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It is the 1670s. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, having returned from exploring south of Lake Erie, made common cause with the flamboyant and visionary new governor of New France, Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac. Together they hatch a plan to get permission from Louis XIV to build a string of forts in the Great Lakes region and explore and settle the Mississippi River Valley. La Salle travels to France twice, and enlists the King’s first minister, the great Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to support a mission to find the mouth of the Mississippi so that France might establish a base there for the purpose of better harrassing Spain. Along the way La Salle builds a huge fort at the eastern end of Lake … Ontario, survives the second of five assassination attempts, and Frontenac demonstrates a great flair for diplomacy with the Iroquois.
Oh, and the Jesuits have it out for them.
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#217 Introduction to René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
Primary references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)
Anka Muhlstein, La Salle: Explorer of the North American Frontier
Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard, “Colbert, La Salle, and the Search for Empire,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2020.
