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The history of Missouri begins with settlement of the region by indigenous people during the Paleo-Indian period beginning in about 12,000 BC. Subsequent periods of native life emerged until the 17th century. New France set up small settlements, and in 1803, Napoleonic France sold the area to the U.S. as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Statehood for Missouri came following the Missouri Compromise in 1820 that allowed slavery. Settlement was rapid after 1820, aided by a network of rivers navigable by steamboats, centered in the City of St. Louis. It attracted European immigrants, especially Germans; the business community had a large Yankee element as well. The Civil War saw numerous small battles and control by the Union. After the war, its economy diversified, and railroads centered in Kansas City, opened up new farmlands in the west.

Progressive Era reforms In the early 20th century sought to modernize state and local government and minimize political corruption. During the 20th century, Missouri's economy diversified further, and it developed a balanced agricultural and economic sector. By the 21st century manufacturing was fading, as service industries grew, especially in medicine, education, and tourism. Agriculture would still remain profitable economic sector, as farms grew larger due to mechanization.

Pre-Columbian era

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Indigenous peoples inhabited Missouri for thousands of years before European exploration and settlement. Archaeological excavations along the rivers have shown continuous habitation for more than 7,000 years. Beginning before 1000 CE, there arose the complex Mississippian culture, whose people created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences, but they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop and conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans, because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds, since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast as well as the upper river.

European exploration, conquest, and colonization (1673–1803)

In May 1673 the French Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette and French trader Louis Jolliet paddled down the Mississippi River in canoes along the area that would later become the state of Missouri.^[1]

During the late 1680s and 1690s the French pursued colonization of central North America – not only to promote trade, but also to thwart the efforts of England on the continent.^[2] Pierre-Gabriel Marest, a Jesuit priest, in late 1700 established a mission on the west bank of the Mississippi at the mouth of the River Des Peres.^[3][4] Marest established his mission station with a handful of French settlers and a large band of the Kaskaskia people, who fled from the eastern Illinois Country to the station in the hope of receiving French protection from the Iroquois.^[3] The Mississippi-Missouri river system waterways were the main means of communication and transportation in the region.

During the 1710s the French government again began to pursue a course of increased development of the region, which Native Americans, imperial officials, and local European settlers conceived of the region as being part of the "Illinois Country," referring to the confederacy of Native communities that dominated the region. .^[5] Boisbriand ordered the construction of Fort de Chartres about eighteen miles north of Kaskaskia as the base of operations and headquarters for the company in the area.^[6] After the construction of Fort de Chartres, the company directed a series of prospecting expeditions to an area 30 miles west of the Mississippi River in present-day Madison, St. Francois, and Washington counties.^[6] These mining operations generally focused on discovering either lead or silver ore. Despite severe financial losses in late 1720, in January 1722 the company's directors sent Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont to Missouri to protect the company's trade networks on the Missouri River from Spanish influence.^[7] In November 1723, Bourgmont and the party arrived in present-day Carroll County in northern Missouri, where they constructed Fort Orleans.^[8] Within a year, Bourgmont negotiated alliances with indigenous tribes along the Missouri River. The quick abandonment of the fort after its construction was necessitated by the general retreat on the part of the company after the financial losses of 1720, and in 1731, the company returned its charter and control of Louisiana to royal authority.^[9] During the 1730s and 1740s, French control over Missouri remained weak, and no permanent settlements existed on the western bank of the Mississippi River.^[9]

French settlers remained on the east bank of the Mississippi at Kaskaskia and Fort de Chartres until 1750, when the new settlement of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri was constructed. Though in present-day Missouri, the settlement at Ste. Genevieve was still thought of as part of the Illinois Country. During its early years, Ste. Genevieve grew slowly due to its location on a muddy, flat, floodplain, and in 1752, the town had only 23 full-time residents. The people were farmers. Using enslaved Africans and Native peoples, the settlement primarily grew wheat, corn and tobacco.^[10][11]

Spanish settlement and government

Disputes between France and England over control of the Ohio Valley resulted in the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754. The British won and France lost all its holdings. France gave Spain control of Louisiana in November 1762 in the Treaty of Fontainebleau.^[12] Meanwhile, the French governor of Louisiana granted a trade monopoly over the parts of the Illinois Country lying west of the Mississippi River to New Orleans merchant Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent and his partner, Pierre Laclède.^[13] In August 1763, Laclede and his stepson Auguste Chouteau departed New Orleans to establish a settlement in the Illinois Country, where in February 1764 they established St. Louis on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi.^[14] By the 1770s, most Europeans in the region referred to the area as "Upper Louisiana." Concern about living under British rule led many French settlers east of the Mississippi River to decamp for the Louisiana on the west bank of the Mississippi.^[15]

Early settlements in Missouri

Settlement	Founding
Mine La Motte	1717 settlement
Ste. Genevieve	1750, 1735–1785[11]
St. Louis	1764
Carondelet	1767, St. Louis annex 1870
St. Charles	1769
Mine à Breton	1770, 1760–1780[16]
New Madrid	1783, 1789[17]
Florissant	1786
Commerce	1788
Cape Girardeau	1792
Wolf Island	1792
Saint Michel	1799, now part of Fredericktown

Spanish dominion over the European settlements in Upper Louisiana led to population growth in Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis, as a result of French immigration from British-held Illinois and the forced migration of enslaved Africans Americans and Native Americans.^[18] Ste. Genevieve continued to suffer from periodic flooding, although during the 1770s its population of 600 made it slightly larger than St. Louis.^[18] While the residents of Ste. Genevieve took a balanced approach between fur trading and farming, St. Louisans had a particular focus on fur trading, which led to periodic food shortages and the city's nickname of 'Paincourt', mistakenly understood as 'short of bread' in the historical literature.^[18] Robust evidence from the St. Lawrence Valley has shown otherwise, as the same place name is also found in Canada.^[19] South of St. Louis a satellite city known as Carondelet was established in 1767, although it never thrived.^[20] A third major settlement was established in 1769, when Louis Blanchette, a Canadian trader, set up a trading post on the northwest bank of the Missouri River, which eventually grew into the town of St. Charles.^[21]

In 1770 Pedro Piernas fully replaced St. Ange as administrator of the colony, although he retained the veteran Frenchman as an adviser.^[18] Local administrators of Ste. Genevieve also were Spanish-appointed, but frequently were forced to acquiesce to local customs.^[18] Throughout the 1770s, Spanish officials were forced to contend not only with the wishes of their predominantly French populations, but also with repeated incursions from British traders and hostile indigenous tribes.^[22]

To reduce the influence of British traders, Spain renewed efforts to encourage French settlers to decamp from Illinois to Missouri, and in 1778, the Spanish offered generous land grants, basic supplies, and access to enslaved African Americans to Catholic immigrants on the east bank of the Mississippi River. However, only a small number of Illinois French pursued settlement across the Mississippi.^[23] A second effort by the Spanish against the British found greater success: starting in the late 1770s, the Spanish officials began openly supporting American rebels fighting against British rule in the American War of Independence.^[24] Spanish officials in both St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve were instrumental in supplying George Rogers Clark during his Illinois campaign of 1779.^[25]

But Spanish aid to the rebels came at a price: in June 1779, Spain declared war on England, and word reached Missouri of the war in February 1780.^[26] By March 1780, St. Louis was warned of an impending British attack, and the Spanish government began preparations for a fort at the town, known as Fort San Carlos.^[27] In late May, a British war party attacked the town of St. Louis; although the town was saved, 21 were killed, 7 were wounded, and 25 were taken prisoner.^[28]

After the American victory in its war of independence, the European countries involved negotiated a set of treaties known as the Peace of Paris. The Spanish, who retained Louisiana, were forced to contend with large numbers of American immigrants crossing into Missouri from the east.^[29] Rather than attempt to stifle the immigration of American Protestants, however, Spanish diplomats began encouraging it in an effort to create an economically successful province.^[30]

As part of this effort, in 1789 Spanish diplomats in Philadelphia encouraged George Morgan, an American military officer, to set up a semi-autonomous colony in southern Missouri across from the mouth of the Ohio River.^[31] Named New Madrid, the colony began auspiciously but was discouraged by Louisiana's governor, Esteban Rodríguez Miró, who considered Morgan's infant colony as flawed due to its lack of provisos for ensuring the settlement's loyalty to Spain.^[32] New Madrid's early American settlers departed, as did Morgan, and New Madrid became primarily a hunting and trading outpost rather than a full-fledged agricultural city.^[33]

Despite Spanish diplomats' efforts, during the early 1790s both Governor Miró and his successor, Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet, were cool toward the idea of American immigration to Missouri.^[34] However, with the onset of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1796, Spain again needed an influx of settlement to defend the region.^[34] To that end, Spain offered U.S. settlers, free land, no taxes, and religious freedom in Spanish territory. This offer proved attractive to settlers in Kentucky who could not obtain clear title to land.^[34] Settlement in Spanish Missouri also proved attractive to slaveholders in Illinois, where the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 left the status of slavery uncertain. Among these American pioneers was Daniel Boone, who settled with his family after encouragement from the territorial governor.^[34] In the late 1790s, a significant number of U.S. settlers moved to Spanish Missouri seeking free land, no taxes, and guarantees for slavery. In the 1790s, approximately 1/5 of Missouri's non-Native American population consisted of enslaved African Americans.

To better govern the region of Missouri, the Spanish split the province into five administrative districts in the mid-1790s: St. Louis, St. Charles, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau and New Madrid.^[35] Of the five administrative districts, the newest was Cape Girardeau, founded in 1792 by trader Louis Lorimier as a trading post and settlement for newly arriving Americans.^[36] The largest district, St. Louis, was the provincial capital and center of trade; by 1800, its district population stood at nearly 2,500.^[20] Aside from Carondelet, other settlements in the St. Louis district included Florissant, located 15 miles northwest of St. Louis and settled in 1785, and Bridgeton, located 5 miles southwest of Florissant and settled in 1794.^[37] All three settlements were popular with immigrants from the United States.^[37]

But these American settlers fundamentally changed the makeup of Missouri; by the mid-1790s, Spanish officials realized the American Protestant immigrants were not interested in converting to Catholicism or in serious loyalty to Spain.^[38] Despite a brief attempt to restrict immigration to Catholics only, the heavy immigration from the United States changed the lifestyle and even the primary language of Missouri; by 1804, more than three-fifths of the population were immigrants from the U.S. whether black or white, free or enslaved.^[38] With little return on their investment of time and money in the colony, the Spanish negotiated the return of Louisiana, including Missouri, to France in 1800, which was codified in the Treaty of San Ildefonso.^[39]

By 1800 the non-Native American population of Upper Louisiana, approximately 20% of whom were enslaved, was primarily concentrated in a few settlements along the Mississippi in present-day Missouri. The majority of land in Missouri was controlled by Native Americans. Travel between towns was by the river. Agriculture was the primary economic activity. Most farming families produced surpluses, which were sold to merchants who shipped foodstuffs downriver to plantation settlements in the Natchez Country and Louisiana. Fur trading, lead mining, and salt making were also significant economic activities for residents during the 1790s. The use of slave labor was central to economic life in Missouri, and perhaps twenty percent of the population was black and enslaved.^[40][41]

The settlers in early Spanish Missouri, both black and white, were mostly French-speakers, and the Catholic Church was a significant part of life.^[42] Through 1773, Missouri parishes lacked resident priests, and residents were served by traveling priests from the east side of the Mississippi.^[42] During the 1770s and 1780s, both Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis gained resident priests. Protestant services were not allowed in the colony. However, itinerant Protestant preachers frequently visited the settlements in private, and restrictions on Protestant residency were rarely enforced. According to historian William E. Foley, Spanish Missouri lived under a "de facto form of religious toleration," with few residents demanding rigid orthodoxy.^[43]

There was no aristocracy. The highest class was based upon wealth and constituted of a mixed group of creole merchants linked by familial ties. Below them were the artisans and craftsmen of the society, followed by laborers of all types, including boatmen, hunters, and soldiers. At the bottom of the social system were free blacks, servants, and coureur des bois, with enslaved Native Americans and Africans forming the bottom class.^[44]

Women in the region were responsible for a variety of domestic tasks, including food preparation and clothing making. French women were well known for their cooking, which incorporated both French staples such as soups and fricassees and African and Creole foods such as gumbo. The colonists also ate local meats, including squirrel, rabbits, and bear, although they preferred beef, pork and fowl. Most foods were local, although sugar and liquor were imported until the late Spanish period.^[45] Malaria particularly affecting low-lying settlements such as Ste. Genevieve.

Territorial and early statehood history (1804–1860)

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=History_of_Missouri
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