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Abstract
In 1684, La Salle proposed to establish a naval base for France on the doorstep of New Spain by sea. The site he chose was a fork in the Mississippi River 180 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. This was where Bayou Lafourche formed a western branch, a distributary of the great river. When the difficult captain of his frigate escort vanished in a fog and headed south in January 1685, La Salle was forced to pursue him for more than 2 weeks down the Texas coast. Presented with a short calendar to achieve the possible invasion of Mexico, and facing contrary winds back to Galveston Bay, where he imagined the mouths of the main channel to be, La Salle headed into Matagorda Bay, where he hoped to find his western branch.
En 1684 La Salle se ofreció para fundar una base naval para Francia en la puerta marítima a la Nueva España. El sitio que eligió era una bifurcación del río Mississippi a 180 millas del Golfo de México. En aquel lugar el Bayou Lafourche formaba una rama occidental, un efluente del gran río. Cuando el difícil capitán de su escolta de fragatas desapareció en la niebla y se dirigió al sur en enero de 1685, La Salle se vio obligado a perseguirlo durante más de dos semanas por la costa de Texas. Con muy poco plazo para lograr la posible invasión de México, y encontrando vientos contrarios de regreso a la bahía de Galveston, donde imaginaba que estaría la desembocadura del canal principal, La Salle se dirigió a la bahía de Matagorda, donde esperaba encontrar su rama occidental.
En 1684 La Salle a proposé d’établir une base navale pour la France au seuil de la Nouvelle Espagne par mer. Le site qu’il a choisi était une fourche du Mississippi 180 miles du Golfe du Mexique. C’était à cet endroit où le Bayou Lafourche faisait une branche vers l’ouest, un défluent du grand fleuve. Quand le capitaine difficile de la frégate qui l’escortait a disparu dans un brouillard et a tourné vers le sud en janvier 1685, La Salle a dû le poursuivre pendant plus de deux semaines le long de la côte du Texas. Face à un court terme pour réaliser l’invasion possible du Mexique, et aussi à des vents contraires dans son retour à la Baie de Galveston, où il s’imaginait trouver les bouches du chenal principal, La Salle est entré dans la Baie Matagorda, où il espérait trouver sa branche vers l’ouest.
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Notes
1 Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard, “Colbert, La Salle, and the Search for Empire,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 113, no. 2 (Summer 2020), pp. 68–101.
2 La Salle to Thouret, 29 September 1680 in C.M. Burton, editor, B.F. Stevens & Brown trans., unpublished English translations of the original documents found in Pierre Margry, ed., Decouvertes et Etablissements des Français dans l’Ouest est dans le sud d’Amerique Septentrionale, 1614–1754, 6 vols., Paris, D. Jouaust, 1876–1886, (London and Detroit, 1915), Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, II: pp.72–73 (cited hereafter as Burton).
3 “Memoir of M. Cavelier de La Salle on an enterprise which he has proposed to Monseigneur the Marquis of Seignelay respecting one of the provinces of Mexico,” in Thomas Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi and on The South-Western, Oregon, And North-Western Boundary of The United States, London, Samuel Clarke, 1844, (reprint 1972, Austin, Texas, Shoal Creek Publishers), p. 13. “(T)he mouth through which it [the Seignelai, or Red River] enters the Mississippi is 100 leagues [300 miles] west-northwest from the place where the latter river discharges itself into the Gulf of Mexico.” The actual distance from the Old Red River is 302 miles.
4 George A. Baker, “The St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage: Its Location and Use by Marquette, La Salle and the French Voyageurs,” The Northern Indiana Historical Society, Publication No. 1, First Edition (South Bend: Northern Indiana Historical Society, May 1, 1899), pp. 34–35. Baker documented that the seventeenth century French Canadian league equals 3.05 statute miles, and a comparison of La Salle’s own estimated distances in leagues to actual distances in miles shows that he was using the same equivalence.
5 La Salle was running out of time, because his royal commission was due to run out the following year, and he had not established a seigniory in Illinois to solidify his claim. His group was also running low on food, their birchbark canoes could not navigate the Gulf waters, and they had been warned by the Taensas about hostile natives on the lower river.
6 Jack Jackson, Flags Along the Coast: Charting the Gulf of Mexico, 1519–1759, a Reappraisal (The Book Club of Texas, 1995), p. 16. In 1699, Pierre Lemoyne d’Iberville, following up La Salle’s claim and successfully establishing a settlement in Louisiana, had Barroto’s map to guide him, because it was seized from a Spanish ship in Gulf waters.
7 Jean-Baptiste Minet, “Voyage Made from Canada Inland Going Southward During the Year 1682 by Order of Monsieur Colbert, Minister of State,” ed. Robert S. Weddle, La Salle, the Mississippi, and the Gulf: Three Primary Documents (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), p. 43. La Salle’s engineer in the Gulf of Mexico, Jean-Baptiste Minet, wrote that La Salle had used a 7-inch astrolabe in 1682 that he purchased in Montreal. Also see La Salle to Beaujeu, 3 February 1685, in Burton, II: p. 507. For the faulty astrolabe, see Minet to Seignelay, 6 July 1685, in Burton, II: p. 578. La Salle’s measurements were “not exact, since he had no good instrument with which to take it.” For example, La Salle placed the mouth of the Illinois River at 37 degrees of latitude; the actual is 39; see Minet, “Voyage Made from Canada,” p. 43. La Salle placed the branching of the mouths of the Mississippi at 27 degrees; the actual parallel is 29; see La Salle to Bernou, October 1682, in Burton, II: p. 287.
8 Richard Gross, “A Second Look at ‘La Salle: Discovery of a Lost Explorer,’” Louisiana History LXII, no. 1 (Winter 2021), pp. 22–24. La Salle referred several times to this latitude as the outfall of the river: (1) Jacques de la Metairie, “Procès Verbal of the taking possession of Louisiana, at the mouth of the Mississippi, by the Sieur de La Salle, on the 9th of April, 1682,” in Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 41; (2) La Salle to Bernou, October 1682, in Burton, II: p. 287; (3) La Salle to Hyacinthe Lefèvre, 1683, in Burton, II: pp. 201–202, and (4) Claude Bernou, “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River,” in The Franciscan Père Marquette, Franciscan Studies, no. 13, ed. Marion Habig (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1934), p. 253.
9 La Salle to Lefèvre, 1683, in Burton, II: p. 201. The historian Jean Delanglez, whose native language was French, mangled the translation of this quotation as “Furthermore, all the maps which place the mouth of the Colbert River very near Mexico are worthless;” see Jean Delanglez, “The Cartography of the Mississippi, II: La Salle and the Mississippi,” Mid-America An Historical Quarterly 31 (1949), p. 36.
10 La Salle to Lefèvre, 1683, in Burton, II: p. 187. La Salle wrote, “At this spot [the mouth of the Illinois River] I find it as much as 39 degrees of longitude, or thereabouts, from Isle Percée which makes it 104 degrees from La Rochelle and therefore almost as far west as Mexico.” La Salle’s faulty longitude estimates displaced the Mississippi 750 to 850 miles west of its actual location.
11 La Salle to Renaudot, 31 October 1678, in Burton, I: p. 431. “From there [Fort Conti, above Niagara Falls] one goes by water five hundred leagues to that place where Fort Dauphin [Fort Miami] is to be begun, from which it only remains to descend the great river of the Bay of St. Esprit to reach the Gulf of Mexico.” Also see Henri de Tonty, “Narrative of Henri de Tonty,” in Burton, I: p. 641. “M. de La Salle, who had always believed that this river [Mississippi] fell into the Bay du St. Esprit … ” The Jean Baptiste Franquelin map of 1681 reflects this prevailing thought; see Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin’s 1681 “Partie de l’Amerique septentrionale.” Service historique de la Défense, département Marine, Cartes et plans, recueil 66, no. 4. This thought had been expressed by Claude Dablon, Jesuit Superior of New France, in his Marquette account of the 1673 discovery of the Mississippi; see Claude Dablon, “Recit des Voyages et des Decouvertes du Pere Jacques Marquette,” in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols., ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, 1896–1901), 59: p. 159. For La Salle’s comment about the latitude of the central Gulf Coast, see La Salle to Lefèvre, 1683, in Burton, II: p. 20.
12 Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard, “La Salle’s Texas Landing and Louis XIV’s Imperial America,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly CXXV, no. 3 (January 2022), p. 244.
13 Jean Delanglez, “Franquelin, Mapmaker,” in Mid-America, An Historical Quarterly 25 (1943), pp. 33–34.
14 Jacques de la Metairie, “Declaration setting forth this act of taking possession in the country of the Arkansas in Louisiana, 13th and 14th of March 1682,” in Burton, II: pp. 188–193.
15 Claude Bernou, “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi,” in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, pp. 244–256. Also see Jacques de la Metairie, “Procès Verbal of the taking possession of Louisiana,” in Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, pp. 35–44, and Henri de Tonty to Governor Frontenac, 23 July 1681, in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, pp. 215–229.
16 The Chétimachas River is identified in Carte Particulaire du cours Du Mississippi depuis le Missouri et le Pays de les Illinois, jusque la Embrouchure de ce Fleuve, Pour Servir à L’intelligence du Voyage du Général Collot, Service historique de la Défense des départments Marine, Cartes et plans, recueil 66, no. 7C, 1796. A legend identifies the western branch as Bayou Lafourche in Gregory Waselkov, Ives Goddard, Patricia Galloway, Marvin D. Jeter, and John E. Worth, “Small Tribes of the Western Southeast” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 14, Southeast, ed. Raymond D. Fogelson (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press: Washington, D.C., 2004), p. 182, .
17 Claude Bernou, “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River,” in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, pp. 244–256.
18 La Salle to Bernou, October 1682, in Burton, II: pp. 287–301; Tonty to Frontenac, 23 July 1682, in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, pp. 215–229; Membré to Valentin Le Roux, 3 June 1682, in Burton, II: pp.209–215. Membré carried all three letters to Paris in 1682.
19 The Recollet order of priests and missionaries had been associated with La Salle’s American activities since Colbert had directed priests of the order to accompany La Salle to Fort Frontenac in 1675.
20 La Salle to Bernou, October 1682, in Burton, II: p. 289.
21 La Salle’s translated letter from wilderness America to Thouret took up nearly 70 pages, and those to Bernou 46 and 55 pages. The two fragments of the Lefèvre letter are found in Burton, II: pp. 170–188 and Burton, II: pp. 198–206.
22 Bernou to Renaudot, 27 June 1683, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Nouvelles Acquisitions français, Gallica, mss. 933f, 36–37. Translation by the authors. Bernou’s conclusion, Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico Accomplished by the Sieur de La Salle During the past Year, 1682, was submitted to the Ministry of Marine in January 1683.
23 It is likely that the pages of the letter became separated, however, as Coronelli traveled to Venice and later to Rome, where he was reunited with Bernou, among whose papers only two fragments were ever found, both in La Salle’s hand.
24 La Salle to Lefevre, 1683, in Burton, II: pp. 199–203. Tonti also believed in these islands and a stream east of them. He wrote, “We missed ten nations, having taken one channel for another [which forms] an island about forty leagues long;” see Tonty to Frontenac, 23 July 1681, in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, pp. 222. Bernou misplaced these islands south of the Koroa village in his official report; see, Claude Bernou, “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River,” in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, p. 251.
25 Claude Bernou, “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River,” in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, p. 248.
26 See Richard Gross, “La Salle’s Claim and the Ohio River Valley,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 87, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 338–363.
27 La Salle to Lefevre, 1683, in Burton, II: p. 199.
28 La Salle to Lefevre, 1683, in Burton, II: p. 199.
29 Tonti to Frontenac, 23 July 1682, in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, p. 216 and “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River,” in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, p. 245. All three men used the same spelling of Ouabache.
30 Nicholas de La Salle left no journal. He transmitted his account verbally to Minet during their 1684 trip across the Atlantic. Minet did not provide the information until his return to France with Beaujeu in 1685, long after Coronelli had made his sketch map and terrestrial globe.
31 Minet to Seignelay, 6 July 1685, in Burton, II: p. 578. Minet wrote, “You will see the course of the river and the lakes of Canada as he [La Salle] shows them in his map.” Minet also had the testimony of La Salle, Membré, Nicolas de La Salle, and Gabriel Barbier.
32 Weddle, La Salle, the Mississippi, and the Gulf, p. 99, citing Minet’s journal reference to an item “on the map that he [La Salle] gave the king, of which they gave me a copy.”
33 Jean Delanglez, “La Salle’s Expedition of 1682,” Mid-America: An Historical Quarterly, vol. 22, (1940), p. 5.
34 La Salle to Lefevre, 1683, in Burton, II: pp. 202–203.
35 Philip Phillips, James A. Ford, and James B. Griffin, Archaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940–1947, ed. Stephen Williams, (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2003).
36 Memoir of Henri de Tonty, 1684, in Burton, I: p. 644.
37 Robert S. Weddle, The Wreck of La Belle, the Ruin of La Salle, (College Station, Texas, 2001), p. 154 and p. 158. Also see Gene Rhea Tucker, “Coronelli’s Texan Mississippi: A Reinterpretation of the America Settentrionale of 1688,” Terrae Incognitae 40, no. 1 (2008), p. 97.
38 “Bayou Lafourche,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Lafourche, accessed 7 November 2022. The bayou was dredged in 2016 from Donaldsonville to Napoleonville, and a water gate introduced to mitigate saltwater inflow. In 2021, a weir was removed, allowing boating and recreational use along the length of the bayou.
39 “Memoir of M. Cavelier de La Salle on an Enterprise Which He Has Proposed to Monseigneur the Marquis of Seignelay Respecting One of the Provinces of Mexico,” in Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 3, This was La Salle’s proposal to invade New Biscay. The distance is also recorded in Bernou to Renaudot, 29 February 1684, in Burton, III: pp. 56–57.
40 Jean Delanglez, “Cartography of the Mississippi: The Maps of Coronelli,” Mid-America An Historical Quarterly, vol. 30 (1948), p. 283, citing Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, Atlante Veneto, 2 volumes, Venice, 1690, I: p. 132: “Finally, the Colbert River, having reached latitude 28 degrees, divides itself into two branches … ” This information could only have come from one source – La Salle’s 1683 letter to Lefèvre.
41 Jackson, Flags Along the Coast, p. 12 and p. 104.
42 Clairambault 1016:647–647 v, cited in Delanglez, Some La Salle Journeys (Chicago: Institute of Jesuit History, 1938), pp. 70–71, fn. 21: “La Salle, in a ship of 50–60 tons, was on his way to the Gulf of Mexico, where, ‘according to all the maps, he will not be more than 250 leagues [750 miles] away from the gold and silver mines of New Biscay.’”
43 See end notes 69 and 70. Also see Claude Bernou, “Carte de l’Amérique septentrionale et partie de la méridionale depuis l’embouchure de la rivière St Laurens jusqu’à l’isle de Cayenne avec les nouvelles découvertes de la rivière de Mississipi ou Colbert,” Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, Ge SH 122-2-0 Rés. Available online at the Library of Congress website.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15489/?r=−0.228,0.054,1.635,0.724,0 accessed 12 August 2023. This map places the mouth of the Rio Bravo at about 26.75 degrees. Also see Claude Bernou, “Relation of the Discovery of the Mouth of the Mississippi River,” in Habig, The Franciscan Père Marquette, p. 253; “It [the Mississippi] empties into the Gulf of Mexico beyond the bay of the Holy Spirit, between the 27th and 28th degree of latitude, and at the place where some maps put the Rio de la Madalena, and others the Rio Escondido; it is about 30 leagues distance from the Rio Bravo, about 60 from the Rio del Palmas, and about 90–100 leagues from the Rio Panero … ”
44 “Memorandum for Monseigneur the Marquis de Seignelay, concerning the establishment of a new colony in Florida at the mouth of the Rier called Rio Bravo, and the advantages which may accrue therefrom to the King and his subjects,” 18 January 1682, in Burton, III: pp. 24–29.
45 See Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard, “Peñalosa: The Hoax, the Myth, the Consequences,” Louisiana History 63, no. 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 5–55.
46 Legend on the map, America Settentrionale Colle Nuove Scoperte Sin All Anno 1688, in Atlante Veneto, 1690. Available online at the University of Minnesota Libraries online exhibits, James Ford Belle Library Historical Maps and Mapmakers website, https://gallery.lib.umn.edu/exhibits/show/bell-atlas/item/878 accessed 13 August 2023. Even after Renaudot informed Bernou that La Salle had exposed Peñalosa’s fraud, Bernou continued to support the Spaniard’s account; see Bernou to Renaudot, 11 April 1684, in Burton, III: pp. 64–65.
47 Jean-Baptiste Minet to Seignelay, 6 July 1685, in Burton, II: p.578: “The latitude he [La Salle] gives is not exact, since he had no good instrument with which to take it”
48 John L. Allen, “An Analysis of the Exploratory Process: The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806,” Geographical Review 62 no. 1 (January 1972), pp. 13–39. The author explains that an explorer may change his field operations as he recognizes “discrepancies between zones of actual and perceived knowledge” (16).
49 Henri Joutel to “Sir,” 14 November 1684, in Burton, II: pp. 474–475. This letter, written in the form of a journal, shows no author. However, Joutel’s journal repeats much of the same material as the letter, often verbatim. Also see Marquis de Saint-Laurens memorandum to Louis XIV, 20 January 1685, in Burton, II: p. 479.
50 La Salle to Beaujeau, 23 November 23, 1684, in Burton, II: p. 499, emphasis added.
51 Henri Joutel to “Sir,” 14 November 1684, in Burton, II: pp. 473. “From that time [at Madeira] they [Beaujeu and his officers] have raised almost continually new points to dispute, and M. de La Salle has not passed a week in peace without being attacked directly or indirectly, and has been continually on the defensive.” Newspapers in Paris on 13 March 1684 had revealed that La Salle was returning to the Mississippi by way of the Gulf of Mexico, and the government immediately launched a disinformation campaign to indicate La Salle was returning by way of Canada. See Renaudot to Nicolas Thoynard, 30 April 1684 in Burton, II: pp. 393–394.
52 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: pp. 113–114.
53 Jean Cavelier, “Journal of Abbé Cavelier from leaving France,” in Burton, II: pp. 485–486.
54 La Salle to Seignelay, 4 March 1685, in Burton, II: p. 535.
55 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: p. 114.
56 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: p. 116.
57 La Salle to Beaujeu, 23 January 1684, in Burton, II: p. 504.
58 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: p. 126.
59 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: p. 141. These marks included a large wooden cross and an inscribed lead plaque; see Jacques de la Metairie, “Procès Verbal of the taking possession of Louisiana,” in Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 41. Searching for La Salle in 1686, Tonti found that floods had pulled down the column that they had erected in 1682; see Henri de Tonty, “Memoir sent in 1693, on the discovery of the Mississippi and Neighboring Nations by M. de La Salle, from the year 1678 to the time of his death, and by the Sieur de Tonty to the year 1691,” in Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, pp. 77–78.
60 La Salle to Beaujeu, 3 February 1685, in Burton, III: p. 505.
61 Beaujeu to La Salle, 16 February 1685, in Burton, II: p. 514.
62 Beaujeu to La Salle, 18 February 1685, in Burton, II: p. 520.
63 La Salle to Seignelay, 4 March, 1685, in Burton, II: p 534.
64 In 2001, a Texas historian, Robert Weddle, recognized that La Salle perceived himself to be at the western branch, but the scholar identified this as the Atchafalaya River, whose connection to the Mississippi was just below the Red, nearly 300 miles above the mouths of the delta, not 180 miles, as was Bayou Lafourche, as La Salle stated; see Robert S. Weddle, The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle, (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), pp. 54 and 58.
65 La Salle to Seignelay, 4 March 1685, in Burton, II: p. 538.
66 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: pp. 112–167.
67 La Salle, “Statement drawn up by La Salle,” 18 April 1686, in Burton, III: p. 533.
68 Henri Joutel, “Narrative of Henri Joutel,” in Burton, III: p. 203.
69 See Delanglez, Some La Salle Journeys, pp. 79–80; Louis DeVorsey Jr., “La Salle’s Cartography of the Lower Mississippi: Product of Error or Deception,” Geoscience & Man 25 (June 30, 1988), pp. 5–23; and Gene R. Tucker, “Coronelli’s Texan Mississippi,” pp. 82–101.
70 Falconer himself wrote that La Salle landed in La Rochelle on 18 December 1683; Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, text p. 13. Seignelay to de Cussy, 4 March 1684, in Burton, II: p. 357. Seignelay wrote to Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy, the new governor of Tortuga, on 4 March 1684: “I explained to you, before your departure, that the king might require buccaneers for an enterprise against the Spaniards settled on the coast of New Biscay; and, as his Majesty has now decided upon it, he directs me to write and to tell you that, as soon as you reach the coast of St. Domingo, he wishes you to set to work and get together all the said buccaneers, so as to prepare them for setting out in the month of October or November next.” This conversation between Seignelay and de Cussy must have taken place on or before the third week in February, two months after La Salle’s landing in France; see Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard, “La Salle’s Texas Enterprise and Louis XIV’s Imperial America,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 125, no. 3 (January 2022), p. 245, n. 67.
71 Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Clairambault 1016, pp. 199 v-200.
72 Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Clairambault 1016, p. 209.
73 Bernou to Renaudot, 29 February 1684, in Burton, III: p. 54.
74 La Salle, “Memoir of the Sieur de La Salle reporting to Monsiegneur de Seignelay the discoveries made by him under the order of His Majesty,” in Falconer, On the Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 23.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Richard Gross
Richard Gross has been actively involved in researching the history of the explorer Cavelier de La Salle since he was selected to be a member of La Salle Expedition II in 1975. From August 11, 1976 to April 9, 1977 he and 22 other participants, authentically retraced La Salle’s expedition of exploration from Montreal Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Using period documents, he has spent many years unraveling the myths and confusion surrounding all aspects of La Salle’s activities in the Midwest. Richard has a BA in Biological Sciences from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and a Master Degree in Education with an emphasis in Biology from Roosevelt University, Chicago. He taught high school Biology and Chemistry for 20 years. [email protected]
Craig p. Howard
Craig P. Howard spent 27 years as a newspaper reporter and editor in Chicago and Houston. During a parallel, 20-year career in education, he taught 12-year-olds how to examine biographies in the context of their times – exactly the kind of research and writing he has done with Richard. Craig holds a BA from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Houston. He is a member of the Organization of American Historians and the Society for the History of Discoveries. [email protected]
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