This gave him title to the land.

There were people on the bank already, long before La Salle came by.
It would have surprised them to be told that the land was no longer theirs because a man had come by on the water.

But nobody did tell them.
They were Indians.

They had wives and children and wigwams and other possessions in the land where they had always lived; but they were red, and the man in the boat was white, and therefore they were turned into trespassers because he had sailed by in a boat.

That was the title to Louisiana which we bought from Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Louisiana Purchase was a piece of land running up the Mississippi, up the Missouri, over the Divide, and down the Columbia to the Pacific.
Before we acquired it, our area was over a quarter, but not half, a million square miles.