Louis Blanchette was a French Canadian

French Canadian

French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...

 explorer who travelled to North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 in the 18th century. After exploring parts of Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

, he is remembered for founding the city of St. Charles

Saint Charles, Missouri

St. Charles is a city in, and the county seat of, St. Charles County, Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 65,794, making St. Charles the 2nd largest city in St. Charles County. It lies just to the northwest of St. Louis, Missouri on the Missouri River, and, for a time,...

 in 1769.

According to Hopewell

Menra Hopewell

Menra Hopewell was a United States physician and author. He was best known as the author of a biography of DeWitt Clinton, and co-author of a biographical history of St...

's Legends of the Missouri and Mississippi:

In the year 1765, a French Canadian, called Blanchette Chasseur, animated by that love of adventure which characterizes all who have lived a roving and restless life, ascended the Missouri, with a few followers, for the purpose of forming a settlement in the then remote wilderness.

He was one of those who encountered perils and endured privations, not from necessity, but from choice; for he had been born to affluence, and had every indulgence consistent with wealth and station, but from a boy had spurned, with Spartan prejudice, every effeminate trait, and had accomplished himself in every hardy and manly exercise. When he had attained his majority, he sailed for America, then the El Dorado

El Dorado

El Dorado is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into a highland lake.Later it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold" that has fascinated – and so far eluded – explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors...

 of all the visionary, roving and restless spirits of the age.

According to Hopewell's rather romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 account, Blanchette met another Frenchman (Bernard Guillet) at the site of St. Charles in 1765. Blanchette, determined to settle at the site, asked if Guillet, who had become the chief of a Dakota tribe, had chosen a name for it.

"I called the place 'Les Petites Côtes' " replied Bernard, "from the sides of the hills that you see."

"By that name shall it be called," said Blanchette Chasseur, "for it is the echo of nature -- beautiful from its simplicity."

Hopewell's account is suspect on several details. He appears to have conflated Blanchette's occupation as a hunter (chasseur in French) with a name.

Blanchette settled there in 1769 under the authority of the Spanish governor of Upper Louisiana, and served as its civil and military leader until his death in 1793. During this time perhaps only a couple dozen buildings were built. Although the settlement was under Spanish jurisdiction, the settlers themselves remained primarily French nationals. He is buried in St. Charles Borromeo cemetery, St. Charles, Missouri.