Book I: The American Egypt · Chapter 6
They called it the “American Nile.” But the river already had its own ancient name, and it outlived every attempt to replace it.
Four colonial names, all failed
- 1541: Hernando de Soto calls it the “River of the Holy Spirit.”
- 1673: Father Marquette names it for the “Immaculate Conception.”
- 1682: La Salle calls it the “Colbert River,” after the French finance minister.
- Early 1700s: the French governor d’Iberville calls it the “St. Louis River,” after King Louis XIV.
All on record.
The people’s name won
“Missi-sipi” means “large flowing water” in the Ojibwe language. The French writer Le Page du Pratz recorded it as “Mechasipi” in 1758. In 1847, the Choctaw leader Peter Pitchlynn wrote that the name means “the River beyond any age.” (Record)
The lens: the names never changed because the people kept saying them. About half of U.S. state names come from Native languages: Mississippi, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Ohio, Kentucky and more. Their paper war lost this round. (Pattern)
Still open: the first printed use of “American Nile,” and whether the Egypt nickname came before or after the Egyptian town names. That needs the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America newspapers and Google Books.
Sources: Commercial Dispatch: the origin of “Mississippi” · St. Louis Magazine: when the Mississippi was the St. Louis River · Etymonline: Mississippi