William Halse Rivers Rivers

William Halse Rivers Rivers 1864-1922, British anthropologist. He taught at Cambridge from 1893 until shortly before his death. Trained in medicine and psychology, he pioneered in the experimental study of mental functions among preliterate peoples, making his first field investigations in 1898 among the islanders of the Torres Strait, which separates Australia and New Guinea. Rivers also made a major contribution to social anthropology, introducing the genealogical method into sociological investigations. This method is applied with great success in his classic study, The Todas (1906). An expedition to Melanesia in 1908 resulted in his monumental work, The History of Melanesian Society (1914). His attempts to fuse ethnological facts and psychoanalytic theory led to such works as Instinct and the Unconscious (2d ed. 1922) and Medicine, Magic, and Religion (1924). Other writings include Kinship and Social Organization (1914), Essays on the Depopulation of Melanesia (1922), Psychology and Politics (1923), and Social Organization (ed. by W. J. Perry, 1924).

Yazoo River a river joining the Mississippi River at the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which was a Confederate stronghold during the Civil War. Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant fought to capture Vicksburg by land and water from mid October 1862. Several attempts to seize Vicksburg, which was well-defended and surrounded by high river bluffs, involved use of gunboats in the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers. The U.S.S. Cairo was the first vessel torpedoed and sunk by Confederate forces on December 12, 1862, in the Yazoo River. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman continued to challenge Confederate forces from the water. Bombings from mortar boats on the Yazoo River May 24–31, 1863, aided the siege of Vicksburg by land. Confederate troops at Vicksburg surrendered on July 3, 1863.