 Jazzmen Louis Armstrong and Bix Biederbecke played on Mississippi River steamers.As the federal government removed the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Nations to Oklahoma, the new immigrants and the military forces demanded supplies, creating a vigorous steamboat trade to the Mississippi River down to New Orleans or upstream to points north.At the peak of steamboat commerce, in the 1840s and 1850s, there were twenty-two landings between Fort Smith in present-day Arkansas, and Fort Gibson, with the most difficult point at Webbers Falls.