I, whom you call the MISSISSIPPI RIVER, reflect on my Encounters with Anunnaki and other off-worlders, with Mound Builder people descended from Cain of Mesopotamia, and with conquerors, slaves, pirates, American presidents, engineers, and with climate as it changes.
Zecharia Sitchin scholar Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA), translated my story from gurgles into English below. Humans call me Mississippi. I took muddy water from a big part of North America to the Mexican Gulf. Animals drank from me. Indians traveled my tributaries, fished my waters, planted beside me, traded upon me, fought beside me, and built civilizations along my banks. Then Europeans arrived. They sought gold, land, empire, converts, cotton, slaves, commerce, and power. Later humans straightened me, dredged me, dammed my tributaries, confined me behind levees, and built cities where my floods had deposited mud for thousands of years.
Through all these transformations, I watched the same human dilemma recur:
COOPERATION created civilizations. DOMINATION concentrated their benefits and costs.
But neither complete submission nor complete disorganization solved the human problem.
As you read each chapter of my story, learn:
Who did the work?
Who controlled the surplus?
Who made the decisions?
Who benefited?
Who paid? and,
How can humans combine leadership with cooperation without turning leadership into domination?
ca 1,000 BCE: BEFORE AMERICA: INDIANS BUILT CITIES BESIDE ME
Long before Europeans arrived, Indian societies transformed my banks; people the Whites now call “Indians” built CAHOKIA (across the river from what you call “St. Louis”.
Cahokia housed 10,000-20,000 people at its height. Thousands of Homo sapiens, refugees from the Lyran-Draco wars, directed (and assisted with sonar technology) the building of monumental earthworks at Cahokia; local leaders directed Indian laborers who assisted the giant refugee extraterrestrials. Cahokia’s farmers cultivated corn; fishers and hunters supplied food, and craftspeople produced specialized goods they traded widely. The so-called Indian traders moved materials across great distances, their Priests conducted ceremonies, and their leaders organized the Indians to support the construction that the ETs were creating. MONKS MOUND, one mound the Indians and their off-planet patrons built at Cahokia, towered about 100 feet above the landscape. Monks Mound’s base covered 16 acres.
Indian workers did as their ET sponsors asked. Building the mounds required enormous cooperation, but Cahokia also showed hierarchy. Important Indians occupied privileged spaces and burials. Mound 72 contained hundreds of burials, including sacrificial victims. COOPERATION and DOMINATION existed together at Cahokia. Cooperators commented, Together we can create what none of us can create alone. But Dominators demanded more power, wealth, and obedience than those they bossed. I, the River that brought them bounty, say Organization may be necessary. But when does leadership become ownership of other people?
ANUNNAKI PRINCE MARDUK AND THE MOUND BUILDERS
Sitchin described conflict among the Anunnaki Royals who had settled in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Prince Marduk, who was engaged to marry Nannar/Allah’s daughter INANNA, died while men dispatched by Marduk attempted to seize him on the pretext that he raped his sister Gestinianna (it was a set-up; she told Dumuzi to escape, but he died trying to escape Marduk’s marshals).
Marduk denied deliberately killing Dumuzi, but the Anunnaki nevertheless judged him responsible. They imprisoned him in the Great Pyramid, rescued him, and ultimately exiled him to North America. Marduk went with his hybrid Anunnaki/Adapite wife, SARPANIT, and their son, NABU, to the “Land of Bisons” — North America.
Marduk himself illustrates the paradox of the Anunnaki and the humans they bred and deposited on my banks: dominators and cooperators struggled to reconcile the dimension of giving and taking that defines the universal polarity of giving and taking. DOMINATORS demanded power, dynasty, rivalry, command, and competition for supremacy; cooperators counseled engineering, organization, civilization-building, and coordination of collective projects.
1500s: EUROPEAN CONQUERORS CAME LOOKING FOR WEALTH
Then strangers entered my world.
HERNANDO DE SOTO’S expedition crossed the Southeast searching for riches.
Its members encountered populous Indian societies, chiefdoms, cultivated fields, towns, and political systems that contradicted later fantasies of an empty wilderness awaiting Europeans.
The expedition demanded food and labor, took captives, fought Indian communities, and carried Old World diseases into a continent catastrophically vulnerable to them.
De Soto reached the Mississippi in 1541. In 1542, he died. His followers concealed his death and placed his body into my waters.
The conqueror who sought wealth beyond imagination ultimately disappeared beneath the river he could not conquer.
Desoto and dominators told the Indians, Your land, food, labor, and treasure belong to me because I possess greater military power.
No way, said Indians, who preferred cooperation: Trade with us. Learn from us. Exchange rather than conquer. Prosper together.
I the River, say, They could have met one another as peoples. Alas, they met as masters and prospective subjects.
1718–1803: NEW ORLEANS TURNED MY MOUTH INTO AN IMPERIAL PRIZE
Europeans realized that whoever controlled my mouth could influence commerce across much of the continent.
The French founded NEW ORLEANS in 1718.
French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, Indian, and later American influences mingled there.
But cultural creativity existed beside brutal inequality.
Enslaved Africans and their descendants generated enormous wealth while being treated legally as property.
New Orleans became a place of cultural synthesis and racial caste at the same time.
France, then Spain, ruled Louisiana. France regained it.
In 1803, French Emperor NAPOLEON sold the Louisiana territory to the United States. I, mighty river,
had become an artery of continental empire.
People exchanged foods, rhythms, languages, religions, technologies, and traditions.
COOPERATION CREATED CULTURE ON MY SOUTH END
Empire, slavery, and caste determined who possessed political and economic power.
DOMINATION DISTRIBUTED THE REWARDS.
1800s: BURR, WILKINSON, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR NORTH AMERICA’S WEST
After the Louisiana Purchase, Americans themselves struggled over who would control the enormous western territory.
AARON BURR became involved in a mysterious western enterprise whose ultimate purpose remains debated.
GENERAL JAMES WILKINSON—one of America’s highest military officers secretly received money from Spain and communicated with Spanish authorities.
Burr and Wilkinson became associated with plans involving western lands and Spanish territories before Wilkinson turned against Burr.
National loyalty, private ambition, land speculation, foreign intrigue, and personal power were already tangled together along my waters.
From my riparian perspective, the Politicians said they represented nations, but speculators represented fortunes.
Soldiers represented governments.
No one represented the ordinary people already living beside me.
1815: PIRATES, SOLDIERS, BLACK TROOPS, AND JACKSON DEFEATED THE BRITISH
During the War of 1812, British forces approached New Orleans.
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON assembled a heterogeneous defensive force that included U.S. regulars, militia, free men of color, Choctaw fighters, and JEAN LAFITTE’S Baratarians.
People who ordinarily occupied profoundly unequal positions cooperated against a common enemy.
The American victory at the BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS became legendary.
And generations later children sang: “In 1814, we took a little trip…”
Jackson, whom Americans celebrated for defending New Orleans later, as president, supported Indian removal.
His administration enforced policies that displaced Indian nations from southeastern homelands.
MISSISSIPPI: I say to you, Do not turn people into saints or devils. Examine what they actually did—and ask who benefited and who suffered.
COOPERATION IN ONE CHAPTER DOES NOT ERASE DOMINATION IN ANOTHER.
1800s–1900s: HUMANS PUT ME TO WORK
Steamboats transformed me into an industrial transportation highway.
Cotton traveled upon me.
So did enslaved people.
Plantation fortunes accumulated through coerced Black labor.
After slavery ended, racial caste survived through segregation, political exclusion, economic inequality, and violence.
Then engineers attempted something unprecedented.
Humans dredged me.
They built levees.
They cut channels.
They constructed locks, dams, reservoirs, spillways, and flood-control systems throughout my enormous watershed.
Projects such as the TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY demonstrated another paradox of collective power.
Government coordination could provide electricity, navigation, employment, erosion control, and regional development on a scale individuals could never accomplish separately.
But dams and reservoirs could also displace communities, transform ecosystems, and place enormous decision-making authority in centralized institutions.
Cooperators cautioned, Pool resources so everyone can have electricity, transportation, water management, and protection.”
Dominators declared, Experts know what is best. Move aside.
I, the River, say, Neither slogan alone solves the problem. THE QUESTION IS WHETHER PEOPLE AFFECTED BY COLLECTIVE POWER ALSO SHARE MEANINGFULLY IN ITS DECISIONS AND BENEFITS.
2005–2100? I, THE MISSISSIPPI AND MY EXIT ORIFICE AT NEW ORLEANS FACE A CHANGING CLIMATE
KATRINA
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and catastrophic failures in the New Orleans flood-protection system inundated much of the city.
The Mississippi Delta is losing land while relative sea level rises.
Subsidence makes parts of coastal Louisiana especially vulnerable.
Climate change does not mean simply “more water.”
Periods of heavy precipitation increase flood pressures.
Periods of drought can reduce my flow, impair navigation, and allow saltwater from the Gulf to push upstream.
Humans experienced serious saltwater intrusion in the lower river during recent drought years.
So will New Orleans disappear?
Its future depends partly upon global warming and sea-level rise, but also upon subsidence, wetlands, sediment, levees, storm protection, coastal restoration, engineering, investment, public policy, and choices humans have not yet made.
For thousands of years humans have asked: HOW CAN WE MAKE THE MISSISSIPPI SERVE US?
But now, I ask, HOW CAN HUMANS AND I SURVIVE TOGETHER?
Dominators demand: Conquer nature; passive romantics respond: Never interfere with nature.
But neither is sufficient for millions of people already living within a transformed river system.
Cooperators contend: We must UNDERSTAND, ADAPT, RESTORE, ENGINEER WISELY, SHARE COSTS, SHARE BENEFITS, and PLAN TOGETHER
I, the river you call the Mississippi, thank you for hearing my story.
I carried the canoes of Indians.
I watched Cahokia rise.
I received De Soto.
I carried slave ships and cotton.
I carried steamboats.
I watched pirates become patriots for a battle.
I watched engineers imprison my floods between walls.
I watched New Orleans dance below sea level.
And I am still flowing.
I HAVE CHANGED YOUR CIVILIZATION.
NOW YOUR CIVILIZATION IS CHANGING ME.
WHAT WILL WE BECOME TOGETHER?
REFERENCES
Cahokia: National Park Service, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site: World Heritage Site. Cahokia flourished principally between A.D. 1000 and 1350; estimates place Cahokia proper at approximately 10,000–20,000 inhabitants. Greater Cahokia may have been considerably larger.
National Park Service, Cahokia Mounds Reconnaissance Survey. Useful for Cahokia’s urban organization, Monks Mound, Mound 72, agriculture, population, palisades, and eventual decline.
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site — archaeological and interpretive materials.
Sitchin/Anunnaki hypothesis: Zecharia Sitchin, The Lost Book of Enki and When Time Began. Use for Sitchin’s reconstruction of the Dumuzi/Marduk conflict, Marduk’s punishment and exile, Sarpanit, Nabu, and related Anunnaki chronology.
People’s-history framework: Chris Harman, A People’s History of the World, 2017 edition; Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States. Use particularly for class, labor, surplus, hierarchy, conquest, slavery, and history viewed from ordinary people’s experience.
Mississippi climate future: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration materials on sea-level rise, coastal inundation, drought, Mississippi navigation, saltwater intrusion, and extreme precipitation.
Video: Cahokia Mound Builders — 500 Nations Middle Native American Tribes, posted by Jeffery Powell; reviews Cahokia, Mississippian life, Great Sun traditions, trade, agriculture, and mound building.
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