ring his rights. This second misfortune came upon
him some time after the period of which we are now writing.

Meantime Colonel Boone found his residence in Missouri agreeable, and in
every respect congenial to his habits and tastes. His duties as Syndic
were light; and he was allowed ample time for the cultivation of his
land, and for occasional tours of hunting, in which he so greatly
delighted. Trapping beaver was another of his favorite pursuits, and
in this new country he found abundance of this as well as other species
of game.

A greater part of the people of Missouri were emigrants from the
United States, pioneers of the West, who had already resisted Indian
aggressions, and were welcomed by the French and Spanish settlers as
a clear accession to their military strength,

A brief notice of the history of this State, showing how the different
kinds of population came there, will be not inappropriate in this place.

Though the French were the first settlers, and for a long time the
principal inhabitants of Missouri, yet a very small portion of her
present population is of that descent. A fort was built by that people
as early as 1719, near the site of the present capital, called Fort
Orleans, and its lead mines worked to some extent the next year. St.
Genevieve, the oldest town in the State, was settled in 1755, and St.
Louis in 1764. At the treaty of 1763 it was assigned, with all the
territory west of the Mississippi, to Spain. "In 1780, St. Louis was
besieged and attacked by a body of British troops and Indians, fifteen
hundred and forty strong." During the siege, sixty of the French were
killed. The siege was raised by Colonel George Rogers Clark, who came
with five hundred men to the relief of the place. At the close of the
American Revolution, the territory west of the Mississippi remained with
Spain till it was ceded to France, in 1801. In 1803, at the purchase of
Louisiana, it came into the possession of the United States, and formed
part of the territory of Louisiana, until the formation of the State
of that name in 1812, when the remainder of the territory was named
Missouri, from which (after a stormy debate in Congress as to the
admission of slavery) was separated the present State of Missouri in
1721.[59]

The office of Syndic, to which Colonel Boone had been appointed, is
similar to that of justice of the peace under our own government: but it
is more extensive, as combining military with civil