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166-552: The plant started in 1888. In 1925 it was acquired by Sheffield Steel Corporation with its variety of products and was billed as a department store of the steel industry with a more diversified line of products than any mill in the country." It was located near the confluence of the Missouri River and Blue River (Missouri) in Kansas City's Northeast Industrial District. The company was the first manufacturer to go into

332-489: A collective noun (also describing First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act, 1982 . Over time, as societal perceptions and government–indigenous relationships have shifted, many historical terms have changed definitions or been replaced as they have fallen out of favor. The use of the term "Indian" is frowned upon because it represents

498-536: A tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River is slightly longer and carries a comparable volume of water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms the world's fourth-longest river system . For over 12,000 years, people have depended on the Missouri River and its tributaries as a source of sustenance and transportation. More than ten major groups of Native Americans populated

664-667: A colonial state. The peopling of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers ( Paleo-Indians ) entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge , which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 19,000 years ago). These populations expanded south of

830-640: A connection to residential schools. Additionally, Indigenous respondents with higher HLS and HLASS scores had one or more negative health outcomes. While there are many studies that found an association between IHT and adverse health outcomes, scholars continue to suggest that it remains difficult to understand the impact of IHT. IHT needs to be systematically measured. Indigenous people also need to be understood in separate categories based on similar experiences, location, and background as opposed to being categorized as one monolithic group. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples domesticated, bred, and cultivated

996-688: A debt crisis, Napoleon offered to sell the entirety of Louisiana, including the Missouri River, for $ 15 million – amounting to less than 3¢ per acre. The deal was signed in 1803, doubling the size of the United States with the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory . In 1803, Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis to explore the Missouri and search for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. By then, it had been discovered that

1162-430: A different owner (International Steel Group) later Mittal Steel and later ArcelorMittal . During the 2012 U.S. Presidential election laid off plant worker Joe Soptic was featured in an advertisement against Romney claiming that his wife died of cancer after he lost his health insurance in the closing. The ad stated "When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my healthcare, and my family lost their healthcare. And

1328-855: A few still considered uncontacted peoples . The Americas also host millions of individuals of mixed Indigenous, European, and sometimes African or Asian descent, historically referred to as mestizos in Spanish-speaking countries. In many Latin American nations, people of partial Indigenous descent constitute a majority or significant portion of the population, particularly in Central America , Mexico , Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador , Colombia , Venezuela , Chile , and Paraguay. Mestizos outnumber Indigenous peoples in most Spanish-speaking countries, according to estimates of ethnic cultural identification. However, since Indigenous communities in

1494-600: A large endorheic drainage called the Great Divide Basin exists between the Missouri and Green watersheds in western Wyoming. This area is sometimes counted as part of the Missouri River watershed, even though its waters do not flow to either side of the Continental Divide. To the north, the much lower Laurentian Divide separates the Missouri River watershed from those of the Oldman River ,

1660-476: A large array of plant species. These species now constitute between 50% and 60% of all crops in cultivation worldwide. In certain cases, the Indigenous peoples developed entirely new species and strains through artificial selection , as with the domestication and breeding of maize from wild teosinte grasses in the valleys of southern Mexico. Numerous such agricultural products retain their native names in

1826-424: A large citizenry. Indigenous civilizations also displayed impressive accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics, including the most accurate calendar in the world. The domestication of maize or corn required thousands of years of selective breeding, and continued cultivation of multiple varieties was done with planning and selection, generally by women. Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, and Indigenous creation myths tell of

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1992-488: A multitude of ways because the Indigenous community and their history are diverse. Many studies (such as Whitbeck et al., 2014; Brockie, 2012; Anastasio et al., 2016; Clark & Winterowd, 2012; Tucker et al., 2016) have evaluated the impact of IHT on health outcomes of Indigenous communities from the United States and Canada. IHT is a difficult term to standardize and measure because of the vast and variable diversity of Indigenous people and their communities. Therefore, it

2158-419: A period of record greater than fifty years is at Hermann, Missouri – 97.9 miles (157.6 km) upstream of the mouth of the Missouri – where the average annual flow was 87,520 cu ft/s (2,478 m /s) from 1897 to 2010. About 522,500 sq mi (1,353,000 km ), or 98.7% of the watershed, lies above Hermann. The highest annual mean was 181,800 cu ft/s (5,150 m /s) in 1993, and

2324-416: A pre-Columbian high of an estimated three million to some 300,000 in 1997. The Spanish Empire and other Europeans re-introduced horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. The reintroduction of the horse , extinct in the Americas for over 7500 years, had a profound impact on Indigenous cultures in several regions, such as those of

2490-413: A river that plays hide and seek with you today and tomorrow follows you around like a pet dog with a dynamite cracker tied to his tail. That river is the Missouri. With a drainage basin spanning 529,350 square miles (1,371,000 km ), the Missouri River's catchment encompasses nearly one-sixth of the area of the United States or just over five percent of the continent of North America. Comparable to

2656-592: A second, more recent wave of migration several thousand years later and have much more recent genetic and cultural commonalities with the Indigenous peoples of Siberia . However, these groups are nonetheless considered "Indigenous peoples of the Americas". The term Amerindian , a portmanteau of "American Indian", was coined in 1902 by the American Anthropological Association . It has been controversial ever since its creation. It

2822-467: A short time after that my wife became ill." An investigation by The Washington Post showed that Soptic's wife had died of cancer in 2006 five years after the plant closed and that she had her own health insurance at the time of the closing but lost it after she left that job in 2002. 39°6′14.65″N 94°29′56.07″W  /  39.1040694°N 94.4989083°W  / 39.1040694; -94.4989083 Missouri River The Missouri River

2988-611: A threat to livestock. Several bird species, such as turkeys , Muscovy ducks , Puna ibis , and neotropic cormorants were domesticated by various peoples in Mesoamerica and South America to be used for poultry. In the Andean region, indigenous peoples domesticated llamas and alpacas to produce fiber and meat. The llama was the only beast of burden in the Americas before European colonization. Guinea pigs were domesticated from wild cavies to be raised for meat consumption in

3154-666: A tributary of the South Saskatchewan River , as well as the Souris , Sheyenne , and smaller tributaries of the Red River of the North . All of these streams are part of Canada's Nelson River drainage basin, which empties into Hudson Bay . There are also several large endorheic basins between the Missouri and Nelson watersheds in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Minnesota and Des Moines Rivers, tributaries of

3320-493: A variety of origins of their respective peoples. Some were "always there" or were created by gods or animals, some migrated from a specified compass point , and others came from "across the ocean". The European colonization of the Americas fundamentally changed the lives and cultures of the resident Indigenous peoples. Although the exact pre-colonization population count of the Americas is unknown, scholars estimate that Indigenous populations diminished by between 80% and 90% during

3486-666: A violent poison. Eventually, a Taíno Cacique named Enriquillo managed to hold out in the Baoruco Mountain Range for thirteen years, causing serious damage to the Spanish, Carib-held plantations and their Indian auxiliaries . Hearing of the seriousness of the revolt, Emperor Charles V (also King of Spain) sent Captain Francisco Barrionuevo to negotiate a peace treaty with the ever-increasing number of rebels. Two months later, after consultation with

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3652-437: A whole, in general, most Indigenous peoples prefer to be identified by the name of their specific nation, tribe, or band. Early settlers often adopted terms that some tribes used for each other, not realizing these were derogatory terms used by enemies. When discussing broader subsets of peoples, naming has often been based on shared language, region, or historical relationship. Many English exonyms have been used to refer to

3818-419: A whole, the Missouri is thirteenth largest, after the Mississippi, Mackenzie , St. Lawrence, Ohio, Columbia, Niagara, Yukon, Detroit, St. Clair, Fraser , Slave , and Koksoak . As the Missouri drains a predominantly semi-arid region, its discharge is much lower and more variable than other North American rivers of comparable length. Before the construction of dams, the river flooded twice each year – once in

3984-534: A whole. Since the 1970s, the word "Indigenous", which is capitalized when referring to people, has gradually emerged as a favored umbrella term. The capitalization is to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have cultures and societies that are equal to Europeans, Africans, and Asians. This has recently been acknowledged in the AP Stylebook . Some consider it improper to refer to Indigenous people as "Indigenous Americans" or to append any colonial nationality to

4150-901: Is a river in the Central and Mountain West regions of the United States . The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana , then flows east and south for 2,341 miles (3,767 km) before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis , Missouri . The river drains semi-arid watershed of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 km ), which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although

4316-533: Is a common term, though nativos or pueblos nativos ('native peoples') may also be heard; moreover, aborigen ('aborigine') is used in Argentina and pueblos originarios ('original peoples') is common in Chile . In Brazil, indígenas and povos originários ('Indigenous peoples') are common formal-sounding designations, while índio ('Indian') is still the more often heard term (the noun for

4482-416: Is an arduous task to assign an operational definition and systematically collect data when studying IHT. Many of the studies that incorporate IHT measure it in different ways, making it hard to compile data and review it holistically. This is an important point that provides context for the following studies that attempt to understand the relationship between IHT and potential adverse health impacts. Some of

4648-551: Is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration and the place(s) of origin in Eurasia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear. The traditional theory is that Ancient Beringians moved when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation , following herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between

4814-602: Is joined by the Gallatin a mile (1.6 km) downstream. It then passes through Canyon Ferry Lake , a reservoir west of the Big Belt Mountains . Issuing from the mountains near Cascade , the river flows northeast to the city of Great Falls , where it drops over the Great Falls of the Missouri , a series of five substantial waterfalls. It then winds east through a scenic region of canyons and badlands known as

4980-563: Is measured to the hydrologic source, regardless of naming convention. The main stem of the Kansas River, for example, is 148 miles (238 km) long. However, including the longest headwaters tributaries, the 453-mile (729 km) Republican River and the 156-mile (251 km) Arikaree River , brings the total length to 749 miles (1,205 km). Similar naming issues are encountered with the Platte River, whose longest tributary,

5146-464: Is sparsely populated. However, many northwestern cities, such as Billings, Montana , are among the fastest growing in the Missouri basin. With more than 170,000 square miles (440,000 km ) under the plow, the Missouri River watershed includes roughly one-fourth of all the agricultural land in the United States, providing more than a third of the country's wheat, flax, barley, and oats. However, only 11,000 square miles (28,000 km ) of farmland in

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5312-782: The American Fur Company founded Fort Union at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Fort Union gradually became the main headquarters for the fur trade in the upper Missouri basin. Fur trapping activities in the early 19th century encompassed nearly all of the Rocky Mountains on both the eastern and western slopes. Trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, St. Louis Missouri Fur Company, American Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company , North West Company and other outfits worked thousands of streams in

5478-570: The Archaic period of North American cultures. Technology had advanced to the point where pottery had started to become common and the small-scale felling of trees had become feasible. Concurrently, the Archaic Indigenous peoples began using fire in a controlled manner. They carried out the intentional burning of vegetation to mimic the effects of natural fires that tended to clear forest understories. It made travel easier and facilitated

5644-713: The Bighorn , in southern Montana. Although the business started small, it quickly grew into a thriving trade. Lisa's men started construction of Fort Raymond , which sat on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Yellowstone and Bighorn, in the fall of 1807. The fort would serve primarily as a trading post for bartering with the Native Americans for furs. This method was unlike that of the Pacific Northwest fur trade, which involved trappers hired by

5810-614: The Chiribaya to herd llamas . The vast majority of indigenous dog breeds in the Americas went extinct, due to being replaced by dogs of European origin. The Fuegian dog was a domesticated variation of the culpeo that was raised by several cultures in Tierra del Fuego , like the Selk'nam and the Yahgan . It was exterminated by Argentine and Chilean settlers, due to supposedly posing as

5976-576: The Columbia River system, which drains into the Pacific, had a similar latitude as the headwaters of the Missouri River, and it was widely believed that a connection or short portage existed between the two. However, Spain balked at the takeover, citing that they had never formally returned Louisiana to the French. Spanish authorities warned Lewis not to take the journey and forbade him from seeing

6142-771: The Great Plains , the Northwest Plateau , the Great Basin , Aridoamerica , the Gran Chaco and the Southern Cone . By domesticating horses, some tribes had great success: horses enabled them to expand their territories, exchange more goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game , such as bison . According to Erin McKenna and Scott L. Pratt, the Indigenous population of the Americas

6308-543: The Illinoian ) glaciation diverted the Missouri River southeastward toward its present confluence with the Mississippi and caused it to integrate into a single river system that cuts across the regional slope. In western Montana, the Missouri River is thought to have once flowed north then east around the Bear Paw Mountains . Sapphires are found in some spots along the river in western Montana. Advances of

6474-503: The Inca Civil War of 1529–1532. Smallpox was only the first epidemic. Typhus (probably) in 1546, influenza and smallpox together in 1558, smallpox again in 1589, diphtheria in 1614, and measles in 1618—all ravaged the remains of Inca culture. Smallpox killed millions of native inhabitants of Mexico. Unintentionally introduced at Veracruz with the arrival of Pánfilo de Narváez on 23 April 1520, smallpox ravaged Mexico in

6640-518: The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile . Any archaeological evidence of coastal occupation during the last Ice Age would now have been covered by the sea level rise , up to a hundred metres since then. While technically referring to the era before Christopher Columbus ' voyages of 1492 to 1504, in practice

6806-549: The Laurentide Ice Sheet and spread rapidly southward, occupying both North and South America by 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. The earliest populations in the Americas, before roughly 10,000 years ago, are known as Paleo-Indians . Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been linked to Siberian populations by proposed linguistic factors , the distribution of blood types , and in genetic composition as reflected by molecular data, such as DNA . While there

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6972-823: The Menominee of Wisconsin—suggest that longstanding "sacred values" may represent a summary of sustainable millennial traditions. Numerous Native American dog breeds have been used by the people of the Americas, such as the Canadian Eskimo dog , the Carolina dog , and the Chihuahua . Some indigenous peoples in the Great Plains used dogs for pulling travois , while others like the Tahltan bear dog were bred to hunt larger game. Some Andean cultures also bred

7138-454: The Mound builders , stayed along the Missouri, becoming the ancestors of the later Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Indigenous peoples of North America who have lived along the Missouri have historically had access to ample food, water, and shelter. Many migratory animals naturally inhabit the plains area. Before they were hunted by colonists and Native Americans, these animals, such as

7304-713: The Niobrara River and many smaller tributaries from the southwest. It then proceeds to form the boundary of South Dakota and Nebraska and is joined by the James River from the north. At Sioux City the Big Sioux River comes in from the north, after which the Missouri forms the Iowa –Nebraska boundary. It flows south to the city of Omaha where it receives its longest tributary, the Platte River , from

7470-551: The North Platte River , is more than twice as long as its mainstream. The Missouri's headwaters above Three Forks extend much farther upstream than the main stem. Measured to the farthest source at Brower's Spring, the Jefferson River is 298 miles (480 km) long. Thus measured to its highest headwaters, the Missouri River stretches for 2,639 miles (4,247 km). When combined with the lower Mississippi,

7636-544: The Osage and Gasconade Rivers from the south downstream of Jefferson City . The river then rounds the northern side of St. Louis to join the Mississippi River on the border between Missouri and Illinois . There is only one river with a personality, a sense of humor, and a woman's caprice; a river that goes traveling sidewise, that interferes in politics, rearranges geography, and dabbles in real estate;

7802-530: The Otoe , Missouria , Omaha , Ponca , Dakota , Lakota , Arikara , Hidatsa , Mandan , Assiniboine , Gros Ventres and Blackfeet . In this pre-colonial and early-colonial era, the Missouri river was used as a path of trade and transport, and the river and its tributaries often formed territorial boundaries. Most of the Indigenous peoples in the region at that time had semi-nomadic cultures, with many tribes maintaining different summer and winter camps. However,

7968-495: The Pacific Northwest region, provided a foundation for future explorers and emigrants. They also negotiated relations with numerous Native American tribes and wrote extensive reports on the climate, ecology and geology of the region. Many present-day names of geographic features in the upper Missouri basin originated from their expedition. As early as the 18th century, fur trappers entered the extreme northern basin of

8134-664: The Treaty of Paris , France ceded its Canadian possessions to the British, gaining Louisiana from the Spanish in return. Initially, the Spanish did not extensively explore the Missouri and let French traders continue their activities under license. However, this ended after news of incursions by trappers working for the Hudson's Bay Company in the upper Missouri River watershed was brought back following an expedition by Jacques D'Eglise in

8300-418: The buffalo , provided meat, clothing, and other everyday items; there were also great riparian areas in the river's floodplain that provided habitat for herbs and other staple foods. No written records from the tribes and peoples of the pre-European contact period exist because they did not yet use writing. According to the writings of early colonists, some of the major tribes along the Missouri River included

8466-538: The fluvial Arikaree Group were deposited between 29 and 19 million years ago. The Miocene -age Ogallala and the slightly younger Pliocene -age Broadwater Formation deposited atop the Arikaree Group, and are formed from material eroded off of the Rocky Mountains during a time of increased generation of topographic relief; these formations stretch from the Rocky Mountains nearly to the Iowa border and give

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8632-726: The headwaters of the Missouri River first rose in the Laramide Orogeny , a mountain-building episode that occurred from around 70 to 45 million years ago (the end of the Mesozoic through the early Cenozoic ). This orogeny uplifted Cretaceous rocks along the western side of the Western Interior Seaway , a vast shallow sea that stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and deposited

8798-418: The history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European and African influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original arrival in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the early modern period . The Norte Chico civilization (in present-day Peru) is one of the defining six original civilizations of the world, arising independently around

8964-448: The residential school ancestry studies ask respondents if their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or "elders from their community" went to a residential school to understand if family or community history in residential schools is associated with negative health outcomes. In a comprehensive review of the research literature, Joseph Gone and colleagues compiled and compared outcomes for studies using these IHT measures relative to

9130-431: The " West Indies " (or " Antilles "), a name that is still used to describe the islands. This led to the blanket term "Indies" and "Indians" ( Spanish : indios ; Portuguese : índios ; French : indiens ; Dutch : indianen ) for the Indigenous inhabitants, which implied some kind of ethnic or cultural unity among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This unifying concept, codified in law, religion, and politics,

9296-472: The "April Rise" or " Spring Fresh ", with the melting of snow on the plains of the watershed, and in the "June Rise", caused by snowmelt and summer rainstorms in the Rocky Mountains. The latter was far more destructive, with the river increasing to over ten times its normal discharge in some years. The Missouri's discharge is affected by over 17,000 reservoirs with an aggregate capacity of some 141 million acre-feet (174 km ). By providing flood control,

9462-439: The 1520s, possibly killing over 150,000 in Tenochtitlán (the heartland of the Aztec Empire) alone, and aiding in the victory of Hernán Cortés over the Aztec Empire at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) in 1521. There are many factors as to why Indigenous peoples suffered such immense losses from Afro-Eurasian diseases. Many Old World diseases, like cow pox, are acquired from domesticated animals that are not indigenous to

9628-473: The 16th century were Constantinople and Paris with 300,000 and 200,000 inhabitants respectively. The population in London, Madrid, and Rome hardly exceeded 50,000 people. In 1523, right around the time of the Spanish conquest, the entire population in the country of England was just under three million people. This fact speaks to the level of sophistication, agriculture, governmental procedure, and rule of law that existed in Tenochtitlan, needed to govern over such

9794-453: The 250,000 Taínos of Hispaniola , represented the dominant culture in the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. Within thirty years about 70% of the Taínos had died. They had no immunity to European diseases, so outbreaks of measles and smallpox ravaged their population. One such outbreak occurred in a camp of enslaved Africans, where smallpox spread to the nearby Taíno population and reduced their numbers by 50%. Increasing punishment of

9960-408: The American West and a flood of settlers, farmers, ranchers, adventurers, hopefuls, financially bereft, and entrepreneurs took their place. The river roughly defined the American frontier in the 19th century, particularly downstream from Kansas City, where it takes a sharp eastern turn into the heart of the state of Missouri, an area known as the Boonslick . As first area settled by Europeans along

10126-462: The Americas are defined by cultural identification and kinship rather than ancestry or race , mestizos are typically not counted among the Indigenous population unless they speak an Indigenous language or identify with a specific Indigenous culture. Additionally, many individuals of wholly Indigenous descent who do not follow Indigenous traditions or speak an Indigenous language have been classified or self-identify as mestizo due to assimilation into

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10292-746: The Americas as such. These populations exhibit significant diversity; some Indigenous peoples were historically hunter-gatherers , while others practiced agriculture and aquaculture . Various Indigenous societies developed complex social structures , including pre-contact monumental architecture, organized cities , city-states , chiefdoms , states , kingdoms , republics , confederacies , and empires . These societies possessed varying levels of knowledge in fields such as engineering , architecture , mathematics , astronomy , writing , physics , medicine , agriculture , irrigation , geology , mining , metallurgy , art , sculpture , and goldsmithing . Indigenous peoples continue to inhabit many regions of

10458-416: The Americas have been more vocal about how they want to be addressed, pushing to suppress the use of terms widely considered to be obsolete, inaccurate, or racist . During the latter half of the 20th century and the rise of the Indian rights movement , the United States federal government responded by proposing the use of the term " Native American ", to recognize the primacy of Indigenous peoples' tenure in

10624-899: The Americas, with significant populations in countries such as Bolivia , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Ecuador , Guatemala , Mexico , Peru , and the United States . There are at least 1,000 different indigenous languages spoken across the Americas, with 574 federally recognized tribes in the US alone. Some languages, including Quechua , Arawak , Aymara , Guaraní , Mayan , and Nahuatl , have millions of speakers and are recognized as official by governments in Bolivia , Peru , Paraguay , and Greenland . Indigenous peoples, whether residing in rural or urban areas, often maintain aspects of their cultural practices, including religion , social organization , and subsistence practices. Over time, these cultures have evolved, preserving traditional customs while adapting to modern needs. Some Indigenous groups remain relatively isolated from Western culture , with

10790-399: The Americas. European populations had adapted to these diseases, and built up resistance, over many generations. Many of the Old World diseases that were brought over to the Americas were diseases, like yellow fever , that were relatively manageable if infected as a child, but were deadly if infected as an adult. Children could often survive the disease, resulting in immunity to the disease for

10956-454: The Audencia of Santo Domingo, Enriquillo was offered any part of the island to live in peace. The Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513 , were the first codified set of laws governing the behavior of Spanish settlers in America, particularly concerning Indigenous peoples. The laws forbade the maltreatment of them and endorsed their conversion to Catholicism . The Spanish crown found it difficult to enforce these laws in distant colonies. Epidemic disease

11122-404: The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan . The watershed's largest city is Denver , Colorado, with a population of more than six hundred thousand. Denver is the main city of the Front Range Urban Corridor whose cities had a combined population of over four million in 2005, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Missouri River basin. Other major population centers – mostly in

11288-472: The English and Spanish lexicons. The South American highlands became a center of early agriculture. Genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species suggests that the potato has a single origin in the area of southern Peru , from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex. Over 99% of all modern cultivated potatoes worldwide are descendants of a subspecies indigenous to south-central Chile , Solanum tuberosum ssp. tuberosum , where it

11454-426: The Europeans began the human trafficking of massive numbers of enslaved Western and Central African people to the Americas. Like Indigenous peoples, these African people, newly exposed to European diseases, lacked any inherited resistance to the diseases of Europe. In 1520, an African who had been infected with smallpox had arrived in Yucatán. By 1558, the disease had spread throughout South America and had arrived at

11620-508: The French colonial authorities since 1706, when he deserted his post as commandant of Fort Detroit after poorly handling an attack by the Ottawa that resulted in thirty-one deaths. However, his reputation was enhanced in 1720 when the Pawnee – who had earlier been befriended by Bourgmont – massacred the Spanish Villasur expedition near present-day Columbus, Nebraska , on the Missouri River, temporarily ending Spanish encroachment on French Louisiana. Bourgmont established Fort Orleans ,

11786-418: The Great Plains much of their gentle but persistent eastward tilt, and also constitute a major aquifer. Immediately before the Quaternary Ice Age , the Missouri River was likely split into three segments: an upper portion that drained northwards into Hudson Bay, and middle and lower sections that flowed eastward down the regional slope. As the Earth plunged into the Ice Age, a pre-Illinoian (or possibly

11952-546: The Gulf at the confluence of the Arkansas River with the Mississippi. In 1682, France expanded its territorial claims in North America to include land on the western side of the Mississippi River, which included the lower portion of the Missouri. However, the Missouri itself remained formally unexplored until Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont commanded an expedition in 1714 that reached at least as far as

12118-401: The Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some of these names were based on foreign language terms used by earlier explorers and colonists, while others resulted from the colonists' attempts to translate or transliterate endonyms from the native languages. Other terms arose during periods of conflict between the colonists and Indigenous peoples. Since the late 20th century, Indigenous peoples in

12284-544: The Indigenous population of North America in the first hundred years after the arrival of Europeans. Some 90 percent of the native population near Massachusetts Bay Colony died of smallpox in an epidemic in 1617–1619. In 1633, in Fort Orange (New Netherland) , the Native Americans there were exposed to smallpox because of contact with Europeans. As it had done elsewhere, the virus wiped out entire population groups of Native Americans. It reached Lake Ontario in 1636, and

12450-796: The Indigenous-European mixed-race mestizos (or caboclos in Brazil) of Hispanic America who, with their larger population (in most Latin American countries constituting either outright majorities, pluralities, or at the least large minorities), identify largely as a new ethnic group distinct from both Europeans and Indigenous, but still considering themselves a subset of the European-derived Hispanic or Brazilian peoplehood in culture and ethnicity ( cf. ladinos ). Among Spanish-speaking countries , indígenas or pueblos indígenas ('Indigenous peoples')

12616-664: The Kansas River and its tributary the Republican River as well as pair of smaller Colorado streams, Big Sandy Creek and the South Platte River , to near Denver. The gold rushes precipitated the decline of the Bozeman Trail as a popular emigration route, as it passed through land held by often-hostile Native Americans. Safer paths were blazed to the Great Salt Lake near Corinne, Utah , during

12782-638: The MacKay and Evans map of the Missouri, although Lewis eventually managed to gain access to it. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their famed expedition in 1804 with a party of thirty-three people in three boats. Although they became the first Europeans to travel the entire length of the Missouri and reach the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia, they found no trace of the Northwest Passage. The maps made by Lewis and Clark, especially those of

12948-842: The Missouri Breaks, receiving the Marias River from the west then widening into the Fort Peck Lake reservoir a few miles above the confluence with the Musselshell River . Farther on, the river passes through the Fort Peck Dam , and immediately downstream, the Milk River joins from the north. Flowing eastward through the plains of eastern Montana, the Missouri receives the Poplar River from

13114-822: The Missouri River in the hopes of finding populations of beaver and river otter , the sale of whose pelts drove the thriving North American fur trade . They came from many different places – some from the Canadian fur corporations at Hudson Bay, some from the Pacific Northwest ( see also : Maritime fur trade ), and some from the midwestern United States. Most did not stay in the area for long, as they failed to find significant resources. The first glowing reports of country rich with thousands of game animals came in 1806 when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned from their two-year expedition. Their journals described lands amply stocked with thousands of buffalo, beaver, and river otter; and also an abundant population of sea otters on

13280-533: The Missouri River, with most of the larger ones coming in as the river draws close to the mouth. Most rivers and streams in the Missouri River basin flow from west to east, following the incline of the Great Plains; however, some eastern tributaries such as the James, Big Sioux and Grand River systems flow from north to south. The Missouri's largest tributaries by runoff are the Yellowstone in Montana and Wyoming,

13446-449: The Missouri and its headwaters form part of the fourth-longest river system in the world , at 3,745 miles (6,027 km). By discharge , the Missouri is the ninth largest river of the United States, after the Mississippi, St. Lawrence , Ohio , Columbia, Niagara , Yukon , Detroit , and St. Clair . The latter two, however, are sometimes considered part of a strait between Lake Huron and Lake Erie . Among rivers of North America as

13612-710: The Missouri flowed in a new course along the south side of the Bearpaws, and the lower part of the Milk River tributary took over the original main channel. The Missouri's nickname, the "Big Muddy", was inspired by its enormous loads of sediment or silt – some of the largest of any North American river. In its pre-development state, the river transported some 175 to 320 million short tons (159 to 290 million metric tons) per year. The construction of dams and levees has drastically reduced this to 20 to 25 million short tons (18 to 23 million metric tons) in

13778-399: The Missouri to start. As the 1830s drew to a close, the fur industry slowly began to die as silk replaced beaver fur as a desirable clothing item. By this time, also, the beaver population of streams in the Rocky Mountains had been decimated by intense hunting. Furthermore, frequent Native American attacks on trading posts made it dangerous for employees of the fur companies. In some regions,

13944-418: The Missouri watershed as well as the neighboring Columbia, Colorado, Arkansas, and Saskatchewan river systems. During this period, the trappers, also called mountain men , blazed trails through the wilderness that would later form the paths pioneers and settlers would travel by into the West. Transport of the thousands of beaver pelts required ships, providing one of the first large motives for river transport on

14110-404: The Pacific Northwest coast. In 1807, explorer Manuel Lisa organized an expedition which would lead to the explosive growth of the fur trade in the upper Missouri River country. Lisa and his crew traveled up the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, trading manufactured items in return for furs from local Native American tribes, and established a fort at the confluence of the Yellowstone and a tributary,

14276-461: The Pacific Ocean. In late June, Jolliet and Marquette became the first documented European discoverers of the Missouri River, which according to their journals was in full flood. "I never saw anything more terrific," Jolliet wrote, "a tangle of entire trees from the mouth of the Pekistanoui [Missouri] with such impetuosity that one could not attempt to cross it without great danger. The commotion

14442-665: The Plata basin. Colonist violence towards Indigenous peoples accelerated the loss of lives. European colonists perpetrated massacres on the Indigenous peoples and enslaved them. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), the North American Indian Wars of the 19th century had a known death toll of about 19,000 Europeans and 30,000 Native Americans, and an estimated total death toll of 45,000 Native Americans. The first Indigenous group encountered by Columbus,

14608-452: The Platte and Yellowstone Rivers. Elevations in the watershed vary widely, ranging from just over 400 feet (120 m) at the Missouri's mouth to the 14,293-foot (4,357 m) summit of Mount Lincoln in central Colorado. The river drops 8,626 feet (2,629 m) from Brower's Spring, the farthest source. Although the plains of the watershed have extremely little local vertical relief,

14774-577: The Platte in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, and the Kansas – Republican / Smoky Hill and Osage in Kansas and Missouri. Each of these tributaries drains an area greater than 50,000 square miles (130,000 km ) or has an average discharge greater than 5,000 cu ft/s (140 m /s). The Yellowstone River has the highest discharge, even though the Platte is longer and drains a larger area. In fact,

14940-428: The Platte provided an abundant and reliable source of water for the pioneers as they headed west. Covered wagons, popularly referred to as prairie schooners , provided the primary means of transport until the beginning of regular boat service on the river in the 1850s. During the 1860s, gold strikes in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and northern Utah attracted another wave of hopefuls to the region. Although some freight

15106-594: The Rockies in Montana, Idaho and western Wyoming. The Columbia, Missouri and Colorado River watersheds meet at Three Waters Mountain in Wyoming's Wind River Range . South of there, the Missouri basin is bordered on the west by the drainage of the Green River , a tributary of the Colorado, then on the south by the mainstem of the Colorado. Both the Colorado and Columbia Rivers flow to the Pacific Ocean. However,

15272-639: The Rockies provide the majority of the flow in the Missouri and its tributaries. The Missouri and many of its tributaries cross the Great Plains, flowing over or cutting into the Ogallala Group and older mid-Cenozoic sedimentary rocks. The lowest major Cenozoic unit, the White River Formation , was deposited between roughly 35 and 29 million years ago and consists of claystone , sandstone , limestone , and conglomerate . Channel sandstones and finer-grained overbank deposits of

15438-419: The Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado eastward through the Great Plains. An early expedition led by Robert Stuart from 1812 to 1813 proved the Platte impossible to navigate by the dugout canoes they used, let alone the large sidewheelers and sternwheelers that would later ply the Missouri in increasing numbers. One explorer remarked that the Platte was "too thick to drink, too thin to plow". Nevertheless,

15604-748: The South-Asian nationality being indiano ), but for the past 10 years has been considered offensive and pejorative. Aborígene and nativo are rarely used in Brazil in Indigenous-specific contexts (e.g., aborígene is usually understood as the ethnonym for Indigenous Australians ). The Spanish and Portuguese equivalents to Indian , nevertheless, could be used to mean any hunter-gatherer or full-blooded Indigenous person, particularly to continents other than Europe or Africa—for example, indios filipinos . Indigenous peoples of

15770-474: The Taínos for revolting against forced labor, despite measures put in place by the encomienda , which included religious education and protection from warring tribes, eventually led to the last great Taíno rebellion (1511–1529). Following years of mistreatment, the Taínos began to adopt suicidal behaviors, with women aborting or killing their infants and men jumping from cliffs or ingesting untreated cassava ,

15936-568: The United States are commonly known as Native Americans , Indians, as well as Alaska Natives . The term "Indian" is still used in some communities and remains in use in the official names of many institutions and businesses in Indian Country . The various nations, tribes, and bands of Indigenous peoples of the Americas have differing preferences in terminology for themselves. While there are regional and generational variations in which umbrella terms are preferred for Indigenous peoples as

16102-419: The United States during the 19th century. The growth of the fur trade in the early 19th century laid much of the groundwork as trappers explored the region and blazed trails. Pioneers headed west en masse beginning in the 1830s, first by covered wagon , then by the growing numbers of steamboats that entered service on the river. Conflict between settlers and Native Americans in the watershed led to some of

16268-591: The Yellowstone River, which was called Roche Jaune ("Yellow Rock") by the French. Although MacKay and Evans failed to accomplish their original goal of reaching the Pacific, they did create the first accurate map of the upper Missouri River. In 1795, the young United States and Spain signed Pinckney's Treaty , which recognized American rights to navigate the Mississippi River and store goods for export in New Orleans. Three years later, Spain revoked

16434-462: The Yellowstone's flow is about 13,800 cu ft/s (390 m /s) – accounting for sixteen percent of total runoff in the Missouri basin and nearly double that of the Platte. On the other end of the scale is the tiny Roe River in Montana, which at 201 feet (61 m) long is one of the world's shortest rivers. The table on the right lists the ten longest tributaries of the Missouri, along with their respective catchment areas and flows. Length

16600-409: The annual flow of the Mississippi past St. Louis, and as much as 70 percent in certain droughts. In 1990, the Missouri River watershed was home to about 12 million people. This included the entire population of the U.S. state of Nebraska, parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, and small southern portions of

16766-625: The bankruptcy. Employees noted that Bain had loaded the company with debt while earning profits ($ 58.4 million). At the time of its bankruptcy it said it owed $ 553.9 million in debts against $ 395.2 million in assets. In 2002 it was revealed the company had underfunded the pension for employees by $ 44 million. GS Steel derives its name from Georgetown Steel which operates a steel plant in Georgetown, South Carolina . The South Carolina and Missouri operations were combined by Bain. The South Carolina plant closed in 2003. That plant reopened in 2003 with

16932-431: The basin is irrigated. A further 281,000 square miles (730,000 km ) of the basin is devoted to the raising of livestock, mainly cattle. Forested areas of the watershed, mostly second-growth , total about 43,700 square miles (113,000 km ). Urban areas, on the other hand, comprise less than 13,000 square miles (34,000 km ) of land. Most built-up areas are along the main stem and a few major tributaries, including

17098-456: The basin relied heavily on the bison as a food source, and their hides and bones served to create other household items. In time, the species came to benefit from the indigenous peoples' periodic controlled burnings of the grasslands surrounding the Missouri to clear out old and dead growth. The large bison population of the region gave rise to the term great bison belt , an area of rich annual grasslands that extended from Alaska to Mexico along

17264-410: The basin. As one of the continent's most significant river systems, the Missouri's drainage basin borders on many other major watersheds of the United States and Canada. The Continental Divide , running along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, forms most of the western border of the Missouri watershed. The Clark Fork and Snake River , both part of the Columbia River basin, drain the area west of

17430-704: The capital of North Dakota, where the Heart River joins from the west. It slows into the Lake Oahe reservoir just before the Cannonball River confluence. While it continues south, eventually reaching Oahe Dam in South Dakota , the Grand , Moreau and Cheyenne Rivers all join the Missouri from the west. The Missouri makes a bend to the southeast as it winds through the Great Plains, receiving

17596-585: The center of Native American wealth and trade lay along the Missouri River in the Dakotas region on its great bend south. A large cluster of walled Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara villages situated on bluffs and islands of the river was home to thousands, and later served as a market and trading post used by early French and British explorers and fur traders. Following the introduction of horses to Missouri River tribes, possibly from feral European-introduced populations, Natives' way of life changed dramatically. The use of

17762-401: The chiefs back to North America. Fort Orleans was either abandoned or its small contingent massacred by Native Americans in 1726. The French and Indian War erupted when territorial disputes between France and Great Britain in North America reached a head in 1754. By 1763, France's army in North America had been defeated by a combined British-American force and was forced to sue for peace. In

17928-680: The contact and colonization period and were documented in historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Mayan, Olmec, Mixtec, Aztec , and Nahua peoples , had their written languages and records. However, the European colonists of the time worked to eliminate non-Christian beliefs and burned many pre-Columbian written records. Only a few documents remained hidden and survived, leaving contemporary historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge. According to both Indigenous and European accounts and documents, American civilizations before and at

18094-462: The continental ice sheets diverted the river and its tributaries, causing them to pool up into large temporary lakes such as Glacial Lakes Great Falls , Musselshell and others. As the lakes rose, the water in them often spilled across adjacent local drainage divides, creating now-abandoned channels and coulees including the Shonkin Sag , 100 miles (160 km) long. When the glaciers retreated,

18260-480: The district and within 10 years 30 other manufacturers followed it with the enclaves adopting the English industrial town names of Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester as levees were built to protect it. It was acquired by Armco Steel in 1930 which expanded it in 1945. At its peak it was one of Kansas City's largest employers with more than 4,500 employees. Operating as Armco Worldwide Grinding System , it

18426-504: The dominant Hispanic culture . In recent years, the self-identified Indigenous population in many countries has increased as individuals reclaim their heritage amid rising Indigenous-led movements for self-determination and social justice . Application of the term " Indian " originated with Christopher Columbus , who, in his search for India , thought that he had arrived in the East Indies . The islands came to be known as

18592-544: The early 1790s. In 1795 the Spanish chartered the Company of Discoverers and Explorers of the Missouri, popularly referred to as the "Missouri Company", and offered a reward for the first person to reach the Pacific Ocean via the Missouri. In 1794 and 1795 expeditions led by Jean-Baptiste Truteau and Antoine Simon Lecuyer de la Jonchšre did not even make it as far north as the Mandan villages in central North Dakota. Arguably

18758-430: The eastern flank of the Continental Divide. However, after the arrival of Europeans in North America, both the bison and the Native Americans saw a rapid decline in population. Massive over-hunting for sport by colonists eliminated bison populations east of the Mississippi River by 1833 and reduced the numbers in the Missouri basin to a mere few hundred. Foreign diseases brought by settlers, such as smallpox , raged across

18924-486: The eastern terminus of the First transcontinental railroad via a ferry ride across the Missouri between Council Bluffs, Iowa , and Omaha. The Hannibal Bridge became the first bridge to cross the Missouri River in 1869, and its location was a major reason why Kansas City became the largest city on the river upstream from its mouth at St. Louis. True to the then-ideal of Manifest Destiny , over 500,000 people set out from

19090-595: The end of the Pleistocene . During the end of the last glacial period , large migration of humans were taking place, such as those via the Bering land bridge between the Americas and Eurasia. Over centuries, the Missouri River formed one of these main migration paths. Most migratory groups that passed through the area eventually settled in the Ohio Valley and the lower Mississippi River Valley, but many, including

19256-423: The first European settlement of any kind on the Missouri River, near present-day Brunswick, Missouri , in 1723. The following year Bourgmont led an expedition to enlist Comanche support against the Spanish, who continued to show interest in taking over the Missouri. In 1725 Bourgmont brought the chiefs of several Missouri River tribes to visit France. There he was raised to the rank of nobility and did not accompany

19422-630: The first centuries of European colonization. Most scholars estimate a pre-colonization population of around 50 million, with other scholars arguing for an estimate of 100 million. Estimates reach as high as 145 million. Epidemics ravaged the Americas with diseases, such as smallpox , measles , and cholera , which the early colonists brought from Europe. The spread of infectious diseases was slow initially, as most Europeans were not actively or visibly infected, due to inherited immunity from generations of exposure to these diseases in Europe. This changed when

19588-514: The gold rush period, which led to the large-scale settlement of the Rocky Mountains region and eastern Great Basin . Indigenous peoples of the Americas In the Americas , indigenous peoples comprise the two continents' pre-Columbian inhabitants prior to European settlement in the 15th century, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with the pre-Columbian population of

19754-512: The growth of herbs and berry-producing plants, which were important both for food and for medicines. In the Mississippi River valley, Europeans noted that Native Americans managed groves of nut and fruit trees not far from villages and towns and their gardens and agricultural fields. They would have used prescribed burning farther away, in forest and prairie areas. Many crops first domesticated by Indigenous peoples are now produced and used globally, most notably maize (or "corn") arguably

19920-435: The health outcomes of Indigenous peoples. The study defined negative health outcomes to include such concepts as anxiety , suicidal ideation , suicide attempts , polysubstance abuse , PTSD , depression , binge eating , anger, and sexual abuse. The connection between IHT and health conditions is complicated because of the difficult nature of measuring IHT, the unknown directionality of IHT and health outcomes, and because

20086-525: The horse allowed them to travel greater distances, and thus facilitated hunting, communications, warfare, the Siouxoan genocide and expulsion of many tribes,and the abundance of trade. Once, tens of millions of American bison (commonly called buffalo), one of the keystone species of the Great Plains and the Ohio Valley, roamed the plains of the Missouri River basin. Most Native American nations in

20252-570: The imposition and restriction of Indigenous peoples and cultures by the Canadian Government. The terms "Native" and " Eskimo " are generally regarded as disrespectful (in Canada), and so are rarely used unless specifically required. While "Indigenous peoples" is the preferred term, many individuals or communities may choose to describe their identity using a different term. The Métis people of Canada can be contrasted, for instance, to

20418-477: The industry continued well into the 1840s, but in others such as the Platte River valley, declines of the beaver population contributed to an earlier demise. The fur trade finally disappeared in the Great Plains around 1850, with the primary center of industry shifting to the Mississippi Valley and central Canada. Despite the demise of the once-prosperous trade, however, its legacy led to the opening of

20584-452: The land rises about 10 feet per mile (1.9 m/km) from east to west. The elevation is less than 500 feet (150 m) at the eastern border of the watershed, but is over 3,000 feet (910 m) above sea level in many places at the base of the Rockies. The Missouri's drainage basin has highly variable weather and rainfall patterns, Overall, the watershed is defined by a continental climate with warm, wet summers and harsh, cold winters. Most of

20750-561: The land, decimating Native American populations. Left without their primary source of sustenance, many of the remaining indigenous people were forced onto resettlement areas and reservations, often at gunpoint. In May 1673, the French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet and the French explorer Jacques Marquette left the settlement of St. Ignace on Lake Huron and traveled down the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers, aiming to reach

20916-707: The lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans. The 1775–82 North American smallpox epidemic and the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic brought devastation and drastic population depletion among the Plains Indians . In 1832 the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans ( The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832 ). The Indigenous peoples in Brazil declined from

21082-679: The lower Missouri valley is now a populous and highly productive agricultural and industrial region, heavy development has taken its toll on wildlife and fish populations as well as water quality. From the Rocky Mountains, three streams rise to form the headwaters of the Missouri River: The Missouri River officially starts at the confluence of the Jefferson and Madison in Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks, Montana , and

21248-430: The lowest was 41,690 cu ft/s (1,181 m /s) in 2006. Extremes of the flow vary even further. The largest discharge ever recorded was over 750,000 cu ft/s (21,000 m /s) on July 31, 1993, during a historic flood . The lowest, a mere 602 cu ft/s (17.0 m /s) – caused by the formation of an ice dam – was measured on December 23, 1963. The Rocky Mountains of southwestern Montana at

21414-476: The methodologies to measure IHT include a "Historical Losses Scale" (HLS), "Historical Losses Associated Symptoms Scale" (HLASS), and residential school ancestry studies. HLS uses a survey format that includes "12 kinds of historical losses", such as loss of language and loss of land and asks participants how often they think about those losses. The HLASS includes 12 emotional reactions, and asks participants how they feel when they think about these losses. Lastly,

21580-887: The most important crop in the world. Other significant crops include cassava ; chia ; squash (pumpkins, zucchini, marrow , acorn squash , butternut squash ); the pinto bean , Phaseolus beans including most common beans , tepary beans , and lima beans ; tomatoes ; potatoes ; sweet potatoes ; avocados ; peanuts ; cocoa beans (used to make chocolate ); vanilla ; strawberries ; pineapples ; peppers (species and varieties of Capsicum , including bell peppers , jalapeños , paprika , and chili peppers ); sunflower seeds ; rubber ; brazilwood ; chicle ; tobacco ; coca ; blueberries , cranberries , and some species of cotton . Studies of contemporary Indigenous environmental management—including agro-forestry practices among Itza Maya in Guatemala and hunting and fishing among

21746-546: The most longstanding and violent of the American Indian Wars . During the 20th century, the Missouri River basin was extensively developed for irrigation, flood control, and the generation of hydroelectric power . Fifteen dams impound the main stem of the river, with hundreds more on tributaries. Meanders have been cut off and the river channelized to improve navigation, reducing its length by almost 200 miles (320 km) from pre-development times. Although

21912-534: The most successful of the Missouri Company expeditions was that of James MacKay and John Evans . The two set out along the Missouri, and established Fort Charles about 20 miles (32 km) south of present-day Sioux City as a winter camp in 1795. At the Mandan villages in North Dakota, they forcefully expelled several British traders, and while talking to the populace they pinpointed the location of

22078-436: The mouth of the Platte River. It is unclear exactly how far Bourgmont traveled beyond there; he described the blond-haired Mandans in his journals, so it is likely he reached as far as their villages in present-day North Dakota. Later that year, Bourgmont published The Route To Be Taken To Ascend The Missouri River , the first known document to use the name "Missouri River"; many of the names he gave to tributaries, mostly from

22244-442: The mouth, is 21,920 cu ft/s (621 m /s). This is from a drainage area of 186,400 sq mi (483,000 km ), or 35% of the total river basin. At Kansas City, 366.1 miles (589.2 km) from the mouth, the river's average flow is 55,400 cu ft/s (1,570 m /s). The river here drains about 484,100 sq mi (1,254,000 km ), representing about 91% of the entire basin. The lowermost gage with

22410-458: The nation. As may be expected among people of over 400 different cultures in the US alone, not all of the people intended to be described by this term have agreed on its use or adopted it. No single group naming convention has been accepted by all Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Most prefer to be addressed as people of their tribe or nations when not speaking about Native Americans/American Indians as

22576-505: The native tribes that lived along them, are still in use today. The expedition's discoveries eventually found their way to cartographer Guillaume Delisle , who used the information to create a map of the lower Missouri. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville requested that the French government bestow upon Bourgmont the Cross of St. Louis because of his "outstanding service to France". Bourgmont had in fact been in trouble with

22742-543: The north before crossing into North Dakota where the Yellowstone River , its greatest tributary by volume, joins from the southwest. At the confluence, the Yellowstone is actually the larger river. The Missouri then meanders east past Williston and into Lake Sakakawea , the reservoir formed by Garrison Dam . Below the dam the Missouri receives the Knife River from the west and flows south to Bismarck ,

22908-526: The one which produced the 1972 Black Hills flood through Rapid City, South Dakota . Winter temperatures in the northern and western portions of the basin typically drop to −20 °F (−28.9 °C) or lower every winter with extremes as low as −60 °F (−51.1 °C), while summer highs occasionally exceed 100 °F (37.8 °C) in all areas except the higher elevations of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. Extreme maxima — almost all prior to 1960 — have exceeded 115 °F (46.1 °C) in all US states in

23074-467: The present day. Much of this sediment is derived from the river's floodplain , also called the meander belt; every time the river changed course, it would erode tons of soil and rocks from its banks. However, damming and channeling the river has kept it from reaching its natural sediment sources along most of its course. Reservoirs along the Missouri trap roughly 36.4 million short tons (33.0 million metric tons) of sediment each year. Despite this,

23240-424: The reservoirs dramatically reduce peak flows and increase low flows. Evaporation from reservoirs significantly reduces the river's runoff, causing an annual loss of over 3 million acre-feet (3.7 km ) from mainstem reservoirs alone. The United States Geological Survey operates fifty-one stream gauges along the Missouri River. The river's average discharge at Bismarck, 1,314.5 miles (2,115.5 km) from

23406-774: The rest of their lives. But contact with adult populations without this childhood or inherited immunity would result in these diseases proving fatal. Colonization of the Caribbean led to the destruction of the Arawaks of the Lesser Antilles . Their culture was destroyed by 1650. Only 500 had survived by the year 1550, though the bloodlines continued through to the modern populace. In Amazonia, Indigenous societies weathered, and continue to suffer, centuries of colonization and genocide. Contact with European diseases such as smallpox and measles killed between 50 and 67 percent of

23572-640: The river it was largely populated by slave-owning southerners following the Boone's Lick Road . The major trails for the opening of the American West all have their starting points on the river, including the California , Mormon , Oregon , and Santa Fe trails. The first westward leg of the Pony Express was a ferry across the Missouri at St. Joseph, Missouri . Similarly, most emigrants arrived at

23738-493: The river still transports more than half the total silt that empties into the Gulf of Mexico; the Mississippi River Delta , formed by sediment deposits at the mouth of the Mississippi, constitutes a majority of sediments carried by the Missouri. Archaeological evidence, especially in Missouri, suggests that human beings first inhabited the watershed of the Missouri River between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago at

23904-498: The river town of Independence, Missouri , to their various destinations in the American West from the 1830s to the 1860s. These people had many reasons to embark on this strenuous year-long journey – economic crisis, and later gold strikes including the California Gold Rush , for example. For most, the route took them up the Missouri to Omaha, Nebraska, where they would set out along the Platte River , which flows from

24070-540: The same time as that of Egypt . Many later pre-Columbian civilizations achieved great complexity, with hallmarks that included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, engineering, astronomy, trade, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies . Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first significant European and African arrivals (ca. late 15th–early 16th centuries), and are known only through oral history and through archaeological investigations. Others were contemporary with

24236-453: The sediments that now underlie much of the drainage basin of the Missouri River. This Laramide uplift caused the sea to retreat and laid the framework for a vast drainage system of rivers flowing from the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains , the predecessor of the modern-day Mississippi watershed. The Laramide Orogeny is essential to modern Missouri River hydrology , as snow and ice melt from

24402-614: The size of the Canadian province of Quebec , the watershed encompasses most of the central Great Plains, stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River Valley in the east and from the southern extreme of western Canada to the border of the Arkansas River watershed. Compared with the Mississippi River above their confluence, the Missouri is twice as long and drains an area three times as large. The Missouri accounts for 45 percent of

24568-474: The term Indigenous people used in the various samples comprises a huge population of individuals with drastically different experiences and histories. That being said some studies such as Bombay, Matheson, and Anisman (2014), Elias et al. (2012), and Pearce et al. (2008) found that Indigenous respondents with a connection to residential schools have more negative health outcomes (e.g., suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and depression) than those who did not have

24734-497: The term because Indigenous cultures existed before European colonization. Indigenous groups have territorial claims that are different from modern national and international borders, and when labeled as part of a country, their traditional lands are not acknowledged. Some who have written guidelines consider it more appropriate to describe an Indigenous person as "living in" or "of" the Americas, rather than calling them "American"; or simply calling them "Indigenous" without any addition of

24900-569: The term usually includes the history of Indigenous cultures until Europeans either conquered or significantly influenced them. "Pre-Columbian" is used especially often in the context of discussing the pre-contact Mesoamerican Indigenous societies : Olmec ; Toltec ; Teotihuacano ' Zapotec ; Mixtec ; Aztec and Maya civilizations ; and the complex cultures of the Andes : Inca Empire , Moche culture , Muisca Confederation , and Cañari . The Pre-Columbian era refers to all period subdivisions in

25066-405: The time of European encounter had achieved great complexity and many accomplishments. For instance, the Aztecs built one of the largest cities in the world, Tenochtitlan (the historical site of what would become Mexico City ), with an estimated population of 200,000 for the city proper and a population of close to five million for the extended empire. By comparison, the largest European cities in

25232-459: The treaty and in 1800 secretly returned Louisiana to Napoleonic France in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso . This transfer was so secret that the Spanish continued to administer the territory. In 1801, Spain restored rights to use the Mississippi and New Orleans to the United States. Fearing that the cutoffs could occur again, President Thomas Jefferson proposed to buy the port of New Orleans from France for $ 10 million. Instead, faced with

25398-410: The upper Mississippi, drain most of the area bordering the eastern side of the Missouri River basin. Finally, on the south, the Ozark Mountains and other low divides through central Missouri, Kansas and Colorado separate the Missouri watershed from those of the White River and Arkansas River, also tributaries of the Mississippi River. Over 95 significant tributaries and hundreds of smaller ones feed

25564-403: The various fur enterprises, namely Hudson's Bay . Fort Raymond was later replaced by Fort Lisa at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone in North Dakota; a second fort also called Fort Lisa was built downstream on the Missouri River in Nebraska. In 1809 the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company was founded by Lisa in conjunction with William Clark and Pierre Choteau, among others. In 1828,

25730-442: The watershed receives an average of 8 to 10 inches (200 to 250 mm) of precipitation each year. However, the westernmost portions of the basin in the Rockies as well as southeastern regions in Missouri may receive as much as 40 inches (1,000 mm). The vast majority of precipitation occurs in summer in most of the lower and middle basin, although the upper basin is known for short-lived but intense summer thunderstorms such as

25896-399: The watershed's southeastern portion – include Omaha, Nebraska , north of the confluence of the Missouri and Platte Rivers; Kansas City, Missouri – Kansas City, Kansas , at the confluence of the Missouri with the Kansas River; and the St. Louis metropolitan area, south of the Missouri River just below the latter's mouth, on the Mississippi. In contrast, the northwestern part of the watershed

26062-416: The watershed, with most leading a nomadic lifestyle and dependent on enormous bison herds that roamed through the Great Plains . The first Europeans encountered the river in the late seventeenth century, and the region passed through Spanish and French hands before becoming part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase . The Missouri River was one of the main routes for the westward expansion of

26228-416: The west. Downstream, it begins to define the border between the states of Nebraska and Missouri , then flows between the states of Missouri and Kansas . The Missouri swings east at Kansas City , where the Kansas River enters from the west, and so on into north-central Missouri. To the east of Kansas City, the Missouri receives, on the left side, the Grand River . It passes south of Columbia and receives

26394-456: Was 145 million in the late 15th and by the late 17th century, had been reduced to 15 million due to epidemics , wars, massacres, mass rapes , starvation, and enslavement. Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) is the trauma that can accumulate across generations and develop as a result of the historical ramifications of colonization and is linked to mental and physical health hardships and population decline. IHT affects many different people in

26560-529: Was cultivated as long as 10,000 years ago. According to Linda Newson , "It is clear that in pre-Columbian times some groups struggled to survive and often suffered food shortages and famines , while others enjoyed a varied and substantial diet." Persistent drought around AD 850 coincided with the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization, and the famine of One Rabbit (AD 1454) was a major catastrophe in Mexico. Indigenous peoples of North America began practicing farming approximately 4,000 years ago, late in

26726-452: Was hauled overland, most transport to and from the gold fields was done through the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, as well as the Snake River in western Wyoming and the Bear River in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. It is estimated that of the passengers and freight hauled from the Midwest to Montana, over 80 percent were transported by boat, a journey that took 150 days in the upstream direction. A route more directly west into Colorado lay along

26892-464: Was immediately rejected by some leading members of the Association, and, while adopted by many, it was never universally accepted. While never popular in Indigenous communities themselves, it remains a preferred term among some anthropologists, notably in some parts of Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean . " Indigenous peoples in Canada " is used as the collective name for First Nations , Inuit , and Métis . The term Aboriginal peoples as

27058-400: Was not originally accepted by the myriad groups of Indigenous peoples themselves but has since been embraced or tolerated by many over the last two centuries. The term "Indian" generally does not include the culturally and linguistically distinct Indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions of the Americas, including the Aleuts , Inuit , or Yupik peoples . These peoples entered the continent as

27224-492: Was sold in 1993 to GS Technologies which then became GST Steel Company. In 1997 the plant had a 10-week strike. It closed in February 2001 with the layoff of 750 employees. The closing of the company (plant) drew considerable attention in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election because of scrutiny of the business dealings of Mitt Romney who had founded Bain Capital which had acquired controlling interest of GST Steel in 1993 for $ 24.5 million. Romney had left Bain in 1999 before

27390-457: Was such that the water was made muddy by it and could not clear itself." They recorded Pekitanoui or Pekistanoui as the local name for the Missouri. However, the party never explored the Missouri beyond its mouth, nor did they linger in the area. In addition, they later learned that the Mississippi drained into the Gulf of Mexico and not the Pacific as they had originally presumed; the expedition turned back about 440 miles (710 km) short of

27556-409: Was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Indigenous peoples. After initial contact with Europeans and Africans, Old World diseases caused the deaths of 90 to 95% of the native population of the New World in the following 150 years. Smallpox killed from one-third to half of the native population of Hispaniola in 1518. By killing the Incan ruler Huayna Capac , smallpox caused

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