arful
explosion. One day a solitary soldier appeared in the hamlet of New
Orleans with fearful news. Fort Rosalie had been surprised, its
garrison of over two hundred men massacred, and two hundred and fifty
women and children taken prisoners. In the war that followed, the
Choctaws sided with the French, the Chickasaws and Yazoos with the
Natchez. Finally the French, under St. Denis, won a complete victory,
the women and children taken at Fort Rosalie were recaptured and
brought to New Orleans, and the Natchez tribe was completely broken up.
The prisoners were sent to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingo
sugar plantations, while a few who escaped the French were adopted into
the Chickasaw nation.

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Chapter XIV

LA SALLE AND THE FOUNDING OF LOUISIANA

La Salle leads an Expedition to seize the Mouth of the Mississippi.--A
Series of Mishaps.--Landing at Matagorda Bay.--Fort St. Louis of
Texas.--Seeking the Mississippi, La Salle explores the Interior of
Texas.--Mounted Comanches.--La Salle starts out to go to Canada for
Relief.--Interesting Experiences.--La Salle assassinated.--Tonty's
Heroic Efforts to rescue him and his Party.--Supplement: The Founding
of New Orleans.

On a day in February, 1685, a party landed from one of three vessels
lying off the entrance of Matagorda Bay, on the coast of Texas. They
were under the command of La Salle. What was this extraordinary man
doing there? In accordance with the plan which had long filled his
mind, of planting French forts and colonies in the valley of the Great
River and giving its trade an outlet into the Gulf of Mexico, he had
come to establish a fort on the Mississippi. This, the first part of
his plan, was very rational, if only he had the vast resources needed
for such an undertaking.

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But the second part was so crazy that we must suppose that his mind was
beginning to give way. With a handful of Frenchmen and an army of
fifteen thousand savages, which he professed to be able to muster and
to march down the Mississippi, he had promised the King of France that
he would conquer the northern province of Mexico, called New Biscay,
and get possession of its valuable silver mines.

Louis had cheerfully accepted this insane proposition--insane, if we
consider the pitiful equipment that La Salle said would suffice,
namely, two ships and two hundred men. Louis was indeed furiously
jealous of the Spanish King's success in the New Wo