“Those of us who knew how to swim crossed to the other bank. But a number of our company did not know how to swim, and I was among that number. One of the Indians gave me a sign to go get a nearly dry log . . . then, fastening a strap on each end, he made us understand that we should hold on to the log with one arm and try to swim with the other arm and our feet . . . While trying to swim . . . I accidentally hit the Father in the stomach. At that moment he thought he was lost and, I assure you, he invoked the patron saint of his order, St. Francis, with all his heart. I could not keep from laughing although I could see I was in peril of drowning. But the Indians on the other side saw all this and came to our help . . . “Still there were others to get across. . . . We made the Indians understand that they must go help them, but because they had become disgusted by the last trip, they did not want to return again. This distressed us greatly.”—From Henri Joute’s journal, March 23, 1687, shortly after La Salle was murdered. The La Salle Expedition in Texas presents the definitive English translation of Henri Joutel’s classic account of Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle’s 1684–1687 expedition to establish a fort and colony near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Written from detailed notes taken during this historic journey, Joutel’s journal is the most comprehensive and authoritative account available of this dramatic story of adventure and misadventure in Texas. Joutel, who served as post commander for La Salle, describes in accurate and colorful detail the daily experiences and precise route La Salle’s party followed in 1687 from the Texas coast to the Mississippi River. By carefully comparing Joutel’s compass directions and detailed descriptions to maps and geographic locations, Foster has established where La Salle was murdered by his men, and has corrected many erroneous geographic interpretations made by French and American scholars during the past century. Joutel’s account is a captivating narrative set in a Texas coastal wilderness. Foster follows Joutel, La Salle, and their fellow adventurers as they encounter Indians and their unique cultures; enormous drifting herds of bison; and unknown flora and fauna, including lethal flowering cactus fruit and rattlesnakes. The cast of characters includes priests and soldiers, deserters and murderers, Indian leaders, and a handful of French women who worked side-by-side with the men. It is a remarkable first hand tale of dramatic adventure as these diverse individuals meet and interact on the grand landscape of Texas. Joutel’s journal, newly translated by Johanna S. Warren, is edited and annotated with an extensive introduction by William C. Foster. The account is accompanied by numerous detailed maps and the first published English translation of the testimony of Pierre Meunier, one of the most knowledgeable and creditable survivors of La Salle’s expedition.

The La Salle Expedition on the Mississippi River presents the definitive English translation of Nicolas de La Salle's diary account of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle's 1682 discovery expedition of the Mississippi River from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. This previously unknown manuscript copy was discovered recently in the collection of rare books in the Texas State Archives. It provides the most complete and authoritative account available of this historic North American adventure and territorial claim. By careful cross- document analysis, Foster projects an extended expedition chronology that adds about two weeks to the journey, corrects the date that La Salle's claim was announced, and revises erroneous interpretations made by most contemporary French and American scholars. The work includes maps prepared by the noted Southwest cartographer John V. Cotter

History, travelogue, and memoir combine in this illuminating journey in the footsteps of the great explorer La Salle. This is the extraordinary account of a personal and historical quest in which Philip Marchand retraces the seventeenth-century explorations of La Salle while he searches in the present day for vestiges of France’s lost North American legacy. After he explored the Great Lakes and the entire Mississippi, La Salle was murdered by his own men when he led them on a disastrous mission to Texas. The vast land beyond Quebec that he claimed for France could have become — but for a few twists of history — an alternative North America: a French-speaking, Catholic empire in which native peoples would have played a prominent role. Marchand probes the intriguingly flawed character of La Salle and recounts the astonishing history of the Jesuit missionaries, coureurs de bois, fur traders, and soldiers who followed on his heels, and of the Indian nations with whom they came into contact. He also reports on the survivals of this diaspora from late-night bars, battle reenactments, parish churches, and wayside restaurants from Montreal to Venice, Louisiana. And throughout he draws on memories of his own Catholic childhood in Massachusetts to interpret the lingering attitudes, fears, hopes, and iconography of a people who, more deeply than most, feel the burdens and the ironies of history.

In this collection of essays that marked the tricentennial of La Salle's expedition, thirteen scholars assess his legacy and the significance of French colonialism in the Southeast