98 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. De Soto was the first European who discovered the Mississip- pi. He crossed it in the year 1541, near the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude, and after his death the remnant of his com- panions, reduced to about three hundred, descended it to its mouth, and with their frail barks were fortunate enough to reach Panuco on the Mexican coast. Although the Spaniards became thus early acquainted with that large river, and their ships must have passed annually in sight of its mouth, it re- mained unknown for one hundred and fifty years after De Soto's expedition ; and the river was on that account designated by the name of " Rio Escondido." Father Marquette and M. Joliette, in the year 1673, reached it by the way of the Fox River of Michigan and of the Wisconsin. Ten years later La Salle descended it to its entrance into the sea.* But, having sailed from France with the intention of forming a settlement on its banks, he passed by its mouth in 1685, with- out recognising it, and landed in the Bay of St. Bernard at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In his attempt to reach thence the Mississippi by land, he was murdered by his own people ; it was only in March, 1699, that D'Iberville entered the river from the sea f ; and the French, who had first established themselves at the mouth of the Mobile and at Biloxi, did not lay the foundation of New Orleans till the year 1717. The seashore from the Mobile to the Mississippi, and the banks of that river, were then inhabited by several small tribes, of which the Natches were the principal. All the rest of the country from the Gulf of Mexico to Cumberland River, if not to the Ohio, bounded on the west by the Mississippi and on the east by the Creeks and the Cherokees, was inhabited by the Choc- taws and the Chicasas, two distinct nations, but of the same
- He reached the sea on the 7th of April, 1683. See Tonti's re-
lation in the fifth volume of "Voyages au Nord." Tonti was the friend and companion of La Salle, and his relation of the inland ex- peditions of that enterprising traveller is the most authentic we have, though disfigured by embellishments in very bad taste, introduced by the Paris publisher. The only good relation of La Salle's last voy- age is that of Joutel. f A British ship, probably that mentioned by Dr. Cox in his " Carola- na," entered the river in September of the same year, and ascended it to the place thence called English Town. (Charlevoix). There is no evidence that supports the assertion, that the river had formerly been visited by English vessels.
