The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina by Christopher Morris

Abstract

The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina. By Christopher Morris. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv, 300. $36.95, ISBN 978-0-19-531691-9.) On the first page of his ambitious and highly entertaining The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina, Christopher Morris divides the Mississippi River Valley into two categories: the and the dry. The wet valley is the natural formation created by the mighty river, while the dry has been constructed--with varying degrees of success--on the original wet one by people of mainly European ancestry in their foolhardy attempt to interrupt many of the river's endemic processes, the most important of which is the nearly annual flooding. The Mississippi basin is, however, customarily divided into the upper and valleys, with the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers serving as the traditional boundary between them. Contrary to the promise of the book's subtitle (and presumably to the disappointment of many readers), the environmental history of only the lower(most) Mississippi Valley is addressed in any depth. Morris pays the bulk of his attention to the area covered by the present-day state of Louisiana and to the river's estuary, with occasional forays into the Mississippi and Arkansas bottomlands. Of course, a comprehensive environmental history of the whole Mississippi Valley in 224 pages of text would be a tall order. Considering the magnitude of his project for even the lower Mississippi Valley, Morris copes admirably. The first five chapters examine the lower Mississippi floodplain in its natural condition and the various ways Native Americans and early Spanish and French settlers adapted--or tried to adapt--to the damp landscape. Chapters 6-8 describe the construction of a massive levee system that transformed the region into a prime agricultural area as a part of the United States during the nineteenth century. Relief from flooding made the development of European-style agriculture and infrastructure possible, but only at great environmental cost and with unanticipated consequences. The last three chapters of the book examine, among other topics, the pathological landscape of pesticides, herbicides, and insect-transmitted diseases; the role of aquaculture; and nature's return in the form of Hurricane Katrina, together constructing an unusually powerful argument for the more sustainable use of the floodplain in the future (pp. …