St. Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede Liguest and a few companions, all French _voyageurs_, in 1764; at least it was in that year that Laclede's lieutenant, Auguste Chouteau, cleared away the site of the present city. Laclede Liguest, or, as he is sometimes known, Liguest Laclede, a merchant of New Orleans, had from the French Government a monopoly of the fur trade in the Missouri River country. He left New Orleans with his family and a small party in August, 1763, with the intention of founding a town near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Shortly after the town was laid out occurred the cession to Great Britain of the Illinois country, on the east bank of the Mississippi. The French inhabitants of that country having followed from the north in the wake of Marquette in 1673, and of La Salle in 1678, hated the English, and began to move over to the new town, which soon grew into importance. A trading point for the Indians, Laclede and his companions so managed them that there was none of the friction which marked the contact elsewhere of the English and the natives. When the laying out of the city began a band of one hundred and fifty warriors, with their squaws and papooses, outnumbering the whites five to one, appeared and camped near the strangers. The Frenchmen treated the savages with such tact and kindness that they not only did no harm, but even of their own volition assisted in the work. The first cellar was excavated with the aid of the squaws, who carried off the clay in baskets, and were paid in beads and other trinkets which Laclede had brought up from New Orleans. The Indians became so friendly that they were a hindrance rather than a help, and finally, to induce them to depart, Laclede hinted that the French soldiers at Fort Chartres were to be summoned. [Illustration THE OLD CHOUTEAU MANSION BUILT FOR LACLEDE IN 1765. FROM DAGUERREOTYPE IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]