Produced by Lee Dawei, Seth Hadley, and Project Gutenberg
Distributed Proofreaders
1870
The discovery of the "Great West," or the valleys of the Mississippi andthe Lakes, is a portion of our history hitherto very obscure. Thosemagnificent regions were revealed to the world through a series of daringenterprises, of which the motives and even the incidents have been butpartially and superficially known. The chief actor in them wrote much, butprinted nothing; and the published writings of his associates standwofully in need of interpretation from the unpublished documents whichexist, but which have not heretofore been used as material for history.
This volume attempts to supply the defect. Of the large amount of whollynew material employed in it, by far the greater part is drawn from thevarious public archives of France, and the rest from private sources. Thediscovery of many of these documents is due to the indefatigable researchof M. Pierre Margry, assistant custodian of the Archives of the Marine andColonies at Paris, whose labors, as an investigator of the maritime andcolonial history of France can be appreciated only by those who have seentheir results. In the department of American colonial history, theseresults have been invaluable; for, besides several private collectionsmade by him, he rendered important service in the collection of the Frenchportion of the Brodhead documents, selected and arranged the two greatseries of colonial papers ordered by the Canadian government, andprepared, with vast labor, analytical indexes of these and ofsupplementary documents in the French archives, as well as a copious indexof the mass of papers relating to Louisiana. It is to be hoped that thevaluable publications on the maritime history of France which haveappeared from his pen are an earnest of more extended contributions infuture.
The late President Sparks, some time after the publication of his life ofLa Salle, caused a collection to be made of documents relating to thatexplorer, with the intention of incorporating them in a future edition.This intention was never carried into effect, and the documents were neverused. With the liberality which always distinguished him, he placed themat my disposal, and this privilege has been, kindly continued by Mrs.Sparks.
Abbé Faillon, the learned author of "La Colonie Française en Canada," has
sent me copies of various documents found by him, including family papers
of La Salle. Among others who in various ways have aided my inquiries, are
Dr. John Paul, of Ottawa, Ill.; Count Adolphe de Circourt and M. Jules
Marcou, of Paris; M. A. Gérin Lajoie, Assistant Librarian of the Canadian
Parliament; M. J. M. Le Moine, of Quebec; General Dix, Minister of the
United States at the Court of France; O. H. Marshall, of Buffalo; J. G.
Shea, of New York; Buckingham Smith, of St. Augustine; and Colonel Thomas
Aspinwall, of Boston.
The map contained in the book is a portion of the great manuscript map of
Franquelin, of which an account will be found in the Appendix.
The next volume of the series will be devoted to the efforts of Monarchyand Feudalism under Louis XIV. to establish a permanent power on