“Mee-zee-see-bee” or Great River – Mississippi State Quarter Coin

Today, the Mississippi State Quarter Coin tells the story of the name, the river and the new state born 198 years ago.

The early Congress defined the territory of Mississippi in April 1798.

On December 10, 1817, Congress added a new state called Mississippi.

“RESOLUTION for the admission of the State of Mississippi into the Vision.

“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the state of Mississippi shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the union on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatever.”

History notes several different discoverers of the mighty river that borders the state and also lists many different names given by the early adventurers —as early as 1519.

But, for today, let’s review the different origins of the name “Mississippi.”

In his book, Winona and Its Environs on the Mississippi, published in 1897, Lafayette Houghton Bunnell provided this description of the name and information about the river’s continental journey.

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As the name “Mississippi,” of French orthography, became finally established as the name of the great river, and as that word has often poetically been interpreted as meaning the “Father of Waters,” it is well to repeat here that the name is of Algonquin or Chippewa origin, and in English orthography would be spelled Mee-zee-see-bee; Mee-zee, great and see-bee a river, but the Chippewas have a wonderfully diversified language and frequently refer to it in terms which signify the “endless river,” the river that “divides itself,” or of “many channels.”

The Illinois Indians contracted the Chippewa word for “great endless river,” Miche-gah-see-bee, and from their own pronunciation of it the French also got Messipi, and finally, as it now stands, Mississippi.

As to a “Father of Waters,” no Indian has any conception of such a simile, and when a Chippewa is asked for its origin, he will tell you that Nu-say is a father and ask you to point out if you can, its appearance in their name for the mighty river.

So it is with many Indian words, and their interpretations.

The name in its simplicity, means only the big or great river, but elaborated into its figurative Chippewa terms, it gives the idea of a river of unknown length.

The Ottawas, a Chippewa branch, called Lake Superior “Kee-che-gummi,” a lake that was deepest, or of unknown depth, and the Mississippi was designated about in the same way as the “great or greatest river.”

The Sacs and Foxes and Potawatomies, called it Me-chaw-se- poo, big river. The Menominees, Pah-kah-poo-see-bee, the Winnebagoes, Ne-scaos-hut-ta-rah, or Bluff-walled river, and the Dakotah bands called it Wat-pa h-tan-kah. Wat-pah, meaning river, and tan-kah, big or great in size.

From the mouth of the Mississippi to New Orleans is 104 miles, and although the descent is slight, the velocity is quite strong, owing to the volume and depth of the channel, which in places exceed an hundred feet.

The mouth of the Ohio river is 1,216 miles above the mouth of the Mississippi, or Balize, as the different entrances into the gulf are unitedly called, and St. Louis is 1,390 miles above.

Prairie du Chien is 1,932 miles, La Crosse 2,014 miles, Trempealeau 2,042, Winona 2,054 miles, Wabasha 2,084, St. Croix river 2,150, St. Paul 2,186 miles, Minnesota river 2,192, and St. Anthony Falls 2,200 miles.

The altitude above tide water is half a foot at New Orleans, 324 feet at mouth of the Ohio, 384 feet at St. Louis, 526 feet at Rock Island, and 806 feet at St. Anthony Falls.

At Schoolcraft Island, Itasca Lake, it is 1,575 feet, and the dividing ridge is 1,680 feet above the mouth of the river.

These measurements are taken from the table in Judge Gale’s book, “Upper Mississippi,” and were compiled by Nicollet and Fremont. (The highest bluffs on the Mississippi, about 600 feet, are those between La Crosse and Winona. The measurements have been taken from recent surveys.)

Gale’s work, published in 1867, before anyone had pretended to a new discovery of the sources of the Mississippi, says: “The Mississippi has its sources in the numerous springs that burst forth from the hauteurs de terre, or the dividing ridge between the Itasca lake and Red river, and flow into that lake, where they become united and start on their tortuous course for the ocean. The Itasca lake is in latitude 47 degrees 13 minutes north, and longitude 95 degrees and 2 minutes west of Greenwich.”

It will be seen by the foregoing, that Judge Gale did not regard Lake Itasca as the real source or head of the Mississippi, but as the place where the waters gathered to make their start to the Gulf, and to me it is incredible that Schoolcraft, with Chippewa Indian guides, and he himself speaking the Chippewa language like a native, having married a Chippewa mixed blood for his first wife, should not have informed himself as to the true source of the Mississippi.

In naming Itasca, it is plain that he simply regarded it as the true head of canoe navigation, as the small branch from the little lake above, was filled, no doubt, with logs then, as later, and so shoal as to offer no inducements for further navigation.

Only bark canoe and batteaux navigation was thought of or in use by the earliest navigators of the Mississippi and its tributaries, for portages, or carriage across from one water course to another and past rapids and water-falls, was of frequent necessity.

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The Mississippi State Quarter Coin shows along with a keel boat on the Mississippi river, circa 1838.

Mississippi State Quarter Coin