The Big River

I was inspired to read about the Mississippi River after visiting the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium and bought Paul Schneider's Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History last summer. After many side steps and detours, I finally cracked it open a couple weeks ago and finished it earlier this week. This is good for me as I normally become interested in a topic and then go out and buy a book about it only to finally get around to reading it years later after that initial dopamine rush of love for a new discovery has gone.

Although not an exhaustive history, it was a very interesting book indeed. I enjoyed learning about the French explorers making their way through Wisconsin to the Mississippi - there's a school named after one of them not too far from here. The chapters on the Native Americans who called the Mississippi watershed home were fascinating for me. While I have read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and know the odd bit of Native American history relating to Wisconsin, such as the Black Hawk War, the history of the Americas prior to 1492 is largely a mystery to me. Schneider gives a good overview of the Mississippian peoples with their capital city, Cahokia, just across the river from St. Louis. Closer to home, a little east of Madison lies Aztalan, the site of a settlement of Mississippians, that lasted from the 10th to the 13th century.

Another area of history in which I am not well-read is that of the American Civil War. Schneider notes the importance of the Mississippi and its tributaries in the conflict. Personally, I think of battles in the east when I think of the Civil War, so I found these chapters quite illuminating.

There were pirates on the Mississippi! I did not know that.

Unfortunately, the Upper Mississippi, that is, the part of the river north of Cairo, IL where it meets the Ohio River, doesn't get much mention after the sections on the French explorers. So more of the history of river life for towns like La Crosse, Dubuque, and the Quad Cities will have to be found elsewhere.

Regardless, if you're looking for an overview of the Mississippi and its watershed, I recommend this book highly.

So how about some music related to the history covered in the book?