The first Europeans who reported seeing the river were at the mouth of the Missouri where it empties into the Mississippi. They were French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet. In Sixteen-Seventy-Three, they were traveling down the Mississippi in a small wooden boat when they heard a great noise of water moving at great speed. Father Marquette wrote that he felt great fear. He saw large trees floating into the Mississippi River. They were carried in violently moving muddy water. The muddy water was the Missouri River which emptied into the western side of the Mississippi.
The Missouri was a violent river, making travel along it difficult. Yet explorers and settlers used it as a way to move west. In the early Seventeen-hundreds, French fur traders began to travel along the Missouri to the lands of the great American west.
The first non-natives to explore the river, from its mouth to its beginnings, did so in Eighteen-Oh-Five and Eighteen-Oh-Six. President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the area.
The United States government had bought from France a large area of land called the Louisiana Territory. This land extended from the Gulf of Mexico northwest to the Pacific coast. The story of Lewis and Clark's travels up the Missouri River and on to the Pacific Northwest is one of the great stories of American exploration.
President Jefferson sent the two men to explore the little-known river to learn all about the land on both sides of it. Lewis and Clark completed the trip in two years. The explorers were the first Americans to cross the Missouri lands to the Pacific Northwest.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25