Shirley Christian

Before Lewis and Clark (eBook, ePUB)

The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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.

"A fine history of a French family that enjoyed great influence-and deservedly so-in the early trans-Mississippian West." - Kirkus Reviews

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in D ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Seitenzahl: 528
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. April 2005
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781466813038
• Artikelnr.: 39912825

Autorenporträt

Shirley Christian has been a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the Associated Press and is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family.

Inhaltsangabe

Map: Chouteau Country
Laclède-Chouteau Family Tree
1. Among a People of Strange Speech
2. The First Generation: Pierre Laclède Liguest
3. Haughty Children of the Middle Waters
4. The Business of St. Louis
5. Auguste and Pierre, Greatly Loved and Greatly Feared
6. New Rulers, New Ways
7. Intrigues and Possibilities
8. Enveloped in a Cloud of Miseries
9. Dreaming Big--and Stumbling
10. The Third Generation
11. Auguste and Pierre: Men of Property
12. Pierre Jr.: Gentle Creole, Driven Tycoon
13. A. P. Chouteau: Star-Crossed Hero
14. François and Bérénice: Together to a New Place
15. Pierre Jr.: Position, Advantage, and Perhaps Vanity
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index