Francis Parkman, Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was
an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail:
Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental
seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still
valued as historical sources and as literature. He was also a leading
horticulturist, briefly a professor of Horticulture at Harvard
University and author of several books on the topic. Parkman was a
trustee of the Boston Athenæum from 1858 until his death in 1893
René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle (1643-1687), one of the most legendary
explorers of the New World, is best known for claiming the entire
Louisiana Territory for France in 1682. Two years later, he was given
the order to colonize and govern the great expanse of territory between
Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico. He set out from France with four
ships but never reached his destination. Landing somewhere in East
Texas, he and his men were ravaged by disease, weakened by hard labor,
even gored by buffalo as they tried to locate the mouth of the
Mississippi River, which was obscured by the sandy sameness of the Gulf
coastline. In 1687, on a third attempt to locate the river by an
overland route, La Salle was murdered by his own men in the desolate
country between the Trinity and Brazos rivers. His body was never found.
First published in 1869, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West
is the vivid, richly detailed story of that final grim expedition, told
by America's foremost historian.