The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1902-09-05
PASSES INTO HISTORY.
The Missouri Robbed Of Business and
Enchantment.

The Missouri Robbed OF Business and
Enchantment.
St. Louis Globe Democrat: The
possible abandonment of the Missouri
river in the near.future SO far as re-
CARDS appropriations for its improve
ment by congress, is a humiliation
for that stream which nobody could
have dreamed of in the earlier days.
This is one of sthe worlds greatest
waterways, physically, scientifically
and historically. Measured from its
source in the Rocky mountains down
to the mouth of the lower Mississippi
and this is called by some geograph-
ers the main stream, with the upper
Mississippi as an afluent-the dis
lance is about 1900 miles. The Mis-
souri, itself, reckoning it from its rise
at the continental divide to it's en-
trance into the Mississippi, has a
length Of about $500 miles. It is
about 300 miles longer than the Mis-
issippi, of which it is the largest af-
fluent. OF the 1,200, 900 square miles
in the watershed Of the Mississippi
and it's tributaries the Missouri, it's
principal branch, contributes $4,000.
In the high-water stage of the spring
and early summer the Missouri is
navigable for l;ght-draft steamboats,
up to Fort Benton, in Montana, a
distance Of 1900 miles.
When Joliet and Marquette on their
journey from Canada by way of the
Great Lakes and the Fox and Wiscon-
sin rivers, went 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 GER
tain 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 viewed it. enough trees
to stock a small forest. When it's
current made their canoes dance and
l Will 1lhc uAy IW160 Ill q AAoAASoAA
brook Marquette saio: Il W saw
anything more terrific" The old mis-
sionary remarked that he would re-
turn there some day and go by way
of that river to Asia. The Missouri
may be said to have a continuous
history from that day, two and a
third centuries ago, to this. Moreover,
there is a chance that it's annals be-
gan even earlier than that time. Cor
onado, the Spanish conquistadore
from Mexico, chasing Quivira's gol-
den myth, was in Kansas more than
a century before Marquette and Joliet
went down the Mississippi, and some
of the antiquarians~ have figured that
he either reached the Missouri or
came very close to it.
Thus, when Lewis nd>Clarke. about
100 years ago, weref working their
row beats up against the Missouri's
turbulent and tortuous current, that
river had much more than a century
of a background of history behind
it. In the days of the French, domin-
ion prospecting and exploring parties
were up that river as far as the mouth
of the Kansas as early as 17O5. The
Verendryes were on it's upper waters,
in the present state of Montana, in
1743. The Otoes, Sioux, Omahas,
Mandans and Aricaras, whom Jeffer-
sons first explorers saw on their way
across the continent, were not alto
gether un%acquainted with white men
at that time. From 1907, when Man
uel 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 upper waters
and the first house in the present
Montana, onward until long after the
end of the fur {trade's2great days, the
Missouri was the scene of much ac-
tivity. In 1919 the first steamboats,
to enter that river. independence and
WSSlcIH Iu6IHeei, went up oCSCAdA
hundred miles. The American Fur
company's Yellowstone steamed as
far as the company's 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 compile
tion of Cakes Ames' and Huntington's
Pacific railroads, the Missouri swarm
ed with steamboats,. But the glory OF
the great river has departed. The
railroads have takelaway it's business
and it's picturesqueness and romano
have passed into history