This article argues that the sketchlike patchwork of texts, identities, and histories that make up Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi emerges through the narrative mixing of passengers and pilots. Situating Twain’s Life in relation to Washington Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., the article suggests that in the aftermath of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction, Twain attempted to define the New (South) against the Old using the genre of the sketch. Concerned as it was with the ruins, relics, and monuments of the nation’s cultural ancestors, Irving’s Sketch-Book provided a useful framework for a writer like Twain whose Life on the Mississippi reconceptualized post-Reconstruction expressions of new southern literary identities. Lastly, the article argues that the many mixtures present in Twain’s Life are predicated on Irving’s earlier explorations of “racial” degeneracy, blended nations, hybrid identities, cross-cultural exchange, intertextuality, indigeneity, and mixed-race dynamics.