St. Louis - The Fourth City, Volume 1. Walter Barlow Stevens

the motive of M. de Neyon, did all in his power to hinder them from going down. lie did it without any interested view, but through humanity, telling them that the English government was not so terrible, that for his part he had a much more favorable opinion of it. However, if, in consequence of false prejudice, they did not wish to remain under this government, he would recommend them to go up to his new settlement. He would facilitate for them the means of getting there. As for their animals, it was very easy to conduct them by land, since the journey was only nineteen leagues by a good road. Several families accepted these offers and obtained immediately the wagons and the necessary harness to proceed to St. Louis. And there he aided them in settling and ordered me to assign them lands, according to the plan which he had made, which I did aa exactly as possible. "

      

      Those who followed de Villiers in his fleet of twenty-one boats numbered eighty. They were for the most part from the immediate vicinity of the Fort.

      In the spring of 1764 a few families moved to Laclede's settlement. After Neyon de Villiers had gone with most of the soldiers, the habitants who remained began preparations to join Laclede. Those who were farmers waited to make sure of their crops. Through the fall and early winter they were moving, family after family, to Laclede's St. Louis. The months went by and still the flag of France floated over Fort Chartres. But in the villages and hamlets of the eastern side the houses of posts, without doors or windows and in many cases without roofs, stood for the census of the families who had joined Laclede.

      Not for the want of naming did the new community thrive as "Laclede's Settlement." The founder chose the name with the same prompt decision that marked his manner in the selection of the site. Upon his visit to the scene of activity in April, Laclede coupled with the selection of location for his house and with the plan of the settlement the formal designation of it.

      "He named it St. Louis," wrote Auguste Chouteau, "in honor of Louis XV., whose subject he expected to remain a long time (he never imagined he was a subject of the king of Spain) and of the king's patron saint, Louis IX."

      Historians generally who have had occasion to speak of the naming of St. Louis have said it was in honor of the crusader, the law giver, the good Louis. They were at least half right. Auguste Chouteau was the first historian of St. Louis. Only a few pages of his Narrative are extant. The most of it went into a fire through the fault of one who should have been most careful to preserve it. Twenty years Auguste Chouteau kept a journal. He intended it to be "a full account of the leading events of our early history." In a fit of ill temper, or indifference, so the tradition goes, the greater part of this journal was destroyed by an historical writer to whom it was loaned many years ago.

      Louis XV. was the wicked Louis, the Louis who was under the influence of the noted DuBarry and Pompadour, the Louis who lived riotously, in whose reign were planted the seeds of popular hatred of royalty which fruited in the French Revolution.

      It is history that Louis XV. was king of France when Laclede founded his settlement. Because of the change of sovereignty east of the river Laclede sought his site west of the river. By the secret treaty of 1762 France had ceded the territory west of the river to Spain. This, Laclede did not know. He was drawing to him the French habitants east of the river with the inducement that here they would live under the flag of France. He chose for his settlement a name that would appeal to them. He was where he was by virtue of a privilege granted from French authority at New Orleans. Perhaps for business reasons he felt that the name should in some degree recognize the source of his privilege. He "named it St. Louis in honor of Louis XV. and of the king's patron saint. Louis IX."

      This act was not extraordinary. LaSalle, long before, had named two of his posts, St. Louis, and had recorded that he did so "in honor of Louis XIV.," then reigning. The attempt had been made to substitute for the Indian name Mississippi, the name of St. Louis to apply to the great river. Business reasons prompted Laclede's choice of name for the settlement. The founder cared little for royalty. He was no courtier. He was by instinct, if not by reasoning, a republican, as events subsequently showed.

      Perhaps the most significant thing about Auguste Chouteau's reference to Louis XV. in the naming of St. Louis is the evidence it affords that the settlement was formed and obtained its first impetus on the mistaken belief that it was on French soil. Not until the 18th of April, 1764, did d'Abbadie, the French commander at New Orleans, write in his journal, "the rumors of the cession of this colony to Spain have the appearance of truth."

       This is a song of the axmen who cleared the way for the future,

       Sung for the glory of them who live not in song or story!

       Glory of seer and of prophet, glory of dream and of vision

       Live though we know not of it, potent in lives of all men,

       Strong with the strength of the axmen who cleared the way for the future,

       Seeking not praise for their labor, forgetting the deed in the doing;

       Strong for their way's whole length, achieving and still pursuing,

       Leaving each deed for the future, leaving the meed and the guerdon;

       Dying, forgotten and fameless, rewarded with rest after labor,

       Living in work well done, immortal but evermore nameless!

      

       Stroke after stroke of the axmen, clearing the way for the future,

       Fell on the oak till it trembled and crashed to the ground by the river;

       So with a sound that echoed around the world of the future

       Fell the first oak of the vast wild that stretched to the Western ocean;

       Ho as the lot was cast from the lap of the whirling planet

       Vanished the ages past in the future's dim commotion!

       True was the stroke of the steel blade, true was the axman who held it,

       Making a way as the oak fell for the new age following after;

       Seeking for roof-tree and rafter to build for his children their cabin,

       Builder be of a city, mother of states and of cities,

       Mighty of stalwart grace of the myriad nameless builders,

       Bred to the trade of the steel blade, bred to the grace that fails not,

       Mighty where all else fails, availing where strength avails not —

       Grace of the stroke repeated with the axman's sure precision,

       Falling again on the place where the first stroke failed of its purpose;

       Falling again and again with a patience never defeated!

       — The Axmen of St. Louis, by William Vincent Byars.

      CHAPTER II. PERMANENCE 1764-1770

      Conditions in the autumn of 1764, Auguste Chouteau wrote, "commenced to give some permanence to St. Louis." Neyon de Villiers and the soldiers had gone south from Fort Chartres. The settlement was growing. Laclede had taken possession of the stone house. The fur trade promised to yield at least 200 per cent, profit. But in the years from 1764 to 1770 the resources, the tact and the courage of the founder were taxed to cany the settlement through a succession of crises.

      The