The Cession of Louisiana To Spain
In America, the war
between Great Britain and France was known as the "French and Indian War."
It was decided by the victory of Wolf on the plains of Abraham in 1759.
Montreal fell, in 1760, and the campaign that year convinced France that
she was defeated in America. On the 15th of July, 1761, she proposed terms
of peace by which Canada and that part of Louisiana east of the
Mississippi should be ceded to England. Negotistions proceeded for nearly
two years. A treaty had been virtually concluded between Great Britain,
France, Spain and Portugal in 1762. It was made definitive, as affecting
these powers, at Paris, on February 10th, 1763. By its terms New France
disappeared. The British bounds were extended to the Mississippi.
The calamity of France was far greater than was made known at the
conclusion of the treaty. For at Fontainbleau, on the 3d of November,
1762, the island and City of New Orleans and all of Louisiana west of the
Mississippi were ceded by France to Spain. This was a secret cession, and
knowledge of it was not made public for more than a year. This treaty
changed the sovereignty of the country now embraced in Kansas. And Spain
secured by treaty through the stress of France what she might have had
more than two centuries before for the mere taking, but which she lost
then through indolence and indifference.
Upper Louisiana had grown in commercial importance under the rule of
France. Its trade began to attract the attention of those engaged in large
enterprises. In 1762 Maxent, Laclede & Co. secured from the
Governor-General the grant of a monopoly of the fur trade with the
Missouri Indians and tribes to the north of them. The junior member of the
company was sent up the Mississippi with boats laden with goods suitable
for the trade of their venture in Upper Louisiana. His name was Pierre
Laclede Liguest, but after the manner of the French, he chose to be
popularly known by the name of Laclede. Failing to find storage for his
goods at St. Genevieve, he went on to Fort Chartres. From this point he
examined the east bank of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Missouri for
a suitable site for a trading-post. As he returned he gave his attention
to the west bank, when the choice for the location of his post fell upon
the site now occupied by the City of St. Louis. In February Auguste
Chouteau, then but thirteen, was sent in charge of a party to begin the
erection of buildings on the spot marked by Liguest. He arrived on the
14th of February, 1764, and on the 15th he began to clear away the forest
and put up some temporary shelter for his men.
The selection of the site for the trading-station was most fortunate. When
the French inhabitants of the Illinois country learned that they had been
made British subjects by the fortunes of war, they moved in large numbers
to the west of the Mississippi. St Louis soon became a post of importance.
It became the point of supply for all the country drained by the Missouri.
The pressure of white population upon the Indian lands on the western
waters threw many tribes beyond the Mississippi. The Delawares, Shawnces,
Mohegans, Iroquois and other Eastern Indians were forced across the
Alleghenies, pushing the Illinois, Kaskaskias, Miamis and other Western
aborigines into the Spanish possessions. This movement was not of sudden
origin for it began in fact with the founding of the English colonies
along the Atlantic seaboard. It continued until the aboriginal population
had been pushed out of all the country east of the Mississippi. This
migration was the more marked after the British had taken possession of
Eastern Louisiana. For the English occupation of the country required an
absolute title to the soil, with no troublesome Indian neighbors. The
Indians had to move off or be exterminated. It became the policy of the
Americans after the Revolution to require cessions from the tribes in
return for "reservations" to the westward. But prior to the adoption of
this course the Indians were forced to migrate into countries already
occupied by aboriginal people, twenty-one tribes having crossed the
Mississippi in the time from 1804 to 1825. Many tribes had crossed over in
whole or in part before. Most of these crossed into Louisiana near St.
Louis, adding more than thirty thousand to the Indian population of what
is now Missouri. In 1820 there were eighteen hundred Shawnees in the
vicinity of St. Louis.
The presence of this additional Indian population on the west side of the
Mississippi brought trouble to the town of St. Louis, but it also tended
to increase the trade of that town in such commodities as the Indian life
produced and required. While the Spaniards could never develop trade with
the Indians as could the French, it must be remembered that there remained
in Louisiana the French inhabitants found on the soil at the time of the
cession. French Canadians continued to come in ever increasing numbers,
for the Spanish power was never exacting on the prairies, and along the
streams, and over the Great Plains. St. Louis became the trading-point for
Upper Louisiana and grew in wealth and importance during the Spanish
regime.
It was during the Spanish rule of Louisiana that those conditions arose
which made it possible—necessary—that the United States should acquire all
of Louisiana.
