La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West

by Francis Parkman, Rick Bass (Introduction)

René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle (1643-1687), one of the most legendary explorers of the New World, is best known for claiming the entire Louisiana Territory for France in 1682. Two years later, he was given the order to colonize and govern the great expanse of territory between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. He set out from France with four ships but never reached his destination. Landing somewhere in East Texas, he and his men were ravaged by disease, weakened by hard labor, even gored by buffalo as they tried to locate the mouth of the Mississippi River, which was obscured by the sandy sameness of the Gulf coastline. In 1687, on a third attempt to locate the river by an overland route, La Salle was murdered by his own men in the desolate country between the Trinity and Brazos rivers. His body was never found.

First published in 1869, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West is the vivid, richly detailed story of that final grim expedition, told by America's foremost historian.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, American, Biography, Travel

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1869

About the author

Francis Parkman was an American historian.

He is best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as historical sources and as literature. He was also a leading horticulturist, briefly a Professor of Horticulture at Harvard University and author of several books on the topic.

Parkman was a trustee of the Boston Athenæum from 1858 until his death in 1893.

Reviews

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1869, this is the third of Parkman’s seven volumes on the history of France in the New World. Most of the present volume follows the career of Rene-Robert Cavelier de la Salle (1643-1687), early explorer of the Ohio, the Illinois and the Mississippi. Secondary characters include La Salle’s stalwart lieutenant, the literally iron-fisted Henri de Tonty; and Fr Louis Hennepin, who spent time as a captive of the Sioux and went on to lie through his rather substantial nose about himself discovering the mouth of the Mississippi.

Like the prior two volumes (which I’ve already reviewed), this is a great book. Parkman’s prose is spotless, his research and argument deep, his narrative skills absolutely compelling. Parkman gives us a La Salle of heroic ambitions and of critically flawed character, the scale of whose achievements was matched only by the scale of his failures. And what a colossal failure his final endeavor was. With royal backing from Louis XIV, a small fleet, and three hundred colonists, priests, tradesmen and soldiers, La Salle barely manages to make landfall on the Gulf of Mexico at what he takes to be the mouth of the Mississippi – but he’s four hundred miles off course. By pig-headedness, disease, treachery, and cold-blooded murder, the colony – and La Salle himself – make a sad, sad end.

I can’t help thinking of the poor children brought along for that final voyage. After crossing an ocean, dodging Spanish buccaneers, storms and sickness, they finally land in Texas, which was not at all their intended destination. They live in a makeshift fort while the adults conspire against each other and vanish one by one through desertion or disease. When their savior La Salle fails them utterly, king and country abandon them too, and those few still alive are finally captured by a local tribe. After years of living as buffalo-hunting Indians of the plains, they’re taken by the Spanish, clapped into irons, shipped to Europe, and sentenced to hard labor in the Caribbean mines. When finally repatriated, they came home to a France they must barely have known.

[Jay French · Rating 4 out of 5]

I come from a small town in Northwestern Illinois and grew up with an interest in history, especially local history. Being from a rural area, we considered anything within an hour or so, also generally rural areas, to be neighbors. Starved Rock, in Utica, I always considered to be close, so I was interested in the history of the area, and had visited many times. I’m also amazed that local history was rarely covered in school growing up. So now, 40 years past high school, I learn that explorer LaSalle visited Starved Rock multiple times as he explored the Midwest, and even built a fort on the rock. LaSalle’s visits to Starved Rock bookend his multiple trips on downstream on the Illinois River on his way to the Mississippi and even to the gulf. Even more interesting is that we learn in this book that the author, Francis Parkman, even visited Starved Rock to determine the location of an Indian village and site of a massacre. So far in Parkman’s history series on England and France in the New World, this is the only mention of the author writing about himself, so it stands out. I find it disappointing that the visit of a famous historian to the area, now over 150 years ago, never made the radar of any of my history teachers in school. Sad.

Stepping off my soapbox, I enjoyed this story of LaSalle’s many explorations of the Midwest and, unfortunate for him, Texas. Parkman provides a surprising level of detail and is able to tell the exploration story that keeps the interest high, even following the remnants of his group of explorers after his death, finding their way back to civilization, not surprisingly through Starved Rock. This was the volume in Parkman’s series that I thought would be most interesting to me, given the local content, and so far I’d say it was. While I enjoy Parkman’s ability to craft a story, his next volume that appears to be all Canadian isn’t calling to me.

[Kivrin · Rating 2 out of 5]

As interesting as the topic was, this one was a chore to read. The original book was written in the late 1860's and updated in the late 1870's, and I struggled with the writing--formal, old fashioned, WORDY! La Salle (explorer of the Mississippi) led an adventurous life, but apparently, he was not an easy man to know. He's comes across as taciturn, very private, and extremely paranoid. Not that people weren't out to get him; they certainly were, but he kept everything very close which doesn't make him that fun to read about. The book is extremely well researched, and it is fun to see the viewpoint of that age (how the Indians are described, etc.), but many of the footnotes were in French, and it was just a hard read.

[Thomas Funke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good overview of early French Explorers. Parkman utilizes the many letters & memoirs to tell their stories. For a book written over 100 years ago, it was easy to read, but at times, a bit confusing to figure out where the explorers were on the landscape. A map sure would have helped.

Also, no organized bibliography to which was the primary reason I bought the book. One would have to pick through the footnotes to find references.

[Stephen Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn't quite as high on this one as I was on the book about the Jesuits that comes right before this one. This was written as a full-length book and then Parkman discovered a lot of other documents that lead him to go back and significantly expand it, so I feel like it might be a little long with those expansions. Still, overall, it was enjoyable.

[George M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bold, new world.

LaSalle, and Tonty, and the band of Frenchman and Indians who shared in their travails, tell the fascinating and terrifying tale of the early exploration of the Mississippi River region.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parkman's style of historical writing is vastly different from that to which we are accustomed today, making this book just a bit of an unusual read in places. Some of that is due to the spottiness of the historical record, but I think modern historians are better at the overall art of story-telling and connecting events. Parkman's organization of the history feels a bit disjointed and more connected to original resource materials than to explicating the time period. That said, I found the book to be a wonderful reminder of a section of history that we probably glossed over in most US history classes so that we could get to the topics that tried to make us good citizens. This book is deeply about the earliest interactions between the native American peoples and white intruders, and I left it with a sense of the scale and complexity of the native populations that I never had before. Parkman is, of course, of his era and tends to refer to the native populations as savages, though he often credits them with a hospitality and generosity that was remarkable. This books makes me want to revisit the course of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes to discover some of the living places of the tens of thousands of original Americans.

Worth the time, certainly, but it is a different read. You might want to have a good map alongside the book as you read.

[Smith Nickerson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really not too sure how to rate. Found the archaic language to be fun and challenging. Best to get a map of the eastern Mississippi watershed to follow some of his journeys.

Blind ambition, exploitation and greed. Does not end well for La Salle.

[Pastor Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I got going I was entranced by this book.