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In 1666 French explorers somewhere in the western Great Lakes region recorded Messipi as their rendering of the Ojibwa name for the river they had come upon, misi-sipi, "big river." The French took the name with them as they went down Big River to its delta, and it superseded all the other names for Big River used by local Indian tribes and by earlier Spanish explorers. In 1798 Congress applied the Ojibwa name of the river to the territory of Mississippi.

It was thought to mean Father of the waters but this is inaccurate.

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17y ago

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