University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Winter 1984 Mapping The Missouri River Through The Great Plains, 1673-1895 W. Raymond Wood University of Missouri-Columbia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Wood, W. Raymond, "Mapping The Missouri River Through The Great Plains, 1673-1895" (1984). Great Plains Quarterly. 1817. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1817 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. MAPPING THE MISSOURI RIVER THROUGH THE GREAT PLAINS, 1673 .. 1895 W. RAYMOND WOOD For decades, "the Way West" referred not to general study that describes and illustrates the any kind of overland trail but to the channel history of the mapping of the Missouri River, of the Missouri River. St. Louis became famous but a host of published papers significantly as the gateway to the West because it was the augment Hamilton's work.3 Our purpose here port of entry to the vast western domains is to draw these scattered sources together in a drained in part by this mighty stream. Consider­ brief narrative for the period from 1673 to ing the extensive scholarship devoted to such 1895. By the latter date the entire course of land routes as the Oregon, Santa Fe, and Over­ the river was known and accurately mapped land trails, it is curious that the equally impor­ in detail.4 tant role of the Missouri River as an artery of From first to last the mapping of the river exploration has been neglected. Only three was inspired principally by commercial inter­ works have made any real attempt to offer ests. For the first century and a half of the such a history, two of them popular.1 The Missouri's modern history, Indian trade, espe­ third, by Abraham Nasatir, is a short but heav­ cially for furs, dominated the reasons for map­ ily documented history of the river from its making. Maps made during the next seventy­ discovery in 1673 until 1805, when the course five years, on the other hand, were stimulated of the stream was firially explored in its entirety in large part by the needs of those using the by Lewis and Clark.2 Even so, the emphasis in steamboat to trade with and settle the West. Nasatir's study is on the two decades spanning The latter period ended about 1902, with the the years 1785 to 1804. dissolution of the Missouri River Commission, a An article by Raphael Hamilton is the only federal unit charged with improving the naviga­ tional capabilities of the river.S A professor of anthropology at the University of This study of the mapping of the Missouri Missouri-Columbia, W. Raymond Wood served River requires that we consider the entire as editor of Plains Anthropologist. In 1982 he reach of the stream from the time of its dis­ published "William Clark's Mapping in Missouri, covery by European explorers. The first crude 1803-1804" in Missouri Historical Review. maps of the Missouri, as well as most later gen­ [GPQ 4 (Winter 1984): 29-42.] eral maps, depicted Native American tribal 29 30 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1984 locations and other details on the Great Plains such copies.8 On these maps, as well as on the proper. These details extended well to the autograph map Marquette produced in 1673- north and west of the mouth of the Kansas 74, the Missouri is shown simply as a short stub River, which, in some cultural schemes, marks of a stream entering the Mississippi from the the approximate eastern boundary of the Great northwest.9 The relationships between the Plains on the lower Missouri River. We are not various Marquette and J olliet maps and their concerned here with the precision of such de­ derivatives (as reconstructed by Father Delan­ tails as Native American tribal locations, but glez) illustrate the kind of "genealogy" that rather with the developing exactness of the must be prepared as the basis for a critical inter­ representation of the river itself through nine pretation of these early maps. generations, or general stages, of Missouri River For decades, Marquette and J olliet's specula­ mapping. Each generation depicted a basic tion that the Missouri River would provide a design of the river's configuration, and each route to New Mexico fueled French interest in ended as new data permitted significant refine­ that stream as a means of reaching Mexico and ment of that particular conformation. its silver. As Bernard DeVoto said, "This idea was to confute government, diplomacy, and THE FRENCH PERIOD: 1673-1770 military strategy till the Great Valley became American, and to confuse geographical think­ The first-generation maps are those of ing till Lewis and Clark got home.,,10 Marquette and J olliet. Although there are hints The stu blike depiction of the Missouri River that the Spanish in the Southwest had learned persisted on copies of the lost J olliet "X" map from Indians of the existence of the Missouri and on derivatives of the Marquette map pro­ River as early as 1541, Europeans did not duced by the French map makers Franquelin, actually lay eyes upon the stream until more Randin, and Bernou as late as the 1680s.11 On than a century later.6 In late June 1673, Father a few maps of the period (such as the Coronelli Jacques Marquette and Louis J olliet and their 1688 map), the Missouri bears the name Riv. party passed the mouth of the Missouri on their des Ozages, after one of the principal tributaries way down the Mississippi River. Marquette, a of the lower Missouri River and the important Jesuit, and J olliet, a frontiersman, provided Indian tribe living along it in what is now west­ a graphic description of the mouth of the Mis­ ern Missouri.12 A few maps made as late as souri River as they passed it-not surprisingly, 1700 continued to show no real improvement since it would have been discharging its spring over the Marquette and J olliet sketches, in spite floodwaters into the Mississippi at the time. of the passage of time and the increasing num­ They named the Missouri the Pikistanoui, a ber of French explorers, traders, and priests name that survived in various spellings (and, no living near the mouth of the Missouri, some of doubt, pronunciations) for several decades.7 whom penetrated a short distance up the river. The cartographic documentation of the Mis­ Less than a decade after Marquette and souri by this expedition included only the posi­ J olliet's passage, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur tion of the mouth of the river. Unfortunately, de la Salle, also explored the Mississippi River, the originals of J olliet's map were lost at this time between the mouth of the Illinois Lachine Rapids, a few miles from Montreal, on River and the Gulf of Mexico. Assisted by his his return home in 1674. He produced a copy of lieutenant, Henry de Tonti, La Salle and his the map from memory, however, and his supe­ party arrived at the mouth of the Missouri on riors sent it on to France. It too has been lost, 14 February 1682 as they moved downstream. although it was copied by several European car­ Near the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle tographers before it disappeared. Father Jean took possession of the basin of the Mississippi Delanglez has reconstructed a prototype of the River in the name of Louis XIV, naming the lost map (called the J olliet "X" map) using five country Louisiane in his honor.13 MAPPING THE MISSOURI RIVER 31 After his return, La Salle produced a sketch known, for by 1686 he had become the royal of his impressions of the country of New hydrographer in Canada. The maps based on France, apparently based in part on informa­ La Salle's data are readily identifiable by a dis­ tion obtained from a boy who is believed to tinctive and bizarre rendering of the lower have been a Wichita Indian slave.14 This infor­ reaches of the Missouri River, best described as mation was probably augmented by data from "braided," with three immense "islands" de­ other French explorers and priests who were picted between what appear to be the lands of familiar with the area of his map. Frenchmen the Missouri and the Kansa Indians. The Kansas were certainly in the Missouri valley by this River was apparently mistaken for the Missouri time, for according to Pierre Margry, two proper, for the Pawnees (Panimaha) are shown French coureurs de bois were captured by the on one of three northwesterly affluents of what Missouri Indians and taken to their village in is called, on the 1684 map and some other ver­ 1680 or 1681, about a year before La Salle's sions, La Grande Riviere des Emissourittes. visit to the mouth of the Missouri River.1S The rider . ou des Ozages appears on the La Salle's map (now lost) was passed along 1699 version.17 to Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin in Paris North of and parallel to the Grande Riviere, when Franquelin served La Salle as a draughts­ or Kansas River, is a stream that John Champe man in 1684 (fig. 1).i6 This map provided the identified as the platte River, with affluents second generation of Missouri River charts and to the north that he believed to represent the continued to be produced by Franquelin for Loup forks, since these streams bear village many years.