Where Theorists Go Wrong – Part I

When those who write, talk about or discuss the Book of Mormon geographical setting and the Land of Promise, stray from the scriptural record to make their point, they are in deep water and as time goes on as they try to make their questionable points, they end up floundering more and more. This is generally the case when people embark on opinion or points of view that are not well founded in the scriptural facts.

The watershed of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, including the Ohio River

 

Take Rod L. Meldrum the Heartland Theorists who wants to place the Land of Promise in North America, along the Mississippi River region, the Great Plains, and even to the Great Lakes, which some theoriss, like Phyllis Carol Olive, Vernal Holley, W. Vincent Coon and Delbert W. Curtis, place the Land of Promise in western New York.

The Rod Meldrum and Bruce H. Porter’s theory of the Nephites in the Heartland of North America, has led Meldrum over time discussing the Sidon River of the scriptural record being the Mississippi River. Now the Mississippi flows from Minnesota in the far north to the river’s delta to the far south in the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of some 2,320 miles, with its length increasing or decreasing as deposition or erosion occurs at its delta, or as meanders are created or cutoff. The river crosses through ten states, and with its many tributaries, the Mississippi watershed drains all or parts of 31 states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains.

Once every 1000 years, according to experts, the Mississippi has changed course as it  looked for a shorter, lower path to the Gulf when sediments deposited by the river made the old path higher and flatter.  Today, it’s ready to change course again.  It wants to take a short cut at the Old River Control Complex down the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf at Morgan City, Louisiana.  It’s 193 miles shorter and steeper and faster than going by New Orleans.

Thanks to the Corps of Engineers, the Mississippi River that used to be about one-mile-wide at its widest is now two miles wide at the widest. This navigable point is at Lake Pepin, about fifty miles south of Minneapolis, between Hager City and Reads Landing where it is the dividing border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

A geologic syncline

 

Geologically, the Mississippi embayment is a syncline (fold in the rock, and a recess in a coastline forming or resembling a bay)) which plunges to the south and whose axis generally parallels the Mississippi River. The syncline is filled with sedimentary rocks ranging in age from Jurassic to Quaternary and reaching a maximum thickness of about 18,000 feet in the southern part of the region. Stratigraphic evidence in the central Mississippi Embayment indicates that a stream of major size has continuously occupied approximately the same location since the forming of the Atlantic Ocean (C. John Mann and William A. Thomas, The Ancient Mississippi River, Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, Vol.18, 1968, pp187-204; Donald E. Owen, “Commentary: Usage of Stratigraphic Terminology,” Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, vol.57, no.2, March 1987, pp363–372).

Significant deltaic sediments occur from thick layers of the river's silt deposits of oolitic and silty limestones, called the geologic Smackover Limestone as well as in most younger units, has formed the route of the Mississippi. The stream which has persisted from the formation to the present is referred to as the Ancient Mississippi River (Kendell Dickinson, Upper Jurassic Stratigraphy, US Geologic Society, 1968, pE9). The Mississippi embayment—part of the alluvial plain—is one of the most fertile agricultural regions of the country, which resulted in the river's storied steamboat era.

During the Civil War, the Mississippi increased as an important route of trade and travel, and because of substantial growth of cities and the larger ships and barges that supplanted the old keel boats and other shallow-draft riverboats of shallow draft to clear river snags and rapids. The first decades of the 20th century saw the construction of massive engineering works such as levees, locks and dams, often built in combination—making the Mississippi for the first time, available to deep ocean ships.

Prior to that time, the traffic on the Mississippi was in shallow or flat bottomed boat traffic, such as early canoes, packet and keel boats, then the big paddle wheelers driven by steam. However, not until the river was dredged, deepened and widened in 1820, was it capable of handling ships of any size, such as large, deep-water sailing vessels that plied the oceans in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Prior to then, traffic on the Mississippi River consisted of the steam-driven paddle wheel boats carrying cargo up and down the lower Mississippi, and before then were the canoes and keel boats.

Flat-bottom boats, or broadhorns, had a very shallow draft in order to negotiate the Mississippi River before it was dredged in 1820

 

While the keel boats had a draft of only 2 feet (the distance between the keel and the water line), a shallow-draft paddle wheel steamboat widely used on rivers in the 19th century, had a draft of only 4 feet; however, the early sailing ships had a draft of 17 feet and could not have sailed even the distance from the Gulf to Baton Rouge, a distance of only 68 miles (Erik F. Haites, et al., Western River Transportation: The Era of Early Internal Development, 1810-1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1975, pp15-18).

Naturally, gravity finds a shorter, steeper path to the Gulf when sediments deposited by the river make the old path higher and flatter. Experts claim the river is ready to change course again—taking a short cut at the Old River Control Complex down the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf at Morgan City, Louisiana.  It’s 193 miles shorter and steeper and faster than going by New Orleans.

In reality, south-bound traffic on the Mississippi is free flowing with the current, however, north-bound sailing has to struggle to get through the 5- or 6-knot current.

It used to be, especially in the winter, that debris floated downriver, making sailing on the river hazardous, and caused even the large paddle-wheelers placing lookouts on the bow of their ships, watching out for hazards. It could get so dangerous that ship captains would not sail the river at night.

The river bed of the Mississippi was initially a low-lying or shallow basin, that filled with water over time as well as continually having sediment from upriver settling along its bottom, especially from the confluence of the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois, and the Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas rivers. This continual deposition of sediment has always kept the Mississippi River quite shallow until modern times when the Corps of Engineers was tasked in the early 1800s to keep the river open to ship traffic.

In the upper part of the Lower Mississippi (north of Baton Rouge) in the late 1800s was still plying the shallow Mississippi in two-foot draft keel boats and wide canoes

 

Thus, when Meldrum and Porter claim that one of the groups, the Mulekites, sailed 852 miles up the Mississippi River to southwest Iowa/southern Illinois to the area across from Nauvoo which the early Saints called Zarahemla, it would not have been possible, for several reasons, not the least of which, would have been against wind and river currents.

Another problem is that the Mississippi does not correctly illustrate the Sidon River of the Book of Mormon. As an example, Manti is near the head of Sidon but the actual head of Sidon is in the South (or narrow strip) wilderness "away up beyond" the land of Manti. That puts the river’s head or source on a higher altitude than either Manti or Zarahemla. This would obviously result in a northward flow of water between Zarahemla and Manti. In addition, we know that the river Sidon flows pas or through the Land of Zarahemla, again meaning the river flowed to the north.

As can be seen, theorists go wrong when they make up stories, such as anciently the Mississippi was once wide and deep; and as Meldrum in his map, tries to make the ancient Mississippi so large, that he claims it was the Sea West—neither of these two ideas are consistent with known history and with the Book of Mormon. The claim that the south flowing Mississippi is the north flowing Sidon River is completely without merit.

(See the next post, Where Theorists Go Wrong – Part II,” for more information on how theorists go wrong in the development or support of theories that are inconsistent with the scriptural record)