The Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi

Abstract

IT is a matter of little importance or interest in what spot is located the ultimate spring of the longest branch of even the greatest river. Especially is this the case with the Mississippi, where it may easily be an open question which of a dozen branches is the longest, when traced through its innumerable lakes and windings. By common consent, however, a certain branch of the Mississippi has been assumed as the river proper, and its head as Lake Itasca, in northern central Minnesota. The river was explored to this point, and the lake discovered in 1832 by Schoolcraft, who published a map of the lake, and of the river from this point downwards. He spent but one night on the lake, and did not explore its tributaries. Four years later Nicollet led an expedition to the head waters of this stream, reached Lake Itasca, and spent several days in making a thorough exploration of the country about it. In his narrative, published in 1841, he gives a full description of the tributaries to the lake which constituted, according to general acceptation, the extreme head waters of the river. The report is accompanied by a map, on which the geographic features described in the narrative are delineated, and which agrees in general with later and more accurate maps.