 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|||||
|
 |
 |
Biography of La Salle, Sieur deName: La Salle, Sieur deBirth Date: September 21, 1643 Death Date: March 19, 1687 Place of Birth: Rouen, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: explorer, colonizer La Salle, Sieur de René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687), was a French explorer and colonizer, best known for his discovery of the Mississippi Delta. His career is a remarkable tale of wanderings in North America and of the intrigues of Versailles.René Robert Cavelier, later Sieur de La Salle, was born on Sept. 21, 1643, near Rouen into a wealthy bourgeois family. In 1658 he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, taking his vows in 1660. But Cavelier proved to be somewhat intractable, and after several unsuccessful attempts to conform to the rigid discipline of the Jesuit order he was released from his vows in 1667.With no prospects in France, Cavelier followed family connections and a wandering spirit and set out for New France that same year. He was immediately granted a seigneury, known as Lachine, by his Sulpician brother's order on Montreal Island. It is an instructive comment on the Sieur …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…discoverer of the mouth of the Mississippi River and the leader of that ill-fated colonization scheme. His energy and courage must be acknowledged, but his passionate pursuit of fame and glory render him one of the most perplexing of the explorers of the interior of North America. Further Reading Most of the material written on La Salle is in French. The best study in English is Jean Delanglez, Some La Salle Journeys (1938). Also extremely useful is Donald Johnson's La Salle: A Perilous Odyssey from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, packed with illustrations and maps (2002). The romantic prose of Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869; many later editions), is worth reading. Also useful are the references in Grace Lee Nute, Caesars of the Wilderness (1943). Newer works are Edmund Boyd Osler, La Salle (1967), and John Upton Terrell, La Salle: The Life and Times of an Explorer (1968). |