Winner, Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement, 2016 Flatboats were the most prolific type of vessel on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers during the early 1800s. Thousands of these boats descended the two rivers each year, carrying not only valuable cargo to New Orleans but also western-bound emigrants to newly opened territories. By the late 1800s, flatboats had completely disappeared, and no intact examples were known to exist. Our knowledge of these historic vessels had been limited to illustrations, memoirs, and traveler accounts. That changed in 2000 after local residents found a wreck on the Ohio River shoreline in Illinois. Archaeologist Mark J. Wagner and his colleagues from Southern Illinois University Carbondale investigated extensively and established that the wreck was a pre–Civil War flatboat, which they named America, after a nearby town. In The Wreck of the America in Southern Illinois: A Flatboat on the Ohio River, Wagner provides a brief description and general history of flatboats and the various reasons they wrecked—such as poor workmanship and encounters with pirates, storms, rocks, and floating trees. Wagner describes the remains of the America, how it was constructed, the artifacts found nearby and inside—including pewter spoons, utensils with bone handles, metal buttons, and an iron felling axe—and the probable cause of its sinking. Wagner concludes with a history of the America since its discovery in 2000 and a plea that the boat be removed from the riverbank and preserved before the Ohio washes it away.
Analyses of big datasets signal important directions for the archaeology of religion in the Archaic to Mississippian Native North America Across North America, huge data accumulations derived from decades of cultural resource management studies, combined with old museum collections, provide archaeologists with unparalleled opportunities to explore new questions about the lives of ancient native peoples. For many years the topics of technology, economy, and political organization have received the most research attention, while ritual, religion, and symbolic expression have largely been ignored. This was often the case because researchers considered such topics beyond reach of their methods and data. In Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent, editors Brad H. Koldehoff and Timothy R. Pauketat and their contributors demonstrate that this notion is outdated through their analyses of a series of large datasets from the midcontinent, ranging from tiny charred seeds to the cosmic alignments of mounds, they consider new questions about the religious practices and lives of native peoples. At the core of this volume are case studies that explore religious practices from the Cahokia area and surrounding Illinois uplands. Additional chapters explore these topics using data collected from sites and landscapes scattered along the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. This innovative work facilitates a greater appreciation for, and understanding of, ancient native religious practices, especially their seamless connections to everyday life and livelihood. The contributors do not advocate for a reduced emphasis on technology, economy, and political organization; rather, they recommend expanding the scope of such studies to include considerations of how religious practices shaped the locations of sites, the character of artifacts, and the content and arrangement of sites and features. They also highlight analytical approaches that are applicable to archaeological datasets from across the Americas and beyond.
On the night of July 5, 1918, a steamboat named "Columbia, " returning from a moonlight excursion, collapsed and sank in the middle of the Illinois River. Of the nearly 500 passengers on board that night, most were from the town of Pekin. Eighty-seven people lost their lives in the disaster. The rest were left to tell their stories of fortitude and survival. The worst maritime accident in the history of the Illinois River, the wreck of the "Columbia" is a mostly forgotten tragedy today. Ken Zurski's gripping account follows the compelling true story from the moment the captain sensed a problem, to the horror of the cries and screams in the night, to the courageous actions of the rescue and recovery workers, and ultimately to the pursuit by law enforcement officials to find truth and justice. One town in particular found itself reeling from a sudden and devastating loss of life, an immense communal grief, and a frustrating search for answers that never truly came. PRAISE FOR 'THE WRECK OF THE COLUMBIA' "A stirring account of the tragedy." "An authoritative source on the wreck." "A solid job of stringing together narrative accounts of that fatal night." "Plenty of fascinating personal vignettes." "Both instructive and entertaining." "-Peoria Journal Star and PJStar.com" "Grabs the reader by the life jacket and sweeps them along as the horrific night unfolds." "Played in my head almost as if I were witnessing the events and hearing the conversations." "Spot on...historical perfection." "A literary buffet...Fascinating tidbits of facts and information." "A hit!" "-50+ News and Views" "A captivating and readable style. This book was hard to put down." "A broad-ranging and probing look at the disaster, vividly bringing it back to life." "A great read!" "-East Peoria-Times Observer"
Our Blue Planet provides a comprehensive introduction to the field of maritime and underwater archaeology. Situating the field within the broader study of history and archaeology, this book advocates that an understanding of how our ancestors interacted with rivers, lakes, and oceans is integral to comprehending the human past. Our Blue Planet covers the full breadth of maritime and underwater archaeology, including formerly terrestrial sites drowned by rising sea levels, coastal sites, and a wide variety of wreck sites ranging across the globe and spanning from antiquity to World War II.Beginning with a definition of the field and several chapters dedicated to the methods of finding, recording, and interpreting submerged sites, Our Blue Planet provides an entry point for all readers, whether or not they are familiar with maritime and underwater archaeology or archaeology in general. The book then shifts to a thematic approach with chapters exploring human interactions with the watery world, both along the coasts and by ship. These chapters discuss the relationships between culture, technology, and environment that allowed humans through time to spread across the globe. Because ships were the primary means for humans to interact with large bodies of water, they are the focus of several chapters on the development of shipbuilding technology, the lives of sailors, and the uses of ships in exploration, expansion, and warfare. The book ends with chapters on how and why the non-renewable submerged archaeological record should be managed, so that both current and future generations can learn from the achievements and failures of past societies, as well as on how anyone can become involved in maritime and underwater archaeology. Throughout, the reader benefits from the personal reflections of a number of leading figures in the field.
A pictorial chronicle of the events of July 24, 1915, when the steamship Eastland capsized and sank in the port of Chicago, killing over eight hundred people.
Ill-Fated Frontier is at once a pioneer adventure and a compelling narrative of the frictions that emerged among entrepreneurial pioneers and their sixty slaves, Indians fighting to preserve their land, and Spanish colonials with their own agenda. Here is a lively and visceral portrait of the wild and enduring American frontier in 1789. The melting pot America would become was barely simmering when an ill-fated attempt to settle land near Natchez in brought together a volatile mix of ambitious Northern pioneers and their slaves, Spanish colonists, and Native Americans who had claimed the land as theirs for hundreds of years. This illuminating episode in American history comes to life in this account of an expedition gone wrong. It began with an optimistic plan to settle and expand in the new territory. It ended ignominiously, with the body of one of the expedition’s leaders returning to New Jersey stored in a pickle barrel. What happened in between—a cautionary tale of greed, incompetence, and hubris—lies at the center of this fascinating account by Harvard historian Samuel A. Forman. Endorsed by New York Times best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick, it is a startling and frank portrait of a young America that examines the dream of an inclusive American experience and its reality—a debate that continues today. Imperious General David Forman, a terror to his Monmouth County, New Jersey, Loyalist neighbors, during the Revolutionary War obtained a large land grant in Natchez, then part of Spanish West Florida. His charge was to establish a plantation that would lure settlers and establish a new American presence. Staying behind in New Jersey David Forman appointed his rotund and gouty older brother Ezekiel as leader of the expedition, his young cousin Samuel S. Forman as its business manager, and a former military aide as overseer of the enslaved African Americans who accompanied them. It did not go well. When the expedition finally reached the new territory it found waiting Spanish colonials who felt the land was theirs and Native Americans who still maintained their sovereignty over the contested lands. When Ezekiel Forman died unexpectedly, David Forman stormed from New Jersey into Natchez to take control of the unraveling situation. He would find on his arrival that those awaiting him had other ideas about who the land actually belonged to. He would return to New Jersey quite dead and pickled in a barrel of rum. Lively, impeccably researched, and rich in details that have escaped the usual tales of American growth and enterprise, Ill-Fated Frontier shines new and entertaining light on what it means to be an American.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Audacious…Life on the Mississippi sparkles.” —The Wall Street Journal * “A rich mix of history, reporting, and personal introspection.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch * “Both a travelogue and an engaging history lesson about America’s westward expansion.” —The Christian Science Monitor The eagerly awaited return of master American storyteller Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand “flatboat era” of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River, illuminating the forgotten past of America’s first western frontier. Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands, and steep levees. As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era. The role of the flatboat in our country’s evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize. Between 1800 and 1840, millions of farmers, merchants, and teenage adventurers embarked from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia on flatboats headed beyond the Appalachians to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Settler families repurposed the wood from their boats to build their first cabins in the wilderness; cargo boats were broken apart and sold to build the boomtowns along the water route. Joining the river traffic were floating brothels, called “gun boats”; “smithy boats” for blacksmiths; even “whiskey boats” for alcohol. In the present day, America’s inland rivers are a superhighway dominated by leviathan barges—carrying $80 billion of cargo annually—all descended from flatboats like the ramshackle Patience. As a historian, Buck resurrects the era’s adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers’ push for land and wealth. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced more than 125,000 members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and several other tribes to travel the Mississippi on a brutal journey en route to the barrens of Oklahoma. Simultaneously, almost a million enslaved African Americans were carried in flatboats and marched by foot 1,000 miles over the Appalachians to the cotton and cane fields of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, birthing the term “sold down the river.” Buck portrays this watershed era of American expansion as it was really lived. With a rare narrative power that blends stirring adventure with absorbing untold history, Life on the Mississippi is a muscular and majestic feat of storytelling from a writer who may be the closest that we have today to Mark Twain.
American cinema has always been violent, and never more so than now: exploding heads, buses that blow up if they stop, racial attacks, and general mayhem. From slapstick's comic violence to film noir, from silent cinema to Tarantino, violence has been an integral part of America on screen. This new volume in a successful series analyzes violence, examining its nature, its effects, and its cinematic and social meaning.
This volume represents current theory and research in rhetoric, across disciplines, and is of interest to scholars and students in rhetoric studies in speech communication, English, and related disciplines.
