A woman once wrote that the town was “a beautiful place but it is very wicked. There is no chance to hear the gospel preached without going ten miles over a wretched road to a chapel. The main way the men spend their Sundays is in drinking and gambling, horse racing and chicken fighting.”
It isn’t surprising, really, that such a town was established by a man who used to pay Indians for American scalps, and it was named for a Frenchman who deserted his country’s military to first settle the area.
The town is Cape Girardeau.