La Salle Murdered: French Explorer's Tragic End
His own men shot him in the head while he searched for food near their camp in East Texas. Robert Cavelier de La Salle had claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France five years earlier—828,000 square miles he named Louisiana after King Louis XIV. But he couldn't find the river's mouth again. His 1684 expedition missed it completely, landing 400 miles west in Texas instead. Two years of wandering through swamps and prairies drove his men to mutiny. They killed his nephew first, then La Salle when he came looking for him. The assassins were themselves murdered weeks later by other crew members. France lost track of Texas for decades because the one man who'd been there was dead.
March 19, 1687
339 years ago
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