Three versions of the Missouri-Mississippi confluence

1840

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the vallies of the Rocky Mountains, rushes through a valley of 3,000 miles, receiving the tribute of all its waters, and precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character. The latter, 'till now transparent, reveals in an extraordinary manner the wonders of the secret depths of the opaque waters of the Missouri.   

-- July 23, 1840 Army and Navy Chronicle

1842

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the vallies of the Rocky Mountains, and receiving tributaries throughout a course of three thousand miles, precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character. A mind fertile in conceits might fancy in the coming of this turbid and soil-stained river of the west, to join the clearer and gentler stream, the approach of a red warrior to woo a fair damsel of the settlements; at first the white face edges away and keeps aloof from the strange lover, but his suit is vehement and irresistible, and soon she is in his dusky arms, and her gentleness is lost, and his wild nature gives its complexion to her own. To be sure the circumstance that the Mississippi is the acknowledged "Father of Waters" is an obstacle of sex, and hurts the conceit somewhat. -- Southern Literary Messenger Volume 8, June 1842

1857

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, and receiving tributaries throughout a course of three thousand miles, precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character.   

--Scenes and Adventures in the Army 

And one more:

Down on it like a Pawnee from ambush foams the yellow-jacked [painted?] Missouri....The Missouri sends rather a hostile element than a filial flow. Longer, stronger than the father of waters like Jupiter he dethrones his sire & reigns in his stead. Under the benign name Mississippi it is in short the Missouri that now rolls to the Gulf....

-- Herman Melville, "The River." About which see John D. Seeley, “Timothy Flint’s ‘Wicked River’ and The Confidence-Man.” PMLA 78, no. 1 (1963): 75–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/461227.

Early comment on the racy style of Scenes and Adventures in the Army (1842 magazine version)

The confluence of the Mississippi (right) and the Missouri (left) Rivers.
Photo Credit: Doc DeVore via MU High School

Glad to know I'm not the only one who noticed the loose tendencies already evident in the first part of Scenes and Adventures in the Army. From the Augusta [Georgia] Chronicle, Wednesday, June 22, 1842:

We have read “Scenes and Adventures in the Army, by a Captain of U. S. Dragoons” —with a good deal of enjoyment. The style of composition is not so severely chaste as it might be, but it is nevertheless an agreeable and entertaining paper, especially after the matter-of-fact article of the Naval Officer.

--Found in the newspaper archives at Genealogy Bank.

The most obvious example of less-than-chaste style from the June 1842 installment has to be the extended metaphor of the Missouri River's confluence with the Mississippi as a persistent Indian lover's courting and conquering a white maiden. The candidly experimental and romanticized "conceit" of the "red warrior" and "fair damsel of the settlements" had not appeared in the earlier 1840 version (Army and Navy Chronicle 11, 23 July 1840, p61) of the narrative and would be deleted in revision for the 1857 book version. (Compare the three different versions here.)

The morning after, I passed the mouth of the Missouri. This river, after draining the vallies of the Rocky Mountains, and receiving tributaries throughout a course of three thousand miles, precipitates its turbid currents right across the placid bosom of the Mississippi, to which, losing its name, it imparts its character. A mind fertile in conceits might fancy in the coming of this turbid and soil-stained river of the west, to join the clearer and gentler stream, the approach of a red warrior to woo a fair damsel of the settlements; at first the white face edges away and keeps aloof from the strange lover, but his suit is vehement and irresistible, and soon she is in his dusky arms, and her gentleness is lost, and his wild nature gives its complexion to her own. To be sure the circumstance that the Mississippi is the acknowledged "Father of Waters" is an obstacle of sex, and hurts the conceit somewhat.  --June 1842 Scenes and Adventures

Up north, newspapers in Boston and New York City seemed glad to reprint the account of "An Indian Battle" from the July 1842 installment of "Scenes and Adventures in the Army" in the Southern Literary Messenger. The sketch was given under the following brief editorial introduction which did not appear in the original magazine series:

AN INDIAN BATTLE—[The Southern Literary Messenger, for July, has an entertaining article entitled “Scenes and Adventures in the Army,” which relates incidents which took place a few years since in the country watered by the Arkansas, and stretching from the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The following is a lively description of a contest with the Indians.]

Newspaper re-printings of the "Indian Battle" sketch from the July 1842 Southern Literary Messenger include:

• New York Sun, Friday, July 8, 1842 
• New York Evening Post, Saturday, July 9, 1842 
• Albany Argus, Tuesday, July 12, 1842 
• Boston Traveler Tuesday, August 2, 1842
• Vermont Gazette [Bennington, Vermont], Tuesday, August 9, 1842

None of these 1842 excerpts acknowledged the prior, 1840 publication of "Scenes and Adventures in the Army" in the Army and Navy Chronicle under a couple of different titles, the last being "Notes and Reminiscences of an Officer of the Army." The Indian Battle episode was first published in the September 10, 1840 issue of the Army and Navy Chronicle (volume 11) with the rest of No. VII of "Notes and Reminiscences of an Officer of the Army" by "F. R. D."

Army and Navy Chronicle 10-11 (1840)

waters flowing through depths, emerging far away

Devil's Gate, Wyoming
Frederick Piercy, 1853

Hershel Parker, Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative:

"To declare that Melville was interested in bodies of water—lakes, ponds, flowing water, waterfalls, confluences of rivers, and oceans—is to announce the obvious. But there was more. Melville was fascinated by, perhaps haunted by, feelings of being subterranean, in the orlop deck, in vaults, in passages such as Giovanni Belzoni wormed his way through, in depths below depths as in the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris. He was particularly intrigued by waters that went subterranean and emerged far away." (15)

"You stand upon one side of what seems a deep green river, flowing through mountain passes to the sea..." (Omoo)

Thus liberated, the river enters a vast sunburnt plain; and, as if to take a last farewell of the romantic ridge, runs five or six miles to the foot of the solitary Independence Rock, thrown out like a grim sentinel upon the desert's boundary; then, as if warned of the salt and lava desolation beyond, turns again, and hastens to join the Platte, to aid in the evident struggle before it, with all the rocky powers of chaos and volcano.

Having thus, as from impulse, surrendered name and identity, and the excited contest over, they emerge from the secret and sublime mountain passes, in dreary unity, upon the boundless flatness of barren plains,—though some fleeting enjoyment of flowery savannas succeeds— before both are lost in Missouri's dark and turbid flood.

Farewell to thee, then, sweet daughter of Mountain! Thou smile upon our mother's melancholy face! Go,— with thy bright and blithe innocence,—like many another victim;—go purling merrily when you may, ignorantly happy, to the dark course of thy destiny. Thus do the Fates spin our warped life-threads,—thus do we weave its chequered or sombre web! [earlier version, Sept. 1852: "...ignorantly happy, to the chequered course of thy destiny. Thus do the silent Fates prepare for our warped life threads their sombre woof!]

.... Silvery gleams attract our sight—there is water—it is the river! In the midst of its secret, fierce course, a sweet glen has tempted it to a gentle pause on its soft bosom. It is then a river valley! Truly, close to our right, through an unsuspected chasm of wondrous depth, the happy Platte, having been somewhere secretly united to Sweet Water, has come to meet us, as witnesses to its triumph, or sharers in the excitement of a pleasure tour. Lowly, but bright and joyous in its life of motion and cumulative power, it advances, courting first all sweet and quiet recesses—yet daring all opposition to its wilful course. How we watch it now! Yonder, it sweeps in curves of beauty;—but suddenly lost, we gaze conjecturing where it may next appear; unexpectedly, it has paid a smiling visit to a grim mound, that stands modestly far aside; satisfied, it comes forth to new discoveries;—a determined barrier seems opposed ; but carelessly yet, it sports in some little meadows which can scarce be seen. Then it advances more seriously to a green hill, which seems bent in homage. But no! Nothing less than the loftiest mountain of proud rock, must give it passage! and through a narrow—a sublime chasm, it fiercely rushes forth to new labyrinths beyond.

September 1852, Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Update:  This lavish personification of the Sweetwater River has also to do with, besides surprise emergings from depths and labyrinths, a preoccupation with the confluence of rivers, here the Sweetwater and Platte, with a gloomy anticipation too of another confluence, the inevitable merging of the Platte and Missouri rivers.

"Why would he not seek out confluences of rivers, since from childhood he had walked on the Battery, seeing where the East River and the Hudson (or “North River”) merged after they poured separately into the bay?"  (Hershel Parker, Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative)