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Native Americans on the Mississippi

This image from Henry Lewis' Das Illustrirte Mississippithal (1858) depicts a Native American party at day's end. In the years before white soldiers and settlers removed them from their lands in the Upper Mississippi Valley, many Native Americans used the Mississippi River as a major thoroughfare. Water transportation provided tribes with opportunities to seek out prime hunting and fishing grounds, trade with other groups, and launch surprise attacks upon rival bands. Here a groups of Native American travelers have retired before a campfire in the shadow of the Upper Mississippi's imposing bluffs and cliffs.