× Expand La Salle claims Louisiana for France.

The bronze statue in front of the museum says it all: Saint Louis, Louis IX, (1214-1270) the Crusader King on his mighty steed. Of course our city was named for him, to honor his future namesake Louis XV, King of France in 1764, year of our city’s founding. Everyone knows this. Or we’re supposed to. Auguste Chouteau, who was there—and ought to know—told us so.

Or, perhaps we’re named for the river named after Saint Louis in honor of Louis XIV, the flamboyant Sun King, who ruled a century earlier.

It’s confusing, keeping all these Louises straight. The problem begins in the late 1600s. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a seminary dropout who explored the Pays des Illinois, or French Illinois country. No one quite knows the extent of all his travels, but we do know he made an epic trip to the mouth of the Mississippi, near present-day New Orleans, in 1682. There, he proclaimed

In the name of the most high, mighty invincible and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God and King of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name…[I take possession of] this country of Louisiana…from the mouth of the great River St. Louis, on the eastern side…

River St. Louis? Say again? Encore? La Salle was apparently referring to the Ohio River, whose upper reaches he may have explored the previous decade. The name was short-lived and the Ohio was renamed La Belle Riviere. Missionary explorer Jacques Marquette had proposed calling the Mississippi River Conception, after the Virgin Mary. Muddying the holy waters, La Salle dubs it “River Colbert,” after an influential advisor to the Roi du Soleil. Alas, to the disappointment of a future late-night talk show host, this label didn’t stick either.

Finally the names sorted themselves out. The Mississippi’s new identity: Fleùve Ste. Louis. The Saint Louis River. Denis Diderot’s famous Encyclopédie explains

The Mississippi, otherwise called by the French, the Saint Louis River, river in North America, the most considerable part in Louisiana, which is crosses from one side to the other up until its outlet into the sea.

The Encyclopédie’s entry date is 1765, a year after St. Louis’s founding. Coincidence? Maybe. But even early 18th century maps clearly show Fleùve Ste. Louis, or la Riviere de S. Louis, often close to the site of the future city. One 1718 map says, “Mississippi, today (“aujourd’hui”) the St. Louis River,” and “now (“apresent”) the St. Louis River,” sounding suspiciously like an 18th century geopolitical rebranding campaign. The nametag says it all: it’s our river, folks, don’t mess with the St. Louis. The French were touchy about their holdings in the heartland, which at the time consisted of a few villages and fur trading forts. But they made great maps.

× Expand 1755 map showing the “Fleùve S. Louis” (Mississippi) river, upstream from site of present-day city of St. Louis.

Three centuries later, we can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out had the name stayed. Roll on St. Louis? Life on the St. Louis? St. Louis Mud Pie? Hmm. It’s not doing anything for me.

Fortunately, things didn’t get that far. Eighty-two years after La Salle’s historic descent, Pierre Laclède made his 12-week voyage up Fleùve St. Louis from New Orleans and gave the town the river’s name. The land he was standing on was now claimed by Spain, from a secret treaty two years earlier, but luckily Laclède didn’t know it. (San Luis?) The river soon reverted to its rightful Ojibwe or Algonquin title, "Misi-ziibi," meaning "Great River," which had never been completely abandoned, even by the French. The town kept its name. And whose name is it? Ultimately, a 13th century canonized king, via two other possible kings honored by their royal explorers. And a long and fabled river, whose name had once echoed the city next to it.

Further study:

Eccles, W. J., The French in North America 1500-1783

Ekberg, Carl, St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive

Fausz, J. Frederick, Founding St. Louis, First City of the New West

Parkman, Francis, France and England in North America: Vol. 1: Pioneers of France in the New World, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West

David Rumsey Maps

Research Laboratories of Archaeology: Early Maps of the American Midwest and Great Lakes

Roger Kaza is principal horn of the St. Louis (River) Symphony and an amateur historian of the French-Canadian fur trade.