CHAPTER 2
A River Is Born

Before there was the Mississippi River, there was ice. Twenty-one thousand years ago, huge, massive, pointy sheets of ice called glaciers covered most of what is now the northern United States. The glaciers were thousands of feet thick. The temperature was so cold that only giant animals able to hold in a lot of body heat could survive. Woolly mammoths, caribou, and mastodons roamed the edges of the glaciers. The world was in the middle of an ice age.

A herd of mastodons crossing a plain of ice

Paleo-Indians were the first known people to live along the Mississippi River. They survived by hunting the giant animals and dressing in warm furs and skins.

Then, the world began to warm again. Glaciers started to melt. Shards of ice and melting water began to move south, carving channels in the land.

As the giant glaciers melted, people came from far away to the newly created river. Most survived by hunting and fishing in the river. Later, the world grew warm enough to grow crops like beans and corn and pumpkins. The people in the area formed groups or tribes. Several tribes, including the Sioux, Choctaw, Natchez, Osage, and Ojibwa, took up farming. Before long, villages were springing up along the upper, middle, and lower parts of the river.

Some members of the Ojibwa tribe settled in northern Minnesota where the Crow Wing River feeds into the Mississippi. They must have admired the river a great deal because they named it Misi-ziibi, which means “great river” or “gathering of water.” From the Ojibwa comes the name Mississippi.