Part IX. Notes 
Notes To Part | 
1. Perhaps the most infamous duel fought on ‘‘Bloody Island’’ occurred 
in 1817, when Thomas Hart Benton killed Charles Lucas on the notorious sand- 
bar. In 1831, another sensational duel took place on the island that resulted 
in the deaths of both participants—director of the St. Louis branch of the Bank 
of America, Thomas Biddle, and congressman, Spencer Pettis. St. Louis’ con- 
siderable reputation for violence was based on such duels, the frontier and 
riverboat mystique, and on the despicable ‘McIntosh affair.’’ Francis McIn- 
tosh was a free mulatto steamboat steward arrested for a minor offense in St. 
Louis in 1836. When McIntosh asked what would likely happen to him, he 
was told he would probably be hanged. Upon hearing this, McIntosh panicked 
and tried to escape, killing one man and wounding another. He was captured 
and placed in jail, but a mob took him, tied him to a tree on the corner of 
Tenth and Market streets and slowly roasted him to death. News of this hor- 
rendous act shocked the nation. See James Neal Primm, Lion of the Valley: 
St. Louis (Boulder, 1981), 181-188. 
2. ‘‘Memorial of the Western Academy of Natural Sciences, at St. 
Louis,’’ 26 Congress, Ist Sess., S. Doc., no. 71, 13 January 1840. 
3. Act of Incorporation, Constitution and By-Laws of the Western 
Academy of Natural Sciences (St. Louis, 1837). 
4. Anzeiger des Westens, 4 February, 1937. 
5. After returning from the Northwest in 1805, William Clark settled 
in St. Louis as territorial governor and Indian agent. He assembled an im- 
pressive collection of natural history specimens and Indian artifacts he had 
collected on the Lewis and Clark expedition, augmenting it with later acquisi- 
tions. These items could be seen in a little museum Clark opened in rooms 
in his home. Just how much of Clark’s collection was given to the Western 
Academy is unknown. See Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘The Western Academy 
of Natural Sciences of St. Louis,’’ Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 16 
(January, 1960): 126. 
6. Ibid 
7. Ibid.: 127-128. 
8. ‘‘Memorial of the Western Academy, at St. Louis.”’ 
9. Ibid. 
10. Ibid. 
11. Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘The Western Academy of Natural Sciences 
of St. Louis’’: 238. 
12. Quoted in Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘Natural Science and Urban 
Culture in the Nineteenth Century Middle West,’’ Transactions of the 
Academy of Science of St. Louis (hereafter cited as **TAS’’) 31 (1958): 
128-129. 
13. Missouri Saturday News, 10 February 1838. 
14. Engelmann was the first person to point out that American grapes 
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