Pierre-Louis de Lorimier, the French Canadian founder of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, wrote three journals between 1777 and 1795 that provide an invaluable contribution to understanding the confrontations that affected the nascent United States, Great Britain, Mexico, the Native American nations, and the French Canadians. These chronicles, published here together, present a history of the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys and the people who inhabited those areas.

In addition, this is the bilingual biography of a fascinating man, sharing how Lorimier left New France, drawn by adventure and the fur trade south of the Great Lakes, to eventually become commander of the Cape Girardeau trading post. After being born under the French crown, Lorimier was successively made a British subject, a Spanish subject, and finally an American citizen.