An Early Texas Mystery: Where Was La Salle Killed?(Aug 4, 2024)
One of the key figures of early Texas exploration, the man who made the French claim to Texas, was René Robert Cavelier, Sieur De La Salle. Texans know the general story of La Salle well, how he first sailed down the Mississippi, claiming all it drained for France, and then how he returned to eventually claim Texas for France, too, when he missed the Mississippi on his return, and built Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek in southeast Texas. He eventually realized that he was not near the Mississippi, so he set out to find a way back to French settlements, but he was killed by his own men. The death of the young French nobleman became the stuff of legends.
Such a narrative is not in question, but what is still debated is: where exactly was La Salle murdered? A number ofcommunities and locales have claimed to be the exact spot, but there has always been some question about each one’s contention, and the historical record is vague. In the end, any search for the actual site of La Salle’s death spot will prove unsatisfactory and will largely depend on which account you decide to give the most credence. However, like a fool, I am going to wade into the debate.
La Salle was not a well-liked man. Today, he would probably be diagnosed as manic-depressive as he was moody, could be filled with rage, then despondent and melancholy. When he finally figured out that he was not near the Mississippi, he left a small contingent of his party at Fort St. Louis and struck out in an attempt to find the French trading post near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, also named St. Louis. As he moved east and north away from Fort St. Louis in Texas, one of his men, Pierre Duhaut, had grown so bitter at his treatment by La Salle that he hid in the grass and shot the French explorer in the back of the head as he walked past. Duhaut and the remainder of the party stripped La Salle of his clothes, robbed him of anything he had of value, and, according to the killer’s diary, “left him for the wolves.” Duhaut also wrote that they killed left La Salle “six leagues” from the westernmost village of the Hasinai Indians.
But where, exactly, was that? Speculation as to the spot has vexed researchers and historians almost as long as La Salle has been dead. One of the earliest chroniclers to offer an opinion was E. J. Gum, a Professor of French History at the University of Nebraska. Dr. Gum stated in a paper he delivered to an East Texas Historical Association meeting in the 1980s that he was convinced that La Salle was not killed in Texas at all but instead in eastern Oklahoma. Another researcher, Dr. Lee Woodward, somewhat agreed with Gum. He claimed that Oklahoma’s famed Heavener Runestone is not of Nordic ancestry but is instead a secret La Salle monument, and that La Salle was killed near the Poteau Valley of Oklahoma. My immediate predecessor Archie McDonald believed these accounts had much credence, but I had to disagree; while there would have been Caddo people villages in Oklahoma, they would not have been part of the Hasinai Band, and even if they were, at those locations the site would not be “six leagues west.”
Another source, Charlie Langford of Henderson, has averred that the murder spot was in Rusk County, near Henderson,because the descriptions of the countryside given by the perpetrator matched the physical ground in Rusk County. I assume that it does, but it also matches hundreds of other spots in East Texas. Another account has La Salle moving much farther east from Fort St. Louis in an attempt to avoid unfriendly Natives and killed near Village Creek, in present-day Hardin County. Again, that may be possible, but it does not meet the conditions of “west of the Hasinai” or the physical description of the topography.
One very authoritative source is that of the late F.W. Cole. Cole, a Cherokee County resident who made the study of La Salle almost an avocation, claimed to have traced La Salle well into East Texas, and he concluded that the Frenchman met his demise on the banks of Bowles Creek near present-day Alto. That would certainly match the description in the diary, and there is a part of me that leans toward that as the spot, but I draw short because there is a confirmed Hasinai Village, one that would have been well known to the French explorers, that existed at that time west of that spot. That would put La Salle’s death east of Duhaut’s recollection. It is unlikely he would have made such a mistake unless, as some have suggested, he was trying to disguise where he actually shot La Salle.
The account that has gained the most historical trend is the one made by William C. Foster’s book The La Salle Expedition to Texas: The Journal of Henry Joutel, 1884-1687. In this book, Foster translates Joutel as fixing the spot of the murder in western Grimes County, twelve miles from present-day Navasota. More chroniclers believe that this is the spot than any other, and the city of Navasota has capitalized on that with a grand statue of La Salle on its primary esplanade. But, again, if we believe Duhaut, this is too far distant from the description in the diary.
In the end, historians have to trust the reputation of the researcher more than anything, and of all the folks who have researched La Salle and the French in Texas, no one has done more than the late Robert Weddle, a man who devoted his life to writing about the French in the Lone Star State. Weddle studied the problem from every angle, and in the end, he named a spot just east of the Trinity River near present-day Madisonville, some distance from the Grimes or Cherokee locations. Weddle did voluminous archival research and, through more than three manuscripts on the French in Texas, made a reputation as a researcher who never leaves a stone unturned and also leaves out sentimentality and any “shilling” that some others have done more akin to a Chamber of Commerce tract than an objective historical study. So, in the end, I’m going to go with Weddle, but there is no way that is definitive. There remains room for a number of different interpretations. It is a history mystery, one that will remain so for years to come.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.