French Women and the Founding of Kansas City

Date Published: Apr 16

This program was co-presented by the Alliance Francaise de Kansas City, and Kansas City Athenaeum in honor of Women’s History Month, and as part of the Nuit des Idées in collaboration with Villa Albertine. It took place on March 30th and was presented by Pr Kathy Krause, Emerita Professor of French at UMKC.

The founding of Kansas City is attributed to men, such as François Chouteau, Gabriel Prudhomme, John McCoy, and the 14 investors who formed the Town Company in 1838, but the role of women in the city’s early development is often overlooked.

While Chouteau established a fur trading outpost of his family’s business, it was his wife Bérénice who encouraged other French speaking families, primarily fur trappers and their Native American wives, to settle in the area. Among them was Gabriel Prudhomme, whose lands would be purchased by the Town Company to establish the City of Kansas – but only after his widow, Josephine, and oldest daughter petitioned Jackson County Circuit Court to settle the estate.
In her presentation, Pr Kathy Krause examines how the French-speaking women who lived in “Chez les Canses” (village of the Kanza) – those of European ancestry, Native Americans, métis women, and enslaved African Americans – transformed the land at the confluence of the Kaw and Missouri rivers into a vibrant francophone community during the early decades of the 19^th century.
In the presentation, we discover how,

• Bérénice Ménard Chouteau (1801-1888), 
• Kah che qua, a Shawnee woman,
• Aimée Brichaut Guinotte (1823-1909).

You can find the slides of the presentation, on the Public Library website, here and listen to the presentation, on the Library presentation here