The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle.

By Robert S. Weddle. Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University, No. 88. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001. Pp. [xviii], 327. $29.95, ISBN 1-58544-121-X.)

In 1869 Francis Parkman published his stirring book on early French exploration, The Discovery of the Great West. In the following decade, he convinced Congress to help subsidize the publication of six volumes of colonization documents gathered by French archivist Pierre Margry. Parkman's effort earned him an early look at Margry's priceless collection and prompted him to revise his famous work, which he then retitled La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (Boston, 1879). The volume portrayed La Salle as a tragic hero, troubled--like Parkman himself--with occasional mental torments. At the center of the book was the explorer's 1682 voyage down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, when he claimed the river valley for France and named the region Louisiana for King Louis XIV. Parkman's final sweeping chapters related La Salle's effort to bring several hundred colonists from France to the Gulf Coast in 1685, how they became lost and stranded at Matagorda Bay on the Texas coastline, and how La Salle was murdered by his own subordinates before he could recover his bearings.

For more than a century, others have continued to pursue and debate the unknowns of this compelling story, letting their imaginations and prejudices run wild amid the deceptive, incomplete, and contradictory evidence. Cartographers, novelists, anthropologists, and antiquarians have all visited this topic, but too often their well-intended efforts have only added to the confusion. At last, an experienced historian has revisited the whole broad saga in detail, with fascinating results. Robert Weddle published his first La Salle--related article thirty years ago, and since then he has written or edited more than half a dozen books on the imperial rivalries that played out along the Gulf Coast between 1500 and 1800. Besides a judicious and thorough style, this senior independent scholar brings three distinctive assets to his task. He has an unequaled knowledge of the Spanish sources, which augment the extensive French materials. He is a Texan with a keen sense of the particulars of regional geography. And he has the information and inspiration that can be gleaned from the most important La Salle discovery in decades: the salvaging of a fifty-one-foot barque, the Belle, lost in Matagorda Bay in 1686 and rediscovered--in recognizable condition, with thousands of artifacts--in 1995.

Where Parkman stressed the Mississippi, Weddle focuses on Matagorda Bay. And while Parkman's drama turned around La Salle himself, Weddle's narrative highlights the newly recovered' boat. In the text, as in the title, the Belle comes ahead of the explorer who stashed his papers and his hopes in its narrow hull. Weddle begins with a gripping description of the vessel's loss. A starving, untrained crew, short on leadership and missing an anchor, allows the Belle to hit a shoal, after one ship has returned to Europe and another has sunk within sight of shore, laden with valuable supplies. Like a good movie director who shows us the ending first, Weddle then goes back to recount the years of exploration and intrigue that led to this impasse. As always, Weddle offers meticulous research, multiple perspectives, ample quotations, rich detail, and balanced assessments. He occasionally passes judgment on central characters--it is hard not to with such a cast--and the useful map work still leaves something to be desired. But The Wreck of the Belle, based on exhaustive use of difficult primary sources, is the best single narrative we have of the "other" lost colony. Besides much else, Weddle's book reinforces the growing awareness that Texas history did not begin with the fall of the Alamo, or even with its construction.

PETER H. WOOD
Duke University