Hillbillyland: What the Movies Did to the Mountains and What the Mountains Did to the Movies.

Mississippi River Valley: The Course of American Civilization

“…15. Walker,Mississippi Valley,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]Foster,Mississippi Valley, autumn are relatively mild, but summers in the upper valley are hot and humid, with the heavy, late afternoon thundershowers that characterize the Mississippi Valley in general. 16 John James Audubon sailed the upper Mississippi by both keelboat and steamboat.…”

“…Here, thunderstorms became tropical storms, and on occasion, hurricanes rolled in from the Gulf of Mexico, wreaking havoc. 28 Plants and trees grew even more prodigiously than in the upper Mississippi Valley. In the early 1800s, the French traveler M. Perrin du Lac described the Mississippi's shoreline between the confluence with the Ohio and the mouth of the Arkansas as an unbroken, wild, and immense forest.…”

“…When Marquette and Jolliet launched their canoes on the Mississippi on June 17, 1673, they became the first Europeans to explore its upper reaches. 28 "Turning southward, they paddled down the stream through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man," wrote the nineteenth-century historian Frances Parkman. "At length the buffalo appeared, grazing in herds on the great prairies which then bordered the river."…”

“…The Frenchman's startled horse promptly threw its rider into a large mud puddle, whereupon the wet, muddied aristocrat arose and returned the salute, adding, "You are a little too d-nd polite, Saire"! 28 27. Samuel Chew Madden, "Notebook," typescript, Sesqui Manuscripts, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 3.…”

“…Mississippi Valley folk, paints a similarly evocative portrait of river life. 28 My own hero is Daniel Boorstin, a distinguished University of Chicago professor and Librarian of Congress, who used selected histories to portray American civilization in his Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy, The Americans. Although The Americans is not a Mississippi Valley work (though it lingers in the Great Valley in portions of volume 2), Boorstin uses an interdisciplinary case study method to artistic ends, painting a word picture of the history of American culture.…”