under rené-robert cavelier, sieur de la salle, the mississippi and ohio rivers were discovered and explored for the first time, and claimed as part of new france. the earliest explorers were soon followed by catholic christian missionaries led by jacques gravier, who soon won converts among the illini, and some of these praying indians founded riverside villages at cahokia, kaskaskia, and peoria. these villages were small by modern standards, although they remained comparable in size to european settlements in the area; according to letters by one missionary written in 1750, three illini villages in the american bottom together numbered fewer than eight hundred inhabitants, while the five french villages in the same region comprised eleven hundred frenchmen and three hundred blacks.