Did She Generally Decide? Women in Ste. Genevieve, 1750-1805

Abstract

H HISTORIANS have made few studies of women in the French colonies of North America or of women in the middle Mississippi Valley, the area known as the Illinois country. This article helps to fill the gap examining the experience of women in Ste. Genevieve, a French settlement on the west bank of the Mississippi River, about sixty miles south of St. Louis.' Travelers in the Illinois country noted favorable conditions enjoyed French women, whom one described as by no means prone to consider themselves in the light of goods and chattels of their liege-lords.2 In i8i i Henry Marie Brackenridge revisited the town where he had spent three