One of these new settlements was Ste. Genevieve,
strategically located near the lead mines from which the entire
region had long drawn its supplies of shot. Another, which was
destined to greater importance, was St. Louis, established as a
trading post on the richly wooded bluffs opposite Cahokia by
Pierre Laclede in 1764.
Associated with Laclede in his fur-trading operations at the new
post was a lithe young man named Pierre Chouteau. In 1846--
eighty-two years afterwards--Francis Parkman sat on the spacious
veranda of Pierre Chouteau's country house near the city of St.
Louis and heard from the lips of the venerable merchant stories
of Pontiac, Saint-Ange, Croghan, and all the western worthies,
red and white, of two full generations. "Not all the magic of a
dream," the historian remarks, "nor the enchantments of an
Arabian tale, could outmatch the waking realities which were to
rise upon the vision of Pierre Chouteau. Where, in his youth, he
had climbed the woody bluff, and looked abroad on prairies dotted
with bison, he saw, with the dim eye of his old age, the land
darkened for many a furlong with the clustered roofs of the
western metropolis.
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