Missouri turns 196 years old Thursday, on the anniversary of its admission to the Union on August 10, 1821.
To mark this anniversary for the Show Me State, 41 Action News did some digging into the history of Missouri’s name.
Whether you pronounce it “Missour-ee” or “Missour-uh,” the origin of the state’s name remains the same.
According to the Missouri Secretary of State, Missouri got its name from a Sioux tribe called the Missourias who lived along the Missouri River.
Many people think the name Missouri means “muddy water,” but according to the Smithsonian, it actually means “town of large canoes.”
Other historical authorities have said the Native American syllables that make up the word mean “wooden canoe people,” or “he of the big canoe.”
The Missouria were among the first to meet with explorers Lewis and Clark.
They merged with the Otoe tribe when contact with Europeans brought on a smallpox epidemic, according to the University of Missouri.
Although the tribes were very distinct from one another, they were forced to group together to survive when the disease wiped out great numbers of their people.
The tribes’ livelihoods came to revolve around bison and their migratory patterns, but they also utilized outside resources. Together, the Otoe-Missourias established trade relationships with the Spanish, French and other settlers. They are credited for creating the economy surrounding the Missouri River that’s still thriving today, and are the namesake of the river as well.
The Otoe-Missouria were forced to relocate to Oklahoma when the U.S. government created the Big Blue Reservation. The idea was to concentrate the tribe into a smaller area of the fertile farmland they inhabited to make room for European settlers.
Eventually, starvation and disease on the reservation led to their decision to relocate.
You can see a map of the former Otoe-Missouria territory here.
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