French Bottoms

{{Short description|European-American-tribal settlement}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2025}} {{Use American English|date=July 2025}} {{Infobox former subdivision | name = French Bottoms | conventional_long_name = | common_name = | era = American frontier | date_start = {{Start year and age|1821}} | event_start = Founded by François and Bérénice Chouteau | date_end = {{End date and age|1844|7|17}}<ref name="WyandotsKT1844"/> | event_end = Great Flood of 1844 | p1 = Osage Nation | s1 = Kansas, Missouri | today = Kansas City, Missouri | coordinates = {{coord|39|06|45|N|94|36|01|W|region:US-MO_type:landmark|display=inline}} }} [[File:Osage and Chouteau trading sculptures at Heritage Fountain.jpg|thumb|The Osage Nation trades with François Chouteau at the Chouteau Heritage Fountain.]] '''French Bottoms''', originally with the French name '''{{lang|fr|Chez les Cansès}}''' (lit. "at the place of the Kansa"),<ref name="Chez Grande"/><ref name="ChezTele"/> and the lowland part of '''Chouteau's Town''', was the first permanent European-American settlement in the area that became Kansas City, Missouri. It was founded by the French Creole trader François Chouteau and his wife Bérénice Chouteau as a fur trading post for the American Fur Company. The enterprise began in 1821 as the newlyweds' honeymoon was spent scouting the Missouri River for land to build their first trading post, eventually establishing the main settlement in the alluvial floodplain, or bottoms, near the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers.

This French-speaking enclave was populated by families of French and mixed French-Native American heritage, extending the French Creole culture of the Mississippi River Valley to the frontier. The community's culture was distinct from that of the later American settlers, featuring unique architecture such as ''poteaux-en-terre'' homes and a land parcel design based on the French colonial long-lot system rather than the American square grid. Social life revolved around communal events, including weekly dances (''bals'') and traditional songs (''chansons''). A traveler from 1841 recalled how "the tasty ''pot de bouillon'' and friendly cup of wine went round and the ''chansons'' and fiddles and laughter rang out."

The Great Flood of 1844 completely obliterated the French Bottoms, washing away every home and farm and permanently erasing the floodplain community. Led by the widowed Bérénice Chouteau, the survivors abandoned the bottoms and relocated permanently to the highland part of Chouteau's Town, centered around the church and the Chouteau warehouses. Bérénice's new house on Pearl Street and major sale of land spanning the western bottoms and bluff to developer Kersey Coates enabled him to create the Quality Hill neighborhood, directly linking the old settlement's leadership to the foundation of the modern city.

The historical French Bottoms is considered the direct progenitor from which Kansas City grew. After its abandonment, the floodplain area was renamed the West Bottoms and East Bottoms and was later redeveloped into a major industrial and transportation hub. The site of the original 1821 north-bank trading post is commemorated by the François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Monument on Chouteau Trafficway near the Chouteau Bridge.

==History== ===Geology=== The French Bottoms was situated on a landscape defined by its geology.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|2}} The area's nearly flat-lying limestone and shale bedrock, deposited during the Pennsylvanian Period, was fundamentally reshaped during the Pleistocene epoch.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|2}} A continental glacier fundamentally reshaped the region's river system.<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|4}} The advancing ice sheet shifted the path of a preglacial river, forcing the modern Missouri River into a new channel that turns abruptly from southbound to eastbound at its confluence with the Kansas River.<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|4}} Continental glaciers scoured the bedrock, carving deep troughs and altering drainage patterns. As the glaciers retreated, they deposited immense volumes of meltwater and sediment (sand, silt, and clay), which filled the valleys and created the vast, flat, and fertile alluvial floodplain of the Missouri and Kansas rivers.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|4}} Particular bluffs (which became part of Chouteau's Town and then the Kansas townsite) were additionally topped by a massive cap of wind-blown glacial soil that raised those bluffs another {{convert|120|ft}} over the rock ledge.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|6}} The bluffs are safer than flat riverbottoms for permanent structures, though forcing a human challenge of navigating their sharp hills and ravines.<ref name="kchistory"/>

This geological process created the exceptionally rich soil that attracted settlers to the riverbottoms, but also an inherently dangerous instability.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|2, 5}} The river constantly shifted its channel back and forth across the valley, sometimes widening and then shrinking in the same place over time.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|4}} The thick, unconsolidated sediment, saturated by a high water table, made the riverbanks soft, yielding, and prone to catastrophic flooding and erosion.<ref name="Gentile"/>

===The great bend's early inhabitants=== [[File:Naturalis Biodiversity Center - ZMA.AVES.3159 - Conuropsis carolinensis Linnaeus, 1758 - Psittacidae - skin specimen.jpeg|thumb|The Carolina parakeet flocked the area until hunted to extinction in the early 1900s.]] The strategic location at the river confluence around Kaw Point was a center of a vast region of human activity long before Europeans arrived. From approximately {{nowrap|100 BCE}} to {{nowrap|700 CE}}, the area was the westernmost extent of the Hopewell tradition, a network of communities connected by extensive trade routes.<ref name="KUHopewell"/> Archaeology has identified several Kansas City Hopewell villages, such as the Trowbridge and Renner sites, which were typically located on river terraces overlooking the floodplains.<ref name="KUHopewell"/>

By the time of sustained European contact, the dominant regional power was the Osage Nation, who call themselves the ''Ni-u-kon-ska'' ("People of the Middle Waters"). Their ancestral lands had encompassed the area for centuries, and they controlled the riverways, becoming indispensable trade partners for French traders based in St. Louis.<ref name="OsageHistory"/>

Nineteenth-century traders and planners saw tremendous economic potential in this "great bend" as a natural emporium for territorial evolution of the United States. This western end of the Missouri River was the logical point to transfer supplies from eastern steamboats onto wagons destined for westward and southwestern overland expansion trails.<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|4}}

Long before American expansion, French Creole traders from St. Louis established extensive trade networks and alliances with the powerful regional tribes, particularly the Osage Nation.<ref name="Rollings1995" /> These relationships often included intermarriage, creating familial and economic bonds that were vital to the fur trade.<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|11}} As the United States federal government began forcibly relocating eastern tribes to lands west of Missouri, a new economic reality emerged. The removal treaties paid federal annuities to the tribes, creating a significant new market that attracted both established Creole traders and a new wave of American entrepreneurs to the area.<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|14}}

In 1744, decades before Chouteau or Fort Osage, the first European settlement was Fort de Cavagnial in an unknown location somewhere between what became Kansas City, Missouri, and what became Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. French fur traders established and ran that small depot until 1763, when France ceded the entire region to Spain.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|10}}

By the early 19th century, the Osage territory extended from the Missouri River south to the Red River.<ref name="Rollings1995"/>{{rp|252}} A treaty in 1808 established a formal boundary of land cession, and the Osage relinquished claims east of a line drawn south from Fort Osage to the Arkansas River.<ref name="Kappler1904" /><ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|7}} The south bank of the Missouri River west of the fort remained legally forbidden to outside settlement.<ref name="Wilson1965"/>{{rp|3}}<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|10}} This prohibition forced traders like François Chouteau to establish their initial posts on the north side of the river.<ref name="Wilson1965"/>{{rp|3}} The land on the south bank was not opened for legal American settlement until the US government coerced the Osage to cede their claims to the land in the Osage Treaty of 1825, which directly enabled the formal establishment and expansion of the French settlement.<ref name="jchs"/><ref name="Wilson1965"/>{{rp|3}}<ref name="KCaHiG"/>{{rp|10-11}}

Nineteenth-century explorers saw tremendous economic potential in the river's unique geometry,<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|4}} specifically its "great bend" or "elbow" where the stream changes direction abruptly from a south-flowing to an east-flowing one.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|4}}<ref name="kchistory"/> Traders and military planners saw this bend as a natural emporium, the logical point to transfer goods from steamboats to wagons for overland transport to western and southwestern destinations.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|4}} Using steamboats to carry goods far upriver to the bend significantly shortened the difficult and time-consuming overland portion of the journey.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|12}} As early as 1827, army officials grasped this implication when they established Fort Leavenworth as their principal supply station for western operations, and city builders soon wanted to do the same.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|4}}

===''Chez les Cansès''=== ====Founding==== The settlement's founding was a commercial and familial enterprise, driven by the powerful Chouteau fur-trading dynasty of St. Louis. In 1819, François Chouteau, a son of Jean Pierre Chouteau, married Bérénice Thérèse Ménard, daughter of Pierre Menard, the first lieutenant governor of Illinois.<ref name="kchistory"/><ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|10}} This union allied two of the region's most influential French Creole families.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|10}} Their honeymoon was a keelboat expedition up the Missouri to scout a location for a new trading post on behalf of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company.<ref name="kchistory"/>

In 1821, François, Bérénice, and their employees established their first permanent post in the North Bottoms of the Missouri River, at the Randolph Bluffs (in what became Clay County).<ref name="kchistory"/> This post was destroyed by a flood in 1826.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|11}} Chouteau relocated to what he believed was higher ground on the south bank, establishing the residential and agricultural settlement known as the French Bottoms.<ref name="kcur"/> For arriving steamboats, he built Chouteau's Landing at the river's edge at the foot of the bluff (near modern Gillis Street). To service this settlement, a warehouse was built upon the high bluff above, immediately to the south.<ref name="kchistory"/> From these locations, François managed the commercial aspects of the outpost, trading manufactured goods for pelts from the Kansa, Osage, and other regional tribes.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|10}} Bérénice was instrumental in recruiting other French-speaking families, transforming the post into a viable community.<ref name="jchs"/> She was later described by town founder John Calvin McCoy as “the soul of the colony”.<ref name="kchistory"/>

====Culture==== The French Bottoms was a wide area of river bottoms (all of which was renamed East and West Bottoms in 1850), which eventually contained about sixteen farms.<ref name="HMDBFrenchSettlements"/> By the early 1830s, it was a thriving Francophone community of at least one hundred people.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|11}}<ref name="jchs"/> It was a mix of families from established Creole centers like St. Louis and Kaskaskia, and French trappers of mixed heritage, often referred to as ''Métis''.<ref name="jchs"/> Several American squatters lived on land without legal title, alongside the established French families.<ref name="SFTrailer"/>

The settlement's architecture reflected its French colonial roots. Homes were likely built in the ''poteaux-en-terre'' ("posts-in-ground") style, with vertical logs set into the earth and the gaps filled with a mixture of mud and grass (''bousillage'').<ref name="CentreLouis"/> Land ownership was based on the French colonial long-lot system, where farms were laid out not in the square-mile grid of the American PLSS, but in long, narrow "arpent strips" that maximized river access for many landowners.<ref name="NPS_SRS"/> This system inevitably conflicted with the American PLSS grid that was used to survey and sell land in the region. This created legal ambiguities and disputes, as Bérénice Chouteau discovered after François's death when she had to engage in legal actions to secure clear title to her family's lands under the American system.<ref name="SFTrailer"/>

Life in the settlement, known derisively by some in wealthier St. Louis as ''Nouveau Vide Poche'' ("New Empty Pocket"), was described as communal and vibrant.<ref name="hmdb-french"/><ref name="jchs"/><ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|11}} Social life revolved around weekly dances (''bals'') with fiddle music and traditional songs (''chansons''). Visitors recalled a palpable ''joie de vivre'' and some wrote of the joyful "Frenchness" of the village's camaraderie, music, and dancing.<ref name="BC at KCH"/> A visitor in the 1830s said, "Their laughter and gay songs, mixed with the bird song from the tall trees, made a cheerful sound that could be heard from the river, inviting all to come ashore and join in the merriment."<ref name="jchs"/><ref name="Garraghan1938"/>

The community's religious life was centered on St. Francis Regis Church. As devout Roman Catholics, the Chouteaus were the primary patrons for the church, a log chapel built in 1835.<ref name="Garraghan"/> It was constructed not in the bottoms, but on the high bluffs overlooking the settlement, near the modern corner of Eleventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.<ref name="hmdb-french"/><ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|11, 23}} This location on what became Quality Hill established permanence on safe ground.<ref name="kchistory"/>

A map created in 1841 by the parish priest, Father Nicholas Point, identified the farm plots of 26 resident families, including the Prudhomme, Mercier, Edouard, Bowird, LaGautherie, Tremble, Philbert, Tugeon, and Etue families.<ref name="Garraghan"/> A traveler from 1841 recalled: "These country French had week[ly] ''bals'' where the tasty ''pot de bouillon'' and friendly cup of wine went round and the ''chansons'' and fiddles and laughter rang out."<ref name="Hoffhaus1984"/>{{rp|98}}

===Great Flood of 1844=== {{Main|Great Flood of 1844}} The existence of French Bottoms was precarious. A major flood in 1826 destroyed the Chouteaus' first trading post, forcing a relocation, but this was only a prelude.<ref name="kcur"/> In June 1844, after weeks of sustained, heavy rain, the Kansas and Missouri rivers crested in what is considered the largest flood in the region's recorded history.<ref name="kcur"/>

The cataclysmic flood completely obliterated the French Bottoms.<ref name="hmdb-french"/> The powerful current did not just cover the settlement, but scoured the land, washing away every home, farm, and outbuilding.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|11, 17}} The destruction was absolute, permanently erasing the physical community.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|17}} François Chouteau had already died in 1838, but his brother Frederick, who operated a nearby trading post, provided an eyewitness account.<ref name="Barry" />{{rp|523}}<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|11}} He recalled swimming his horses through the floodwaters to safety on high ground and, with other survivors, building a new log house in three days in the rain.<ref name="Barry" />{{rp|523}} Across the rivers and beyond Kaw Point, hundreds of Wyandot people recently forcibly removed to there, were killed by the flood.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|17}}

Survivors from the French Bottoms portion of Chouteau's Town were led by the widowed matriarch Bérénice Chouteau, to abandon the untenable floodplain and relocate permanently to the elevated portion of Chouteau's Town upon the bluffs.<ref name="kchistory"/> Fellow pioneers wrote about her remarkable fortitude in choosing to remain there on the American frontier to manage the family's extensive business and land interests rather than return to St. Louis. She sold a {{convert|110|acre|adj=on}} tract in 1855 to town cofounder Kersey Coates that became the Quality Hill neighborhood.<ref name="kchistory"/><ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|24}} The Chouteau business operations moved to a new warehouse on the bluffs, near what became Harrison Street.<ref name="kchistory"/> This fully consolidated townsite upon higher, more durable ground, set the physical and economic trajectory for Kansas City's origin story, leading directly to the legal incorporation of Kansas, Missouri, in 1850, which grew from fewer than 500 residents in 1855 to 4,418 by 1860.<ref name="kchistory"/><ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|20, 25}} The bottoms were reportedly naturally reforested by 1855.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|17}}

A historical marker in the former French Bottoms notes, "But the great flood of 1844 washed away all of their little homes and improvements, and a Catholic priest reported sadly that thereafter all one could hear wafting up from the little French clearings were the songs of the birds and the chattering of the squirrels."<ref name="HMDBFrenchSettlements"/>

==Legacy== Though it existed for only about two decades, historians regard French Bottoms as the "nucleus" from which Kansas City grew.<ref name="kchistory"/> In 1850, the founders of the new legally incorporated town of Kansas renamed the former French Bottoms as the West Bottoms and East Bottoms, which were remade decades later as an industrial and transportation hub. Kansas was renamed the City of Kansas and then Kansas City, and its 20th century government renamed the much larger East Bottoms to the Northeast Industrial District.<ref name="KCaHiG" />{{rp|5}}

In 2021, the city's origins were commemorated by the François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Monument, located on Chouteau Trafficway, near the original trading post by the Chouteau Bridge.<ref name="kcparks"/><ref name="hmdb-monument"/> The monument features bronze sculptures by artist Kwan Wu depicting François Chouteau, an Osage family, and a Kansa hunter, honoring the foundational trading relationships between the French settlers and regional tribes.<ref name="kcparks"/><ref name="hmdb-monument"/>

==References== <references>

<ref name="Chez Grande">{{cite web |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annals_of_the_City_of_Kansas/X9ASAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Chez+les+Cans%C3%A8s%22&pg=PA97&printsec=frontcover |title=Annals of the City of Kansas |last=Spalding |first=Charles C. |date=1858 |publisher=Van Horn & Abeel's Printing House |page=97 |access-date=July 17, 2025 |quote=The post was known to the French by the designation of "Chez les Cansès," (at the home of the Kanzas).}}</ref> <ref name="ChezTele">{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kansas-city-times-chez-les-canses-a/151323490/ |title=Chez Les Canses Almost a Forgotten Name |work=The Kansas City Times |date=October 26, 1908 |access-date=July 17, 2025 |via=Newspapers.com |quote=In the old days the traders and trappers in this section, nine-tenths of whom were French, always spoke of this trading post as "Chez les Canses," which literally translated means "At the home of the Kansas Indians."}}</ref> <ref name="kchistory">{{cite web |url=https://kchistory.org/biography/b%C3%A9r%C3%A9nice-chouteau-1808-1888-and-fran%C3%A7ois-chouteau-1797-1838-founding-residents |title=Biography of Bérénice Chouteau (1808-1888) and François Chouteau (1797-1838), Founding Residents of Kansas City |publisher=Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="jchs">{{cite web |url=http://jchs.org/s/frenchkc-zchy.pdf |title=Stop 1. Old French Kansas City Marker 13th & Central |publisher=Jackson County Historical Society |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="kcur">{{cite web |url=https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2015-08-10/how-floods-shaped-the-kansas-city-we-know-today |title=How Floods Shaped The Kansas City We Know Today |last=Adler |first=Frank |date=August 10, 2015 |publisher=KCUR 89.3 |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="KCaHiG">{{cite book |last=Shortridge |first=James R. |date=2012 |title=Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822-2011 |publisher=University Press of Kansas | location=Lawrence, Kansas | isbn=9780700618811 |oclc=788282828}}</ref> <ref name="SFTrailer">{{cite web |url=https://newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com/2019/07/chez-les-canses-chouteaus-town-before.html |title=Chez les Canses: Chouteau's Town Before Kansas City |website=The New Santa Fe Trailer |last1=Bushnell | first1=Michael | first2=Dorri | last2=Partain |date=July 28, 2019 |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="hmdb-french">{{cite web |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=86212 |title=The French "Bottoms" |publisher=The Historical Marker Database |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="Gentile">{{cite book |author=Gentile, Richard J. |date=1983 |title=The Geology of Kansas City, Missouri |url=https://share.mo.gov/nr/mgs/MGSData/Books/Special%20Publications/Geologic%20Field%20Trips%20in%20the%20Greater%20Kansas%20City%20Area%20(Western%20Missouri,%20Northeastern%20Kansas,%20and%20Southeastern%20Nebraska)/SP-011_Original%20Digital%20Documents/01Gentile.pdf |publisher=Missouri Department of Natural Resources |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="KUHopewell">{{cite web |url=https://biodiversity.ku.edu/archaeology/collections/highlights/plains/hopewell |title=Kansas City Hopewell |publisher=KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="OsageHistory">{{cite web |url=https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=OS001 |title=Osage (tribe) |publisher=The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="CentreLouis">{{cite web |url=https://www.greatamericantreasures.org/destinations/the-centre-for-french-colonial-life/ |title=The Centre for French Colonial Life |publisher=Great American Treasures |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="NPS_SRS">{{cite web |url=https://npshistory.com/publications/srs/stge-srs.pdf |title=Ste. Genevieve Final Special Resource Study and Environmental Assessment |publisher=National Park Service |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="Garraghan">{{cite book |last=Garraghan |first=Gilbert Joseph |year=1920 |title=Catholic Beginnings in Kansas City, Missouri: An Historical Sketch |publisher=Loyola University Press |oclc=1890122 |url=https://archive.org/details/catholicbeginnin00garr/page/44/mode/2up |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="Barry">{{cite book |last=Barry |first=Louise |year=1972 |title=The Beginning of the West: Annals of the Kansas Gateway to the American West, 1540-1854 |location=Topeka |publisher=Kansas State Historical Society |isbn=978-0-87726-001-1}}</ref> <ref name="kcparks">{{cite web |url=https://kcparks.org/places/francois-chouteau-native-american-heritage-monument/ |title=François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Monument |publisher=Kansas City Parks and Recreation |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="hmdb-monument">{{cite web |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=188031 |title=François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Monument |publisher=The Historical Marker Database |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="BC at KCH">{{cite book |last=Green |first=George Fuller |date=1968 |title=A Condensed History of the Kansas City Area: Its Mayors and Some V. I. P.s |publisher=The Lowell Press |page=39 |oclc=426545 }}</ref> <ref name="Garraghan1938">{{cite book |last=Garraghan |first=Gilbert Joseph |date=1938 |title=The Jesuits of the Middle United States |volume=2 |publisher=America Press |page=305 |oclc=1172288 }}</ref> <ref name="Hoffhaus1984">{{cite book |last=Hoffhaus |first=Jack |date=1984 |title=Chez les Canses : a story of the first permanent settlement in the Kansas City area |oclc=11762740 |publisher=Lowell Press}}</ref> <ref name="HMDBFrenchSettlements">{{cite web |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=86211 |title=The French Settlements |publisher=The Historical Marker Database |access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="WyandotsKT1844">{{cite web | title=Wyandots in Kansas Territory 1844 | publisher=Wyandot people | url=https://www.wyandot.org/1844.htm | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204095633/https://www.wyandot.org/1844.htm | archive-date=February 4, 2012 | access-date=July 17, 2025}}</ref> <ref name="Rollings1995">{{cite book |last=Rollings |first=Willard H. |year=1995 |title=The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains |publisher=University of Missouri Press |isbn=978-0826210067}}</ref> <ref name="Kappler1904">{{cite book |editor-last=Kappler |editor-first=Charles J. |year=1904 |title=Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties |volume=2 |chapter=Treaty with the Osage, 1808 |url=https://dc.library.okstate.edu/digital/collection/kapplers/id/19448 |publisher=Government Printing Office |via=Oklahoma State University Library}}</ref> <ref name="Wilson1965">{{cite journal |last=Wilson |first=Charles R. |date=June 1965 |title=The Lure of the West: The Role of the Santa Fe Trade in the Development of the Kansas City Area |journal=The Trail Guide |publisher=Kansas City Westerners |volume=10 |issue=2}}</ref>

</references> Category:History of Kansas City, Missouri Category:French-American history Category:19th-century floods in the United States Category:Osage Nation