Three centuries after the French explorer La Salle was murdered in the Texas wilds, this volume presents translations of three obscure documents that broaden the view of the man and his exploits. The first non-Spanish effort to settle areas along the Gulf of Mexico is seen from the perspectives of La Salle's engineer; a Spanish pilot who searched for the French colony; and two French lads who, orphaned as a result of the Fort Saint-Louis massacre, lived first among the Texas Indians, then the Spaniards.

A biography of the French explorer who sailed down the Mississippi River and claimed a vast territory for France.

The La Salle Expedition on the Mississippi River presents the definitive English translation of Nicolas de La Salle's diary account of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle's 1682 discovery expedition of the Mississippi River from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. This previously unknown manuscript copy was discovered recently in the collection of rare books in the Texas State Archives. It provides the most complete and authoritative account available of this historic North American adventure and territorial claim. By careful cross- document analysis, Foster projects an extended expedition chronology that adds about two weeks to the journey, corrects the date that La Salle's claim was announced, and revises erroneous interpretations made by most contemporary French and American scholars. The work includes maps prepared by the noted Southwest cartographer John V. Cotter

Profiles the explorer who, upon hearing rumors of the Mississippi River, determined first to find it, then to claim it for France and establish French settlements from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Profiles the explorer who, upon hearing rumors of the Mississippi River, determined first to find it, then to claim it for France and establish French settlements from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Who first sailed down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico? La Salle did. Known to many as Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, this French explorer claimed the Mississippi Valley for France. Read about how La Salle explored the Great Lakes area and tracked the Mississippi river to the Gulf of Mexico. Book jacket.

A biography of the seventeenth-century French explorer who was the first European to travel the entire length of the Mississippi River, claiming for France not only the river, but also all the land whose waters fed into it.