"The year was 1804. In the little French Creole village of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, where the brothers Auguste Pierre and Pierre (Cadet) Chouteau were the leading figures, there was great uncertainty about the future. Nevertheless, the Chouteaus and all of St. Louis welcomed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as the two men prepared for their spring voyage up the Missouri River to explore the new lands and search for a route to the Pacific Ocean." "Before Lewis and Clark is the saga of the Chouteaus, the dynasty that guarded the gates to the West for three generations. From St. Louis, founded by the family four decades before the arrival of Lewis and Clark, the Chouteaus built fortunes as land speculators, financiers, Indian agents, and, above all, fur traders. The Chouteaus conquered the more-than-two-thousand-mile length of the Missouri River, put down the first European roots at the future site of Kansas City and in present-day Oklahoma, and left their names and imprints on lands stretching to the Canadian border."--Jacket.