LA’s French Colonial Era
Chpt. 6
Locations for the test
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Ft. Maurepas (present-day Ocean Springs, MS…near Biloxi)
Ft. Mississippi (de la Boulaye)
Ft. Louis (present-day Mobile, AL)
English Turn
Natchitoches
Ship Island
Dauphin Island
New Orleans (in 1718)
The German Coast (not labeled in your book…goes from
Destrehan up to Edgard)
• Ft. Rosalie (present-day Natchez)
• Balize (not labeled in book…it was a fort at the very end of
the Mississippi River)
• Place d'Armes (it’s called Jackson Square in N.O. today)
In 1673, French explorers, Louis Joliet
and Fr. Marquette, go down the
Mississippi…but they stop before they
get to LA(present-day) & go back.
Why?
They’re sent to
explore the land &
possibly look for a
passage to the
Pacific Ocean.
• Stopped at mouth of Arkansas River on the
Mississippi by Indians
– Luckily they had a calumet, peace pipe, on them
from an Indian tribe upriver & weren’t killed.
Joliet: Guns?....Alright, well, um, I guess that’s all there is to see
here…whataya say we turn this bad boy around & go home,
Maackett?
Marquette: Sounds good to me…I’m not afraid or nothin’…I just think,
well, you know, Canada has just so much more future
potential than this slummy area down here.
• Heard from local Indians that the tribes downriver
could defend themselves with Spanish guns
So someone else had to claim LA for
France…
La Salle
• Rene Robert Cavelier (Sieur de La Salle)
• Feb. 1682 entered Upper Mississippi River
• April 9, 1682 at mouth of Mississippi, La Salle
claims all land drained by Mississippi for King
Louis XIV.
This Day in Treasure History
The Tablet La Salle buried at the
mouth of the river…how much do
you think it was worth when a
Cajun trapper found it in the
1920s?
Ooops…
• Dude couldn’t read the Latin inscription so he
melted it down into fishing weights & buckshot.
Captain Henri de Tonti came to the
Americas with LaSalle…& he tried
searching for LaSalle when LaSalle was
missing.
Tonti also had the respect of the Indians…
• Bravery
• He had an “iron hand.”
RWB: Dude…Stands With Hatchet…check
out this Frenchie with the hook!!!
SWH: That is very awesome, Runs With
Buffalo. I would very much like to
get one of those hands of iron.
– Amputated it himself (grenade injured it during war
with Spain in Sicily)
– Wore a glove over his hook
Capt. Hook & Tonti…coincidence?
I think not.
LaSalle went missing? Oh, no…what
happened? Did they find him?
Whaaa!? They killed him? Not La
Salle!
LaSalle’s fateful trip…
• King Louis gave LaSalle a fleet of ships and 300
colonists to make a colony in LA.
• 1687 – can’t find the mouth of the Mississippi,
sails to Matagorda Bay in TX.
Location of La Salle's settlement now known as Fort St. Louis. Established roughly 40 miles inland from where the French expedition landed on
the Texas coast, the site was intended only as a temporary outpost for the colonists while La Salle continued searching for the mouth of the
Mississippi River. Map by Roland Pantermuehl, courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission.
Men mutinied & killed him.
• He set up a “fort” and tried to find the
Mississippi.
• 17 men go on this trip, 1 kills La Salle & 7
others at camp
• Pierre Duhaut shot La Salle…and Duhaut was
killed not to long after.
Which would you have chosen?
• 6 men decide to return to Canada & the rest
return to Ft. St. Louis.
With your neighbor…which would
you have chosen?
• Come up with 1 positive & negative possible
result of your decision.
• (don’t have to write it down)
• The 6 men make it safely to Canada
• Those who return & the 20 other men left at Fort
St. Louis were attacked by Indians the next year,
1689, along with the women & children. The
Karankawa allowed 4 children to live but killed at
least 1 infant.
– These were raised by the Karankawa Indians
So why they called the “explorers”?
The sports reporter in Philly
thought…
St. Jean Baptiste de La Salle
Rene Robert Cavelier (Sieur de La Salle)