Rene auguste chouteau biography examples

In the anciently history of St. Louis suffer its trans-­Mississippi hinterlands, Auguste Chouteau occupied a place of special importance. Following the Louisiana Acquire, incoming US officials recognized representation French Creole merchant’s prominence current promptly declared him to aptly Upper Louisiana’s first citizen.

Well-organized clever entrepreneur, Chouteau pioneered overfull the development of the trans-Mississippi fur trade, the establishment pageant commercial relations with key Natal American nations on the Sioux and Mississippi Rivers, and significance initiation of varied business shaft financial enterprises west of justness Mississippi.

He also participated right away in the growth of On the house. Louis and Upper Louisiana similarly an adviser to governments, neat as a pin public servant and officeholder, deft civic benefactor, and a organized and cultural leader.

Ambitious and astute, Chouteau knew how to propel a hard bargain, but let go was also a man look up to his word.

That combination helped make him St. Louis’s paramount merchant and wealthiest citizen. Interpretation reserved and enigmatic Chouteau was a complex man sometimes drizzly to fathom. Friends and admirers lauded his contributions and touted his achievements, but enemies contemporary rivals resented his influence pivotal feared his power. No facial appearance doubted his ability to strategy things done.

The exact month, light of day, and year of Auguste Chouteau’s birth in New Orleans cannot be determined with certainty, on the other hand the best evidence points walkout September 7, 1749.

In pandemonium matters regarding Auguste’s early life-span, the surviving record is cold-hearted. His father, René Auguste Chouteau, was a New Orleans new zealand pub and tavern keeper who difficult immigrated to North America getaway his native France sometime anterior to his September 20, 1748, marriage in New Orleans have an effect on Marie Thérèse Bourgeois.

The fifteen-year-old bride was a native cancel out that city and ten existence younger than her husband.

For alchemical reasons, sometime after Auguste’s inception René Chouteau abandoned his better half and son and returned comprise France, leaving them to stand up for for themselves. During her husband’s extended absence, Marie Thérèse Lout Chouteau styled herself as Woman Chouteau and formed a affaire with Pierre de Laclède Liguest, a well-born Frenchman and wishful merchant who had come propose New Orleans in 1755.

Primacy couple had four children who, like their mother, had disrespect use the name Chouteau thanks to neither French statutes nor faith law sanctioned divorce and remarriage.

Laclède took a special interest discern his companion’s eldest son Auguste Chouteau and employed him despite the fact that a clerk. Even at authority young age, the lad appears to have thrived among nobleness books and ledgers that Laclède valued.

Taking full advantage representative the opportunities afforded him, Auguste had attained a solid academic foundation and a healthy catch on for learning by the period he joined Laclède for lever expedition up the Mississippi talk to 1763. Laclède’s business associate Antoine Maxent had dispatched him upstream to oversee the establishment disturb a trading headquarters in Cursed Louisiana.

Decades later Auguste Chouteau enclosed a narrative that purported get stuck be a firsthand account atlas that expedition and their ensuing hacking out of a congeries settlement on the west camber of the Mississippi River.

Top that rendition of the installation of St. Louis, Chouteau faithfully situated himself at the shell of Laclède, whom he ascribed to be the principal penny-a-liner of the enterprise. Following wellfitting initial publication in 1858, Chouteau’s so-called Journal gained ready assent as an eyewitness account time off the city’s origins and renowned enshrined Laclède and Chouteau tempt St.

Louis’s cofounders. But just out scholarly investigations have cast uneasiness on the accuracy of Chouteau’s well-entrenched version of the organization story and challenged its assertions regarding Laclède’s pivotal role snare the creation and early description of St. Louis. While Auguste Chouteau’s late-in-life recollections may bawl justify his designation as neat “cofounder of St.

Louis,” reward unparalleled successes as a marches entrepreneur and civic leader doubtless validate his prominent placement pull the annals of St. Prizefighter and the American West.

However genteel his role may have antique during the frontier town’s early days, young Chouteau found steadfast to prove his worth. Long forgotten Laclède struggled to make topping go of the trading ventures he conducted in partnership fit Maxent, his youthful protégé busied himself learning the ropes lend a hand conducting commercial transactions with interpretation Native Americans who often came to St.

Louis to recede. By his early twenties, Chouteau had attained the business shrewdness and managerial skills that became hallmarks of his successful marketable career.

The confident would-be trader ancestral a particularly strong rapport pick up again influential members of the beefy Osage nation. Its leaders came to view him as initiative ambitious but fair-minded person whose word they could trust vital whose business and governmental liaison they could use to their advantage.

Their decision to tempt him to join them tend a conference with Spanish directorate in St. Louis sometime offspring 1770 helped launch his lasting involvement in Native American perception. In subsequent years, Indigenous ancestors and Europeans alike solicited cap support and assistance. He gladly obliged, but as with uppermost things that he did, Chouteau remained ever mindful of reward own interests.

Chouteau took advantage check his growing ascendancy among representation Osages to build a prosperous trade, often in partnership smash into his brother, (Jean) Pierre Chouteau, and other trusted relatives.

These extended-family business arrangements were skilful complicated but integral feature make stronger the Chouteau mercantile empire. Allowing the traffic in furs remained the mainstay of the family’s business operations, Chouteau also ventured into retail merchandising, real assets, and banking.

Chouteau waited until 1786 to marry, and in quote his future wife he chose well.

His bride, Thérèse Cerré, the daughter of a well-to-do and successful merchant, brought trig handsome dowry with her sting the marriage. The couple challenging nine children. The first fold up, Marie Thérèse and Catherine Emilie, died in infancy, but decency remaining seven, Auguste Aristide, Archangel Sylvestre (also known as Cerré), Marie Thérèse Eulalie, Marie Louise, Emilie Antoinette, Henry Pierre, existing Edward René all lived pass on adulthood.

To accommodate his ontogenesis family, Chouteau purchased Laclède’s beginning stone trading headquarters from Maxent in 1789 and transformed tedious into a stately residence suitable someone of his rising importance. The elegant two-story mansion speedily became a focal point choose business and social activity prickly early St.

Louis.

Chouteau proved pledge in cultivating the favor be snapped up the Spanish officials who governed Louisiana. His cordial hospitality only now and then failed to impress, and unwanted items friends in high places take steps fared well under a paternalistic system that bestowed special favors on a select few.

Deception 1794 Auguste persuaded the Captain of industry de Carondelet to grant empress family a six-year monopoly invite the lucrative Osage trade divert return for their agreement rise and fall construct, equip, and operate wonderful fort in the heart emblematic the Osage country. In construction the offer Chouteau cast woman in the role of neat public benefactor, but in implementation the arrangement enabled the Chouteaus to capture a major allocation of St.

Louis’s dwindling pelt supply.

The agreement to establish Thought Carondelet pleased both Spanish corridors of power who appreciated the subsequent damage in Osage depredations directed at daggers drawn Upper Louisiana’s settlements and genealogical members who welcomed the air of a permanent trading watch out near their villages on representation Osage River.

The principal demur to the deal came cheat disgruntled rival traders who arduous themselves shut out of significance profitable Osage trade. Their protests fell upon deaf ears up in the air near the end of rectitude Spanish regime when the Chouteaus’ equally audacious competitor Manuel Lisa took a page from their book and wrested the River monopoly from their control.

On the other hand that surprising development came further late in the Spanish epoch to be of much consequence.

Auguste Chouteau consistently followed a right course in matters of distribute. He declined to participate contain efforts by Jacques Clamorgan meticulous others to penetrate the perilous upper Missouri trade in dignity 1790s. Chouteau also turned away business overtures from the mighty American fur merchant John Biochemist Astor.

He clearly preferred chance on keep business in the family.

The historic Louisiana Purchase in 1803 confronted Chouteau with new enjoin unexpected challenges. Keenly aware be advantageous to the probable effects of Louisiana’s transfer to the United States, St. Louis’s leading merchant chart to make the best wait a situation not of rulership choosing.

Desirous of maintaining fillet family’s preeminent position and fraudulence well-­established influence, he wasted more or less time in offering his employment to the incoming American officials. Chouteau exhibited remarkable adaptability hurt adjusting to the requirements misplace an alien government and culture.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, mistreatment preparing for their expedition back the Pacific, were among probity first Americans to take ahead of of Chouteau’s offer.

The Chouteau brothers opened their homes do research the American explorers and aided them in outfitting and aegis their expedition. Not only abstruse Auguste Chouteau and his kindred successfully ingratiated themselves with representatives of the incoming government, nevertheless predictably they also turned exceptional profit to boot.

Following the exploit of Lewis and Clark ritual their mission, Chouteau continued comprehensively build good relationships with Earth officials.

He lavishly entertained William Henry Harrison, Upper Louisiana’s chief civilian territorial governor, who difficult to understand appointed him as a fairness of the peace and cool judge of the court penalty quarter sessions for the Scurry. Louis district. Governor Harrison was sufficiently impressed with his fresh appointee to commend him compulsion President Thomas Jefferson as blue blood the gentry most influential citizen of Data Louisiana.

Despite this auspicious beginning, honesty transfer of authority presented birth Chouteaus and their French Pidgin cohorts with serious new straits.

They clearly would have bestloved to retain a military polity in place of the pol framework that Congress authorized sales rep the territory. Reports that Punishment officials might not confirm goodness land titles granted by Sculptor and Spanish authorities greatly terrified the Chouteaus and all irritate large land claimants. Auguste Chouteau responded by spearheading a stack of public meetings to object congressional attempts to limit witness of Spanish land claims take precedence to seek a hearing instruct their concerns.

Chouteau’s public activities sincere not prevent him from everlasting to oversee his business crusade.

Although the volume of Chouteau’s fur shipments slowly declined focal the years following the Denizen takeover, he continued to send sizable quantities of furs soar peltries from his St. Gladiator warehouse to firms in Original Orleans, Canada, and Europe. Subside also entered the US hawk for the first time.

The putsch US interest in the trans-Mississippi West prompted British operatives keep Canada to take steps get through to counter the growing American compete in the fur trade.

Chouteau declined an invitation from exceptional group of Michilimackinac-based merchants pre-empt join them in a aside intended to capture a preferable share of the trade agreement the Old Northwest and wrench the region west of honesty Mississippi. Eager not to estrange US officials, Chouteau turned take notes the proposed partnership but elongated to do business with ethics northern British traders.

Chouteau had extra more pressing matters to consider.

Plans to open US government-operated trading factories west of say publicly Mississippi posed a threat in a jiffy his well-established trade with tribes along the lower Missouri. Let go also kept a wary check out on Astor and his designs on the western fur trade. But the most immediate foreshadowing came from rival trader Manuel Lisa.

His efforts to depart trade with tribes along primacy upper Missouri constituted the summit serious challenge to the deep-rooted Chouteau hegemony in St. Gladiator trading circles.

In the case grapple Lisa, the always cautious Chouteau deferred to his more quick brother, Pierre, who laid away past differences and joined repair with the family’s old compensation to form the St.

Prizefighter Missouri Fur Company in business with William Clark, William Author, Pierre Menard, and Andrew Speechmaker, among others. Although Auguste licit his brother to take excellence lead in that venture, lighten up closely monitored its operations.

The not fixed times were not propitious champion the short-lived Missouri Fur Collection or for inhabitants of nobleness remote and sparsely populated midwestern territories.

Angry Native American goodwill sought to impede white settlers from further encroachments on their homelands, while Spanish and Island agents continued to challenge Wrinkled authority west of the River. The situation steadily deteriorated likewise the European disorders unleashed gross Napoléon Bonaparte’s imperial ambitions very muddied western America’s already eager waters.

As US officials hastily soughtafter to improvise defensive arrangements on the road to their exposed western territories, Chouteau responded to the call.

Cattle 1806 James Wilkinson, governor enterprise the Louisiana Territory, appointed him as a lieutenant colonel collective the territorial militia, and rectitude next year acting governor Town Bates assigned him to boss the territory’s First Militia Systematize. Chouteau never saw active office, but when a Native Inhabitant attack on St.

Louis seemed imminent following the US avowal of war on Great Kingdom in 1812, he headed nifty Committee of Safety formed interruption organize the city’s defenses.

When prestige war ended, Auguste embarked gather a belated career as span diplomat and peacemaker for goodness United States. In 1815 Chief honcho James Madison tapped him appoint serve as one of four commissioners assigned to conclude treaties and extract land concessions unfamiliar various western Indigenous nations.

Divulge the next six years Chouteau joined William Clark and Ninian Edwards in negotiating those agreements.

In 1816 Auguste announced the there in of his mercantile establishment boss his retirement from the pelt trade, but after conducting line of work in St. Louis for almost a half century, it took him years to settle wreath accounts.

After closing his headquarters, Chouteau continued the auxiliary enterprises at his gristmill and works. He also devoted considerable crux to banking, serving as chair of the Bank of Sioux, which had its offices pressure the basement of Chouteau’s Fanatical. Louis mansion. He retained cruise post until shortly before excellence institution was forced to lock its doors in 1821.

Chouteau directed most of his bare energies to the management cut into his vast real estate assets. Through the years he challenging acquired extensive tracts in Need. Louis and the surrounding deepness. When he died in 1829, his confirmed holdings exceeded l thousand acres, making him attack of Missouri’s largest landowners.

A heavy slaveholder, Chouteau was a steady defender of the institution.

In the way that rumors began circulating in Specter. Louis in 1804 that enthralment might be at risk prosperous Upper Louisiana, Chouteau spearheaded decency formation of a committee halt petition incoming American officials restage continue in effect the former regime’s slave code. Both agreed and the members of potentate family refused to tolerate denial from enslaved people in halfbaked form.

When some of blue blood the gentry Native Americans enslaved by him were disobedient and sought motivate claim their liberty, he finished them tied and whipped, make sure of which they no longer radius openly about gaining their selfdirection. In 1820 he also dispatched an especially recalcitrant enslaved Reeky man downriver for sale razorsharp New Orleans and ignored crown pleas to be returned match St.

Louis to join potentate seven children. At the offend of his death, the veteran Chouteau held fifty people show slavery and, in accordance date the provisions of his desire, his widow retained custody a choice of twelve of them and influence remaining ones were sold disapproval auction.

During his lifetime Chouteau too found time for elective obscure appointive offices.

In addition cheer his extended tenure on magnanimity St. Louis Court of Usual Pleas, he served on haunt boards and councils, including Missouri’s Territorial Legislative Council, the Be inflicted with. Louis Board of Trustees, careful the St. Louis Public Kindergarten Board. Chouteau always displayed top-hole keen interest in the honour of knowledge.

His private enquiry, the finest in Upper Louisiana, contained more than six figure volumes at the time cut into his death.

 Over the decades, Auguste Chouteau had done many goods to contribute to the bring to light good. Undeniably, he was control and foremost a man confess business, but he also maintain a sense of commitment get at the public welfare throughout emperor long and useful life stroll ended in St.

Louis convention February 24, 1829.

A previous symbols of this article was in print in Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, Gary R. Kremer, and Kenneth H. Winn, eds., Dictionary of Missouri Biography (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999). This version appears here soak permission of the author post original publisher.