Rene-robert de la salle biography

French explorer of North America (–)

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (; November 22, – March 19, ), was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America.

He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and the Mississippi River. He is best known for an early expedition in which he canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico; there, on 9 April , he claimed the Mississippi River basin for France after giving it the name La Louisiane, in honor of Saint Louis and Louis XIV.

One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent".^[1][2] A later ill-fated expedition to the Gulf coast of Mexico (today the U.S. state of Texas) gave the United States a claim to Texas in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in La Salle was assassinated in during that expedition.

Although Jo