"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 the wigwams of savages, where the
white man's face had never been seen." --John S.C. Abbott, Preface, 1875
American historian John S.C. Abbott wrote The Adventures of the
Chevalier de La Salle and His Companions (1875) as part of his American
Pioneers and Patriots series. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
(1643-1687) was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North
America. He is best known for an early 1682 expedition in which he
canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River
to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for
France.