25 years canoeing the Mighty Mississippi: John Ruskey shares stories from the Big Muddy

Forty years ago, in 1983, John Ruskey embarked on a raft trip from home state of Colorado, traversing rivers in an attempt to get to the Gulf of Mexico.

Five months into the expedition, he wound up shipwrecked on an island in northern Mississippi.

That experience eventually led him back to Mississippi, where he started Quapaw Canoe Company, and 25 years after that, he said, "We are still boogying up and down the Mississippi."

Ruskey, along with his crew, provide wilderness adventures by canoe, kayak or paddle board on any section of the last 954 miles of the Mississippi River, from Cairo Illinois down to the Gulf of Mexico. They also serve the Atchafalaya “River of Trees,” and many other tributary feeder rivers, such as the Arkansas.

He landed in Clarksdale in the early 1990s for the blues music scene and even worked as the curator of the Delta Blues Museum.

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He bought a canoe and started offering people canoe trips, one trip at a time in a 17-foot aluminum canoe in the largest river in North America.

That is how Quapaw Canoe Company started in 1998.

Since then, Ruskey estimates he has safely guided more than 30,000 people on tours of the river, which include church groups, schools, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, families, couples and individuals. In his estimation, there was never before or isn't now another modern guiding and outfitting business anywhere along the lower Mississippi River.

"That raft trip in the '80s really put something in my heart for Mississippi," Ruskey said. "There is an incredible intersection of music and the river in Clarksdale and that's part of the reason I am there."

The name Quapaw comes from the Quapaw Nation of Native Americans, that inhabited areas from Oklahoma to the Midwest and down the Mississippi River as late as the 17th century.

Quapaw landing is the closest landing on the Mississippi River to Clarksdale, due west of town.

He added 10 more aluminum canoes and then hand-crafted a 20 foot cypress-strip canoe, named the Lady Bug, that now has many brothers and sisters that carry customers all along the river.

"We call The Lady Bug the Queen of the Mississippi River," Ruskey quipped about the 11-person original wooden canoe.

Former New York Giants defensive back Mark Peoples is Ruskey's right-hand man and has been along for the ride from the beginning.

"You know, the river just speaks to me," Peoples said. "It's the lifeblood of our country."

When not on the water, Peoples mentors Delta youth and educates them on the importance of the protection and preservation of our national treasure for generations to come.

While he has guided literally thousands of people up and down the river, Peoples has said that one of the most interesting trips he had was guiding a group that included a couple from Norway. He said the wife was 9 months pregnant and ultimately went into labor soon after the completion of their expedition.

Ruskey said most of the people who take the river expeditions have never been on the Mississippi River previously, and in many cases have never paddled any type of vessel anywhere.

There have been mayors, business people, kids, adults, journalists, photographers as well as the secretary of transportation for the state of Arkansas. And all of them have to help paddle along the way.

He shared a recent experience involving a group of high school girls who started a weekend trip afraid of any bug that got near them. By the end of the trip, Ruskey said they were picking up large beetles and asking him to identify them.

"By the way, it was the Eastern Click Beetle," he said. "By the end of the trip one of the young ladies was so affected by the trip, she had applied to our apprenticeship program."

He has expanded on that and has created a summer camp program to help educate people on the importance of the Mississippi River Valley and what it means. It is a traditional style canoe camp that focuses on survival skills, teamwork and leadership.

Mostly, however, Quapaw is a custom trip company that caters to anyone wanting a river experience, whether that be a day trip, a weekend experience or a week-long expedition.

The longest trip runs from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico and lasts for six weeks.

"We don't do that one very often," Ruskey said. "But our mission is to share the raw, wild Mississippi River with whoever wants to see it."

The mission has been so successful that Quapaw is now running expeditions out of Memphis and Vicksburg as well as Quapaw Landing near Clarksdale.

— Ross Reily can be reached by email at rreily@gannett.com or 601-573-2952. You can follow him on Twitter @GreenOkra1.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: 25 years of Quapaw Canoe Company