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109-603: The navigable Texas river's name is a corruption of Rivière des Vaches ("Cow River"), by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle . The flagship of Jean Laffite's fleet was alleged to have been scuttled in the lower part of the river. Hallettsville, and Moulton, Texas, are included in Lavaca-Navidad River Authority , which was established in 1941. 28°41′50″N 96°34′34″W  /  28.6972°N 96.5761°W  / 28.6972; -96.5761 This article related to

218-541: A 500% increase in mercury discharges between 2007 and 2013. For several decades beginning in the 1950s, the Ohio River was polluted with hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA , a fluoride-based chemical used in making teflon , among other things, by the DuPont chemical company from an outflow pipe at its Parkersburg, West Virginia , facility. The Ohio was listed among America's Most Endangered Rivers of 2023 on

327-776: A French architect and surveyor whose survey was the first mapping of the Ohio River, led an expedition of French troops from Fort Niagara down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers as far as the mouth of the Great Miami River near Big Bone Lick and possibly the Falls of the Ohio (present-day Louisville ). Chaussegros de Lery mapped the Great Lakes in 1725, and engineered the Niagara fortifications in 1726. I am indebted for

436-582: A group of 40, La Salle and Henri de Tonti headed south from Fort Miami. They canoed up the St. Joseph and followed it to a portage at present-day South Bend, Indiana . They crossed to the Kankakee River and followed it to the Illinois River . In January 1680, they reached an area that is near the current city of Peoria, Illinois . In order to help the local Peoria tribe defend themselves against

545-631: A guide. The Dutchman's freedom was purchased by the party in exchange for wampum . While at the Native village in September 1669, La Salle was seized with a violent fever and expressed the intention of returning to Ville Marie . At this juncture, he parted from his company and the narrative of the Jesuits, who continued on to upper Lake Erie. Other accounts have it that some of La Salle's men soon returned to New Holland or Ville Marie. Beyond that,

654-542: A hydrography which was non-existent. In those days, maps as well as descriptions were based part on observation and part on hearsay, of necessity. This confounded courses, mouths and confluences among the rivers. At various times, La Salle invented such rivers as the Chucagoa, Baudrane, Louisiane (Anglicized "Saint Louis"), and Ouabanchi-Aramoni. Confounding fact with fiction started with publication in 1876 of Pierre Margry's Découvertes et Établissements des Français . Margry

763-632: A load of furs, but was never seen again. La Salle continued with his men in canoes down the western shore of Lake Michigan , rounding the southern end to the mouth of the Miami River (now St. Joseph River ), where they built a stockade in November, 1679. They called it Fort Miami (now known as St. Joseph, Michigan ). There they waited for Tonti and his party, who had crossed the Lower Michigan peninsula on foot. On December 3, 1679, with

872-592: A point south of the Ohio River and north of the Falls: "Place where one found the ivory of Elephant in 1729" ( French : endroit ou on à trouvé des os d'Elephant en 1729 ). De Lery's men found teeth weighing ten pounds (4.5 kg) with a diameter of five to seven inches (130 to 180 mm), tusks 11 feet (3.4 m) long and 6–7 inches (150–180 mm) in diameter, and thigh bones 5 feet (1.5 m) long. The bones were collected and shipped to Paris, where they were identified as mastodon remains; they are on display at

981-717: A river in Texas is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Ren%C3%A9-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle ( / l ə ˈ s æ l / ; November 22, 1643 – March 19, 1687), was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada , and the Mississippi River . He

1090-783: A single career. Though he died at the hands of some of his quarrelling followers in the mud of reeds of the Gulf of Mexico lowlands, he was essentially a man of the lakes, of Ontario and Erie, Huron and Michigan...." A sculpture of de La Salle is located on the south facade of the Knute Rockne Memorial on the campus of the University of Notre Dame . There is also a statue of him in Chicago 's Lincoln Park . La Salle University in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , adopted

1199-633: A single instance only excepted." After the French and Indian War , Britain's trans-Appalachian Indian Reserve was divided by the river into colonial lands to the south and Native American lands to the north. In the late 18th century, the river became the southern boundary of the Northwest Territory . The river is sometimes considered as the western extension of the Mason–Dixon line that divided Pennsylvania from Maryland , and thus part of

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1308-678: A southern route to his home in Augusta County, Virginia , in May 1745. John Howard was extradited to France to stand trial. His ship was intercepted by the English and, as a free man, he reported his adventures after landing in London; however, his account has been lost. Salling's detailed account of Virginia's adjacent lands was used in Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson's 1751 map. In 1749,

1417-910: A whole is ranked as the most polluted river in the United States, based on 2009 and 2010 data. The more industrial and regional West Virginia/Pennsylvania tributary, the Monongahela River , ranked 17th for water pollution , behind 16 other American rivers. The Ohio again ranked as the most polluted in 2013, and has been the most polluted river since at least 2001, according to the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO). The Commission found that 92% of toxic discharges were nitrates , including farm runoff and waste water from industrial processes such as steel production. The Commission also noted mercury pollution as an ongoing concern, citing

1526-711: A wide variety of craft then in use. In 1830, the Louisville and Portland Canal (now the McAlpine Locks and Dam ) bypassed the rapids, allowing even larger commercial and modern navigation from the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh to the Port of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi on the Gulf of Mexico. Since the "canalization" of the river in 1929, the Ohio has not been a natural free-flowing river; today, it

1635-535: Is 1,310 miles (2,110 km) long and carries the largest volume of water of any tributary of the Mississippi. The Indians and early European explorers and settlers of the region often considered the Allegheny to be part of the Ohio. The forks (the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at what is now Pittsburgh) were considered a strategic military location by colonial French and British, and later independent American military authorities. The Ohio River

1744-458: Is a 981-mile-long (1,579 km) river in the United States . It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States , flowing in a southwesterly direction from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illinois . It is the third largest river by discharge volume in the United States and the largest tributary by volume of

1853-632: Is best known for an early 1682 expedition in which he canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico ; there, on 9 April 1682, he claimed the Mississippi River basin for France after giving it the name La Louisiane , in honor of Saint Louis and Louis XIV . One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent". A later ill-fated expedition to

1962-475: Is called today Irondequoit Bay on the southern shore of Lake Ontario at the mouth of Irondequoit Creek, a place now commemorated as La Salle's Landing. There they were greeted by a party of Natives, who escorted them starting the next day to a village some leagues distant, a journey of a few days. At the village, the Seneca vehemently attempted to dissuade the party from proceeding into the lands of their enemies,

2071-553: Is credited with being the first European to travel and explore western Pennsylvania and the upper Ohio Valley. Viele made contact with Native American nations as far west as the Wabash River , in present-day Indiana. He and his company left Albany , traveling southbound and crossing portions of present-day New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. They apparently followed the west branch of the Susquehanna River into

2180-525: Is divided into 21 discrete pools or reservoirs by 20 locks and dams for navigation and power generation. The name "Ohio" comes from the Seneca , Ohi:yo' , lit.  "Good River". In his Notes on the State of Virginia published in 1781–82, Thomas Jefferson stated: "The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids,

2289-552: Is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at what is now Point State Park in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . From there, it flows northwest through Allegheny and Beaver counties, before making an abrupt turn to the south-southwest at the West Virginia –Ohio–Pennsylvania triple-state line (near East Liverpool, Ohio ; Chester, West Virginia ; and Ohioville, Pennsylvania ). From there, it forms

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2398-537: Is now Memphis, Tennessee , where La Salle built a small fort, named Fort Prudhomme . In April 1682, the expedition reached the Gulf of Mexico. There, La Salle named the Mississippi basin La Louisiane in honor of Louis XIV and claimed it for France. During 1682–83, La Salle, with Henry de Tonti, established Fort Saint-Louis of Illinois at Starved Rock on the Illinois River to protect and hold

2507-549: The 1763 Treaty of Paris . The 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix with several tribes opened Kentucky to colonial settlement and established the Ohio River as a southern boundary for American Indian territory. In 1774 the Quebec Act restored the land east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River to Quebec , in effect making the Ohio the southern boundary of Canada . This appeased French Canadians in Quebec but angered

2616-536: The Algonquins , telling of the dire fate awaiting them. The necessity of securing guides for the further part of the journey, and the refusal of the Seneca to provide them, delayed the expedition a month. A fortuitous capture by the Natives in the lands to the south of a Dutchman who spoke Iroquois well but French poorly, and was to be burned at the stake for transgressions unknown, provided an opportunity to obtain

2725-467: The American Civil War . One antebellum slave trader reported that they kept slaves chained two-by-two while navigating the Ohio, only when they reached the Mississippi could the slaves be unchained for a time, because "there was slavery on both sides of the boat." The expression "sold down the river" originated as a lament of Upper South slaves, especially from Kentucky, who were shipped via

2834-648: The Batts and Fallam expedition of 1671, and the Needham and Arthur expedition of 1673–74. In early autumn 1692, loyal English-speaking Dutchman Arnout Viele and a party of eleven companions from Esopus —Europeans, Shawnee , and a few loyal Delaware guides—were sent by the governor of New York to trade with the Shawnee and bring them into the English sphere of influence. Viele understood several Native American languages, which made him valuable as an interpreter. He

2943-543: The Discovery Channel featured the story of the ship; divers who were involved in the investigation were convinced that Le Griffon sank in the Mississagi Strait . Historians debated the site of La Salle's "Fort St Louis" colony, which had been said to be near Lavaca Bay at Garcitas Creek, and was a significant part of the history of French colonization of Texas . A June 1996 dig at the site that

3052-639: The French National Natural History Museum . Charles III Le Moyne , second Baron de Longueuil (later the governor of Montreal and interim governor of New France ), commanded Fort Niagara from 1726 to 1733. He led an expedition of 442 men, including Native Americans, from Montreal to war against the Chickasaw who occupied territory on the lower part of the Mississippi River in the area claimed as La Louisiane . According to Gaston Pierre de Lévis , Duke de Mirepoix,

3161-666: The Iroquois , La Salle and his group built a stockade and named it Fort Crèvecoeur . In March 1680, La Salle set off on foot for Fort Frontenac for supplies. A month after his departure, the soldiers at Ft. Crevecoeur, led by Martin Chartier , mutinied , destroyed the fort, and exiled Tonti, whom he had left in charge. The group later travelled along the Illinois River and arrived at the Mississippi River in February 1682; they built canoes there. The exploration reached an area that

3270-521: The Jesuit religious order and became a member after taking initial vows in 1660. Required to reject his father's legacy when he joined the Jesuits, La Salle was nearly destitute when he traveled as a prospective colonist to North America. He sailed for New France in the spring of 1666. His brother Jean, had moved there the year before. At La Salle's request on March 27, 1667, after he was in Canada, he

3379-714: The Kanawha River , they entered the Ohio River 444 miles (715 km) above the falls. The Virginia pioneers traced the northern boundary of Kentucky for five hundred miles (800 km), reaching the Mississippi River on June 7. They descended just below the mouth of the Arkansas River , where they were ambushed by a large company of Native Americans, Blacks and Frenchmen on July 2, 1742; one or two of Howard's men were killed. The rest were brought to New Orleans and imprisoned as spies. After two years in prison, Salling escaped on October 25, 1744, and returned on

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3488-645: The Lenape and Iroquois , considered the Ohio and Allegheny rivers as the same, as is suggested by a New York State road sign on Interstate 86 that refers to the Allegheny River also as Ohi:yo' . Similarly, the Geographic Names Information System lists O-hee-yo and O-hi-o as variant names for the Allegheny. An earlier Miami-Illinois language name was also applied to the Ohio River, Mosopeleacipi ("river of

3597-628: The Midwestern Great Lakes states from the Upper South states, which were historically border states in the Civil War. The Ohio River is a left (east) and the largest tributary by volume of the Mississippi River in the United States . At the confluence , the Ohio is considerably bigger than the Mississippi, measured by long-term mean discharge. The Ohio River at Cairo is 281,500 cu ft/s (7,960 m /s); and

3706-499: The Mississippi River at the city of Cairo, Illinois . Where the Ohio joins the Mississippi is the lowest elevation in the state of Illinois, at 315 feet (96 m). The Mississippi River flows to the Gulf of Mexico on the Atlantic Ocean . Among rivers wholly or mostly in the United States, the Ohio is the second largest by discharge volume and the tenth longest and has the eighth largest drainage basin. It serves to separate

3815-546: The Mosopelea " tribe). Shortened in the Shawnee language to pelewa thiipi , spelewathiipi or peleewa thiipiiki , the name evolved through variant forms such as "Polesipi", "Peleson", "Pele Sipi" and "Pere Sipi", and eventually stabilized to the variant spellings "Pelisipi", "Pelisippi" and "Pellissippi". Originally applied just to the Ohio River, the "Pelisipi" name later was variously applied back and forth between

3924-529: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 's Ohio River Forecast Center. The water depth predictions are relative to each local flood plain based upon predicted rainfall in the Ohio River basin in five reports as follows: The water levels for the Ohio River from Smithland Lock and Dam to Cairo, Illinois, are predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 's Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center. The largest tributaries of

4033-652: The Ohio Company was established in Virginia Colony to settle and trade in the Ohio River region. Exploration of the territory and trade with the Indians in the region near the Forks brought white colonists from both Pennsylvania and Virginia across the mountains, and both colonies claimed the territory. The movement across the Allegheny Mountains of Anglo-American settlers and the claims of

4142-473: The Potomac River to the Ohio River. The Wheeling Suspension Bridge was built over the river at Wheeling from 1847 to 1849, making the trip west easier. For a brief time, until 1851, it was the world's largest suspension bridge. The bridge survived the American Civil War , after having been improved in 1859. It was renovated again in 1872, and remains in use as the oldest vehicular suspension bridge in

4251-718: The cataract later known as Niagara Falls . The first ship built by La Salle, called the Frontenac , a 10-ton single-decked brigantine or barque, was lost in Lake Ontario, on January 8, 1679. Afterward, La Salle built Le Griffon , a seven-cannon, 45-ton barque , on the upper Niagara River at or near Cayuga Creek . She was launched on August 7, 1679. La Salle sailed in Le Griffon up Lake Erie to Lake Huron , then up Huron to Michilimackinac and on to present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin . Le Griffon left for Niagara with

4360-416: The humid subtropical and humid continental climate areas. It is inhabited by fauna and flora of both climates. Today, the Ohio River is one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. In winter, it regularly freezes over at Pittsburgh but rarely farther south towards Cincinnati and Louisville . Further down the river in places like Paducah and Owensboro , Kentucky, closer to its confluence with

4469-462: The keelboats used for commerce in the early days of American settlement. The Ohio River boatmen inspired performer Dan Emmett , who in 1843 wrote the song " The Boatman's Dance ". Trading boats and ships traveled south on the Mississippi to New Orleans , and sometimes beyond to the Gulf of Mexico and other ports in the Americas and Europe. This provided a much-needed export route for goods from

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4578-462: The name of a U.S. state . The Encyclopædia Britannica provides this summary of La Salle's achievements: "His claim of Louisiana for France, though but a vain boast at the time, pointed the way to the French colonial empire that was eventually built by other men". Pierre Berton wrote, "no other man had crammed so much adventure, so much excitement, so many triumphs, and so many heartbreaks into

4687-659: The Governor of New France, Louis de Buade de Frontenac , arrived at the mouth of the Cataraqui River to meet with leaders of the Five Nations of the Iroquois to encourage them to trade with the French. While the groups met and exchanged gifts, Frontenac's men, led by La Salle, hastily constructed a rough wooden palisade on a point of land by a shallow, sheltered bay. Originally the fort was named Fort Cataraqui but

4796-420: The Gulf coast of Mexico (today the U.S. state of Texas) gave the United States a claim to Texas in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. La Salle was assassinated in 1687 during that expedition. Although Joliet and Marquette preceded him on the upper Mississippi in their journey of 1673–74, La Salle extended exploration, and France's claims, all the way to the river's mouth, while

4905-464: The Mississippi River at Thebes, Illinois , which is upstream of the confluence, is 208,200 cu ft/s (5,897 m /s). The Ohio River flow is greater than that of the Mississippi River, so hydrologically the Ohio River is the main stream of the river system. The Ohio River is a naturally shallow river that was artificially deepened by a series of dams . The natural depth of the river varied from about 3 to 20 feet (1 to 6 m). The dams raise

5014-434: The Mississippi, the Ohio is ice-free year-round. The name "Ohio" comes from the Seneca language (an Iroquoian language ), Ohi:yo' (roughly pronounced oh-hee-yoh, with the vowel in "hee" held longer ), a proper name derived from ohiːyoːh ("good river"), therefore literally translating to "Good River". "Great river" and "large creek" have also been given as translations. Native Americans , including

5123-408: The Natural Bridge), crossing Greenbrier River and landing at the New River . At New River, the Virginia explorers built a large bull boat frame and covered it with five buffalo skins. The first Englishmen to explore the region then followed the New River for 250 miles (400 km), until it became too dangerous to navigate. At a large waterfall, they traveled overland to the Coal River . Following

5232-515: The Ohio River and the Clinch River in Virginia and Tennessee . In his original draft of the Land Ordinance of 1784 , Thomas Jefferson proposed a new state called "Pelisipia", to the south of the Ohio River, which would have included parts of present-day Eastern Kentucky , Virginia and West Virginia . The river had great significance in the history of the Native Americans , as numerous prehistoric and historic civilizations formed along its valley. For thousands of years, Native Americans used

5341-514: The Ohio River opened about the same time. Although such boats cruised on the Ohio River in an oval pattern up and down, the state of Kentucky soon protested. Other states had to limit their cruises to going forward, then reversing and going backward on the Indiana shore only. Both Illinois and Indiana have long since changed their laws to allow riverboat casinos to be permanently docked, with Illinois changing in 1999 and Indiana in 2002. The Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant, West Virginia , collapsed into

5450-406: The Ohio River was called the " River Jordan " by slaves crossing it to escape to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad . More escaping slaves, estimated in the thousands, made their perilous journey north to freedom across the Ohio River than anywhere else across the north-south frontier. Harriet Beecher Stowe 's Uncle Tom's Cabin , the bestselling novel that fueled abolitionist work,

5559-461: The Ohio River's rapids and tributaries in that area. However, the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave the entire Ohio Valley to the United States , and numerous white settlers entered the region. The economic connection of the Ohio Country to the East was significantly increased in 1818 when the National Road being built westward from Cumberland, Maryland , reached Wheeling, Virginia , (now West Virginia ), providing an easier overland connection from

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5668-544: The Ohio River. La Salle's own journal of the expedition was lost in 1756. Two indirect historical accounts exist. The one, Récit d’un ami de l’abbé de Galliné , purported to be a recitation by La Salle himself to an unknown writer during his visit to Paris in 1678, and the other Mémoire sur le projet du sieur de la Salle pour la descouverte de la partie occidentale de l’Amérique septentrionale entre la Nouvelle-France, la Floride et le Mexique . A letter from Madeleine Cavelier, his now elderly niece, written in 1746, commenting on

5777-401: The Ohio and Mississippi to cotton and sugar plantations in the Deep South . Changes in crops cultivated in the Upper South resulted in slaves available to be sold to the South, where the expansion of cotton plantations was doing very well. Invention of the cotton gin made cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable throughout the Black Belt of this region. Before and during the Civil War,

5886-565: The Spanish, and 10 other adults, who lived for a while among the Native Americans and were later captured and released by the Spanish. Six found their way to Canada and eventually returned to France. Three others were refused passage by the Spanish; an Italian was imprisoned. For as long as 30 years after the demise of the colony, there were specious accounts of survivors still living among the Native Americans in Texas. La Salle never married, but has been linked to Madeleine de Roybon d'Allonne , an early colonizer of New France . In addition to

5995-400: The Texas Historical Commission. The collection is held by the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History. Artifacts from La Belle are shown at nine museums across Texas. The wreckage of his ship L'Aimable has yet to be located. In 1998, The National Underwater and Marine Agency claimed that it had found the wreck in Matagorda Bay but the Texas Historical Commission stated that the wreck

6104-429: The U.S. Louisville was founded in 1778 as a military encampment on Corn Island (now submerged) by General George Rogers Clark at the only major natural navigational barrier on the river, the Falls of the Ohio . The Falls were a series of rapids where the river dropped 26 feet (7.9 m) in a stretch of about 2 miles (3.2 km). In this area, the river flowed over hard, fossil-rich beds of limestone . The outpost

6213-460: The Virginia mountains to the Mississippi River. The elder Howard had a promised reward of 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) of land for a successful expedition from the Virginia Royal Governor's Council to reinforce British claims in the west. Howard offered equal shares of the 10,000 acres to the four other members of his expedition. The party of five left John Peter Salling's house in August County on March 16, 1742, and traveled west to Cedar Creek (near

6322-407: The area near modern-day Pittsburgh led to conflict with the French, who had forts in the Ohio River Valley . This conflict was called the French and Indian War , and would merge into the global Anglo-French struggle, the Seven Years' War . In 1763, following its defeat in the war, France ceded its area east of the Mississippi River to Britain and its area west of the Mississippi River to Spain in

6431-406: The border between free and slave territory, and between the Northern and Southern United States or Upper South . Where the river was narrow, it was crossed by thousands of slaves escaping to the North for freedom; many were helped by free blacks and whites of the Underground Railroad resistance movement. The Ohio River is a climatic transition area, as its water runs along the periphery of

6540-401: The border between West Virginia and Ohio, upstream of Wheeling, West Virginia . The river follows a roughly southwest and then west-northwest course until Cincinnati, before bending to a west-southwest course for most of the remainder of its length. The course forms the northern borders of West Virginia and Kentucky ; and the southern borders of Ohio , Indiana and Illinois , until it joins

6649-411: The colonists of the Thirteen Colonies . Lord Dunmore's War south of the Ohio river also contributed to cession of land north to Quebec to prevent colonial expansion onto Native American territory. During the Revolutionary War . in 1776 the British military engineer John Montrésor created a map of the river showing the strategic location of Fort Pitt , including specific navigational information about

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6758-518: The content therein. English and American scholars were immediately skeptical of the work, since full and faithful publication of some of the original documents had previously existed. The situation was so fraught with doubt, that the United States Congress appropriated $ 10,000 in 1873, which Margry wanted as an advance, to have the original documents photostated, witnessed by uninvolved parties as to veracity. La Salle undertook several other smaller unknown expeditions between 1671 and 1673. On July 12, 1673,

6867-465: The discoverer managed, during a voyage to France in 1674–75, to secure for himself the grant of Fort Cataraqui and acquired letters of nobility for himself and his descendants. With Frontenac's support, he received not only a fur trade concession, with permission to establish frontier forts, but also a title of nobility . He returned and rebuilt Frontenac in stone. An Ontario Heritage Trust plaque describes La Salle at Cataraqui as "[a] major figure in

6976-402: The entrance to Green Bay in northern Lake Michigan was located by Steve Libert of the Great Lakes Exploration Group in 2001. The organization prevailed in a lawsuit against the state of Michigan over ownership of artifacts in 2012, and in 2013 was issued a permit to excavate the wreck. Only one artifact, a wood pole, was recovered, and it is indeterminate whether it was from a shipwreck. In 2019,

7085-441: The existing historical evidence does not indicate that La Salle ever reached the Ohio/Allegheny Valley . Robert Cavelier was born on November 22, 1643, into a comfortably well-off family in Rouen , France, in the parish Saint-Herbland. His parents were Jean Cavelier and Catherine Geest. His older brother, Jean Cavelier, became a Sulpician priest. When Robert was young, he enjoyed science and nature. In his teens, he studied with

7194-410: The expansion of the French fur trade into the Lake Ontario region. Using the fort as a base, he undertook expeditions to the west and southwest in the interest of developing a vast fur-trading empire." After leaving Lower Canada in September 1678, La Salle and his lieutenant Henri de Tonti travelled to Fort Frontenac (now in Kingston, Ontario ) and then to Niagara where, in December 1678, they were

7303-402: The expedition ran out of supplies in northern Texas and failed to reach the site. It is now known that there were 15 survivors of the original 180 colonists at the fort, most of whom had accompanied La Salle on his final eastward trek to locate the mouth of the Colbert (Mississippi) River and escaped the massacre: five children kidnapped by Native Americans at the settlement and later rescued by

7412-412: The expedition used the Ohio River as a corridor to the Mississippi. Among the officers who accompanied this party were Major de Lignery; Lieutenants, de Vassan, Aubert de Gaspe, Du Vivier, de Verrier, Le Gardeur de St. Pierre, Chevalier de Villiers, de Portneuf, de Sabrevious; Father Vernet, chaplain; Cadets, Joncaire de Closonne , Le Gai de Joncaire, Drouet de Richarville the younger, Chaussegros de Lery

7521-443: The factual record of La Salle's first expedition ends, and what prevails is obscurity and fabrication. It is likely that he spent the winter in Ville Marie. The next confirmed sighting of La Salle was by Nicolas Perrot on the Ottawa River near the Rapide des Chats in early summer, 1670, hunting with a party of Iroquois. That would be 700 miles as the crow flies from the Falls of the Ohio, the point supposed by some that he reached on

7630-402: The first Europeans to view Niagara Falls ; they built Fort Conti at the mouth of the Niagara River. There they loaded supplies into smaller boats ( canoes or bateaux ), so they could continue up the shallow and swiftly flowing lower Niagara River to what is now the location of Lewiston, New York . There the Iroquois had a well-established portage route which bypassed the rapids and

7739-408: The first reported eyewitness accounts of Shannoah , a Shawnee town, was by le Moyne III in July 1739. On their journey down the Ohio River toward the Mississippi, they met with local chiefs in a village on the Scioto River . John Howard, a pioneer from Virginia, led a party of five— John Peter Salling (a Pennsylvania German), Josiah Howard (John's son), Charles Sinclair, and John Poteet (Vizt)—from

7848-508: The flagship La Belle , the only remaining ship, ran aground and sank into the mud, stranding the colony on the Texas coast. Some of his men mutinied , near the site of present-day Navasota, Texas . On March 19, 1687, La Salle was slain by Pierre Duhaut during an ambush while talking to Duhaut's decoy, Jean L'Archevêque . They were "six leagues" from the westernmost village of the Hasinai (Tejas) Indians. One source states that Duhaut

7957-405: The forts, which also served as authorized agencies for the extensive fur trade, La Salle's visits to Illinois and other Natives cemented the French policy of alliance with Natives in the common causes of containing both Iroquois influence and Anglo-American colonization. He also gave the name Louisiana ( La Louisiane ) to the interior North American territory he claimed for France, which lives on in

8066-541: The fur trade from the Iroquois nations to the northeast, they migrated west of the Mississippi River in the 17th century to the territory now defined as Missouri , Arkansas , and Oklahoma . Several accounts exist of the discovery and traversal of the Ohio River by Europeans in the latter half of the 17th century: Virginian colonist Abraham Wood 's trans-Appalachian expeditions between 1654 and 1664; Frenchman Robert de La Salle 's putative Ohio expedition of 1669; and two expeditions of Virginians sponsored by Colonel Wood:

8175-531: The heels of contamination from a high-profile train derailment , and following years as one of the most polluted watersheds in the United States. The Ohio River is extensively industrialized and populated. Regular barge traffic carries cargoes of oil, steel and other industrial goods produced in the region. Major cities located along the northern and southern banks of the river include Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ; Louisville, Kentucky ; Evansville, Indiana ; and Cincinnati, Ohio . The combined Allegheny-Ohio river

8284-473: The increasing size of steamships and barges on the river meant that the outdated locks could serve only the smallest vessels until well after the Civil War when improvements were made. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers improvements were expanded again in the 1960s, forming the present-day McAlpine Locks and Dam . During the nineteenth century, emigrants from Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky traveled by

8393-583: The journal of La Salle in her possession may also shed some light on the issue. La Salle himself never claimed to have discovered the Ohio River. In a letter to the intendant Talon in 1677, he claimed "discovery" of a river, the Baudrane, flowing southwesterly below the Great Lakes (well north of the Ohio's location) with its head on Lake Erie and emptying into the Saint Louis (i.e. the Mississippi),

8502-658: The largest inhabited island in the Ohio River, belongs to West Virginia, although it is closer to the Ohio shore than to the West Virginia shore. Kentucky sued the state of Indiana in the early 1980s because of their construction of the never-completed Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant in Indiana, which would have discharged its waste water into the river. This would have adversely affected Kentucky's water supplies. The U.S. Supreme Court held that Kentucky's jurisdiction (and, implicitly, that of West Virginia) extended only to

8611-523: The low-water mark of 1793 (important because the river has been extensively dammed for navigation so that the present river bank is north of the old low-water mark). Similarly, in the 1990s, Kentucky challenged Illinois's right to collect taxes on a riverboat casino docked in Metropolis , citing its own control of the entire river. A private casino riverboat that docked in Evansville, Indiana , on

8720-511: The manor". Sieur is a French title of nobility, similar to the English "Sir," but under the French seigneurial system, the title is purchased rather than earned, and does not imply military duty. Robert Cavelier took the title with his seigneurial purchase of Lachine from the Sulpician order at Ville Marie around 1667. It refers to the name of a family estate near Rouen. However, the phrase La Salle has become iconic, and associated with

8829-682: The mountains, traversing the Tioga River and reaching a tributary of the Allegheny River before floating down to the Shawnee towns along the Ohio River. Viele and his expedition spent most of 1693 exploring the Ohio River and its tributaries in northern Kentucky with their Shawnee hosts. Gerit Luykasse, two of Viele's Dutch traders, and two Shawnee reappeared in Albany in February 1694 "to fetch powder for Arnout [Viele] and his Company"; their party had been gone for fifteen months, but Viele

8938-546: The mouth of the Ohio, settlers would travel north on the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri . There, some continued on up the Missouri River , some up the Mississippi, and some farther west over land routes. In the early 19th century, river pirates such as Samuel Mason , operating out of Cave-In-Rock, Illinois , waylaid travelers on their way down the river. They killed travelers, stealing their goods and scuttling their boats. The folktales about Mike Fink recall

9047-699: The nickname " Explorers " for its athletic teams after René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. La Salle University is named after Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle , the French priest, educator and founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools . In 1931, a sportswriter mistakenly referred to the La Salle football team as the "Explorers" thinking the school was named after the French explorer. In 1932 students voted to pick "Explorers" as

9156-464: The north-south flowing Mississippi River, which divides the eastern from western United States. It is also the sixth oldest river on the North American continent. The river flows through or along the border of six states , and its drainage basin includes parts of 14 states. Through its largest tributary, the Tennessee River , the basin includes several states of the southeastern U.S. It is

9265-447: The official nickname. The La Salle University mascot is The Explorer. In 1995, La Salle's primary ship La Belle was discovered in the muck of Matagorda Bay . It has been the subject of archeological research. A search of the wreck and surrounding area during 1996 to 1997 yielded numerous artifacts from the 17th century. Through an international treaty, the artifacts excavated from La Belle are owned by France and held in trust by

9374-474: The other. He also used in some cases one or another copies of original documents previously edited, extracted or altered by others, without specifying which transcriptions were original, and which were copies, or whether the copy was dated earlier or later. Reproductions were scattered in fragments across chapters, so that it was impossible to ascertain the integrity of the document from its fragments. Chapter headings were oblique and sensational, so as to obfuscate

9483-559: The person as if it were his name; he is therefore often called Robert La Salle, or simply "La Salle". The Seneca told La Salle of a great river, called the Ohio , which flowed into the sea, the "Vermilion Sea". He began to plan for expeditions to find a western passage to China. He sought and received permission from Governor Daniel Courcelle and Intendant Jean Talon to embark on the enterprise. He sold his interests in Lachine to finance

9592-413: The region for France. La Salle then returned to Montreal and later, to France. On July 24, 1684, he departed France and returned to America with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico , at the mouth of the Mississippi River. They had four ships and 300 colonists. The expedition was plagued by pirates , Natives defending their land, and poor navigation. One ship

9701-493: The river and settled along its northern bank. Known as butternuts , they formed the dominant culture in the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois with a society that was primarily Southern in culture. Largely devoted to agricultural pursuits, they shipped much of their produce along the river to ports such as Cincinnati. Because the Ohio River flowed westward, it became a convenient means of westward movement by pioneers traveling from western Pennsylvania. After reaching

9810-741: The river as a major transportation and trading route. In the five centuries before European colonization, the Mississippian culture built numerous regional chiefdoms and major earthwork mounds in the Ohio Valley like the Angel Mounds near Evansville, Indiana as well as in the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast. The historic Osage , Omaha , Ponca , and Kaw peoples lived in the Ohio Valley. Under pressure over

9919-675: The river on December 15, 1967. The collapse killed 46 people who had been crossing when the bridge failed. The bridge had been built in 1929, and by 1967 was carrying too heavy a load for its design. The bridge was rebuilt about one mile downstream and in service as the Silver Memorial Bridge in 1969. In the early 1980s, the Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area was established at Clarksville, Indiana . The Ohio River as

10028-483: The river. The colonial charter for Virginia defined its territory as extending to the north shore of the Ohio, so that the riverbed was "owned" by Virginia. Where the river serves as a boundary between states today, Congress designated the entire river to belong to the states on the east and south, i.e., West Virginia and Kentucky at the time of admission to the Union, that were divided from Virginia. Thus Wheeling Island ,

10137-475: The source of drinking water for five million people. The river became a primary transportation route for pioneers during the westward expansion of the early U.S. The lower Ohio River just below Louisville was obstructed by rapids known as the Falls of the Ohio where the elevation falls 26 feet (7.9 m) in 2 miles (3.2 km) restricting larger commercial navigation, although in the 18th and early 19th century its three deepest channels could be traversed by

10246-516: The topographical details of the course of this River to M. de Lery, Engineer, who surveyed it with the compass at the time that he descended it with a detachment of French troops in 1729. A map of the Ohio River valley, drawn by Bellin from observations by de Lery, is in Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix 's History of New France . The 1744 Bellin map, "Map of Louisiana" ( French : Carte de La Louisiane ), has an inscription at

10355-429: The venture. La Salle left Lachine by the St. Lawrence on July 6, 1669, with a flotilla of nine canoes and 24 men, an unknown number of Seneca guides: himself and 14 hired men in four canoes, the two Sulpicians Dollier de Casson and Abbé René de Bréhan de Galinée with seven new recruits in three canoes, and two canoes of Natives. Having travelled up the St. Lawrence and across Lake Ontario for 35 days, they arrived at what

10464-466: The water level and have turned the river largely into a series of reservoirs , eliminating shallow stretches and allowing for commercial navigation. From its origin to Cincinnati, the average depth is approximately 15 feet (5 m). The largest immediate drop in water level is below the McAlpine Locks and Dam at the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky , where flood stage is reached when

10573-443: The water reaches 23 feet (7 m) on the lower gauge. However, the river's deepest point is 168 feet (51 m) on the western side of Louisville, Kentucky. From Louisville, the river loses depth very gradually until its confluence with the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois , where it has an approximate depth of 19 feet (6 m). Water levels for the Ohio River from Smithland Lock and Dam upstream to Pittsburgh are predicted daily by

10682-476: The west since the trek east over the Appalachian Mountains was long and arduous. The need for access to the port of New Orleans by settlers in the Ohio Valley is one of the factors that led to the United States' Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Because the river is the southern border of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, it was part of the border between free states and slave states in the years before

10791-574: The younger, de Gannes, Chev. Benoist, de Morville, de Selles, and seventeen others. The rank and file consisted of three sergeants, six corporals, six lance corporals, twenty-four soldiers, forty-five habitants , one hundred and eighty-six Iroquois from the Sault, forty-one from the Lake of Two Mountains , thirty-two Algonquin and Nipissing , fifty Abenaqui from St. Francois and Bécancour, Quebec; Father La Bretonnier, Jesuit; Queret, missionary. One of

10900-400: Was a "disenchanted follower". Duhaut was shot and killed by James Hiems to avenge La Salle. Over the following week, others were killed; confusion followed as to who killed whom. The colony lasted only until 1688, when Karankawa -speaking Natives killed the 20 remaining adults and took five children as captives. Tonti sent a search mission in 1689 when he learned of the colonizers' fate, but

11009-407: Was a French archivist and partisan who had private access to the French archives. He came to be the agent of American historian Francis Parkman. Margry's work, a massive nine volumes, encompassed an assemblage of documents some previously published, but many not. In it, he sometimes published a reproduction of the whole document, and sometimes only an extract, or summary, not distinguishing the one from

11118-603: Was away for about two years. He and his companions returned from the Pennsylvania wilderness in August 1694, accompanied by diplomats from "seven Nations of Indians" who sought trade with the English (or peace with the powerful Iroquois nations of New York and Pennsylvania), and hundreds of Shawnee who intended to relocate in the Minisink country on the upper Delaware River . In 1729, Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry ,

11227-740: Was believed to be the correct location revealed eight French cannon. This led archeologists to excavate the Keeran Ranch site in the area, during 1996–2002; they concluded that the Spanish Presidio La Bahía fort "was built on the La Salle settlement". Some 10 percent of the artifacts recovered are believed to have originated in France.   Many places, streets, parks, buildings and other things were named in La Salle's honor: Counties and towns Parks and streets Buildings and other Ohio River The Ohio River

11336-468: Was later renamed Fort Frontenac by La Salle in honor of his patron. The purpose of Fort Frontenac was to control the lucrative fur trade in the Great Lakes Basin to the west. The fort was also meant to be a bulwark against the English and Dutch, who were competing with the French for control of the fur trade. La Salle was left in command of the fort in 1673. Thanks to his powerful protector,

11445-566: Was lost to pirates in the West Indies , a second sank in the inlets of Matagorda Bay . The La Belle made landfall in Feb. 1685. They founded a settlement , near the bay which they called the Bay of Saint Louis, on Garcitas Creek in the vicinity of present-day Victoria, Texas . La Salle led a group eastward on foot on three occasions to try to locate the mouth of the Mississippi. In the meantime,

11554-478: Was moved that same year to the south shore where Fort-on-Shore was constructed. It proved insufficient within 3 years, and the mighty Fort Nelson was constructed upriver. The town of Louisville was chartered in 1780, in honor of King Louis XVI of France. The first locks on the river – the Louisville and Portland Canal – were built between 1825 and 1830 to circumnavigate the falls. Fears that Louisville's transshipment industry would collapse proved ill-founded: but

11663-456: Was much more recent.   The possible remains of Le Griffon were found in 1898 by lighthouse keeper Albert Cullis, on a beach on the western edge of Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. Results of testing some of the artifacts were disputed. Many of the recovered artifacts were lost and the wreck was washed away in 1942. A possible shipwreck of Le Griffon near Poverty Island at

11772-536: Was released from the Society of Jesus after citing "moral weaknesses". La Salle was granted a seigneurie on land at the western end of the Island of Montreal , which became known as Lachine . La Salle immediately began to issue land grants, set up a village and learn the languages of the Native people, several tribes of Iroquois in this area. Sieur de La Salle is a French title roughly translating to "Lord of

11881-486: Was the best known of the anti-slavery novels that portrayed such escapes across the Ohio. The times have been expressed by 20th-century novelists as well, such as the Nobel Prize -winning Toni Morrison , whose novel Beloved was adapted as a film of the same name. She also composed the libretto for the opera Margaret Garner (2005), based on the life and trial of an enslaved woman who escaped with her family across

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