The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples, from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane KatrinaOUP USA, 2012 M09 13 - 300 pages In the first long-term environmental history of the Mississippi, Christopher Morris offers a brilliant tour across five centuries as he illuminates the interaction between people and the landscape, from early hunter-gatherer bands to present-day industrial and post-industrial society. Morris shows that when Hernando de Soto arrived at the lower Mississippi Valley, he found an incredibly vast wetland, the largest in North America, but by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly drying. Morris reveals how centuries of increasingly intensified human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, the introduction of foreign species of animals and plants, and levee construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. Valley residents have been paying the price ever since, most visibly with the disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina. Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered bending of natural environments to human purposes. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Valley of Mud | 9 |
2 Knee Deep in Water and Snakes | 24 |
3 Rice | 48 |
4 The Rise of New Orleans and the Fall of Natchez | 70 |
5 Consolidation Transformation Conservation | 86 |
6 King Cotton Meets Big Muddy | 108 |
7 The Cotton Kingdoms Edges Made and Unmade | 125 |
Other editions - View all
The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples ... Christopher Morris No preview available - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
accessed January African American agriculture animals aquaculture Archives Arkansas Army Corps Atchafalaya Baton Rouge Bayogoula Bayou Bieller Bienville Big Muddy catfish century Choctaw Colonial Congress construction corn Corps of Engineers cotton County crawfish crop cultivation Culture cypress drained dry land Dunbar Ecology environment environmental European farm farmers federal fertile fields fish Fisheries flood control floodplain forest French French Louisiana Gulf Hernando de Soto History Humphreys hunting Hurricane Hurricane Katrina Iberville Indian indigo inundation Katrina labor lakes land and water landowners levees lived Louisiana Historical Quarterly Louisiana State University lower Mississippi Valley lower valley Mississippi River delta mouth MPAFD Natchez National native natural North numbers Orleans Ouachita Ouachita River Parish plantation planters planting Plaquemine ponds population rice Saikku Salle Salle’s sediment settlement slaves soil Soto’s South Southern Spanish sugar swamps tion trans transformed trees University Press Usner valley’s Vicksburg Wailes West wetlands William Dunbar Yazoo Yazoo River York