The remains buried here are those of a seventeenth-century sailor from the ill-fated French expedition led by Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle to the New World in 1684-87. Texas Historical Commission archaeologists discovered his skeleton on October 31, 1996, during excavations of La Salle’s ship the Belle, which sank in a 1686 storm in Matagorda Bay. Near the skeleton they found a pewter cup inscribed C. Barange and a small cask. Historical accounts say the Belle’s crew exhausted its fresh water while waiting for La Salle to return from an overland search for the mouth of the Mississippi River, and archaeologists believe the sailor may have died of thirst. Forensic evidence indicates he was between 35 and 45 years old and about 5 feet 4 inches tall, with an arthritic back, severely decayed teeth, and an old broken nose. Louis XIV of France had hoped La Salle’s expedition would challenge Spain’s hold on the Gulf of Mexico and secure a French claim to Louisiana, but the venture was beset by disaster: one of La Salle’s four ships was lost to Spanish privateers in the Caribbean, another ran aground in Pass Cavallo at the mouth of Matagorda Bay, and a third returned to France with disillusioned crew and colonists. Failing to find the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle instead landed at Matagorda Bay on the Texas coast and built Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek for the remaining colonists. The sinking of the Belle with the expedition’s remaining supplies dealt the final blow to the colony, and the next year La Salle was killed by his own men in east Texas while trying to reach French settlements in Canada. The collapse of Fort St. Louis and the failure of the French colonization effort opened the way for Spain’s settlement of Texas and later domination of the region.