"Life on the Mississippi Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the War. The book begins with a brief history of the river as reported by Europeans and Americans, beginning with the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542. It continues with anecdotes of Twain's training as a steamboat pilot, as the 'cub' (apprentice) of an experienced pilot, Horace"
"for gold, and a passage to China. De Sotos group were the first documented Europeans to cross the Mississippi River, on whose banks de Soto died in 1542. (Alonso Álvarez de Pineda was the first European to see the river, in 1519 when he sailed twenty miles up the river from the Gulf of Mexico). A vast undertaking, de Soto's North American expedition ranged across parts of the modern states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas. Among the first European settlements in North America were Spanish settlements in what would later become"
"Giacomo Beltrami Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779 in Bergamo – January 6, 1855 in Filottrano) was an Italian jurist, author, and explorer, best known for claiming to have discovered the headwaters of the Mississippi River in 1823 while on a trip through much of the United States (later expeditions determined a different source, however). Beltrami County in Minnesota is named for him. He had an extensive network of notable figures for friends and acquaintances, such as members of the powerful Medici family. Beltrami was the 16th of 17 children, born in the city of Bergamo in the northern Italian region of"
"Europeans at its southern end possibly as early as the voyages of Christopher Columbus, and its midsection by Hernando De Soto a century earlier. La Salle did not lead another expedition for seven years, but he never forgot the rivers and continued to form plans for more expeditions. The land he discovered was all claimed in the name of Louis XIV and added to New France. The French Crown expanded on his exploration by claiming the entire Mississippi River Watershed|Mississippi River Basin, and New Orleans was later created to control the southern end of the river. In the late 17th"
"the Mississippi River and was the first European to sail the Gulf of Mexico and cross Texas. Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) drew the first maps of part of central and maritime Canada; Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1510–1554) discovered the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River; Francisco de Orellana (1511–1546) was the first European to navigate the length of the Amazon River. Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521), was the first navigator to cross the Pacific Ocean, discovering the Strait of Magellan, the Tuamotus and Mariana Islands, and achieving a nearly complete circumnavigation of the Earth, in multiple voyages, for the first time. Juan Sebastian"
"Michel Aco Michel Aco (fl. 1680–1702, also known as Michel Accault) was a French explorer who, along with René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Father Louis Hennepin, explored the Mississippi River in 1679. Aco became La Salle's lieutenant because of his knowledge of Native American languages and his abilities as an explorer. When the party reached the Illinois River; Aco, Hennepin and another man were sent to explore the upper Mississippi. During their exploration, they became the first Europeans to see Carver's Cave and Saint Anthony Falls. They were later captured by Sioux Indians and held until the"
"of Quebec City is also named in his honour. Louis Jolliet Louis Jolliet (September 21, 1645last seen May 1700) was a French Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America. Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, a Catholic priest and missionary, were the first non-Natives to explore and map the Mississippi River in 1673. Jolliet was born in 1645 in Beaupré, a French settlement near Quebec City. When he was seven years old, his father died; his mother then married a successful merchant. Jolliet's stepfather owned land on the Ile d'Orleans, an island in the Saint Lawrence River in"
"17, 1673, explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi River, known to the Sioux as ""does Tongo,"" or to the Miami-Illinois as "" missisipioui"" (""the great river""). They reached the mouth of the Arkansas and then up the river, after learning that it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and not to the California Sea (Pacific Ocean). In 1682, the Normand Cavelier de la Salle and the Italian Henri de Tonti came down the Mississippi to its Delta. They left from Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois River, along with 23 French and 18 Native Americans. In April"
"Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto (; ; 1500 – May 21, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and ""conquistador"" who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula, and played an important role in Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, but is best known for leading the first Spanish and European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States (through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and most likely Arkansas). He is the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River. De Soto's North American expedition was a vast undertaking. It ranged throughout the southeastern"
"Louis Jolliet Louis Jolliet (September 21, 1645last seen May 1700) was a French Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America. Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, a Catholic priest and missionary, were the first non-Natives to explore and map the Mississippi River in 1673. Jolliet was born in 1645 in Beaupré, a French settlement near Quebec City. When he was seven years old, his father died; his mother then married a successful merchant. Jolliet's stepfather owned land on the Ile d'Orleans, an island in the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec that was home to First Nations. Jolliet spent"
"a French explorer who claimed all of the land along the Mississippi River Valley, including Kentucky, for France. In July 1669, Robert de la Salle organized twenty four men and six canoes for his expedition. During this venture, he met Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, the first white men to explore and map the Mississippi River, in Hamilton, Ontario. The expedition eventually reached the Ohio River, allegedly, which it followed as far as Louisville, Kentucky. In 1673 (1679?), La Salle traveled down the Mississippi River, passing by present-day Kentucky after reaching the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, on"
"explored the upper Mississippi Valley, including the area where it was joined by the Ohio River.[10] La Salle later participated in an expedition to follow the northern shore of Lake Erie across Lake Huron to Michilimackinac, where Lake Michigan empties into Lake Huron. La Salle named the entire area of the Mississippi watershed Louisiana after king Louis XIV of France. La Salle later followed up the discovery and sailed down the river all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. His trip made him the first European to travel the length of the Mississippi, but it had been visited by"
"Narváez expedition The Narváez expedition was a Spanish journey of exploration and colonization started in 1527 that intended to establish colonial settlements and garrisons in Florida. The expedition was initially led by Pánfilo de Narváez, who died in 1528. More men died as the expedition traveled west along the unexplored Gulf Coast of the present-day United States and into the American Southwest. Only four of the expedition's original members survived, reaching Mexico City in 1536. These survivors were the first known Europeans and Africans to see the Mississippi River, and to cross the Gulf of Mexico and Texas. Narváez's crew"
"Antoine Auguelle Antoine Auguelle Picard du Gay (alternative spelling ""Augelle"", also referred to as Anthony Auguel) was a 17th-century French explorer. Born at Amiens in Picardy, Auguelle along with Michel Aco accompanied Father Louis Hennepin during his exploration of the Upper Mississippi River. Setting out from Fort Crevecoeur in present-day Illinois on , the trio were briefly captured by a band of Santee Sioux on near Mille Lacs Lake in present-day Minnesota. During their captivity, they were escorted to such memorable Minnesotan landmarks such as Saint Anthony Falls, Lake Pepin, and Kaposia, in the process becoming the first Europeans to"
"the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the Southeast. In 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas. Small Spanish settlements eventually grew to become important cities, such as San Antonio, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and San Francisco, California. New Netherland was a 17th-century Dutch colony centered on present-day New York City and the Hudson River Valley; the Dutch traded furs with the Native Americans to the north. The colony served as a barrier to expansion from New England."
"two children from his union with the former Lydia Rogers of Boston. Shreve spent his final years with his daughter Rebecca's family in St. Louis. He died in the home of his son-in-law, Walker Randolph Carter, and is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. Henry Miller Shreve Henry Miller Shreve (October 21, 1785 – March 6, 1851) was the American inventor and steamboat captain who opened the Mississippi, Ohio, and Red rivers to steamboat navigation. Shreveport, Louisiana, is named in his honor. Shreve was also instrumental in breaking the Fulton-Livingston monopoly on steamboat traffic on the lower Mississippi. He"
"of their neighbors. In 1681, French nobleman René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, launched an expedition down the Mississippi River from New France, expecting to find a path to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, La Salle found a route to the Gulf of Mexico. Although Hernando de Soto had explored and claimed this area for Spain 140 years before, on April 9, 1682 La Salle claimed the Mississippi River valley for the French king, Louis XIV, naming the territory Louisiana in his honor. La Salle knew that French control of the Mississippi would split Spanish Florida from New Spain, and he"
"the Mississippi at Cuivre Slough which is part of the Mississippi River west of Cuiver Island. The confluence is at at an elevation of 423 feet. The Cuivre River received its name from French-speaking settlers during the French Louisiana. The name means ""copper"", though none is present along the river, and it is thought to have been named after Baron Georges Leopold Cuvier, a French naturalist and paleontologist, who was first to do comparative anatomy and the classification of animals and fossils. When France acquired the territory west of the Mississippi River, Cuvier sent two of his students to America"
"Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut (c. 1639 – 25 February 1710) was a French soldier and explorer who is the first European known to have visited the area where the city of Duluth, Minnesota, is now located and the headwaters of the Mississippi River near Bemidji, Minnesota. His name is sometimes anglicized as ""DuLuth"", and he is the namesake of Duluth, Minnesota as well as Duluth, Georgia. Daniel Greysolon signed himself ""Dulhut"" on surviving manuscripts. He was born, in 1639, in Saint-Germain-Laval, near Saint-Étienne, France, and first visited New France in 1674. In September 1678,"
"follows: The history and culture that is linked to the Mississippi River Delta is as unique as its geologic landscape. The mouth of the Mississippi River was discovered in 1519 by Alvarez de Pineda of Spain. Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed the territory around the mouth of the Mississippi River for France in 1682, and the region grew with importance with its strategic location for trade and security. In 1699 the French built their first crude fort at La Balize, on the Southeast Pass in Pass á Loutre, to control passage on the Mississippi. By 1721, they had built"
"Mississippi"". French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi in the 17th century. Marquette traveled with a Sioux Indian who named it ""Ne Tongo"" (""Big river"" in Sioux language) in 1673. Marquette proposed calling it the ""River of the Immaculate Conception"". When Louis Jolliet explored the Mississippi Valley in the 17th century, natives guided him to a quicker way to return to French Canada via the Illinois River. When he found the Chicago Portage, he remarked that a canal of ""only half a league"" (less than 2 miles (3.2 km), 3 km) would join the Mississippi and"
"Henry Miller Shreve Henry Miller Shreve (October 21, 1785 – March 6, 1851) was the American inventor and steamboat captain who opened the Mississippi, Ohio, and Red rivers to steamboat navigation. Shreveport, Louisiana, is named in his honor. Shreve was also instrumental in breaking the Fulton-Livingston monopoly on steamboat traffic on the lower Mississippi. He was the first riverboat captain to travel the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans and back, as well as the first to bring a keelboat from the Ohio River up the Mississippi to the Fever River in Illinois. Shreve also made significant improvements to"
"the middle Mississippi Valley. Extensive European exploration near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers began nearly a century before the city was officially founded. Explorer Louis Joliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette traveled south on the Mississippi River in June 1673, passed the future site of St. Louis and reached the mouth of the Arkansas River before turning back. Nine years later, French explorer La Salle led an expedition south from the Illinois River to the mouth of the Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire valley for France. La Salle named the Mississippi river basin"
"explorer Hernando de Soto in 1541, who crossed the Mississippi and marched across central Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains. After finding nothing he considered of value and encountering native resistance the entire way, he and his men returned to the Mississippi River where de Soto fell ill. From his deathbed he ordered his men to massacre all of the men of the nearby village of Anilco, who he feared had been plotting with a powerful polity down the Mississippi River, ""Quigualtam"". His men obeyed and did not stop with the men, but were said to have massacred women and children"
"the winter in Mississippi. In May 1541 the expedition crossed the Mississippi River and wandered through present-day Arkansas, Missouri and possibly Kansas before spending the winter in Oklahoma. In 1542 the expedition headed back to the Mississippi River, where de Soto died. Three hundred and ten survivors returned from the expedition in 1543. Although the Spanish had lost hope of finding gold and other riches in Florida, it was seen as vital to the defense of their colonies and territories in Mexico and the Caribbean. In 1559 Tristán de Luna y Arellano left Mexico with 500 soldiers and 1,000 civilians"
"on the west. In 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto penetrated to the Arkansas River and perhaps well into present-day southeastern Missouri, which was then populated by various Native American tribes, including the Osage. Under pressure from a constantly advancing white settlement, the Native Americans gradually retreated westward. The area of southeastern Missouri was noted for its level swampy lowlands, subject to the seasonal flooding of the Mississippi River, which had resulted in extremely fertile soil. By 1820 American pioneers, many migrating from the southern states, had settled most of the present counties of southeastern Missouri. The settlers were"
"the Maine coast. Gomes entered New York Harbor and saw the Hudson River(which he named the ""San Antonio River""). Because of his expedition, the 1529 Diogo Ribeiro world map outlines the East coast of North America almost perfectly. In 1534, Jacques Cartier planted a cross in the Gaspé Peninsula, on the Gulf Gulf of Saint Lawrence and claimed the land in the name of Francis I. In 1535 Cartier explored the St. Lawrence river and also claimed the region for France. After two failed attempts to reach East Asia by circumnavigating Siberia, Henry Hudson sailed west in 1609 under the"
"1660 CE. Archaeologists suggest that Carson is important because it was either near or part of one of the indigenous polities encountered by the expedition of Hernando de Soto, the earliest European explorers of the southeastern United States in the early 1540s. There is no physical evidence that Carson was visited by de Soto or his men during the westward trek across the southeastern United States. However, they did pass at the very least within – of Carson when they traveled down the Mississippi River in July 1543. Some archaeologists and historians have located the polity of Quizquiz encountered by"
"far east, possibly beyond the Alleghenies, and, pushing gradually westward, descended the Ohio River – hence called by the Illinois the ""river of the Akansea"" – to its junction with the Mississippi, whence the Quapaw, then including the Osage and Kansa, descended to the mouth of the Arkansas, while the Omaha, with the Ponca, went up the Missouri. In 1541, when the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led an expedition that came across the town of Pacaha (also recorded by Garcilaso as Capaha), between the Mississippi River and a lake on the Arkansas side, apparently in present-day Phillips County. His"
"René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, or Robert de La Salle (November 22, 1643 – March 19, 1687) was a French explorer. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France. Robert Cavelier was born on November 22, 1643, into a comfortably well-off family in Rouen, France, in the parish Saint-Herbland. When he was younger, he enjoyed science and nature. As a man, he studied with the Jesuit religious order and became a member"
"Minnesota River Valley were occupied by a Native American, pre-Columbian Woodland Culture from approximately 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1850. In 1834, there was a Wahpeton village at the present-day location of Carver, led by Chief Mazomaini; early maps indicate it was located on either side of the mouth of Carver Creek where it meets the Minnesota River. Pierre-Charles Le Sueur became the first European to navigate the Minnesota River, and between 1683 and 1700 made explorations of the region on behalf of King Louis XIV of France. In 1766, Jonathan Carver explored the area on behalf of the British Empire,"
"forms various shoals that render its navigation very difficult."" In his only other reference to the river, Marquette says that the Mississippi is ""narrow at the place where Miskous empties."" After they returned, Joliet used the name ""Miskonsing"" on a map that he drew in 1674, and when the news of their voyage was first published in 1681 the book's author, Melchisedec Thevenot, called it the ""Mescousin"" River. The name used today was born when the explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, misread Marquette's initial M, which was written by hand in cursive script, ""Ou"" in 1674. This"
"the Mississippi River. Jefferson, a scientist himself, supported expeditions to explore and map the new domain, most notably the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Jefferson believed deeply in republicanism and argued it should be based on the independent yeoman farmer and planter; he distrusted cities, factories and banks. He also distrusted the federal government and judges, and tried to weaken the judiciary. However he met his match in John Marshall, a Federalist from Virginia. Although the Constitution specified a Supreme Court, its functions were vague until Marshall, the Chief Justice (1801–35), defined them, especially the power to overturn acts of Congress"