A Little Girl in Old St. Louis

by Amanda M. Douglas

Once again the French flag waved over St. Louis and hearts beat high with joy. Not that they had been unhappy or discontented under the Spanish régime, though the place had remained stationery. Except for the fur trade and the energies of the house of Maxent Laclede & Co. with their entrepot, it would still have been a little French hamlet. Even now it had scarcely two hundred buildings and less than a thousand inhabitants. Yet perhaps few places could boast of forty years of content and happiness and such peaceful living.

So down came the Spanish flag and up went the lilies of France. There was a night of rejoicing. People scarcely went to bed. Fiddles and flutes played old French airs, and songs were sung; but, after all, the people were decorous and there was no orgie. Most of these men had never known Parisian enthusiasm. Robert de Longueville marvelled at it and the simplicity.

It was well, perhaps, to have had those few hours of jubilation for men to talk about in their old age. For the next day a company came over from the fort and held a consultation with Lieutenant-Governor Dellassus. And then the royal lilies came down slowly, sadly, it seemed, and men’s hearts beat with sudden apprehension. What did it mean? They gathered in little knots and their faces were blanched.

Captain Stoddard raised the new colors—broad bands of red and white and thirteen stars on a blue field. The brave colonies had taken another leap and crossed the Mississippi. Here at the old Spanish quarters, March, 1804, the last vestige of hope fluttered and died in the French heart. The breeze caught the flag and flung it out and a few cheers went up, but they were from the Americans, and the salutes even had a melancholy sound.

“St. Louis,” said some one. “Will they take away the name, too? Are we to be orphans?”

Others wept. Some of the better informed tried to explain, but it was half-heartedly. No one was certain of what was to come. These conquerors, yes, they were that, spoke a different tongue, had a different religion, were aggressive, a resistless power that might sweep them beyond the mountains.

There was no rejoicing that night. There were no cabarets in which men could drink and discuss the change. They went to each other’s houses and sat moodily by firesides. Old St. Louis was lost to them and hearts were very heavy.

Spain had ceded the whole of Louisiana to France, and again France had sold her desirable possession. Napoleon, hating the English and wanting the money to carry on his war against them, had bargained with the United States. All the great country lying westward no one knew how far. And the mighty river was free from troublesome complications.

Yes, old St. Louis was gone. There was something new in the very air, an energy where there had been a leisurely aspect; a certain roughness instead of simplicity, pioneer life. No avalanche swept over them, but people came from the other side of the river, stalwart boatmen, stalwart hunters, with new and far-reaching ideas. Schools, poor enough at first, but teaching something besides the catechism and a little arithmetic. There were books to read, discoveries to make, mines to unearth, more profitable ways of labor. The old slow method of work in the salt licks was improved upon, as well as that of the lead mines. Upper Louisiana held in its borders some of the great wealth of the world. Spanish language dropped out, French began to be a good deal mixed, and men found it to their advantage to learn English. The stockade and the round towers dropped down, and no one repaired them, because the town was going to stretch out. New houses were built, but many of them seemed as queer at a later date, with their second-floor galleries approached by a stairs from the outside. The high-peaked roofs with their perky windows looked down on the old one-story houses of split logs and plaster. Laclede’s town, about a mile long, was old enough to have legends growing about it when men sat out on stoops and smoked their pipes.

Yet there was enough of the past left to still afford content and romance. Robert de Longueville proved himself a capable young fellow and turned his past education to some account. He had a truly French adoration for his half sister that presently won quite a regard from Gaspard Denys.