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

Daniel Bissell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, Portraits, N38584]

The builder and commandant of Fort Bellefontaine, General Daniel Bissell served with…

Daniel Boone. Boone sat for artist Chester Harding shortly before his death in 1820. It is the only known portrait of Boone painted from life. [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2015.102]

Daniel Boone is most commonly known as a hunter, trapper, and frontier settler, but he also…

This lunette in the Missouri State Capitol, painted by Victor Higgins, depicts the sons of Daniel Boone manufacturing salt at Boone’s Lick in central Missouri. [Missouri State Archives, Ken Raveill Collection, MS386, 004-030]

Daniel Morgan Boone was born on December 23, 1769, the seventh child of

Auguste Chouteau. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1869-001-0001]

In the early history of St. Louis and its trans-­Mississippi hinterlands, Auguste Chouteau…

Jean Pierre Chouteau Sr. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N22207]

Jean Pierre Chouteau, known as Pierre, was a pioneer settler in St. Louis and the territory…

Francois M. Guyol de Guiran created this portrait of Marie Therese Bourgeois Chouteau, the “founding mother” of St. Louis, in 1810. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MHS Objects Collection, 1950-084-0002]

Marie Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau was born in New Orleans on January 14, 1733, but she was…

Painting titled Cler-mónt, First Chief of the Tribe, by George Catlin, 1834. [Smithsonian American Art Museum, SAAM-1985.66.29_1]

Following the death of Clermont (Gra-Mon or “Arrow-Going-Home”) in 1796, his son, also…

Missouri Encyclopedia logo

Henri Peyroux de Ia Coudrenière was born in France around 1743, the son of Marguerite-…

This depiction of colonial Ste. Genevieve by artist Oscar Berninghaus is among the murals in the Missouri State Capitol. [State Historical Society of Missouri, color transparency in Ralph Walker Photographs Collection, P0108-017298-1]

The French Revolution induced many royalists to emigrate to the Louisiana Territory in the…