A Second French Thorn: The Scholarly Search for La Salle

An imposing monument of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, at the site of old Indianola in Calhoun County, overlooks Indian Point, where goods were transshipped from the Belle to canoes for the last leg of the voyage to the French settlement on Garcitas Creek.

When news reached Spain early in 1686 that the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle had entered the Gulf of Mexico with plans to establish a colony in Spanish-claimed territory, the War Council of the Indies envisioned the worst possible outcome. Foreseeing a major French invasion force with the ability to confuse and conquer the whole of New Spain, the council called for prompt action “to remove this thorn that has been thrust into the heart of America.” ¹ In response, six land marches, originating from such widespread points as St. Augustine, Florida, and El Parral, Chihuahua, combed the Gulf coastal region from Florida to Tampico; five sea voyages searched the coastline. Such was Spain’s response to the first “French thorn.”²

Highlighting this effort was the 1686 voyage of two shallow-draft piraguas captained by Martín de Rivas and Pedro de Iriarte. This voyage, as told in the diary kept by the chief pilot, Juan Enríquez Barroto, found La Salle’s light frigate Belle of the Royal French Navy aground in Matagorda Bay. This diary, a microfilm copy of which the present writer brought from Spain in 1979, proved to be the key for archaeologists to find and excavate the remains of the Belle, showing the mutual benefits that come when historians and archaeologists work together.³

The climax of the search, however, was Coahuila Governor Alonso de León’s entrada of 1689, which was marked by the discovery of La Salle’s settlement on Garcitas Creek in present-day Victoria County, Texas, a few months after its total destruction by Karankawa Indians. The Karankawas, after feigning friendship to gain entry to the enclave, had murdered the inhabitants; only the children, carried away by the Indian women, were spared. La Salle himself had deserted the colony two years previously with the stated purpose of seeking relief for the colonists from Illinois or Canada; he was assassinated by a disenchanted follower before he was out of Texas.

León rounded up La Salle’s scattered remnants as he proceeded, with Father Damián Massanet, to the westernmost village of the Hasinai (southern Caddo), near the scene of La Salle’s tragic death.⁴ After conducting the French prisoners to Mexico, León, with Father Massanet and four other priests, returned to the Hasinai the following year to establish two short-lived missions. The French thorn had at last prodded Spain to assert its claim to Texas by establishing settlements. Notwithstanding two periods in which Spanish forces were withdrawn temporarily, the Spanish presence in Texas would endure until it yielded to Mexico in 1821.

So much for the first French thorn. As La Salle himself—and the unfortunate ones who committed themselves to him only to be deserted to a cruel fate—vanished from the scene, a second French thorn would eventually manifest itself in the scholarly effort to understand the explorer and his exploits. Surely each of us who has made a serious effort to assess the character of La Salle and evaluate his exploits has felt the jab of this second thorn: irritating, yet spurring us on to greater effort. The path to understanding would not be easy, for enlightenment is not to be accomplished in “one fell-swoop” but in seemingly never-ending baby steps, complicated by the confusion in La Salle’s own mind. The explorer’s befuddlement grew as he tried vainly to reconcile his observations while descending the Mississippi River with the period’s hypothetical maps and dearth of geographical understanding—his efforts complicated by a broken compass and an astrolabe that yielded latitudes grossly in error, overcast skies, and a tortuous river channel. Hence the well-chosen title of...