A Spanish explorer, Fernando de Soto (1496-1542) was the first European encounters the wide and muddy waters of the Mississippi river. A veteran of Pizarro’s conquest of Peru, he was governor of Cuba when in May 1539 he set out with 600 men on an expedition in search of gold. By 1541 his wanderings had led him to the Mississippi but a year later he died of fever on its banks and was buried in the river at night to conceal his death from the Indians.
The next white explorers were two Frenchmen, father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a trader, who in 1673 descended the Mississippi as far south as the Arkansas River.
Their trip inspired another Frenchman Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, to complete the exploration. He obtained permission for the expedition from King Louis XIV of France and in 1682 travelled down first the Ohio and then the Mississippi to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. He named the new territory he had explored Louisiana in honour of his sovereign, but was assassinated while trying to establish a colony.
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