REFLECTING ON CAPE GIRARDEAU'S BICENTENNIAL: LOUIS LORIMIER LOVED HIS PROMISED LAND

(First in a series of articles on Cape Girardeau's Bicentennial.)

Cape Girardeau is the only place in the United States so named.

It lies on the west bank of the Mississippi River about halfway between St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn.

It is a beautiful city and a progressive one with a current population of about 40,000. The residents are now making preparations to observe the bicentennial in 1992-1993.

The founder of the city was Louis Lorimier, a French-Canadian who crossed the Mississippi River into Spanish territory in 1787 to engage in Indian trade in partnership with Peyrous and Menard. At the time, he resided on the Saline River about five or six miles from the present town of St. Marys, not far from New Bremen, near a place called the "Big Shawnee Spring."

Until Lorimier came into what was the upper Louisiana territory, he lived on a branch of the Miami and Maumee rivers at a place called Pickawilleny, Ohio. In 1769, he carried on trade with the Indians in furs and supplies, like his father before him.

Their place of business was called "Laramie's Station." The place was also called "the Frenchman's Store" and it was the center of activities and a source of supplies for the Indians and British raiders against American settlers. Gen. George Rogers Clark and his Kentuckians plundered and destroyed the store and almost captured Lorimier who managed to successfully escape carrying his young son, Louis, with him.

He never returned to Ohio, but spent a short time at Vincennes and from there gradually made his way westward into Illinois territory and to the bank of the Mississippi.

Two tribes of Indians were his loyal friends and followed him on the journey. They were the Shawnee and the Delawares from the eastern United States. Lorimier understood them and their Indian ways. His wife was half Shawnee.

The Spanish settlements along the river had no military protection and the commandants feared an invasion by French and American filibusters so they persuaded Lorimier to return to the Illinois territory and bring his Indian friends across the river to serve as a military force, if trouble came.

Some Shawnees had been in the Spanish-held territory dating back to 1788, but they were dissatisfied because Commandant Don Manuel Perez wanted to civilize them. Since Lorimier could control the Indians, the governor general of Louisiana raised Lorimier's title from "don" to "commandant" and put him in charge of controlling the Indians from the Missouri to the Arkansas rivers.

At the same time, he bestowed upon him the title of "commandant of the newly formed Cape Girardeau District" in 1793, with the rights and privileges that went with the station. Thus, Cape Girardeau became one of the five original districts of Missouri in 1793. The other four being Ste. Genevieve, St. Louis, St. Charles and New Madrid.

Cape Girardeau was an old site on river maps dating to the early 1700s when a French ensign from the Fort of Kaskaskia, Ill., who was serving with the troops stationed there, crossed the Mississippi into Spanish territory and established a trade with Indians in furs and supplies on a huge rock formation that extended into the river. At the base of the rock was a protected cape where merchandise could be unloaded from dugouts and canoes. The place became know as "Girardot's Landing," and later "Cape Girardot," which eventually became Cape Girardeau. "Eau" is French for water.

Lorimier visited the area in 1792, and found it very beautiful, with fresh springs that supplied drinking water, and dense wooded forests in which wild animals were a source of food.

When Louis Houck came to Cape Girardeau on April 21, 1869, he was also charmed with the area. As a lawyer, recently practicing in St. Louis, he discovered Cape Girardeau had an uncommonly interesting history, and the story of the town, recovering from the aftermath of the Civil War, infatuated him. He later wrote the three-volume "History of Missouri," and still later produced a two-volume set on the "Spanish Regime."

On Dec. 25, 1872, Houck married Mary Hunter Giboney, the daughter of Andrew Giboney and sister of Col. Abr. Giboney. The result was an increased knowledge of local history.

The Giboneys were descendants of Alexander Giboney, one of the first settlers of the area, who received a Spanish grant to a large plantation on what is now Bloomfield Road. Alexander Giboney died in 1804, and his son, Mary's father, became a merchant in Cape Girardeau, in business first with his brother-in-law, Lindsey D. Lashmut, and still later with Robert Sturdivant. Mr. Giboney had assembled a huge collection of the area's first newspapers, with information about the city and its inhabitants.

Houck's books will be invaluable as source material for the city's bi-centennial.