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Local business leaders, politicians, experts and scientists.All are fair game on KRCU's Going Public.Join us for interviews and features that matter to you on KRCU's Going Public.

Going Public: Exhibit Highlights Ste. Genevieve Militia's Ties to 1780 Battle at St. Louis Fort

 

Woods: We're talking today with Robbie Pratte. He is Director of Museum Operations at the Center for French Colonial Life in Ste. Genevieve. He's here to tell us about their new exhibit titled "Saving St. Louis: The Ste. Genevieve Militia and the Battle of Fort San Carlos." Robbie, welcome to the program.

Pratte: Well thanks for having me, Dan. I appreciate it.

Woods: Good to have you here. Before we talk about the specific exhibit, tell us about the French Center there, the FCA and about your campus.

Pratte: Well, the sort of grander name we have for our campus is very imaginative, it's the Center for French Colonial Life Museum Campus. FCA stands for French Colonial America. That is the group that owns and operates the campuses now.

Originally this campus started out as The Bolduc House Museum. A lot of people know our site as that name. And originally it was just the one building that you could tour and it was originally founded by the National Society of the Colonial Themes of America in the State of Missouri. In the forties and fifties they were doing the restoration work on the Bolduc House and opened the museum then. And then slowly they added the LeMeiilleur House which is the second tour house. So, when you take a guided tour at our site you'll see both of those houses. And then they added on in 2012 and 2013 an exhibit facility and two more houses. We ended up having this larger campus that took up most of a city block.

The exhibit facility was originally a bank building that we renovated and turned into this sort of welcome center for our campus. There are other sites in Ste. Genevieve that you can see and tour but seeing as we had so many different buildings that you could go to and interact with historians and interpreters at, we felt the need to have a larger sort of campus hub. So we moved our offices and gift shops into there and essentially there's two exhibit spaces and we rotate exhibits in and out and that building opened up in 2018. We call it "The Center" for short and this new exhibit is one we've been working on for about two or three years now and as you mentioned it's called "Saving St. Louis" and it is truly the story of the 1780 Revolutionary War battle that happened in St. Louis. Almost nobody knows about it and we explore the Ste. Genevieve militia's role in that exhibit.

Woods: Why is the story not known do you think?

Pratte: Well, you know, there are a lot of different thoughts and speculation about it. In general the French story of Missouri is not something that's told on a grand scale. There is that old addage that the victors get to write history and the story of America is very much the east coast colonies and Spain and France and New France and Canada and everything else sort of gets...I hate to say the word whitewashed...but it sort of gets glossed over very quickly.

When I was in school the French story of Missouri was maybe a one day history lesson about the Louisiana Purchase. And then eventually I think in high school at some point there was touched on the French settling in Canada. And then in college I think I actually did take a class that discussed that a little bit further but it's something that just doesn't get told. And especially in Missouri so much attention goes to the Irish and German heritage that it is almost French in name only. People sort of forget the story and the culture that's still very present. You see fleur-de-lis everywhere but nobody knows what it is or what it means or why it's there. So, I don't think there's an easy answer to your question about why it's not talked about and why it's forgotten. I think that just in time smaller things get lost to the big picture.

Woods: What can you tell us about this exhibit? If we come to see it what are we going to see?

Pratte: Well, as I mentioned this is one we've been working on for a while and we're pretty proud of it. So, I'll give you the Readers Digest version of the history of the event. Essentially in 1780, the British and their allies, which is essentially several different Native American tribes, tried to take control of the Mississippi River Valley. And they start by attacking St. Louis and Cahokia first and the idea is that they'll take those strongholds and then they'll sort of leapfrog their way down the river to take control of that territory. Now, some scouts discovered this, found word and they made the commandant in St. Louis -- at the time we're under Spanish control. So, it's a really interesting story. We're French people under Spanish control and we've got wind of the British coming to try to take over the area.

So, the commandant sends word out to areas surrounding St. Louis to try to get some more troops in and he very quickly builds a Spanish-style stone tower fort. They were able to get some cannons from the surrounding areas to put on top of the fort. And in a very quick amount of time they fortified St. Louis and dug these entrenchments around the city. And specifically Ste. Genevieve, you know since we're centered right here in Downtown Ste. Gen we really wanted to highlight Ste. Genevieve's role. And just over 300 men fought at this battle and 60 of them were Ste. Genevieve militia members. They really did have a huge impact.

Now the invading force, the numbers aren't known exactly, but it's estimated to be around 700 attacked St. Louis and there was a subsequent attack going on at Cahokia the same time with around another 300 or so. So, there was about 1,000 on the British side coming to attack St. Louis and like I said about 700 of those attacked St. Louis specifically and only 300 defending it. So, it was -- the odds are against them. So for 60 men to come from Ste. Genevieve, we firmly believe that really sort of helped with the outcome. And in fact they were able to fight off the British they did thwart this attempt and we really sort of highlight the Ste. Gen militia's role and the men who fought at this battle and who made the decision to come up not only out of fielty to the area and to the king but we live in such a sterile society, nobody gets their hands dirty anymore. You scrape your knee and you immediately put antibiotic ointment and some kind of cream to prevent a scar. What a Greek tragedy it would be if you had a scar from scraping your knee. An event like this is not going to be quick and peaceful it's going to be bloody and horrific and these men were essentially defending their fellow villagers. Because if St. Louis falls, it's going to come down to Ste. Genevieve. So, these men were not only out of like I said fielty, they're defending their loved ones, their friends and their neighbors. What a way to celebrate that especially with Memorial Day being so close to the opening of this exhibit.

Woods: You said it took a couple of years to put this together. Was that research? Why did it take so long to get it all put together?

Pratte: Oh yeah it is research, it's planning and eventually it's interesting...we initially did start out looking at the Ste. Genevieve role in this battle and then it slowly started to grow and become a larger exhibit about the American Revolutionary War in the west and a few months back we sort of paused and realized that this exhibit has grown beyond the size of our building...we can't house it. There was just too much content. So we decided to scale it back down again and bring it back to that original story about the Ste. Genevieve Militia helping to defend St. Louis. I guess to answer your question, it was a lot of research, a lot of planning and trying to be meticulous and efficient with what we're doing.

This building is relatively new and this is the fourth temporary exhibit that we've had in this building. So we're churning out about an exhibit every year and we wanted to really take our time and plan this one out, out of respect and awe for the story because it is such a fascinating story we wanted to make sure it's here for a little while. So we wanted to take our time.

Woods: We're just about out of time. Tell us how for folks who want to come see it, the hours and how they can take advantage of this opportunity and how long's it's going to be available to be viewed.

Pratte: Our campus is open Thursday - Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. When you come to our site you can see this exhibit, it's $5.00 for an adult and $3.00 for students (Kindergarten - Senior in High School). On top of that we do offer guided tours of the Bolduc and LeMeiilleur houses every day. Those are $10.00 for adults and $5.00 for students. And then on top of that we are frequently open and involved with town events and festivals and we often hold our own events and festivals as well. Earlier today I was planning one of our events for November called "Pecanapalooza Street Festival" and we also host a lecture series and a lot of different presentations during the summer. We have a really cool werewolf event in October called "Night of the Werewolf" that's really neat. We have militia hunting werewolves at night on the campus and you take candlelit tours of the houses and there is werewolf stories and campfires and s'mores and it's a lot of fun.

Dan is a 1994 graduate of Southeast Missouri State University. He majored in radio and minored in political science. He spent three of his four years at Southeast working as a student announcer at KRCU – the beginning of his radio career.