Rene-Robert-Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

Explorer, born at Rouen, 1643; died in Texas, 1687.

In his youth he displayed an unusual precocity in mathematics and
a predilection for natural science; his outlook upon life was
somewhat puritanical. Whether or not he was educated with a view
to entering the Society of Jesus is a matter of doubt, though some
religious order he must have subsequently joined, for to this fact
is assigned the forfeiture of his estates. The career of a
churchman was definitely abandoned, however, when, after receiving
the feudal grant of a tract of land at La Chine on the St.
Lawrence from the Sulpicians, seigneurs of Montreal--perhaps
through the influence of a elder brother who was a member of the
order at that place--he came to Canada as an adventurer and trader
in 1666. For three years La Salle remained quietly upon his little
estate, mastering Indian dialects and meditating on a southwest
passage. Upon the latter quest he set out in 1669 with a party of
Sulpicians, who, deeming that there was greater missionary work
among the north-western tribes, soon abandoned the expedition. La
salle's subsequent travels on this occasion are shrouded in an
obscurity that will perhaps never be dispelled. Whether he was the
first white man to gaze upon Niagara, whether he explored the
Allegheny valley or the Ohio river, he seems not to have reached
the Mississippi, Joliet's undisputed claim to that distinction
during La Salle's residence in Canada being regarded, at present,
as finally established. Indeed Joliet's announcement, some few
years later, that the Grande Rivi�re flowed into the Gulf of
Mexico perceptibly stimulated La Salle to fashion and carry out
those schemes which must have been taking shape even in the
novitiate of Rouen--dreams of acquiring a monopoly of the fur
trade and of building up the empire of New France. The French
doctrine that the discovery of a river gave an inchoate right to
the land drained by its tributaries suggested to La Salle and
Governor Frontenac a " plan to effect a military occupation of the
whole Mississippi valley...by means of military posts which should
control the communication and sway the policy of the Indian
tribes", as well as present an impassable barrior to the English
colonies. The money needed for such a plan drove La Salle to those
attempts at a monopoly which engendered such persistent
opposition, and which account, partly at least, for the failure of
his plans.

A trip to France in the autumn of 1674 followed his erection of
Fort Frontenac for the protection of the fur trade at the outset
of Lake Ontario. The king gave him a grant of his fort and the
adjacent territory, promised to garrison it at his own expense,
and conferred upon him the rank of esquire. Upon his return, La
Salle rebuilt the fort, launched upon the Niagara River the
"Griffin", a forty-five ton schooner with five guns, in which,
with Hennepin, a Franciscan, and the Neapolitan Henri de Tonty, he
set sail in the autumn of 1678, passed over Lakes Erie and Huron,
and reached the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. Here the
gunboat was sent back, unlawfully laden with furs to appease La
Salle's creditors, and was never heard from again. The expedition
pushed on to the Illinois, where Fort Crevecoeur was built. After
waiting through the winter for the return of the "Griffin", La
Salle, leaving the faithful Tonty in charge of the fort, resolved
to return one thousand miles on foot to Montreal, accompanied by
four Frenchmen and an Indian guide. The sufferings of his famous
retreat were borne with incredible fortitude, and he was returning
with supplies when it was learned that the garrison at Fort
Crevecoeur had mutinied, had driven Tonty into the wilderness, and
were then cruising about Lake Ontario in the hope of murdering La
Salle. The dauntless Frenchman pushed out at once upon the lake,
captured the mutineers, sent them back in irons to the governor,
and then went to the rescue of Tonty, whom he met at Mackinaw on
his return trip after abandoning the search. For a brief space in
1682 La Salle's fate seems more propitious, when, on 9 April, we
catch a glimpse of him planting the fleurs-de-lis on the banks of
the Mississippi, and claiming for France the wide territory that
it drained. But, five years later, in the wretched failure of an
attempt to plant a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, he was
murdered by mutineers from ambush.

La Salle's schemes of empire and of trade were far too vast for
his own generation to accomplish, though it was along the lines
that he projected that France pursued her colonial policy in the
New World in the eighteenth century until finally overthrown by
the English in the French and Indian Wars.

JARVIS KEILEY
Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

In Memory of Mrs. Victor Revetto


From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the  entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
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editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
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