Henri Joutel

Henri Joutel (c. 1643 – 1725), a French explorer and soldier, is known for his eyewitness history of the last North American expedition of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.

Joutel was born in Rouen.

After serving as a soldier, he joins La Salle's expedition and becomes the commander of La Salle's southern colony and base of operations in the New World at Fort Saint Louis (Texas).

After the loss of the colony's ships, a mutiny, and La Salle's murder by others, in 1687–88, Joutel leads members of the expedition back to France, going north, over land and river, by way of the Illinois Country to New France in what will become Canada.

Joutel's journal provides some of the earliest written information on the interior, natural history, and ethnography of central North America.

After Joutel returns to France, he becomes a guard at the city gates of Rouen.

He is unpersuaded by the Minister of Marine, Louis de Ponchartrain, to return to America but lends his journal.

The journal returns to the Gulf Coast in the Iberville expedition that finally establishes a lasting French presence near the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1699.

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