America at 250: Battle of St. Louis marked Revolutionary War’s only clash west of the Mississippi

The main source for this information is an article written by Stephen L. Kling Jr. that appears on the website of the Missouri Society Sons of the American Revolution.

Although most Revolutionary War battles were fought in the original 13 American colonies, one notable skirmish during the conflict occurred just a few miles downriver from Alton.

The Battle of St. Louis, also known as the Battle of Fort San Carlos, took place on May 26, 1780, pitting Native Americans allied with the British against a hodge-podge of French and Spanish colonists defending the young city. It was the only Revolutionary War battle to occur west of the Mississippi River.

St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French colonists who came up the Mississippi from New Orleans. The French settled in a number of spots on both sides of the river, including Cape Girardeau and Ste. Genevieve in Missouri, as well as Kaskaskia and Cahokia in Illinois.

But in 1762, the Spanish took control of the vast area that the French had named Louisiana under the terms of a treaty that ended the Seven Years’ War. The Spanish established their authority in St. Louis in the late 1760s.

Shortly after the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775 in and around Boston, the French and Spanish began aiding the American colonists in their struggle against the British, longtime adversaries of both France and Spain. France’s contributions to the American cause are well-known, especially the efforts of the Marquis de Lafayette, but Spain’s role in the war gets little publicity.

Mississippi River marked war's western frontier

In 1778, American Gen. George Rogers Clark of Virginia opened the war in the West by attacking and capturing the British fort at Kaskaskia. In early 1779, Clark led an expedition from Kaskaskia across Southern Illinois to capture another British fort near present-day Vincennes, Indiana.

Those defeats alerted British leaders to the importance of controlling what then was the western frontier of America. So in 1780, Patrick Sinclair, the military governor at Fort Michilimackinac in present-day Michigan, urged Loyalist fur traders to organize Native American tribes for an expedition against St. Louis. About two dozen fur traders and an estimated 750 to 1,000 Indian warriors left Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin on May 2, 1780, under the command of Emanuel Hesse, a former militia captain turned fur trader.

About 200 Sioux warriors made up the largest contingent from one tribe, but fighters from the Ojibwe, Menonimee and Ho-Chunk nations also came along under the leadership of the Ojibwe chief Matchekewis as the force made its way in canoes down the Mississippi. At Rock Island, they were joined by about 250 men from the Sauk and Meskwaki nations.

The village of St. Louis was governed by Lt. Gov. Fernando de Leyba, a captain in the Spanish army, who was warned by a fur trader about the British plan to attack. With little time to prepare, he oversaw the construction of a round tower, about 30 to 40 feet high, that gave a commanding view of the area outside the village. It was named Fort San Carlos.

Trenches were dug to form a defensive perimeter. Five heavy cannons were set up in the tower, with smaller cannons and swivel guns distributed in the trenches. Leyba had 310 men under his command, most of them militia.

At the same time, George Rogers Clark and a small company from his Illinois Regiment of Virginia fortified the French village of Cahokia, a few miles east of St. Louis, repairing a large stone building at the mission that was called Fort Bowman. Clark himself arrived there a few days before the attack; he was able to meet with Leyba to discuss their strategy.

Fort proves decisive in defeat of British, Indian allies

The British and Indians landed their canoes on May 25 near what now would be the Bremen neighborhood of North St. Louis. Hesse decided to attack the following day. About 750 of the Indians would attack Fort San Carlos, while some 200 warriors, mostly Chippewa, would attack Cahokia.

The battle began about 1 p.m. on May 26, with the British and Indians charging the entrenchments around St. Louis. They were met by cannon fire from the tower and musket fire from the earthworks. Free Black inhabitants of the town assisted in the defense. A number of townspeople were caught in their farm fields outside of the defenses when the attack began, and they made up the majority of the casualties.

After about two hours of fighting, the Indians retreated, effectively ending the battle. The cannon fire from the tower, in particular, apparently surprised and intimidated the Indian attackers. They later referred to Fort San Carlos as the “House of Thunder.”

Leyba tallied 21 dead and six wounded, with 25 people taken prisoner. Another 46 people were captured along the Mississippi River before and after the attack. The British and Indians reportedly suffered fewer than 10 casualties overall. Leyba himself, who had been severely ill during the battle, died the next month.

At Cahokia, the attackers also failed to breach the defenses. Clark’s men and the militia, numbering about 200 to 250, were assisted by some 45 Kaskaskia warriors. The British reported they had killed four of the defenders and taken five prisoners.

Battle secures western frontier for Americans

The British forces retreated up the Mississippi the next day, taking about 70 prisoners with them, and destroying crops and killing livestock along the way.  Militia cavalrymen from St. Louis and Cahokia pursued the Indians up the Mississippi and also up the Illinois River to the vicinity of present-day Chicago. The combined French, Spanish and American forces, in turn, attacked and burned some Indian villages, especially those belonging to the Sac and Fox tribes.

Chastened by their defeat, a number of Sac and Fox chiefs later returned to St. Louis to surrender their British peace medals and flags; they accepted Spanish medals and flags in their place to signify their new allegiance to Britain’s enemies. Almost all of the captives were returned to St. Louis by the end of the war in 1783.

Although the Battle of St. Louis was relatively small compared to the major battles along the Atlantic Coast, it effectively denied the British control over the Mississippi River Valley, paving the way for the Americans to move westward after the war’s end.

Fort San Carlos was located at the present-day corner of Fourth and Walnut streets in downtown St. Louis, where a plaque was placed by the Sons of the American Revolution to commemorate the battle. The remains of the tower underlie the present-day Ballpark Village adjacent to Busch Stadium.