Borderlands of Empire, Borderlands of Race

Abstract

The year was 1783, and the time of year probably early autumn, before ice added to the hazards of navigating the Mississippi. For many weeks Jacques Clamorgan had been following the great river north to the town he had heard so much about back in New Orleans. He had come to make his fortune, but what he saw as his boatmen poled his flatboat close into the shore and began unloading all his worldly possessions can hardly have inspired him with confidence. Frankly, St Louis was not so much a town as a fortified trading post. The frontier settlement had been in existence for less than two decades. It boasted a cluster of homes and warehouses, a church, a few taverns and a population of less than one thousand.¹