Wicked River_ The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild - Lee Sandlin [0]
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Images from the “Davy Crockett Almanacs” are reproduced courtesy of Dorothy Sloan Rare Books. The “Ribbon Map of the Great Mississippi River” is from the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sandlin, Lee.
Wicked river : the Mississippi when it last ran wild / Lee Sandlin.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37951-1
1. Mississippi River—History—19th century. 2. Mississippi River—Geography. 3. Mississippi River—Environmental conditions. 4. River life—Mississippi River Region—History—19th century. 5. Community life—Mississippi River Region—History—19th century. 6. Mississippi River Region—History—19th century. 7. Mississippi River Region—Biography. 8. Mississippi River Region—Social life and customs—19th century. 9. Social change—Mississippi River Region—History—19th century. 10. Disasters—Mississippi River Region—History—19th century. I. Title.
F353.S26 2010 977—dc22 2010008511
www.pantheonbooks.com
v3.1
FOR JOANNE FOX
SINE QUA NON
For if and when we talk of a river we talk of a deep and dank architecture.
Harold Pinter, No Man’s Land
I do not remember to have traversed this river in any considerable trip, without having heard of some fatal disaster to a boat, or having seen a dead body of some boatman, recognised by the red flannel shirt, which they generally wear. The multitudes of carcasses of boats, lying at the points, or thrown up high and dry on the wreck-heaps, demonstrate most palpably, how many boats are lost on this wild, and, as the boatmen always denominate it, “wicked river.”
Timothy Flint, Recollections
I hate the Mississippi, and as I look down upon its wild and filthy waters, boiling and eddying, and reflect how uncertain is travelling in this region … I cannot help feeling a disgust at the idea of perishing in such a vile sewer, to be buried in mud, and perhaps to be rooted out again by some pig-nosed alligator.
Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Introduction
Prologue
PART ONE The River Rising
1 Gone on the River
2 Old Devil River
3 The Comet’s Tail
4 Like Bubbles on a Sea
PART TWO “Do You Live on the River?”
5 The Desire of an Ignorant Westerner
6 Bloody Island
7 The Roar of Niagara
8 The Cosmopolitan Tide
9 A Pile of Shavings
10 The Coasts of Dark Destruction
PART THREE The Course of Empire
11 The Mound Builders
12 A Young Man of Splendid Abilities
13 The Oracles
Photo Insert
PART FOUR Behemoth
14 The Sky Parlor
15 The Alligator
PART FIVE The Good and the Thoughtless
16 The Last of the Floating Life
Epilogue
A Note on Sources
About the Author
The path of the Mississippi River, from its source at Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico
Introduction
THERE IS A TRIBUTARY of the Mississippi River running through my neighborhood in Chicago. It’s not easy to spot; you have to know just where to look. It’s by the bus stop on a cluttered commercial block. Right at the curb is a manhole. The manhole cover is embossed with a decorative pattern of fish, and it carries the message DUMP NO WASTE! DRAINS TO WATERWAYS! Down below is water bound for the Mississippi.
Sometimes when I’m waiting for the bus, I pass the time by imagining the course the water is running. It’s invisible at street level, but there is a maze of piping underneath Chicago: water mains and sewer mains and gas mains, electrical conduit and fiber-optic cabling. The water is gurgling through this spaghetti tangle for mile after mile, below the ranges of highrises and the decaying industrial districts and the limitless veldts of bungalows. It doesn’t surface until it reaches a pumping station past the southern city limits. There it empties into the Illinois River. The Illinois runs in a meandering course roughly southwest, past