Just thinking of does thinking of la belle doom the french effort to colonize texas . La salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River. Claim to the lands for france. Got a commission from louis the 14th two, back and build a colony at the Mississippi River mouth. He got the slides together and came back in 1684, and landed at the texas coast thinking he was at the mouth of Mississippi River. He thought texas was part of the Mississippi River. And was insistent somewhere in that area he would find his river to build his colony. His problem was was that he had a map that he used at the time that he and his mapmaker put together that was dramatically wrong. It showed the Mississippi River floating flowing through north america coming down to the content and veering to the west and linking up the Rio Grande River and flooring into texas at the western end of the gulf of mexico. That map is what really got la salle off course. He offloaded the ships. Lost a big supply ship. He was down to two ships. La belle and la jolie. La jolie had orders to take the colonists and supplies and offload them and sail back to france. That ship did that. In 1865, la salle was down to a single ship if he needed to sail somewhere to get help. As time went on, he looked for the Mississippi River. Could not find it, and finally decided in late 1865, he would load everything he had left on la belle. Sail it to the northeast. Then he would go overland, find the river, come back and get his ship. He left la belle saying, i will be gone 10 days. Stay there, dont move. Two months later the people on board that ship went out of the water and things got so bad that the captain of the ship decided he would violate la salles ord ers. Sail back around to where other french people were on the other end of the bay. When he did that, a cold front blew through texas in february 1686 and la belle wrecked on the southern shore of Matagorda Bay. The ship was discovered in 1995. The Historical Commission decided at that point to build a double rimmed vocoffer dam around the entire wreck. Matagorda bay is very difficult to dive in. With this dam all of the water can be pumped out and it could be a moist dig. It took about two years just looking at the ship itself to clean all the services of the timber. Then a rough reconstruction had to take place, so you knew everything would fit that together. The whole conservation process lasted from approximately 2003 to about 2014. The la belle is currently being reconstructed here at the state History Museum in texas, austin, texas. Portions of what you see now are our progress in putting back the frames and longitudinal section of the muscle itself. The keel is the base. Then we have floors. That make frame sets. And when we finished putting all of this together, it will actually, the spaces in between the gray laminates will be filled. It will essentially timgber. How did we find la belle . We knew it was other because the presence of the french in this part of the new world cause great alarm to spain. Spain said they control the northern gulf of mexico. But they had nobody up here. So, when the french came in, spain heard about that and said that if we are going to stop the french king, we need to send people up there to find la salle and stop that colony. 11 expeditions came up looking for la salle. Eventually, one of them in 1689 found the remains of the french camp they had set up with all of the colonists gone or dead. And they also miraculously for archaeologists in Matagorda Bay they found the remains of la belle still sticking above the water, and they made a map. That map shows the bay. Based upon that document, we look for that shipwreck. In 1995, we went out searching for it and we got lucky and we found it. We brought up a beautiful bronze cannon that had french writing on it, and it had the insignia. Of the grand admiral of france gave us confirmation that we found la belle. It turned out we had a treasure trove of historical importance. We had what i basically call, we found a kit for building a colony in the 17th century new world. Not aware of those objects existing together like we found them anyplace else. By excavating those objects we have been able to peer into the mind of la salle and understand what he thought he needed to build a successful colony in the new world. La belle was built in 1684 specifically for this project of la salles. It was intended to be a ship kit an come over in a larger hold of a supply ship. A couple months before they were due to sail, the cargo hold was full, and there was no more room for la belle. So hastily, they erected the shpiip in la rochlleelle france, an included her to make a fleet of four ships with the collins coming over. When i mention the ship kit you can see the numbers along the keel. Here and here. So, this is, the one and one. That it has been a little bit obliterated. Thats a voneone. And you can see an a carved. Part of the dynamic of this project is that the exhibit designers have placed a 15 foot wide by 55 foot long casing that is going to stand five feet high that the visitor is able to come to museum and will actually walk over the top of la belle. Look down and in the hold. And then from following these frame sets, the ship for each artifact, we tell the story of that artifact. Some of my favorites are the glass beads and finger rings in the little bells. These were tickets that la salle brought with him to trade with the indians. He knew when he got to the new world after some point in time, he was going to have to be getting additional food supplies, and also furs he could ship back to france and sell from date of people. He knew the kinds of things that they cherished because hed been doing explorations up in the great lakes and interacted with native people for many years of their. Re up there. He brought with him hundreds of thousands of different Little Things to trade with the indians. Now, what is so exciting to me about this is that we have the objects but we also have a journal of the exhibition. An multiple times in there, the author talks about trading glass beads for a deer hide or finger rings for conr orrn or food. So we get an idea of how these things are being used and the exchange rate. If that ship had not gone down in a storm in 1686, our history might well be like new orleans. But presence of la salle and sla salle. Awake in spain that they needed to get people up here. And the presence of la salle being led to our wonderful hispanic heritage we have today. Throughout the weekend, American History tv is featuring austin texas. Learn more about other stops on cspans cities tour at cspan. Org
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