158 Marcel Moraud
authentic and particular than that of de La Salle.” Having
summed the story of de La Salle’s expedition as accurately
as it could be done at the time, John Quincy Adams went
on—“On this journey he was basely assassinated on the 19th
of March 1687 by two of his own men, and left a name,
among the illustrious discoverers of the New World, second
only to that of Columbus, with whose story and adven-
tures, his own bear in many particulars, a striking resem-
blance.”
Then he points out to the Spaniards who had belittled
the expedition, that “de La Salle’s undertaking has every
characteristic of sublime genius, magnanimous enterprise,
and heroic execution. To him, and to him alone, the people
of this continent are indebted for the discovery, from its
source to the ocean, of the Mississippi, the father of the
floods; and, of the numberless million of freemen destined
in this and future ages to sail, on his bosom, and dwell along
his banks, and those of his tributary streams,—there is not
one, but will be deeply indebted for a large portion of the
comforts and enjoyments of life, to the genius and energy
of La Salle.”
The words of John Quincy Adams represent, I believe, the
first tribute of the American nation to de La Salle’s Texas
expedition, and they were pronounced at a time when Texas
was not even a part of the United States.
One of the results of the long controversy between the
two governments was to attract the attention of diplomatic
and intellectual circles to the accomplishments of de La Salle
on this continent. Then, as historical societies were formed
in the different states of the Union, Massachusetts, Illinois,
Louisiana and much later Texas, matters of interest to each
individual state were studied and de La Salle gradually
came into his own.