In 1908 John Neihardt (1881–1973) and two companions traveled the Missouri River—about two thousand miles—in a twenty-foot canoe. Originally published in Outing Magazine as a series of articles, The River and I describes their adventures on that wild waterway before it was dammed by the Army Corps of Engineers and points out storied sites along the shore. The result transcends journalism; Neihardt does for the Missouri what Twain did for the Mississippi.
This Landmark edition makes available once more the book that was issued in 1910, two years before Neihardt began work on A Cycle of the West and twenty-two years before the publication of Black Elk Speaks.