Name and significance. The word Mississippi itself comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquin) name for the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River).. In the 18th century, the river was the primary western boundary of the young United States, and since the country's expansion westward, the Mississippi River has been widely considered a convenient, …

The Mississippi Embayment is a physiographic feature in the south-central United States, part of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain.It is essentially a northward continuation of the fluvial sediments of the Mississippi River Delta to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois.The current sedimentary area was formed in the Cretaceous and early Cenozoic by the filling with sediment …