Robert Cavelier de La Salle

Robert Cavelier de La Salle (1643 - March 19, 1687) was a French explorer.

A settler in New France, he sailed down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1682, naming the Mississippi basin Louisiana in honour of Louis XIV; in 1684 he led an expedition to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, and after an unsuccessful search for the Mississippi delta his followers mutinied and he was murdered.

See French colonization of the Americas.