Mississippi River Tales mural
The River Heritage Mural Association presents the history of Cape Girardeau with 24 painted panels on the Mississippi River floodwall.
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Cape Rock before man: Chicago-based artist Thomas Melvin said it shows "a very wide Mississippi and wildlife living comfortably in their habitat." It prominently features several colorful Carolina Parakeets, which are now extinct but were once abundant in the area. The last bird died in captivity in Florida in 1910, Melvin said.
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Mississippian Culture circa 900 A.D.: Mississippian is the term anthropologists and archeologists use to describe a native culture that thrived from around 900 A.D. to the 16th century. Tribes in this culture constructed mounds for housing and ceremonial purposes, some of which can still be seen in Southeast Missouri. "It was a huge culture," Melvin said. At right is Hernando de Soto, a 16th century Spanish explorer who led the first European expedition to reach the Mississippi. Melvin said the image is in a different style to provide "relief from realism and the stonework tying everything together."
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Jacques Marquette, 1673: This mural shows Jacques Marquette taking off for a trip down the Mississippi, despite warnings from members of the Ottawa tribe in Wisconsin that things would become more dangerous farther south. Marquette was a French explorer and Roman Catholic missionary who joined French-Canadian explorer Louis Joliet on a trip down the river. The men got as far as the Arkansas River when they turned back and headed north to Lake Michigan.
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Girardot trading post: The Girardot trading post was located north of Cape Rock and overlooked the Mississippi. The figure on the right, gesturing, is Jean Baptiste Girardot, a Frenchman who set up a trading post in the city in the 1730s that brought river travellers to the then-remote region. Girardot is the town's namesake.
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