The Osage gave French explorer and fur trader Pierre Chouteau land along the Lamine River on March 19, 1792, including what is now Blackwater Township, Pilot Grove Township, and Chouteau Springs, presenting him with a scroll or deed and promising that if Osage offspring troubled him over ownership he need only show it. Opposition to his ownership came not from the Osage but from the U.S. government, which claimed the land, and litigation continued until 1837, when the grant was acknowledged. Chouteau later sold the land to Gov. William Ashley, who after his death in 1839 was buried where he had chosen on an ancient Indian mound on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri River near the junction of the Lamine River north of what is now the town of Lamine.