People from History
Historical People L La Salle, Rene Robert Cavelier de
La Salle, Rene Robert Cavelier de |
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La Salle settled in Canada as a fur trader at the age of twenty-three. He heard from the Indians about a mighty river they called the Messi-Sipi, and made up his mind to explore it. After exploring the Great Lakes and the River Ohio, he set out from Lake Michigan on 21 December, 1681 with twenty-three Frenchmen and eighteen Indians. They sailed down the River Illinois into the Mississippi and reached the Gulf of Mexico on 9 April, 1682. La Salle claimed for France all the land the Mississippi flowed through and named it Louisiana after King Louis IV. La Salle did not know it, but this amounted to almost 1.6 million square miles (2.5 million square kilometers). Afterwards, he returned by sea to set up a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi but on this expedition he was murdered by one of his own men. See Issac Joslin Cox The Journeys of Rene Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle
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La Salle, Rene Robert Cavelier de (1643-87), French explorer.