Early history Archaeological excavations along river valleys have shown continuous habitation since about 9000 BCE. Beginning before 1000
CE, the people of the
Mississippian culture created regional political centers at present-day
St. Louis and across the
Mississippi River at
Cahokia, near present-day
Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences. Still, they are known for their surviving massive
earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in
platform,
ridgetop and
conical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the
Great Lakes to the
Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast and the upper river. The land that became the state of Missouri was part of numerous different territories, possessed changing and often indeterminate borders, and had many different
Native American and European names between the 1600s and statehood. For much of the first half of the 1700s, the west bank of the
Mississippi River that would become Missouri was mostly uninhabited, something of a no man's land that kept peace between the
Illinois on the east bank of the Mississippi River and to the North, and the Osage and Missouri Indians of the lower Missouri Valley. In the early 1700s, French traders and missionaries explored the whole of the Mississippi Valley, and named the region "Louisiana". Around the same time, a different group of French Canadians established five villages on the east bank of the Mississippi River and identified their settlements as being in le pays des Illinois, "the country of the Illinois". When settlers of
French Canadian descent began crossing the Mississippi River to establish settlements such as Ste. Genevieve, they continued to identify their settlements as being in the Illinois Country. At the same time, the French settlements on both sides of the Mississippi River were part of the French province of
Louisiana. To distinguish the settlements in the Middle Mississippi Valley from French settlements in the lower Mississippi Valley around New Orleans, French officials and inhabitants referred to the Middle Mississippi Valley as La Haute Louisiane, "The High Louisiana", or "Upper Louisiana". '' by Missouri painter
George Caleb Bingham The first European settlers were mostly ethnic
French Canadians, who created their first settlement in Missouri at present-day
Ste. Genevieve, about south of St. Louis. They had migrated in about 1750 from the
Illinois Country. They came from colonial villages on the east side of the Mississippi River, where soils were becoming exhausted and there was insufficient river bottom land for the growing population. The early Missouri
settlements included many enslaved Africans and Native Americans, and slave labor was central to both commercial agriculture and the fur trade. Sainte-Geneviève became a thriving agricultural center, producing enough surplus wheat,
corn and tobacco to ship tons of grain annually downriver to Lower Louisiana for trade. Grain production in the Illinois Country was critical to the survival of Lower Louisiana and especially the city of New Orleans. St. Louis was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders
Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent,
Pierre Laclède, and
Auguste Chouteau. From 1764 to 1803, European control of the area west of the Mississippi to the northernmost part of the Missouri River basin, called Louisiana, was assumed by the Spanish as part of the Viceroyalty of
New Spain, due to
Treaty of Fontainebleau (in order to have Spain join with France in the war against England). The arrival of the Spanish in St. Louis was in September 1767. St. Louis became the center of a regional
fur trade with Native American tribes that extended up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, dominating the regional economy for decades. Trading partners of major firms shipped their furs from St. Louis by river down to New Orleans for export to Europe. They provided a variety of goods to traders for sale and trade with their Native American clients. The fur trade and associated businesses made St. Louis an early financial center and provided the wealth for some to build fine houses and import luxury items. Its location near the confluence of the Illinois River meant it also handled produce from the agricultural areas. River traffic and trade along the Mississippi were integral to the state's economy. As the area's first major city, St. Louis expanded greatly after the invention of the
steamboat and the increased river trade.
19th century around 1803 overlaid over the current American states that it encompassed. Part of the 1803
Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname
Gateway to the West because it served as a significant departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West during the 19th century.
St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the
Lewis and Clark Expedition, which ascended the Missouri River in 1804, to explore the western lands to the Pacific Ocean. For decades,
St. Louis was a major supply point for parties of settlers heading west. Missouri was historically a Southern state. As many of the early settlers in western and southeastern Missouri migrated from the
Upper South including
Kentucky,
Tennessee, and
Virginia, they brought enslaved
African Americans as agricultural laborers, and they desired to continue their culture and the institution of
slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the
Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled
plantation agriculture and became known as "
Little Dixie". The state was rocked by the
1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. Casualties were few due to the sparse population.
Admission as a state in 1821 became unorganized territory. In 1821, the former Missouri Territory was admitted as a
slave state, under the
Missouri Compromise, and with a temporary state capital in St. Charles. In 1826, the
capital was shifted to its permanent location of
Jefferson City, also on the Missouri River. Originally the state's western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, the point where the
Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. In 1836 the
Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about to Virginia's 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia). In the early 1830s,
Mormon migrants from northern states and Canada began settling near
Independence and areas just north of there. Conflicts over religion and slavery arose between the 'old settlers' (mainly from the South) and the Mormons (mainly from the North). The
Mormon War erupted in 1838. By 1839, with the help of an "Extermination Order" by Governor
Lilburn Boggs, the old settlers forcibly expelled the Mormons from Missouri and confiscated their lands. Conflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. From 1838 to 1839, a border dispute with
Iowa over the so-called
Honey Lands resulted in both states' calling-up of
militias along the border. With increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s, Missouri's population almost doubled with every decade. Most newcomers were American-born and Southern, but many later arrivals were Northern migrants as well as Irish and German immigrants who arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. A growing
Catholic majority established its own institutional infrastructure, altering the religious landscape of the historically
Protestant state. Many settled in cities, creating a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. 19th-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis. While many German immigrants were strongly anti-slavery, many Irish immigrants living in cities were pro-slavery, fearing that liberating African-American slaves would create a glut of unskilled labor, driving wages down. In order to control the flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, the state had completed construction of of
levees along the river by 1860.
American Civil War in the
Trans-Mississippi Theater, 1864 After the secession of Southern states began in 1861, the Missouri legislature called for the election of a special convention on secession. This convention voted against secession, but also qualified their support of the Union. In the aftermath of
Battle of Fort Sumter Pro-Southern Governor
Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia who had gathered in a camp in
St. Louis for training. In secret, he also requested Confederate arms and artillery to help take the
St. Louis Arsenal. Alarmed at this action, and discovering the Confederate aid, General
Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon directed his soldiers, largely non-English-speaking German
immigrants, to march the prisoners through the streets, and this led to riot by pro-secession citizens. While it is disputed how it started, this riot led to violence and Union soldiers killed by St. Louis civilians. The event as a whole, is called the
Camp Jackson Affair. These events sharpened the divisions within the state. Governor Jackson appointed
Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new
Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon's rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital of
Jefferson City on June 14, 1861. In
Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session to call for secession. However, the elected legislative body was split between pro-Union and pro-Confederate. As such, few of the pro-unionist attended the session called in Neosho, and the ordinance of secession was quickly adopted. The Confederacy recognized Missouri secession on October 30, 1861. With the elected governor absent from the capital and the legislators largely dispersed, the state convention was reassembled with most of its members present, save twenty who fled south with Jackson's forces. The convention declared all offices vacant and installed
Hamilton Gamble as the new governor of Missouri. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government as the legal Missouri government. The federal government's decision enabled raising pro-Union militia forces for service within the state and volunteer regiments for the Union Army. Fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's Missouri State Guard and Confederate troops from
Arkansas and Texas under General
Ben McCulloch. After winning victories at the
battle of Wilson's Creek and the siege of
Lexington, Missouri and suffering losses elsewhere, the Confederate forces retreated to Arkansas and later
Marshall, Texas, in the face of a largely reinforced Union Army. Though regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of
guerrilla warfare. "Citizen soldiers" or insurgents such as Captain
William Quantrill,
Frank and
Jesse James, the
Younger brothers, and
William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Historians have portrayed stories of the James brothers' outlaw years as an American "Robin Hood" myth. The vigilante activities of the
Bald Knobbers of the Ozarks in the 1880s were an unofficial continuation of insurgent mentality long after the official end of the war, and they are a favorite theme in
Branson's self-image.
Reconstruction and later 19th century in St. Louis was the world's largest and busiest train station when it opened in 1894. Missouri remained electorally competitive during the
Jim Crow era, and did not disenfranchise African Americans, who comprised less than 10% of the state's population from 1870 to 1960. In particular, Missouri never implemented a
poll tax as a requirement to vote. However, Missouri did enact racial segregation. Democratic President
Harry S. Truman grew up in Missouri, where segregation was practiced and largely accepted. Truman would later issue
Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, prohibiting racial segregation in the armed forces.
20th century , 1910 The
Progressive Era (1890s to 1920s) saw numerous prominent leaders from Missouri trying to end corruption and modernize politics, government, and society.
Joseph "Holy Joe" Folk was a key leader who made a strong appeal to the middle class and rural evangelical Protestants. Folk was elected governor as a progressive reformer and
Democrat in the
1904 election. He promoted what he called "the Missouri Idea", the concept of Missouri as a leader in public morality through popular control of law and strict enforcement. He successfully conducted antitrust prosecutions, ended free railroad passes for state officials, extended bribery statutes, improved election laws, required formal registration for lobbyists, made racetrack gambling illegal and enforced the Sunday-closing law. He helped enact Progressive legislation, including an initiative and referendum provision, regulation of elections, education, employment and child labor, railroads, food, business, and public utilities. Several efficiency-oriented examiner boards and commissions were established during Folk's administration, including many agricultural boards and the Missouri library commission. was raised in
Laclede, Missouri. Between the Civil War and the end of World War II, Missouri transitioned from a rural southern state to a hybrid industrial-service-agricultural midwestern state as the Midwest rapidly industrialized and expanded into Missouri. The expansion of railroads to the West transformed Kansas City into a major transportation hub within the nation, and led to major Midwestern migration after the war overtaking the state's original Southern population. The growth of the Texas cattle industry along with this increased rail infrastructure and the invention of the
refrigerated boxcar also made Kansas City a major
meatpacking center, as large
cattle drives from Texas brought herds of cattle to
Dodge City and other Kansas towns. There, the cattle were loaded onto trains destined for Kansas City, where they were butchered and distributed to the eastern markets. The first half of the 20th century was the height of Kansas City's prominence, and its downtown became a showcase for stylish
Art Deco skyscrapers as construction boomed. In 1930, there was a
diphtheria epidemic in the area around Springfield, which killed approximately 100 people. Serum was rushed to the area, and medical personnel stopped the epidemic. shack,
New Madrid County, 1938 During the mid-1950s and 1960s, St. Louis and Kansas City suffered deindustrialization and loss of jobs in railroads and manufacturing, as did other
Midwestern industrial cities.
St. Charles claims to be the site of the first
interstate highway project in 1956. Such highway construction made it easy for middle-class residents to leave the city for newer housing developed in the suburbs, often former farmland where land was available at lower prices. These major cities have gone through decades of readjustment to develop different economies and adjust to demographic changes. Suburban areas have developed separate job markets, both in knowledge industries and services, such as major retail malls.
21st century In 2014, Missouri received national attention for the
protests and riots that followed the
shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer of
Ferguson, which led Governor
Jay Nixon to call out the
Missouri National Guard. A
grand jury declined to
indict the officer, and the
U.S. Department of Justice concluded, after careful investigation, that the police officer legitimately feared for his safety. However, in a separate investigation, the Department of Justice also found that the Ferguson Police Department and the City of Ferguson relied on unconstitutional practices in order to balance the city's budget through racially motivated excessive fines and punishments, that the Ferguson police "had used excessive and dangerous force and had disproportionately targeted blacks," and that the municipal court "emphasized revenue over public safety, leading to routine breaches of citizens' constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law."
A series of student protests at the
University of Missouri against what the protesters viewed as poor response by the administration to racist incidents on campus began in September 2015. On June 7, 2017, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a warning to prospective African-American travelers to Missouri. This is the first NAACP warning ever covering an entire state. According to a 2018 report by the
Missouri Attorney General's office, for the past 18 years, "African Americans, Hispanics and other people of color are disproportionately affected by stops, searches and arrests." The same report found that the biggest discrepancy was in 2017, when "black motorists were 85% more likely to be pulled over in traffic stops". In 2018, the USDA announced its plans to relocate Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City. They have since decided on a specific location in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. With the addition of the KC Streetcar project and construction of the Sprint Center Arena, the downtown area in KC has attracted investment in new offices, hotels, and residential complexes. Both Kansas City and St. Louis are undergoing a rebirth in their downtown areas with the addition of the new Power & Light (KC) and Ballpark Village (STL) districts and the renovation of existing historical buildings in each downtown area. The 2019 announcement of an MLS expansion team in St. Louis is driving even more development in the downtown west area of St. Louis. Kansas City has experienced a boom in population, with new developments such as Three Light apartments being centered in
Downtown Kansas City, as well as suburban development in the
Northland. ==Geography==