La Salle1994
explorer of the North American frontier
by Anka Muhlstein
Seventeenth-century North America was a dangerous, untamed land, a vast wilderness where settlers, fur traders, and missionaries all struggled to eke out an existence. But the New World was also a place that attracted a special breed - men with a thirst for adventure and discovery. Robert Cavelier de La Salle, whose energy and single-minded ambition made him one of the greatest explorers of the time, was such a man.
Born in 1643 to a family of wealthy linen merchants in Rouen, France, La Salle joined the Jesuits in hopes of becoming a missionary and traveling to distant lands. The hotheaded Robert soon found himself unable to conform. Sedentary teaching appointments ill suited his passionate nature, and, at the age of twenty-four, he left the Society of Jesus and crossed the Atlantic to...