French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s rendering of members of an Osage traveling party in Europe, including Big Soldier (at right). [Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, object # S/NPG.2011.5]
Big Soldier (1773?–1844)

Big Soldier, a Little Osage war leader, was probably born in 1773 in a village near the…

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Lilburn Boggs. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N11644]
Lilburn W. Boggs (1792–1860)

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 14, 1792, Lilburn W. Boggs became one of the most…

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Portrait of William Clark by Charles Willson Peale, c. 1807–1809. [Courtesy of the Independence National Historical Park]
William Clark (1770–1838)

William Clark, the celebrated explorer who joined Meriwether Lewis …

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Louisiana Territory transfer ceremony
Louisiana Purchase and Missouri

The Louisiana Purchase, an 1803 land deal between the United States and France, doubled the size of the United…

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Mo-Hon-Go (Sacred Sun), an Osage woman, and her child. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Image Collection, 021180]
The Osage

The most powerful tribal group in the early history of Missouri was referred to as the Wah-…

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John Mason Peck. [Album of Missouri Baptists (St. Louis: Central Baptist Pub. Co., 1904), p. 2]
John Mason Peck (1787–1858)

John Mason Peck, a pioneer, Baptist missionary, noted preacher, author, and journalist on…

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