author
Henri Joutel
d. 1735
A French soldier and explorer, he is remembered for the vivid journal he kept during René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle’s last expedition in North America. That firsthand account helped preserve one of the most dramatic stories of early French exploration in the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Valley.
1 Audiobook
Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7
by Henri Joutel
About the author
Born in Rouen in the 1640s, Henri Joutel served as a soldier before joining La Salle’s 1684 expedition. He became one of the small group who survived the colony’s hardships on the Texas coast and the turmoil that followed La Salle’s death.
Joutel’s lasting importance comes from the journal he kept during those years. Written from close observation, it records the failed attempt to found a French colony near the mouth of the Mississippi, the overland journey that followed, and the landscapes and Native peoples the expedition encountered along the way.
Sources consulted during this search agree that he later returned to France and that his narrative became a key historical record of La Salle’s final expedition. Some references differ on his death year, giving either 1725 or 1735, so it is safest to say that he died in the early eighteenth century.