Francis Parkman · 1869 · overland

Francis Parkman's 1869 volume, and still the standard account. A Rouen merchant's son who sold everything to look for a route to China, put the first sailing ship on the Great Lakes, claimed the entire Mississippi watershed for France in one afternoon, and was murdered by his own men in Texas.

1. 1
   Rouen

   A merchant's son educated by the Jesuits and released from his vows at twenty-three - which cost him his inheritance and sent him to Canada with nothing but a seigneury nobody else wanted.

2. 2
   Montreal

   Lachine, the land grant above the rapids, named by neighbours as a joke because La Salle would not stop talking about a route to China - and sold within four years to pay for looking for one.

3. 3
   Niagara

   The Griffon built above the falls in 1679, the first sailing ship on the upper lakes - loaded with furs on her return leg and never seen again, which begins the run of disasters the book is really about.

4. 4
   Fort Crevecoeur

   On the Illinois, and the name means heartbreak - built by men who deserted it, wrecked it and left a message on a board reading nous sommes tous sauvages, we are all savages.

5. 5
   Fort St Louis

   Starved Rock, the sandstone bluff above the Illinois, fortified and made the centre of an alliance of refugee nations - the one thing La Salle built that worked and outlasted him.

6. 6
   The Mississippi

   Down the great river in 1682 with twenty-three Frenchmen and eighteen Native allies, past the Missouri and the Ohio - the first descent by Europeans from the Illinois country to the sea.

7. 7
   The Gulf

   9 April 1682, at the passes below New Orleans: a cross, a column, a proclamation, and the whole watershed claimed for Louis XIV and named Louisiana - the largest claim ever made by one man in an afternoon.

8. 8
   Matagorda Bay

   The return by sea in 1684 to found a colony at the river mouth - and a navigational error of four hundred miles that puts four ships and three hundred colonists on the coast of Texas instead.

9. 9
   Navasota

   1687, and the remnant walking overland to look for the Mississippi on foot - and La Salle shot in the head by his own men in the woods of east Texas and left where he fell.