The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-10-05
THE MAYNARD MISSOURI.
Great Streams Long and Excitins
History Briefly Told.

St. Louis Giobe-Democrat.
The possible abandonment of the Missouri
river in the near future, so far as regards
appropriations for its Improvement by Con-
gress, is a humiliation for that stream
which nobody could have dreamed of in
the earlier days. This is one of the worlds
greatest waterways-physically scientific
ally and historically.
Measured from its source, in the Rocky
mountains, down to the mouth of the lower
Mississippi-and this is called by some ge-
ographers the main stream, with the upper
Mississippi as the affiuent-the distance is
about 1900 miles. The Missouri itself.
reckoning it from its rise, at the conti-
mental divide, to its entrance into the Mis-
sissippi, has a length Of about $500 miles.
1t is about three hundred miles longer than
the Mississippi. of which it is the largest
affiuent. OF the 100000 square miles in
the watershed Of the Mississippi and its
tributaries the Missouri, its principal
branch, contributes $4,000. In the high
water stage of the spring and early sum-
mer the Missouri is navigable for light
draught steamboats, up to Fort Benton, In
Montana, a distance of 2,700 miles.
When Joliet and Marquette, on their jour-
ney from Canada by way OF the great lakes
Il
down the Mississippi, in 1853, 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 sur
face of the Mississippi, carried with 1t, in
the few minutes which they viewed 1t,
enough trees to stock small forest. When
it's current made their canoes dance and
whirl like dry twigs in a mountain brook
Marquette said: Il 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 con-
tinuous history from that day, two and
half centuries ago, to this. Moreover there
is a chance that its annals began even
earlier than that time. Coronado. the Span
ish conquistadore from Mexico, chasing
Quivira' golden myth, was in Kansas more
than century before Marquette and Joliet
went down the Mississippi, and some of
the antiquarians have figured that ne either
reached the Missouri or came very close
to it.
Thus, when Lewis and Clark, about one
hundred years ago, were working their row.
boats up against the Missourfs turbulent
and tortuouS current that river had much
more than a century of background of his
tory 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 1IO0. The
Verendryes were on its upper waters, In
the present state Of Montana, in 1743. The
OtoeS, Sioux, OmahaS, MandanS and Ari-
caras, whom Jeffersons first explorers saw
when on their way across the continent,
were not altogether unacquainted with
white men at that time. From 1907, when
Manuel Lisa, of the Missouri Fur Company,
went up the big river to the mouth OF the
Yellowstone and then assembled that stream
to the confluence of the Big Horn, where
he erected the first trading post on the up
per waters and the first house in the pres
ent Montana, onward until long after the
end of the fur trades great days the Mis-
souri, was the scene of much activity.
In 1919 the first steamboats, to enter that
river, the Independence and the Western
Engineer, went up several hundred miles.
The American Fur Company's Yellowstone
steamed as far as the companys post at
Fort Pierre, in the present South Dakota,
in 1929 Afterward, in the days of the early
settlers in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and
the Dakotas and from that time until long
after the completion of Cakes Ames's and
Huntington's Pacific railroads, the missouri
swarmed with steamboats,.
But the glory of the great river has de-
parted The railroads have taken away its
business, and its pictureSqueneSS and ro-
nance have passed into history. How the
steamboat men of thirty, forty or fifty
years ago, the residents along its banks,
the travellers upon its waters, and the rest
of the persons who knew 1t in its wild and
strenuous days would have marveled If
anybody had told them then that the
mighty Missouri would one day socially
and commercially shrink to its present
little measure.