The Dickinson press., 1902-09-06
Historic River.

Historic River.
MlSSoURlaHAS LONG STORY OF
SCENIC AND HISTORIC
GRANDEUR.
The possible abandonment Of the Mis-
sissippi river in the neal future, so far
as regards appropriations for its i'm
provement by congress, is a humiliation
for that stream which nobody could have
dreamed of in the earlier days, says the
St. Louis Globe Democrat. This is one
of the worlds greatest waterways, phys
ically, s~cenically and historically. Meas.
ured from its source in the Rocky
mountains down to the mouth of the
lower Mississippi-and this is called by
some geographers the main stream, with
the upper Mississippi as the afauent-
the distance is about 4,2oo miles. The
Missouri, itself, reckoning it from its
rise at the continental divide to its en-
trance into the Mississippi, has a length
{. about 5000 miles. 1t is about 800
miles longer than the Mississippi, of
which it is the largest afluent. Of the
100000 square miles in the waterways
of the Mississippi and its tributaries, the
Missouri, its principal branch. contrib
utes $4,000. In the highwater stage Of
the spring and early summer the Mis-
souri, is navigable Tor light draught
steamboats, up to Fort Benton, in Mon
tana, a distance of 200 miles.
When Joliet and Marquette, on their
journey from Canada by way of the
Great Lakes and the Fox and Wisconsin
rivers, went down the Mississippi in 1868
to the mouth of the Arkansas, they were
surprised and alarmed when passing the
Missouri. The torrent of yellow mud
which they saw at a certain point on the
west side Of the main. stream surging
across the smooth blue surface of the
Mississippi carried with it, in the few
minutes which they viewd it, enough
trees t stock a small forest. When its
current made their canoes dance and
whirl like dry twigs in a mountain brook
Marquette said: II never saw anything
more terrific" The old missionary re-
marked that he would return there some
day and go by way of that river to Asia.
The Missouri may be said to have a con-
t%inuous history from that day, two and a
third centuries ago, to this. Moreover,
there is a chance that its annals began
even earlier than that time. Coronado,
the Spanish conquistadore from Mexico,
chasing Quivira's golden myth, was in
Kansas nor than a century before
Marquette and Joliet went down the
Mississippi and some of the ANTIGUA.
rians have figured that he either reached
the Missouri or came very close to it.
Thus, when Lewis and Clark, about
100 years ago, were working their row
boats up against the Missouri's turbu'
lent and to1tuous current that river had
much more than a century of a back
ground of history behind it. In the days
of the French domination prospecting
and exploring parties were up that river
as far as the mouth of the Kansas as
early as 1905. The Verendryes were or
its upper waters, in the present state o.
Montana, in I743. The Otoes, Sioux
Omahas, Mandans and Aricarees, whom
Jefferson's first explorers saw when or
their way across the continent, were no
altogether ~unacquainted with white mer
at that time. From 1907, when Manue
Lisa, of the Missouri Fur company, wen
up the big river to the mouth Of the Vel
lowstone and then assembled stream t.
the confluence of the Big Horn, where
he erected the first trading post on thu
upper waters aud the first house in the
present Montana, onward until long af
ter the end of the fur trades great days
the Missouri was the scene of much &C
tivity. In 1870 the first steamboats, tt
enter that river, the independence anc
the Western Engineer, went scvera
hundred miles.
The American Fur company's Yellow
stone steamed as far as the company!
post at Fort Pierre, in the present South
Dakota, in 1920. Afterwards, in thu
days of the early settlers in Iowa, Kan
sas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, ane
from that time until long after the com
pletion of Cakes Ames' and Hunting
tons Pacific railroads, this Missouri
swarmed with steamboats,, but the glorl
of the great river has departed. Thu
railroads have taken away its business
and its picturesqueness and romano
have passed into history. How tn
steamboat men of thirty, FORTY or fit,
years ago, the residents along its banks
the travellers upon its waters and tn
persons who knew it in its wild ant
str enuous days would have marveled i
anybody had told them that the might.
Missouri would one day socially ant
commercially shrink to its present it'll
measure.
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