History of Kansas City

Fort Détroit, he had deserted his post as commander of the fort and was avoiding the French authorities. Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in the Missouri village about 90 miles (140 km) east near Brunswick, Missouri, and illegally traded furs.

In order to clear his name, he wrote "Exact Description of Louisiana, of Its Harbors, Lands and Rivers, and Names of the Indian Tribes That Occupy It, and the Commerce and Advantages to Be Derived Therefrom for the Establishment of a Colony" in 1713 followed in 1714 by "The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River." In the documents he describes the junction of the "Grande Riv[ière] des Cansez" and Missouri River, being the first to refer to them by those names. French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the first reasonably accurate map of the area.

The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris (1763), but were not to play a major role in the area other than taxing and licensing all traffic on the Missouri River. The French continued their fur trade on the river under Spanish license. The Chouteau family operated under the Spanish license at St. Louis in the lower Missouri Valley as early as 1765, but it would be 1821 before the Chouteaus reached Kansas City, when François Chouteau established Chouteau's Landing.

After the Louisiana Purchase, in 1804, Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, noting it was a good place to build a fort.

In 1831 a group of Mormons from New York settled in an area that would later be part of Kansas City. They built the first school within the current boundaries of the city, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833 and their settlement was left vacant.

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