Rene Robert Cavelier De La Salle
| Rene Robert Cavelier de La Salle | |
 | |
| Portrait of La Salle | |
| Birth | 22 November 1643 Rouen |
|---|---|
| Deaths | 19 March 1687 (43 years) Louisiana |
| Nationality | French |
| Main findings | Mississippi |
| Country employer (s) | France |
| Buildings | La Belle |
| First shipment | Region of the Great Lakes |
| Last expedition | Louisiana |
Rene Robert Cavelier de La Salle was born in Rouen (nowadays in Seine-Maritime ) on 22 November 1643 and died on 19 March 1687 in the south of the French colony of Louisiana , now the U.S. state of Texas.
Explorer -traveler, he explored the region of the Great Lakes of the United States and Canada , and the river Mississippi and has uncovered the lands between the St. Lawrence valley and delta of Mississippi.
Summary |
Youth and studies
Rene Robert Cavelier, the son of a wealthy merchant Jean Cavelier. The name "The Room", which he will later come from a family estate near Rouen. He studied at the Jesuit college of Rouen and entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus , in which he makes his vows in 1660. He enjoys teaching in this institution, Alencon , Tours and Blois , then asks to be relieved of his wishes for "moral weaknesses", he gets the 27 March 1667. He entered the Jesuit order to please his father.
First trip
He began his first trip to France and landed in 1667 in New France , to Montreal , where his brother John, a priest of St. Sulpice , had arrived the previous year. It occupies a land southwest of the island of Montreal which he called " Saint-Sulpice , but China appoints people to make fun of her desire to find a route to go in China.
In 1669 , he financed an expedition exploring the lakes Ontario and Erie. It then reaches the river Ohio , but not the top of the upper Mississippi , which was discovered by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette in 1672. His group consisted of five canoes and five men, the father of Dollier Casson and seven men traveling with him in three additional canoes.
In 1674 , he established Fort Frontenac (now Kingston ) on Lake Ontario as the first element of an enterprise of the fur trade (beaver). The fort was named after the governor of New France , Louis de Frontenac Buade. He then left for France (1674-1675), travel during which he receives, with the support of Frontenac, not just a concession for the fur trade, with permission to establish frontier forts, but also letters patent of nobility.
Second voyage
Upon his return to New France, he is accompanied by Henri de Tonti , who will join his explorations. On 7 August 1678 , La Salle set sail on Le Griffon , which he and Tonti had built Fort Conti , near Niagara Falls. Becoming the first to sail the Great Lakes, they sail to Lake Erie and Lake Huron and then down to Lake Michigan.
On 1November 1678 , La Salle founded a fort at the mouth of St. Joseph , River today Michigan and awaits the return of a team led by Tonti, who crossed the peninsula on foot. Tonti arrived on November 20 , and December 3 the entire crew goes back in St. Joseph, to reach a port on the River Kankakee. They followed the Kankakee River to Illinois , where they established the Fort Crevecoeur near present Peoria.
The room then walk to Fort Frontenac for supplies. Meanwhile, Louis Hennepin follows Illinois to its junction with the Mississippi, but was captured during a war between the Sioux and transported in Minnesota. In the absence of La Salle, the soldiers mutinied at Fort Crevecoeur and banish Tonti, La Salle had left in the direction of the fort. La Salle capture the mutineers on Lake Ontario and eventually find Tonti at Michilimackinac, now called Mackinaw.
Exploration of the Mississippi
La Salle then gathers his crew for a new expedition. Leaving Fort Crevecoeur with twenty-three French and eighteen Indians , he reached the southern Lake Michigan in 1680 and down the Mississippi in 1682 , to the Gulf of Mexico. On April 9 , he took possession of these vast territories in the name of France and gave them the name Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV who, ungrateful, wrote to the governor of La Barre that this discovery is "very unnecessary and need to prevent more such discoveries, even if he orders her to return and to establish a colony. At the mouth of the Mississippi River, near modern Venice , Louisiana, La Salle buried an engraved plate and a cross claiming the territory for France.
In 1683 , on his return journey, he set a new box at rock starved (Starved Rock) on the river Illinois , to replace Fort Crevecoeur. Tonti directs the fort while La Salle returned again to France to raise resources for a new expedition to install a counter at the mouth of the Mississippi River and develop a fur trade competitor to that of the Jesuits Valley Laurentian.
Third Voyage
It is the king of France Louis XIV , to whom Spain has just declared war in October 1683 , which provides support to mount an expedition to ensure better control of France on the North American and also to monitor the mines of silver from Mexico to feed the coffers of Charles II of Spain. If this is the means royal warrant for La Salle in debt to finance his expedition, the real motivation of the browser is its thirst for wealth and grandeur. The room shall leave the port of La Rochelle July 24, 1684 with the title of governor of Louisiana and the head of an expedition of four ships and 300 settlers, an armed force. Louis XIV granted him the warship the Joly and a long boat - sort of corvette or small frigate - La Belle. To transport the approximately 300 settlers, soldiers and crewmen, excluding loading, La Salle has to hire two other ships: the frigate L'Amiable and ketch The Saint Francis.
The expedition will be buffeted by attacks from pirates and navigational errors accumulate. The St. Francis fell to pirates to the Spanish West Indies , off the coast of Hispaniola. Navigation time is unclear and whether the determination of latitude is approximately correct, the longitude, in the absence of precise chronometers not appear until the eighteenth century, is very deficient. The ships landed on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico well in western mouth of the Mississippi. Along the coast, arrived near Matagorda Bay , in Texas , La Salle decides to stand down. During the maneuver to enter the bay the Aimable ran aground on a sandbar and sank. Almost all of its cargo is lost. The commander Tanguy Welsh Beaujeu, Captain of the Royal Navy commander Joly, is in conflict with La Salle and decides to return to France. He set down the loading of Joly and returned to France in March 1685 with staff on board who defected. Upon his arrival in France, he predicted the inevitable failure of the expedition and suicidal. This does not count when more than a ship, La Belle, and 180 people on board the 300 to La Rochelle a few months earlier.
The remaining members of the expedition were finally forced to establish a fort on shore - the Fort St. Louis - near Victoria in Texas. Hence, La Salle leads doggedly researching east to try to find the Mississippi. Unfortunately for him, he is more than 600 km of river. And its attempts to face particularly hostile Indians, deserts, malnutrition, and accidental deaths. In February 1686, his last ship, La Belle, is caught in a storm and ran aground in Matagorda Bay. After two years long and hard who see the colony of 180 souls reduced to 40 people including 7 children, La Salle decided to tempt fate. He left the camp with 16 men, among them his older brother Jean Cavelier, priest of state, Colin Crevel Morang, the nephew of La Salle, and Henri Joutel , his trusted. But men mutinied and La Salle was murdered on 19 March 1687 , near Navasota.
The last surviving member of the colony until 1688 , when Indian Karankawa massacred the 20 remaining adults and took five children as captives. Henri Joutel who survived the mutiny which claimed his life in La Salle continues along the road of Jean Cavelier and 5 other men walk to the Mississippi, then to Quebec , where most of them stopped. When he learns the fate of the expedition, Tonti sent out search missions in 1689, but no survivors are found. The main narrative of this expedition is from the journal of Henri Joutel, regarded by historians as the most objective source of information on the subject.
The loss of territories
De La Salle has offered a vast territory to Louis XIV in the center of North America. New France Canada and the left bank of the Mississippi were lost to England in 1763 to the end of the war seven years. The right bank of the Mississippi and New Orleans were ceded to Spain in 1762 when the Treaty of Fontainebleau. In 1800, France regained Louisiana during the Spanish Treaty of San Ildefonso. On 18 December 1803 , Louisiana was ceded to the United States by Napoleon. Fifteen states in the United States of America have been completely or partially cut into the former French territory of Louisiana.
Today
The wreck of La Salle's last ship, the long boat La Belle , whose location was on old maps of Spanish and French, was rediscovered in the mud of Matagorda Bay in 1995 , the remains of the wreckage and equipment on board which have been reassembled and are presented on different sites in Texas under a loan made by France for 99 years. (See External Links).
Property in France the remains of La Belle has been in effect be reaffirmed by an agreement between the United States of America and France, signed at Washington March 31, 2003, and has been the subject of Decree 2003 - 540 of June 17, 2003, published in the Official Gazette of the French Republic June 24, 2003, page 10 560.
Many places have been named in his honor as the borough of LaSalle to the city of Montreal.
LaSalle , a city in the state of Illinois to the United States , named in his honor, and a major street in Chicago , LaSalle Street.
In 1927 , Alfred P. Sloan , president of General Motors , named the brand Auto " LaSalle "in his honor. The brand is produced until 1940 , as a sub brand Cadillac.
Sources
- Henri Joutel , Historical Journal of the last trip that the late Mr. de La Sale was in the Gulf of Mexico, to find the mouth, and the course of the Mississippi River, now called the St. Louis River, which flows through Louisiana. Where we see the tragic story of his death, and several curious things in the New World, Paris, E. Robinot, 1713
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