AUDUBON: A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF LORIMIER

CAPE GIRARDEAU - Cape Girardeau is making preparations to observe the 200th anniversary of its founding. In connection with the event, renewed interest is being shown in learning more about the founder, Louis Lorimier. He was the first and only commandant that the so-called Spanish military post had until the U.S. purchased the Louisiana territory in 1803.

The land transaction was not made known to the residents or did it affect them until a year later. At that time, Lorimier was relieved of his command but given a government position, which he held until his death in 1812.

From the private diary of the naturalist, John James Audubon, who visited the area in 1811, we can learn something about Lorimier because the artist's keen eyes registered many details about the Frenchman. And because he and the old commandant were French, there was a common bond, although the background of Audubon and Lorimier were very different.

Audubon was touring the heartland region of America during the winter of 1811, and coming north on the Mississippi he eventually met "a swarthy youth in a canoe, with six boatmen, who said his name was Louis Lorimier."

He told Audubon that his father was the former territorial agent. Although it was February and there was ice on the river floating in large blocks, and piling up in places making river travel dangerous, young Lorimier said the river was open as far north as Cape Girardeau and that he and his men would pilot the keel boat of Audubon and his traveling companion, Rozier, upstream since they were more accustomed to poling keel boats through the icy waters.

It was agreed to let them take over the craft and eventually the party landed safely, having hugged the Illinois shore and traveling in the shallows in between ice flows.

The father of young Louis Lorimier met the group when the craft pulled ashore at the village.

"Louis Lorimier, the Old Commandant, is a little man and he wore moccasins, a soiled dress uniform jacket with epaulets, and buckskins with iron knee buckles and Indian gaiters. Old Lorimier, now a strutting, pathetic figure of the past, had once led Tory fighters in Ohio.

"He had also once escorted Daniel Boone's party. After George Rogers Clark drove him across the Mississippi, he became a commandant and was much respected by Indian nations, Secure though his place had been, until 1804 when Upper Louisiana became Missouri, his best days were over.

"The little village of Cape Girardeau contained nothing remarkable or interesting except Lorimier, the father of our patron, young Louis Lorimier. The Commandant was representative of a class of men fast disappearing from the earth. His portrait is so striking and well worth preserving I shall try to draw it for you (in words).

"Imagine a man not more than 4 feet 6 inches, thin in proportion, looking as if he had just been shot out of a pop-gun. His nose formed the most prominent feature of his spare meager countenance. It was a true nex a la Grand Frederie, a tremendous promontory, fully 3 inches in length, hooked like a hawk's beak, and garnished with eyes like an eagle's. His hair was plastered down close to his head with a quantity of pomatum; it ended in a long queue rolled up in a dirty ribbon that hung down below his waist.

"The upper part of his dress was European, once rich but now woefully patched and dilapidated with shreds of gold and silver lace here and there. The fashion of his waistcoat, as antique as that of his nose, had immense pocket flaps that covered more than half his tight buckskin trousers that were ornamented with big iron knee-buckles to support Indian hunting gaiters long past their prime. His moccasins, to complete his costume, were really of the most beautiful workmanship.

"Though these articles of dress along with his statue and singular features made him the most ludicrous caricature imaginable, his manners were courteous and polished.

"He said he had been a Louisiana governor when it was a Spanish possession; actually, a Spanish agent. Since his retirement to this little village he had come to be looked upon as a great general and was held in high esteem." (Audubon was not clear and did not give Lorimier his rightful title, Spanish Commandant of the Post of Cape Girardeau while it was under Spanish rule.)

"We left Cape Girardeau and proceeded to Grand Tower and around its immense rock, against which the current crashed, without mishap.

"All night we heard wolves howling from the Illinois hills. I thought them hunting deer in packs, like dogs, but with more sagacity and cunning. They drive the deer before them toward wolves posted in ambush which overtake their prey. Their cry bring the pack like a hunter's bugle sounds the death note.

"On we went to Ste. Genevieve, and arrived safely in this old French City."