François Saucier

In 1799, Spanish Lieutenant-Governor Don Zenon Trudeau picked François Saucier to establish a settlement at Portage des Sioux, a strategic part of the St. Charles district. Born near Fort de Chartres in 1740, Saucier had gained the trust of the Creoles living on the American side of the Mississippi, and many settled at Portage des Sioux at his invitation. The area is said to be so named because the Sioux used the portage to avoid a Missouria ambush. Saucier remained commandant until the transfer the upper Louisiana Territory just days before writing to Clark (see 9 March 1804). He died 6 August 1821 in Portage des Sioux and is said to have fathered twenty-two children.^[1]Louis Houck, A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements until the Admission of the State into the Union (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1908), 2:88–89.

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• March 23, 1804 -

  At winter camp across the Mississippi above St. Louis, the man sent up the river to check the status of a Kickapoo war party returns with a letter from François Saucier, the commander of Portage des Sioux.