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171-632: The First Hannibal Bridge was the first permanent rail crossing of the Missouri River and helped establish the City of Kansas (renamed Kansas City, Missouri , in 1889) as a major city and rail center. In its early days, it was called the Kansas City Bridge . It increased area train traffic, which contributed to the building of Union Depot, the predecessor to the Kansas City Union Station . It

342-523: A tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River is slightly longer and carries a comparable volume of water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms the world's fourth-longest river system . For over 12,000 years, people have depended on the Missouri River and its tributaries as a source of sustenance and transportation. More than ten major groups of Native Americans populated

513-509: A ceremony was held to thank the bear for "giving" up its life to them. One study of the Ojibwe women who married French fur traders maintained that the majority of the brides were "exceptional" women with "unusual ambitions, influenced by dreams and visions—like the women who become hunters, traders, healers and warriors in Ruth Landes 's account of Ojibwe women". Out of these relationships emerged

684-660: A debt crisis, Napoleon offered to sell the entirety of Louisiana, including the Missouri River, for $ 15 million – amounting to less than 3¢ per acre. The deal was signed in 1803, doubling the size of the United States with the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory . In 1803, Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis to explore the Missouri and search for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. By then, it had been discovered that

855-549: A fierce rivalry grow between France and Great Britain as each European power struggled to expand their fur-trading territories. The two imperial powers and their native allies competed in conflicts that culminated in the French and Indian War , a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe. The 1659–1660 voyage of French traders Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers into

1026-471: A gap between demand and supply and to a higher equilibrium in terms of supply. Data from the trading posts show that the supply of beavers from the Aboriginals was price-elastic and therefore traders responded with increased harvests as prices rose. The harvests were further increased due to the fact that no tribe had an absolute monopoly near any trade and most of them were competing against each other to derive

1197-530: A growing trade in the French and later British territories in the 17th century. The transition from a seasonal coastal trade into a permanent interior fur trade was formally marked with the foundation of Quebec on the Saint Lawrence River in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain , officially establishing the settlement of New France . This settlement marked the beginning of the westward movement of French traders from

1368-453: A hunt should occur, particularly prohibitions against needless killing of deer. There are specific taboos against taking the skins of unhealthy deer. But the arrival of the lucrative, European deerskin trade prompted some hunters to abandon tradition and act past the point of restraint they had operated under before. The hunting economy collapsed because of the scarcity of deer as they were over-hunted and lost their lands to white settlers. As

1539-578: A large endorheic drainage called the Great Divide Basin exists between the Missouri and Green watersheds in western Wyoming. This area is sometimes counted as part of the Missouri River watershed, even though its waters do not flow to either side of the Continental Divide. To the north, the much lower Laurentian Divide separates the Missouri River watershed from those of the Oldman River ,

1710-419: A period of record greater than fifty years is at Hermann, Missouri – 97.9 miles (157.6 km) upstream of the mouth of the Missouri – where the average annual flow was 87,520 cu ft/s (2,478 m /s) from 1897 to 2010. About 522,500 sq mi (1,353,000 km ), or 98.7% of the watershed, lies above Hermann. The highest annual mean was 181,800 cu ft/s (5,150 m /s) in 1993, and

1881-413: A river that plays hide and seek with you today and tomorrow follows you around like a pet dog with a dynamite cracker tied to his tail. That river is the Missouri. With a drainage basin spanning 529,350 square miles (1,371,000 km ), the Missouri River's catchment encompasses nearly one-sixth of the area of the United States or just over five percent of the continent of North America. Comparable to

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2052-502: A series of small fortifications, beginning with Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario in 1673. Together with the construction of Le Griffon in 1679, the first full-sized sailing ship on the Great Lakes, the forts opened the upper Great Lakes to French navigation. More native groups learned about European wares and became trading middlemen, most notably the Ottawa . The competitive impact of

2223-663: A significant effect on the social behavior of Native Americans. Under the influence of rum, the younger generation did not obey the elders of the tribe and became involved with more skirmishes with other tribes and white settlers. Rum also disrupted the amount of time the younger generation of males spent on labor. Alcohol was one of the goods provided on credit, and led to a debt trap for many Native Americans. Native Americans did not know how to distill alcohol and thus were driven to trade for it. Native Americans had become dependent on manufactured goods such as guns and domesticated animals, and lost much of their traditional practices. With

2394-643: A tributary of the South Saskatchewan River , as well as the Souris , Sheyenne , and smaller tributaries of the Red River of the North . All of these streams are part of Canada's Nelson River drainage basin, which empties into Hudson Bay . There are also several large endorheic basins between the Missouri and Nelson watersheds in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Minnesota and Des Moines Rivers, tributaries of

2565-401: A very slow return. The first revenues from fur sales in Europe did not arrive until four or more years after the initial investment. These economic factors concentrated the fur trade in the hands of a few large Montreal merchants who had available capital. This trend expanded in the 18th century and reached its zenith with the great fur-trading companies of the 19th century. Competition between

2736-419: A whole, the Missouri is thirteenth largest, after the Mississippi, Mackenzie , St. Lawrence, Ohio, Columbia, Niagara, Yukon, Detroit, St. Clair, Fraser , Slave , and Koksoak . As the Missouri drains a predominantly semi-arid region, its discharge is much lower and more variable than other North American rivers of comparable length. Before the construction of dams, the river flooded twice each year – once in

2907-661: A woman from one of these kinship networks would make a fur trader into a member of these networks, thereby ensuring that Indians belonging to whatever clan the trader had married into were more likely to deal only with him. Furthermore, the fur traders discovered that the Indians were more likely to share food, especially during the hard months of winter, to those fur traders who were regarded as part of their communities. One fur trader who married an 18-year old Ojibwe girl describes in his diary his "secret satisfaction at being compelled to marry for my safety". The converse of such marriages

3078-862: Is a river in the Central and Mountain West regions of the United States . The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana , then flows east and south for 2,341 miles (3,767 km) before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis , Missouri . The river drains semi-arid watershed of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 km ), which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although

3249-498: Is a lack of critical discussion on other factors such as beaver population dynamics, the number of animals harvested, nature of property rights, prices, role of the English and the French in the matter. The primary effect of increased French competition was that the English raised the prices they paid to the Aboriginals to harvest fur. The result of this was greater incentive for Aboriginals to increase harvests. Increased price will lead to

3420-583: Is joined by the Gallatin a mile (1.6 km) downstream. It then passes through Canyon Ferry Lake , a reservoir west of the Big Belt Mountains . Issuing from the mountains near Cascade , the river flows northeast to the city of Great Falls , where it drops over the Great Falls of the Missouri , a series of five substantial waterfalls. It then winds east through a scenic region of canyons and badlands known as

3591-417: Is likely that the women were in fact acting with the approval of their menfolk. Henry claims that he had left at once out of the fear of violence from jealous Ojibwe men, but it seemed more likely that he was afraid that his French-Canadian voyageurs might enjoy themselves too much with the Ojibwe women at this one village and would not want to travel further west. American historian Bruce White describes

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3762-551: Is measured to the hydrologic source, regardless of naming convention. The main stem of the Kansas River, for example, is 148 miles (238 km) long. However, including the longest headwaters tributaries, the 453-mile (729 km) Republican River and the 156-mile (251 km) Arikaree River , brings the total length to 749 miles (1,205 km). Similar naming issues are encountered with the Platte River, whose longest tributary,

3933-580: Is now southern Ontario being bordered on three sides by Lake Ontario , Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay , and it was through Wendake that the Ojibwe and Cree who lived further north traded with the French. In 1649, the Iroquois made a series of raids into Wendake that were intended to destroy the Wendat as a people with thousands of Wendat taken to be adopted by Iroquois families with the rest being killed. The war against

4104-464: Is sparsely populated. However, many northwestern cities, such as Billings, Montana , are among the fastest growing in the Missouri basin. With more than 170,000 square miles (440,000 km ) under the plow, the Missouri River watershed includes roughly one-fourth of all the agricultural land in the United States, providing more than a third of the country's wheat, flax, barley, and oats. However, only 11,000 square miles (28,000 km ) of farmland in

4275-554: The Métis people whose culture was a fusion of French and Indian elements. Indian men were the trappers who killed the animals for their furs, but normally it was the women who were in charge of the furs that their menfolk had collected, making women into important players in the fur trade. Indian women normally harvested the rice and made the maple sugar that were such important parts of the traders' diets, for which they were usually paid with alcohol. Henry mentions how at one Ojibwe village,

4446-756: The American Fur Company founded Fort Union at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Fort Union gradually became the main headquarters for the fur trade in the upper Missouri basin. Fur trapping activities in the early 19th century encompassed nearly all of the Rocky Mountains on both the eastern and western slopes. Trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, St. Louis Missouri Fur Company, American Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company , North West Company and other outfits worked thousands of streams in

4617-686: The Bighorn , in southern Montana. Although the business started small, it quickly grew into a thriving trade. Lisa's men started construction of Fort Raymond , which sat on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Yellowstone and Bighorn, in the fall of 1807. The fort would serve primarily as a trading post for bartering with the Native Americans for furs. This method was unlike that of the Pacific Northwest fur trade, which involved trappers hired by

4788-588: The Central Plains . While some historians dispute the claims that the competition was predominantly responsible for over-exploitation of stocks, others have used empirical analysis to emphasize the changing economic incentives for Indigenous hunters and role of the Europeans in the matter. Calvin Martin holds that there was a breakdown of the relationship between man and animal among some Indigenous hunters who, adapting to

4959-511: The Columbia River system, which drains into the Pacific, had a similar latitude as the headwaters of the Missouri River, and it was widely believed that a connection or short portage existed between the two. However, Spain balked at the takeover, citing that they had never formally returned Louisiana to the French. Spanish authorities warned Lewis not to take the journey and forbade him from seeing

5130-697: The Compagnie des Cent-Associés went bankrupt, New France was taken over by the French Crown. King Louis XIV wanted his new Crown colony to turn a profit and dispatched the Carignan-Salières Regiment to defend it. In 1666, the Carignan-Salières Regiment made a devastating raid upon Kanienkeh, which led the Five Nations to sue for peace in 1667. The era from roughly 1660 through 1763 saw

5301-524: The Company of Habitants in the 1640s and 1650s, permitting a small group of investors within Canada an initial hold on the monopoly but then quickly pulling back and limiting trading and investment within the colony. While the monopolies dominated the trade, their charters also required payment of annual returns to the national government, military expenditures, and expectations that they would encourage settlement for

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5472-462: The Dakota , who were the enemies of the Ojibwe at the time. Likewise, the fur trader Alexander Henry in visiting an Ojibwe village in what is now Manitoba in 1775 described the "facility with which the women abandoned themselves to my Canadiens " to such an extent that he believed it would cause violence as the Ojibwe men would become jealous, causing him to order his party to leave at once, though it

5643-506: The Dutch Republic established trading posts and forts in various regions of eastern North America, primarily to conduct trade transactions with First Nations and local communities. The trade reached its peak of economic prominence in the 19th century, by which time the entire operation was fueled by seasoned trails, the knowledge and experiences of numerous frontiersmen and the system of elaborate trade networks. The trade soon became one of

5814-530: The Illinoian ) glaciation diverted the Missouri River southeastward toward its present confluence with the Mississippi and caused it to integrate into a single river system that cuts across the regional slope. In western Montana, the Missouri River is thought to have once flowed north then east around the Bear Paw Mountains . Sapphires are found in some spots along the river in western Montana. Advances of

5985-505: The Mound builders , stayed along the Missouri, becoming the ancestors of the later Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Indigenous peoples of North America who have lived along the Missouri have historically had access to ample food, water, and shelter. Many migratory animals naturally inhabit the plains area. Before they were hunted by colonists and Native Americans, these animals, such as

6156-683: The Niobrara River and many smaller tributaries from the southwest. It then proceeds to form the boundary of South Dakota and Nebraska and is joined by the James River from the north. At Sioux City the Big Sioux River comes in from the north, after which the Missouri forms the Iowa –Nebraska boundary. It flows south to the city of Omaha where it receives its longest tributary, the Platte River , from

6327-536: The North Platte River , is more than twice as long as its mainstream. The Missouri's headwaters above Three Forks extend much farther upstream than the main stem. Measured to the farthest source at Brower's Spring, the Jefferson River is 298 miles (480 km) long. Thus measured to its highest headwaters, the Missouri River stretches for 2,639 miles (4,247 km). When combined with the lower Mississippi,

6498-532: The Osage and Gasconade Rivers from the south downstream of Jefferson City . The river then rounds the northern side of St. Louis to join the Mississippi River on the border between Missouri and Illinois . There is only one river with a personality, a sense of humor, and a woman's caprice; a river that goes traveling sidewise, that interferes in politics, rearranges geography, and dabbles in real estate;

6669-579: The Otoe , Missouria , Omaha , Ponca , Dakota , Lakota , Arikara , Hidatsa , Mandan , Assiniboine , Gros Ventres and Blackfeet . In this pre-colonial and early-colonial era, the Missouri river was used as a path of trade and transport, and the river and its tributaries often formed territorial boundaries. Most of the Indigenous peoples in the region at that time had semi-nomadic cultures, with many tribes maintaining different summer and winter camps. However,

6840-487: The Pacific Northwest region, provided a foundation for future explorers and emigrants. They also negotiated relations with numerous Native American tribes and wrote extensive reports on the climate, ecology and geology of the region. Many present-day names of geographic features in the upper Missouri basin originated from their expedition. As early as the 18th century, fur trappers entered the extreme northern basin of

7011-643: The Saint Lawrence River . He concentrated on trading for furs used as trimming and adornment. He overlooked the fur that would become the driving force of the fur trade in the north, the beaver pelt, which would become fashionable in Europe. The earliest European trading for beaver pelts dated to the growing cod fishing industry that spread to the Grand Banks of the North Atlantic in the 16th century. The new preservation technique of drying fish allowed

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7182-696: The Treaty of Paris , France ceded its Canadian possessions to the British, gaining Louisiana from the Spanish in return. Initially, the Spanish did not extensively explore the Missouri and let French traders continue their activities under license. However, this ended after news of incursions by trappers working for the Hudson's Bay Company in the upper Missouri River watershed was brought back following an expedition by Jacques D'Eglise in

7353-418: The buffalo , provided meat, clothing, and other everyday items; there were also great riparian areas in the river's floodplain that provided habitat for herbs and other staple foods. No written records from the tribes and peoples of the pre-European contact period exist because they did not yet use writing. According to the writings of early colonists, some of the major tribes along the Missouri River included

7524-527: The fluvial Arikaree Group were deposited between 29 and 19 million years ago. The Miocene -age Ogallala and the slightly younger Pliocene -age Broadwater Formation deposited atop the Arikaree Group, and are formed from material eroded off of the Rocky Mountains during a time of increased generation of topographic relief; these formations stretch from the Rocky Mountains nearly to the Iowa border and give

7695-693: The headwaters of the Missouri River first rose in the Laramide Orogeny , a mountain-building episode that occurred from around 70 to 45 million years ago (the end of the Mesozoic through the early Cenozoic ). This orogeny uplifted Cretaceous rocks along the western side of the Western Interior Seaway , a vast shallow sea that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and deposited

7866-543: The pays d'en haut . Champlain supported the northern groups in their preexisting military struggle with the Iroquois Confederacy to the south. He secured the Ottawa River route to Georgian Bay , greatly expanding the trade. Champlain also sent young French men to live and work among the natives, most notably Étienne Brûlé , to learn the land, language, and customs, as well as to promote trade. Champlain reformed

8037-472: The "April Rise" or " Spring Fresh ", with the melting of snow on the plains of the watershed, and in the "June Rise", caused by snowmelt and summer rainstorms in the Rocky Mountains. The latter was far more destructive, with the river increasing to over ten times its normal discharge in some years. The Missouri's discharge is affected by over 17,000 reservoirs with an aggregate capacity of some 141 million acre-feet (174 km ). By providing flood control,

8208-482: The "nations of the north" which was attended by Ojibwe, Dakota, and Assiniboine leaders, where it was agreed that the daughters and sons of the various chiefs would marry each other to promote peace and ensure the flow of French goods into the region. The French fur trader Claude-Charles Le Roy writes that the Dakota had decided to make peace with their traditional enemies, the Ojibwe, in order to obtain French goods that

8379-427: The 1620s, the Iroquois had become dependent upon iron implements, which they obtained by trading fur with the Dutch at Fort Nassau (modern Albany, New York ). Between 1624 and 1628, the Iroquois drove out their neighbors, the Mahican, to allow themselves to be the one people in the Hudson river valley able to trade with the Dutch. By 1640, the Five Nations had exhausted the supply of beavers in Kanienkeh ("the land of

8550-408: The American West and a flood of settlers, farmers, ranchers, adventurers, hopefuls, financially bereft, and entrepreneurs took their place. The river roughly defined the American frontier in the 19th century, particularly downstream from Kansas City, where it takes a sharp eastern turn into the heart of the state of Missouri, an area known as the Boonslick . As first area settled by Europeans along

8721-404: The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan . The watershed's largest city is Denver , Colorado, with a population of more than six hundred thousand. Denver is the main city of the Front Range Urban Corridor whose cities had a combined population of over four million in 2005, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Missouri River basin. Other major population centers – mostly in

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8892-411: The City of Kansas for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad bridge. The bridge was designed by Octave Chanute , who also designed the Kansas City Stockyards and later became a pioneer in aviation . After hearing of the proposed bridge at the City of Kansas, Joseph Tomlinson contacted Chanute and they corresponded on how best to cross the Missouri River. In October 1867, Chanute hired Tomlinson as

9063-403: The English and the French was disastrous on the beaver population. The status of beavers changed dramatically as it went from being a source of food and clothing for Indigenous peoples to a vital good for exchange with the Europeans. The French were constantly in search of cheaper fur and trying to cut off Indigenous middleman which led them to explore the interior all the way to Lake Winnipeg and

9234-424: The Five Nations once and for all, and to teach them to respect the "grandeur" of France. The repeated French raids took their toll with the Mohawk who could field about 300 warriors in the 1670s to able to field only 170 warriors in the summer of 1691. The Iroquois struck back by making raids into New France with the most successful being a raid on Lachine in 1689 that killed 24 Frenchmen while taking 80 captives, but

9405-508: The French colonial authorities since 1706, when he deserted his post as commandant of Fort Detroit after poorly handling an attack by the Ottawa that resulted in thirty-one deaths. However, his reputation was enhanced in 1720 when the Pawnee – who had earlier been befriended by Bourgmont – massacred the Spanish Villasur expedition near present-day Columbus, Nebraska , on the Missouri River, temporarily ending Spanish encroachment on French Louisiana. Bourgmont established Fort Orleans ,

9576-434: The French took an ambivalent attitude towards the Iroquois push west. On one hand, having the Five Nations at war with other nations prevented those nations from trading with the English at Albany, while on the other hand, the French did not want the Iroquois to become the only middlemen in the fur trade. But as the Iroquois continued to win against the other nations, they prevented French and Algonquin fur traders from entering

9747-418: The Great Plains much of their gentle but persistent eastward tilt, and also constitute a major aquifer. Immediately before the Quaternary Ice Age , the Missouri River was likely split into three segments: an upper portion that drained northwards into Hudson Bay, and middle and lower sections that flowed eastward down the regional slope. As the Earth plunged into the Ice Age, a pre-Illinoian (or possibly

9918-419: The Gulf at the confluence of the Arkansas River with the Mississippi. In 1682, France expanded its territorial claims in North America to include land on the western side of the Mississippi River, which included the lower portion of the Missouri. However, the Missouri itself remained formally unexplored until Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont commanded an expedition in 1714 that reached at least as far as

10089-416: The Hudson Bay. Their success led to England's chartering of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670, a major player in the fur trade for the next two centuries. French exploration and expansion westward continued with men such as La Salle and Jacques Marquette exploring and claiming the Great Lakes as well as the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. To bolster these territorial claims, the French constructed

10260-412: The Hudson's Bay Company competition. At the same time, the English presence in New England grew stronger, while the French were occupied with trying to combat the coureurs de bois and allied Indians from smuggling furs to the English for often higher prices and higher quality goods than they could offer. In 1675, the Iroquois made peace with the Machian while finally defeating the Susquenhannock . In

10431-423: The Hudson's Bay Company show this trend. The English and French had very different trading hierarchical structures. The Hudson's Bay Company had a technical monopoly of the beaver trade within the drainage basin of Hudson Bay while the Compagnie d'Occident was given a monopoly of the beaver trade farther south. The English organized their trade on strictly hierarchical lines while the French used licenses to lease

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10602-447: The Iroquois finally made peace with the French in 1667, one of the terms was the French had to hand over all of the Wendat who had fled to New France. The Iroquois had already clashed with the French in 1609, 1610 and 1615, but the "beaver wars" caused a lengthy struggle with the French who had no intention of allowing the Five Nations to set themselves up as the only middlemen in the fur trade. The French did not fare well at first, with

10773-399: The Iroquois inflicting more casualties then they suffered, French settlements frequently cut off, canoes bringing fur to Montreal intercepted, and sometimes the Iroquois blockaded the Saint Lawrence. New France was a proprietary colony run by the Compagnie des Cent-Associés who went bankrupt in 1663 because of the Iroquois attacks which made the fur trade unprofitable for the French. After

10944-400: The Iroquois, who had a predatory attitude towards their neighbors even at the best of times, constantly raiding neighboring peoples in "mourning wars" in search of captives who would become Iroquois, were determined to be the only middlemen between the Europeans and the other Indians who lived in the West, and quite consciously set about eliminating any rivals as such as the Huron (Wendat). By

11115-403: The Kansas River and its tributary the Republican River as well as pair of smaller Colorado streams, Big Sandy Creek and the South Platte River , to near Denver. The gold rushes precipitated the decline of the Bozeman Trail as a popular emigration route, as it passed through land held by often-hostile Native Americans. Safer paths were blazed to the Great Salt Lake near Corinne, Utah , during

11286-461: The MacKay and Evans map of the Missouri, although Lewis eventually managed to gain access to it. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their famed expedition in 1804 with a party of thirty-three people in three boats. Although they became the first Europeans to travel the entire length of the Missouri and reach the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia, they found no trace of the Northwest Passage. The maps made by Lewis and Clark, especially those of

11457-413: The Mississippi River valley, and the Ottawa showed signs of finally making an alliance with the Five Nations, in 1684, the French declared war on the Iroquois. Otreouti in an appeal for help correctly noted: "The French will have all the beavers and are angry with us for bringing you any". Starting in 1684, the French repeatedly raided Kanienkeh, burning crops and villages as Louis gave orders to "humble"

11628-407: The Missouri Breaks, receiving the Marias River from the west then widening into the Fort Peck Lake reservoir a few miles above the confluence with the Musselshell River . Farther on, the river passes through the Fort Peck Dam , and immediately downstream, the Milk River joins from the north. Flowing eastward through the plains of eastern Montana, the Missouri receives the Poplar River from

11799-766: The Missouri River in the hopes of finding populations of beaver and river otter , the sale of whose pelts drove the thriving North American fur trade . They came from many different places – some from the Canadian fur corporations at Hudson Bay, some from the Pacific Northwest ( see also : Maritime fur trade ), and some from the midwestern United States. Most did not stay in the area for long, as they failed to find significant resources. The first glowing reports of country rich with thousands of game animals came in 1806 when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned from their two-year expedition. Their journals described lands amply stocked with thousands of buffalo, beaver, and river otter; and also an abundant population of sea otters on

11970-426: The Missouri River, with most of the larger ones coming in as the river draws close to the mouth. Most rivers and streams in the Missouri River basin flow from west to east, following the incline of the Great Plains; however, some eastern tributaries such as the James, Big Sioux and Grand River systems flow from north to south. The Missouri's largest tributaries by runoff are the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming,

12141-449: The Missouri and its headwaters form part of the fourth-longest river system in the world , at 3,745 miles (6,027 km). By discharge , the Missouri is the ninth largest river of the United States, after the Mississippi, St. Lawrence , Ohio , Columbia, Niagara , Yukon , Detroit , and St. Clair . The latter two, however, are sometimes considered part of a strait between Lake Huron and Lake Erie . Among rivers of North America as

12312-699: The Missouri flowed in a new course along the south side of the Bearpaws, and the lower part of the Milk River tributary took over the original main channel. The Missouri's nickname, the "Big Muddy", was inspired by its enormous loads of sediment or silt – some of the largest of any North American river. In its pre-development state, the river transported some 175 to 320 million short tons (159 to 290 million metric tons) per year. The construction of dams and levees has drastically reduced this to 20 to 25 million short tons (18 to 23 million metric tons) in

12483-399: The Missouri to start. As the 1830s drew to a close, the fur industry slowly began to die as silk replaced beaver fur as a desirable clothing item. By this time, also, the beaver population of streams in the Rocky Mountains had been decimated by intense hunting. Furthermore, frequent Native American attacks on trading posts made it dangerous for employees of the fur companies. In some regions,

12654-418: The Missouri watershed as well as the neighboring Columbia, Colorado, Arkansas, and Saskatchewan river systems. During this period, the trappers, also called mountain men , blazed trails through the wilderness that would later form the paths pioneers and settlers would travel by into the West. Transport of the thousands of beaver pelts required ships, providing one of the first large motives for river transport on

12825-431: The Native Americans in debt. Traders would rig the weighing system that determined the value of the deerskins in their favor, cut measurement tools to devalue the deerskin, and would tamper with the manufactured goods to decrease their worth, such as watering down the alcohol they traded. To satisfy the need for deerskins, many males of the tribes abandoned their traditional seasonal roles and became full-time traders. When

12996-559: The North West with Montreal . The old system of native middlemen and coureurs de bois traveling to trade fairs in Montreal or illegally to English markets was replaced by an increasingly complex and labor-intensive trade network. Licensed voyageurs , allied with Montreal merchants, used water routes to reach the far-flung corners of the North West with canoe loads of trade goods. These risky ventures required large initial investments and had

13167-632: The Ojibwe were blocking them from receiving. Le Roy writes the Dakota "could obtain French merchandise only through the agency of the Sauteurs [Ojibwe]" so they made "a treaty of peace by which they were mutually bound to give their daughters in marriage on both sides". Indian marriages usually involved a simple ceremony involving the exchange of valuable gifts from the parents of the bride and groom and, unlike European marriages, could be dissolved at any time by one partner choosing to walk out. The Indians were organized into kinship and clan networks, and marrying

13338-404: The Pacific Northwest coast. In 1807, explorer Manuel Lisa organized an expedition which would lead to the explosive growth of the fur trade in the upper Missouri River country. Lisa and his crew traveled up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, trading manufactured items in return for furs from local Native American tribes, and established a fort at the confluence of the Yellowstone and a tributary,

13509-455: The Pacific Ocean. In late June, Jolliet and Marquette became the first documented European discoverers of the Missouri River, which according to their journals was in full flood. "I never saw anything more terrific," Jolliet wrote, "a tangle of entire trees from the mouth of the Pekistanoui [Missouri] with such impetuosity that one could not attempt to cross it without great danger. The commotion

13680-448: The Platte and Yellowstone Rivers. Elevations in the watershed vary widely, ranging from just over 400 feet (120 m) at the Missouri's mouth to the 14,293-foot (4,357 m) summit of Mount Lincoln in central Colorado. The river drops 8,626 feet (2,629 m) from Brower's Spring, the farthest source. Although the plains of the watershed have extremely little local vertical relief,

13851-564: The Platte in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, and the Kansas – Republican / Smoky Hill and Osage in Kansas and Missouri. Each of these tributaries drains an area greater than 50,000 square miles (130,000 km ) or has an average discharge greater than 5,000 cu ft/s (140 m /s). The Yellowstone River has the highest discharge, even though the Platte is longer and drains a larger area. In fact,

14022-478: The Platte provided an abundant and reliable source of water for the pioneers as they headed west. Covered wagons, popularly referred to as prairie schooners , provided the primary means of transport until the beginning of regular boat service on the river in the 1850s. During the 1860s, gold strikes in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and northern Utah attracted another wave of hopefuls to the region. Although some freight

14193-578: The Rockies in Montana, Idaho and western Wyoming. The Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River watersheds meet at Three Waters Mountain in Wyoming's Wind River Range . South of there, the Missouri basin is bordered on the west by the drainage of the Green River , a tributary of the Colorado, then on the south by the mainstem of the Colorado. Both the Colorado and Columbia Rivers flow to the Pacific Ocean. However,

14364-623: The Rockies provide the majority of the flow in the Missouri and its tributaries. The Missouri and many of its tributaries cross the Great Plains, flowing over or cutting into the Ogallala Group and older mid-Cenozoic sedimentary rocks. The lowest major Cenozoic unit, the White River Formation , was deposited between roughly 35 and 29 million years ago and consists of claystone , sandstone , limestone , and conglomerate . Channel sandstones and finer-grained overbank deposits of

14535-419: The Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado eastward through the Great Plains. An early expedition led by Robert Stuart from 1812 to 1813 proved the Platte impossible to navigate by the dugout canoes they used, let alone the large sidewheelers and sternwheelers that would later ply the Missouri in increasing numbers. One explorer remarked that the Platte was "too thick to drink, too thin to plow". Nevertheless,

14706-701: The Saint Lawrence heightened the fierce competition between the Iroquois and Huron for access to the rich fur-bearing lands of the Canadian Shield . The competition for hunting is believed to have contributed to the earlier destruction of the Saint Lawrence Iroquoians in the valley by 1600, likely by the Iroquois Mohawk tribe, who were located closest to them, were more powerful than the Huron, and had

14877-419: The United States during the 19th century. The growth of the fur trade in the early 19th century laid much of the groundwork as trappers explored the region and blazed trails. Pioneers headed west en masse beginning in the 1830s, first by covered wagon , then by the growing numbers of steamboats that entered service on the river. Conflict between settlers and Native Americans in the watershed led to some of

15048-404: The Wendat was at least just as much a "mourning war" as a "beaver war" as the Iroquois obsessively raided Wendake for ten years after their great raids of 1649 to take single Wendat back to Kanienkeh, even though they did not possess much in the way of beaver pelts. The Iroquois's population had been devastated by losses because of European diseases like smallpox for they had no immunity, and when

15219-577: The Yellowstone River, which was called Roche Jaune ("Yellow Rock") by the French. Although MacKay and Evans failed to accomplish their original goal of reaching the Pacific, they did create the first accurate map of the upper Missouri River. In 1795, the young United States and Spain signed Pinckney's Treaty , which recognized American rights to navigate the Mississippi River and store goods for export in New Orleans. Three years later, Spain revoked

15390-462: The Yellowstone's flow is about 13,800 cu ft/s (390 m /s) – accounting for sixteen percent of total runoff in the Missouri basin and nearly double that of the Platte. On the other end of the scale is the tiny Roe River in Montana, which at 201 feet (61 m) long is one of the world's shortest rivers. The table on the right lists the ten longest tributaries of the Missouri, along with their respective catchment areas and flows. Length

15561-505: The animals' North American populations. The natural ecosystems that came to rely on the beavers for dams , river and water management and other vital needs were also ravaged, leading to ecological destruction , significant environmental change, and even drought in certain areas. Following this degradation, both the river otter and beaver populations in North America would continue to decline, without much noticeable improvement until around

15732-409: The annual flow of the Mississippi past St. Louis, and as much as 70 percent in certain droughts. In 1990, the Missouri River watershed was home to about 12 million people. This included the entire population of the U.S. state of Nebraska, parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, and small southern portions of

15903-431: The basin is irrigated. A further 281,000 square miles (730,000 km ) of the basin is devoted to the raising of livestock, mainly cattle. Forested areas of the watershed, mostly second-growth , total about 43,700 square miles (113,000 km ). Urban areas, on the other hand, comprise less than 13,000 square miles (34,000 km ) of land. Most built-up areas are along the main stem and a few major tributaries, including

16074-456: The basin relied heavily on the bison as a food source, and their hides and bones served to create other household items. In time, the species came to benefit from the indigenous peoples' periodic controlled burnings of the grasslands surrounding the Missouri to clear out old and dead growth. The large bison population of the region gave rise to the term great bison belt , an area of rich annual grasslands that extended from Alaska to Mexico along

16245-410: The basin. As one of the continent's most significant river systems, the Missouri's drainage basin borders on many other major watersheds of the United States and Canada. The Continental Divide , running along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, forms most of the western border of the Missouri watershed. The Clark Fork and Snake River , both part of the Columbia River basin, drain the area west of

16416-414: The beaver returns from each trading post, biological evidence on beaver population dynamics and contemporary estimates of beaver population densities. While the view that increased competition between the English and the French led to over-exploitation of beaver stocks by the Aboriginals does not receive uncritical support, most believe that Aboriginals were the primary actors in depleting animal stocks. There

16587-502: The bridge was severely damaged by a tornado that collapsed a middle span. It was reconstructed and its truss structure was altered from an arch design to a traditional truss design. It was later replaced by the Second Hannibal Bridge 200 feet (61 m) upstream on the northern bank, but at the same location on the southern bank where it enters into the gooseneck cut into the bluff. Missouri River The Missouri River

16758-480: The business of the trade, creating the first informal trust in 1613 in response to increasing losses because of competition. The trust was later formalized with a royal charter, leading to a series of trade monopolies during the term of New France. The most notable monopoly was the Company of One Hundred Associates based back in France, with a period of attempted transition towards other share trading companies, such as

16929-675: The capital of North Dakota, where the Heart River joins from the west. It slows into the Lake Oahe reservoir just before the Cannonball River confluence. While it continues south, eventually reaching Oahe Dam in South Dakota , the Grand , Moreau and Cheyenne Rivers all join the Missouri from the west. The Missouri makes a bend to the southeast as it winds through the Great Plains, receiving

17100-580: The center of Native American wealth and trade lay along the Missouri River in the Dakotas region on its great bend south. A large cluster of walled Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara villages situated on bluffs and islands of the river was home to thousands, and later served as a market and trading post used by early French and British explorers and fur traders. Following the introduction of horses to Missouri River tribes, possibly from feral European-introduced populations, Natives' way of life changed dramatically. The use of

17271-401: The chiefs back to North America. Fort Orleans was either abandoned or its small contingent massacred by Native Americans in 1726. The French and Indian War erupted when territorial disputes between France and Great Britain in North America reached a head in 1754. By 1763, France's army in North America had been defeated by a combined British-American force and was forced to sue for peace. In

17442-456: The continental ice sheets diverted the river and its tributaries, causing them to pool up into large temporary lakes such as Glacial Lakes Great Falls , Musselshell and others. As the lakes rose, the water in them often spilled across adjacent local drainage divides, creating now-abandoned channels and coulees including the Shonkin Sag , 100 miles (160 km) long. When the glaciers retreated,

17613-426: The continual supply of European goods to their communities and discourage fur traders from dealing with other Indian tribes. The fur trade did not involve barter in the way that most people presuppose but was a credit/debit relationship when a fur trader would arrive in a community in the summer or fall, hand out goods to the Indians who would pay him back in the spring with the furs from the animals they had killed over

17784-465: The country north and west of Lake Superior symbolically opened this new era of expansion. Their trading voyage proved extremely lucrative in furs. More importantly, they learned of a frozen sea to the north that provided easy access to the fur-bearing interior. Upon their return, French officials confiscated the furs of these unlicensed coureurs des bois . Radisson and Groseilliers went to Boston and then to London to secure funding and two ships to explore

17955-529: The dead Iroquois; thus a cycle of violence and warfare escalated. More significantly, new infectious diseases brought by the French decimated Native communities . Combined with warfare, disease led to the near destruction of the Huron by 1650. During the 1640s and 1650s, the Beaver Wars initiated by the Iroquois forced a massive demographic shift as their western neighbors fled the violence. They sought refuge west and north of Lake Michigan . The Five Nations of

18126-524: The deer populations declined and the government pressured tribes to switch to the European settler's way of life, animal husbandry replaced deer hunting both as an income and in the diet. Rum was first introduced in the early 16th century as a trading item and quickly became an inelastic good . While Native Americans for the most part acted conservatively in trading deals, they consumed a surplus of alcohol. Traders used rum to help form partnerships. Rum had

18297-454: The deerskin trade collapsed, Native Americans found themselves dependent on manufactured goods, and could not return to the old ways because of lost knowledge. It was a common practice on the part of the Indian women to offer marriage and sometimes just sex in exchange for fur traders not trading with their rivals. Radisson describes visiting one Ojibwe village in the spring of 1660 where during

18468-535: The early 1790s. In 1795 the Spanish chartered the Company of Discoverers and Explorers of the Missouri, popularly referred to as the "Missouri Company", and offered a reward for the first person to reach the Pacific Ocean via the Missouri. In 1794 and 1795 expeditions led by Jean-Baptiste Truteau and Antoine Simon Lecuyer de la Jonchšre did not even make it as far north as the Mandan villages in central North Dakota. Arguably

18639-430: The eastern flank of the Continental Divide. However, after the arrival of Europeans in North America, both the bison and the Native Americans saw a rapid decline in population. Massive over-hunting for sport by colonists eliminated bison populations east of the Mississippi River by 1833 and reduced the numbers in the Missouri basin to a mere few hundred. Foreign diseases brought by settlers, such as smallpox , raged across

18810-482: The eastern terminus of the First transcontinental railroad via a ferry ride across the Missouri between Council Bluffs, Iowa , and Omaha. The Hannibal Bridge became the first bridge to cross the Missouri River in 1869, and its location was a major reason why Kansas City became the largest city on the river upstream from its mouth at St. Louis. True to the then-ideal of Manifest Destiny , over 500,000 people set out from

18981-630: The end of the Pleistocene . During the end of the last glacial period , large migration of humans were taking place, such as those via the Bering land bridge between the Americas and Eurasia. Over centuries, the Missouri River formed one of these main migration paths. Most migratory groups that passed through the area eventually settled in the Ohio Valley and the lower Mississippi River Valley, but many, including

19152-512: The expansion while centralizing the French efforts. As native peoples had the primary role of suppliers in the fur trade, Champlain quickly created alliances with the Algonquin , Montagnais (who were located in the territory around Tadoussac), and most importantly, the Huron to the west. The latter, an Iroquoian -speaking people, served as middlemen between the French on the Saint Lawrence and nations in

19323-423: The first European settlement of any kind on the Missouri River, near present-day Brunswick, Missouri , in 1723. The following year Bourgmont led an expedition to enlist Comanche support against the Spanish, who continued to show interest in taking over the Missouri. In 1725 Bourgmont brought the chiefs of several Missouri River tribes to visit France. There he was raised to the rank of nobility and did not accompany

19494-519: The first permanent settlement of Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, up the Saint Lawrence River and into the pays d'en haut (or "upper country") around the Great Lakes . What followed in the first half of the 17th century were strategic moves by both the French and the Indigenous groups to further their own economic and geopolitical ambitions. Champlain led

19665-457: The flint," the Iroquois name for their homeland in what is now upstate New York ), and moreover Kanienkeh lacked the beavers with the thick pelts that the Europeans favored and would pay the best price for, which were to be found further north in what is now northern Canada. The Five Nations launched the "Beaver Wars" to take control of the fur trade from other middlemen who would deal with the Europeans. The Wendat homeland, Wendake, lies in what

19836-406: The fur trade also brought profound changes to the Indigenous communities living along the Saint Lawrence. European wares, such as iron axe heads, brass kettles, cloth, and firearms were bought with beaver pelts and other furs. The widespread practice of trading furs for rum and whiskey led to problems associated with inebriation and alcohol abuse. The subsequent destruction of beaver populations along

20007-466: The gold rush period, which led to the large-scale settlement of the Rocky Mountains region and eastern Great Basin . North American fur trade Europeans began their participation in the North American fur trade from the initial period of their colonization of the Americas onward, bringing the financial and material gains of the trade to Europe. European merchants from France , England and

20178-514: The horse allowed them to travel greater distances, and thus facilitated hunting, communications, warfare, the Siouxoan genocide and expulsion of many tribes,and the abundance of trade. Once, tens of millions of American bison (commonly called buffalo), one of the keystone species of the Great Plains and the Ohio Valley, roamed the plains of the Missouri River basin. Most Native American nations in

20349-409: The importance of personal contacts and experience in the fur trade, gave an edge to independent traders over the more bureaucratic monopolies. The newly established English colonies to the south quickly joined the lucrative trade, raiding the Saint Lawrence River valley and capturing and controlling Quebec from 1629 to 1632. While bringing wealth to a few select French traders and the French regime,

20520-469: The industry continued well into the 1840s, but in others such as the Platte River valley, declines of the beaver population contributed to an earlier demise. The fur trade finally disappeared in the Great Plains around 1850, with the primary center of industry shifting to the Mississippi Valley and central Canada. Despite the demise of the once-prosperous trade, however, its legacy led to the opening of

20691-452: The land rises about 10 feet per mile (1.9 m/km) from east to west. The elevation is less than 500 feet (150 m) at the eastern border of the watershed, but is over 3,000 feet (910 m) above sea level in many places at the base of the Rockies. The Missouri's drainage basin has highly variable weather and rainfall patterns, Overall, the watershed is defined by a continental climate with warm, wet summers and harsh, cold winters. Most of

20862-549: The land, decimating Native American populations. Left without their primary source of sustenance, many of the remaining indigenous people were forced onto resettlement areas and reservations, often at gunpoint. In May 1673, the French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet and the French explorer Jacques Marquette left the settlement of St. Ignace on Lake Huron and traveled down the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers, aiming to reach

21033-718: The late 1670s and early 1680s, the Five Nations started to raid what is now the Midwest , battling the Miami and the Illinois while alternatively fighting against and attempting to make an alliance with the Ottawa. One Onondaga chief, Otreouti, whom the French called La Grande Gueule ("the big mouth"), announced in a speech in 1684 that the wars against the Illinois and Miami were justified because "They came to hunt beavers on our lands ...". Initially,

21204-648: The lower Missouri valley is now a populous and highly productive agricultural and industrial region, heavy development has taken its toll on wildlife and fish populations as well as water quality. From the Rocky Mountains, three streams rise to form the headwaters of the Missouri River: The Missouri River officially starts at the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison in Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks, Montana , and

21375-430: The lowest was 41,690 cu ft/s (1,181 m /s) in 2006. Extremes of the flow vary even further. The largest discharge ever recorded was over 750,000 cu ft/s (21,000 m /s) on July 31, 1993, during a historic flood . The lowest, a mere 602 cu ft/s (17.0 m /s) – caused by the formation of an ice dam – was measured on December 23, 1963. The Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana at

21546-524: The main economic drivers in North America, attracting competition amongst European nations, who maintained trade interests in the Americas. The United States sought to remove the substantial British control over the North American fur trade during the first decades of its existence . Many Indigenous peoples would soon come to depend on the fur trade as their primary source of income and method of obtaining European-manufactured goods (such as weaponry, housewares, kitchenwares, and other useful products). However, by

21717-481: The mainly Basque fishermen to fish near the Newfoundland coast and transport fish back to Europe for sale. The fishermen sought suitable harbors with ample lumber to dry large quantities of cod. This generated their earliest contact with local Indigenous peoples, with whom the fisherman began simple trading. The fishermen traded metal items for beaver robes made of sewn-together, native-tanned beaver pelts. They used

21888-474: The maximum benefit from the presence of the English and the French. Additionally, the problem of the commons is also glaringly visible in this matter. Open access to resources leads to no incentive to conserve stocks, and actors which try to conserve lose out compared to the others when it comes to maximizing economic output. Therefore, there appeared to be a lack of concern by tribes of the First Nations about

22059-412: The mid-19th century, changing fashions in Europe brought about a collapse in fur prices and led to the crashing of several fur companies. Many Indigenous (and European) communities that relied on the fur trade were suddenly plunged into poverty and, consequently, lost much of the political influence they once held. The number of beavers and river otters killed during the fur trade was devastating for

22230-451: The mid-twentieth century. French explorer Jacques Cartier in his three voyages into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the 1530s and 1540s conducted some of the earliest fur trading between European and First Nations peoples associated with 16th century and later explorations in North America. Cartier attempted limited fur trading with the First Nations in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and along

22401-537: The most longstanding and violent of the American Indian Wars . During the 20th century, the Missouri River basin was extensively developed for irrigation, flood control, and the generation of hydroelectric power . Fifteen dams impound the main stem of the river, with hundreds more on tributaries. Meanders have been cut off and the river channelized to improve navigation, reducing its length by almost 200 miles (320 km) from pre-development times. Although

22572-520: The most successful of the Missouri Company expeditions was that of James MacKay and John Evans . The two set out along the Missouri, and established Fort Charles about 20 miles (32 km) south of present-day Sioux City as a winter camp in 1795. At the Mandan villages in North Dakota, they forcefully expelled several British traders, and while talking to the populace they pinpointed the location of

22743-532: The most to gain by controlling this part of the valley. Iroquois access to firearms through Dutch and later English traders along the Hudson River increased the casualties in the warfare. This greater bloodshed, previously unseen in Iroquoian warfare, increased the practice of " Mourning Wars ". The Iroquois raided neighboring groups to take captives, who were ceremonially adopted as new family members to replace

22914-436: The mouth of the Platte River. It is unclear exactly how far Bourgmont traveled beyond there; he described the blond-haired Mandans in his journals, so it is likely he reached as far as their villages in present-day North Dakota. Later that year, Bourgmont published The Route To Be Taken To Ascend The Missouri River , the first known document to use the name "Missouri River"; many of the names he gave to tributaries, mostly from

23085-442: The mouth, is 21,920 cu ft/s (621 m /s). This is from a drainage area of 186,400 sq mi (483,000 km ), or 35% of the total river basin. At Kansas City, 366.1 miles (589.2 km) from the mouth, the river's average flow is 55,400 cu ft/s (1,570 m /s). The river here drains about 484,100 sq mi (1,254,000 km ), representing about 91% of the entire basin. The lowermost gage with

23256-501: The native tribes that lived along them, are still in use today. The expedition's discoveries eventually found their way to cartographer Guillaume Delisle , who used the information to create a map of the lower Missouri. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville requested that the French government bestow upon Bourgmont the Cross of St. Louis because of his "outstanding service to France". Bourgmont had in fact been in trouble with

23427-460: The new English Hudson's Bay Company trade was felt as early as 1671, with diminished returns for the French and the role of the native middlemen. This new competition directly stimulated French expansion into the North West to win back native customers. What followed was a continual expansion north and west of Lake Superior. The French used diplomatic negotiations with natives to win back trade and an aggressive military policy to temporarily eliminate

23598-403: The new cattle herds roaming the hunting lands, and a greater emphasis on farming due to the invention of the cotton gin , Native Americans struggled to maintain their place in the economy. An inequality gap had appeared in the tribes, as some hunters were more successful than others. Still, the creditors treated an individual's debt as debt of the whole tribe and used several strategies to keep

23769-529: The north before crossing into North Dakota where the Yellowstone River , its greatest tributary by volume, joins from the southwest. At the confluence, the Yellowstone is actually the larger river. The Missouri then meanders east past Williston and into Lake Sakakawea , the reservoir formed by Garrison Dam . Below the dam the Missouri receives the Knife River from the west and flows south to Bismarck ,

23940-526: The one which produced the 1972 Black Hills flood through Rapid City, South Dakota . Winter temperatures in the northern and western portions of the basin typically drop to −20 °F (−28.9 °C) or lower every winter with extremes as low as −60 °F (−51.1 °C), while summer highs occasionally exceed 100 °F (37.8 °C) in all areas except the higher elevations of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. Extreme maxima — almost all prior to 1960 — have exceeded 115 °F (46.1 °C) in all US states in

24111-467: The present day. Much of this sediment is derived from the river's floodplain , also called the meander belt; every time the river changed course, it would erode tons of soil and rocks from its banks. However, damming and channeling the river has kept it from reaching its natural sediment sources along most of its course. Reservoirs along the Missouri trap roughly 36.4 million short tons (33.0 million metric tons) of sediment each year. Despite this,

24282-424: The reservoirs dramatically reduce peak flows and increase low flows. Evaporation from reservoirs significantly reduces the river's runoff, causing an annual loss of over 3 million acre-feet (3.7 km ) from mainstem reservoirs alone. The United States Geological Survey operates fifty-one stream gauges along the Missouri River. The river's average discharge at Bismarck, 1,314.5 miles (2,115.5 km) from

24453-617: The river it was largely populated by slave-owning southerners following the Boone's Lick Road . The major trails for the opening of the American West all have their starting points on the river, including the California , Mormon , Oregon , and Santa Fe trails. The first westward leg of the Pony Express was a ferry across the Missouri at St. Joseph, Missouri . Similarly, most emigrants arrived at

24624-483: The river still transports more than half the total silt that empties into the Gulf of Mexico; the Mississippi River Delta , formed by sediment deposits at the mouth of the Mississippi, constitutes a majority of sediments carried by the Missouri. Archaeological evidence, especially in Missouri, suggests that human beings first inhabited the watershed of the Missouri River between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago at

24795-489: The river town of Independence, Missouri , to their various destinations in the American West from the 1830s to the 1860s. These people had many reasons to embark on this strenuous year-long journey – economic crisis, and later gold strikes including the California Gold Rush , for example. For most, the route took them up the Missouri to Omaha, Nebraska, where they would set out along the Platte River , which flows from

24966-522: The robes to keep warm on the long, cold return voyages across the Atlantic. These castor gras (in French) became prized by European hat makers in the second half of the 16th century, as they converted the pelts to felt . The discovery of the superior felting qualities of beaver fur, along with the rapidly increasing popularity of beaver felt hats in fashion, transformed the incidental trading of fishermen into

25137-449: The sediments that now underlie much of the drainage basin of the Missouri River. This Laramide uplift caused the sea to retreat and laid the framework for a vast drainage system of rivers flowing from the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains , the predecessor of the modern-day Mississippi watershed. The Laramide Orogeny is essential to modern Missouri River hydrology , as snow and ice melt from

25308-409: The settling to a lower level of stable population, further declines were caused by over-harvesting in two of the three English trading posts (Albany and York). The data from the third trading post are also very interesting in that the post did not come under French pressure and was therefore shielded from the kind of over-exploitation of stocks which resulted at the other trading posts. At Fort Churchill,

25479-648: The size of the Canadian province of Quebec , the watershed encompasses most of the central Great Plains, stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River Valley in the east and from the southern extreme of western Canada to the border of the Arkansas River watershed. Compared with the Mississippi River above their confluence, the Missouri is twice as long and drains an area three times as large. The Missouri accounts for 45 percent of

25650-440: The sparsely populated New France. The vast wealth in the fur trade created enforcement problems for the monopoly. Unlicensed independent traders, known as coureurs des bois (or "runners of the woods"), began to do business in the late 17th and early 18th century. Over time, many Métis were drawn to the independent trade; they were the descendants of French trappers and native women. The increasing use of currency , as well as

25821-569: The stocks of beaver adjusted to the maximum sustained yield level. The data from Churchill further reinforce the case of over-exploitation of stocks caused by the French-English competition. Indigenous North American beliefs in the affected region incorporate respect for the environment. Traditionally, many tribes in the region believe in a spiritual relationship between the people and the animals they rely on for food, clothing, and medicines, and many tribes have traditional protocols surrounding how

25992-399: The superintendent of superstructure. George S. Morison , who later became a leading bridge designer in North America, apprenticed under the supervision of Tomlinson and Chanute during the construction of the bridge. It was a swing bridge that could open in under two minutes, and had an arched truss design. Construction cost $ 1 million (equivalent to $ 21.8 million in 2023). In 1886,

26163-558: The superior resources of the French state proceeded to grind them down until they finally made peace in 1701 . The settlement of native refugees from the Beaver Wars in the western and northern Great Lakes combined with the decline of the Ottawa middlemen to create vast new markets for French traders. Resurgent Iroquoian warfare in the 1680s also stimulated the fur trade as native French allies bought weapons. The new more distant markets and fierce English competition stifled direct trade from

26334-455: The sustainability of the fur trade. The problem of over-exploitation is not helped by the fact that the efforts by the French to remove the middlemen such as the Huron who increasingly resented their influence meant that stocks were put under more pressure. All these factors contributed to an unsustainable trade pattern in furs which depleted beaver stocks very fast. An empirical study done by Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis shows that apart from

26505-513: The treaty and in 1800 secretly returned Louisiana to Napoleonic France in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso . This transfer was so secret that the Spanish continued to administer the territory. In 1801, Spain restored rights to use the Mississippi and New Orleans to the United States. Fearing that the cutoffs could occur again, President Thomas Jefferson proposed to buy the port of New Orleans from France for $ 10 million. Instead, faced with

26676-520: The upper Mississippi, drain most of the area bordering the eastern side of the Missouri River basin. Finally, on the south, the Ozark Mountains and other low divides through central Missouri, Kansas and Colorado separate the Missouri watershed from those of the White River and Arkansas River, also tributaries of the Mississippi River. Over 95 significant tributaries and hundreds of smaller ones feed

26847-585: The use of their posts. This meant that the French incentivized the extension of trade, and French traders did indeed infiltrate much of the Great Lakes region. The French established posts on Lake Winnipeg, Lac des Praires and Lake Nipigon which represented a serious threat to flow of furs to the York Factory . The increasing penetration near English ports meant that the Native Americans had more than one place to sell their goods. The simulation of beaver populations around trading posts are done by taking into account

27018-498: The various fur enterprises, namely Hudson's Bay . Fort Raymond was later replaced by Fort Lisa at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone in North Dakota; a second fort also called Fort Lisa was built downstream on the Missouri River in Nebraska. In 1809 the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company was founded by Lisa in conjunction with William Clark and Pierre Choteau, among others. In 1828,

27189-442: The watershed receives an average of 8 to 10 inches (200 to 250 mm) of precipitation each year. However, the westernmost portions of the basin in the Rockies as well as southeastern regions in Missouri may receive as much as 40 inches (1,000 mm). The vast majority of precipitation occurs in summer in most of the lower and middle basin, although the upper basin is known for short-lived but intense summer thunderstorms such as

27360-444: The watershed's southeastern portion – include Omaha, Nebraska , north of the confluence of the Missouri and Platte Rivers; Kansas City, Missouri – Kansas City, Kansas , at the confluence of the Missouri with the Kansas River; and the St. Louis metropolitan area, south of the Missouri River just below the latter's mouth, on the Mississippi. In contrast, the northwestern part of the watershed

27531-530: The watershed, with most leading a nomadic lifestyle and dependent on enormous bison herds that roamed through the Great Plains . The first Europeans encountered the river in the late seventeenth century, and the region passed through Spanish and French hands before becoming part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase . The Missouri River was one of the main routes for the westward expansion of

27702-546: The way in which the Ojibwe and the other Indian peoples sought to "use sexual relations as a means of establishing long-term relationships between themselves and people from another society was a rational strategy, one that has been described in many parts of the world". One fur trader who married an Ojibwe woman describes how the Ojibwe would initially shun a fur trader until they could give gauge his honesty and provided he proved himself an honest man, "the chiefs would take together their marriageable girls to his trading house and he

27873-403: The ways of the colonists, hunted to feed global fur markets with little consideration of the possibility of extinction. As competition increased between the English and French in the 16th century, fur also continued to be harvested by Aboriginal tribes, both for their own use and as middleman. All of this combined to cause a severe over-harvesting of beavers. Data from three of the trading posts of

28044-439: The welcoming ceremony: "The women throw themselves backwards on the ground, thinking to give us tokens of friendship and wellcome [welcome]". Radisson was initially confused by this gesture, but as the women started to engage in more overtly sexual behavior, he realized what was being offered. Radisson was informed by the village elders that he could have sex with any unmarried women in the village provided that he did not trade with

28215-523: The west. Downstream, it begins to define the border between the states of Nebraska and Missouri , then flows between the states of Missouri and Kansas . The Missouri swings east at Kansas City , where the Kansas River enters from the west, and so on into north-central Missouri. To the east of Kansas City, the Missouri receives, on the left side, the Grand River . It passes south of Columbia and receives

28386-421: The winter; in the interim, further exchanges often involved both Indian men and women. Fur traders found that marrying the daughters of chiefs would ensure the co-operation of an entire community. Marriage alliances were also made between Indian tribes. In September 1679, the French diplomat and soldier Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut , called a peace conference at Fond du Lac (modern Duluth, Minnesota ) of all

28557-418: Was given the choice of the lot". If the fur trader married, the Ojibwe would trade with him as he became part of the community, and if he refused to marry, then the Ojibwe would not trade with him as Ojibwe only traded with a man who "took one of their women for his wife". Virtually all Indian communities encouraged fur traders to take an Indian wife in order to build a long-term relationship that would ensure

28728-654: Was hauled overland, most transport to and from the gold fields was done through the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, as well as the Snake River in western Wyoming and the Bear River in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. It is estimated that of the passengers and freight hauled from the Midwest to Montana, over 80 percent were transported by boat, a journey that took 150 days in the upstream direction. A route more directly west into Colorado lay along

28899-409: Was severely damaged by a tornado and replaced in virtually the same location by the Second Hannibal Bridge . Construction started in 1867, shortly after the end of the American Civil War , and was completed in 1869. The bridge was built for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad by the Keystone Bridge Company . The completion of the bridge came after a short battle between Leavenworth, Kansas , and

29070-457: Was such that the water was made muddy by it and could not clear itself." They recorded Pekitanoui or Pekistanoui as the local name for the Missouri. However, the party never explored the Missouri beyond its mouth, nor did they linger in the area. In addition, they later learned that the Mississippi drained into the Gulf of Mexico and not the Pacific as they had originally presumed; the expedition turned back about 440 miles (710 km) short of

29241-407: Was that a fur trader was expected to favor whatever clan/kinship network that he had married into with European goods, and a fur trader who did not would ruin his reputation. The Ojibwe, like other tribes, saw all life in this world being based upon reciprocal relationships, with "gifts" of tobacco left behind when harvesting plants to thank nature for providing the plants, while when a bear was killed,

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