Founding St. Louis by J. Frederick Fausz

Author:J. Frederick Fausz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

NOUS NE SOMMES PAS TOUT DES SAUVAGES (“WE ARE NOT ALL SAVAGES”)

Nous sommes touts Sauvages (“We are all savages”) was the ominous message that several French deserters from LaSalle’s Fort Crevecoeur carved on a piece of wood in 1680 before fleeing into the forest. The defiant declaration by desperate individuals who abandoned familiar countrymen and resisted traditional subordination was a warning that close and frequent contact with Indians could make Europeans “wild,” unleashing cultural contradictions they could neither comprehend nor control.182

Ninety years later, the French established an even more ambitious and long-term multicultural society at St. Louis that confronted the same issues: how many alien beliefs and behaviors could Europeans accommodate and/or adopt without becoming people they did not recognize or respect? Anarchy and tyranny were equal threats to social survival in a new settlement without a permanent priest to instill the moral teachings of the church or a strong royal governor to enforce the secular laws of the state. But neither resulted because the Illinois French were already comfortable with a community of negotiable conformity that indulged the freedom of individual behavior within established boundaries. St. Louis was perhaps the only place on the planet administered so congenially by resident and well-known French officials who lacked the French king’s authority. In a consensual society, deference paid to the heroic old commandant and respect for the notary’s knowledge of customary law sufficed to maintain social order while avoiding authoritarianism. “Civilized” behavior thrived in the “wilderness” because the émigrés from Illinois had long experience with a deferential society composed of masses and marines, patriarchal parenting and nosy neighbors, and they moderated their individualism in order to preserve community harmony. French St. Louisans were already well aware of what constituted crime and sin, and their greatest fear was being ostracized from the affection and protection of traditional village life, especially in a potentially threatening territory. They proved that contact with Indians did not promote savagery or stamp out the culture of one’s upbringing, since hunters in deep forests, traders at distant villages and voyageurs on long expeditions yearned to return to congenial homes of reassuring familiarity.

As a mirror image of French Illinois culture, St. Louis experienced almost seven years of good luck in having new colonists create the society they wanted without outside interference or official coercion. Residents were free to experiment with social organization, but most found it hard to improve on the traditional Illinois system of local village governance and individual compromise derived from “the secret of real politeness—self denial.” And who could be discontented “in a country where one can kill more…than can be consumed, and…everything is produced in plenty because the climate is favorable and the soil virgin”? If their new town was not an actual “State of Nature,” St. Louisans could still tell Rousseau and other French philosophers something about a frontier utopia, “where every Man is allowed to do what he will with his own Person and Property, consistent with other Men’s”—living “like Indians…much better than Men under Tyranny and arbitrary Government.

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