Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/308

294 been obtained from them. One of the discoveries made in them has given occasion to the present paper.

Among the Diligencias or Informaciones was one the superscription of which read, "Information of Pedro Meusnier—a Frenchman—1699." It was strange to meet with a Frenchman in New Mexico in 1699; and on reading the document it appeared that Pedro or Pierre Meusnier, or Meunier, at the time a soldier in the garrison at Santa Fé, born in Paris, had come to America in the year 1684 with the flotilla commanded by Monsieur de la Sala. Meunier brought forward two witnesses, one of whom was named Santiago Grolee, the other Juan de Archeueque. Both were French, and both declared that they had come across the sea with Meunier in the flotilla which the same "Monsieur de la Sala" commanded; and Grolee said that he was born at La Rochelle.

"Monsieur de la Sala" could have been nobody else than the famous brave discoverer of the mouths of the Mississippi—Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The date agrees with this supposition, for La Salle crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the last time in 1684, to found a French colony on the coast of Texas. There came also with the expedition Jacques Grollet, a sailor, and a certain Jean l'Archévèque. It was the latter who, on March 18, 1687, led the unfortunate commander into the trap which his confederates Duhaut and Liotot had set, and in which La Salle was killed. Grollet was in the plot, but took no part in the murder. The supposition seems at least well founded that Juan de