CHAPTER ONE 1010 EUROPEAN EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA The early history of the land that would become Louisiana is dominated by the French Although the Spanish first explored the region in the 1540s it was the French who later settled it They made it part of their North American colony known as New France which stretched from eastern Canada in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south Yet for all the vast territory that France laid claim to in North America New France was never effectively colonized Many permanent communities were founded but the main interest of the mother country was com mercial exploitation especially the fur trade Under French and later Spanish rule all these settlements including Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Louisiana
EUROPEAN EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA 11 remained frontier outposts Only after 1800 when citi zens of the United States began trekking westward in search of plentiful inexpensive land did they really grow FRENCH EXPLORATION OF LOUISIANA During the 17th century a great number of Frenchmen traders missionaries and soldiers traversed the wilderness from eastern Canada to New Orleans They ventured throughout the Great Lakes region and the Mississippi River valley claiming the territory for the king of France The most famous of these explorers was René-Robert Cavelier sieur lord de La Salle The father of the Louisiana Territory La Salle was the first European to voyage down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico As a result of this 1682 expedition France laid claim to the entire Mississippi Valley La Salle named the terri tory Louisiana for the French king Louis XIV France’s claim to Louisiana was strengthened by the efforts of In this print published in Edward Sylvester Ellis’s The History of Our Country 1899 Sieur de La Salle lays claim to the entire Mississippi Valley in the name of France
THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE AND WESTWARD EXPANSION 12 LA SALLE’S EXPEDITIONS La Salle’s exploration of the Mississippi in 1682 was not his first expedition in North America Committed to expanding New France he had sold his land in Montreal to finance an expedition to the Ohio region in 1669 70 A decade later in 1679 he sailed from Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario to Green Bay on Lake Michigan He then continued south eventually in 1680 following the Illinois River to its junction with the Mississippi This was his first glimpse of the river he would famously descend two years later After his storied expedition of 1682 La Salle made one more voyage In 1684 he set out with four ships and about 400 men in an attempt to establish a post at the mouth of the Mississippi This expedition by sea was doomed from the start La Salle’s naval commander opposed him constantly and illness took a heavy toll Many men deserted Finally a great miscalculation brought the ships to Matagorda Bay in Texas 500 miles 800 kilometers west of their intended landfall There his naval commander left him with one small ship La Salle started to build a fort and made several fruitless journeys in search of his lost Mississippi His ship was wrecked and he lost all but 36 of his men In March 1687 he was murdered by three of his men near the Brazos River in what is now eastern Texas His vision of a French empire died with him It would be up to other Frenchmen to colonize New France
EUROPEAN EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA 13 Map of Sieur de La Salle’s explorations of North America
