Wherein Moominmama celebrates Juneteenth in St. Louis and tries to figure out "Where it All Began" for the Lewis & Clark expedition...

St. Louis is home to the National Blues Museum, and the street corner outside the museum was awash in sound yesterday -- a concert in honor of Juneteenth. What better way to spend this new national holiday than to revel in the blues?

St. Louis is one of several major cities associated with the growth and development of the blues. The song, "St. Louis Blues" by W.C. Handy from 1914 is the most recorded blues tune in history, according to the museum.

The blues grew out of African traditions, and the banjo in particular is believed to be an adaptation of a lute found among the Mande people of West Africa. The blues surfaced in the work songs of enslaved people and in their early churches, where singing made use of call and response. But the blues grew to be a major -- if not THE major -- influence on all the music that followed in the United States. B.B. King called the blues the "mother tree" of American music.

Chuck Berry was a St. Louis native and Miles Davis grew up in East St. Louis. Even the local NHL hockey team is called the St. Louis Blues!

St. Louis is also known for the Gateway Arch, a 630-foot towering silver arch that opened in 1965 to celebrate the westward expansion of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase.

President Thomas Jefferson tasked his aide Merriwether Lewis with putting together a team to map what they could of the 530 million acres, find a route to the Pacific Ocean and make contact with the native peoples living in the territory.

First and foremost, Jefferson wanted control of the Mississippi River down to New Orleans, a vital conduit for trade and therefore dollars. But the land would also become essential to the growing number of settlers seeking their fortunes -- and it would allow the United States government to push native peoples westward as well, off the lands settlers had already claimed in the east.

What was interesting to learn is how much was already known about who owned these lands. French trappers had plenty of contact with the native tribes living in the territory. St. Louis was first set up by the French to serve as a trading post at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers where skins and fur could be loaded and transported down to New Orleans and points east. Several of those French trappers and traders had relationships with the tribes, spoke their languages and became part of the Lewis & Clark expedition.

The journey as I learned it in school was basically a great American adventure, a team of men heading into the great unknown, overcoming obstacles like the Rocky Mountains to arrive at the Pacific Ocean, befriending Sacagawea who would help them achieve that goal. But it was obviously much more than that.

It is interesting to see how many communities want to be identified as the place where it all started. Arguably, it started in Washington D.C. when Jefferson commissioned Lewis to launch the exploration. But maybe it really began in Elizabeth, Pa. where they celebrate the construction of the first and largest boat (photo here shows a re-creation of that keel boat) that took the expedition upriver and into the "new" territory? 

Or was it the Falls of the Ohio where Lewis met up with his partner William Clark, Clark's enslaved man, York (in doll form above), and formed their initial 9-member team? 

Or was it east of St. Louis in Illinois where they wintered, hired and trained their full expedition force. 

Or was it upriver on the Missouri River at St. Charles, where they said their final farewell to white society and were cheered on by settlers there?

All of these places lay claim to being the place where it all began! And that may be cause for celebration for some, but it clearly had a downside for all the indigenous people displaced in the wake of this exploration. Not that they didn't fight it, they did. And I will learn more about that as I continue.

This expedition may also be "where it all began" for thousands of native people pushed west, who lost their lives, lands and livelihoods -- and in some cases, their cultures and their children -- as part of the United States expansion. It seems only now that we're realizing how much we have to learn from native people about living in harmony with the environment, with our planet!

looking west from the top of the Gateway Arch at the land Jefferson "bought" from France