Embracing an account of the discovery of the true source of the Mississippi, together with views, descriptive and pictorial, of the cities, towns, villages, and scenery on the banks of the river, as seen during a canoe voyage of over three thousand miles from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico.

Every once in a while, I’ll read a book that really surprises me, and this is one of those times. I found this book while volunteering in an old antique shop, and since it contains an entire chapter about my hometown on the banks of the Upper Mississippi River, I just had to give it a shot.

A Breakdown of the Book

The first nine chapters of the book recount Captain Glazier’s expedition in 1881 to find the true source of the Mississippi. In 1820, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft had followed a similar course, but had only traveled as far as Lake Itasca. Confident in his own “discovery,” Schoolcraft claimed to have found the River’s source, a claim that had been trusted as fact without dispute for nearly 60 years—that is, without dispute from White explorers. The Chippewa people in the region knew better, so with the help of Native guides, Captain Glazier traveled to the absolute beginning, and although he’s not there to “discover” these headwaters, he’s there to affirm the true source.

Chapters 9-14 then recount his return from the headwaters to the main channel of the Mississippi, while Chapters 15-33 cover the remaining trip down to the Gulf of Mexico. Throughout the book, Captain Glazier fills his pages with historical anecdotes about the areas and the peoples that populate them. He offers details about some of the more major towns and cities along the 3,000-mile route—which, 150 years later, I found incredibly informative—and occasionally he also discusses the trials of canoeing through streams and lakes and down the mighty waters of the Mississippi.

Reading with Google Maps Open

Something that made this book all the more enjoyable for me (from the comfort of my couch) was tracing Glazier and his team’s path via Google Maps. Many of the locations he names are still there, though some have disappeared over time. Even the various small lakes that he named after friends and family in 1881 still bear the same monikers.

Captain Glazier couldn’t have foreseen the technology, but what an addition to this marvelous read! The more I peered with the eye-in-the-sky into this tiny corner of “the land of 10,000 lakes,” the more I could see of countless ponds and lakes that to this day have no houses built on their shores, no roads giving them access, and seemingly no paths that would allow even the casual hiker to enjoy their beauty. They all appear unknown or forgotten, yet explorable nonetheless. How cool it would be to investigate places that have rarely been visited since the Chippewa and Pillagers roamed the woods!

One area in northern Minnesota especially caught my eye, for as I read about the team’s portaging through a bog, I noticed that Glazier’s brother dropped an entire case of ammunition into the muck (p.63). This sparked my metal-detecting whimsy, so I shared the rough coordinates and the quoted passage with a Facebook group I’ve joined about metal detecting in Minnesota. One participant from the area’s now planning to research it more this winter and maybe check it out this summer, so who knows! Perhaps my fun side-reading will turn into a discovery of historical importance. Wouldn’t that be nice.

A Canoeing Travelogue

While the earliest chunk of this book is set in the barely inhabited wilderness of Northern Minnesota, the further south Glazier moves, the more inhabited the land becomes, and the less he’s focused on new and interesting sights. The book thus moves from serious expedition to banal travel, though knowing that it’s done entirely by canoe 150 years ago certainly kept it lively for me.

I have to admit there were times in the middle of the book that I was tempted to lose interest: he had already passed my hometown, he was describing places I’d never heard of, and he was giving statistics about areas that I didn’t really care about. It was odd, though, that whenever I tried to skim his text, I couldn’t. Each of his 117 diary entries was a bite-sized taste of 19th-century America, and with as many interesting nuggets as he included about the area or about his trip, I just had to read every word. Too many examples of such nuggets exist, but here are a few that stood out to me:

• In Chapter 9, he describes at length the culture and practices of the Chippewa people, even including sheet music for tunes to both “The Dog Dance of the Sioux” and “The Chippewa Scalp Dance.” (p.106)
  
• He mentions a town, St. Fiolle, just north of Prairie du Chien, WI, that was on the maps in 1846 but had, by 1881, all but disappeared from memory (p.232). That too is music, but to a metal detectorist’s ears!
  
• On his 69th day (Chapter 23), he visits Navou, MO, which had once been the Holy Land for Mormonism. Even he writes of this town as history, which today for us is distant history, and I found the whole discussion fascinating.
• Whenever necessary, he’s also willing to be brutally honest about a towns ugliness or dilapidation, noting at times that with just a tiny bit of effort and care the place might have hope for a future. I actually had to laugh at his impressions of Trempealeau, WI!

A Snapshot of History

I’ve written elsewhere (like in my reviews of Paul Theroux’s travelogues) that books like this can never grow outdated. Different than history books which emphasize big places, big events, and big names, travelogues instead give us snapshots of reality as it was at the time of writing, especially the reality that makes up most of life: small places, small events, and unknown people. This book fits well within that context, making it a valuable part of our history. Glazier notes his purpose at one point in the book:

My long journey had been projected and undertaken, not with a view of displaying any extraordinary feats of nautical skill or physical endurance, but with a milder object of adding, if possible, to the geographical knowledge of this section of our country, and at the same time afford myself an opportunity of studying the character of our great North American river and the cities and people that lined its banks, extending over a distance of some 20° of latitude.

According to Captain Glazier, he and his team were the first people ever to attempt this massive undertaking, canoeing from headwaters to Gulf, yet he also thinks that they’ll likely be the last:

No one had ever attempted this before, and it is hardly probable that any one will ever attempt it again, for the perils of a voyage of over three thousand miles in an open canoe are not purely imaginary. And yet this was the only way in which I could practically and satisfactorily accomplish my purpose of making careful observations along the route traversed. (78)

About these perils (and beauty) he later writes:

A storm is at all times one of the most blended phenomena in nature; but when experienced in the gloomy force of the Mississippi, in the midst of solitude, with no companions, but a few fellow sufferers standing in a shivering attitude around a small fire, it receives additional interest; every flash of lightning displays a scene which the painter would wish to fix upon the canvas. The loud peals of thunder resound more forcibly when reverberated by the rocky bluffs which border upon the river, and they contrast sublimely with the low but uninterrupted muttering of the waters. (146)

Throughout his long, circuitous route, Glazier provides wonderful notes about the region’s history. Occasionally he recounts Indian legends from area, which make for fascinating reading. At other times he’s more pragmatic, noting that even in the late 19th Century, Native American history was under threat of being forgotten. One particular passage about Indian Mounds stood out to me:

But the mounds are fast disappearing before the march of civilization. A utilitarian age and people are demolishing them with the plow, the pick, and the spade, and already a majority have disappeared. The antiquarian of the future will sigh in vain for these sole relics of an unknown and a mysterious people. However, in a few instances, they are being preserved with that care to which their antiquity entities them. (230-231)

The further south Galzier moved, too, the more his team came in contact with slaves freed since the Civil war. He makes references “the advancement of Negroes” (p.357-359) a number of times and carries a genuine regard for their equality as a people who’ve been ill-treated for far too long but now face a brighter future as free men and women.

The bitter feeling against the negroes that prevailed shortly after the close of the war, which resulted in their emancipation, was no doubt largely due to the prejudices engendered by slavery and the political complications consequent upon their being suddenly placed on an equal footing with their former masters in the exercise of their rights as freemen. The sanguinary race-encounters at the polls in the South, reported in the Northern papers since 1865, not unfrequently with much exaggeration, are things of the past—let us hope never to be revived; and, as the years roll by and the rising generation of blacks, with their minds free from the shackles of ignorance as their bodies are from slavery, that the color-line will cease to be an obstacle to political and other preferment, and white and black live together and work for their common good in harmony and peace. (378-397)

He later adds:

I cannot say too much in praise of the genuine hospitality of the negroes we came in contact with in the South. Always ready and eager to do their utmost to please us, they were unselfish to a degree. It was but poor accommodation they could offer, and they were fully conscious of this; but, poor as it was, the demonstrations of cordial welcome with which it was tendered made us feel thankful to have found such friends. (411-412)

Conclusion

I truly enjoyed reading this wonderful slice of history, at once both an adventurous expedition and an historical travelogue. I’ll never canoe the Mighty Mississippi myself, but like other armchair adventurers, I can join those who have through the detailed records they’ve kept.

Captain Willard W. Glazier has three other books available through The Gutenberg Project which I’m interested in checking out, though sadly this one’s not available. If Gutenberg wants it, they’ll have to get it from my brother, because I’m definitely passing this one on.

©2024 E.T.

Check Out These Other American Travelogues:

• Down the Great River by Captain Willard G. Glazier (1887)
• The Road by Jack London (1907)
• America and Americans by John Steinbeck (1966)
• A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins (1979)
• The Walk West by Peter Jenkins (1981)
• The Road Unseen by Peter and Barbara Jenkins (1985)
• The Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour (1989)
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (1998)

Check Out These Other Great Books Published in 1887:

• She by H. Rider Haggard
• Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
• Down the Great River by Capt. Willard G. Glazier
• A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle