There is no one of the Pioneers of this continent whose achievements equal those of the Chevalier Robert de la Salle. He passed over thousands of miles of lakes and rivers in the birch canoe. He traversed countless leagues of prairie and forest, on foot, guided by the moccasined Indian, threading trails which the white man's foot had never trod, and penetrating the villages and wigwams of savages, where the white man's face had never been seen.

Fear was an emotion La Salle never experienced. His adventures were more wild and wondrous than almost any recorded in the tales of chivalry. As time is rapidly obliterating from our land the footprints of the savage, it is important that these records of his strange existence should be perpetuated.

(From John S. C. Abbott's The adventures of the Chevalier de La Salle and his companions : in their explorations of the prairies, lakes and rivers of the New World, and their interviews with the savage tribes two hundred years ago", published by Dodd & Mead in New York, 1875.)

French explorer and research traveller Rene Robert Chevalier de la Salle was almost single-handedly responsible for the opening of the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada. His explorations extended south along the Mississippi River through to Louisiana, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico. He was also behind the launching of the first ship inland on the Great Lakes, and the establishment of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, crucial to the development and increased success of the fur trade.

Born on November 22, 1643 in Rouen, France, La Salle was a storekeeper and probably briefly a member of a religious order before leaving home for La Chine in New France, south of the St. Lawrence River, where he was granted land in 1666.

New France at this time was a burgeoning colony under direct rule from France, operating under the principles of mercantilism. The fur trade was rapidly expanding into the west and the north; colonies along the eastern seaboard of what would later be the United States were growing, though not without conflict. We remember the peace and optimism of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. We do not remember Roanoke, and we pass quickly over the mass elimination of culture as American Indians were swept aside to make way for agricultural expansion.

The area west of the Ohio Valley and further south along the coast remained largely unexplored in the mid-seventeenth century. La Salle, an entrepreneur in his homeland, became an explorer. After drawing up a plan for the reconnaissance of North America, financed by the French crown, La Salle led his first expedition south in 1669, turning back at the Ohio River.

Had he gone further, his fame would have increased exponentially with the discovery of the Mississippi River. Instead its discovery was left to Louis Joliet in 1672.

During this period, the fur trade was the single industry most critical to the success of New France. Much trading was done through establishing forts further inland, where trappers could bring furs to trade for European goods. In 1674, La Salle established the westernmost fort at that time on Lake Ontario, named Fort Frontenac in honour of his patron and the governor of New France, Louis de Baude Frontenac.

The same year, La Salle returned to France to establish and acquire royal support for his claim to the land he had discovered. With help from Frontenac, he was given a fur trade concession and permission to establish forts further inland as well as noble status.

Back in New France in 1678, La Salle was responsible for the launch of the first ship on the Great Lakes, Le Griffon. Sailing up Lake Erie through Lake Huron and down to Lake Michigan, La Salle and his crew mapped much of the terrain surrounding the Great Lakes, providing the impetus for the creation of new trading posts, forts, and settlements.

Also in 1678, La Salle established a fort in Michigan at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, to be used as a jumping-off point for exploration to the south. With another French explorer, Henry de Tonty, he set off from Michigan up the St. Joseph and portaged to the Kankakee River, which they then followed to the Illinois River. After building another fort -- Fort Crevecoeur, on the Illinois -- La Salle returned to Fort Frontenac on foot, to acquire supplies and munitions. The voyage thus far had spanned four years.

In his absence, another member of his expedition continued up the Illinois to its junction with the Mississippi. Louis Hennepin named the Mississippi basin Louisiana in honour of the French monarch, Louis XIV, before he was captured by a hostile war party of Sioux.

Returning to the Mississippi to find the new discovery and subsequent failure, including the downfall of Fort Crevecoeur, La Salle established another fort to replace it: Fort Saint Louis, at Starved Rock on the Illinois River, in 1683.

By way of reward for his discoveries and land claims for France, which stretched the length of the Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico, La Salle was appointed Viceroy of the French colonies in North America by Louis XIV.

In 1684, La Salle was given four ships and three hundred colonists with directions to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. It proved to be disastrous. Attacked by pirates in the West Indies, one ship was lost. Another sank in Matagorda Bay, while a third ran aground and was damaged beyond repair. Desperate, La Salle and his followers set up a fort near Victoria, Texas; the colonists had had enough, however, and when La Salle led a group east to search for the Mississippi delta, they mutinied and murdered him at Navasota.

The colony that La Salle had help build only lasted for four years after his murder. Local Indians slaughtered the twenty adult colonists who were all that remained of the original three hundred, and took the five children remaining captive in 1688.

Sources:
http://www.artpolitic.org/infopedia
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/pa/lawrence/1908/ch2.htm
http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/empires/0015.html
http://www.colony-info.de/e/texte/113.htm
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/colonial/pioneer/chap2.html
http://www.ospreyfortress.com/articles/fort_frontenac.htm