The Head, Source, or Headwaters of the Sidon – Part I

We write this article in hopes that the misuse of the words “river,” “head,” “headwaters,” “conflux,” and “confluence” might not be a problem for those who read or listen to people like Rodney L. Meldrum or Jonathan Neville, with their Heartland Theory, or John L. Sorenson and other theorists who try to play word games to substantiate their theories and models. First of all, let’s take a look at these words and their meanings as listed in Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, which typify the meanings of these words in the region Joseph Smith grew up and where he translated the plates, as is illustrated in this dictionary that was used by Joseph and other leaders in the School of the Prophets:
• Headwaters: Webster has no listing [it was not a word in use in New England in the early 1800s—today the word means “the source of a river” or “the furthest place in a river or stream from its estuary [mouth] or confluence with another river”].
• Head: The principal source of a stream; as the head of the Nile. Thus, the 1828 “head” and today’s “headwaters” are the same word with the same meaning (source of a river).
• Confluence: A flowing together, meeting or junction of two or more streams, place of meeting.
• Conflux: A flowing together, a meeting of two or more currents of a river (fluid). “Conflux,” by the way, is the same as “confluence,” and in some types of writing, is used interchangeably.
    These words each have meaning and are used daily in such disciplines as hydrology, which studies the flow patterns of confluences and how they give rise to patterns of erosion, sand bars, and scour pools; and in chemistry, because sometimes the mixing of the waters of two streams triggers a chemical reaction, particularly in a polluted stream.

Lake Itasca and the head or headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota

As an example, Lake Itasca in southeastern Clearwater County, of north central Minnesota (within the Itasca State Park, Park Rapids, Minnesota), is considered the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and the river's channel appears much as it did when Henry Rowe Schoolcraft discovered the source in 1832 (U.S. Geological Survey, U. S. Department of the Interior, March 5, 2009; Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, State of Minnesota), or in 1828, would have been called “the head of the Mississippi.” There are no other “heads” of the Mississippi River considered by the Mississippi River Commission, Hydrologists, map makers, and Limnologists anywhere along its 2,320-mile length from its head in Minnesota to its delta mouth in the Gulf of Mexico.
    However, Rod Meldrum, in his greater confessed wisdom, says “So the ‘head’ of the Sidon river of the Book of Mormon has two possible definitions, one at the commencement of a stream or river and one which is defined as the location where two branches or tributaries of a river meet, or their confluence.”
    Yet, as stated above, the official and overall understanding of rivers is that a river has one “head” and that is where it begins (also called its source, head water, or just head). In fact, in the days of the Nephites, the Sidon River would have been called such throughout its length, no matter if there were tributaries or not. The ancients did not give different names to a river of a land—only other people in other lands would have named a river differently (as an example, early settlers along the course of the Mississippi called the entire river by that name from Itasca, Minnesota, to the Gulf of Mexico; also, though we call the Allegheny River and the Ohio River by these two names today, the Iroquiois understood that to be one river and called it Ohí:o; also the early settlers called the entire Tennessee River by one name, distant Indian groups gave it many names: Chaovannon, Kallamuchee, Kaskinampo, Callamaco, Cootela, Hogohegee, Pellissippi, Nonachunkeh, or Euphasee – depending on which tributary they honored as the main branch.
    Yet, Meldrum goes on: “Which definition did the Book of Mormon authors and translator mean and is there a scriptural basis for the idea of the ‘head’ of a river being a junction of two or more rivers?

Left: Two rivers becoming one or flowing together, with the predominant or main stem river (River A) continuing along its channel, and the lesser river (River B) ending or flowing into the other; Right: One river becoming two, or a second river created, with the predominant or main stem river (River A) continuing along its channel, and the new river (River B) forming and becoming a new channel with a different or new name

The simple process illustrated above shows two examples of a river confluence. The first is the ending of one river as it flows into the stem river, forming the mouth of River B, creating what is called a “delta,” sometimes a silty area at this mouth (end) creating muddy banks with new land often forming (denuded area in photo) from the sediment brought down by River B. In the second example (right), the stem or main or predominant river (River A) continues flowing downriver, but a branch, called a distributary, breaks off and forms a new river (River B), at the confluence. This beginning (of River B) is its head, or beginning, and acquires a new, different name from that of the stem or predominant river (River A).
    The first example is seen where the Ohio River terminates at the confluence with the Mississippi River, with the Ohio forming its mouth (end) and the Mississippi river continuing on its channel.

The Mississippi River (Red Line), continues past this (Yellow Circle) confluence and on through Louisiana for 335 miles to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. At Simmesport, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, the distributary Atchafalaya River (green Line) branches off the Mississippi (creating the Head of the Atchafalaya) and flows to the west then south and runs about 170 miles basically parallel to the Mississippi to Morgan City, then into the Gulf of Mexico forming its mouth. The terminology of the Mississippi does not change

 

The second example is seen where a distributary, called the Atchafalaya River, branches off to the west from the Mississippi in south central Louisiana and flows south into the Gulf of Mexico near Morgan City.
    Other confluences connected to the Mississippi River is where the Missouri River flows into it at Jones-Confluence Point State Park, just north of St. Louis, Missouri; upriver the Illinois River flows into the Mississippi; and at Keokuk, Iowa, (just south of Zarahemla, Iowa) the Des Moines River flows into the Mississippi. In addition, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin rivers form a confluence with the Missouri River at Three Forks, Montana.

When a river flows into another and terminates at the confluence, it does not continue its name, and the river ends, creating its mouth (ending) and the main stem or predominant river continues on its channel, maintaining its name from before (above) and after (below) the confluence

In all these cases, the tributary river terminated at the confluence and the main stem or predominant river continued with its name unchanged, therefore, there was no head along the Mississippi River anywhere pertaining to the Mississippi. Stated differently, Meldrum’s claim that the Mississippi River had its head at the joining of the Ohio River/Mississippi River confluence has no claim on truth—in fact, is simply inaccurate according to any understanding of rivers and their flow and parts.

The beginning or head of the Ohio River is formed at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where the northern rivers both end, with their mouths at the confluence and the head of the Ohio

In addition, there are occasions where two rivers come together and become the source of a new river, called the main stem river with a new name, such as is seen in the joining or confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating the Ohio River. Another is where the confluence of the Kankakee River and the Des Plaines Rivers that meet and form the Illinois River.
(See the next post, “The Head, Source, or Headwaters of the Sidon – Part II,” to continue with the understanding of how rivers are categorized with “head,” “tributary,” “distributary,” “confluence,” and “mouth”)