Paddle Power

PETER ONUF: Major funding for BackStory is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

ED AYERS: From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is BackStory, with the American Historys hosts.

BRIAN BALOGH: Welcome to the show. I’m Brian Balogh. And I’m here with Peter Onuf.

PETER ONUF: Yep.

BRIAN BALOGH: And Ed Ayers is with us.

ED AYERS: Hello, Brian.

BRIAN BALOGH: And today, we’re going to take a trip along the mighty Mississippi.

PETER ONUF: The Mississippi River connects some of America’s most important cities, and for centuries has been a main artery of the country’s economy. But it’s also much more than that. For many, it’s also a source of inspiration and adventure. Every year, people hop into canoes and rafts and paddle down the river. It’s the aquatic version of the great American road trip.

JOE MAILANDER: We were camping out on the middle of the river on an island one night.

ED AYERS: This is Joe Mailander. He’s the lead singer in a band called the Okee Dokee Brothers. In 2011, he and his band mates were on a journey down the river writing and recording music for their latest kids’ album. On the last night of their 30-day trip, they were sleeping soundly in their tents.

JOE MAILANDER: When an S-0 tornado, or what they call a micro burst, hit our camp, this giant storm, at 2:00 AM, in the middle of the night. We had our camp completely leveled. The tent bowls broke. We were drenched. Our videographer’s tent actually was blown into the river with him in it.

PETER ONUF: John Ruskey also discovered that things don’t always go as planned on the river. When he graduated from high school, he built a huge raft with a friend and set out for Memphis. On their very first day on the river, disaster struck.

JOHN RUSKEY: There used to be, back in those days, a 350-foot tower.

PETER ONUF: Right in the middle of a mile-wide section of the waterway. They thought there was no chance they would get the tower. So they didn’t pay it any mind, until it was too late.

JOHN RUSKEY: We got swept right into it. The whole raft convulsed in the powerful waters. And it just destroyed the raft completely. You could have taken a potato chip and crushed it in your hands. And that’s what our raft looked like.

PETER ONUF: Ruskey and his friend were thrown into the freezing waters. They were washed up on a muddy bank, and eventually found shelter, lucky to be alive.

ED AYERS: Even travelers who have made it out of the river unscathed have found themselves haunted by the experience. After Eddie Harris completed his 2,500-mile canoe journey, he was feeling pretty good about it. So when some young men came to him for advice, he thought it was only right to encourage them.

EDDIE HARRIS: So I said to these guys, yeah, go ahead and do it. They were two young fellows. And they had camera equipment. And they wanted to take pictures and video in the river. And they started their journey. And in the middle of Lake Winnibigoshish, they had their accident. And they’d both drowned.

ED AYERS: Harris felt horrible about having supported their ill-fated journey.

EDDIE HARRIS: So horrible, in fact, that I went to the funeral of one of the boys and made a sort of apology to the parents. And the parents both embraced me and said, no, you encouraged him to do what he really, really wanted to do. And he died doing something that he loved.

PETER ONUF: We often mythologize the Mississippi River, seeing it as a place where boys become men, and men find glory. It calls to us, inspires us. People have dedicated and given their lives to it. But as anyone who has ever spent a spring near its flooded banks knows, the river has also frustrated our efforts to conquer it.

BRIAN BALOGH: So today on the show, we’re taking a deep dive into the river that Mark Twain once referred to as the lawless stream. From geopolitics to floods to exploding steamboats, we’ll trace the push and pull of the Mississippi River through American history. And we’ll try to do so with as few references to Mark Twain as we can possibly manage.