“Shiftin' lands, broken farms around me, muddy water's changin' all I know”—from the song Muddy Waters by Phil Rosenthal
Under billowing clouds imperceptibly changing shape in the rising warm air, the Mississippi River gently flowed past Credit Island. I stood on the river bank looking toward Illinois and the mouth of the Rock River. Over the millennia, so much life and history had passed this way with the river’s flow. Though little was revealed by a casual glance, I knew there was much more here than a scenic view.
Credit Island, now part of the Davenport park system, just happens to be a place where detailed history has been recorded or reconstructed: an early trading post where credit was offered to Native Americans to provide animal hides; site of a War of 1812 battle that involved the future president Zachery Taylor and the Sauk Chief Blackhawk; part natural area and part recreational retreat for city dwellers for over a century. And yet, I thought, what about times or places where events may not have been significant enough to be recorded? Or where there were no witnesses to see a flood, tornado, or wildfire. Or, over deep time, as a river island gradually erodes away, with new islands forming, and the river changes course.
Credit Island on the Mississippi River opposite the Rock River Confluence.
Some clues to the past remain. But how does one link an old, rusted square nail, still embedded within a weathered fragment of ancient lumber, to an actual event? Was that nail part of a shanty boat that sank or a pier taken out in a flood long ago? What of an old whisky bottle, out of sight for decades before erosion brought it once again to the light of day? Was there a drunken brawl late one evening along the riverbank? Did someone throw the bottle overboard from a steamboat bound for New Orleans? There could still be stories left to be told, but they likely have already been lost, or could still remain hidden memories for a time in an anonymous mind, inevitably to dissipate into the infinity of time.
Within piles of natural woody debris that gather along the river bottoms, there are more hidden links to real events, if only those links could be followed; each piece with its unique history; untraceable; the result of storms that felled trees, ripped branches, or created floods of such magnitude that bottomland forests died by summer’s end, their remnants gradually carried away over the years. Logs, branches, twigs, bark, leaves, and seeds eventually rotting to nothing or becoming smoothed over and pulverized into ever smaller sizes from scraping and moving about with the current and waves; and as a river flood recedes, some of this is left behind as a kind of “river mulch” in a layer over the ground, almost like a narrow carpet parallel to the river bank marking the high water level.
River mulch.
The island itself, though, has its own story, that of originally being scraped from bedrock, grain by grain, carried across the land embedded within a continental-sized glacier more than ten thousand years ago, then drained away within torrential meltwaters as the climate warmed and the glaciers melted, finally deposited here and there within the river’s floodplain. The Mississippi and Rock River valleys were two such drainage ways, transporting floods of glacial meltwaters, carrying various loads of clay, silt, sand, and gravel, all set down at different times and locations as the current slowed. At some point, vegetation was able to anchor some of the shapeless alluvium into an island.
Standing on the river bank, I could not help being drawn to the Rock River; I kept pivoting in that direction, no matter what else was happening. And so, I gave in to the pull, and in my mind’s eye, left the Island, crossed the Mississippi, and followed the Rock River through north-central Illinois and further north to its headwaters in Wisconsin beyond the great Horicon Marsh, a gathering place each fall for thousands upon thousands of sandhill cranes, Canada geese, and other water birds. Several times in my life I have watched this wildlife spectacle, each time marveling how so many large birds in flight never collide; they never even seem to come close.
The Rock holds many of my special memories, all coming to the foreground simply from gazing toward the river’s mouth. I imagined a young man zooming along on his first long motorcycle trip over forty years ago, exiting the Illinois Tollway at Dixon, following the Rock River highway to the small town of Oregon and beyond: a big city kid, frustrated with crowds and city congestion, completely taken by the charming small river towns, making a mental note to return one day.
As I began to move along the island’s shoreline, my attention was once again drawn downward, to comb the sand for artifacts—perhaps from the old battle—or ancient potsherds or items carved from rock (anchor stones, arrowheads, grinding stones), left behind from vanished cultures who built mounds to their honored dead and effigies of spirit creatures. Alas, I found nothing, but also knew that if I had stumbled upon something, it would have to be left in place, forever to be a part of Credit Island’s history.
Yet even a mountain erodes away given enough eons. Forever is a long time; however great a span one might imagine, forever is longer. So the river and patience will wear it all away. Credit Island will not last forever.
For now, we can still find bits and pieces of the past, put them together to construct plausible scenarios, and then carefully surmise the rest; we have our stories in this way, and we let them become as real as our thoughts. As far as Credit Island, how different a visit would be without archaeologist Christopher Espenshade’s words hovering around: “At first light on September 5, a number of Native Americans had waded to Pelican Island from Credit Island, and an American sentry was shot and killed. The Americans disembarked a force and cleared the Native Americans from Pelican Island. At about this same time, the few British with a 3-pounder and two swivel guns abandoned their position watching the Rock Island rapids, and moved downstream to the western bank of the Mississippi….”
References
Espenshade , C.T. 2013. Archaeological/historical research and military terrain analysis of the Credit Island Battlefield (War of 1812), Iowa and Illinois. Prepared for City of Davenport, Iowa and American Battlefield Protection Program, Washington, D.C., Grant GA-2287-12-002. Prepared by Commonwealth Cultural Resources Group, Inc. 2530 Spring Arbor Road, Jackson, Michigan 49203-3602.
Killey, M.M. 1998. Illinois’ ice age legacy. Geoscience education series 14. Illinois State Geological Survey, Champaign, Illinois.
Theler, J.L. and R.F. Boszhardt. 2003. Twelve millennia: archaeology of the upper Mississippi River Valley. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.
Wikipedia. Credit Island. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Island. Referenced on September 8, 2021.
Good article Tom! I love the dynamics of river systems forever changing as described in your article!
Posted by: Ross Adams | April 13, 2023 at 11:52 AM