Place Names: Mississippi (River and State)

When European settlers arrived in North America, they freely borrowed Native place names for rivers, mountains and other points of geography.  One of the anchors of the North American continent is the Mississippi River and its network of tributaries.  The modern form of the name, Mississippi, comes from the French Messippi, which is a corruption of the Ojibwe words Misi-ziibe, or Great River.  Unlike Europeans, who tended to keep a consistent name for a river throughout its course, Natives used different descriptive terms to denote which part of a river was under reference.

Lake Itasca, the beginning of the Mississippi, was known as Elk Lake to the Ojibwe, who called the river flowing out of it, Elk River.  Where the River joined Lake Bemidji, it was known as the River from the Traversing Lake.  Further downstream, flowing into Lake Cass, it became the Red Cedar River.  Then the River flowed of Lake Winnibigoshish and became known as the Wretched Dirty Water River.  Things improved a bit when the Mississippi joined the Leech Lake River, becoming known as Gichi-ziibe or Big River, then when the Mississippi met the Crow Wing River, it became the Misi-ziibe or Great River.  During the earliest days of European settlement, the portion of the River known as the Messippi was that portion above the Crow Wing River.  The name eventually applied the entire length of the River.  Incidentally, the Cheyenne knew the river as Greasy River.  The Sioux, one of the local tribes who lived along the river, stuck with their own name, the Great River.  Other sources state that Natives called the River the Father of Waters, and generally give this term an Algonquian definition.  However, with dozens of tribes living along the Mississippi, and many of the Algonquian-speaking peoples, no one tribe has been credited with this name.

But European explorers had to add their two cents.  Hernando de Soto favored Rio del Espiritu Santo, or River of the Holy Spirit.  Later Spanish knew the River as Rio Florida, because it flowed through the then-province of West Florida.  Early French explorers called the River, Malabouchi, explaining that Messippi meant Father of Waters, but without giving the exact derivation.  Other French explorers, priests Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, favored Immaculate Conception River.  The Choctaw and Chickasaw referred to it as the River Without Age.  Robert Cavalier, Sieur de LaSalle, wanted to name it the Colbert River, after one of the ministers of King Louis XIV.   In addition to the French corruption of Messippi, the river was also designated Riviere St. Louis, after Louis IX, the Patron Saint of Louisiana.    In American parlance, the Mississippi is Old Man River, Big Muddy, Old Blue, the Gathering of Waters, or Mighty Mississippi.  The state takes its name from the River.