Tenn-Tom Country (review)

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 27, No. 2, November 1987, pp. 131-136 REVIEWS Tenn-Tom Country. James F. Doster and David C. Weaver. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987. 239 pp., maps, tables, diagrams, photographs, appendix and index. $49.95 cloth (ISBN: 0-8173-0279-4) Tenn-Tom Country chronicles the cultural and economic character of the upper Tombigbee Valley of western Alabama and northwestern Mississippi . The epic culminates with construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. As James Doster and David Weaver correctly suggest the "Tenn-Tom" Waterway ranks as "one of the great engineering accomplishments of all time, comparable in magnitude to the Panama Canal and Egypt's Aswan Dam." The authors seek to describe what the country and people are like, what have been the results of attempts to foster economic development in the region, and what has been done to protect and preserve the regional historic heritage. The organization of the book is generally chronological but Chapter 1, "Preserving the Memories of Early Times," pays tribute to some of the individuals whose efforts shaped and preserved the cultural history of the region. Chapter 2, "Nature and Artifacts," supplies an easily readable overview of the geology and archeology of the Tenn-Tom Country and Chapter 3, "Indians and Indian Countrymen, 1540-1820," reviews the early historical record. The antebellum years are particularly well surveyed in three chapters: Chapter 4, "White Planters and Black Slaves, 1820-1840; Chapter 5, "Flush Times, 1840-1860;" and Chapter 6, "Antebellum Homes of the Wealthy." Students of folk housing will be pleased to see the evolution of early homes within the region (e.g., double pens, dogtrots , and I-houses) included and woven into an evolutionary architectural milieu. The following three chapters: "Civil War and Readjustment, 1860-1870," "The New Economy, 1870-1890," and "Doldrum Days, 1890-1940" describe how a collapsed and sluggish economy struggled through a difficult period. For example Doster and Weaver address one of the most interesting questions about the quality of life in the South during the mid to late nineteenth century, the relationship between agriculture, trade, and diet. As the Black Prairie soils were depleted and farmers found it increasingly difficult to purchase supplies, merchants 132Southeastern Geographer would furnish supplies and perhaps some cash in exchange for a lien on the future crop. As the productivity of the upland Black Prairie soils declined, yields declined sharply and merchants demanded that more cotton be planted to better cover their liens. The production of meat and bread decreased. "Fatback pork from the North" replaced the lean locally produced meat. Doster and Weaver suggest: "Concentration on this and on wheat flour produced an ill-balanced diet, causing widespread dietary deficiencies and a disease called pellagra." The modern growth of industry is well illustrated in Chapter 10, "The Great Awakening: The Transformation since 1940." To many readers, the final chapter, "The Impact of the Waterway," may be the most intriguing because of the many social and economic problems and opportunities created by the Tenn-Tom Waterway. Opened since 1985 the main impact on the counties adjacent to the Tenn-Tom has been the employment of construction and maintenance workers. Long term impacts are expected to include use of numerous recreational areas for hunting, fishing, picnicking, boating, and camping. The authors also suggest another somewhat unexpected benefit of the waterway. The U.S. Corps of Engineers was pressured by various interest groups to develop an environmentally sensitive technology. The authors suggest that as a result of the criticism surrounding the Tenn-Tom, the Corps developed an improved "capacity to perform great works with a minimum disturbance to the ecology and culture of an area." The decision to build the waterway was surrounded by controversy but the reader is provided with only sketchy explanations ofthe dispute. On what evidence did the 1961 "economic study" base its favorable recommendation to build the waterway? What was the crucial testimony in the Environmental Defense Fund suit against the Corps of Engineers? What was the cost of the waterway projected to be? What was the value of all the projected benefits? Now that the waterway is finished, how do the benefits compare with the costs? Is the Tennessee...