Down the Mississippi to the Gulf

René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle · 1682 CE · Earth

Down the Mississippi to the Gulf — René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle · 1682 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Follow the great river from the Illinois country to its mouth and determine whether it opened on the Gulf of Mexico or on the Pacific.

Historical context

Joliet and Marquette had gone down the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas in 1673 and turned back for fear of the Spanish, leaving open the question that mattered to Versailles: where the river came out. A French outlet on the Gulf would flank the Spanish empire and give the fur trade of the Great Lakes a port that did not freeze. La Salle, mortgaged to his creditors and out of favour with half of New France, needed the answer more than anyone, and he went to look for it in February with the rivers still full of ice.

The voyage, step by step

  1. The frozen portage

    January 1682

    Fifty-four people drag canoes on sledges across the watershed between the lakes and the river.

  2. Past the great rock

    1682 CE

    The party passes the sandstone bluff on which La Salle will build Fort Saint-Louis the next year.

  3. The Illinois towns of the Peoria lake

    1682 CE

    The great summer town is empty for the winter hunt, and the party lives on what it can shoot.

  4. Onto the Mississippi, 6 February

    6 February 1682

    The canoes reach the great river and wait a week for the ice to clear.

  5. The Quapaw towns

    1682 CE

    At the Arkansas the French are fed for three days and a cross and a column are set up.

  6. The Natchez sun

    1682 CE

    A chief carried on a litter receives them in a town built round a temple mound.

  7. The three passes

    6 April 1682

    The river divides into channels through the marsh and the water at last tastes of salt.

  8. Louisiane proclaimed, 9 April

    9 April 1682

    A cross, a lead plate and a volley of muskets claim a third of a continent for Louis XIV.

Outcome

Reached the three passes of the delta on 6 April 1682 and claimed the entire basin for France as Louisiane three days later.

René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle

Rouen-born trader who descended the Mississippi to the Gulf in 1682 and claimed its whole basin for Louis XIV, then lost his life trying to find the river’s mouth again from the sea.

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Sources

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