Qualla: Battle of St. Louis

Battle of St. Louis: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. The American Revolution came to the Mississippi River on a spring afternoon in 1780. The village of St. Louis -- a Franco-Spanish trading post of 700 souls on the west bank, governed by a Spanish captain named Fernando de Leyba -- was not an obvious military target. But British strategists in London had their eyes on the river corridor, and on May 26, a force of roughly two dozen Loyalist fur traders and an estimated 750 to 1,000 Indigenous warriors from the Sioux, Ojibwe, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and other nations descended on the little settlement. What they found was not the easy prize they expected. Leyba had built a tower, dug trenches, and mounted cannons. The Battle of St. Louis, also known as the Battle of Fort San Carlos, would effectively end British ambitions to control the upper Mississippi during the Revolutionary War.

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of St. Louis: A Desperate Fortification

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Larry Pieniazek, CC BY 2.5. Leyba had been warned. In late March 1780, a fur trader brought word that the British were recruiting Indigenous nations for an expedition against St. Louis and the nearby American post at Cahokia, Illinois. The lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana had an inexperienced militia ...

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Image: Larry Pieniazek | CC BY 2.5

Battle of St. Louis: The Defender from Sainte Genevieve

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Humberto Moreno, CC BY 2.0. With only 197 defenders against a force potentially five times their number, the odds looked grim. Leyba appealed to Francois Valle, a 64-year-old former captain of the French militia living 60 miles south at Sainte Genevieve. Valle responded by sending his two sons and 60 well-t...

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Image: Humberto Moreno | CC BY 2.0

Battle of St. Louis: Cannons and Treachery

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar E. Berninghaus (1874-1952); photo by uploader (User:Americasroof), Public domain. The British-allied force gathered at Prairie du Chien under the command of Emanuel Hesse, a former militia captain turned fur trader. Two hundred Sioux warriors led by Wapasha I formed the largest contingent, with additional companies of Ojibwe, Menominee, and Ho-Chunk. The diver...

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Image: Oscar E. Berninghaus (1874-1952); photo by uploader (User:Americasroof) | Public domain

Battle of St. Louis: The Aftermath on the River

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wapasha and the Sioux pressed the attack for several hours, attempting to draw the defenders out of their fortifications. They went so far as to kill captives they had taken in the surrounding fields in full view of the townspeople, but Leyba held firm, refusing to authorize a so...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0