The trader and priest reached the Mississippi by the way of Green Bay, the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers.  They went down the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas.  Though they were still many hundreds of miles from the mouth of the river, they grasped the fact that it must reach, not the western ocean, but the southern gulf first discovered by the Spaniards.  Marquette died not long afterwards, worn out by his labours in the wilderness, and was buried beneath the little chapel at St. Ignace.  Joliet’s name henceforth disappears from the annals of the West.

Rene Robert Cavelier, better known as the Sieur de la Salle, completed the work commenced by the trader and missionary.  In 1666 he obtained a grant of land at the head of the rapids above Montreal by the side of that beautiful expanse of the St. Lawrence, still called Lachine, a name first given in derisive allusion to his hope of finding a short route to China.  In 1679 he saw the Niagara Falls for the first time, and the earliest sketch is to be found in La Nouvelle Decouverte written or compiled by that garrulous, vain, and often mendacious Recollet Friar, Louis Hennepin, who accompanied La Salle on this expedition.  In the winter of 1681-82 this famous explorer reached the Mississippi, and for weeks followed its course through the novel and wondrous scenery of a southern land.  On the 9th of April, 1682, at a point just above the mouth of the great river, La Salle took formal possession of the Mississippi valley in the name of Louis XIV, with the same imposing ceremonies that distinguished the claim asserted by St. Lusson at the Sault in the lake region.  By the irony of fate, La Salle failed to discover the mouth of the river when he came direct from France to the Gulf of Mexico in 1685, but landed somewhere on Matagorda Bay on the Texan coast, where he built a fort for temporary protection.  Finding his position untenable, he decided in 1687 to make an effort to reach the Illinois country, but when he had been a few days on this perilous journey he was treacherously murdered by some of his companions near the southern branch of Trinity River.  His body was left to the beasts and birds of prey.  Two of the murderers were themselves killed by their accomplices, none of whom appear ever to have been brought to justice for their participation in a crime by which France lost one of the bravest and ablest men who ever struggled for her dominion in North America.

Some years later the famous Canadians, Iberville and Bienville, founded a colony in the great valley, known by the name of Louisiana, which was first given to it by La Salle himself.  By the possession of the Sault, Mackinac, and Detroit, the French were for many years supreme on the lakes, and had full control of Indian trade.  The Iroquois and their English friends were effectively shut out of the west by the French posts and settlements which followed the explorations of Joliet, La Salle, Du Luth, and other adventurers.