The few colonists who had survived hunger and disease were killed by the local people

And now, blessedly, for something completely different. From La Belle’s Mysterious Bones by James Urquhart.

Subtitle: New genetic research unveils an unexpected origin for bones found trapped in a 17th-century shipwreck.

In 1682, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle explored and claimed the Mississippi region for France, naming it La Louisiane after King Louis XIV. Two years later, La Salle set sail from France with 400 sailors and colonists aboard four ships, intending to colonize the mouth of the Mississippi River.

But the expedition didn’t go according to plan. Privateers plundered one ship en route and the remaining vessels, including the flagship La Belle, mistakenly landed at Matagorda Bay, some 650 kilometers southwest of the Mississippi in what is now Texas. Then one ship ran aground and another returned to France, leaving only La Belle afloat to support the remaining expedition.

After several failed attempts to locate the Mississippi, La Salle started building a settlement inland called Fort St. Louis. In 1686, however, La Belle was sunk by a storm while anchored in the bay, taking the expedition’s remaining provisions with it. Ultimately, La Salle led a party to seek help, but mutineers murdered him before turning on each other. Later, the few colonists in Fort St. Louis who had survived hunger and disease were killed by the local Karankawa people.

Details of the doomed expedition exist in accounts written by the expedition’s chronicler, Henri Joutel, and five other survivors who reached Canada before sailing back to France. But it was only in 1995 that archaeologists found and recovered La Belle and its contents. Much of the ship had decomposed long before, but the bottom third survived buried in mud which, lacking oxygen, prevented aerobic organisms such as shipworms from consuming the wood and other organic matter.

Two bodies were recovered. Read the article for the DNA analysis.