Records from Louisiana Purchase now on Internet

ST. LOUIS -- Debts and trespassing. Broken covenants and trading without the proper license.

It turns out early American fur traders got into plenty of dustups, including disputes sometimes hauled before a judge for resolution.

Now, some of those early 19th-century court records can be viewed on the Internet. On Tuesday, 71 documents from St. Louis Circuit Court relating to fur trading history were released in conjunction with the Three Flags Festival here. The festival is a celebration of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the transfer of power of lands to the United States.

There's a catch to understanding some of the documents: C'est utile de parler le Francais.

In other words, it helps to know French.

A few of the documents, from a multilingual world two centuries ago, are in foreign languages. And cursive script on 200-year-old paper doesn't always make for the easiest reading.

But project organizers urge users not to become discouraged. They hope to transcribe and in some cases translate as time and funding allow.

The project is a collaboration between the Missouri State Archives, the American Culture Studies Program at Washington University and the St. Louis circuit clerk's office.

It's part of a larger effort to make Missouri's past more accessible to the public by improving access to the city's legal history.

The group previously released St. Louis Circuit Court documents relating to the Lewis and Clark exhibition; the Freedom Suits, or nearly 300 legal petitions for freedom by slaves from 1814 to 1860; and Native American suits.

Secretary of State Matt Blunt, whose office oversees the state archives, said, "I think when you can look at these documents, it doesn't really feel like the cold past. It comes alive."

Peter Kastor, assistant professor of history and American Studies at Washington University, said the fur trading documents are important because they contain written references to American Indians that are hard to come by, and show the importance of Indians in trading days.

Kastor said few regulatory agencies and no police force meant that traders often had to take matters to court for resolution. "This is an incredibly litigious society," he said. "Everybody is suing everybody."

The Three Flags Festival is part of the city's effort to recognize the purchase of the Louisiana Territory and the final transfer of power from Spain to France to the United States, which took place in the small village of St. Louis on March 9 and 10, 1804.

That transfer enabled Lewis and Clark to launch that May their exploration of the vast Louisiana Territory that President Thomas Jefferson had purchased for $15 million, doubling the size of the United States.

On the Net

stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu