Appendix D
Improvement of the Upper Mississippi, 1866-1876
The following table gives in detail the different divisions into which the river was divided for convenience in letting contracts, and prosecuting the work of improvement, the number of miles covered in each division, and the amount expended in each in the ten years from 1866 to 1876:
| DIVISION | MILES | AMT. EXPENDED |
| St. Anthony Falls to St. Paul | 11 | $ 59,098.70 |
| St. Paul to Prescott | 32 | 638,498.56 |
| Prescott to Head Lake Pepin | 29 | 111,409.17 |
| Harbor at Lake City | — | 16,091.62 |
| Foot Lake Pepin to Alma | 12 | 341,439.26 |
| Alma to Winona | 29 | 365,394.25 |
| Winona to La Crosse | 31 | 236,239.39 |
| La Crosse to McGregor | 72 | 308,311.07 |
| McGregor to Dubuque | 59 | 137,236.65 |
| Dubuque to Clinton | 67 | 131,905.29 |
| Clinton to Rock Island | 40 | 228,298.99 |
| Rock Island to Keithsburg | 58 | 70,071.85 |
| Keithsburg to Des Moines Rapids | 60 | 515,971.20 |
| Keokuk to Quincy | 40 | 355,263.71 |
| Quincy to Clarksville | 60 | 552,051.47 |
| Clarksville to Cap au Gris | 43 | 389,959.31 |
| Cap au Gris to Illinois River | 27 | 137,116.97 |
| Illinois River to Mouth of Missouri River | 25 | 70,688.77 |
| Miscellaneous, maintenance of Snag-Boats, Dredges, wages, provisions, etc. | 549,760.92 | |
| —— | ———— | |
| 695 | $5,200,707.25 |
Appendix E
Indian Nomenclature and Legends
The name Mississippi is an amelioration of the harsher syllables of the Indian tongue from which it sprang. Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell, late of Winona, Minnesota, a personal friend and old army comrade, is my authority for the names and spelling given below, as gleaned by him during many years' residence among the Chippewa of Wisconsin and the Sioux (or Dakota) of Minnesota. Dr. Bunnell spoke both languages fluently, and in addition made a scholarly study of Indian tongues for literary purposes. His evidence is conclusive, that so far as the northern tribes were concerned the Mississippi was in the Chippewa language, from which the name is derived: Mee-zee (great), see'-bee (river)—Great River. The Dakota called it Wat-pah-tah'-ka (big river). The Sauk, Foxes, and Potawatomi, related tribes, all called it: Mee-chaw-see'-poo (big river). The Winnebago called it: Ne-scas-hut'-ta-ra (the bluff-walled river). Thus six out of seven tribes peopling its banks united in terming it the "Great River".
Dr. Bunnell disposes of the romantic fiction that the Indians called it the "Great Father of Waters", by saying that in Chippewa this would be: Miche-nu-say'-be-gong—a term that he never heard used in speaking of the stream; and old Wah-pa-sha, chief of the Dakota living at Winona, assured the Doctor that he had never heard an Indian use it. The Chippewa did, however, have a superlative form of the name: Miche-gah'-see-bee (great, endless river), descriptive of its (to them) illimitable length.
Dr. Bunnell suggests the derivation of the name Michigan, as applied to the lake and state. The Chippewa term for any great body of water, like Lakes Michigan, Superior, or Huron, is: Miche-gah'-be-gong (great, boundless waters). It was very easy for the white men who first heard this general term as applied to the lake, to accept it as a proper name, and to translate the Indian term into Michigan, as we have it to-day.
It is a source of gratification that the names applied to the Great River by the Jesuit fathers who first plied their birch-bark canoes upon its surface, did not stick. They were wonderful men, those old missionaries, devoted and self-sacrificing beyond belief; but when it came to naming the new-found lands and rivers, there was a monotony of religious nomenclature. Rivière St. Louis and Rivière de la Conception are neither of them particularly descriptive of the Great River. In this connection it must be said, however, that there was something providential in the zeal of the good missionaries in christening as they did, the ports at either end of the upper river run. The mention of St. Louis and St. Paul lent the only devotional tinge to steamboat conversation in the fifties. Without this there would have been nothing religious about that eight hundred miles of Western water. Even as it was, skepticism crept in with its doubts and questionings. We all know who St. Paul was, and his manner of life; but it is difficult to recall just what particular lines of holiness were followed by Louis XIV to entitle him to canonization.
Trempealeau Mountain, as it is called, situated two miles above Trempealeau Landing, Wisconsin, is another marvel of nature that attracted the attention of the Indians. It is an island of limestone, capped with sandstone, rising four hundred feet above the level of the river. Between the island and the mainland is a slough several hundred feet wide, which heads some five or six miles above. The Winnebago gave it a descriptive name: Hay-me-ah'-shan (Soaking Mountain). In Dakota it was Min-nay-chon'-ka-hah (pronounced Minneshon'ka), meaning Bluff in the Water. This was translated by the early French voyageurs into: Trempe à l'eau—the Mountain that bathes its feet in the water. There is no other island of rock in the Mississippi above the upper rapids; none rising more than a few feet above the water.