About 1750, some Creole families from Kaskaskia, in present Illinois, moved to the west bank of the Mississippi, and the settlement of Ste. Genevieve developed along the bank of the river. Trade with Canada and New Orleans increased. In 1762, the New Orleans firm of Maxent, Laclede & Company received a monopoly of the fur trade on the Mississippi in the area between the Missouri and the St. Peters Rivers. In 1764, Pierre Laclede, directing the company's activities, assisted by young Auguste Chouteau, established St. Louis as his headquarters. Within a few months the village received official notice that by secret treaty on November 3, 1762, France had ceded its colony west of the Mississippi, and the city of New Orleans, to Spain. By the Treaty of Paris ( 1763) at the end of the French and Indian War, France lost Canada and her possessions east of the Mississippi to England. Missouri's strategic position at the crossroads of this international boundary gave the region a new prominence, which resulted in rapid development.

In 1765, St. Ange de Bellerive, the commander of Fort Chartres, the French capital of Upper Louisiana, surrendered his fort and the territory east of the Mississippi to British officers. Awaiting the formal transfer of the colony west of the river to Spain, he removed with his garrison to St. Louis, which thus became the capital of Upper Louisiana. St. Ange remained civil and military head until the arrival of Spanish officials in 1770.

The laws and customs of Paris, which had governed the colony during the French regime, remained essentially unchanged under the new government. In theory, Spanish was the official language, and Spanish officials with Spanish titles were substituted for French; but actually, many Frenchmen were appointed to offices in Upper Louisiana, and of course French was the native language of the inhabitants. During the entire Spanish period, the only new laws of consequence were those providing for the acquisition of lands and regulating dower and intestate inheritances.

The government of Upper Louisiana was not complicated. A lieutenant governor was appointed by the governor general at New Orleans to superintend the affairs of the entire territory extending from the Arkansas River to the Canadian Line. The lieutenant governor's authority was extensive, although his decisions could be appealed to the governor general. All land cessions had to be approved in New Orleans. For the more convenient direction of purely local affairs the settlements along the Mississippi were divided into districts, each with a commandant appointed by the lieutenant governor and responsible to him. Before the close of the Spanish period, five such districts were formed in the Missouri area: St. Charles, St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, and New Madrid. For the most part, the officials seem to have been well selected and the laws impartially enforced.

Settlement and the fur trade increased under this government. Laclede and other enterprising merchants with headquarters in St. Louis extended their operations far up the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Their increasing profits made St. Louis the commercial and cultural center of the upper valley. Meanwhile, resident priests were withdrawn from the British villages of the Illinois Country and sent to the growing Spanish settlements. The Creoles on the east bank, already dissatisfied with being subjects of Protestant England, were further disgruntled by this, and many of them moved into Spanish territory.

The inhabitants of Upper Louisiana were primarily fur traders, rather than colonists. They suffered from no land hunger, and their settlements were in reality widely scattered trading posts whose very existence depended upon friendly relations with the Indians. A unity with the natives was consequently one of the major policies of the government, especially since the revenue of the colony was insufficient to support a large army. From the first, the French and Spanish in this area, unlike colonists elsewhere in America, adopted the practice of recognizing the Indians' land claims and of living on the friendliest terms with them. None of their villages was fortified against the Indians, yet, so far as is known, very few Creole colonists were killed by Indians during the entire Colonial period. The Spanish neither took nor needed any military precautions until the British and Americans threatened invasion. Then St. Louis was stockaded, and forts and blockhouses were built throughout the territory.

Life in the colony was seriously disrupted by the American Revolution. The authorities at St. Louis aided George Rogers Clark in the conquest of the territory northwest of the Ohio River, and rallied todefeat a combined British and Indian attack on St. Louis in 1780. This was a significant victory of the American Revolution, for it consolidated the defense of the frontier against British expeditions and Indian raids, at the same time that it preserved the Mississippi-Ohio route for supplies to the American army. However, the enthusiasm with which the French residents of the Northwest Territory and the Spanish officials in the Missouri Territory had greeted the struggle of the colonies was soon destroyed by the harsh and disorganized government established in the territory won from the British. Even before the close of the war, great numbers of Creole families moved west across the Mississippi.

When peace came in 1783, England relinquished her possessions east of the Mississippi to the victorious Americans, yet for almost ten years she continued to occupy posts in the ceded area. Her fur traders, operating from Canada, poached on both American and Spanish territory, and gave increasingly serious competition to St. Louis merchants, who were forced to buy from them at least a portion of their goods for trading.

To Spanish officials the Americans constituted a threat at this time, for they had pushed their settlements across the Alleghenies to the very banks of the Mississippi, and there was no longer a barrier of wilderness between them and the Spanish colony. The territory was too large and too sparsely settled for defense against serious invasion; consequently the Spanish supplemented their military defenses with diplomacy. Like France and England, Spain was involved in various intrigues with American citizens to separate the western territories from the United States. As an additional measure, Spain adopted the policy of encouraging Americans to become Spanish citizens in the territory.

Circumstances aided this plan. The main revenue of the American settlements in Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Ohio River Country came from furs and agricultural products sold on the international market. The Mississippi was the highway to that market, and Spain controlled the Mississippi. This control she exercised arbitrarily, opening or closing the river to American trade without regard to official promises. The Americans were angry over their own government's failure to settle the issue, and many found it expedient to move into Spanish territory, where as citizens they could use the river without restrictions.

There were other advantages to moving across the Mississippi. Spain's land policy was far more liberal than any ever established by the English or American governments. Not only was land granted free on the basis of the settlers' individual needs, but no land faxes were assessed, and settlers without funds were given supplies and equipment. Spain even Telaxed her restrictions against Protestants entering the territory. Moreover, slave-holding families were welcomed, and

these came in increasing numbers after the passage of the Ordinance of 1787, by which the United States prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. Thus, long before Missouri became a part of the Union, slavery was an established institution there.

Spain also fostered various colonizing schemes. New Bourbon became a refuge for the French Royalists whose settlement at Gallipolis had failed, and Colonel George Morgan's grandiose plans for New Madrid were for a time encouraged by the Spanish. Nor did Spain neglect the Indians. As the various tribes were forced westward by advancing American settlement, Spain granted them land in her territory. Louis Lorimier, an Indian trader who had been in the pay. of the British and who had led more than one raid on Kentucky villages, was permitted to enter Spanish territory, and lands in southeast Missouri were granted him and his Shawnee and Delaware Indian friends. Spain hoped that Lorimier's Indian colony would serve as an additional bulwark against American aggression, and at the same time would put a stop to Osage Indian raids along the Mississippi. These Osage raids were an omen of the trouble to come as American settlement pushed westward, for the Americans, who had already established villages along the Missouri, the Meramec, the Big River, and the St. Francis, settled their score with the Indians without regard to Spanish policy or Indian rights.

In 1795, by the Treaty of San Lorenzo, free navigation of the Mississippi River below the thirty-first parallel was reaffirmed, and New Orleans was opened to Americans as a port of deposit and export. Five years later, Napoleon, dreaming of reviving the French colonial empire, forced Spain to return New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory to France. No formal transfer was made for almost three years, and Spanish officials remained in charge, but the change in owners aggravated American uneasiness over foreign control of their chief highway. When the Spanish authorities in New Orleans abruptly closed the port to Americans in 1802, the frontiersmen demanded that the matter be decided once and for all, either by purchase or by force. Ministers were consequently sent to France to negotiate with Napoleon for the purchase of New Orleans. To their surprise, they were offered the entire Louisiana Territory, for Napoleon was preparing another war on England. On April 30, 1803, a treaty was signed by which the United States purchased Louisiana for $15,000,000.

The Western settlements were delighted, but the people of the East had some doubts about the purchase. Many feared that the addition of so vast a territory would destroy the original balance of the Union by giving too much power to the trans-Allegheny region. The treaty was ratified, however, and Lower Louisiana was formally transferred to the United States on December 20, 1803. On March 9, 1804,

Captain Amos Stoddard, acting as agent for both the French Republic and the United States, received Upper Louisiana from the Spanish officials in St. Louis at a formal ceremony. Stoddard thus became governor of the territory, but he retained the commandants and other Spanish officials, and the laws and customs of the province were not altered.

The boundaries of the Louisiana Territory were not clearly defined in the treaty. When Congress established Upper Louisiana as the District of Louisiana in 1804, it was described as extending from the thirtythird parallel to the Canadian line, and from the Mississippi indefinitely west. This vast area was put under the control of the Territory of Indiana, of which Benjamin Harrison was then Governor. The three judges of the Indiana Territory, who were appointed a legislative body, supplemented the old Spanish laws with new ones reflecting AngloAmerican mores and procedures, but the last of the Spanish laws was not abrogated until 1825. The old Spanish districts were continued as administrative units under the new government. Each was provided with a commandant, a court of common pleas and quarter sessions, a recorder, and a sheriff, and provisions were made for appointing justices of the peace, constables, and coroners for each neighborhood.

The new government was well received at first, but dissatisfaction soon arose. The people of the territory objected to the new taxes, the swarm of officials thrust upon them, the endless delays, and, most of all, the location of the seat of government in Indiana. In the fall of 1804, the various districts sent representatives to a convention in St. Louis, where they drafted a memorial to Congress requesting specified changes.

Congress responded by passing the Act of 1805, which divorced the Louisiana District from the Indiana Territory, and set it up as a separate territory with a government of its own. Officials, appointed by the President of the United States, consisted of a governor, a secretary, and a legislature -- the last composed of the governor and three judges, who were empowered to establish inferior courts and prescribe their jurisdiction, and to make all necessary laws. Provision was made for forming new districts as the need arose, and for appointing additional magistrates and civic officers. The first governor appointed was General James Wilkinson, but his administration was so bitterly opposed that on March 3, 1807, he was replaced by Meriwether Lewis, who was both well known and popular in the territory.

Three years earlier, President Jefferson had sent Lewis and William Clark on an expedition from St. Louis up the Missouri River to the headwaters of the Columbia, and from there to the Pacific, to gain first-hand information about the almost unknown western half of the Louisiana Purchase