The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 414
566 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
resources inordinately in the search for the interlopers. It sparked
Spanish interest in Texas, resulting in the first fleeting mission set-
tlement among the Indians of the Hasinai Confederacy, 169o-1693,
which paved the way for the more lasting effort of 1716. One per-
manent Spanish settlement-Pensacola, Florida-resulted directly from
the La Salle episode.'
During his two years in the Texas wilderness, La Salle probed
constantly in all directions, seeking the mouth of the Mississippi.
When he left his struggling Fort St. Louis the last time, in January,
1687, he divided his colony. La Salle, with sixteen others, including
the Indian, Nika, who had come with him from Canada via France,
planned to try to reach Canada to seek help for the twenty to twenty-
five who remained behind. The plan went awry near the country of
the Hasinai (Cenis or Tejas), where began the blood-letting in which
La Salle himself died.
Henri Joutel, La Salle's trusted lieutenant and the most reliable
historian of the expedition, relates that the first outbreak of violence
occurred in a hunting camp as the outgrowth of an argument pre-
cipitated by La Salle's nephew, Crevel de Moranget. The prin-
cipal conspirators were Pierre Duhaut (the elder of the two Duhaut
brothers), the surgeon Liotot, and an erstwhile buccaneer, James
Hiens. Also involved was Jean L'Archeveque, Duhaut's servant, and
possibly a pilot named Tessier. Joutel credits Liotot with wielding
the axe that split the skulls of Moranget, La Salle's Indian hunter
Nika, and his servant Saget, while they slept.'
Later, when La Salle came to investigate the hunting party's delay,
he was lured into ambush by L'Archeveque, and Duhaut fired the
shot that killed him. Returning to the main camp, L'Archeveque
sought out Joutel where he was tending the horses and gave him a
warning that may have saved his life. Joutel found occasion to re-
turn the favor more than a month later, when the assassins fell
out among themselves. Hiens, provoking an argument with Duhaut,
shot him dead. A man named Ruter-one of three deserters from an
earlier La Salle expedition who joined the group after La Salle
8See Irving A. Leonard (ed.), Spanish Approach to Pensacola, x689-r693 (Albu-
querque, 1939), which contains translations of the Spanish documents pertaining to the
Pensacola project, and William Edward Dunn, Spanish and French Rivalry in the Gulf
Region of the United States, z678-zon: The Beginnings of Texas and Pensacola (Austin,
1917), 146-184.
'Joutel, Journal, 116, 153.414
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972, periodical, 1972; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101201/m1/426/?rotate=90: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.