François Chouteau

François Gesseau Chouteau (7 February 1797 – 18 April 1838) was an American pioneer fur trader, businessman and community leader known as the "Founder" or "Father" of Kansas City, Missouri.

François Gesseau Chouteau was born in 1797 in St. Louis, Missouri, to French parents Jean Pierre Chouteau, a prominent fur trader, and his second wife Brigitte Saucier, when the area was still under the authority of New Spain. His uncle Auguste Chouteau had founded the city of St. Louis 33 years earlier. In his youth, François learned his father’s trade, which was the basis of the early wealth of the city.

Chouteau married Bérénice Thérèse Ménard, originally of Cahokia (Kaskaskia, Illinois) and also of French descent, on 12 July 1819 in St. Louis. He soon started making fur trading expeditions into the western frontier via the Missouri River.

In 1819, Chouteau and his cousin Gabriel S. Sères set up a temporary trading post for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company on the Randolph Bluffs along the Missouri River in Clay County, western Missouri. Seeking an ideal place for a permanent post, they investigated several other locations as far north as Council Bluffs, Iowa. Chouteau, together with his wife and his brother Cyprien, finally chose a site on the Missouri River not far from the earlier post a few miles from the mouth of the "River Canses," known today as the Kaw or Kansas River. The place, called Chouteau's Landing, was located near the north end of present-day Grand Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1821 it became the area's first permanent European-American settlement.

Several trappers joined them in 1825, including Gabriel Prud'homme and his family, who were returning from an expedition in the Snake River region. Chouteau, with Prud’homme and his brother Cyprien as partners, created his own fur business. The company's warehouse became the headquarters. The company concentrated on western trading routes and engaged other members of the family clan. Following a flood in 1826, Chouteau moved his trading post to higher ground near present-day Troost Avenue's intersection with the river. Chouteau traveled widely throughout the Kansas Territory, trading manufactured goods for animal pelts from the Shawnee, Kickapoo, and other tribes, with whom he had established long-standing good relations.

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