Remembered

On the way south from Dumas, Arkansas, we drove by Lake Chicot. Set far back from the road, rambling brick homes lined the lake shore, their spacious front lawns stretching a couple hundred feet to the road.
"This is a retirement area," said Andy.
I could understand why. Across the road on the other side lay miles of flat farmland, rich black earth tinged green with clover to be plowed under or beige with the chucking from corn stalks or brown and white with the remains of cotton.
"The lake is crescent shaped," I noticed, looking at the map.
"That's because the river changed course," said Andy. "See all the twists and turns between Arkansas and Mississippi? The river can't make up its mind, but the state boundaries don't change. You just might find yourself living on a different side of the river after a big rain, but you'll still be in the same state."
"That is, if your house doesn't wash away first," I added.
In Eudora several older men raked their garden plots. "They can plant in about a month," said Andy. Temperatures today were predicted to reach 68 degrees, 72 degrees for tomorrow before the cold snap dips into the 40's again, and even warmer south of here.
As we crossed back into Louisiana on Route #17, the odometer on Little Red turned over 100,000 miles. "I never thought I'd see that on this car," said Andy. "It certainly doesn't look 16-plus years old.
Signs advertised boiled peanuts and sweet yams in towns like Oak Grove and Forest. "I guess we know what is being grown here," I said.
"Yes, and soy beans," said Andy.
"And the trailers are raised off the ground, so it must flood frequently," I added.
"Well, look at the water in the culverts," said Andy. "It doesn't take much to flood, and the brick houses are all on slabs. I think they do it more to keep out the snakes though."
Poverty Point State Historic Site, affiliated with the federal government, was named for the plantation located here in 1850. But cultural and historical significance extends back to 10,000 B.C., when this region attracted hunter-gatherers who settled in northeastern Louisiana and to 2000-500 B.C., when they established a permanent community of about 2,000 people.
"We applied for World Heritage Certification," explained the ranger, "and we think there is a good chance."
The incredible earthworks of Poverty Point overlooking the Mississippi flood plain include mounds and ridges, built by an unknown people around 1600 B.C. They moved enough dirt to build a structure the size of the largest pyramid in Egypt. They did it all with baskets and bare hands. In addition, one mound, 72 feet high, retains the effigy of a bird in flight with a 656-foot wing span. The mound, with a flat 20 x 30-foot platform along the tail, is considered an ancient temple, since bird effigies and carvings were found in the village area that surrounded the temple mound in six concentric semi-circular arcs or ridges. The temple mound, considered the largest in the western hemisphere at the time of its construction in 1400 B.C., had a volume of 90,000 tons of dirt, all carried in baskets.
Studies by the American Museum of Natural History and later by Tulane University uncovered planned building and leveling of other mounds by these ancient peoples, dated around 3,600 years ago, and requiring at least five million hours of labor to construct. It was a great communal engineering feat. The plaza included evidence of circular buildings up to 202 feet in diameter buried under the farmland.

The Poverty Point inhabitants participated in extensive trade, as well, with others from Appalachia to the Midwest to the Great Lakes 1,499 miles away, and they developed art that included stone beads and carved figurines, most with broken heads. They ingeniously molded earthen balls for boiling liquids and for baking. Stone was not available to make cooking implements.

"Someday this park could be incredible," said Andy. "The potential is all there, but they have a long way to go." The mounds were just being cleared, and a group of supporters met behind the closed door of the museum.

My desire to do archaeological digging and discover rarities burned again. Even Crater of Diamonds didn't kill the longing for a find.

We crossed the Mississippi River and stopped at the Welcome Center, complete with an elegant parlor and coffee and cookies for guests. The sign said, "Welcome to Mississippi, Home of America's Music."

But music was not what Andy had in mind for the rest of the day.

We checked in at the gate of Vicksburg National Military Park and spent the next four hours taking the Battlefield Tour.

For 16 miles the blue Union markers and the red Confederate markers showed visitors the military positions and fortifications for one of the most significant battles of the Civil War, a battle that determined control of the Mississippi River and divided the Confederacy in two. The Union victory of Ulysses S. Grant here marked one of the great Northern objectives of the war and prompted President Abraham Lincoln to say, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

Andy and I were amazed at the close proximity of the Union and Confederate lines as we drove to 15 major stops, walked around the major state monuments, and drove by hundreds of stone markers.

A battery of 22 cannons, most on display, had hammered the Confederate Great Redoubt for months in the late spring of 1863. Grant knew that direct attacks failed, and even tunneling under the fortifications and planting explosives didn't dislodge the Confederates from the high ground. So with the river blockaded by gun boats, he turned to bombardment to starve them out.

Particularly impressive, the white marble Illinois Monument, with its 48 steps and gold leaf eagle, stood high on a Union redoubt next to the Shirley House. Union troops called the Shirley farm "the white house," the only structure in the park that survived the war.

The Wisconsin Monument, 100 years old this year, proudly displayed Old Abe at the top, a six-foot granite eagle that is the symbol of the Screaming Eagles Airborne. We were saddened that this beautiful monument, a tribute to those who served from the north, had been vandalized with graffiti. Removed and cleaned, the evidence of thoughtlessness, or worse of hate, was still visible.
The more we walked, the more the temperatures climbed. Andy, in shirt sleeves, left his sweatshirt in the car. Others jogged in shorts. "Look," said Andy, "those trees are actually budding, and the grass in the sunny areas has already greened."

An obelisk paid tribute to the Union Navy, sailors who blockaded the harbor from February of 1862 through November of 1864.
Nearby we found a museum and the remains of the U.S.S. Cairo, one of the seven ironclad gun ships on the Mississippi River and the only one to survive. The Cairo, brought down in 12 minutes, was the first ship in history to be sunk by an enemy mine. No men were lost, but the Confederates had learned the vulnerability of the ironclad "unsinkables." Walking across the deck area and seeing the original timbers raised from 100 years in the mud of the Mississippi brought history to life for us.
We walked around the newer Tennessee Monument and the Texas Monument with the live yuccas and the Iowa Monument with its bronzes on the high ground of the Mississippi Palisades. The park, a remembrance of a terrible war, is a place of beauty and peace.

We left feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude and awed by the sacrifice and the horrendous loss. "At least they didn't forget what men did on both sides," said Andy. "At least here they are remembered."