"There is no one of the Pioneers of this continent whose achievements equal those of the Chevalier Robert de la Salle. He passed over thousands of miles of lakes and rivers in the birch canoe. He traversed countless leagues of prairie and forest, on foot, guided by the moccasined Indian, threading trails which the white man's foot had never trod, and penetrating the villages and the wigwams of savages, where the white man's face had never been seen." -John S.C. Abbott, Preface, 1875 American historian John S.C. Abbott wrote The Adventures of the Chevalier de La Salle and His Companions (1875) as part of his American Pioneers and Patriots series. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He 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 and claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France.