The Missouria people lived near the mouth of the Missouri River at the beginning of European settlement of the region. The Osage people, who lived and hunted throughout region, also visited the area on hunting trips. An even earlier habitation was by members of the Mound Builders culture, who built extensive earthwork mounds at the site of St. Louis and the nearby Cahokia Mounds east of the river.
In 1764 a trading post was established on the site of present-day St. Louis by a party of French fur traders led by Pierre Laclède and his 14-year-old clerk, René Auguste Chouteau. The site was chosen a year earlier, selected because it was the spot closest to the Missouri River mouth that was still protected from floods. In 1770 the Spanish, who had acquired the entire Louisiana territory from the French in 1763, established the seat of government for Upper Louisiana at St. Louis. The isolated village soon became the headquarters of the western fur trade and the chief point of departure for fur trappers and explorers traveling on the Missouri and other rivers that led west. The small settlement that grew up around Laclède's trading post was nicknamed Pain Court (short of bread) because of the lack of good agricultural land. The settlement was also called Mound City because of the large number of mounds Native American built on the upland. The mounds were destroyed as the city expanded.
