LA. SALLE, RENk ROBERT CAVELIER, Sieur de, 164347; b. in Rouen, France, of a `wealthy merchant family; discoverer of the Ohio and the main part of the Mississippi river. Studious and grave in youth, he entered a school of the Roman church and became a Jesuit priest. About his twenty-third year he withdrew from this service with the good-will of his superiors, and sailed for Canada, where an older brother was priest at Montreal in the seminary of St. Sulpice. This seminary was a religious corporation to which had been given a sort of feudal proprietorship of Montreal and its vicinage. The superior, seeing in La Salle a youth of high character, granted him a tract of land with seignorial rights, where the village of La Chine now stands, near the rapids of the St. Lawrence. The youthful lord built a fort, laid out a village, subdivided and leased lands in the seignorial form of that day, set, apart a park or common, and in his own personal reservation cleared the land and erected buildings. He studied the Indian lan guages, and in a few years was master of seven or eight dialects. Trade with the Indians in furs, explorations into the surrounding country to extend this trade, and easy communi cation by the upper St. Lawrence with the tribes on its borders, gave La Salle the means to make improvements at La Chine, and enabled him to obtain that vague knowledge of the great interior which fired his ambition to learn more. Even down to that time men believed in a navigable passage to the South sea, to China and Japan, through this con tinent. The vast extent of the lakes, then dimly known through information gleaned from savages, seemed a probable connecting route to the Pacific. A band of the Senecas spent the winter at La Salle's fort and told him of the great Ohio rising in their country and flowing to the sea, but so long that eight or nine months were required to paddle to its mouth. La Salle believed that this stream must empty into the gulf of Calif,:rnia on the Pacific. He quietly formed his plans to be its Columbus, obtained the governor's consent, and letters patent authorizing the exploration, but at his own expense. He sold his seignory and all improvements to get the means. July 6, 1669, with 14 men and tour canoes the expedition started up the St. Lawrence. It took them 30 days to pass the rapids, the Thousand islands, and to reach lake Ontario. Thence they skirted the s. shore to the mouth of the Genesee, where they remained a month, seeking infor mation and. friendship among the Indians. Then coasting westward they passed the mouth of the Niagara, heard the far roar of the cataract, and reached the w. bnd of lake Ontario. There he found a Shawnee prisoner who promised to conduct him to the Ohio river in six weeks. Here be met Joliet, afterwards with Marquette discoverer of the upper Mississippi, returning from a futile search for copper mines on lake Superior. From him he procured a map of the lake country which he bad visited. From this
point the records of La Salle's movements are not full. It is known, however, that he went southward and embarked on the head stream of the Alleghany river e. of lake Erie and followed it down to the Ohio, which he explored to the rapids at Louisville. There lie learned from the natives that, far beyond, this stream joined the bed of that great river which lost itself in the vast lowlands of the south. Here his men deserted in a body. La Salle returned "400 lieues" to Canada alone, living upon the chase, herbs, and the hospitality of the natives. Nicholas Perrot, a famous early voyageur, states that lie met La Salle in the summer of 1670 hunting on the Ottawa with a party of Iroquois. This gives the required time for his return, and indicates both his reduced circumstances and that he was energetically at `work to get the means for another expedition. The season of 1671 finds him embarked on lake Erie, which he skirted in canoes to the mouth of the Detroit river; thence through lake Huron to Mackinac and lake Michigan. Beyond Green bay he explored the western shore of the lake, not known to have been visited before by white men, and made the portage to the Illinois river either where Chicago now stands, or by the way of the St. Joseph and the Kankakee on the s.e. shore of the lake. He followed down the Illinois to, or nearly to, the Mississippi, and made a map of its course and tributary streams. This map indicates that he made the Chicago portage, though his subsequent explorations via the St. Joseph and Kankakee portage indicate that he did not so early learn of the Chicago trail to the Illinois. He returned to Montreal and reported his discoveries. In 1672-73 he seems to have been busy in the fur trade. The latter year he laid before the governor, Count Frontenac, the project for the exploration of the Mississippi. The governor could promise no money, but the project had collateral mercantile advantages in which he might participate with La Salle, so that he gave the sanction of his authority to the enterprise. Ostensibly, the project was to build forts westward of Canada to hold the country for Louis XIV., and to prevent the rich trade in furs from being diverted to the Dutch and English at Albany and New York. In effect it would give him a base of operations for the great discovery to which his imagination and energy impelled him. The forts were to be made centers for the fur trade beyond the competition of Montreal. The project met with strong opposition from the traders of Montreal and from the directors of the Jesuits, but Frontenac's imperious will had its way. By official strategy lie managed to have a fort built for La Salle at a point designated by him near where Kingston, Canada, now stands, and invited the Iroquois to a grand council there. La Salle's scheme embraced forts at Niagara and on the upper lakes.