He was one of the first trustees of the town of St. Louis; served as Justice of the Peace and as Judge of the Court of Common Pleas; was the first president of the Bank of Missouri, and held other important positions. His policy in dealing with the Indians was to treat them fairly, and he enjoyed their  confidence and friendship until his death, which occurred on February 24, 1829.

Jean Pierre Chouteau, a brother of Auguste, was born at New Orleans On October 10, 1758, and as soon as he was old enough he engaged in the fur trade. He established several trading posts in the Indian country, one of which was on the upper Osage River in what is now southwestern Missouri. Soon after Louisiana was ceded to the United States, he gave up the fur trade and became a merchant in St. Louis, where he died on July 10, 1849.

About 1825 Frederick, Francis G. and Cyprian Chouteau, three brothers of a younger generation, received a license to trade with certain Indian tribes west of the Missouri River, and immediately set about the establishment of trading posts in their new domain. As there were no roads at that time, their goods were transported through the woods on the backs of packhorses. Francis G. Chouteau started a post on an island three miles below Kansas City, but the flood of 1826 washed it into the river. He then went about ten miles up the Kansas River and established a new post. For some time he was superintendent of the trading posts of the American Fur Company. In 1828 he established his residence in Kansas City, where he passed the remainder of his life, his son, P. M. Chouteau succeeding to the business.

Frederick Chouteau was born in St. Louis in 1810. When he first came to the Kansas Valley in 1825, he and his brother Cyprian first built trading houses about five miles above Wyandotte (Kansas City) on the south side of the Kansas River, where they traded with the Shawnee and Delaware Indians. A little later another post was established farther up the river. Daniel Boone, in a letter to W. W. Cone of Topeka, dated August 11, 1879, says: "Frederick Chouteau's brother established his trading post across the river from my father's residence the same fall we moved to the agency, in the year 1827."

Two or three years later Frederick Chouteau went up the river to the mouth of Mission Creek, about ten  miles above the present city of Topeka, and opened a trading post there, taking his goods up the Kansas River in keel boats. This post was maintained until about 1842, when it was abandoned, and a new one was started on Mill Creek in Johnson County. Here the floods destroyed practically everything he had in 1844 and forced him to move to higher ground. He was then engaged in the Indian trade at Council Grove until about 1853, when he returned to Johnson County, Kansas. He was burned out by William Quantrill in 1862, but rebuilt and passed the remainder of his life in that county. Frederick Chouteau was married four times, two of his wives having been Indian women, and by his four marriages became the father of eleven children.