Three versions of the Missouri-Mississippi confluence

1840

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the vallies of the Rocky Mountains, rushes through a valley of 3,000 miles, receiving the tribute of all its waters, and precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character. The latter, 'till now transparent, reveals in an extraordinary manner the wonders of the secret depths of the opaque waters of the Missouri.   

-- July 23, 1840 Army and Navy Chronicle

1842

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the vallies of the Rocky Mountains, and receiving tributaries throughout a course of three thousand miles, precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character. A mind fertile in conceits might fancy in the coming of this turbid and soil-stained river of the west, to join the clearer and gentler stream, the approach of a red warrior to woo a fair damsel of the settlements; at first the white face edges away and keeps aloof from the strange lover, but his suit is vehement and irresistible, and soon she is in his dusky arms, and her gentleness is lost, and his wild nature gives its complexion to her own. To be sure the circumstance that the Mississippi is the acknowledged "Father of Waters" is an obstacle of sex, and hurts the conceit somewhat. -- Southern Literary Messenger Volume 8, June 1842

1857

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, and receiving tributaries throughout a course of three thousand miles, precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character.   

--Scenes and Adventures in the Army 

And one more:

Down on it like a Pawnee from ambush foams the yellow-jacked [painted?] Missouri....The Missouri sends rather a hostile element than a filial flow. Longer, stronger than the father of waters like Jupiter he dethrones his sire & reigns in his stead. Under the benign name Mississippi it is in short the Missouri that now rolls to the Gulf....

-- Herman Melville, "The River." About which see John D. Seeley, “Timothy Flint’s ‘Wicked River’ and The Confidence-Man.” PMLA 78, no. 1 (1963): 75–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/461227.