Award winning author, and International speaker. President of the Archer Alexander Memorial Foundation. Member of the Missouri Speakers Bureau and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. President of the Boone’s Lick Road Association. Executive Director of the Missouri Germans Consortium. She has been writing for over 35 years and published several books on local history, German immigration, and other topics. Currently working on To Tell a True Story – Archer Alexander.
Edward Bates was born in 1793, in Goochland County, Virginia. In 1814, he would follow his brother Frederick, who had been appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of the Louisiana Territory. Edward studied law under Rufus Easton, the Territory’s Chief Clerk, and then serving on the Supreme Court, he would receive his bar degree in 1816. In 1820, he would serve in the State Convention , after being one opposed to the restriction of slavery. In 1822, he would serve Missouri in the House of Representatives, located in the village of St. Charles.
Edward Bates’ brother Fredrick Bates would serve as Missouri’s second Governor, where he would die while he was in office in 1825. The first State Capitol would move from St. Charles to Jefferson City in November of 1826. Edward Bates would establish his home on the Boone’s Lick Road (Today’s Highway N) in Dardenne Prairie in 1829, naming his huge plantation of 500 acres Walnut Grove. There he built a 22-room mansion, the largest in St. Charles County and name it Chenaux. The huge home was flanked by two large twin Chimneys. (The home is no longer standing.)
In 1844, Edward Bates would serve as the pro-bono attorney for Lucy Berry, later known as Lucy Delaney, author of the 1892 slave narrative “From the Darkness cometh the Light”. Her case, which Bates won, served as the inspiration for the freedom suit of Harriet and Dred Scott. “Despite his efforts on behalf of freepersons like Lucy, Bates had reservations against exerting greater pressure on slavery itself. Personally, his actions regarding enslaved people were in line with his contemporaries who exhibited no personal qualms with treating Black people unequally. At times, Bates hired out his enslaved servants to his neighbors. At others, he profited from their sale.”[i]
During the Civil War, Edward Bates would serve in President Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet as the United States Attorney General from 1861until 1865. When Edward Bates retired and returned to Missouri, his son Joshua Barton Bates was living at the family’s estate in Dardenne Prairie and raising his family. President Lincoln had appointed Barton Bates as a Missouri Supreme Court Judge in 1862.
From the Twin Chimneys Elementary which was built in 1993: Most of the Winghaven Development is located on what was the Bates’ property. Even now, if you superimpose the 1800’s property map over present day satellite images, they are still eerily similar. The part of the Twin Chimneys subdivision, Little Oaks, is where the original residence, Cheneaux stood. In our Twin Chimneys Elementary community, there are still signs of Judge Bates and his family. Many streets in the adjacent subdivision are named after the Bates family. Bates road of course, Onward Way for the Judge’s oldest son, Thornhill was the name of the residence owned by an uncle, and Watson’s Parish was named after the Reverend Thomas Watson of Dardenne Church.
Endnote
[i] Neels, Mark A, Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor, Southern Illinois Press, 2024
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News of the Portage des Sioux treaties sent a message to residents of eastern states; it was now safe to emigrate and homestead in the Missouri Territory. From 1816 to 1820 settlers “camelike an avalanche” wrote missionary John Mason Peck. “It seemed as though Kentucky and Tennessee were breaking up and moving to the Far West.” The treaties also had political ramifications. Missouri filed for statehood in 1820 and William Clark failed in his election bid to become the new state’s first governor. Voters viewed him as being “too soft” on the Indians at Portage des Sioux. Jefferson’s plan of coercion through commerce had worked, though not exactly as he envisioned it. The treaty of Portage des Sioux reaffirmed the process of depriving the Osage of their land and it opened the door for a flood of settlers who rapidly filled the old Osage domain and clamored for more. At the beginning of 1808 the Osage dominated nearly 1/8th of the Louisiana Territory but in just 17 years, they were left with a reservation only 50 miles wide and 150 miles long in southern Kansas. The Treaty of Portage des Sioux which meant peace to the United States only added to the change and turmoil being experienced by the Osage Nation.
In 1816, John Pitman (1753-1839) and his neighbors would file a Petition, asking the Government to assign a surveyor to lay out a road to the most western edge of U.S. settlement at that time, called the Booneslick. That road would become today’s Boone’s Lick Road. In 1816, roads were named by where they were headed! As this old Buffalo trace, turned into a trail, it was because the population was growing. Veterans of the Revolutionary War, like Pitman, had been awarded Land Grants for their service. Pitman had moved to Missouri by 1816, bringing many of his family and his relatives with him. His brother Thomas Pitman (1750-1825) had settled at Howell’s Prairie, near the Missouri River.
Pitman’s Land Warrant was issued for land in the Arkansas Territory in 1821, but he had already moved his family to Missouri by that time. He sold that land warrant to a relative, using it to enlarge his amount of property here in St. Charles County. But in 1816, he was one of a growing number of St. Charles County residents that realized that the Territory was growing, and that good roads were important. And just like James Morrison on St. Charles’ Main Street, who owned the Bryan and Rose Salt lick at the other end of the Boone’s Lick Road, Pitman wanted to make sure that his land would be on “the big road” as it was often referred to at that time.
In 1818, U.S. Land Sales Offices had opened an begun selling land using the Public Land Survey System of a Section Range and Township, which Thomas Jefferson had encountered in France. When the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1804, it didn’t come with any records of who owned what land already. Besides sending out the explorers Lewis and Clark, surveyors were needed to lay out these grids. With the War of 1812, that process would be interrupted. After the treaties, work would begin anew by surveyors. However, the U.S Land Office was also involved at the same time, in identifying who already owned what land. Early settlers like Daniel Boone, Warren Cottle and Jacob Zumwalt had already purchased land prior to 1804. These early land grants from the Spanish were called into question and they had to prove to the new government that they truly owned the property. There was also a lot of land speculation and those that tried to claim land that they didn’t actually owned. And there were those who didn’t own land, but had simply “squatted” on a parcel calling it theirs.
This was a difficult time, as we were just a Territory, and with little representation in D.C., and thoughts of Statehood were beginning. The demographics were changing as well, as the fur traders were giving way to those coming from the states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee buying up huge swaths of cheap land and bringing their cheap labor force, the enslaved, with them.
Land Warrant for John Pitman for his service in the Revolutionary War.
RESOURCES
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Written by Michael Dickey – Former Site Director, Arrow Rock State Historic Site, Missouri Department of Natural Resources for the Program: April 25, 2015 Conflicted Perspectives Symposium, St. Charles County College and the Peace and Friendship Commemoration on September 15, 2015.
President James Madison appointed William Clark, Illinois Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards and U.S. Indian Agent Auguste Chouteau as Indian Peace Commissioners and they were convened from May 11 through September 28. They were appropriated $20,000 in trade goods to use as presents for the Indians.[19]
They invited about 19 western tribes (some were actually bands of tribes) to meet and council at Portage des Sioux. This location was convenient to the tribes on the Missouri, upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and it was far enough from St. Louis and St. Charles so as not to impact the daily activity of the citizenry. Fort Belle Fontaine was only a few miles away and its 275 troops were deployed to the treaty grounds. In early July about 2,000 Indians began gathering at the site. Leaders the pro-British faction of the Sac & Fox did not show up. Leaders of a dozen tribes signed the treaty but others such as the Menominee and Winnebago did not until the following year. Even though the Osage had not fought against the United States they were compelled to affirm their loyalty and re-affirm the treaty of 1808. Eleven chiefs of the Big Osage, one Arkansas Osage chief, eleven Little Osage chiefs and one chief of the Missourias attached to the Little Osage signed the peace treaty on September 12, 1815 which followed a short, simple template:
A treaty of peace and friendship, made and concluded between William Clark, Ninian Edwards, and Auguste Chouteau, Commissioners Plenipotentiary of the United States of America…of the one part; and the undersigned King, Chiefs, and Warriors, of the Great and Little Osage Tribes or Nations…of the other part.
THE parties being desirous of re-establishing peace and friendship between the United States and the said tribes or nations, and of being placed in all things, and in every respect, on the same footing upon which they stood before the war, have agreed to the following articles:
ARTICLE 1. Every injury, or act of hostility, by one or either of the contracting parties against the other, shall be mutually forgiven and forgot.
ARTICLE 2. There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between all the citizens of the United States of America and all the individuals composing the said Osage tribes or nations.
ARTICLE 3. The contracting parties, in the sincerity of mutual friendship recognize, re-establish, and confirm, all and every treaty, contract, and agreement, heretofore concluded between the United States and the said Osage tribes or nations.[20]
At first glance, the wording of the treaty seems harmless enough. No land cessions were required and annuities were not withheld as punishment for any damages attributed to individual Osages during the war. However, the Osages did not regain “the same footing upon which they stood before the war.” Fort Osage reopened that fall, but they did not relocate there. The war had changed the climate of the nation. News of the Portage des Sioux treaties sent a message to residents of eastern states; it was now safe to emigrate and homestead in the Missouri Territory. From 1816 to 1820 settlers “camelike an avalanche” wrote missionary John Mason Peck. “It seemed as though Kentucky and Tennessee were breaking up and moving to the Far West.”[21] The treaties also had political ramifications. Missouri filed for statehood in 1820 and William Clark failed in his election bid to become the new state’s first governor. Voters viewed him as being “too soft” on the Indians at Portage des Sioux.[22] Missourians it seems, were not willing to “forgive and forget” as the treaty had stipulated. The Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Peoria and Cherokees were assigned to reservations abutting the Osage boundary and they frequently hunted on the Osage side of the line. Pressured by the growing settlements of whites and dispossessed eastern tribes, some Big and Little Osage as early as 1808 began joining their Arkansas kinsmen or relocating to southeast Kansas. After 1815 the departures accelerated. The last group of Big Osage remaining in Missouri abandoned their village in the summer of 1822.[23] On June 2 of 1825, the Osage signed a treaty at St. Louis, by which they ceded the remainder of their territory in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and much of Kansas[24]
Jefferson’s plan of coercion through commerce had worked, though not exactly as he envisioned it. The treaty of Portage des Sioux reaffirmed the process of depriving the Osage of their land and it opened the door for a flood of settlers who rapidly filled the old Osage domain and clamored for more. At the beginning of 1808 the Osage dominated nearly 1/8th of the Louisiana Territory but in just 17 years, they were left with a reservation only 50 miles wide and 150 miles long in southern Kansas. The Treaty of Portage des Sioux which meant peace to the United States only added to the change and turmoil being experienced by the Osage Nation.
Endnotes
[19] March, David. The History of Missouri Vol. I. Lewis Historical Publishing Co. New York 1967, p. 303
[21] Babcock, Rufus, ed. Forty Years of Pioneer Life Memoir of John Mason Peck D.D. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965 p. 146
On September 15, 2015, the Commemoration of the Peace and Friendship Treaties took place at the same location as the original signing, Portage des Sioux in St. Charles County. Present were St Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, Osage Nation’s Chief Standing Bear, and William Clark’s descendant Bud Clark.
Drum of the Osage NationSeptember 15, 2015Dorris Keeven-Franke, Bud Clark, Chief Standing BearL-R Steve Ehlmann, Chief Standing Bear, Dorris Keeven-Franke
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