In 1803, the U.S. government purchased France’s claim to “the colony and province” called “Louisiana,” which was named after Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715. That vast area is 875,025 square miles in extent. That’s 560 million acres of Indian nations’ territories which had been claimed by France (and Spain) based on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.

France’s claimed right of discovery was premised on a simple idea: When the exploring representatives of a Christian ‘sovereign’ managed to “discover” the mouth of a river, such as the Mississippi, the family of Christian sovereigns regarded that “discovering sovereign” as having had the right to claim “dominion” over all the watersheds that drained into that particular river, all the way to its source. What President Jefferson purchased from Napoleon was France’s “discovery” claims to all the territories of Indian nations within that 875, 025 square miles.

The first French explorer to sail down the Mississippi River in 1682, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, was Rene-Robert de La Salle. In The Louisiana Purchase and Our Title West of the Rocky Mountains (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1900), Binger Hermann, then Commissioner of the U.S. Land Office, wrote: La Salle, standing with Tonty, Dautray and other companions on the banks of the most western channel of the Mississippi, about three Leagues from its mouth, on April 9, 1862, took possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV, and setting up a column, or, as Dr. Kohl insists, “a cross with arms of the King,” buried a plate, unfurled the flag of France, sung a Te Deum and naming the country “Louisiana” in a loud voice…

Hermann said that La Salle had proclaimed the extent of Louisiana to be “from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, on the eastern side, otherwise called Ohio, Alighin, Sipore, or Chiskagona,” and this was done “with the consent of the Chaonanons, Chikachas, and other people dwelling therein, with whom we have made alliance, as also along the river Colbert, or Mississippi and rivers which discharge themselves therein…”