I’ve been reading about a Frenchman named René-Robert Cavelier de la Salle (1643 – 1687), who became the first European to explore the entire length of the Mississippi River–by canoe, no less. The more I read about him, the more fascinating I find him. It’s impossible to do justice to his story in a short blog post. Someone should write a book about him. Go ahead—you can put me in your acknowledgments.
Like so many fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century European explorers, La Salle was a study in contradictions: exceedingly brave, exceedingly cruel, and possessed of an unbelievable tolerance for enduring hardship. His quest for fame and fortune caused him to make some pretty bone-headed decisions, which ultimately caused his undoing.
La Salle and his crew—comprised of 23 Frenchmen and 18 Indians—paddled the length of the Mississippi and reached the Gulf of Mexico in 1682. He claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France, and founded Louisiana, which he named after his boss, Louis XIV.
Back he went to France. (If I were writing a book, the first question I’d ask is how he got back to France. I mean, here he was with his 41 crew members on the swampy, malarial mouth of the river—how did he get back to France? If you decide to write a book about him, would you please let me know?)
In 1684, he set sail from France (see my question above), newly provisioned with four ships and 300 colonists, intent on reaching the mouth of the Mississippi by sea in order to set up a new French colony. Disaster after disaster struck. One ship was captured by Spanish pirates. Another sank. The remaining two ships travelled too far west, thanks to faulty navigation and bad maps, and one of them ran aground in a bay of Texas.
They set up the colony there, which turned out to be another bad decision, as the settlers began dying rapidly from diseases and hostile Indian attacks. Undaunted, La Salle undertook three separate expeditions, travelling eastward–on foot– in an effort to find the mouth of the Mississippi. Many of these searchers died or deserted. At the fourth attempt, in 1687, a group of his own men mutinied and murdered him, leaving his body for the animals to eat.