Though the French were the first settlers, and for a long time the principal inhabitants of Missouri, yet a very small portion of her present population is of that descent. A fort was built by that people as early as 1719, near the site of the present capital, called Fort Orleans, and its lead mines worked to some extent the next year. St. Genevieve, the oldest town in the State, was settled in 1755, and St. Louis in 1764. At the treaty of 1763 it was assigned, with all the territory west of the Mississippi, to Spain. "In 1780, St. Louis was besieged and attacked by a body of British troops and Indians, fifteen hundred and forty strong." During the siege, sixty of the French were killed. The siege was raised by Colonel George Rogers Clark, who came with five hundred men to the relief of the place. At the close of the American Revolution, the territory west of the Mississippi remained with Spain till it was ceded to France, in 1801. In 1803, at the purchase of Louisiana, it came into the possession of the United States, and formed part of the territory of Louisiana, until the formation of the State of that name in 1812, when the remainder of the territory was named Missouri, from which (after a stormy debate in Congress as to the admission of slavery) was separated the present State of Missouri in 1721.[59] The office of Syndic, to which Colonel Boone had been appointed, is similar to that of justice of the peace under our own government: but it is more extensive, as combining military with civil powers. Its exercise in Colonel Boone's district did not by any means occupy the whole of his time and attention. On the contrary, he found sufficient time for hunting in the winter months--the regular hunting season. At first he was not very successful in obtaining valuable furs; but after two or three seasons, he was able to secure a sufficient quantity to enable him, by the proceeds of their sale, to discharge some outstanding debts in Kentucky; and he made a journey thither for that purpose. When he had seen each creditor, and paid him all he demanded, he returned home to Missouri, and on his arrival he had but half a dollar remaining. "To his family," says Mr. Peck, "and a circle of friends who had called to see him, he said, 'Now I am ready and willing to die. I am relieved from a burden that has long oppressed me. I have paid all my debts, and no one will say, when I am gone, 'Boone was a dishonest man.' I am perfectly willing to die.'"[60]