A richly detailed history of the early Upper Mississippi as the major highway into America's Midwest frontier for Native Americans and for pioneers. Birchbark canoes, romantic passenger steamboats, log rafts, and grain barges all traveled Mark Twain's river. The commercial life of the Mississippi ended with the coming of the railroad. Dams and locks then constricted the river, bringing floods and dumping refuse and sewage into the water. Ignored and...