412 - History of the Mandan
People

The Missouri River is North America’s longest waterway, draining more than half a million square miles through tumbling falls, and lazy, looping oxbows.

The river seems steadfast, permanent, and reliable, but it is not. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who followed the Missouri upstream and back on their 1804-1806 expedition to the Pacific Ocean, marveled at its ever-changing currents and course. As they hastened downriver in August of 1806, the men found that the waters they had traveled just two years earlier were barely recognizable. “I observe a great alteration in the current course and appearance of this point of the Missouri,” wrote Clark below the Cannonball River confluence, in the section that spans the present North Dakota—South Dakota border. “In places where there was sand bars in the fall of 1804 at this time the main current passes, and where the current then passed is now a sandbar.” “Sandbars which were then naked are now covered with willows several feet high.”

Clark was a keen observer. Those of us fortunate enough to be familiar with the complex and mighty Missouri River can no doubt agree with Clark and recognize the constant changes to its beautiful waters and riverbanks. If Clark were alive to see the Missouri today, one wonders at the level of surprise he might find with its form today.