Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 26, 1999

Settlement expedition missed river's mouth

by Jim Bradshaw

He spent 40 days recovering from his fever at Fort Prudhomme, above today's Memphis, each day growing more excited about his plans for a French colony on the Gulf Coast.

His excitement was cooled in the spring of 1683 when a courier from Montréal found him and reported that La Salle's chief supporter, Louis de Baude, Comte de Frontenac, had been dismissed as governor of New France. He had been replaced by Lefebvre de Barre, who had convinced King Louis XIV that La Salle planned to set up a Louisiana kingdom of his own.

As soon as he could travel, La Salle headed for France, arriving there at the end of 1683. La Salle pointed out to the Court that not only did his plans serve commerce, they also served the church, because "The service of God can be established by the preaching of the Gospel to nations that are numerous, docile, sedentary, and well-disposed because they are more civilized than those in other parts of America; they already have temples and a sort of worship which it will be easy to convert into the true--easier than to try to inspire those who have none at all."

In regard to political and military advantages to be gained by his explorations, La Salle said that the Mississippi could be used as a base of operations against the Spanish to the southwest. He urged a colonial policy of expansion into the Mississippi Valley, where France could cultivate the friendship of Indian nations that had been alienated by Spanish severity. With those Indian allies, he said, France could hold its own territory and threaten Spain's without the expense of bringing many French colonists into the area.

To help make his arguments, La Salle sought a friend at court who would help him get the king's ear. One of the men he talked to was Count Don Diego Dionisio de Penalosa Briceno y Berdugo, described by one historian as "one of those attractive four-flushers who save the past from being a dull parade of logical events."

Penalosa was a Spanish Creole, born in Peru, who connived his way up through the Spanish colonial system to become governor of New Mexico in 1661. Unfortunately, he caught the eye of the Spanish Inquisition by doing a few things considered unbecoming to a Catholic including rape, robbery, blackmailing settlers, enslaving Indian girls, and, worst of all, calling church officials "damned rascals."

He was sent to Mexico City for trial and was exiled from the Americas in 1668. He somehow found his way to London, where, in 1670, Penalosa tried to convince British King Charles II to send him back to North America at the head of a British army. When Charles declined the offer, Penalosa moved on to Paris, where he proposed a plan to seize the Spanish mines in Mexico from a French base that would be set up on the Texas coast. He said that with the help of the French pirates in the Caribbean, France could take all of northern Mexico and that there would be plenty of booty for all.

The idea struck the French king's fancy, particularly so because France was then (again) at war with Spain. After meeting with La Salle, Penalosa proposed a joint venture. Penalosa would seize the silver and gold mines and La Salle would set up a colony and fort on the Mississippi River that would be the base of operations.

La Salle turned down Penalosa's proposal because he didn't want to share leadership. But, knowing that King Louis preferred quick wealth to slow colonization, La Salle decided to adopt part of Penalosa's scheme as his own. He proposed that an army of Frenchmen and friendly Indians would attack the Spanish mines from his new colony by moving up the Red River to what is now Shreveport and then marching about 100 miles south to the Rio Grande. His plan did not take into account about 600 miles of dry Texas landscape that stretched between the two rivers, but he didn't know that, nor did the king.

In April 1683, King Louis decided to give La Salle even more ships, sailors, soldiers, and money than the explorer had asked for. By then, the king was coming to terms with Spain, so he said nothing about capturing mines. But La Salle understood that the king would not be displeased if a bit of Spanish gold and silver somehow made its way to France.

La Salle's expedition sailed from La Rochelle on Aug 1, 1684, pretending to head for Quebec so that his real plan of a Gulf colony would be kept secret from Spain. La Salle took an old Caribbean trade route for 4,000 miles to Saint-Domingue. His four ships included a man of war, Le Joli, commanded by an officer of the French royal navy, Monsieur de Beaujeu; a three-masted ship, L'Aimable, which the king had given to La Salle; a smaller, three-masted ship, La Belle, with a draft shallow enough to explore along the coastline; and a two-masted ketch, Saint Domingue.

The ships carried nearly 400 people, 280 of them colonists, the rest soldiers and sailors. Twenty of the colonists were women.

Nothing seemed to please La Salle during the 58-day voyage to Saint Domingue. He bickered constantly with Beaujeu, then collapsed with fever when news came that Spanish pirates had captured the Saint Francois. He got more upset when colonists and soldiers deserted at Saint-Domingue, and even more irked when he found out that the French buccaneers he was counting on to guide him knew very little about the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

On Nov. 25, 1684, the expedition, now only Le Joli, L'Aimable, and La Belle, left Saint-Domingue to begin hunting for the mouth of the Mississippi River. The ships sailed along the coast of Cuba, then turned northwest toward the North America coast. One Dec. 28, crewmen on La Belle were first to sight the low northern Gulf shore. The expedition landed on the shore on New Year's Day, but found nothing like the delta lands La Salle had found at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682. Some historians think that La Salle was probably west of the mouth of the Mississippi, maybe at the mouth of the Atchafalaya. But La Salle and Beaujeu thought they were still too far to the east. They kept sailing to the west.

The crews and colonists aboard La Salle's ships watched for three weeks for the mouth of the river they had already passed. They passed the mouth of the Sabine, but it was not the river La Salle remembered. When they passed Galveston Bay, La Salle thought it was Mobile Bay, so he kept sailing west. Finally, in late January, La Salle decided that he had sailed far enough, and that the Mississippi had to be nearby. Actually, L'Aimable was just off a 30-mile-long sandspit stretching across Matagorda Bay, 70 miles north of what is now Corpus Christi. The first attempt at settlement of Louisiana would be in Texas.

Somehow, La Salle's pilot got the storeship past Pelican Island and through the dangerous narrows of Cavello Pass, into the big bay swarming with teal and mallards, Canada geese, and canvasbacks. L'Aimable was soon joined by Beaujeu's Le Joli and by La Belle. In La Salle's view, the bay and the lands around it were just more of the Louisiana Empire that he would claim for France. He set up a temporary camp at the mouth of the main stream leading into the bay, which he named la rivière aux boeufs, because of the buffalo grazing there. Later, he moved his colonists into Fort St. Louis in greener country about five miles upstream.

Bad things began to happen quickly. The pilot of L'Aimable let the storeship run aground. It split open and its cannonballs, kitchen utensils, tools, and blankets were lost. Beaujeu and La Salle argued, with the result that Beaujeu sailed for France in mid-march 1685 aboard Le Joli, taking the crew of L'Aimable with him. He took all of the cannonballs with him, saying he needed them for ballast. That left the colonists with only La Belle. But a storm wrecked it in the bay, stranding the settlers.

La Salle made a series of desperate marches to find the Mississippi which he still thought to be nearby. He found no river no help, no food. Instead, his explorations used up precious supplies.

By early 1686, the colonists at Fort St. Louis were desperate. Of the 280 of them who had left La Rochelle in 1684, only 37 were still alive. Seven of these were women. Their survival depended solely upon the fort's rickety buildings, 70 pigs, 20 hens, a few barrels of cornmeal, a tiny supply of gunpowder, and eight cannons with no cannonballs.

The colonists finally convinced La Salle to give up his grand scheme and to try to save their lives. He thought that France and Spain were still at war, so he did not dare cross the Rio Grande to seek help from the Spanish enemy in Mexico. He thought the only thing to do was to find his way to the Red River, then to the Mississippi, to follow it to Canada, and from there to go to Paris to get relief ships from the king.

But his men no longer trusted his leadership. On March 17, while they were out hunting, they killed La Salle and his nephew. Most of the settlers also died within the next several months. More than a year later a few of them finally reached Canada and sailed from there to France to tell the story of the failed settlement.

In his book, "Explorers of the Mississippi," historian Timothy Severin gives this opinion: "René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is the most tragic figure in the history of Mississippi exploration. Of all the Mississippi explorers, he had the greatest vision, the most meteoric career, and the worst luck. In France, he received royal patronage and financial assistance, but in Canada he struggled against hatred, greed and envy. If La Salle had achieved his ambitions, a gigantic wedge of North America from Quebec to New Orleans to the Rocky Mountains would have become a French colony firmly held for Louis the Magnificent by a chain of forts that started on the Atlantic and finished on the Gulf of Mexico. This was the empire that La Salle dreamed of, an empire whose key was absolute control of the vital spinal column, the Mississippi, reaching with its tributaries thousands of miles into the interior. If he had lived, perhaps La Salle would have finally built this colossus, but as it was, he died in an obscure Texas thicket, shot through the head by one of his own men."

The French never found the Matagorda Bay colony again. In fact, they never really looked for it. But the Spanish, worried by reports that France had designs on North America, would finally find its remains.