The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes

471 Pages·2013·6.806 MB·English

by  Conevery Bolton Valencius

The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes

conevery bolton valencius
The Lost History
of the New Madrid
Earthquakes
The University of Chicago Press * Chicago and London
Conevery Bolton Valencius is assistant professor at the Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches environmental
history, history of science and medicine, and the American Civil
War.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2013 by Conevery Bolton Valencius
All rights reserved. Published 2013.
Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5
This book was supported by a 2008–2009 research fellowship
from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a vital
tax-supported source of intellectual inquiry in the United
States. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations
expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of
the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for permission
to use material first published in Conevery Bolton Valencius,
“Accounts of the New Madrid Earthquakes: Personal Narratives
and Seismology over the Last Two Centuries,” in Deborah R.
Coen, ed., Witness to Disaster: Earthquakes and Expertise in
Comparative Perspective, special issue of Science in Context 25,
no. 1 (February 2012): 17–48.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-05389-9 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-05392-9 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valencius, Conevery Bolton, 1969–
The lost history of the New Madrid earthquakes / Conevery
Bolton Valencius.
pages ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-226-05389-9 (cloth : alkaline paper) — isbn 978-
0-226-05392-9 (e-book) 1. New Madrid Earthquakes, 1811–1812.
2. Earthquakes—Mississippi River Valley—History. I. Title.
qe535.2.u6v354 2013
363.34'95097709034—dc23
2013007013
a This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
to matthew

contents
list of illustrations ix
Introduction: Earthquake Cracks 1
1 * A Great Commotion: The Experience of the New
Madrid Earthquakes 14
2 * Earthquakes and the End of the New Madrid
Hinterland 58
3 * Revival and Resistance: Earthquakes on Native
Ground 106
4 * The Quaking Body: Sensation, Electricity, and
Religious Revival 145
5 * Vernacular Science: Knowing Earthquakes in the
Early United States 175
6 * Sunk Lands and Submerged Knowledge: How War,
Swamps, and Seismographs Hid Evidence of the New
Madrid Earthquakes 216
7 * The Science of Deep History: Old Accounts and
Modern Science of New Madrid 273
Conclusion: Memory and Earth in the Mississippi
Valley 325
notes 335 bibliographic essays 391
acknowledgments 439 index 445

illustrations
I.1 A challenging moment in the Crocket household 7
I.2 Sand blows in Mississippi County, Arkansas 8
1.1 United States, 1811–12, at the time of the New Madrid earthquakes 15
1.2 “A Mississippi flat-boat” 16
1.3 Side view of an earthquake fissure filled with intruded sand 29
1.4 Mississippi River, mid-quake 31
1.5 “The Great Earthquake at New Madrid” 38
1.6 Reelfoot Lake 42
1.7 First steamboat on the “Western Waters,” 1812 52
2.1 William Clark’s map of the New Madrid hinterland 70
2.2 The New Madrid hinterland, pre-earthquake 82
2.3 The middle Mississippi Valley after the New Madrid earthquakes 83
2.4 Downed timber in the “Great Swamp” 89
2.5 “Sunken lands of Arkansas” 94
3.1 Tecumseh 113
4.1 Bodily evidence of past earthquakes 157
6.1 Battle of Island Number 10 224
6.2 Louis Houck, railway workers, and engine 238
6.3 Logging camp, southeast Missouri 240
6.4 Floating dredge, Little River Drainage District 243
6.5 Pulling willows along a drainage ditch,
Little River Drainage District 244
6.6 Regularizing the Great Swamp 245
6.7 Newly cleared land, newly straightened waterway 246
6.8 Cotton field near Kennett, Missouri 248
6.9 Jesuit seismologists tending instruments, 1920s 260
7.1 New Madrid-area epicenters, 1974–2012 309