Talk:La Salle expeditions

Issues

1. The content in this article is in conflict with René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. This article says he learned about the western rivers from the Seneca. The main La Salle page says it was the Mohawk. Which is correct? RedJ 17 (talk) 23:52, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
2. Another problem of explanation is that if La Salle had built the Griffon at site "near the fort" Conti on Lake Ontario, the article does not explain how La Salle got the Griffon up the Niagara escarpment. RedJ 17 (talk) 00:08, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
3. Céline Dupré of Dictionnaire biographique du Canada notes that "it is beyond doubt that La Salle ... discovered neither the Ohio nor the Mississippi." Yet this article claims, without doubt, that La Salle discovered the Ohio River. There are only two highly unreliable documents on which this claim rests, plus there is other critical scholarship debunking it. [See John G. Shea, The bursting of Pierre Margry’s La Salle bubble (New York, 1879), and Dupré's analysis of the documents in the Dictionnaire.] RedJ 17 (talk) 18:31, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
4. Second Expedition: This article claims that La Salle made an exploration down the Mississippi River to its mouth in 1670. This is three years before Joliet's and Marquette's journey. Most accounts have it that Joliet and Marquette went down the Mississippi before La Salle. Even the main WP La Salle article does not make this gaffe. 16:29, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

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Bateman reference missing

There are three citations to Bateman, but no ref for them. I don't suppose it was Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois by Newton Bateman, et.al.? Sbalfour (talk) 00:20, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Actually, it was. Adding it to the ref list. Sbalfour (talk) 20:44, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

La Salle expeditions

There are three expeditions made by La Salle and all sources generally agree on where they were, and what date(s) they were made, though it's now generally conceded that the (first) Ohio River expedition probably got no further west than the upper Allegheny River. This article is a mishmash, like cut and stitch from multiple incongruent sources by someone who doesn't actually know the history. The first expedition was in 1669, to the Allegheny; the second was in late 1681 via the Illinois River to the Mississippi and thence to the gulf of Mexico; the third was in 1684 by sea to the coast of Texas where he was later killed, so no fourth or "later" expeditions. The establishment of Fort Crevecoeur wasn't an expedition so much as a staging trip, and went nowhere - it doesn't count (we don't get to write revisionist history in the encyclopedia). The actual third expedition is the last paragraph of the Later expeditions section and what's called the third expedition was actually BEFORE what's called the second. There's a lot just weirdly wrong here. Sbalfour (talk) 01:54, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Most of the Ohio expedition was fabricated at some later time, possibly 1678, by La Salle's cronies after they got details from Joliet and Marquette's expedition in 1673-74, to make it seem like La Salle had a prior claim. Historians now believe that La Salle made it no further than "the land of the Seneca's", i.e. western New York State where he may have portaged to the upper Allegheny. It must be remembered that La Salle was a rival of Joliet and Marquette for fame as well as money; they became bitter enemies.

That La Salle traversed the upper Mississippi as early as 1680 is also believed to be fabricated. La Salle saw the Mississippi beyond doubt, in Feb. 1682.

Bloopers

This article contains several outright bloopers:

• It says La Salle rebuilt his fort (Crevecoeur was the antecedent) in 1681 - Nope, it wasn't rebuilt; he built Fort St. Louis in 1683 to replace it
• The map shows Fort St. Louis on the lower Mississippi - Nope, it was in north central Illinois on the Illinois River
• The text says Fort Crevecoeur was built on the Mississippi - Nope, it was 210 miles east of the Mississippi on the Illinois River.
• The text calls La Salle's Texas stockade "Fort St. Louis" - Nope, it wasn't called that until 19th century writers and historians fabricated a name more than 100 years after its demise
• The Seneca River doesn't have a mouth on Lake Nassau, which is nowhere near. Maybe Cross Lake is meant? Fixed.
• There are two textual references to building a "Fort St. Louis", one in 1682 on the Mississippi and one in 1683 on the Illinois. Nope, there was ever only one Fort St. Louis, it was built in winter 1682-83 on the Illinois River.
• To the extent that La Salle "discovered" the Mississippi, what date did he first see it? It's the most important date associated with La Salle, and it doesn't appear in the article
• The text says, "Leaving Fort Crevecoeur... he canoed down the Mississippi River in 1682". Nope, Fort Crevecoeur was in ruins in 1682, and it was 210 miles east on the Illinois River.
• The text says: "In 1681...through the next two years he import[ed] firearms and other metal tools". Nope - starting in late 1681 through 1683, he was on the lower Mississippi.
• The text says: "In the late 17th century, La Salle began... building a series of forts... into the Ohio Valley region[s]." Nope - Fort Miami is on the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan; Fort Crevecoeur is on the Illinois River of the Mississippi watershed; Fort Conti is on the Niagara River of Lake Ontario, and Fort Frontenac is on the St. Lawrence seaway. La Salle never set foot in the Ohio Valley.
• The text says, "On December 3, 1679 a party of twenty-men started out for the Illinois Country." In scholarly text, we can't assume what isn't said. It doesn't say La Salle was with them, so he wasn't with them. Where was he, and where were those 20 men going without him?
• The text says: "Two men eventually located the Falls of St. Anthony before returning." It fails to say that one of them was the famous Father Hennepin, credited with being the first European to see the falls.

Forts of La Salle

This would be the lead article for describing the forts of La Salle, of which there were quite a few, so I though I'd enumerate them, to make sure they're covered in the text.

• Fort Frontenac 1673 St. Lawrence River at Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada; rebuilt in 1675
• Fort Conti early (Jan.?) 1679 on Niagara River at Lake Ontario, New York; burned in Nov. 1679
• Fort Miamis Nov. 1679 on St. Joseph River in Michigan; destroyed by Nov. 1680; rebuilt by Jan. 1681
• Fort Crevecoeur Jan. 1680 on Illinois River in Illinois; destroyed April, 1680
• Fort Prudhomme spring 1682 on Mississippi River in west Tennessee
• Fort St. Louis winter 1682-1683 on Illinois River in Illinois
• fort at Texas settlement summer 1685 near modern Inez, Texas

History and construction

This article is not a popular magazine narrative; it is supposed to be a concise scholarly encyclopedic article. Scholarship implies something - at a minimum, it supplies this: some <person name> did <some action> or participated in <some event> at <some place name> on <some date>. If I cannot answer those questions by reading the text, the author has some work to do. If I cannot answer many of them, the author should not be writing for a scholarly medium. And that is what I see here: the article is a chatty stream-of-consciousness by an amateur who knows almost nothing about the subject matter, and has a limited capacity for composition. This article is appalling. Numerous obvious blunders pervade it. A professional historian could not sustain any part of this. I would support blanking the entire article as beneath the standard of the encyclopedia. It's that bad. If this were submitted to a professional peer-reviewed publication, the author(s) would be black-balled. Just about everything but the opening sentence needs to go. Sbalfour (talk) 05:53, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

There are only 7 paragraphs in the Expeditions sections, but 9 paragraphs in the forts and Ville Marie sections. This article is about expeditions, not his life, and not forts. The non-expedition text needs shrunk by a factor of 3, or moved to main articles about the forts or the biography.

The last three paragraphs of The Great Lakes forts section are basically superfluous, and don't advance the expeditions. Either summarize and merge into above text or delete.

Sbalfour (talk) 22:55, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Merge

Is there anything unique or necessarily different here than in the main biography article? I propose redirecting the page to the main article forthwith. This article is a bleedage - something created because someone could, rather than because it added unique knowledge to the encyclopedia. Blah. Sbalfour (talk) 04:46, 31 January 2019 (UTC)