| 40 | HISTORY |
Father Hennepin with five men then started down the river intending to explore to its mouth, passing along the entire eastern borders of Iowa. Arriving at the mouth of the Arkansas, and learning that it was still a long distance to the Gulf, he returned to the posts on the Illinois, and soon after sailed for France. There he published a glowing account of the regions he had visited, naming the country Louisiana. Hennepin and his party traveled in all a distance of more than three thousand miles and discovered a large tract north of Wisconsin, but he did not explore the Mississippi to its mouth as he claimed after the death of La Salle, who completed this enterprise in 1682.
The river had been named by Marquette “Conception”; by Hennepin the “St. Louis,” and by La Salle “Colbert,” for the French minister.
On the 27th of March the party reached the mouth of Red River, and on the 6th of April arrived at the Mississippi delta. Sending D'Antray down the east, Truly down the middle, La Salle followed the west channel, all in time reaching the Gulf of Mexico. He here took formal possession of the great valley in the name of his sovereign, Louis XIV, thus securing to France Louisiana.*
The fate of this first explorer of the lower Mississippi was a sad one. In 1685 he organized a party of two hundred and eighty persons to found a colony near the mouth of the Mississippi, to hold the territory of Louisiana for France. Not knowing the longitude of the mouth of the river, the fleet sailed too far west and landed the colonists near the Colorado in the present limits of Texas. The fleet then returned to France. After two years of hardship, sickness and suffering La Salle started with a small party to try to reach the nearest settlements in Illinois, and while in the wilderness was treacherously assassinated by some members of his own company. His body
* Near the mouth of the river, La Salle erected a column and a cross upon which the following inscription was made: Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, reigning April 9th, 1682.
