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Cavelier de La Salle, 1684-1687   155

the death of its founder. Barcia, whose book was written in
an entirely different spirit, long remained the great Spanish
authority for American and French historians. In 1827, a
translation into Spanish of the Diary of Joutel, de La Salle’s
faithful lieutenant, was published in Mexico, and that was
all, as far as Spain and Mexico went, almost to the end of
the nineteenth century.

The French establishment had caused the Spanish authori-
ties both in Spain and in Mexico a great deal of alarm. At
a meeting of the Council of the Indies it had been pro-
claimed “a thorn that had been thrust into the very heart of
America” and which had to be “plucked out” by all means.
Once plucked out, the thorn was forgotten.

In France de La Salle fared somewhat better, not at first
however. Not only did his enemies put all the blame on
him for the failure of his expedition, but they attempted to
take away from him the credit for his previous discovery.
In 1691, Father Christian Leclerq published under the title
First establishment of faith in the New World, two small vol-
umes, extremely rare today, containing among other things,
the Relation of Father Anastase Douay, who had witnessed
the assassination of de La Salle by two of his men. In 1697,
two books came out: one by a well known author, Father
Hennepin, whose Discovery of Louisiana, published in 1683,
had been translated into English, German, Dutch, and Ital-
ian and had had thirty-six editions. Hennepin, taking ad-
vantage of the death of de La Salle, was now boldly and
brazenly posing in his New Discovery of Louisiana as the
first discoverer of the Mississippi. The same year under the
name of Tonti, one of de La Salle’s faithful lieutenants, an-
other book was published: Last discovery in North America
of M. de La Salle, by Chevalier de Tonty, governor of Fort
Saint Louis in the country of the Illinois. Tonty himself

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