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The history of St. Louis, Missouri began with the settlement of the St. Louis area by Native American mound builders who lived as part of the Mississippian culture from the 9th century to the 15th century, followed by other migrating tribal groups. Starting in the late 17th century, French explorers arrived. Following British victory in the French and Indian War, a French trading company led by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau established the settlement of St. Louis in February 1764. Many colonists moved across the river to St. Louis from French territory ceded to the British. The city grew in population due to its location as a trading post on the Mississippi River, as the fur trade was extremely lucrative. The city played a small role in the American Revolutionary War. France acquired rule over the area again in the late 18th century, but in 1803, it sold a huge territory in North America west of the Mississippi River to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. After the transfer, St. Louis was an entrepôt of trade with the American West. In the late 1840s, it became a destination for massive immigration by Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine, and Germans arriving after the Revolution in German states of 1848. Some native-born Americans reacted with fear to the newcomers, adopting nativist sentiments. Missouri was a slave state, but the city's proximity to free states caused it to become a center for the filing of freedom suits. Many slaves gained freedom through such suits in the antebellum years. But, by the 1850s and the Dred Scott case, interpretations had changed and the US Supreme Court ruled against him. It also ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, contributing to the tensions causing the American Civil War. During the War, St. Louis had a small skirmish on its outskirts, but was held under Union control. After the war, the city expanded its railroad connections and industrial activity. It suffered a corresponding rise in pollution of the river and waterfront. During the early 1870s, the Eads Bridge was constructed over the Mississippi River, and the city established several large parks, including Forest Park. Due to local political and economic disputes, the city separated from St. Louis County in 1876 and became an independent city. Its limited geographic area has inhibited its success in the 20th and 21st centuries because of the small tax base. During the late 19th century, St. Louis became home to two Major League Baseball teams. Ragtime and blues music flourished in the city, with African Americans making major contributions also in jazz. The city hosted the 1904 World's Fair and the 1904 Summer Olympics, attracting millions of visitors. Part of the infrastructure for the fair was the basis for major city institutions in Forest Park. In the early part of the century, many African Americans migrated from the South to the city for industrial jobs, as part of the Great Migration. St. Louis did not escape the Great Depression and its high unemployment. During World War II the city hosted war industries that employed thousands of workers. After the war, federal highway subsidies and postwar development encouraged outward migration as residents moved to gain newer housing; this suburbanization significantly reduced the city's middle-class population. The city made efforts to create new attractions, such as the Gateway Arch, which construction became a focus of the civil rights movement to gain non-segregated jobs in the skilled trades. The first litigation under the 1964 Civil Rights Act was against St. Louis unions. The city worked to replace substandard housing by new public housing projects such as Pruitt–Igoe. A combination of factors resulted in this being notoriously unsuccessful, and it was demolished in the late 20th century. Starting in the 1980s and continuing into the following century, construction and gentrification have increased in some areas of St. Louis, particularly downtown. City beautification and crime reduction have made progress, although St. Louis has continued to struggle with crime and perceptions of crime. The city saw modest population growth during the mid-2000s, but showed a decline in the 2010 U.S. Census. ==Exploration and Louisiana before 1762== The earliest settlements in the middle Mississippi Valley were built in the 10th century by the people of the Mississippian culture, who constructed more than two dozen platform mounds within the area of the future European-American city.〔Primm (1998), 1.〕〔Peregrine (1996), xx.〕 These were related to the center of the culture at the very large complex of Cahokia Mounds, on the east side of the Mississippi River. The Mississippian culture ended for unknown reasons in the 14th century and these sites were empty for some time. Siouan-speaking groups such as the Missouria and the Osage migrated from the eastern Ohio Valley to the Missouri Valley. They lived in villages along the Missouri and Osage rivers.〔 Both groups competed with northeastern tribes such as the Sauk and the Meskwaki, and all four groups confronted the earliest European explorers of the middle Mississippi Valley. Extensive European exploration near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers began nearly a century before the city was officially founded.〔Primm (1998), 2.〕 Explorer Louis Joliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette traveled south on the Mississippi River in June 1673, passed the future site of St. Louis and reached the mouth of the Arkansas River before turning back.〔Primm (1998), 3.〕〔Shepard (1870), 10.〕 Nine years later, French explorer La Salle led an expedition south from the Illinois River to the mouth of the Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire valley for France.〔 La Salle named the Mississippi river basin ''La Louisiane'' (Louisiana) after King Louis XIV; the region between and near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was named the Illinois Country.〔 As part of a series of forts in the Mississippi valley, the French built settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia, Illinois.〔 French trading companies also built towns during the 1720s and 1730s, including Fort de Chartres and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, the first European town in Missouri west of the Mississippi.〔Primm (1998), 5.〕〔Shepard (1870), 11.〕 From 1756 to 1760, fighting in the French and Indian War (the North American front of the Seven Years' War) halted settlement building. The economy remained weak through 1762 due to the ongoing war, in which Britain defeated France the following year.〔Foley (1983), 4.〕〔Primm (1998), 8.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of St. Louis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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