René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

French explorer

• Born: November 22, 1643
• Birthplace: Rouen, France
• Died: March 19, 1687
• Place of death: On the Brazos River (now in Texas)

La Salle was the first European to traverse fully the Mississippi River. He exited into the Gulf of Mexico, where he later attempted unsuccessfully to found a French colony on the coast of what is now Texas.

Early Life

René-Robert Cavelier was born in Normandy. He preferred to use as his name the noble title sieur de La Salle (syuhr duh lah-sahl). His father, Jean Cavelier, was a wealthy landowner. La Salle’s mother, née Catherine Geest, came from a family of wholesale merchants. The parents wanted René-Robert and his older brother, Jean, to take priestly vows in the Catholic Church. Jean joined the Order of Saint Sulpice and went to French Canada. Young René-Robert entered the Jesuit College of Rouen several years later, at the age of nine.

At Rouen, the youth showed an aptitude for mathematics and philosophy. He thus proved to be a capable student in his academic work. René-Robert, however, had problems with the Jesuit teachers. His large physical size and athletic prowess, coupled with a lusty desire for adventure and excitement, did not suit him for a life of prayer and scholarship. Although no specific physical description of him survives, La Salle seems to have been a handsome and personable youth who made friends easily. At times, however, young La Salle proved to be moody, hot-tempered, and stubborn. His rebellious spirit and strong sense of independence made it difficult for him to succeed in the Jesuit brotherhood. This calling demanded introspection, moderation, tolerance, and austerity. Nevertheless, the youth completed his education at Rouen, although he refused to take full vows as a Jesuit brother upon reaching adulthood.

Instead, young Cavelier renounced his novitiate vows in 1667 and decided to emigrate to New France. He was penniless upon leaving the Jesuits because his father had died while he was a novitiate in the order. Under French law, René-Robert had thus been ineligible to inherit the family property. Canada might therefore provide the young man a chance to earn fortune and fame for himself. In addition, La Salle already had connections in the colony through his brother Jean at Montreal. Also, his uncle had been a member of the Hundred Association of New France and a heavy investor in French development of Canada.

La Salle used these family connections to secure a seigniory (a large landed estate) along the St. Lawrence River. There, he began living the life of a gentleman planter. He traveled in the best social circles of the colony, meeting the rich and powerful of New France. La Salle soon became fascinated with the Indians of Canada and learned some of their major languages. He realized that fur trading with the Indians would provide for him the fastest route to wealth and riches. This desire to enter the fur trade caused La Salle to sell his seigniory and move to the frontier.

Life’s Work

La Salle joined an expedition sent by the Sulpicians in 1669 to found new missions and trade in furs along the western Great Lakes. He visited the Ohio River Valley and familiarized himself with much of the Great Lakes region. This expedition established La Salle as a successful explorer who had the potential for expanding the French fur trade into new areas of North America. His activities on the western frontier caught the attention of New France’s governor, Louis de Baude, the comte de Frontenac. The governor was eager to enrich himself personally in the fur trade. He recognized that a partnership with La Salle would provide a means of doing so. The governor dispatched La Salle to France in 1674 to obtain for them a royal fur-trading monopoly in the Ontario region of the St. Lawrence River. This the two partners soon secured from the French king. From his base at Fort Frontenac on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, La Salle spent the next three years exploring and trading with the Indians in the upper Great Lakes region.

All the while, La Salle dreamed of greater triumphs. He had heard rumors of the mighty unexplored river to the west, which the Indians called “Messi-Sipi.” He had also talked with Louis Jolliet , another Frenchman who had earlier visited its upper reaches. La Salle decided to secure a grant from the king permitting him to descend the river to its mouth, explore its course in the process, and, in so doing, obtain a fur-trading monopoly with the Indians along its banks. In 1677, he returned to France in the company of his faithful lieutenant Henry de Tonty and secured such a concession from the king. By the summer of 1678, La Salle was back in Canada, busily engaged in organizing an expedition for this purpose.

Events, however, moved slowly. It took more than a year to raise the necessary money and secure all the supplies. Further delays came when La Salle suffered various financial reverses. Finally, early in 1682, he and his expedition began their descent of the Mississippi, reaching the Gulf of Mexico on April 9. In formal ceremonies held on that date near the mouth of the river, La Salle laid claim for France to all lands that the river drained. He named the region “Louisiana,” in honor of the French king. La Salle and his men then returned whence they had come, making the laborious journey back up the river to Canada.

During his absence on the Mississippi expedition, Frontenac left the governor’s office, and Antoine Lefebre, the sieur de la Barre, assumed the position. He was one of La Salle’s enemies in the competitive fur trade of French Canada. The new governor removed La Salle from his position in absentia and accused him of various minor crimes. La Salle returned to France to clear his name. The king, pleased with the explorer’s accomplishments, restored his monopoly and trading rights in the Mississippi Valley. La Salle thereupon set about organizing a major colonizing expedition that would found a French settlement on the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi. This expedition left France in July of 1684. Its voyage across the Atlantic was not auspicious. Food and water were in short supply, and La Salle quarreled incessantly with the sieur de Beaujeu, the naval officer who commanded the ships of the expedition.

Morale was low and illness had ravaged the colonists by the time they stopped at French Hispañola, their stepping-stone to the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle, suffering from a fever, was indecisive in his leadership, and Captain Beaujeu refused to cooperate with the explorer. Under these circumstances, they continued their journey. The reconnaissance to find the mouth of the Mississippi did not go well. La Salle missed the river entirely, instead leading his expedition almost due west to Matagorda Bay on the shores of Texas.

Nevertheless, La Salle decided to establish his colony in this uncharted territory and use it as a base to search for the Mississippi. He had a small fort constructed while the colonists built modest huts in which to live. Conditions in the colony were harsh and forbidding, made worse by La Salle’s quarrel with Captain Beaujeu. Acrimony with Beaujeu became so bitter that the naval commander sailed home, leaving the colonists on their own. Moreover, La Salle was not clear about his intentions. At times he talked of harassing the Spanish to the south in Mexico, while on other occasions he maintained that finding the Mississippi was his chief objective.

During 1686, La Salle led several exploring parties into various parts of the surrounding region. The only result of these journeys was increased dissatisfaction among the colonists. In January, 1687, La Salle and a small band of men departed on foot for the Mississippi, leaving behind most of the colonists at Fort St. Louis. By March, several members of this traveling party had become frustrated with La Salle’s authoritarian style of command. These individuals plotted to assassinate La Salle by ambush, which they did on March 19, 1687.

The death of La Salle ended the French colony at Fort St. Louis, which did not long survive his passing. Within months, some of the colonists made their way back to Canada via the Mississippi (which they eventually found), while others died at the hands of hostile Indians who attacked the settlement. A handful, including several children, lived with friendly Indians along the Texas coast. Spanish Captain Alonso de León, whom the authorities in Mexico City had sent to destroy the French settlement, found the few remaining survivors when he arrived at Fort St. Louis in 1689.

Significance

La Salle’s greatest triumph was his exploration of the Mississippi River in 1682, which established claim to Louisiana for France. This acquisition more than doubled the territory held by the French king in North America. Yet the spirit of independence and single-mindedness that permitted La Salle to excel as an explorer made him poorly suited to be a colony builder. He sometimes treated his subordinates dogmatically and imperiously. He could be moody and withdrawn, to the extent that one modern biographer, E. B. Osler, maintains that La Salle was a manic-depressive personality type. Moreover, the explorer was a poor financial manager and spent most of his career deeply in debt.

Nevertheless, La Salle ranks as one of history’s best-known explorers. His accomplishments include a number of “firsts” that certainly justify this reputation: the first European to sail down the Mississippi to the Gulf, the first person to advocate the founding of a major city at the mouth of that river, and the first colonizer to attempt a settlement on the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It is because of La Salle that the French fleur-de-lis is one of the six flags that have flown over Texas during its history.

Bibliography

Bruseth, James E., and Toni S. Turner. From a Watery Grave: The Discovery and Excavation of La Salle’s Shipwreck, La Belle. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. The frigate La Belle was stranded near Matagordo Bay in Texas during La Salle’s ill-fated final voyage. Archaeologists in the 1990’s excavated the shipwreck, uncovering a human skeleton and one million artifacts intended for use in a newly constructed colony. The book examines La Salle’s dream of building a colony, the excavation and artifacts unearthed, and La Belle’s legacy.

Caruso, John Anthony. The Mississippi Valley Frontier: The Age of French Exploration and Settlement. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966. A standard scholarly survey of expansion of French Canada into Louisiana. Examines La Salle and the colonizing activities that came after him, in the eighteenth century.

Cox, Isaac Joslin. The Journeys of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. 2 vols. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1905-1906. A lengthy collection of documents, personal memoirs, and contemporary reports dealing with La Salle’s career. All in English translation.

Galloway, Patricia, ed. La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1982. A series of historical papers on La Salle presented at the 1982 meeting of the Mississippi State Historical Society, in celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of La Salle’s voyage.

Johnson, Donald S. La Salle: A Perilous Odyssey from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Johnson recounts La Salle’s expeditions in the New World.

Joutel, Henri. Joutel’s Journal of La Salle’s Last Voyage. London: A. Bell, 1714. Reprint. Edited by Melville B. Anderson. Chicago: Caxton Club, 1896. Joutel accompanied La Salle on the Texas expedition and was among the survivors.

La Salle, Nicolas de. The La Salle Expedition on the Mississippi River: A Lost Manuscript of Nicolas de La Salle, 1682. Translated by Johanna S. Warren, edited by William C. Foster. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2003. Nicolas de La Salle (no relation to the explorer) was one of the men on Sieur de La Salle’s 1682 Mississippi River expedition. A rare copy of Nicolas’s journal of that voyage was recently discovered at the Texas State Archives. This translation and analysis of the journal reveals new information about the historic exploration.

Osler, E. B. La Salle. Don Mills, Ontario: Longmans Canada, 1967. An excellent modern biography, full of detail, taking the position that La Salle was sometimes mentally unstable, thereby explaining his erratic leadership style.

Parkman, Francis. La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. Boston: Little, Brown, 1879. Parkman ranks as one of the greatest nineteenth century narrative historians. The study, in spite of minor inaccuracies, is a literary work.

Weddle, Robert S. The Spanish Sea. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985. A lengthy examination of European efforts to explore the Gulf of Mexico in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Based on extensive manuscript research in European archives.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Search for La Salle. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973. Examines the La Salle colony in Texas from the Spanish viewpoint, as a threat to Spain’s control of the Gulf of Mexico. Contains much detail about Spanish efforts to locate and destroy La Salle’s ill-fated colony.