• Plaque to George Drouillard, chief hunter on the Lewis & Clark Expedition was the nephew of Louis Lorimier.

• Cottonwood tree from a seed of a cottonwood tree on the Missouri River there at the time of Lewis & Clark.

• The original house stood on the parking lot of the church across the street. It was destroyed in 1850 by a huge tornado that also destroyed the church. The church was of course rebuilt, but the Red House was not. Lorimier's heirs donated the land where the house stood to the Catholic Church.

• This building is an interpretation of the house where Lorimier and his family lived and was constructed for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial commemorated in 2003.

• The place where The Red House stands today would have been in the river in 1803.

• The mural at the back of the house shows what the Mississippi River would have looked like in 1803 when Lewis & Clark stopped by.

• The gardens on the north side of the house show the types of garden you might have seen in 1803 with flowers, vegetables, cooking herbs, and medicinal herbs.

• The Red House Interpretive Center is built in the French Colonial style with vertical logs like the houses in Ste Genevieve.

The Red House Interpretive Center has three rooms to visit—The Lorimier Room decorated in a way that the Lorimier home might have looked; the Trading Post constructed to look like Lorimier’s real trading post stocked with items from Lorimier's inventory list ; and the Girardot Room which shows what life was like in 1803 in the Old Cape Girardeau District when Meriwether Lewis & William Clark stopped here on November 23, 1803. It also tells about the four members of the Lewis & Clark Expedition who returned here to settle after the expedition.

Lorimier Room

Pierre Louis (loo-ee) de Lorimier(Lor-ah-mee-ay) and his growing family came to what is now called Missouri in June of 1787 along with a large contingent of Shawnee and Delaware people. Lorimier was appointed Indian agent and the Shawnee and Delaware settled on the Bois Brule area on the west bank of the Mississippi south of the Saline Creek. When the family moved south about 1791, they came to the area long known as Cape Girardeau, near present-day Cape Rock, and later to the area where the Red House Interpretive Center now stands.

Louis Lorimier was born near Montreal, Canada in 1748, the fourth generation of his family in the New World. He followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather in working with native peoples, both in military operations and the fur trade. After the French and Indian War the Lorimier family established a trading post on the Ohio Frontier where Lorimier and his customers, largely the Shawnee and Delaware sided with the British during the American Revolution. British losses led to the destruction of Lorimier’s Ohio trading post and forced the family west, first to the White/Wabash River area in present-day Indiana and then across the Mississippi River into Spanish territory where they settled on the Saline Creek west of Ste. Genevieve and later moved to the Cape Girardeau area.

The family consisted of Pierre-Louis de Lorimier, a French-Canadian, his wife Charlotte Penampieh (Bay-nam-ah-bay-ase) Bougainville, a half Shawnee woman who was said to have been the natural daughter of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, military man, mathematician and explorer who had served as aide-de-camp to General Montcalm during the French and Indian War. Lorimier had a son, Guillaume (Gie-ome), the product of an earlier relationship, presumably with a Shawnee woman. Lorimier and Penampieh had six children, Louis Jr., Agatha, Marie Louise, Augustus Bougainville, Vernieul (Ver-nay), and Victor. After Pemanpieh’s death in 1808, Lorimier remarried and he and his wife, Marie Berthiaume (Bear-tee-ohme), also a half-blood Shawnee had a son who died as a child. Lorimier died in 1812, and is buried alongside Charlotte in the Old Lorimier Cemetery here in Cape Girardeau.

Trading Post

The trading post of 1700’s and early 1800’s was a centerpiece of the community. Being directly on the river, it was a navigation reference for boats using the Mississippi River. Most people lived in rural areas, but visited once/twice a year for items they needed and couldn’t make or grow themselves. Due to a shortage of currency, furs were legal tender; bear and beaver—being the most valuable; mink, otter, elk, buffalo, and male deer—called a “buck”-- being the least valuable. Besides furs, Native Americans and settlers also brought bear oil, honey, beeswax, moccasins, and other items they grew such as herbs. Europeans had many goods of interest to the Native Americans such as blankets. You will see other items of interest such as kettles, knives, beads, playing cards, trade silver, fabric, brass bells, and ribbons, to name a few. The trading post was Cape’s main business at the time when Lewis and Clark arrived.

Girardot Room

As you enter the room you can look up and see the underside of the roof structure and the great Norman truss which holds up the roof. There is a seven minute video about the contruction of the building. Over 200 people worked 6500 volunteer hours to build the building. If you see someone wearing a red hat, that means they worked long hours to help build the house.

The Girardot Room contains a large map of the entire territory under the control of Don Louis Lorimier for the Spanish Government. Settlers came here to ask for land on which to live and raise their families. Today this map covers seven counties—Cape Girardeau, Bollinger, Wayne, Madison, and parts of Scott, Stoddard, and Mississippi County. If you look closely you will see the names of the people who actually received land from the Spanish Government. Maybe your family’s name is there!

The large map by the window shows all the places Lewis & Clark stopped on the Mississippi River in the fall of 1803 on their way to St. Louis for the winter. We have a small canon on the floor that is a replica of the cannon on the keelboat of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Above the mantle you can see a painting of the men on the keelboat done by artist Gary Lufcy.

Eight interpretive panels explain what live was like in the Old Cape Girardeau District in 1803. Two of the panels tell you about Lewis & Clark. Meriwether Lewis wrote 12 pages in his journal about the good citizens of Cape Girardeau. You can see a copy of his original journal. Then four members of the Expedition came back to Cape after they returned from the Pacific: George Drouillard, chief hunter on the expedition, Sgt. John Ordway, third man in charge, Alexander Willard, blacksmith, and Reuben Field, one of the nine young men from Kentucky. Original documents from the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center proved that all four men were in Cape Girardeau.

The settlers panel shows the 1803 Census with the names of all the heads of household, their family members, crops produced and animals owned. See if your family’s name is on the list. What did they do for fun? How did they earn a living? Where did they come from? Find the answers on the settler’s panel. The Native American panel shows what tribes were in our area. The African American panel shows what life was like for the black people, most of whom were slaves. The Lorimier family genealogy shows the ancestors and descendants of Louis Lorimier. The origins of the French Colonial building are shown on one panel. And finally, the last panel shows how people got around the area on different modes of transportation on the roads and rivers.

1. What made Lorimier’s appearance unusual?
2. How many Lorimier pictures are there in the Red House?
3. Why is the building called the Red House?
4. What happened to the original Red House?
5. Which countries have owned the area called the Old Cape Girardeau District?
6. What counties make up the Old Cape Girardeau District?
7. Who had dinner with the Lorimier family November 23, 1803?
8. In what style is the new Red House built?
9. Who helped build the new Red House?
10. How many children did Louis and Charlotte have together?
11. Name three reasons the Red House was so important.
12. How did one purchase items at the RH?
13. What was one of the most valuable furs at the Trading Post?
14. What was the one of the least valuable furs at the Trading Post?
15. What happened to Lorimier’s first store in Ohio?
16. What were the two tribes of Native Americans who came to Cape with Lorimier?
17. What were three forms of entertainment (fun) in Cape?
18. Why is George Drouillard of importance to the Lewis and Clark Expedition and how is he related to Lorimier?
19. What is the purpose of the long telephone pole in the roof structure?
20. What was unique about the peasant-style clothing hanging in the Lorimier Room?