Patricia Cleary (1)

St. Louis was a French fur-trading town ruled by Spain for four decades before the Americans took over in 1803. It was the site of a small battle of the American Revolutionary War in 1780 between British and Indians on one side and the French inhabitants on the other. Patricia Cleary covers all this plus gender relations, family life and ethnic relations. This is highly competent professional academic history with all the pluses and minuses of that genre. I found only a few minor points of objection. It is not surprising that Pierre LaClede, the founder, read Spanish as well as French. His native Bearnais patois, still used for legal documents in his region of birth until the 1790s, is nearly as close to Spanish as it is to Parisian French. And even a city girl growing up in the Midwest should have learned that one "plants" maize, one does not "sow" it. For a bolder yet well-grounded account of the founding of the town, see J. Frederick Fausz's "Founding St. Louis: First City of the New West" (2011. Cleary and Fausz each have virtues the other does not, but non-specialist readers will probably prefer Fausz.… (mer)