Session D-4: Canoes, Men of War, and the Founding of Louisiana

How did the explorer Rene-Robert Cavalier de La Salle was able to sell his plan to claim the Mississippi Valley for France. Louis XIV, to this point, had been skeptical of an American empire, worried that England’s burgeoning Royal Navy could easily blockade and conquer any territories France might claim. Between 1679 and 1682, however, Bourbon policy changed and La Salle was able to lay claim to a vast domain extending from the Appalachians to the Rockies and from the Gulf of Mexico north to Minnesota. This annexation was a fateful moment in world history. England’s American colonies were now hemmed in by the French and their Indian allies. The friction which resulted would ultimately trigger the French and Indian War which would cost France her American Empire and set the American colonies on the road to revolution