Chez Les Canses or "Chouteau's" Historical Marker

Chez les Cansès was the first permanently inhabited white settlement in what is now Kansas City. It was a French speaking village and it never grew bigger than a few dozen families. The inhabitants of the village were involved in farming and the fur trade through various Chouteau led trading posts along the Missouri and Kansas rivers. In 1844, the village was completely wiped out by a flood.

Chez les Cansès, or Village of the Kansa, was a small French speaking village first settled as early as 1799. This was the first permanent settlement of White people in the Kansas City area, as it was previously inhabited by Native Americans. The town was not like the trade posts and forts set up by traders like the Chouteau's that exploited the fur trade in the region. Rather, Chez les Cansès was a small and destitute farming village made up of settlers seeking new lives away from the Illinois territories and Acadia in Canada. Many of the villages men were known to have relationships with Native American women and had mixed raced children together. This was a common practice, especially among French settlers. The village was only ever populated by around one hundred people.

By 1821, Francois Chouteau (known as the "Father of Kansas City" and his business partners, including his brother Cyprian, began leading the fur trade in the area around modern day Kansas City, and many of the village’s inhabitants would get involved in the lucrative trade. The Missouri and Kansas Rivers had been prone to flooding and Chez les Cansès survived several floods, including one in 1826 that destroyed one of Francois Chouteau’s trading posts. The village was completely washed away in the flood of 1844.

The text of this historical marker reads as follows:

Beginning around 1799, French-speaking traders and farmers moved up-river from the French settlements in the Illinois country, around Ft. Chartres, St. Louis, Kaskaskia and St. Genevieve and from Three Rivers in Canada, and settled at Randolph Bluffs near the Chouteau Bridge to the east, and the "French Bottoms" to the West which now comprise the Central Industrial District. The little enclave at Kawsmouth was entirely French-speaking until 1840 and was strung out in little "arpent" (Paris acre) or strip farms on either side of Turkey Creek (now covered over) in the bottom land to the West below this marker, and around to the east along the bank of the Missouri. A few families clustered around the French church of St. Francis Regis on present Quality Hill. The French were comfortable but somewhat impecunious, and an early priest jokingly called the community "Nouveau Vide Poche" (New Empty Pockets), a rather unflattering comparison with poverty stricken Carondelet on the Mississippi. A French map of 1840 listed 24 French families along Turkey Creek and down the bank of the river to the East. A local priest said that on a clear night you could hear the French fiddlers playing and the French songs wafting up from the French Bottoms during the balls and "bouillons" the French loved to hold. The great flood of 1844 totally eradicated the French community in the bottoms, and the priest said that all that remained of the French farms were their little clearings back from the creek, and that the sounds of the birds and squirrels replaced the fiddles and chansons and laughter of the French.

Chez Les Canses or "Chouteau's", The Historical Marker Database. Accessed July 28th, 2022. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=86212.

Chez les Canses: Chouteau's Town Before Kansas City, The New Santa Fe Trailer. July 31st, 2019. Accessed August 8th, 2022. https://newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com/2019/07/chez-les-canses-chouteaus-town-before.html.

Euston, Diane. Chez les Canses - Chouteau's Town Before Kansas City, Martin City Telegraph. July 8th, 2019. Accessed August 15th, 2022. https://martincitytelegraph.com/2019/07/08/chez-les-canses-chouteaus-town-before-kansas-city/.