who was the first european to discover the mississippi river
Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda
title: Michel Aco text: Michel Aco Michel Aco (fl. 1680–1702, also known as Michel Accault) was a French explorer who, along with René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Father Louis Hennepin, explored the Mississippi River in 1679. Aco became La Salle's lieutenant because of his knowledge of Native American languages and his abilities as an explorer. When the party reached the Illinois River; Aco, Hennepin and another man were sent to explore the upper Mississippi. During their exploration, they became the first Europeans to see Carver's Cave and Saint Anthony Falls. They were later captured by Sioux Indians and held until the title: Kaskaskia text: Kaskaskia The Kaskaskia were one of the indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. They were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation, also called the Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in the Great Lakes region. Their first contact with Europeans reportedly occurred near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1667 at a Jesuit mission station. In 1673, Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet became the first Europeans known to have descended the Mississippi River. The record of their trip is the earliest, best record of contact between Europeans and the Illinois title: History of the Southern United States text: for gold, and a passage to China. De Sotos group were the first documented Europeans to cross the Mississippi River, on whose banks de Soto died in 1542. (Alonso Álvarez de Pineda was the first European to see the river, in 1519 when he sailed twenty miles up the river from the Gulf of Mexico). A vast undertaking, de Soto's North American expedition ranged across parts of the modern states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. Among the first European settlements in North America were Spanish settlements in what would later become title: Louis Jolliet text: school in Quebec and received minor orders in 1662, but abandoned his plans to become a priest in 1667. He spoke French, English, and Spanish. While Hernando de Soto was the first European to make official note of the Mississippi River by discovering its southern entrance in 1541, Jolliet and Marquette were the first to locate its upper reaches, and travel most of its length, about 130 years later. De Soto had named the river Rio del Espiritu Santo, but tribes along its length called it variations of "Mississippi". On May 17, 1673, Jolliet and Marquette departed from St. Ignace title: History of Mississippi text: to areas west of the Mississippi River. The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was Spanish, led by Hernando de Soto, which passed through in the early 1540s. The French claimed the territory that included Mississippi as part of their colony of New France and started settlement along the Gulf Coast. They created the first Fort Maurepas under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville on the site of modern Ocean Springs (or Old Biloxi) in 1699. In 1716, the French founded Natchez as "Fort Rosalie" on the Mississippi River; it became the dominant town and trading post of