes to trade and sell, feeling as much at home in Indian huts as in their mansions on the Mississippi. They hosted parties for visiting American dignitaries, including Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whose journeys reaped enormous benefits from their association with the Chouteaus. As Christian points out, the Chouteaus were instrumental in paving a smooth path in the relations between Indians and American settlers. But, as Christian observes, the settlers paid little attention to the cultivation of relationships with the Native Americans and thus encountered more resistance than the Chouteaus ever did. Christian's lively portrait of the Chouteaus opens a window on a little-known portion of early American history. Map.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

If not for evocative histories such as Christian's, America's French heritage might molder only in vestigial place-names and ruins. St. Louis and its environs have their share, and Christian brings alive the fur trade that created them. French-Indian trade, she emphasizes, predated the founding of the city in 1764 by Pierre Laclede, but his conduct of the business generated records that, in Christian's hands, palpably project a feeling for the perils and potential riches of frontier life. This quality, in addition to the emphasis on Laclede and his Chouteau sons and grandsons' vast trading network, endows her history with more than local attraction, for it captures the uniquely amicable relationships between whites and Indians. Without idealizing the Chouteaus' affairs on their journeys into the lands of the Osage, Kansa, and other tribes, Christian underscores their peacefulness. Some arriving Americans, including Lewis and Clark, took advantage of the Chouteaus' diplomatic value, which threads through Christian's narrative to her conclusion with fur trapping's decline. A fascinating history bound to enrapture Old West readers. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (April 21, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374110050
• ISBN-13: 978-0374110055
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,258,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well researched and interesting, though of limited scope, July 18, 2004

By 

D. Brooks (Gainesville, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier (Hardcover)

OK-I'm going on the wild assumption that you're checking out this book because of your interest in Lewis and Clark. Be warned, the subject matter in Christian's book is somewhat tangentially related, although you will be given little entertaining factoids such as that one of the scientific specimens sent back to Jefferson from St Louis at the start of the Expedition was a large hairball from the stomach of a buffalo.

I live in St Louis, so I found the story of its founding (by the Chouteaus and their father/husband Laclede) interesting. Christian lives up to the subtitle by giving you a detailed picture of the life of this dynasty as it affected this area, which means you get a good idea of what it was like to be a trader on the Missouri (and some of the neighboring rivers), including interesting insights into relations with American Indians. Indeed, it was quite eye-opening to see how welcoming the Indians initially were of the French settlers/traders in and around St Louis. It was also informative to read of how the French and Indians interbred and lived quite comfortably with one another, although on unequal terms. The Chouteau dynasty began in the 1760's and continued for roughly another 80 years or so, so they had to accommodate and adapt to the change in governance that occurred with the Louisiana Purchase by the US (which although purchased from France, consisted of a territory immediately previously administered-with a very long rein-by Spain).

If you're looking more for some background into what was known about the area encompassed by the Louisiana Purchase at the time L + C started off on their expediation (and quite a bit was known; and in fact North America had already been traversed in Canada, so L + C weren't quite the 'firsts' they're made out to be), check out The Course of Empire by DeVoto.

To learn about the journey itself which, not withstanding the caveats above, is truly fascinating story, do yourself a favor and try to find something other than the popular Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. The account provided by Ambrose is in my opinion is seriously flawed, fundamentally lacking in basic historical background necessary to appreciate the Expedition, e.g., any indication of who'd previously explored the regions into which they were heading and lacking a summary map illustrating the geographic (mis)information L + C used to plan their journey. Undaunted Courage also falls down whenever Ambrose attempts the most rudimentary analysis. To top it off, his writing style often made me cringe.

To provide socioeconomic and political background to the Purchase and the settlement that was to follow it, I recommend Mr Jefferson's Loast Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase by Roger Kennedy.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Useful, But not Good, December 17, 2005

By 

Michael E. Fitzgerald (Kingwood, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier (Hardcover)

This is the story of the Chouteaus, the primary founders of St. Louis and, to a very large degree, the people who laid the foundation which led to the State of Missouri. If you are interested in factual history you will find portions of this book illuminating. The author does a very credible job in certain sections of this work.

If you are interested in the social interactions of the Chouteau clan, again, this is a good book for you. But if you are interested only in the impact of the Chouteau clan on the historic development of St. Louis and the future State of Missouri then, while portions of this book will be useful to you, major portions of this work you will simply want to skim.

The author spends quite a bit of time delineating who married who, who begat whom, who married in, what properties they owned, what slaves were owned, freed and which were troublesome, how much they paid for each, who contested the sales...you get the idea. The author provides excruciatingly detailed accounts of bills of lading, packing slips, property details in wills and court settlements right down to who was to get what. Is this history? Sure it is, this really happened. She draws directly from the original documents. But more importantly, is it relevant...not really. The author spends all too much time communicating extraneous, unnecessary information which detracts from her primary thesis: Who were the Chouteaus and what was their amazing impact on the development of the Missouri frontier? As a result, the fascinating Chouteau story tends to get watered down in irrelevant minutia. The Chouteau story gets lost in page after page of useless information.

However, as stated above, there are portions of this book that contribute considerable scholarship to the emerging St. Louis / Missouri frontier as it developed from roughly 1760 through 1830. Those nuggets are quite good, very illuminating and make this book worth spending time with. Just be forewarned that this book reads like an unfinished work still seeking clarity.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fur Trade Family Connections Classic, October 14, 2005

By 

Kira Gale (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier (Hardcover)

For anyone interested in the early history of the American West this book is an invaluable resource. The Chouteaus and other families in St Louis continuously intermarried and did business with each other. This book supplies what has been lacking in the literature of the fur trade, a solid and careful recounting of the story of their lives and business dealings, backed up with page by page notes, citing sources completely.
The title of the book is misleading, as it covers much more. The story of the fur trade is quite complicated and has long needed a comprehensive analysis of the families involved. Anyone who has read fur trade history and been baffled by all the people and their business and personal relationships will turn to it as a definitive resource.It is clearly written. It is not a "page turner," though the stuff of it has the been the source of many a good book.