Deadly Flood of 1844 This winter’s headlines of Missouri River flooding call to mind the river’s biggest flood ever recorded.

The Missouri River and its tributaries have long been torturous neighbors. Calm and quietly flowing toward the seas most of the time, these waters, after heavy rains, have the potential to suddenly transform into roaring, churning monsters and bringers of death.

In 1842, the Wyandotte Nation, after extensive cajoling by the U.S. government, agreed to abandon their homes in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, for lands in the West. The resettlement was a process begun in the 1830s under President Andrew Jackson’s removal policy. The Wyandottes had resisted removal until a principal leader was brutally murdered with axes;  the non-Indian killers were kept from justice as the county allowed two of the killers to escape jail and refused to prosecute another.

Among the Wyandottes who took the 1843 downriver trip to their new land was Louis Tromley, along with his wife and child. In Kansas, the Wyandottes were given lands in what is now part of the greater metropolitan area of Kansas City. The Tromley family reestablished their lives; they built a cabin and cleared land for their farm on the south bank of the Missouri River. Many of Tromley’s fellow tribesmen established the town of Wyandotte nearby.

The first winter stretched into a dry April in 1844. Spring rains came in May. The skies shed water for six weeks straight.

By June 13, the junctions of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers began to back water over the bottomlands. The next day, the water ominously crested over the banks and backed up adjacent tributaries. By June 15, the Kansas and Missouri Rivers were roaring torrents.

As the waters lapped around his family home, Tromley tried to float on a log to Wyandotte to get help. The churning floodwaters made the journey impossible. The elderly man was forced to abandon the log and cling to the upper branches of a tree.

He spent a terrible night shouting into the darkness toward Wyandotte, hoping that his cries would bring help. Amazingly, his calls were heard in Wyandotte. Several tribal members, including Tall Charles, David Froman, Russell Garret, Ethan Long and Isaac Walker, launched a boat farther up the Kansas River, intending to land, after a truly dangerous ride, somewhere near Tromley’s farm.

Their plan worked. They rescued Tromley from his tree and his wife clinging from another tree a few hundred yards away. They found the son on the peak of the roof, as the family home shuddered, shifted and threatened to yield to the swift currents.

The Tromley family joined the gathering throng of refugees who were being taken to the higher hills in the area. The rescue team left to save other families. These intrepid Wyandotte men continued in their heroic activities until darkness made further rescues impossible.

The Tromleys watched from the hilltop as their cabin floated down the river. The terrified family dog clung atop the roof, howling for assistance. Tromley had to be dissuaded from attempting a foolhardy rescue. With a heavy heart, he took last, sorrowful looks at his faithful pet and his home as both were swept out of sight.

The sparse population and scattered development along the Mississippi River kept the Great Flood of 1844 from being a major killer and destroyer of property. A small levee breech today can run up much higher rates of killed and damaged property than the entire 1844 flood.    

The flow rate reveals how the 1844 flood was a monster compared to the recent flood. Estimated Mississippi River discharge during the Great Flood in St. Louis, Missouri, was 1.3 million cubic feet per second, compared with roughly 900,000 cubic feet per second in the winter of 2015-2016.

The 1844 flood was still incredibly deadly. In late June and early July 1844, record-high water inundated several communities outlying St. Louis, including the almost total destruction of Kaskaskia, Illinois. Crops were destroyed, industries flooded and warehouses obliterated. Steamships offered aid, as they could easily navigate over areas that a few days earlier had been prairies, but were now great rivers spread to a width of as much as 15 miles.

Once the water receded, the Wyandotte citizens rebuilt their obliterated community from nothing. The seething waters had been so powerful that rotting buffalo carcasses were stuck in treetops along the course of the rivers. Those saved from a rapid, violent death found themselves contending with another grim reaper—pestilence.

The Trail of Tears suffered by the Wyandottes to reach this new home culminated with this soul-taking flood. By the fall of 1844, almost every member of the Wyandotte Nation suffered from chills, fevers and “bloody flux.” Roughly 100, or one out of every seven, members died.

Terry A. Del Bene is a former Bureau of Land Management archaeologist and the author of Donner Party Cookbook and the novel ’Dem Bon’z.