The 24rd state admitted to the US was Missouri on August 10, 1821. Before it became a state, Missouri was The Territory of Louisiana. It is well known as the "Show Me State" because supervisors kept saying to their workers, "That man is from Missouri, you'll have to show him", about the miners from Colorado with different mining methods who were imported to take the place of local miners who left after the strike. Missouri was once known as the "Gateway to the West" during the Gold Rush of California. In 1849, certain towns in Missouri became the launching point for departure for many emigrants wanting to head West. The official state motto of Missouri is "Salus populi suprema lex esto", which translates to "The Welfare of the People is the Highest Law". The ice cream cone was invented in Missouri at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 when a vendor ran out of cups and asked a fellow waffle vendor to help out by rolling up waffles to hold the ice cream. The rest is history! The capitol of Missouri Jefferson City. The state bird is the Eastern Bluebird, the state flower is the Hawthorn Blossom, and the state tree is the Flowering Dogwood.
For over 12,000 years, Missouri had indigenous people who lived freely off of the land as their home. A tribe of Sioux Indians of the state were called the Missouris, and they lived at what is now known as the Grand and Missouri Rivers. The Northern part of Missouri was inhabited by the Missouri, and the Osage were a very powerful group of natives that controlled most of the state for hunting. The Osage lived in a few small areas along the Osage River and the Missouri River. In 1673, during a voyage down the Mississippi River, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet were the first Europeans to set foot on the land later called Missouri. The French arrived in the 1700's and established a settlement on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River called St. Genevieve. In 1719, workmen for the Company of the Indies started to dig for lead and silver as one of the very first mines in North America, and Philippe Francois Renault, the main operator of the mine, brought the first enslaved people as work forced labor to the now colonial Missouri. The first permanent white settlement was founded in 1750 in Ste. Genevieve. From 1756-1763, a global conflict known as the "French and Indian War" took place between England, Spain, France, and North America. Colonial lines were drawn in favor of the British, and then the Spanish government arrived and assumed control of what was known at the time as the "Territory of Louisiana" in 1770. Because very few Spaniards came to Missouri, the French mainly held the territory and would fight for it again in the Revolutionary War. During the late 1700's, the Spanish started moving indigenous people from the East, creating a larger immigrant Native American community where the Osage were the dominate ones. The Southern half of Missouri ended up as a dumping ground for unwanted Native American groups from the East of the Mississippi. By 1821, the Delaware, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Miamis, Piankashaws, Peoria, and thousands immigrants arrived voluntarily or were forced into the Southwestern parts of Missouri. This forced migration was known as the "Trail of Tears". By the early 1830's, the government moved all of the Native Americans out of Southwest Missouri and into Kansas (what is know today as Oklahoma). This then became Indian Territory. This area, known as the Ozarks, was desired by the Natives. They wanted to claim it as their land and tried to convince the US government to give it to them. This became a spot where whites eventually came and claimed for their own - at the expense of the indigenous peoples. To this day, Missouri has a park called "Trail of Tears State Park" as a memorial.
On January 8, 1818, a petition to Congress from Missouri requested statehood to the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The "Missouri Compromise" on March 6, 1820 addressed the slavery issue, and allowed Missouri to enter the union as a slave state. In 1821, President James Monroe signed a proclamation on August 10th for Missouri to become the 24th state. The capitol was first located in St. Charles and then was moved to Jefferson City once the government buildings were constructed. Currently, Native Americans do not have land or a federally-recognized reservation in the state of Missouri.
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