Colonial St. Louis Economy and The Compagnie de Commerce pour la Découverte des Nations du haut du Missouri (Commercial Company for the Discovery of the Nations of the Upper Missouri), more commonly referred to as The Missouri Company

For those of you who don't realize this, St. Louis was founded by French settlers but was under Spanish rule for most of its early history. I don't mean to insult anyone by implying that you don't already know this, but I think it's a part of our history that gets neglected. There is so much focus on the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, and the arrival of the Americans that our early history has been swept aside. That's a shame, because it sure was interesting!

In 1780, 15 years after the founding of St. Louis, August Chouteau drew this map of the little village (https://shsmo.org). That same year, Spanish St. Louis was attacked by a British-led force of mostly Indians. Spain actually played a pretty big role in the American Revolution - another fact that has been left out of our history books. 

So let's shatter another historical myth. Lewis and Clark had a lot of help.  A lot. The Spanish (Spanish government but primarily French men) had been out on the Missouri River exploring and trading decades before that epic journey to the Pacific. If not for the contact made by these earlier explorers, Lewis and Clark would have had a more difficult time forging past the previous limits. 

I would like to refer you to this old book. There is another book of the same title that talks about the Chouteau family, but this is the one you want. It's in a lot of libraries.

The "Missouri Company" was founded by ten St. Louis merchants in 1794 and was granted exclusive trade rights for ten years with the Native American tribes along the Missouri above the Ponca lands (South Dakota). They were also charged with securing the Upper Missouri for Spanish trade by developing relationships with the tribes and, hopefully, discovering a route to the Pacific. They would be paid 3000 pesos by the King of Spain if they made it to the Pacific in addition to whatever profits they would make through trade. My 4th great grandfather was one of the 10 investors.

I recently wrote a paper about this 4th great grandfather, Hyacinthe-Amable Rouillard dit St. Cyr. He was born in Batiscan, Quebec, in 1751 and, like many French Canadians, found his way to St. Louis. Always referred to as Hyacinthe (or Jacinto) St. Cyr here, he is consistently mentioned as a prominent citizen and listed among the most influential St. Louisans. Unfortunately, he ended up losing almost everything before he died in Florissant. I wanted to know what led to his economic ruin. How did he go from prominent merchant to insolvent debtor?

I'm going to sum up my research in just a few sentences. There was no money in St. Louis. Everyone bought everything on credit, and many people could not pay the debts they owed. People even traded I.O.U.s, basically buying things they needed with the debts owed to them by other people. Needless to say, this was a big problem and even wealthy merchants were often not paid back. Another problem was with the nature of  St. Louis itself. It was founded as a fur-trading town, a center of commerce, and everyone wanted to get rich. I think the fur trade was sort of like the Gold Rush. People took big risks hoping to gain wealth when they were allowed. The ability to trade was limited by the government and was very political. Usually Chouteau and his allies got the best trade licenses.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, The Missouri Company lost money. They lost a lot of money. As a result, the investors lost a lot of money (They had all signed for each other so there was no real back-up in case of failure). Hyacinthe St. Cyr was forced to sell everything he owned. His best pieces of land in St. Louis were bought by the Chouteaus. Once everything had been sold, he could only pay 10% of what he owed. Out of kindness to his family, they allowed him to keep some property in Florissant and everything he would need to farm that land with the stipulation that this was for his wife and children (they had 15) and could not be taken by any of his creditors.

There are still so many things I want to learn about this man. Even after all of this, he was able to provide a good education for his children, even the girls. They married well, and St. Cyr remained a respected member of society. He was resilient.

Hyacinthe St. Cyr and his wife Hélène Hébert had fifteen children. There must be hundreds of descendants like me out there somewhere. I like to think we're risk-takers like St. Cyr, but I hope we're all resilient too, just in case things don't go as planned.