New book celebrates the river of Twain and a mighty nation

Tri-Valley Central ^ | 13 November 2002 | RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

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Mark Twain, who knew it well, once called the Mississippi River "the body of the nation," and indeed its muddy water has been the lifeblood of commerce and communication for much of the past two centuries.

2003 will mark the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's arranging to acquire the river from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

As part of that observance, the National Geographic Society sent historians Stephen E. Ambrose (who died in October) and Douglas G. Brinkley, and photographer Sam Abell, to travel the length of the river and report back. The result is a spectacular new book, "The Mississippi: And the Making of a Nation From the Louisiana Purchase to Today."

At the time of the purchase, the massive area had no roads and few settlements beyond New Orleans, so the fastest way to travel was along the rivers.

The mighty Mississippi and its tributaries tied the whole of the new land together, the watery highway for explorers and traders and soldiers and millions of ordinary people looking to settle the land and make new lives.

From a warm look at the people and history of New Orleans, the book's authors turn north to the plantations along the Mississippi Delta, the land where slavery transformed into poverty and the songs of the people gave birth to the blues.

Tourists are encouraged to visit pre-Civil War mansions, Ambrose and Brinkley write, but "missing from these nostalgic 'moonlight and magnolias' come-ons, celebrating the lifestyles of Confederate cavaliers and coquettish belles and grinning mammies, is any mention that the entire plantation system was based on the practice of slavery."

Balance comes at the River Road African American Museum in Darrow, La., they report, where the visitor can face the life of slaves as it really was.

From Natchez, Miss., and the Old South they move on to Memphis, Tenn., where W.C. Handy made blues popular, where Elvis became king, where Beale Street still flowers with songs of B.B. King, and where a murderer's bullet felled Martin Luther King Jr.

Maps, and historical and modern photos fill page after page as Ambrose and Brinkley pass the Great Confluence where the Ohio joins the Mississippi and move north to St. Louis and, nearby, the arrival of the Missouri.

Visiting Mark Twain country, the authors recall a pilgrimage there by the great Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges, who wanted to visit Twain's home and be taken to the banks of the river.

"Suddenly, to the surprise of all present, he began walking trancelike into the muddy waters until the river rushed up to his chest. 'Now,' Borges declared, 'I understand the essence of America."'

Their long journey ends at the beginning, Lake Itasca, Minn., where a brown wooden sign marks the beginning of the river's 2,352-mile meander to the Gulf of Mexico.

"At dusk we tossed a piece of pinewood into Lake Itasca and watched it slowly float away. Would it make it all the way to Charles Lindbergh's house in Little Falls, we wondered? Could it float over the various locks and dams and end up someday in the Gulf of Mexico? ... Or were we just being American romantics daydreaming about a river where everything seemed possible?"

[Seruzawa]

2003 will mark the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's arranging to acquire the river from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

In other news the French Prime Minister announced before the French Assembly, "We want the Louisiana Purchase returned. It will be French soil again!.

"And if those American peegs will not return it we will call them American pig-dogs! We will tell them to boil their bottoms, sons of silly persons. We blow our noses at you, so-called President Bush, you and all your silly American k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt! Thppt!

"We don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wipers! We fart in your general direction! Your mothers were hamsters and your fathers smelt of elderberries!

"Now, go away, or we shall taunt you a second time-a! "