La Salle Murdered: French Explorer's Tragic End

Robert Cavelier de La Salle's own men shot him in the head on March 19, 1687, while he searched for food near their camp in East Texas. Born on November 22, 1643, in Rouen, France, La Salle had been educated by Jesuits and emigrated to New France (present-day Canada) in 1666. He became an explorer driven by two ambitions: finding a navigable water route to China and claiming the Mississippi River basin for France. He achieved the second. In April 1682, he descended the Mississippi from the Illinois country to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire river basin, 828,000 square miles, for King Louis XIV and naming it Louisiana in his honor. The claim was audacious: it encompassed roughly a third of the modern United States, from the Appalachians to the Rockies. His 1684 expedition to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi was a catastrophe. He missed the river's mouth entirely, landing 400 miles west on the coast of Texas, near Matagorda Bay. The colony he established, Fort Saint Louis, was plagued by disease, hostile encounters with local tribes, and La Salle's own difficult temperament. He was an autocratic leader who alienated subordinates through arbitrary punishments and erratic decision-making. After two years of wandering through swamps and prairies attempting to find the Mississippi overland, his men mutinied. They killed his nephew first, then La Salle when he came looking for him. The assassins were themselves murdered weeks later by other members of the expedition. The survivors eventually reached French settlements in the Illinois country. Fort Saint Louis was destroyed by Karankawa warriors in 1688. France lost track of Texas for decades because the one man who could have led them back was dead in the wilderness.