Sieur de La Salle

For more information on René-Robert Cavelier sieur de La Salle, visit Britannica.com.

René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687), was a French explorer and colonizer, best known for his discovery of the Mississippi Delta. His career is a remarkable tale of wanderings in North America and of the intrigues of Versailles.

René Robert Cavelier, later Sieur de La Salle, was born on Sept. 21, 1643, near Rouen into a wealthy bourgeois family. In 1658 he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, taking his vows in 1660. But Cavelier proved to be somewhat intractable, and after several unsuccessful attempts to conform to the rigid discipline of the Jesuit order he was released from his vows in 1667.

With no prospects in France, Cavelier followed family connections and a wandering spirit and set out for New France that same year. He was immediately granted a seigneury, known as Lachine, by his Sulpician brother's order on Montreal Island. It is an instructive comment on the Sieur de La Salle's character that he ignored the grant and quickly sold it back to the Sulpicians, who had given it to him. The money allowed him to satisfy his desire to search for the Ohio River, "the way to the Southern Sea, and thereby the route to China."

La Salle's first expedition, in 1669, plagued by his inexperience and that of his companions, accomplished little. His activities for the next 3 years remain a mystery. Through cultivation of the Comte de Frontenac, the governor of New France, and a trip to France in 1674-1675, La Salle was granted Cataraqui (now Kingston) and promptly renamed it in honor of his patron, Governor Frontenac. In 1678 he was granted permission by the King to explore the western part of North America. Over the next 2 years La Salle traveled about the basin of the Great Lakes as far west as the Illinois country.

Exploration of the Mississippi

After a brief visit to Montreal in the summer of 1680, during which he attempted, with little effect, to satisfy his creditors, La Salle again set out for the Illinois country. On this occasion he reached the Mississippi River but did not proceed further. He wintered at Michilimackinac and returned to Montreal in the summer of 1681, following the orders of Frontenac. After a conference with the governor and the stalling of his principal creditor, La Salle headed westward once more, determined this time to reach the mouth of the Mississippi.

By February 1682 La Salle, with 22 men, including Indian guides, had reached the Mississippi again. They descended the river in easy stages, even stopping long enough to build a rough fort near the present city of Memphis. A few leagues farther on they reached the point where Louis Jolliet's expedition had turned about in 1673. La Salle reached the sea, finally, in early April. In as grand a ceremony as he could stage, he solemnly took possession of Louisiana in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, a rather bizarre display by men reduced to living on potatoes and crocodile.

The party undertook a brief exploration of the delta and then began the long journey back to Canada. La Salle fell ill and did not arrive back at Michilimackinac until the autumn of 1682. Frontenac, meanwhile, had been replaced as governor by A. J. L. La Barre, who excited considerable hostility against La Salle among the merchants of New France. When La Salle finally arrived back in Montreal in August 1683, he found his authority had been suspended and charges laid against him of jeopardizing the uneasy peace between the French and the Iroquois. In official dispatches to France his explorations were denigrated as being of little significance.

Ill-fated Colonization Scheme

La Salle felt the only method of justifying himself and reaping any advantage from his discovery was to take his case to the court at Versailles. Once there, he was caught up in the schemes and intrigues which surrounded the King. He was persuaded to join a plan to establish a colony in Louisiana, and, to make the presentation stronger, he even agreed to alter maps of the territory he had explored. The minister, on the basis of documents and claims that were complete falsehoods, prevailed on Louis XIV to restore La Salle to favor and assist in the scheme to plant a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, with La Salle as governor of the whole valley of the river as far as the Spanish possessions. The grandiose scheme was doomed from the start.

La Salle proved to be quite incapable of working with Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition. Largely as a result of the explorer's stubborn insistence on having his own way, the party, after many misadventures, found themselves deposited on the gulf shore of Texas, well to the west of the Mississippi. Beaujeu, his task more or less accomplished, sailed for home in March 1685, leaving La Salle and the 180 members of his group to build their colony and find the belle rivière again. Within 2 years the project had failed completely, and the 42 survivors unhappily followed La Salle northward in an attempt to gain the Illinois country. On March 19, 1687, near the Trinity River, La Salle was assassinated by his men.

The paradoxical La Salle, a mixture of idealism and impracticality, is thus remembered as the discoverer of the mouth of the Mississippi River and the leader of that ill-fated colonization scheme. His energy and courage must be acknowledged, but his passionate pursuit of fame and glory render him one of the most perplexing of the explorers of the interior of North America.

Further Reading

Most of the material written on La Salle is in French. The best study in English is Jean Delanglez, Some La Salle Journeys (1938). The romantic prose of Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869; many later editions), is worth reading. Also useful are the references in Grace Lee Nute, Caesars of the Wilderness (1943). Newer works are Edmund Boyd Osler, La Salle (1967), and John Upton Terrell, La Salle: The Life and Times of an Explorer (1968).

actor

Personal Information

Born July 23, 1962, in Hartford, CT, one of four children.
Education: Attended Juilliard; New York University, B.F.A., 1984.

Career

Joined local youth theater group at age 14; entered the Juilliard school, New York, NY, 1982; appeared in numerous plays, New York, NY, 1980s; landed role in daytime soap opera One Life to Live; moved to Los Angeles, CA, 1991; cast in prime-time dramatic series The Human Factor, 1992; appeared as guest star on various television series, 1990s; received star billing for role in a feature film D.R.O.P. Squad, 1994; wrote, directed, and starred in a short film Psalms from the Underground; cast in top-rated television series ER, 1994; earned an Emmy nomination for his role on ER, 1995; directed a movie for HBO on cable television Angel of Harlem.

Life's Work

Becoming an overnight sensation as part of the ensemble of actors on television's top-rated ER series, which premiered in the fall of 1994, Eriq La Salle has received high praise for his portrayal of a driven, uncompromising surgical resident. He earned an Emmy nomination for his role during the first season, and has attracted legions of fans in his role as Dr. Peter Benton. "Much more than a pretty face, he [La Salle] is helping to redefine the face of prime time television and is determined to create more opportunities for African Americans in film," noted Rochelle Watson in about...time magazine. La Salle has admitted to sharing some traits with his character, notably the attitude of an overachiever. "We are a society of underachievers, so I think it's necessary to be an overachiever," he told USA Weekend.

Being black has had a major effect on La Salle's life and career. He grew up in an area of Hartford, Connecticut, that he said was "99.99 percent minority," according to the New York Times. La Salle was raised by Ada Haynes, a foster mother who had to work several jobs to support her brood. Haynes made it clear to her foster son that he would have to work harder than whites just to be considered equal. "What my mother said empowered me; it didn't victimize me," La Salle confided in USA Weekend. "That advice instills in you that life ain't fair~get over it and get on with it. I'm not a cynic. I just say, 'OK, I can't sit on my a~~ and do ABC. I have to do XYZ to get noticed for ABC."

As a child watching his cousin perform at a dance at his school, La Salle was very impressed by the attention that his fellow schoolmates gave his cousin. "There was something about that experience I wanted to know more about," he told NBC. He decided that acting would be his career after joining a local youth theater group at age 14.

La Salle earned acceptance into the prestigious Juilliard school in New York City. While there he and other black students pressured the school to hire a black stage director. In the New York Times La Salle claimed that the director hired by the school was incompetent and had to be let go. When another group of black students later tried to get another black director into the school, the administration claimed that they had tried that already, and it had not worked out. "I'm not the kind of person to blame everything on racism," La Salle noted in the New York Times. "But I think it's so intertwined in our society that it's a factor intentionally or unintentionally."

Although La Salle had entered Juilliard for a four-year program, he was asked to leave after two years because his instructors did not think he would be able to suppress his inner city speech patterns. "I didn't see it coming," said La Salle in the New York Times. "I was training privately with speech teachers, and the word I was getting back was that I was improving. And then at my evaluation, they told me of their decision." Training after Juilliard continued for the actor in New York University's graduate theater program. After graduating he found steady work in several productions for Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park Theater company in New York City. A few weeks later he was cast in a low-budget Italian feature, and from there he landed a series of roles in plays in New York City.

Entry into television came for La Salle in the role of reporter Mike Rivers on the daytime soap opera, One Life to Live. After moving to Los Angeles in 1991, he then played a doctor on the series The Human Factor, but the series was canceled after less than a full season. He also made frequent guest appearances on shows such as L.A. Law, Quantum Leap, and A Different World, and on cable television he appeared in HBO's Vietnam War Stories. His made-for-television movie credits include Empty Cradle, Circumstantial Evidence, What Price Victory, and Leg Work. On the big screen La Salle was seen in the feature films Coming to America, Five Corners, Jacob's Ladder, and The Color of Night, and he received star billing in 1994 for his role as a high-powered advertising executive in D.R.O.P. Squad.

Before landing his role in ER, La Salle wrote a screenplay about a female black militant called Psalms from the Underground. When he couldn't find anyone to produce it, he spent $140,000 of his own money to make it into a 35-minute film. La Salle both directed and starred in the film, whose rights were later bought by actor/director Mel Gibson. The film is planned to be developed into a full-length feature.

ER's producers had still not cast the role of Dr. Peter Benton two days into the filming of the show. "When casting waits that long, they're basically waiting for someone to come in and take the role," La Salle was quoted as saying in Essence. "So I came into the office with a stethoscope and surgical greens I had left over from another series I did, The Human Factor." Three days later La Salle received the news that he had won the role. "We looked at a lot of people for the Benton role," said ER executive producer John Wells in the New York Times. "The others either played him as totally arrogant, or they shied away from playing his arrogance. Eriq walks the high wire."

La Salle claims that he draws considerably on his own experience to play the role of Dr. Benton. "Where I grew up, the philosophy in my community was that you can't be as good as your white counterparts; you have to be better," said La Salle according to the New York Times. "And Benton, my character, I think, embodies what I've learned. He's not out to win a popularity contest." "He's confident and competent," he told NBC about his character. "He's a tough guy on the surface, but underneath, there's something else going on." He added in the Detroit Free Press, "My character is not just an overachiever, he's got that God complex that surgeons have~that feeling that they're the highest of the high. Dr. Benton is strong, arrogant, intelligent, stubborn. But most of all he's a black man on TV who has the guts to be offensive."

On the ER set, fellow actors have noted similarities between La Salle and his character. He has been very adamant about what his character would and would not do, and he has balked at scenes where Dr. Benton submits to others. As he told Entertainment Weekly, "Benton does not acquiesce." His fellow actors have commented on his mischievous sense of humor, according to Ebony, and they've also acknowledged a sensitive side in the actor. "He comes off as this macho, good-looking man, but he's like honey," confided co- star Julianna Margulies to Entertainment Weekly.

The significance of race to his role in ER has been emphasized by La Salle. As he stated in about...time magazine, "I am an African American who gives orders. I'm sure there are [some] who do have problems seeing me telling others what to do and doing it with the type of arrogance and confidence that I portray." He considers ER a breakthrough show in its serious treatment of black characters, who have mostly been relegated to situation comedies. "As long as America is laughing with us, they're comfortable," he continued in about...time. "Sitcoms are silly situations, so it's not so much that [the situations] are true or even possible. [They are] palatable and digestible for white America...and not threatening."

La Salle has given a lot of credit for his and the show's success to the producer, John Wells, and pilot director, Rod Holcomb, as well as to series creator Michael Crichton's overall vision and the quality of the scripts. "What is not known is that Michael Crichton wrote the script [for ER] 20 years ago, and even 20 years ago, he had an African American in mind [for the role of Dr. Benton]," La Salle told about...time. "It's unbelievable that [even back then] he tapped into the intensity of being a doctor who happens to be African American, who happens to be female, who happens to be Jewish, who happens to be whatever."

La Salle has written, directed, and produced two short films that won awards at the Worldfest Houston Film Competition and the USA Film Festival. During a break from his ER work, he directed a movie for HBO called Angel of Harlem. His goal is to direct a feature film, and use that opportunity "to help break down some of the barriers in the business that minorities face," according to about...time. The actor is passionate about billiards, table tennis, and weightlifting, and is highly skilled in the martial arts. He also has a deep religious faith that he credits with helping him through the rough times in his life. In USA Weekend, he offered the following advice for doctors who have God complexes like his character on ER: "Yes, you're doing amazing things. But know that all amazing things come from God."

Further Reading

• about...time, April 30, 1995, p. 10.
• Detroit Free Press, October 15, 1995, p. 4E.
• Ebony, April 1995, p. 50.
• Essence, July 1995, p. 54.
• New York Times, November 6, 1994, p. C30.
• USA Weekend, October 27~29, 1995, p. 14.
• Further information for this profile was obtained from websites for the National Broadcasting Company Inc., Entertainment Weekly, and People Magazine on the Internet.

— Ed Decker

La Salle, Jean-Baptiste, abbé de (1651-1719). Founder in 1679 of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes, who were providing free primary education in over 100 French schools by 1789. His textbooks, Les Devoirs du chrétien and Les Règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, were massively reprinted until well into the 19th c. He was canonized in 1900.

[Peter France]