La Salle, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de (1643–1687)

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (b. 22 November 1643; d. 19 March 1687), French explorer. A native of Rouen, France, La Salle was educated by the Jesuits but left the order and went to Canada in 1666 to enter the fur trade. In 1679 he built and launched the first sailing vessel to ply the Great Lakes. By canoe, he descended the Mississippi River to its mouth in 1682, claiming for France all the lands of its drainage.

La Salle envisioned a warm-water port on the Gulf of Mexico to serve his commercial aims and French designs of empire. Returning to France, he won royal support for a voyage to the Mississippi through the Gulf to establish a colony on the lower river. He sailed from La Rochelle on 24 July 1684. Because of geographical uncertainty, he missed the mouth of the Mississippi and landed his 280 colonists at Texas's Matagorda Bay on 20 February 1685. Realizing his error, he sought his post on the Illinois River by land, but was slain by a disenchanted follower near the Trinity River in eastern Texas.

La Salle was responsible for opening the Mississippi Valley for development. His Gulf of Mexico expedition sparked a renewal of Spanish exploration in the Gulf that led to Spanish occupation of eastern Texas and Pensacola Bay. Because of La Salle, the United States asserted a claim to Texas as part of the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to a boundary dispute with Spain that lasted until 1819.

See alsoExplorers and Exploration: Spanish America; Mexico, Gulf of; Texas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Patricia K. Galloway, ed., La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley (1982).

Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (repr. 1963).

Robert S. Weddle, ed., La Salle, the Mississippi, and the Gulf: Three Primary Documents (1987).

Robert S. Weddle, The French Thorn: Rival Explorers in the Spanish Sea, 1682–1762 (1991), esp. pp. 3-84.

Additional Bibliography

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

                                               Robert S. Weddle