Auguste Chouteau
Historical Figure

Auguste Chouteau

Jean Pierre Auguste Chouteau was a prominent fur trader and civic leader who co-founded the city of St. Louis in 1764 as a fourteen-year-old accompanying Pierre Laclède's trading expedition. He became one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys, establishing extensive trade networks with the Osage and other nations. Chouteau served as a key intermediary and U.S. treaty commissioner during the early territorial period, leveraging his decades of relationships with Indigenous leaders. His fluency in multiple Native languages and deep understanding of tribal diplomacy made him indispensable to the American government's treaty-making efforts in the region.

Portrait: Portrait of Auguste Chouteau, c. 1815-1850. Missouri History Museum.

24 treaties 26 total items 24 mapped locations

Related Locations

Pin color = Planning (1801–1804) Westward (1804–1805) Fort Clatsop (1805–1806) Return (1806) Post (1806–1812)
Master expedition route

Treaties (24)

Treaty with the Foxes, 1815
09/14
Treaty with the Grand Pawnee, 1818
06/18
Treaty with the Iowa, 1815
09/16
Treaty with the Kickapoo, 1815
09/02
Treaty with the Maha (Omaha), 1815
07/20
Treaty with the Noisy Pawnee, 1818
06/19
Treaty with the Osage, 1815
09/12
Treaty with the Osage, 1825
06/02
Treaty with the Oto, 1817
06/24
Treaty with the Ottawa, etc., 1816
08/24
Treaty with the Pawnee Marhar, 1818
06/22
Treaty with the Pawnee Republic, 1818
06/20
Treaty with the Piankashaw, 1815
07/18
Treaty with the Ponca, 1817
06/25
Treaty with the Potawatomi, 1815
07/18
Treaty with the Quapaw, 1818
08/24
Treaty with the Sauk, 1815
09/13
Treaty with the Sauk, 1816
05/13
Treaty with the Sioux Of St. Peter’s River, 1815
07/19
Treaty with The Sioux of the Lakes, 1815
07/19
Treaty with the Sioux, 1816
06/01
Treaty with the Teton, 1815
07/19
Treaty with the Winnebago, 1816
06/03
Treaty with the Yankton Sioux, 1815
07/19

Translations (2)

Auguste Chouteau to Thomas Jefferson, November 20, 1804
Auguste Chouteau: Dinner Invitation to General William Clark

Other Key Figures

William Clark William Clark 2276 Meriwether Lewis Meriwether Lewis 1692 Patrick Gass Patrick Gass 1489 John Ordway 1345 Joseph Whitehouse 538 George Drouillard 400 Mandan Mandan 286 Charles Floyd 189 Shoshone Shoshone 187 George Shannon 180 John Collins 167 Nathaniel Pryor 143
Back to Treaties

Cross-Narrator Analyses

Analyses that cite or discuss Auguste Chouteau — showing 5 of the most recent matches.

Figure: Auguste Chouteau

Auguste Chouteau: St. Louis Patron of the Corps of Discovery

IntroductionAuguste Chouteau (1749–1829), co-founder of St. Louis and patriarch of its dominant mercantile family, is woven throughout the Lewis and Clark journals…
September 6, 1806

First Whiskey Since July 1805: An Encounter with Chouteau’s Trading Boat

The meeting between the homeward-bound Corps of Discovery and a Missouri River trading boat on 6 September 1806 produced a rare alignment…
May 20, 1804

Lewis Joins the Party at Petit Côte

May 20, 1804 marks the day Meriwether Lewis caught up with William Clark and the assembled party at St. Charles, the small…
September 12, 1806

News from the States: The Encounter with McClellan’s Keel Boat

The meeting between the homeward-bound Corps of Discovery and Robert McClellan's trading expedition near St. Michael's Prairie produced three distinct accounts on…
Figure: Ninian Edwards

Ninian Edwards in the Lewis & Clark Journals: A Figure at the Margins of the Record

A Note on SourcesThe corpus of journal entries supplied for this synthesis contains zero references to Ninian Edwards. No narrator — not…

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