Baron Lahontan’s Mysterious Quest

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In 1703 the Baron Lahontan (Louis-Armand, le Baron de Lahontan et Hesleche, a French aristocrat, writer, and explorer who served in the French military in Canada) published New Voyages to North America, which contained an account of his search for an inland passage between New France and the Pacific Ocean in 1688-1689, during which he canoed up the "Long River" (Missouri River) seeking its source. Scholars have almost universally discounted his work as largely fictitious and branded the baron a liar. In this book, a distinguished group of scholars familiar with the central Great Plains and the Platte River exposes the many major flaws in Lahontan's critics' judgements and demonstrates the truthfulness of the baron's journal, including descriptions of Native peoples who had never encountered a European prior to Lahontan. The authors applied anthropology, archaeology, ethnohistory, and physical geography, all supported by French and Spanish documents, to carry out this extensive reexamination of Lahontan's narrative. They believe that the baron should rank among the great explorers of North America.