The French and the Lewis & Clark Expedition - Kansas City, Mo. - Missouri Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

This Chouteau marker is two-sided - one side in English and the other in French. The text of the marker:

The French-speaking community made a significant contribution to the ultimate success of the epochal Lewis & Clark expedition. The St. Louis Chouteau brothers, fur traders Auguste and Pierre, lodged the two captains in their substantial homes many times during the winter of 1803-04, and assisted in procuring supplies, boats, and personnel. Pierre acted as a downstream agent and post office for the expedition.

French voyaguers had ventured up the Missouri for over a century before 1804. French explorers, the Verendryes, reached an area two-thirds of the way along Lewis & Clark’s route in 1742 in present Montana, near the Rockies and the headwaters of the Missouri. Le Page du Pratz’s 1758 “Histoire de la Louisiane” (with map) was a useful resource. The Indians had told the French of the Rockies and the West, including the Great Salt lake, and of mountains and a river system leading west (part of which eventually became known as the Bitterroots, the Snake, and the Columbia) and the Chouteaus had access to French maps and memoires alluding to these features. President Jefferson even obtained a French passport for Lewis since the Louisiana Territory had been French until less than a year before.

Patron (captain) Baptiste Deschamps and his Gaulle engages took supplies and personnel in the large “red pirogue” as far as the Mandan-Hidatsa villages in present North Dakota. A French-Shawnee interpreter, George Drouillard, also acted as chief hunter, arbiter of disputes, and enforcer of the two captains’ orders, and Lewis praised him highly in his reports. Toussaint Charbonneau, another French-Indian interpreter, was occasionally a problem. But his young Indian wife, Sacagawea, procured from her brother, a Shoshoni chief, the indispensable horses to ride over the snow covered mountains. Her little French-Shoshoni papoose, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was with her on the entire voyage and later lived at kawsmouth as a youth. A probable expedition veteran, Frenchman Pierre La Liberte, deeded the land for the first Catholic church (now Cathedral) in Kansas City in 1834.

En route up the Missouri, the French boatmen recited the names given long before by their countrymen to features along the river. Near present Kansas City (French “Chez les Canses” or home of the Kansa) were: Pierre a Fleche, L’Eau d’Azur River, Charretin Creek, La Benite Creek, Petite Riviere Platte, Remore Creek, and Isles des Parques. Above present Leavenworth they pointed out the remains of French Fort de Cavagnial (1744-64) and Isle au Vache (Cow Island), where the French had kept their livestock.

Web link: [Web Link] History of Mark: The above link is to the Chouteau Society which placed the markers. A further sublink shows each individual marker within the tour. Additional point: Not Listed

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