THE fourth longest river in the world, the Mississippi is a sluggish but mighty beast. In , historian of the University of Texas at Arlington tells the river’s story. His tale starts with the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, the first European to cross the river, and extends to the recent catastrophes caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Morris’s thesis is that European colonists failed to understand the river and surrounding wetlands. The Mississippi, he says, has to flood on a regular basis. Native Americans living there knew this so barely bothered to grow crops, which could be destroyed by floods. The rich…
