Henri Chatillon

In the early days of adventurers and trailblazers, a man named Pierre Laclede Liguest set up a fur trading center that would soon become the "Gateway to the West".....St. Louis.

And while the fur traders thrived in the booming town on the Mississippi River, one hunter and trapper in particular stood out....Henri Chatillon, a hunter for the American Fur Company and a guide to western wilderness.

Chatillon, a native St. Louisan, became and American legend after acting as a guide for historian Francis Parkman, Jr.   He is immortalized in Parkman's 1849 best seller, "The Organ Trail", as a "true-hearted friend" with a "keen perception of character."

Chatillon's first wife was a Sioux Indian squaw named Bear Robe, the daughter of the powerful Oglala Sioux Chief Bull Bear.  Bear Robe never came to St. Louis to stay with Chatillon. She died when she was quite young while Chatillon was out West with Parkman in 1846.

In October 1848, Chatillon married wealthy widow Odile Delor Lux, who also was his cousin.  Prior to the marriage, Lux had purchased 21 acres of land in the City Commons area of St Louis at $26 per acres.  Chatillon built a four room brick farmhouse on five of those acres, which formed the original portion of the Mansion.

Henri Chatillon is equated in the minds of many Americans with the image of the gentleman pioneer, a hero combining the manners of a man well-born with the enterprise and courage of a true explorer. Chatillon achieved this notoriety in The Oregon Trail, the famous book by Francis Parkman describing his personal experience during a trip through western America.

When we were at St. Louis, several gentlemen of the Fur Company had kindly offered to procure for us a hunter and guide suited for our purposes, and coming one afternoon to the office, we found there a tall and exceedingly well-dressed man, with a face so open and frank that it attracted our notice at once...His age was about thirty, he was six' feet high, and very powerfully and gracefully molded. The prairies had been his school; he could neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement and delicacy of mind, such as is rare even in women. Henry had not the restless energy of an Anglo-American. He was content to take things as he found them; and his chief fault arose from an excess of easy generosity not conducive to thriving in the world. Yet it was commonly remarked of him, that whatever he might choose to do with what belonged to him self the property of others was always safe in his hands. His bravery was as much celebrated in the mountains as his skill in hunting; but it is characteristic of him that in a country where the rifle is the chief arbiter between man and man, he was very seldom involved in quarrels. He was proof of what unaided nature will sometimes do. I have never, in the city or in the wilderness met a better man than my true-hearted friend, Henry Chatillon. (Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail.) Chatillon lived in Carondelet, a French town five miles south of St. Louis.

Married first to an Indian woman who died in the mid-1840's, he married Odile Del or Lux in 1848. Mme. Lux was the granddaughter of Clement Del or de Treget, a French military officer who founded Carondelet in 1771 at which time it was officially separated from the St. Louis commons. There was contact between the two towns; the trappers and mountain men of Carondelet, did most of their business with the Laclede-Chouteau operation in St. Louis. Chatillon was one of these men from Carondelet, and it was his St. Louis contacts who provided him with his introduction to Parkman.

Before Mme. Lux married Chatillon, she had purchased from the city of St. Louis five acres running between the present Seventh and Thirteenth Streets.

(Her reason for purchasing outside of Carondelet is not known.) By 1849, there was a house on the property. Some date the house Chatillon built as 1842; b if so, it could not have been constructed on the land bought by Mme. Lux. One source mentions that he had a house in Carondelet which is now part of the DeMenil House. If this were the case, it could have been built in 1842 and moved to its present location in 1849. The house was a simple, two storied brick structure with four rooms. According to one source, it had a one-slope roof which was a very common feature of early domestic architecture throughout the St. Louis area. However, in looking at an overlapping elevation, the house does not display this feature.

For some reason, the Chatilion's sold three acres of land in 1850 and in 1855, they sold the remaining land, including the house, to Nicholas DeMenil and Eugene Miltenberger.