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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41103 ***
+
+HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA
+
+VOLUME 9
+
+
+
+
+  HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA
+  VOLUME 9
+
+  Waterways of Westward Expansion
+
+  THE OHIO RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES
+
+  BY
+  ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT
+
+  _With Maps_
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
+  CLEVELAND, OHIO
+  1903
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1903
+  BY
+  THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                            PAGE
+  PREFACE                                      9
+    I. OUR FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE OHIO          15
+   II. THE INDIAN SIDE                        48
+  III. "THE NAVIGATOR"                        73
+   IV. THE EVOLUTION OF RIVER CRAFT          100
+    V. THREE GENERATIONS OF RIVERMEN         151
+   VI. THE NAVIGATION OF THE OHIO            189
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    I. BONNÉCAMPS'S MAP OF THE OHIO RIVER; 1749                       24
+   II. CAPTAIN GORDON'S MAP OF THE OHIO; 1766                _facing_ 48
+  III. RUFUS PUTNAM'S MAP OF THE OHIO RIVER AND SETTLEMENTS; 1804     71
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In the study of Waterways of Westward Expansion, the Ohio River--the
+"Gateway of the West"--occupies such a commanding position that it must
+be considered most important and most typical. Such is its situation in
+our geography and history that it is entitled to a most prominent place
+among Historic Highways of America which greatly influenced the early
+westward extension of the borders and the people of the United States.
+Not until a late period in the expansion era--the day of steam
+navigation--did the Great Lakes rise to importance as highways of
+immigration, and south of the Ohio River Basin there was no westward
+waterway of importance. The day of the keel-boat and barge was of moment
+in the broadening of the American sphere of influence on this continent,
+and nowhere is the study of these ancient craft made to so good
+advantage as on the Ohio and its tributaries.
+
+This monograph is devoted, therefore, to the part played by this
+waterway as a road into the West. The two introductory chapters,
+concerning Céloron and the first occupation of the Old Northwest, added
+to previous volumes of this series (iii, iv, v, and vi), complete the
+legendary and historical setting necessary for a proper view of the Ohio
+in the first momentous years of the nineteenth century. The occupation
+and filling of the southern shores of the Ohio was the story of Volume
+VI; the story of the filling of the northern shore is outlined in the
+second chapter of this book. With the position of the first colonies and
+settlements in the great valley well comprehended, and a conception of
+the origin of the different colonies and their varied types, the next
+logical step in our study is the rise of the river trade and its
+evolution.
+
+It is hardly necessary to point out to any reader of these volumes that
+the Ohio River was the highway upon which all of the great early
+continental routes focused. Washington's Road, Braddock's Road,
+Forbes's Road, and Boone's Road--like the Indian and buffalo trails
+they followed--had their goal on the shores of this strategic waterway.
+The westward movement was by river valleys (a fact perhaps never
+sufficiently emphasized) and not until the Tennessee, Monongahela,
+Kanawha, and Kentucky Rivers were reached were any waters found to run
+parallel with the social movement itself.
+
+When this goal of half a century was reached, then followed a half
+century of river travel that is being forgotten with remarkable
+rapidity. This cannot be realized until one marks out for himself the
+task, for instance, of learning how a keel-boat was made and how it was
+operated. The echo of the steersman's voice and the tuneful note of the
+bargeman's horn have faded from our valleys; and with this music has
+passed away a chapter of our history of vital importance and
+transcendant human interest.
+
+For the sum and substance of Chapter III, the author is indebted, as
+the title indicates, to the painstaking labor of one Zadoc Cramer, a
+statistical hero of a time when a man who could "earn his salt" was
+making a good day's wage, and when it seemed likely that Pittsburg might
+become one of the principal cities of the West.
+
+                                                              A. B. H.
+
+MARIETTA, OHIO, July 23, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+Waterways of Westward Expansion
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OUR FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE OHIO
+
+
+The Ohio River is a greater and more important stream than is generally
+realized. It drains a vast and rich territory; its northern source is in
+latitude 42° 20['], while its mouth, thirteen hundred miles away, is in
+latitude 37° north. Its eastern tributaries are in longitude 78°, while
+its outlet is in longitude 89° 20[']. It thus comprises 5° 2['] of
+latitude and 11° 20['] of longitude. The Ohio drains a greater area than
+the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri; nearly one quarter of
+the waters which flow into the Gulf of Mexico come from it. The lower
+Mississippi and Missouri, only, drain more territory than the Ohio; but
+the downfall of rain in the Missouri drainage is not so great in actual
+water supply as that which falls within the 214,000 square miles drained
+by the Ohio. Moreover, in the district drained by the two heads of the
+Ohio, the Allegheny and the Monongahela (20,000 square miles), it has
+been estimated that the ratio of discharge to downfall is much greater
+than on any of the tributaries of the Mississippi. In 1868,
+1,342,605,725,800 cubic feet of water passed Pittsburg, and in 1869,
+1,634,846,499,200 cubic feet. At the same time the annual downfall of
+rain in the entire Ohio drainage was twenty and one-half trillion cubic
+feet, while the discharge of the Ohio into the Mississippi at Cairo was
+five trillion cubic feet. The ratio of discharge to downfall therefore
+was 0.24.
+
+These estimates, which undoubtedly approximate the truth, are of moment
+to our study. Nature cast, with a lavish hand, her waters where they
+would count tremendously in the opening of this continent: for the
+waters that fell here flowed into the West and the social movement was
+to be westward. The Ohio, more than any river, was to influence the
+flood-tides of immigration. The provision of water was, comparatively,
+abundant; that was the first necessity. A large proportion of the water
+that fell flowed away; that was the second necessity. It flowed
+approximately west; that was the third necessity. Thus it is that this
+river, of all rivers, has a place among the Historic Highways of America
+which were controlling forces in the early days of our national
+expansion westward.
+
+There are various theories concerning the name Ohio, the most popular
+and generally acceptable being that Ohio was the English way of spelling
+and pronouncing the name Oyo, "beautiful" which the Indians had given to
+the river. The French, who usually translated Indian names, called the
+Ohio River La Belle Rivière. Later came the English, and the Iroquois
+name Oyo was Anglicized to Ohio, the modern name of the river. This
+makes a very satisfactory explanation of La Belle Rivière, were it not
+that the Reverend John Heckewelder affirmed that the French name Belle
+Rivière was not a translation from the Indian, since there was no such
+Indian word meaning "beautiful." Mr. Heckewelder felt dissatisfied with
+the theory that Ohio meant "beautiful," and while yet associated with
+the Indians and familiar with their language, made a study of their
+names for the Ohio River with interesting and enlightening results. In
+tracing the derivation of the word Ohio he shows that, in the Miamis
+language, O'hui or Ohi, when prefixed, meant "very," while Ohiopeek
+meant "very white" (caused by froth or white caps) and Ohiopeekhanne
+meant "the white foaming river." He further states: "The Ohio river
+being in many places wide and deep and so gentle that for many miles, in
+some places, no current is perceivable, the least wind blowing up the
+river covers the surface with what the people of that country call
+'white caps;' and I have myself witnessed that for days together, this
+has been the case, caused by southwesterly winds (which by the by are
+the prevailing winds in that country) so that we, navigating the canoes,
+durst not venture to proceed, as these white caps would have filled, and
+sunk our canoe in an instant. Now, in all such cases, when the river
+could not be navigated with canoes, nor even crossed with this kind of
+craft--when the whole surface of the water presented white foaming
+swells, the Indians would, as the case was at the time, say, 'juh
+Ohiopiechen, Ohiopeek Ohiopeekhanne;' and when they supposed the water
+very deep they would say, 'kitschi Ohiopeekhanne,' which means, 'verily
+this is a deep white river.'"[1]
+
+The traders who penetrated the Indian country were commonly careless of
+the pronunciation of names; any word which bore a fragment of similarity
+to the true name was satisfactory. There is, however, great excuse for
+this, as it was impossible for white men to acquire the "Indian ear" and
+pronounce the gutturals of the Indian language. Thus the abridgement of
+many words was carried to such an extent that nothing significant of the
+original Indian name remains. The newcomer learned of his predecessor
+and the "nick-names" were adopted and handed down leaving the true names
+to pass out of memory and existence. For instance Pittsburg was commonly
+called "Pitt" by the traders; Youghiogheny, "Yough;" Hockhocking,
+"Hocken." Our word Lehigh has no signification but was shortened from
+the original Indian name Leehauhanne. In this same manner, the traders
+adopted the first syllables of the word Ohiopeekhanne, thus obtaining an
+easier name to pronounce and remember.
+
+The Reverend Mr. Heckewelder is probably the best authority on Indian
+names and customs, so that, presumably, his version of the derivation
+and meaning of the name Ohio is the most authentic; but, the question
+remains, why should the French have called it La Belle Rivière? One
+cannot pass, however, without noting that in the Onondaga language there
+was a word ojoneri--the j being pronounced like our y. The Reverend
+David Zeisberger, who compiled a copious dictionary of the Onondaga
+language, asserted that ojoneri meant "beautiful" but in an adverbial
+sense, describing the manner in which something is done--synonymous with
+our word well. If the French translated an Indian name La Belle Rivière,
+it was the first syllables of this word, ojoneri, that they
+translated--about as correctly as Washington translated Illinois when he
+first heard it "Black Island" (Île Noire) or Lieutenant-governor
+Hamilton of Detroit translated Rivière d'Anguille (Eel River, as the
+Indians called it) as if it were Rivière d'Anglais.
+
+It is believed that the famous La Salle was the discoverer of the Ohio;
+three years of his life are unaccounted for at a moment when, as Fate
+would have it, we would like most to know where the brave explorer went.
+Suddenly we lose sight of La Salle near Niagara--searching earnestly for
+a great western river. Where he went we do not know but there is
+evidence that he came to what the French later knew as La Belle Rivière
+and descended it to "the Falls," or Louisville, Kentucky, about 1670.
+
+The earliest actual description of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers is
+contained in the narratives of two men who came to the Ohio about the
+middle of the eighteenth century. Here we find the earliest authentic
+experience of travelers on this great water highway. This first glimpse
+of the Allegheny and Ohio is alluring in its suggestiveness; there is so
+much to be noted, between the lines. No story of the Ohio can be written
+without presenting the faintly filled-in pictures of Céloron and
+Bonnécamps: of the rugged hills, the rapid waters, the humorous
+scattering of the Loups and Renards; the solemn proclamations "in a loud
+voice" of sovereignty; the flotilla of canoes sweeping around the hill
+and out of sight. But almost all of this is left to the imagination;
+lacking this, the story is but a meaningless record of landings and
+departures, harangues and horrors. To every reader the story must appear
+differently, but to all it must be a first glimpse of the primeval Ohio.
+
+[Illustration: BONNÉCAMPS'S MAP OF THE OHIO RIVER (1749)]
+
+On the afternoon of the fifteenth day of June in the year 1749 a gallant
+company of French, with savage allies, under the direction of Monsieur
+Céloron de Bienville, embarked on the St. Lawrence in twenty-three
+canoes at La Chine near Montreal. Progress was slow for, in addition to
+the passengers, provisions, and camp necessities, the weight of a number
+of leaden plates caused the canoes to glide deeply in the clear waters.
+It is to the journals of Céloron and Father Bonnécamps, both of which
+are preserved in the archives of the Department of the Marine, in Paris,
+that we owe our knowledge of this first recorded voyage down La Belle
+Rivière, and with this expedition of 1749 begins the authentic
+history of the Ohio River.[2]
+
+Céloron and his detachment, with M. de Contrecoeur as captain,
+proceeded up the St. Lawrence and into the lakes. After coasting the
+southern shore of Lake Erie, he arrived at the Chautauqua portage--now
+known as Barcelona or Portland--on the sixteenth of July; and with the
+dawn of the following day began the ascent of Chautauqua Creek, called
+by the French Rivière aux Pommes. Much patience and labor was expended
+on this unnavigable stream, and it was not until the twenty-second of
+the following month that the band entered Chautauqua Lake, having spent
+six days of this time in toiling over the six-mile portage which
+connects Chautauqua Creek with the lake. Céloron now voyaged down the
+lake and on the morning of the twenty-fourth of July entered Conewango
+Creek. The water was low and, borrowing the words of Céloron: "On the
+29th at noon I entered 'la Belle Rivière' I buried a plate of lead at
+the foot of a red oak on the south bank of the river Oyo and of the
+Chauougon, not far from the village of Kanaouagon, in latitude 42° 5[']
+23['']."[3] Of this same occasion Father Bonnécamps wrote: "Finally,
+overcome with weariness, and almost despairing of seeing the Beautiful
+River, we entered it on the 29th at noon. Monsieur de Céloron buried a
+plate of lead on the south bank of the Ohio; and, farther down, he
+attached the royal coat of arms to a tree. After these operations, we
+encamped opposite a little Iroquois village, of 12 or 13 cabins; it is
+called Kananouangon.[4]
+
+It is an ancient custom of the French people to assert claim to lands in
+their possession by burying leaden plates at the mouths of all streams
+that drain that territory. When Céloron started upon his memorable
+journey he carried with him six leaden plates. These plates were about
+eleven inches long, seven and a half inches wide, and one-eighth of an
+inch thick. Each was engraved with an appropriate inscription, leaving a
+blank space for date and name of place of deposit at the mouths of the
+various streams.[5] A _Procès Verbal_, similar in nature to the
+inscription on the plate, was drawn up and signed by the officers
+present. To the nearest tree was tacked a plate of sheet-iron stamped
+with the royal arms. The officers and men of the expedition were drawn
+up in battle array and the chief in command shouted "Vive le Roi,"
+declaring possession in the name of the King of France. La Salle
+established this custom on this continent in the latter part of the
+seventeenth century and now this chevalier of the order of St. Louis
+penetrates the half-known Central West to make good the precedent
+established fifty years and more ago.
+
+Although the treaty of Aix la Chapelle ended a tedious war in Europe,
+many points of controversy remained unsettled in the New World. At the
+conclusion of the war, England lost no time in taking measures to occupy
+the disputed territory. The Ohio Company was formed and the crown
+granted half a million acres to this association on the condition that
+settlements protected by forts be made upon the granted lands. These
+demonstrations on the part of their rivals had aroused the French to
+action. The Marquis de la Galissonière, Governor of Canada, dispatched
+Céloron and his company with orders to descend La Belle Rivière and take
+possession of all the territory drained by it and its tributaries, in
+the name of the King of France. In order to reach the field of action he
+has come a forty-four days' journey filled with bitter lessons. Today
+his first leaden plate has been buried, and tonight his weary "soldiers"
+have, for the first time, pitched their camp on the bank of the river in
+question. The first act of the real mission he has come to perform took
+place this afternoon with the interment of the plate--but that is only
+one of six! They rest in disputed territory and already has Céloron sent
+his right-hand man, M. de Joncaire, on to La Paille Coupée,[6] to
+reassure the suspicious savages.
+
+On the thirtieth the expedition moved on to Paille Coupée. Here a
+council was conducted by Joncaire whom the Indians addressed as "our
+child Joncaire." He had previously been adopted by the Indians and
+consequently had a great influence over them.[7] The "speech" of the
+Marquis de la Galissonière, brought and presented by Céloron to the
+Iroquois, is especially interesting and to the point, as it plainly
+shows the French attitude with reference to the English:
+
+"My children, since I have been at war with the English, I have learned
+that that nation has deceived you; and not content with breaking your
+heart, they have profited by my absence from this country to invade the
+land which does not belong to them and which is mine. This is what
+determined me to send to you Mr. Céloron, to inform you of my
+intentions, which are, that I will not suffer the English on my land;
+and I invite you, if you are my true children, to not receive them any
+more in your villages. I forbid, then, by this belt, the commerce which
+they have established lately in this part of the land, and announce to
+you that I will no longer suffer it. If you attack them you will make
+them retire and send them home; by that means you will be always
+peaceable in your village. I will give you all the aid you should expect
+from a good father. If you come to see me, next spring, you will have
+reason to be satisfied with the reception which I will give you. I will
+furnish you with traders in abundance, if you wish for them. I will even
+place here officers, if that will please you, to govern you and give you
+the good spirit, so that you will only work in good affairs. The English
+are more in the wrong in coming to this land, as the Five Nations have
+told them to fly from there to the mountains. Give serious attention, my
+children, to the words which I send you; listen well, follow it, it is
+the way to see always in your villages a haven beautiful and serene. I
+expect from you a reply worthy of my true children. You see the marks to
+be respected which I have attached along La Belle Rivière, which will
+prove to the English that this land belongs to me and that they cannot
+come here without exposing themselves to be chased away. I wish for this
+time to treat them with kindness and warn them; if they are wise they
+will profit by my advice."[8]
+
+The result of this council was not entirely satisfactory to the French.
+It was too plainly evident that there existed a feeling in favor of the
+English. Bonnécamps writes in his journal: "... and in the evening he
+received their reply, that every one had been satisfied--if one could
+believe it sincere; but we did not doubt that it was extorted with
+fear."[9] Such fears, however, did not alter the determination of the
+French. On July 31, Céloron writes: "I sojourned at this village,
+[Paille Coupée] having been stopped by the abundance of rain, which
+pleased us much. The water rose three feet during the night."[10]
+
+The expedition left Paille Coupée on the first of August and journeyed
+all day "between two chains of mountains, which bordered the river on
+the right and left." Father Bonnécamps notes that "the Ohio is very low
+during the first twenty leagues; but a great storm, which we had
+experienced on the eve of our departure, had swollen the waters, and we
+pursued our journey without any hindrance."[11] Under date of August 1,
+Father Bonnécamps, tourist-like, recounts a snake story, accompanying it
+by the impressions of a newcomer into the Ohio Basin:
+
+"Monsieur Chabert on that day caught seven rattlesnakes, which were the
+first that I had seen. This snake differs in no way from others, except
+that its tail is terminated by seven or eight little scales, fitting one
+into another, which makes a sort of clicking sound when the creature
+moves or shakes itself. Some have yellowish spots scattered over a brown
+ground, and others are entirely brown, or almost black.
+
+"There are, I am told, very large ones. None of those which I have seen
+exceed four feet. The bite is fatal. It is said that washing the wound
+which has been received, with saliva mixed with a little sea-salt, is a
+sovereign remedy. We have not had, thank God, any occasion to put this
+antidote to the test."
+
+After having marched nearly four leagues on this first day of August,
+the party reached a village of Loups and Renards--clans of the Delaware
+Nation.[12] Having been informed of the approach of this expedition, all
+except one man had fled. Céloron explained to this solitary individual
+that he did not mean to harm the Indians, and invited them "to go to the
+village lower down, which was but four or five leagues distant, where he
+would speak to them." Proceeding on down the river he passed another
+Loup village of about the same size, six cabins. To these inhabitants he
+also addressed himself and requested them also to go to the most
+considerable village, where he promised to "speak to them on the part
+of their Father Onontio." They arrived there a little after the
+travelers.
+
+At this "considerable village" of Loups, after having progressed eight
+or nine leagues in the hot August sun, the tired company rested during
+the night. The second of August was spent at the village, and Céloron
+spoke, conciliating the assembled savages.
+
+Under date of August 3, Father Bonnécamps writes: "We continued our
+route, and we marched, as on the first day, buried in the somber and
+dismal valley, which serves as the bed of the Ohio." During this day's
+journey, two Indian villages were passed. The first village was
+abandoned by its inhabitants in favor of the woods, at the approach of
+the expedition. The second village, Venango,[13] consisted of but nine
+or ten cabins. Céloron disembarked here and spoke to the inhabitants
+"nearly as I had spoken to the Loups, and reëmbarked immediately. This
+evening I buried a lead plate and the arms of the king by a tree, and
+drew up the Procès Verbal."[14] This second plate was buried "near" or
+"underneath" a large boulder upon which were numerous Indian
+hieroglyphics. Following the course of the river, this rock was about
+nine miles below the mouth of French Creek, then called Rivière aux
+Boeufs by the French. According to Bonnécamps: "we buried a 2nd plate
+of lead under a great rock, upon which were to be seen several figures
+roughly graven,"[15] while Céloron himself informs us: "I ... have
+buried on the south bank of the Ohio, four leagues below the River aux
+Boeufs, opposite a bald mountain and near a large stone, on which are
+seen several figures, rather roughly engraved, a lead plate and attached
+in the same place to a tree the arms of the king."[16] This plate has
+never been found.
+
+On the morning of the fourth, a conference was held, it being decided
+that Joncaire with the chiefs should precede the party to Attiqué and
+inform the inhabitants of the good intentions of the approaching band,
+and to beg them not to flee from their village. Of this day Father
+Bonnécamps writes:
+
+"The 4th. We continued our route, always surrounded by
+mountains--sometimes so high that they did not permit us to see the sun
+before 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, or [after] 2 or 3 in the
+afternoon. This double chain of mountains stretches along the Beautiful
+River, at least as far as rivière à la Roche ('Rocky River'). Here and
+there, they fall back from the shore, and display little plains of one
+or two leagues in depth." Céloron seems to have had his mind too full of
+serious matters to notice his surroundings or, at least, to have given
+us the benefit of any observations; and Father Bonnécamps's eyes are the
+first through which we can gaze upon the primeval Ohio.
+
+On the fourth the expedition made about fifteen leagues. Camp was broken
+at an early hour on the fifth, and after having journeyed three or four
+leagues the _voyageurs_ passed a river, the confluence of which with the
+Allegheny, Céloron describes as "very beautiful;" a league further down
+they passed another. "They are both south of la Belle Rivière. On the
+heights there are villages of Loups and Iroquois of the Five Nations. I
+encamped early to give time to Mr. de Joncaire to arrive at the village
+Attické."[17]
+
+After having journeyed about five leagues on the sixth they reached
+Attiqué where they found Joncaire and his chiefs awaiting their arrival;
+all the inhabitants of the village had fled to the woods. "I reëmbarked
+and I passed the same day the ancient village of the Chaouanons
+[Shawanese], which has been abandoned since the departure of Chartier
+and his band, who were removed from this place by the orders of the
+Marquis de Beauharnois, and conducted to the river Vermillon, in the
+Wabash, in 1745."[18] At this place Céloron "encountered" six English
+traders with fifty horses and about one hundred and fifty packs of
+peltry with which they were returning to Philadelphia. Céloron warned
+these Englishmen against intruding upon the territory of the French king
+and gave them a letter to deliver to the governor of Pennsylvania at
+Philadelphia.[19]
+
+On the seventh they passed a village of Loups where only three men
+remained--"the rest of their people had gone to Chinique, not daring to
+remain at home. I invited these three men to come with me to Chinique to
+hear what I had to say to them." Céloron tells us that they reëmbarked
+and proceeded on down to "Written Rock" which was inhabited by the
+Iroquois and governed by an old woman[20] who is "entirely devoted to
+the English." All the savages had fled in alarm from the village and
+"there only remained ... six English traders, who came before me
+trembling.... I made them the same summons as to the others, and I wrote
+to their governor.... This place is one of the most beautiful that
+until the present I have seen on the Belle Rivière."[21]
+
+This village was commonly known throughout the pioneer period as
+Shannopin's Town; it was about four miles above the junction of the
+Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. There could be nothing more singular
+than the omission of any references to the Monongahela River, but
+neither Céloron nor Bonnécamps refer in any wise to it. As they did not
+travel at night and as, from the Ohio River, the Allegheny does not now,
+and did not then, appear to be so important a stream as the Monongahela,
+there can be but one explanation for this astounding omission. As no
+mention whatever is made of the Monongahela, and as no plate was buried
+here, either Céloron's party did not see it, or, believing it took its
+rise in Pennsylvania and was already settled by the English, they
+tacitly omitted to claim it for their king. The first supposition is
+absurd; the formation of the country is particularly significant and
+would attract the attention of the most unobserving; the meeting of the
+river tides, the difference in the color of the waters--everything would
+attract the attention of the _voyageur_. The second supposition is
+inexplicable; the only possible shred of evidence that the French ever
+intended that the English should have even a chance to claim any land in
+the Monongahela Valley is in the Sixth Article of the capitulation
+signed by Washington at Fort Necessity in 1754.[22]
+
+The company spent the night of the seventh about three leagues below
+"Written Rock," and as Chiningué was but two leagues below the camp they
+easily reached this town, which was one of the "most considerable on the
+Belle Rivière," the following day. Céloron informs us that this village
+consisted of fifty cabins of Loups, Iroquois, and Shawanese, and Father
+Bonnécamps records that they called it Chiningué from its close
+proximity to a river of that name.[23] This place (a few miles below
+the present Economy, Pennsylvania) has figured prominently in later
+Indian history as Logstown. Croghan's _Journal_ under date of August,
+1749, says that "Monsieur Celaroon with two hundred French soldiers" had
+passed through Logstown just before his arrival. Inquiring of the
+inhabitants the object of "Celaroon's" expedition, he was told that "it
+was to drive the English away, and by burying iron plates, with
+inscriptions on them at the mouth of each remarkable creek, to steal
+away their country."[24]
+
+Upon reaching Chiningué Céloron compelled several English whom he found
+established there to leave and sent by them a letter, similar to the one
+previously spoken of, to Governor Hamilton. The Indians were very
+suspicious of Céloron, and here his Iroquois and Abenaki allies deserted
+him. They treated his speech with contempt and tore down the plates
+which had been nailed upon the trees.
+
+Céloron left Chiningué on the eleventh and at noon of the thirteenth
+interred a plate of lead "at the entrance of the river and on the south
+bank of the Kenawah, which discharges itself to the east of the river
+Ohio."[25] According to Bonnécamps's journal, the plate was interred at
+the mouth of the Kanonouaora. This third plate was probably buried at
+the mouth of Wheeling Creek in West Virginia, though the descriptions of
+the place as given by both Céloron and Bonnécamps are so vague that it
+is quite impossible to identify positively the site.[26]
+
+At seven o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth, the expedition was
+again on its way down the river. They passed two rivers, the entrances
+of which, Céloron tells us, were very beautiful. On the fifteenth the
+route was continued, and a leaden plate was interred "at the foot of a
+maple, which forms a tripod with a red oak and a cone pine, at the
+entrance of the river Yenanguekouan, on the west shore of this river ...
+and in the same place attached to a tree the arms of the King."[27]
+Father Bonnécamps gives, as the name of this river, Jenanguékoua. This,
+the fourth plate, was interred at the mouth of the Muskingum River in
+Ohio, on the site of old Fort Harmar and within the present city of
+Marietta. This plate, found in 1798 by some boys bathing in the
+Muskingum, was presented to the Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts in
+the library of which it is now preserved.
+
+On the sixteenth at nine o'clock, the party resumed its journey, making
+nearly twelve leagues. On the seventeenth Céloron makes record of having
+seen two "beautiful" rivers the names of which he says he does not know.
+"I disembarked early to hunt, being altogether reduced to a diet of
+bread."[28]
+
+The journey was resumed at an early hour the next day, but the party was
+forced to camp at noon, as the rain prevented their continuing. On this
+day, the eighteenth of August, the fifth leaden plate was "buried, at
+the foot of a tree, on the southern shore of the Ohio and the eastern
+shore of Chiniondaista."[29] Father Bonnécamps gives the name of this
+river, the Great Kanawha, Chinodaichta. The spelling of the name on the
+plate, which was found in 1846 and has been preserved by the Virginia
+Historical Society, differs somewhat from that of the _Journal_, that on
+the plate being Chinodahichetha. This place, where the fifth plate was
+interred, was named Point Pleasant, West Virginia, by the early settlers
+and still bears that name.
+
+At this point the expedition was delayed on account of rain, but all
+reëmbarked on the twentieth, and during the day encountered a Loup, who,
+upon being asked how many inhabitants there were at St. Yotoc,[30]
+replied there were eighty or a hundred cabins. On the following day
+Joncaire, two chiefs of the Sault de St. Louis, three Abenakis chiefs,
+and M. de Niverville were sent ahead to St. Yotoc "to tranquilize the
+nations and restore their spirits, in case any carrier of news had
+troubled them."
+
+Céloron gave his envoys a start of several hours before resuming his
+journey. By embarking early on the morning of the twenty-second, they
+were enabled to reach St. Yotoc that day, and encamped opposite the
+village. The next three days were spent in holding councils. The
+Chaouanons (Shawanese) inhabitants of "St. Yotoc" were very suspicious
+of the French and their intentions. Bonnécamps says: "Monsieur the
+Commandant had great difficulty to reassure them." "The situation of the
+village of the Chaouanons is quite pleasant--at least, it is not masked
+by the mountains, like the other villages through which we had passed.
+The Sinhioto river, which bounds it on the West, has given it its name.
+It is composed of about sixty cabins. The Englishmen there numbered
+five. They were ordered to withdraw, and promised to do so."
+
+The expedition embarked on the morning of the twenty-sixth of August and
+reached Rivière la Blanche[31] that night at ten o'clock. Here they
+waited two days for Le Baril, the chief, and his band of Miamis, to join
+them and proceed to La Demoiselle to hear Céloron's speech. "Finally, on
+the morning of the 31st, they appeared, followed by their women, their
+children, and their dogs. All embarked, and about 4 o'clock in the
+afternoon we entered Rivière à la Roche, after having buried the 6th and
+last leaden plate on the western bank of that river,[32] and to the
+north of the Ohio."[33] "I ... have buried on the point formed by the
+right shore of the Ohio, and the left of the River la Roche, a plate of
+lead, and attached to a tree the arms of the king."[34]
+
+With the burial of this sixth and last leaden plate, which, so far as
+known, has never been discovered, Céloron's voyage on La Belle Rivière
+ended, and on the morning of the first of September the canoes began the
+ascent of the shallow Rivière à la Roche en route to Quebec by way of
+Lake Erie.
+
+Through the eyes of these travelers the Governor of New France looked
+upon the great valley of the Ohio and realized its extent and strategic
+value. The many large rivers entering it, the Indian villages which
+dotted its banks and, more than all else, the avidity of English traders
+for the fur trade of these villages, were the items in the report of
+these first _voyageurs_ which led quickly to the French fort-building
+here and precipitated the old French War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE INDIAN SIDE
+
+
+The campaign of General John Forbes in 1758, which ended French rule on
+the Ohio, gave the Ohio Valley to the English. From this time on, the
+entire sweep of territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the present
+Pittsburg may be termed English territory. While England now nominally
+came into possession of all of this portion of New France, the lands on
+either side of the Ohio River below Pittsburg were claimed by the Indian
+nations inhabiting them, and the Crown attempted, in the Proclamation of
+1763, to preserve these lands for the Indians by prohibiting the
+migrations of the colonists. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, and the
+expansion of Virginia into the vast tract south of the Ohio have been
+recounted.[35] It is sufficient to recall here that this treaty gave to
+Virginia the entire southern bank of the Ohio and all the territory
+southward to the banks of the Tennessee. The treaty was made with the
+Iroquois, the conquerors of half a continent, not with the Delawares and
+Shawanese and Southern Nations, who camped and hunted there. These
+dependents of the Iroquois contested the treaty stoutly and not until
+1774 did the Shawanese even pretend to agree to its stipulations. This
+agreement was secured by what is known as Dunmore's War and was the
+direct result of General Andrew Lewis's bloody victory over the allied
+Indians at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, October 10, 1774. It is
+not less than significant that this decisive battle which assured the
+Old Southwest to the Americans, should have been fought practically over
+the burial place of Céloron's fifth leaden plate which claimed the land
+for France. By the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the
+entire southern shore of the Ohio had been abandoned by Indians, though
+for many years they continually invaded the pleasant country which was
+fast filling with a scattered white population.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN GORDON'S MAP OF THE OHIO RIVER (1766)
+_From original in Library of Congress_]
+
+The story of the conquest and occupation of the northern side of the
+Ohio River is as bitter and bloody a tale as that of the southern side.
+The artificial division of the Middle West into states has resulted in
+some very artificial historical distinctions; the Ohio River has perhaps
+never been considered a mighty boundary line on the brink of which
+civilization paused for many critical years. The northern bank of the
+Ohio was, through many years, known as the "Indian Side;" and while
+western Virginia and Kentucky were counting their tens of thousands, the
+"Indian Side" was forbidden territory. The Ohio River was the western
+boundary of the colonies and of the United States for seventeen years:
+from 1768 until 1785. When, in 1783, the United States by the Treaty of
+Paris came into possession of the territory between the Alleghenies and
+the Mississippi, the "men who wore hats" had not purchased an acre of
+land north and west of the Ohio River from its bareheaded inhabitants.
+
+In 1785 at the Treaty of Fort McIntosh the United States secured from
+its actual possessors (the Iroquois claims having been satisfied at a
+second treaty at Fort Stanwix, October 1784) the first grant of land
+north of the Ohio. The western boundary line of the United States now
+began on Lake Erie, ascended the Cuyahoga, descended the Tuscarawas to
+the site of Fort Laurens, ran west to the portage between the Miami and
+St. Mary Rivers; ascending the Maumee to Lake Erie it followed the lake
+shore to the starting point. The lands south, east, and west of this
+line were given to the United States so far as the Indians "formerly
+claimed the same." This was the first of a long series of treaties each
+of which gave the northwest side of the Ohio River to the United States.
+
+Thus in 1785 the Ohio Valley legally became a part of the territory of
+the United States.
+
+By an ordinance immediately passed by Congress, this tract of land north
+of the Ohio River was ordered to be surveyed, the lots to be sold by the
+Government in order to create a fund to pay the war debt. A geographer
+and surveyors were appointed to survey and plat seven ranges of
+townships westward from the Pennsylvania boundary. These were to be
+sold by townships by commissioners of the loan office of the several
+states after proper advertisement.
+
+Thus, at the stroke of a pen, the Ohio River became a division line
+between empires differing wholly from each other. The "Virginia Side"
+was peopled by southerners according to the Virginia system, which
+allowed a man to take and mark for himself unappropriated lands. Thus
+the entire southern shore of the Ohio had been occupied by Virginians,
+Pennsylvanians, and North Carolinians. By act of Congress the New
+England system was extended to the land lying north of the Ohio; the
+land was to be properly surveyed and sold. The Ohio River at once became
+the western projection of Mason and Dixon's Line. In some such way as
+Chevalier has suggested, the Ohio River became a division fence between
+Roundhead and Cavalier. South of the river, lands were taken up by
+southerners in the old Virginia way; north of the river the New England
+system obtained, as though prophesying that the dominant race was to be
+of New England stock. It was a momentous turning point in the history
+of the Central West when Congress made the New England system operative
+on the "Indian Side" of the Ohio, banishing at once and forever from
+that great area the strife and suffering caused by the thousand
+conflicts of overlapping "tomahawk claims" and incorrect and confusing
+"surveys."
+
+But these acts of Congress were far more easily passed than enforced. In
+the first place, even before the land north of the Ohio was purchased by
+the United States, white settlers began crossing the Ohio and settling
+on the "Indian Side." By the year 1780 the Indian Side of the river had
+been quite wrested from the savages, at least from Pittsburg down to the
+Scioto. Mclntosh had built Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas and, with the
+help of others, the Delawares had been driven from the Muskingum Valley.
+Clark had captured Illinois and it was now a part of Virginia. Many
+invasions from Kentucky had passed up the Scioto and the Miamis, In all
+these campaigns the soldiery was largely made up of the border settlers
+of western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and they somehow conceived the
+notion that they were as much entitled as any one to the splendid lands
+from which they had driven the Indians. Heretofore the states and the
+Government had done everything in reason to encourage the western
+movement and protect it. No one perhaps realized that the Ohio River was
+to be considered, in any sense, a boundary line. Yet the United States
+recognized the Indian right and took such means as were possible to
+accomplish an utterly impossible thing. The lands on the northern side
+of the Ohio River were to be preserved to the Indians until purchased
+from them. It was even decreed that retaliatory raids of the whites
+should not cross the Ohio. As early as 1779 "trespassers" of a law as
+inherently impossible as the Proclamation of 1763, made settlements on
+the Indian Side of the Ohio "from the river Muskingum to Fort Mclntosh,
+and thirty miles up some of the branches of the Ohio river."[36] Colonel
+Brodhead at Fort Pitt immediately despatched Captain Clark to drive off
+the intruders.
+
+The commissioners at the Fort Mclntosh treaty (1785) were not blind to
+such possibilities, and took occasion to forward the following
+instructions to Colonel Harmar at Fort Pitt, January 24, 1785:
+"Surveying or settling the lands not within the limits of any particular
+State being forbid by the United States, in Congress assembled, the
+commander will employ such force as he may judge necessary in driving
+off persons attempting to settle on the lands of the United States."[37]
+The task laid upon Colonel Harmar was a most unpopular and impossible
+one. By this time the country south of the Ohio was teeming with a great
+restless population.
+
+There were, by 1785, a hundred thousand people in what we know as West
+Virginia and Kentucky. The first comers had fallen upon the very best
+lands and appropriated them. There is no doubt that all the fertile
+"bottoms" along the southern shore of the Ohio River had been "staked
+out" and more or less "improved" by this time. Washington alone, through
+his agents Crawford and Freeman, had secured not less than sixty
+thousand acres on the Ohio and Little and Great Kanawha before this
+time. Other far-sighted, enterprising men, like Patrick Henry, had
+secured other tracts of land. It must be remembered, too, that this was
+a day of no roads; lands lying away from the immediate river valleys
+could be reached and improved only with the greatest difficulty.
+
+It is therefore no wonder that the southern shore of the Ohio was
+crowded at this time with a swarm of pioneers whose uncouth faces and
+unkempt appearance suggested plainly the labor they had endured to reach
+and hold the river--their goal. They looked across to the fertile
+bottoms on the Indian Side and the splendid stretches of land in the
+valleys of the Muskingum, Hocking, Scioto, and Miami Rivers. They and
+their children had conquered that land; under a score of fierce leaders
+they had flung themselves upon the upper Muskingum and driven the
+Delawares away to the Lakes, or upon the Scioto and sent the Shawanese
+scurrying up the Sandusky or Maumee. Yet there on the trees on the other
+side were nailed proclamations from the commanding officer at Fort Pitt
+warning them against settling on those lands.
+
+Little wonder they defied the proclamation. In less than two months
+after Colonel Harmar had received the instructions to drive off all
+settlers from these lands of the United States, he sent a force under
+Ensign Armstrong down the river from Pittsburg. His report was most
+alarming;[38] he affirmed that there were three hundred families at the
+falls of the Hocking and an equal number on the Muskingum; on the Miami
+and Scioto Rivers the number of "intruders" was placed at fifteen
+hundred. "From Wheeling to that place [Miami]," he wrote, "there is
+scarcely one bottom on the river but has one or more families living
+thereon." These settlers "were equal to self-government," writes William
+Henry Smith, "and, if undisturbed, would soon have laid the foundations
+of a State on the Ohio."[39] Indeed, a call was issued by these pioneers
+March 12, 1785, for an election of members to a convention for the
+framing of a constitution for the government of a new state; elections
+were to be held at the mouths of the Miami, Scioto, and Muskingum Rivers
+and one at the house of Jonas Menzons in the present Belmont County,
+Ohio. The advertisement of these elections was signed by John Emerson
+and its final paragraph denied the right of Colonel Harmar to dispossess
+the settlers on the Indian Side, in the following terms:
+
+"I do certify that all mankind, agreeable to every constitution formed
+in America, have an undoubted right to pass into every vacant country,
+and there to form their constitution, and that from the confederation of
+the whole United States, Congress is not empowered to forbid them,
+neither is Congress empowered from that confederation to make any sale
+of uninhabited lands to pay the public debts, which is to be by a tax
+levied and lifted [collected] by authority of the Legislature of each
+State."[40]
+
+On January 31, 1786, a treaty was concluded at the mouth of the Great
+Miami with the Shawanese. The United States received from that dangerous
+nation a title to the lower Ohio Valley. But the general government was
+by this time at its wits' end to keep the acquired territory from the
+restless inhabitants of its own impoverished colonies. Colonel Harmar
+wrote the Secretary of War now that he had, by force of arms, driven off
+all intruders for a distance of seventy miles below Pittsburg, but that
+the number beyond "was immense" and that nothing could prevent the lands
+being occupied in the old Virginia way "unless Congress enters into
+immediate measures." Congress took the cue and resolved that if troops
+stationed at Pittsburg could not enforce its commands, a new garrison
+must be established on the lower Ohio. Accordingly Colonel Harmar was
+ordered to take post on the north side of the Ohio between the Muskingum
+and the Miami Rivers, where he could successfully keep the front ranks
+of the immigration army from crossing the river, and where he could also
+protect the surveyors of the seven ranges from any insults of the
+Indians.[41] Under this order Fort Harmar was erected at the mouth of
+the Muskingum River (Marietta, Ohio) in 1785. Fort Harmar and Fort
+Finney, erected at the mouth of the Miami, nominally accomplished the
+purposes for which they were erected; the immigration movement across
+the Ohio was stopped until preparations had been made for it. They were
+the first legal homes of Americans north of the Ohio River after the
+Revolutionary War.
+
+In the meantime propositions for the government of this great region
+north of the Ohio River were being debated in Congress; and finally it
+was declared to be the "Territory Northwest of the River Ohio" by the
+Ordinance of 1787. This famous act had been pending three years in
+Congress, but was passed within twelve days of the arrival in New York
+of Dr. Manasseh Cutler, hero-preacher and skilled diplomat; he came as
+the authorized agent of an Ohio Company of Associates which had been
+formed by Revolutionary veterans under the leadership of General Rufus
+Putnam in Boston in 1786 with special reference to the western land
+bounties promised by Congress in 1776 to faithful soldiers. The
+Ordinance organized from the lands ceded to the government by the
+several states the magnificent territory now occupied by the states of
+Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The act itself was
+conceived in a petition signed by these Revolutionary soldiers composing
+the Ohio Company of Associates, and forwarded by General Putnam to
+General Washington, praying that the Government redeem its worthless
+scrip by grants of western land.
+
+This a grateful government was willing to do. The difficulty was that it
+would be hazardous to organize a territory, to be suckled and protected
+at great expense, unless a considerable fraction of the area thus
+organized should be populated and developed by worthy citizens. The Ohio
+Company of Associates offered to take a million and a half acres. This
+was not satisfactory to the delegates in Congress. It was a mere
+clearing in all that vast stretch of territory between the Ohio, the
+Mississippi, and the Great Lakes. It was, therefore, on a momentous
+mission of reconciliation that Dr. Cutler hurried to New York. The
+"Territory Northwest of the River Ohio" could not be erected unless the
+Ohio Company took a considerable part of the lands. The Ohio Company, on
+the other hand, could not take land without the assurance that it was to
+be an integral part of the United States. The Ohio Company would make
+the Ordinance possible; the Ordinance made the Ohio Company's purchase
+possible.
+
+In order to realize the hopes of his clients, and, at the same time,
+satisfy the demands of the delegates at Congress, Dr. Cutler added to
+the grant of the Ohio Company an additional grant of three and a half
+million acres, taken by a Scioto Company on behalf of Colonel Duer and
+others. Thus by a stupendous speculation, unhappy in its results but
+compromising in no way the Ohio Company or its agent, and by shrewdly,
+though without dissimulation, announcing his determination to obtain
+lands from the individual states if Congress would not now come to
+terms, Dr. Cutler won a signal victory. The famed Ordinance was passed,
+corrected almost to the letter of his amendments, and Congress entered
+into the greatest private contract it had ever made. It was signed by
+Dr. Cutler and Major Winthrop Sargent for the Ohio Company and Samuel
+Osgood and Arthur Lee for the Treasury Department, October 27, 1787.
+
+Speaking in general terms, therefore, the Ohio Valley from the
+Pennsylvania line to the mouth of the Muskingum was, in 1785-86,
+surveyed into the "Seven Ranges;" southwest of this, down the valley,
+came the Ohio Company grant of 1787. This embraced the lands from the
+seventh through the seventeenth range. The earnestness of these New
+Englanders is suggested by the immediate payment of half a million
+dollars down, when the contract was signed with the United States, and
+by the immediate arrival on the Ohio of the Ohio Company's vanguard of
+settlers. These forty-eight "Pilgrims of Ohio," under the leadership of
+the noble Putnam, reached the Youghiogheny by way of the Old Glade Road
+through Pennsylvania in the midwinter of 1787-88. On the seventh of the
+following April they landed at the mouth of the Muskingum. Here, across
+the Muskingum from Fort Harmar, they built their pioneer castle, around
+which grew up Marietta--named in honor of Marie Antoinette, whom its
+founders, old Revolutionary veterans, had learned to love. In July,
+General Arthur St. Clair, the newly-appointed governor of the Territory
+Northwest of the River Ohio arrived, and with imposing ceremony, the
+administration of the great Territory was inaugurated. Within two years
+five colonies had been planted by the Ohio Company, four in the
+Muskingum Valley and one on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Little
+Kanawha River. The "Indian Side" of the "white foaming river" had now
+received its first permanent quota of white settlers.[42]
+
+In the same year, 1787, John Cleves Symmes and associates, largely from
+New Jersey, entered into correspondence with Congress for the purchase
+of a million acres of land north of the Ohio, lying between the Little
+and Great Miami Rivers. This "Symmes" or "Miami" purchase was achieved,
+and the Marietta pioneers saw the Miami settlers passing down the Ohio
+late in 1788 en route to their lands two hundred miles away. In point of
+daring no pioneer movement in America, save only the founding of
+Boonesborough, Kentucky, was more plucky than the founding of what is
+now Cincinnati. In December, Losantiville (Cincinnati) was settled,
+opposite the mouth of the Licking River. The Symmes company also settled
+Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami, and North Bend (Indiana) a
+little to the west. Each of the three settlements vied with the others
+for supremacy. Judge Symmes located at North Bend, but Fort Washington
+was erected at Losantiville and, the name being changed to Cincinnati,
+that settlement became the metropolis of the Ohio River below Pittsburg;
+the seat of government of the Northwest Territory was moved hither in
+1790.
+
+Therefore in 1790, when the Indian War broke out, the northern bank of
+the Ohio was settled, in a certain sense, between the mouths of the
+Muskingum and Scioto and the mouths of the Little and the Great Miami.
+But these light spots in all the darkness of the Black Forest, as the
+West was familiarly called, were, after all, but one shade lighter than
+the surrounding wilderness. The population of the Ohio Company
+settlements was only a few score; Cincinnati, six years after its
+founding, could only number, garrison and all, an equal number of
+hundreds. The founders of Cincinnati, like those of Marietta, were of
+the best of colonial and revolutionary stock; but, because of the
+contaminations of the rough frontier, their settlements became what
+Pittsburg was throughout its early history. General Richard Butler, had
+he lived, might well have written Governor St. Clair at Cincinnati in
+1800 the same words he penned General Irvine at Pittsburg in 1782--"am
+happy to find you can manage the d--ls of that country and the b--tes
+of the garrison." Of Pittsburg in 1782 General Irvine wrote his wife:
+"There never was, nor I hope will there ever be, such a wretched,
+villainous place as this." Of Marietta, equally disagreeable pictures
+were drawn by contemporaneous writers. It was a question whether or not
+the leaven of New England could leaven the whole lump. It did--with the
+help of good Virginian blood.
+
+The next tract of land to be opened was that lying between the Ohio
+Company's purchase and Judge Symmes's, a six thousand square mile tract
+bounded on the east by the Scioto and on the west by the Little Miami.
+This was the Virginia Military District. The Old Dominion had voted her
+soldiers upon continental and state establishment bounties in western
+lands. The land that was granted (practically the old Henderson purchase
+between the Green and Tennessee Rivers) did not prove large enough.
+Virginia, guarding against this very contingency, had reserved the tract
+between the Scioto and Little Miami for bounty lands when she ceded her
+county of Illinois to the Government in 1784. Therefore in 1790
+Congress passed a law "directing the Secretary of War to make return to
+the Governor of Virginia of the names of the Virginia officers and men
+entitled to bounty-lands, and the amount in acres due them." The same
+act authorized the agents of the said troops to locate and survey for
+their use, between the two rivers, apparently in the wretched Virginia
+fashion, such a number of acres of land as, together with the number
+already located on the waters of the Cumberland, would make the amount
+to which they were entitled; these locations and surveys to be recorded,
+together with the names of those for whom they were made, in the office
+of the Secretary of State. The President was then directed to issue
+letters patent for these lands to the persons entitled to them, for
+their use or the use of their heirs, assigns, or legal representatives.
+The Secretary of State should forward these deeds to the executive of
+Virginia, to be delivered to the proper persons. It will be seen that
+the national Government issued the deeds, but did not make the
+surveys.[43]
+
+The Indian War which raged from 1790 to 1795 was fought almost wholly
+north of the Ohio River basin with Fort Washington as the base of
+supplies.[44] The conflict delayed the pioneer movement into the Ohio
+Valley but, after the treaty of Greenville (1795), the movement was
+renewed with a rush. The Virginia Military District now (1796) began
+filling with Virginians, and under good and great men such as General
+Nathaniel Massie and Duncan McArthur, subsequently governor of Ohio,
+became a power in the old Northwest.
+
+We have intimated that the original Ohio Company purchase and the
+Virginia Military District adjoined; upon the utter failure of the
+Scioto Company, which had been a party with the Ohio Company in its
+first contract, the additional lands taken by Colonel Duer came again
+into the possession of the United States and were known as Congress
+Lands. This tract embraced about four thousand square miles and
+stretched over the twenty odd miles on the Ohio between the Ohio Company
+lands and those of the Virginia Military District.
+
+Thus at the opening of the actual pioneer period, about 1800, we find
+both shores of the Ohio dotted with settlements. In Virginia and
+Kentucky there are Pittsburg, Charleston, Wheeling, Limestone
+(Maysville), and Louisville; and on the old-time Indian Side are Beaver
+(Fort Mclntosh), Wellsburg, Marietta (Fort Harmar), Gallipolis,
+Manchester, Columbia, Cincinnati; and Madison and Clarksville, Indiana.
+By 1800 there are forty-five thousand inhabitants in the entire
+Northwest Territory, of which probably twenty-five thousand are in the
+Ohio Valley. Kentucky contains a population of over two hundred
+thousand; not such a large fraction are on the Ohio however, as is true
+in the Northwest Territory. The question of conquest is past, though
+still for a decade the British, who have sullenly withdrawn across the
+Detroit River, will continue to incite the Indians until Harrison shall
+annihilate Tecumseh's confederacy at Tippecanoe in 1811. But so far as
+the Ohio Valley is concerned the question is one of occupation; and now
+come the streams of immigration from all easterly points of the compass
+to this great waterway.
+
+[Illustration: PUTNAM'S MAP OF THE OHIO RIVER AND SETTLEMENTS (1804)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"THE NAVIGATOR"
+
+
+As the eighteenth century neared its close the great highways converging
+upon Pittsburg and its neighboring towns on the Youghiogheny and
+Monongahela became the routes of the great flood-tide of immigration
+which in a day filled the Middle West with towns and cities. The
+emigrant reached navigable waters at Pittsburg, if he came over Forbes's
+Road or the Pittsburg Pike; if he followed Braddock's Road he found
+himself on navigable waters at Brownsville, or, continuing the land
+journey, he reached Wheeling on the Ohio. If he came over the Genesee
+Road through New York he would reach the Allegheny waters at Warren or
+Watertown, Pennsylvania.
+
+At any of these points he would, perhaps, provide himself with a
+handbook of information concerning his prospective route. One of these,
+_The Navigator_, was published in Pittsburg in the first year of the
+nineteenth century by Zadok Cramer. Its title-page (fifth edition)
+affirms the book to be "the trader's useful guide in navigating the
+Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; containing an ample
+account of these much admired waters, from the head of the former to the
+mouth of the latter; a concise description of their towns, villages,
+harbours, settlements, &c with particular directions how to navigate
+them, in all stages of the water, pointing out their rocks, ripples,
+channels, islands, bluffs, creeks, rivers &c and the distances from
+place to place."[45]
+
+Perhaps the typical emigrant would not secure such a guide book but the
+information for which he made eager inquiry at his port of embarkation
+is contained here and is of great interest to the student of the times
+because of the variety of matters treated. Of the Ohio and its two great
+tributaries let us quote the following information:
+
+
+"MONONGAHELA
+
+"This river rises at the foot of the Laurel Mountain, in Virginia,
+thence meandering in a N. by E. direction, passes into Pennsylvania, and
+receives Cheat river from the S.S.E. Thence winding to a N. by W.
+direction, separates Fayette and Westmorland from Washington county, and
+passing into Allegheny county receives the Youghiogheny river at
+Pittsburgh, fifteen miles below the mouth of the former, and by land,
+fifty-five below Cheat. The Monongahela is about 450 yards wide at its
+mouth, measuring from the top of bank to bank, and in the fall and
+spring freshes has water enough to carry ships of 400 tons burthen;
+these, however, subside quickly and render the navigation for such
+vessels very precarious. One great difficulty attending the navigation
+of vessels of burden down this river arises from the almost
+impossibility of keeping them in the proper channel, it being in many
+places very narrow, and full of short turns around points of islands
+which are numerous. This observation will also apply to the Ohio,
+especially as low down as Wheelen [Wheeling], ninety miles below
+Pittsburgh."
+
+The waters of the Monongahela River, in those days as in these, were
+very muddy, and had it not been for the magnificent trees which
+abundantly lined the firm banks, the stream could not have been termed
+very beautiful. These trees were chiefly walnuts, black-oaks, hickories,
+maples, and button-woods, and afforded a bountiful supply of logs for
+the many sawmills which the pioneers had already erected along the river
+at the mouths of the various tributaries. Mr. Cramer tells us that the
+lumber obtained from these logs was floated down to Pittsburg, Wheeling,
+or some more remote point, and sold for a price ranging from a dollar to
+a dollar and a half per hundred feet. The country of the Monongahela
+was, even at this early day (1806), well populated; the land along the
+river was fertile and productive, and sold at any price from twelve to
+thirty dollars an acre. The "bottoms" contained many valuable
+sugar-maples and Cramer estimated that, if properly managed, each tree
+would yield four pounds of maple-sugar per annum--about one dollar a
+tree each season.
+
+"The mean velocity of the current of this river is about two miles an
+hour, and is in a middling state of the water, uninterrupted with falls,
+impeding the navigation, from Morgantown to its mouth, a distance of one
+hundred miles; thence upwards the navigation is frequently interrupted
+by rapids, but is navigable however for small crafts for fifty or sixty
+miles further. The west branch in high water is navigable for fifteen
+miles, and communicates with a southern branch of the Little Kenhawa, by
+a portage of eight miles."
+
+According to _The Navigator_, such cereals as wheat, oats, barley, rye,
+and buckwheat were already raised to "great perfection" in the valley of
+the Monongahela. It was a soil especially adapted to raising exceptional
+wheat crops and Mr. Cramer informs us that the flour made from
+Monongahela Valley wheat sold for two dollars more per barrel in New
+Orleans than Kentucky flour. Apples and peaches were staple fruit crops
+of the Monongahela country and these fruits were not infrequently made
+into brandy. Peach brandy was a luxury in the South and sold at a dollar
+a gallon.
+
+
+"ALLEGHENY
+
+"This is a beautiful, large and navigable river, taking its rise in
+Lycoming county, P. within a few miles of the head waters of
+Sinemahoning creek, a navigable stream that falls into the Susquehanna
+river, to which there is a portage of 23 miles. Thence pursuing a N.
+course passes into New-York state, winding to the N. W. about 20 miles,
+turns gradually to the S. W. enters Pennsylvania, and meandering in
+about that direction 180 miles, joins the Monongahela at Pittsburgh.
+
+"Few rivers and perhaps none excel the Allegheny for the transparency of
+its waters....
+
+"Its mean velocity is about two miles and a half an hour. In its course
+it receives many large and tributary streams; among these are the
+Kiskimenetas, Mohulbuckitum, Tobas, French creek, &c. French creek is
+navigable to Waterford; thence to Lake Erie is but fifteen miles
+portage. To render the communication more complete the legislature of
+Pennsylvania have passed a law for the erection of a turnpike between
+Waterford and Erie. Another communication to lake Erie is by way of
+Chataughque creek and lake; here is a portage of only nine miles, and
+affording ground for an excellent waggon road. We understand a
+ware-house is already established at Chautaughque lake. The navigation
+by this route is said to be the best of the two. At the mouth of a
+creek, also called Chautaughque emptying into lake Erie, a town has been
+recently laid off called Portland nine miles from Chataughque lake. This
+town is about thirty miles below the town of Erie, and ten below the
+line between Pennsylvania and New-York, John M'Mahon proprietor."
+
+The trade between the Allegheny River and the Lakes was at this time
+well established and, it was predicted, would become of great
+importance. Pittsburg was receiving from Onondaga salt works in New York
+State two thousand barrels of salt annually. Immense quantities of
+timber were also constantly being hurried toward their destinations by
+the current of the Allegheny. Quite an extensive trade in salt fish from
+Lake Erie was carried on in 1806, and Mr. Cramer expresses an earnest
+hope that this trade would be encouraged to the extent of superseding
+the importing of fish from beyond the mountains, for the fish brought
+over the mountains then cost twelve cents while those from Lake Erie
+could be offered for four cents and perhaps less per pound.
+
+"In return we could send up whiskey, bar-iron, castings, cider, bacon,
+apples, glass, nails, &c. and this would be keeping trade among
+ourselves, which is always preferable to the sending away specie for
+articles of home consumption. It has been suggested that merchandize
+could be bro't to Pittsburgh from New-York, by way of the lake and down
+this river, for about three cents a pound, which is one half less than
+is given from Philadelphia. By this route, there would be a portage of
+fifteen miles from Albany on the Hudson to Schenectada on the Mohawk, 10
+miles around the falls of Niagara, and fifteen between Erie and
+Waterford, making in all forty miles land carriage from New-York to
+Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvanians, however, are struggling for a turnpike
+road all the way over the mountains, which when compleated, will no
+doubt tend to lessen the very heavy carriages that are now paid on
+merchandize of all kinds."
+
+The current of the Allegheny River is much more rapid than that of the
+Monongahela; and in the days of _The Navigator_, as now, the clear,
+transparent waters of the Allegheny marked their course across the
+yellow, muddy waters of the Monongahela. And even three miles below the
+junction, the waters of the Allegheny were to be distinguished from the
+Monongahela. "Here [at the junction of the two rivers] the Allegheny is
+about 450 yards wide, and when an island lying to the right is
+completely washed away, which is accomplishing rapidly, the river here
+will be at least 800 yards wide. Will not the inquiring mind, on
+examination, have cause to entertain an opinion with us, that the bed of
+this river has greatly shifted its situation; and that it once washed
+the hill now a considerable distance to the east; and that the ground on
+which Pittsburgh now stands has been made by its withdrawing, through
+time and accident, from that hill to its present channel?
+
+
+"OHIO
+
+"This river commences at the junction of the two above mentioned rivers,
+and here also commences its beauty. It has been described, as 'beyond
+all competition, the most beautiful river in the universe, whether we
+consider it for its meandering course through an immense region of
+forests, for its clean and elegant banks, which afford innumerable
+delightful situations for cities, villages and improved farms: or for
+those many other advantages, which truly entitle it to the name
+originally given it by the French, of La Belle Rivière.' This
+description was penned several years since, and it has not generally
+been thought an exaggerated one. Now, the immense forests recede,
+cultivation smiles along its banks, towns every here and there decorate
+its shores, and it is not extravagant to suppose that the day is not far
+distant when its whole margin will form one continued village."
+
+Mr. Cramer further states that his reasons for such a supposition are
+numerous. Among those which he gives are: the large tracts of fertile
+lands that are connected with the Ohio River by means of the navigable
+waters that empty into it; the high, dry and usually healthy river
+bottoms of exceptional extent, fertility and beauty; and the
+extraordinarily superior navigation of the Ohio, by means of whose
+waters the abundant products of these extensive and fertile lands must
+eventually be distributed.
+
+"At its commencement at Pittsburgh, it takes a N.W. course for about 30
+miles, then turns gradually to W.S.W. and pursuing that course for about
+500 miles, winds to the S.W. for nearly 160 miles, then turns to the W.
+for about 276 miles, then S.W. for 160 miles, and empties into the
+Mississippi in a S.E. direction, about 1100 below Pittsburgh, and nearly
+the same distance above New-Orleans, in lat. 36. 43 m. N. It is
+amazingly crooked, so much so indeed, that in some places a person
+taking observations of the sun or stars, will find that he sometimes
+entirely changes his direction, and appears to be going back again; but
+its general course is S. 60 d. W. Its general width is from 500 to 800
+yards, but at the rapids and near the mouth, it is considerably wider."
+
+We can easily agree with Mr. Cramer that the numerous islands, found in
+the Ohio River, added greatly to its picturesque grandeur; yet, he
+reminds us, they caused many shoals and sandbars and greatly embarrassed
+navigation. Some of these islands contain several acres of rich and
+fertile soil and, _The Navigator_ tells us, were covered with a
+luxuriant growth of timber; when cleared and planted with fruit trees
+the orchards thrived amazingly, bearing the choicest fruit and the crop
+seldom failing. This was also the case when fruit trees were planted on
+the river bottoms, the excellent crops, in both instances, being due to
+the same cause: a sandy, fertile soil.
+
+"In times of high freshes, vessels of almost any tonnage may descend,
+and it is never so low, but canoes and other light crafts can navigate
+it. Many of the impediments that are now met with while the water is
+low, might in a dry time be got rid of, and that at a very
+inconsiderable expense: at least the expense would be by no means
+inadequate to the advantages accruing from the undertaking, if properly
+managed.
+
+"Rocks that now, during the dry season, obstruct or render dangerous the
+navigation of the large flat bottomed, or what are called Kentucky
+boats, might be blown, even a considerable depth under water; channels
+might be made through the ripples, and the snags and the fallen timber
+along the banks entirely removed.
+
+"These improvements together with many others that might be enumerated
+will undoubtedly, sooner or later, be carried into effect, as they
+appear to be a national concern of the first importance.
+
+"The Ohio has on its left in descending a part of Pennsylvania,
+Virginia, Kentucky, and the S. W. territory; on the right, Pennsylvania,
+Ohio and Indiana territory. It receives in its course many large,
+navigable streams, the principal ones are, Big Beaver, Muskingum, Little
+and Great Kenhawa, Sandy, Scioto, Little and Great Miami, Licking,
+Kentucky, Salt, Green, Wabash, Cumberland and Tennessee; these will be
+more particularly mentioned in their proper places."
+
+It is of interest to note what Mr. Cramer has to say of the fish of the
+Ohio River. He tells us they were numerous and of various kinds: the
+catfish, weighing from three to eighty pounds; the buffalo, from five to
+thirty; the pike, from four to fifteen pounds; the sturgeon, from four
+to ten; the perch, from one to twenty-five; the sucker, from one-half a
+pound to six pounds; and occasionally a few herring were caught. A
+fisherman, drawing in his seine in the spring of 1805, found among other
+fish, it is said, a few shad of three or four pounds. These were caught
+at Pittsburg. A great many felt disposed to dispute that these were salt
+water shad considering the great distance from the sea, but all who
+tasted of them positively identified them, in taste and shape, as the
+shad which were caught in the Delaware River. Eels and soft-shell
+turtles, though occasionally caught, were not plentiful in 1806. The
+numerous and various kinds of wild ducks and the few geese which
+frequented the river often furnished food for pioneers descending the
+Ohio; for the purpose of shooting ducks and geese, turkeys, and
+occasionally a deer or bear, the boats were always well supplied with
+fire-arms.
+
+"We should be glad could some method be devised to ascertain annually
+the state of the trade of our rivers--could not houses for this purpose
+be established, say at Pittsburg and Louisville, to take an account of
+all cargoes that descend the Ohio? A statement of this kind published
+yearly would show the growing increase of our exportations, and no doubt
+would be interesting to the trading part of the community, and perhaps
+have a tendency to rouse the spirits of the more indolent and careless.
+
+"To the vast quantities of produce and articles of our own manufacture
+that are sent down this river, consisting of flour, whiskey, peach
+brandy, cider, beer, bar-iron, hollow-ware, earthern-ware, cabinet
+works, boots, hoes, plow-irons, mill-irons, chairs, biscuit, bread,
+cheese, bacon, beef, pork, lumber, linen, &c. &c. we must not forget to
+mention a part of the articles which are brought up in return, viz.
+large quantities of cotton, furs, peltries, lead and hemp. As the
+articles of cotton and lead can be brought up in this way much cheaper
+than by bringing them over the mountains, and as they are in great and
+constant demand in this country, we hope that those concerned will use
+all due exertion in pushing this part of our trade, which in time we may
+presume will become a very considerable object to those engaged in it."
+
+The "Instructions" in _The Navigator_ to emigrants afford a very clear
+idea of the nature and needs of river travel in the first half-decade of
+the eighteenth century: The first thing to be attended to by emigrants
+was to secure a boat, and be on the alert to take advantage of the first
+flood. Mr. Cramer speaks with emphatic indignation concerning the
+dishonesty often manifested by the builders of the river boats. He
+asserts that a great per cent of the accidents which happened on the
+Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were due either to unpardonable carelessness
+or stinginess of the builder, who either slighted his work or used unfit
+timber. He earnestly recommends the appointment of boat-inspectors to be
+stationed wherever boats were built, thereby avoiding many serious
+accidents caused by unsafe boats. Mr. Cramer attempts to impress upon
+all who were purchasing Kentucky boats that those intended for
+navigating the Mississippi must necessarily be constructed differently
+and of much stronger timber; he suggests and urges that the owner have
+them narrowly examined, before embarkation, by one who understands the
+form and strength of a boat suitable for navigating the Mississippi
+River.
+
+"Flat and Keel boats may be procured at New-Geneva, Brownsville,
+Williamsport, Elizabethtown, M'Keesport, on the Monongahela, and perhaps
+several places on the Youghiougheny; at Pittsburgh, Beaver, Charlestown,
+and Wheelen, Marietta, Limestone, Cincinnati, the Falls, &c. and at most
+of the above places vessels of considerable burden are built and
+freighted to the Islands, and to different ports in Europe, their
+principal cargoes consisting of flour, staves, cordage, cotton, hemp,
+&c."
+
+The spring and autumn were the two seasons when the Ohio could be most
+advantageously navigated. The spring season began at the breaking up of
+the ice, about the middle of February, and lasted for three months. The
+fall season generally began in October and lasted until the advent of
+winter, or about the first of December. At this time the forming ice
+prevented navigation. These spring and fall freshets, however, could not
+be called periodical, as they entirely depended upon the rainfall and
+the earliness or tardiness of the beginning and ending of winter. Nor
+were these seasons of high water entirely confined to the spring and
+autumn. It commonly occurred that in the summer season a heavy rainfall
+in the Appalachian ridges, where the creeks and rivers that flow into
+the Monongahela take their rise, would cause a considerable freshet in
+the Ohio; or a swelling of the current of the Allegheny and other rivers
+often happened in the summer months and occasioned a sufficient amount
+of water, if taken immediate advantage of, to render the navigation of
+the Ohio perfectly possible. These out-of-season freshets, however,
+subsided rapidly and if the owner of a boat wished to take advantage of
+one and go down the river, he had to embark immediately.
+
+"When provided with a good boat and strong cable of at least 40 feet
+long there is little danger in descending the river in high freshes,
+when proper care is taken, unless at such times as when there is much
+floating ice in it. Much exertion with the oars is, at such times,
+generally speaking of no manner of use; indeed it is rather detrimental
+than otherwise, as such exertion frequently throws you out of the
+current which you ought to continue in, as it will carry you along with
+more rapidity, and at the same time always takes you right. By trusting
+to the current there is no danger to be feared in passing the islands as
+it will carry you past them in safety. On the other hand, if you row,
+and by so doing happen to be in the middle of the river on approaching
+an island, there is great danger of being thrown on the upper point of
+it before you are aware, or have time to regain the current. In case you
+get aground in such a situation, become entangled among the aquatic
+timber, which is generally abundant, or are driven by the force of the
+water among the tops or trunks of other trees, you may consider yourself
+in imminent danger; nothing but the presence of mind and great exertion
+can extricate you from this dilemma.
+
+"As frequent landing is attended with considerable loss of time and some
+hazard, you should contrive to land as seldom as possible, you need not
+even lie by at night, provided you trust to the current, and keep a good
+look out; if you have a moon, so much the better. When you bring to, the
+strength of your cable is a great safe-guard. A quantity of fuel and
+other necessaries, should be laid in at once, and every boat ought to
+have a canoe along side, to send on shore when necessary.
+
+"Though the labour of navigating this river in times of fresh is very
+inconsiderable to what it is during low water, when continual rowing is
+necessary, it is always best to keep a good look out, and be strong
+handed.--The wind will sometimes drive you too near the points of the
+islands, or on projecting parts of the main shore, when considerable
+extra exertion is necessary to surmount the difficulty. You will
+frequently meet with head winds, as the river is so very crooked that
+what is in your favour one hour, will probably be directly against you
+the next, and when contrary winds contend with a strong current, it is
+attended with considerable inconvenience, and requires careful and
+circumspect management, or you may be driven on shore in spite of all
+your efforts. One favourable circumstance is, that the wind commonly
+abates about sunset, particularly in summer.
+
+"Boats have frequently passed from Pittsburgh to the mouth of Ohio in 15
+days, but in general 10 days from Pittsburgh to the falls is reckoned a
+quick passage.
+
+"Descending the river when much incommoded with floating ice, should be
+as much as possible avoided, particularly early in the winter, as there
+is a great probability of its stopping your boat; however, if the water
+is high, and there is an appearance of open weather, you may venture
+with some propriety, if the cakes are not so heavy as to impede your
+progress, or injure your timbers; the boat will in such case, make more
+way than the ice, a great deal of which will sink and get thinner as it
+progresses, but on the other hand, if the water is low, it is by no
+means safe to embark on it when anything considerable of ice is in it.
+
+"If at any time you are obliged to bring to on account of the ice, great
+circumspection should be used in the choice of a place to lie in; there
+are many places where the shore projecting to a point, throws off the
+cakes of ice towards the middle of the river, and forms a kind of
+harbour below. By bringing to in such a situation, and fixing your canoe
+above the boat, with one end strongly to the shore, and the other out in
+the stream sloping down the river, so as to drive out such masses of ice
+as would otherwise accumulate on the upper side of your boat, and tend
+to sink her and drive her from her moorings, you may lie with a
+tolerable degree of safety.--This is a much better method than that of
+felling a tree on the shore above, so as to fall partly into the river,
+for if in felling it, it does not adhere in some measure to the trunk,
+or rest sufficiently on the bank, the weight of accumulated ice will be
+apt to send it adrift, and bring it down, ice and all, on the boat, when
+no safety can be expected for it. The reflection here naturally occurs,
+how easy it would be, and how little it would cost, in different places
+on the river where boats are accustomed to land, to project a sort of
+pier into the river, which inclining down stream, would at all times
+insure a place of safety below it. The advantages accruing from such
+projection to the places where they might be made would be very
+considerable, bring them into repute as landing places, occasion many
+boats and passengers to stop there, who otherwise would not, and soon
+repay the trifling expense incurred by the erection.
+
+"The above observations are more particularly applicable to the Ohio;
+the following apply to the Mississippi, and point out the greatest
+impediments and the most imminent dangers attending the navigation of
+this heavy-watered and powerful river:
+
+"These are, 1st. The instability of the banks.
+
+2. Planters, sawyers, and wooden islands.[46]
+
+"We shall endeavor to instruct the unexperienced navigator how to avoid
+them. The instability of the banks proceeds from their being composed of
+a loose sandy soil, and the impetuosity of the current against their
+prominent parts, which, by undermining them unceasingly, causes them to
+tumble into the river, taking with them everything that may be above.
+And if when the event happens boats should be moored there, they must
+necessarily be buried in the common ruin, which unfortunately has been
+sometimes the case. For which reason, navigators have made it an
+invariable rule never to land at or near a point, but always in the
+sinuosity or cove below it, which is generally lined with small willows
+of the weeping kind, whence some call them although improperly, willow
+points, and which being generally clear of logs and planters, the
+landing is easily effected, by running directly into them, the
+resistance of the willows destroying a part of the boat's velosity, and
+the rest is overcome without much exertion by holding fast to the limbs
+which surround you.--In those places the river generally deposits the
+surplus of soil, with which it is charged from the continual cavings of
+the points, and so forms new land on one side by destroying some on the
+other.
+
+"The banks of this river from where it receives the Missouri to its
+mouth, being with a few exceptions below high water mark, an immense
+country is inundated, when the river is in its highest state, by which
+those extensive swamps are formed and supplied, which prove the
+nurseries of myriades of musquitoes and other insects (to the no small
+inconvenience of the traveller) and the never failing source of grievous
+diseases to the inhabitants. There are also streams, which at all times
+sally forth from the main river with astonishing rapidity, and whose
+vortex extends some distance into the stream. Boats once sucked into
+such bayous are next to lost, it being almost impossible to force so
+unwieldy a machine as a flat bottomed boat against so powerful a
+current. It will therefore be safest for boats, never to keep too close
+to shore, but to keep some distance out in the river. To avoid planters
+and sawyers requires nothing more but attention, for they always
+occasion a small breaker whereever they are, and if your boat seems to
+be hurried towards them row the boat from them, else if you are dilatory
+you must abide by the consequence.
+
+"WOODEN-ISLANDS are more dangerous than real ones the former being an
+obstacle lately thrown in the way of the current, and the bed of the
+river not having had sufficient time to form that bar or gradual ascent
+from the bottom of the river to the island, which divides the current at
+some distance from the point of the island above water, the current will
+hurry you against them, unless you use timely exertion. From all this it
+must be evident how imprudent it is attempting to go after night, even
+when assisted by a clear moon; but after you are once arrived at
+Natchez, you may safely proceed day and night, the river from that place
+to its mouth being clear, and opposing nothing to your progress but a
+few eddies into which you may occasionally be drawn and detained for a
+short time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF RIVER CRAFT
+
+
+The evolution of craft on the Ohio River portrays in a remarkable manner
+the economic development of the Central West. Being the one practicable
+artery in the empire between the Appalachian uplift and the Mississippi,
+and the Blue Ridge and the Great Lakes, this river was, from the
+beginning of the eighteenth century onward, the main route of
+immigration and commerce, and the story of those years is contained in
+the story of these craft which carried the freight and fortune of the
+millions who came and built homes and labored here.
+
+The greater the detail with which this study is examined the more
+interesting and enlightening it becomes. Of the score and more of
+distinctive craft which regularly plied this waterway not one but is
+significant of some change in the social order of things, indicative of
+some open or secret development which, unnoticed at the time perhaps,
+marked a new forward movement in our social evolution. Such an
+indication may be thought slight but it was a straw which marked the
+direction of the sweeping current of advance, and the swiftness of it.
+Compared with the evolution of methods of travel by land, the evolution
+on our rivers was rapid and spectacular. The "freighter" or "Conestoga"
+of 1790 was practically the same as that of 1840: a half century had
+witnessed little change in wagons and stages, save minor improvements.
+But compare the craft of 1790 on the Ohio with that of 1840. The canoe,
+pirogue, keel-boat, "bark," barge, brig, schooner, galley-boat, batteau,
+and dug-out were forgotten--a consequence of the early application of
+steam-power to boats rather than to vehicles. When, in 1811, "The
+Orleans" went steaming down the Ohio from Pittsburg, and when, six years
+later, the "Washington" convinced a desparing public that steamboat
+navigation would succeed on "western waters" the new era in western
+history dawned.
+
+In the earliest days the primitive light canoe, the unwieldy pirogue,
+and the heavy batteau were the common means of navigation on the Ohio.
+The canoe was made from the bark of trees; quickly made and quickly worn
+out, if the water was low, by continually coming in contact with the
+bottom. The pirogue was likewise quickly made; the canoe was paddled,
+the pirogue pushed by oars or setting-poles. The canoe easily glided up
+stream; the pirogue ran easily with the current but could not ascend the
+stream without the expenditure of much labor. Often the words canoe and
+pirogue were used interchangeably of the same craft; in George Rogers
+Clark's famous march to Vincennes in 1779, the army, upon arriving at
+the Little Wabash, February 13, built a boat which in Bowman's _Journal_
+is called a "canoe," and in Clark's _Memoir_, a "pirogue." The batteau,
+better known in the West as the barge, was a square box of any length,
+width, and depth. It was distinctively a downstream craft, and in the
+early days rarely ascended with a load any river of current. The canoe
+and pirogue, compared with the barge, were craft of little burden
+though those of generous size would carry the loads of a score of men.
+The barge or batteau was the freight craft and could be loaded with any
+burden the stage of water permitted.
+
+These three craft reigned supreme on the Ohio and its tributaries
+probably until the close of the Revolutionary War, or about 1785. The
+canoe never abdicated and never can so long as man loves the water; at
+numerous points along the Ohio today many a tourist may be seen enjoying
+the exquisite delight of "paddling his own canoe." The batteau or barge
+has its direct descendant in the wooden and magnificent steel barges in
+which thousands of tons of coal and ore are transported yearly up and
+down the Ohio. The pirogue has been forgotten. But in the era of
+exploration and conquest these boats had a story which disproves the
+adage that history repeats itself. The history of that last half of the
+eighteenth century cannot be repeated here or elsewhere. There is no
+other valley in the world that is to be found, explored, conquered,
+reconquered and settled like the Ohio Basin. What a line of daring
+_voyageurs_ that was from La Salle to Céloron and Washington, who
+feasted their eyes upon the virgin beauty of La Belle Rivière, from
+their heavily-loaded, long canoes; in these craft came the explorers of
+Ohio and Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois; they ploughed the waters of the
+Muskingum far back in the distant day when those waters were, as the
+name implies, clear as an elk's eye; they forged slowly up the Licking
+and Scioto, the Beaver and the Kanawhas. In the early days the canoe was
+the customary bearer of two significant kinds of freight: wampum and
+Indian goods and presents, and packs of peltry. The history of the canoe
+cannot be repeated, for the Indians are vanished who loved the bright
+presents brought to them from the East; and the fur bearing animals
+which once supplied the eastern markets are gone. We speak of the value
+of our cargoes on the Ohio today; it is great, truly; but what would be
+the value today of the furs brought in one season down the Wabash,
+Licking, Miami, Scioto, Kanawha, Muskingum, and Beaver and up the Ohio
+to Pittsburg, in those days when canoes bore their precious tons of
+freight? Compared to the number of persons engaged in it, the old trade
+(in today's markets) would be considered a hundred per cent more
+remunerative.
+
+The burdens those long canoes could bear should not be underestimated.
+When Washington made his journey down the Ohio in 1770 he "embarked in a
+large canoe," October 20, at Pittsburg, "with sufficient store of
+provisions and necessaries, and the following persons, besides Dr. Craik
+and myself, to wit: Capt. Crawford, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bell,
+William Harrison, Charles Morgan and Daniel Rendon, a boy of Capt.
+Crawford's...."
+
+In the era of conquest the canoe played an important part in
+transporting small bodies of men swiftly and, which was frequently not
+less important, silently, to their destinations. But now it was that the
+heavy barge acquired importance as a factor in the making of the West.
+It was the quarter-master's and commissariat's sole reliance, and in
+these great clumsy hulks which floated with the current, sometimes with
+the aid of sails, were transported the armament and stores which made
+possible the forts that at once came into existence in the valley--Forts
+Mclntosh, Henry, Harmar, Finney, Washington, and others. These boats
+were huge boxes, covered and uncovered, square at each end, and
+flat-bottomed. A batteau, in distinction from a barge, was widest in the
+middle and tapered to a point at each end, of about fifteen
+hundred-weight burden and could be managed by two men with oars and
+setting-poles.[47]
+
+The batteau form was more or less adopted by later barges; but the
+ordinary early barge was much the shape of the present-day coal barge.
+The "canal boat" form, or batteau, was a later development.
+
+American expansion westward, as elsewhere suggested, was favored more by
+the Ohio River than by any and all others: it ran the right way.
+Throughout the earlier decades of the pioneer era the greater portion of
+traffic was down stream. Even in the later days of steamboating the
+downstream traffic was ever heaviest. In 1835 the total tonnage received
+and entered at the port of Pittsburg was 63,221 tons; of this, 41,533
+tons was export. In 1837 the total number of boats arriving at Pittsburg
+from February 10 to July 1 was five hundred and ninety-three; the total
+number departing was five hundred and eighty-two.[48] If the upstream
+trade did not equal the downstream trade in the days of steamboats, it
+can be readily imagined how great was the difference in the days of
+rowed and pushed craft. Upstream traffic began to thrive with the
+founding of Pittsburg and other cities in the upper Ohio Valley. A
+market was then created, and the product of the lower valley began to
+ascend.
+
+Thus dawned the era of the famous keel-boat, the first craft of burden
+that plied to and fro on western waters. True, the name was applied to
+craft that came earlier. Colonel Burd, the English officer who led one
+of the marauding expeditions from Detroit into Kentucky in the
+Revolutionary War, came from the lakes and ascended the Licking in
+keel-boats. It is given on good authority that Tarascon, Berthoud and
+Company of Pittsburg introduced the use of keel-boats on the Ohio in
+1792.[49]
+
+The keel-boat heralded a new era in internal development, an era of
+internal communication never known before in the Central West. As a
+craft it is almost forgotten today. Our oldest citizens can barely
+remember the last years of its reign; but the cry of the steersman to
+"lift" and "set" that once rang in our river valleys, is still one of
+the undying memories of their childhood days. It was a long, narrow
+craft perhaps averaging twelve to fifteen feet by fifty, and pointed at
+both prow and stern. On either side were provided what were known as
+"running boards," extending from end to end. The space between, the body
+of the boat, was enclosed and roofed over with boards or shingles. A
+keel-boat would carry from twenty to forty tons of freight well
+protected from the weather; it required from six to ten men, in addition
+to the captain, who was usually the steersman, to propel it upstream.
+Each man was provided with a pole to which was affixed a heavy socket,
+The crew, being divided equally on each side of the boat, "set" their
+poles at the head of the boat; then bringing the end of the pole to the
+shoulder, with bodies bent, they walked slowly along the running boards
+to the stern--returning quickly, at the command of the captain, to the
+head for a new "set." "In ascending rapids, the greatest effort of the
+whole crew was required, so that only one at a time could 'shift' his
+pole. This ascending of rapids was attended with great danger,
+especially if the channel was rocky. The slightest error in pushing or
+steering the boat exposed her to be thrown across the current, and to be
+brought sideways in contact with rocks which would mean her destruction.
+Or, if she escaped injury, a crew who had let their boat swing in the
+rapids would have lost caste. A boatman who could not boast that he had
+never swung or backed in a chute was regarded with contempt, and never
+trusted with the head pole, the place of honor among the keel-boat men.
+It required much practice to become a first rate boatman, and none would
+be taken, even on trial, who did not possess great muscular power."[50]
+Under certain circumstances it was serviceable to catch hold of the
+bushes and trees on a river's bank and pull a keel-boat upstream; this
+was commonly known as "bushwhacking" and was particularly useful in
+times of high water. The number of keel-boats on the Ohio was not as
+large, probably, as would be supposed. It is on record that from
+November 24, 1810 to January 24, 1811--two winter months--twenty-four of
+these craft descended the "falls" of the Ohio at Louisville. It is
+probable that at this time there were not over three or four hundred
+keel-boats regularly plying the Ohio and its tributaries.
+
+The narrowness of the keel-boat, it will be noted, permitted it to ply
+far up the larger tributaries of the Ohio and to a considerable way up
+its smaller tributaries--territory which the barge and flat-boat could
+never reach. It is probable, therefore, that the keel-boat brought much
+territory into touch with the world that otherwise was never reached
+save by the heavy freighter and the pack-saddle; indeed it is probable
+that this was the greatest service of the keel-boat--to reach the rich
+interior settlements and carry their imports and exports. The place of
+the keel-boat is now taken by such packets as the Greenwood and Lorena
+which bring to Pittsburg the produce of such valleys as the Kanawha and
+the Muskingum. In this connection it is proper to emphasize a fact
+suggested elsewhere: that the inhabitants of the Central West, from the
+earliest times until today, have found the favorite sites of occupation
+to be in the interior of the country, beside the lesser tributaries of
+the Ohio.[51] Thus as the pioneer settlements spread up on the Licking,
+Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, and Miami, a boat like the keel-boat,
+which could ply in any season of the year and on the narrow creeks and
+"runs," was an inestimable boon. Again, take for instance the salt
+industry, which in the day of the keel-boat was one of the most
+important, if not the most important, in the Central West; as values
+were a century ago the best of men did well to "earn his salt." These
+salt springs and licks were found at some distance from the main artery
+of travel, the Ohio, and it was the keel-boat, more enduring than the
+canoe, and of lighter weight and draught and of lesser width than the
+barge, which did the greater part of the salt distribution, returning
+usually with loads of flour. The heyday of the keel-boat was also the
+day of the portage path--which played a most important part in the
+development of the land. These portages or carries were mostly located
+far in the interior where rivers flowing in opposite directions took
+their rise. The keel-boat was the only craft of burden that could ascend
+many of our streams to the carrying-place; they were also less unwieldy
+to carry than the old batteau which was used also in the portage
+carrying-trade.[52] Mention has been made of Burd's invasion of Kentucky
+during the Revolutionary War, in keel-boats. If this was not a misnomer
+it is probable that they were brought from the lakes and carried across
+the portage, as was done in the case of Hamilton's capture of Vincennes.
+
+The keel-boat may be considered, therefore, the first upstream boat of
+burden which plied the Ohio and its tributaries; its special functions:
+first, the upstream trade, second, to touch and connect interior
+settlements and do the carrying-trade of the portages.
+
+The great craft of burden on the Ohio and its larger tributaries were
+the barges and the flat-boats, the latter commonly known as the Kentucky
+"broad-horns" or Kentucky boats, and New Orleans boats. The Ohio and
+Mississippi barge resembled the "West Country" barges of England and the
+"wherries" of London. They were great, pointed, covered hulks carrying
+forty or fifty tons of freight and manned by almost as many men. They
+were the great freighters of the larger rivers, descending with the
+current and ascending by means of oars, poles, sails and
+cordelles--ropes by which the craft was often towed from the shore. The
+following description of a barge journey, from the pen of the famous
+naturalist Audubon, is perhaps one of the most accurate left to us:
+
+"We shall suppose one of these boats under way, and, having passed
+Natchez, entering upon what were called the difficulties of their
+ascent. Wherever a point projected so as to render the course or bend
+below it of some magnitude, there was an eddy, the returning current of
+which was sometimes as strong as that of the middle of the great stream.
+The bargemen, therefore, rowed up pretty close under the bank, and had
+merely to keep watch in the bow lest the boat should run against a
+planter or sawyer. But the boat has reached the point, and there the
+current is to all appearance of double strength and right against it.
+The men, who have rested a few minutes, are ordered to take their
+stations and lay hold of their oars, for the river must be crossed, it
+being seldom possible to double such a point and proceed along the same
+shore. The boat is crossing, its head slanting to the current, which is,
+however, too strong for the rowers, and when the other side of the river
+has been reached, it has drifted perhaps a quarter of a mile. The men
+are by this time exhausted, and, as we shall suppose it to be 12
+o'clock, fasten the boat to a tree on the shore. A small glass of
+whiskey is given to each, when they cook and eat their dinner, and
+after resting from their fatigue for an hour, recommence their labors.
+The boat is again seen slowly advancing against the stream. It has
+reached the lower end of a sandbar, along the edge of which it is
+propelled by means of long poles, if the bottom be hard. Two men, called
+bowsmen, remain at the prow to assist, in concert with the steersman, in
+managing the boat and keeping its head right against the current. The
+rest place themselves on the land side of the footway of the vessel, put
+one end of their poles on the ground and the other against their
+shoulders and push with all their might. As each of the men reaches the
+stern, he crosses to the other side, runs along it and comes again to
+the landward side of the bow, when he recommences operations. The barge
+in the meantime is ascending at a rate not exceeding one mile in the
+hour.
+
+"The bar is at length passed, and as the shore in sight is straight on
+both sides and the current uniformly strong, the poles are laid aside,
+and the men being equally divided, those on the river side take to
+their oars, while those on the land-side lay hold of the branches of
+willows or other trees, and thus slowly propel the boat. Here and there,
+however, the trunk of a fallen tree, partly lying on the bank and partly
+projecting beyond it, impedes their progress and requires to be doubled.
+This is performed by striking into it the iron points of the poles and
+gaff-hooks, and so pulling around it. The sun is now quite low, and the
+barge is again secured in the best harbor within reach for the night,
+after having accomplished a distance of perhaps fifteen miles. The next
+day the wind proves favorable, the sail is set, the boat takes all
+advantages, and meeting with no accident, has ascended thirty
+miles--perhaps double that distance. The next day comes with a very
+different aspect. The wind is right ahead, the shores are without trees
+of any kind, and the canes on the bank are so thick and stout that not
+even the cordelles can be used. This occasions a halt. The time is not
+altogether lost, as most of the men, being provided with rifles, betake
+themselves to the woods and search for the deer, the hares or the
+turkeys that are generally abundant there. Three days may pass before
+the wind changes, and the advantages gained on the previous five days
+are forgotten. Again the boat proceeds, but in passing over a shallow
+place, runs on a log, swings with the current, but hangs fast with her
+lee-side almost under water. Now for the poles! All hands are on deck,
+bustling and pushing. At length, towards sunset, the boat is once more
+afloat, and is again taken to the shore where the wearied crew pass
+another night.
+
+"I could tell you of the crew abandoning the boat and cargo and of
+numberless accidents and perils, but be it enough to say, that advancing
+in this tardy manner, the boat that left New Orleans on the 1st of
+March, often did not reach the Falls of Ohio [Louisville] until the
+month of July, sometimes not until October; and after all this immense
+trouble, it brought only a few bags of coffee and at most one hundred
+hogsheads of sugar. Such was the state of things as late as 1808. The
+number of barges at that period did not amount to more than 25 or 30,
+and the largest probably did not exceed one hundred tons burden. To
+make the best of this fatiguing navigation, I may conclude by saying
+that a barge which came up in three months, had done wonders, for I
+believe few voyages were performed in that time."[53]
+
+This is the story of an Orleans boat in distinction from a Kentucky boat
+which was smaller and not so well finished.[54] The heavy up-river loads
+of the Orleans boats--sugar and molasses--were very important cargoes
+and illustrate the place the barge took in pioneer history; they were
+the freighters which carried on the larger rivers the heavy cargoes of a
+country fast filling with a new population. They plied, like the
+keel-boat, up and down stream but could not ascend the smaller rivers or
+reach portages of the larger streams because of their draught and size.
+There were, of course, small barges that could go wherever a keel-boat
+went; it was these that were common on certain portage path trades.[55]
+The small barge was practically a keel-boat (without running boards)
+save only in shape.
+
+The flat-boat was the important craft of the era of immigration, the
+friend of the pioneer. It was the boat that never came back, a
+downstream craft solely. The flat-boat of average size was a roofed
+craft about forty feet long, twelve feet wide and eight feet deep. It
+was square and flat-bottomed and was managed by six oars; two of these,
+about thirty feet long, on each side, were known as "sweeps" and were
+manned by two men each; one at the stern, forty or fifty feet long
+including its big blade, was called the "steering oar;" a small oar was
+located at the prow, known as the "gouger," which aided in steering the
+boat in swift water. One man only was needed at the steering oar and at
+the gouger.
+
+"Kentucky" and "New Orleans" were the significant names for the old-time
+flat-boats, for Kentucky and New Orleans were the destinations of the
+large majority. The nominal difference between a Kentucky and New
+Orleans boat was that the former was commonly roofed only half over
+while the latter was stronger and was entirely covered with a roof. How
+to buy or build a "flat" was the first query of the pioneer father as he
+finally arrived at one of the ports on the upper Ohio. Often several
+families joined together and came down the river on one flat-boat, a
+motley congregation of men, women, children and domestic animals
+surrounded by the few crude, housekeeping utensils which had been
+brought over the mountains or purchased at the port of embarkation.
+Perhaps all of the details which engrossed a prospective pioneer's
+attention are suggested in the previous quotations from _The Navigator_.
+
+These Kentucky "broadhorns," or "broadhorn flatboats" as they were also
+called, almost invariably carried a tin horn by means of which some one
+on board would announce their arrival or make known their whereabouts in
+a fog. This weird music, reverberating from hill to hill, was heard far
+and wide and was welcomed by the country people.
+
+The history of the flat-boat comes down within the present generation,
+for as late as the beginning of the Civil War flat-boating was common
+on the Ohio River. In the early day the flat-boat was the sign of
+immigration; not so in the later day. The flat-boats of the fifties bore
+cargoes to the southern ports, or cargoes to be retailed along the
+Mississippi River plantations. Any enterprising man who owned or could
+build a "flat," bought up the crops of his neighborhood, put them
+aboard, and was ready to start on the "fall rise." Flat-boats were
+loaded at the bow--sometimes through trapdoors in the roof--the cargo
+stored away in the hold. For through freight, apples and potatoes were
+the staples. If it was intended to "coast" (peddle the cargo to the
+plantations) the freight also included cider, cheese, pork, bacon, and
+even cabbage. Apple and peach brandy was a most profitable investment;
+especially if apple brandy, with a few peaches in it, could be palmed
+off on the thirsty darkies as peach brandy.
+
+A yellow page of an old account-book of 1858 leaves record that the
+proprietor of one "flat" purchased the entire product of a neighboring
+farm and took it south that fall. The items and their cost price on
+shore is interesting:
+
+  350 bu. wheat @ $1.05 per bu.                $367.50
+  208 bbls potatoes @ 2.05 per bbl.             426.40
+   17 bbls seed potatoes @ 1.2 5 per bbl         21.25
+   20 hogs, 6086 lbs. @ 4.33 per hundred        263.52
+   5 bbls beans                                  15.25
+   9 bbls & 13-1/2 lbs. sauer-Kraut              66.87
+  Portion of a flat boat                         70.00
+                                             ---------
+                                             $1,230.79
+
+A yearly cash income of $1,230.79 would make many a farmer of our day
+contented.
+
+The proprietor of the flat-boat left on his three thousand mile trip
+taking only a couple of farm hands with him as crew. They lived in the
+stern of the boat under the same roof that sheltered the cargo, but
+separated by a partition. It was all clear sailing, night and day.
+Almost the only work was to keep the craft in the current. Several miles
+above the "falls" at Louisville, pilots would be found in skiffs ready
+to climb aboard and steer the "flat" down the rapids for ten dollars or
+less. If the cargo was intended for the coasting trade, business began
+at the first large plantations. This was in the day of overseers who
+liberally patronized these "coasters," giving in payment drafts on New
+Orleans. The darkies were, in some cases, allowed to make their own
+purchases; they did not neglect the liquor, often exchanging molasses
+for brandy even, gallon for gallon.
+
+Upon arriving at his destination, the proprietor sold his remaining
+stock and boat, invested his money in sugar and molasses, and embarked
+with his freight on a packet for home. Thus two profits were cleared.
+
+The advent of the Civil War was evident to these latter day boatmen;
+watches were always kept on the outlook lest the "lines" be cut. At the
+opening of the war flat-boats were frequently fired upon. When the
+business was again revived in 1866 it was a new, sad South the flat-boat
+men found. The negroes were "free," the overseers gone, the coasting
+trade ruined; through freights were found to be the only ones that paid
+after 1865.
+
+Collins asserts that Captain Jacob Yoder took the first flat-boat down
+the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans in 1782; "the late Capt.
+Jos. Pierce of Cincinnati, Ohio, had erected over the remains of his old
+friend Capt. Jacob Yoder, an iron tablet (the first cast west of the
+Alleghanies) thus inscribed:
+
+    'JACOB YODER
+
+    Was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, August 11, 1758; and was | a
+    soldier of the Revolutionary army in 1777 and 1778. | He emigrated
+    to the West in 1780; and in May, 1782, from Fort Redstone, | on the
+    Monongahela river, in the | FIRST FLAT BOAT. | That ever descended
+    the Mississippi river, he landed in | New Orleans, with a cargoe of
+    produce. | He died April 7, 1832, at his farm in Spencer County,
+    Kentucky, and lies | here interred beneath this tablet.'"
+
+Flat-boats were, both in early and modern times, always used or sold at
+their destination for lumber. Thus the early bargemen and flat-boat men
+who made down river trips returned largely on foot, until the era of
+steamboats. The long journey across country from New Orleans through the
+low fever-infested country and into Kentucky was a dangerous and
+arduous experience.[56] "A large number of these boatmen were brought
+together at New Orleans. Their journey home could not be made in small
+parties, as they carried large quantities of specie, and the road was
+infested by robbers. The outlaws and fugitives from justice from the
+states resorted to this road. Some precautionary arrangements were
+necessary. The boatmen who preferred returning through the wilderness
+organized and selected their officers. These companies sometimes
+numbered several hundred, and a greater proportion of them were armed.
+They were provided with mules to carry the specie and provisions, and
+some spare ones for the sick. Those who were able purchased mules, or
+Indian ponies, for their use, but few could afford to ride. As the
+journey was usually performed after the sickly season commenced, and the
+first six or seven hundred miles was through a flat, unhealthy country,
+with bad water, the spare mules were early loaded with the sick. There
+was a general anxiety to hasten through this region of malaria. Officers
+would give up their horses to the sick, companions would carry them
+forward as long as their strength enabled; but although everything was
+done for their relief which could be done without retarding the progress
+of their journey, many died on the way or were left to the care of the
+Indian or hunter who settled on the road. Many who survived an attack of
+fever, and reached the healthy country of Tennessee, were long
+recovering sufficient strength to resume their journey home. One would
+suppose that men would have been reluctant to engage in a service which
+exposed them to such great suffering and mortality without extraordinary
+compensation; but such was the love of adventure and recklessness of
+danger which characterized the young men of the West, that there was no
+lack of hands to man the boats, although their number increased from
+twenty-five to fifty per cent yearly. The fact that some of these
+boatmen would return with fifty Spanish dollars, which was a large sum
+at that day, was no small incentive to others, who perhaps never had a
+dollar of their own."[57]
+
+The "ark" of pioneer days was, as the name implies, the earliest type of
+houseboat. "These boats," Mr. Harris records, "are generally called
+'Arks;' and are said to have been invented by Mr. Krudger, on the
+Juniata, about ten years ago [1795]. They are square, and flat-bottomed;
+about forty feet by fifteen, with sides six feet deep; covered with a
+roof of thin boards; and accommodated with a fire-place. They require
+but four hands to navigate them, carry no sail, and are wafted down by
+the current."[58]
+
+Rafting logs down the Ohio was one of the great employments of the men
+of three-quarters of a century ago. "Our raft," testified an old
+_voyageur_ who went down the Allegheny and Ohio from Olean, New York in
+1821, "was one hundred and twenty feet long and sixty wide and about
+two feet deep. It had eight oars. In the center was our cabin, which
+was twenty by sixteen, and contained, of course, our provisions and
+valuables, ... and our _stove_. This was a patent range peculiar to
+those days and quite wonderful in its way. It was made of a wooden box
+lined with clay. It had a hole in the top for a kettle, and another
+through which the smoke passed to an aperture in the roof of our cabin,
+left for that purpose.... Our crew consisted of ten persons, including a
+man and his wife and one child, who were going to migrate.... There are
+many eddies along the river and at them we tried to tie up at night in
+order to be out of the current.... From Pittsburg to Cincinnati, five
+hundred miles, the river being broad and deep and free from snags, we
+could travel night and day.... At one point in our trip we saw a raft
+stranded on an island; but the Captain did not seem to take the matter
+very seriously to heart, and answered our salutations by singing and
+dancing and lustily waving his hat as we passed by.... At Limestone,
+[Maysville] Ky., seventy miles east of Cincinnati, I stopped and sold
+some shingles, the raft and the rest of the crew going on. After I had
+transacted my business, I took passage on another going to C.
+[Cincinnati]. At L. [Limestone] I remember seeing a bell on a tavern for
+the first time. This raft had the misfortune to run into a flatboat
+loaded with coal, and also the audacity to sneak off before the damage
+was discovered to avoid both delay and expense.... Once there [at
+Cincinnati] we hired a gang of men to wash the lumber, which was covered
+with dirt and weeds; they then drew it to the lumber yard, where we sold
+it.... I was not sorry when I reached my home ... on the evening of the
+10th of June. I had been away since the middle of February."[59]
+
+The galley--a model boat with covered deck impelled by oarsmen--was not
+an unfamiliar craft in the early river days. It was such a boat as this
+that General George Rogers Clark armed as a gunboat on the lower Ohio
+and used as a patrolling gunboat during the Revolutionary War. The
+famed "Adventure Galley," of the New England pilgrims to Marietta, was a
+craft of this pattern. It was forty-five feet long and twelve feet wide,
+with an estimated burden of fifty tons. Her bows were raking or curved,
+strongly built with heavy timbers and covered with a deck roof.[60] It
+is probable that the first mail boats which ran on the Ohio in 1793 were
+of similar design. This service, established by Jacob Myers between
+Cincinnati and Pittsburg, was advertised on November 16 as leaving
+Cincinnati at 8 A. M. every alternate Saturday, requiring one month for
+the round trip. The proprietor took great credit to himself, "claiming
+to be 'influenced by love of philanthropy and desire of being
+serviceable to the public.' He further stated: 'No danger need be
+apprehended from the [Indian] enemy, as every person on board will be
+under cover, made proof against rifle or musquet balls, and port holes
+for firing out of. Each boat is armed with six pieces carrying a pound
+ball; also a number of good musquets, and amply supplied with
+ammunition, strongly manned with choice hands, and the masters of
+approved knowledge. A separate cabin is partitioned off for
+accommodating ladies on their passage; conveniences are constructed so
+as to render landing unnecessary, as it might, at times, be attended
+with danger. Rules and regulations for maintaining order and for the
+good management of the boats, and tables of the rates of freightage,
+passage, and carrying of letters; also, of the exact time of arrival and
+departure at all way places, may be seen on the boat and at the printing
+office in Cincinnati. Passengers supplied with provisions and liquors,
+of first quality, at most reasonable rates possible. Persons may work
+their passage. An office for insuring at moderate rates the property
+carried, will be kept at Cincinnati, Limestone, (i. e. Maysville) and
+Pittsburgh.' Packet-boat promises then, like steamboat promises
+nowadays, were not _always_ kept; instead of on November 30th, the
+second boat did not leave until December 10th, 'precisely at 10 o'clock
+in the morning.'"[61]
+
+In the days before steamboats, sails were greatly used on almost every
+manner of craft, and were made of every conceivable material. The great
+barges of early days were moved by sails when the wind was
+favorable.[62] Both barges and keel-boats were "provided with a mast, a
+square sail...."[63] Canoes were frequently provided with sails and
+their progress was more or less dependent on the winds.[64]
+
+The story of the building of the first brigs and schooners on the Ohio
+and its tributaries, the dreams of their proprietors and masters, and
+the experiences of their crews, is a subject worthy of a volume. The
+building of these larger craft for the Mississippi and ocean trade
+suggests at the outset the long, conflicting story of Mississippi
+control which can only be hinted at here.
+
+This business of building sailing vessels in the Ohio Basin began the
+decade before the nineteenth century opened, and grew more and more
+important until steam navigation revolutionized the river trade. These
+brigs and schooners were, without doubt, distinctively down river craft,
+which never returned; they were therefore the export carriers, and the
+importance of their place in history may be found in the fact that their
+appearance marks the rise of the export business to a position of
+prominence, as the use of the keel-boat marked the rise of what may be
+called interstate commerce.
+
+In the year 1792 the company of shipbuilders previously mentioned,
+Tarascon, Berthoud, and Company, who put the first keel-boats into
+business on the Ohio, built the schooner "Amity" of one hundred and
+twenty tons, and the "Pittsburgh," a ship of two hundred and fifty tons.
+In 1793 the schooner "was sent to St. Thomas, and the ship to
+Philadelphia, both laden with Flour. The second summer, they built the
+brig 'Nanina,' of two hundred, and the ship 'Louisiana,' of 350 tons.
+The brig was sent direct to Marseilles; the ship was sent out ballasted
+with our _stone coal_, which was sold at _Philadelphia_, for 37 1-2
+cents per bushel. The year after they built the ship 'Western Trader'
+of 400 tons."[65] By 1800, therefore, cargoes of flour, iron, beef,
+pork, glass-ware, furniture of black walnut, wild cherry, and yellow
+birch, and beverages of varying character were awaiting the great hulls
+of these new ships of several hundred tons. In 1803 Thaddeus Harris
+found several of these ships on the stocks at Pittsburg; three had been
+launched before April, "from 160 to 275 tons burden."[66] On May 4 he
+wrote at Marietta: "the schooner 'Dorcas and Sally,' of 70 tons, built
+at Wheeling and rigged at Marietta, dropped down the river. The
+following day there there passed down the schooner 'Amity,' of 103 tons,
+from Pittsburg, and the ship 'Pittsburg,' of 275 tons burden, from the
+same place, laden with seventeen hundred barrels of flour, with the rest
+of her cargo in flat-bottomed boats. In the evening the brig 'Mary
+Avery,' of 130 tons, built at Marietta, set sail. These afforded an
+interesting spectacle to the inhabitants of this place, who saluted the
+vessels as they passed with three cheers, and by firing a small piece of
+ordnance from the banks."[67] "The building and lading of ships is now
+considered as an enterprize of the greatest importance in this part of
+the country. The last (1802) there were launched from the ship-yard of
+Captain Devol, on the Muskingum river, five miles above its mouth, the
+ship 'MUSKINGUM,' of 204 tons, owned by Benjamin Ives Gilman, Esq. and
+the brigantine 'ELIZA GREENE,' of 115 tons, owned by Charles Greene,
+Esq. merchants at Marietta. At the spring flood of the present year, the
+schooner 'Indiana,' of 100 tons, the brig 'Marietta,' of 130 tons, and
+another of 150 tons, also built here, were launched and descended the
+river for New Orleans and the trade to the West Indies. Good judges of
+naval architecture have pronounced these vessels equal, in point of
+workmanship and materials, to the best that have been built in America.
+The firmness and great length of their planks, and the excellency of
+their timbers, (their frames being almost wholly composed of black
+walnut, a wood which, if properly selected, has nearly the strength of
+white oak, and the durability of the live oak of the south without its
+weight) it is believed will give these vessels the preference over any
+built of the timber commonly made use of, in any market where there are
+competent judges. This part of the country owes much to those gentlemen,
+who, in a new and experimental line, have set this example of enterprize
+and perseverance."[68] One ship from Marietta is said to have had the
+existence of her port of clearance questioned in Italy.
+
+In 1811 we learn that ship-building was not prospering as might be
+supposed; misfortunes and accidents "have given a damp to ships building
+at present."[69] On an inland river, where the winds and the amount of
+rainfall at any time were very uncertain, it must have been a most
+difficult thing to cope successfully with low water and shifting sand
+bars and other innumerable obstacles to navigation in the Ohio. The
+times were ripe for another power, one which did not require that the
+vessels have deep draught, as was the case with sailing vessels.
+
+The dawning of the new era of steam navigation cannot be introduced
+better than by quoting a unique paragraph from _The Navigator_ of 1811:
+
+"There is now on foot a new mode of navigating our western waters,
+particularly the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This is with boats
+propelled by the power of steam. This plan has been carried into
+successful operation on the Hudson river at New York, and on the
+Delaware between New Castle and Burlington.--It has been stated that the
+one on the Hudson goes at the rate of four miles an hour against wind
+and tide on her route between New York and Albany, and frequently with
+500 passengers on board. From these successful experiments there can be
+but little doubt of the plan succeeding on our western waters, and
+proving of immense advantage to the commerce of our country. A Mr.
+Rosewalt, a gentleman of enterprise, and who is acting it is said in
+conjunction with Messrs. Fulton and Livingston of New York, has a boat
+of this kind now on the stocks at Pittsburgh, of 138 feet keel,
+calculated for 300 or 400 tons burden. And there is one building at
+Frankfort, Kentucky, by citizens who no doubt will push the enterprise.
+It will be a novel sight, and as pleasing as novel to see a huge boat
+working her way up the windings of the Ohio, without the appearance of
+sail, oar, pole, or any manual labour about her--moving within the
+secrets of her own wonderful mechanism, and propelled by power
+undiscoverable!--This plan if it succeeds, must open to view flattering
+prospects to an immense country, an interior of not less than two
+thousand miles of as fine a soil and climate, as the world can produce,
+and to a people worthy of all the advantages that nature and art can
+give them, a people the more meritorious because they know how to
+sustain peace and live independent, among the crushing of empires, the
+falling of kings, the slaughter and bloodshed of millions, and the
+tumult, corruption and tyranny of all the world beside. The immensity of
+country we have yet to settle, the vast riches of the bowels of the
+earth, the unexampled advantages of our water courses, which wind
+without interruption for thousands of miles, the numerous sources of
+trade and wealth opening to the enterprising and industrious citizens,
+are reflections that must rouse the most dull and stupid.... From the
+canoe, we now see ships of two or three hundred tons burden, masted and
+rigged, descending the same Ohio, laden with the products of the
+country, bound to New Orleans,--thence to any part of the world.--Thus
+the rise and progress of the trade and the trader on the western waters,
+thus the progress of our country from infancy to manhood, and thus the
+flattering prospects of its future greatness through the channels of the
+Ohio and Mississippi rivers."[70]
+
+These words came true in a miraculously short space of time. Previous to
+the adoption of the steamboat navigation, say in 1817, the whole
+commerce from New Orleans to the upper country was carried in about
+twenty barges, averaging one hundred tons each, and making but one trip
+a year. The number of keel-boats employed on the Upper Ohio could not
+have exceeded one hundred and fifty, carrying thirty tons each, and
+making one trip from Pittsburg to Louisville and back in two months, or
+about three voyages in the season. The tonnage of all the boats
+ascending the Ohio and Lower Mississippi was then about sixty-five
+hundred.
+
+In 1811 the first steamboat was constructed at Brownsville,
+Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela. Several others were built soon after,
+but it was probably fifteen years before steamboats came into such
+general use as to cause any diminution in the flat-and keel-boat
+navigation. These first boats were built after models of ships, with
+deep holds. They also were constructed with low pressure engines and
+heavy machinery. Hence they were useless in low water, very hard to
+propel against the current, and their carrying capacity was greatly
+reduced. In order to attain greater speed, the builders soon made the
+boats long and narrow but it was not until they came to the decision
+that boats would run faster on the water than in it, and began making
+them flat and broad, that they finally got a boat capable of carrying a
+thousand tons, when drawing only four feet, and when empty only two and
+one-half feet. Then with a high pressure engine at each wheel they could
+make unprecedented speed; and these boats afforded traveling and freight
+accommodations equal to any. Although the prices of passages did not
+exceed hotel rates, yet more bountifully filled tables were not to be
+found on land and the boats were marvels of splendor in their
+appointments. The chief improvement made in the river steamboats was
+placing one large wheel at the stern of the boat entirely behind the
+hulk and with long paddles the full length of the beam, operated by
+double engines and quartering cranks. This had the advantage of allowing
+the wheel to fly in the eddy water of the boat, while it cleared the
+boat of the afterdraft. With these improvements rapid currents and
+shallow waters could be conquered.
+
+In 1832 it was calculated that the whole number of persons deriving
+subsistence on the Ohio, including the crews of steam- and flat-boats,
+mechanics and laborers employed in building and repairing boats,
+woodcutters, and persons employed in furnishing, supplying, loading and
+unloading these boats, was ninety thousand. At this time, 1832, the
+boats numbered four hundred and fifty and their burden ninety thousand
+tons. In 1843 the whole number of steamboats constructed at Cincinnati
+alone was forty-five; the aggregate amount of their tonnage was twelve
+thousand and thirty-five tons, and their cost $705,000. This gives an
+average of two hundred and sixty-seven tons for each boat and about
+$16,000 for the cost of each.
+
+The models of these 1843 boats, as well as their finish and
+accommodations, evinced a progressive improvement upon earlier boats.
+They had more length and less draught, and were faster than those of the
+last generation, while the hulls were more staunch, though they
+contained less weight of timber. The cabins were not so gaudy and
+expensive as those of former years but were greatly superior in comfort
+and convenience.
+
+In 1844 the number of steamboats employed in navigating the Mississippi
+and its tributaries was four hundred and fifty. The average burden of
+these boats was 200 tons each, making an aggregate of 90,000 tons and
+their aggregate value, at $80 per ton, was $7,200,000. Many of these
+were fine vessels, affording most comfortable accommodations for
+passengers, and compared favorably in all particulars with the best
+packets in any part of the world. The number of persons engaged in
+navigating the steam-boats at this time varied from twenty-five to fifty
+for each boat, or an average of about thirty-five persons, which gives a
+total of 15,750 persons employed.
+
+It appears from the reports of the Louisville and Portland Canal at this
+time that more than seven hundred flat-boats passed that canal in one
+year. There were, therefore, probably four thousand descending the
+Mississippi, and counting five men to a boat there were 20,000 persons
+employed in flat-boating. The cost of these boats was in the
+neighborhood of $400,000, which, as they did not return, was an annual
+expense; the cost of loading, navigating, and unloading them
+approximated $900,000, making a total annual expenditure upon this class
+of boats $1,300,000.
+
+If, in 1834, the number of steamboats on western waters was two hundred
+and thirty, and they carried 39,000 tons, the expense of running them
+could be estimated as follows:[71]
+
+  60 boats, over 200 tons, 108 running
+    days, at $140. per day--                     $1,512,000.
+
+  70 boats, 120-200 tons, 240 running
+    days, at $90. per day--                       1,512,000.
+
+  100 boats, under 120 tons, 270 running
+    days, at $60. per day--                       1,620,000.
+                                                 -----------
+          Total yearly expenses                  $4,645,000.
+
+In 1844 the calculation was:
+
+  110 boats, over 200 tons, 180 running
+    days, at $140 per day--                      $2,772,000.
+
+  140 boats, 120-200 tons, 240 running
+    days, at $90 per day--                        3,024,000.
+
+  200 boats, under 120 tons, 280 running
+    days, at $60--                                3,240,000.
+                                                 -----------
+          Total yearly expenses                  $9,036,000.
+
+This sum, reduced to the different items producing it, would be
+apportioned as follows:
+
+  For wages, 36%               $3,252,960.
+  For wood, 30%                 2,710,800.
+  For provisions, 18%           1,626,480.
+  For contingencies, 16%        1,445,760.
+                               -----------
+          Total                $9,036,000.
+
+To this should be added:
+
+  Insurance, 15% on $7,200,000                   $1,080,000.
+  Louisville and Portland Canal tolls--             250,000.
+  Interest on $7,200,000. Investment at 6%          432,000.
+  Wear and tear of boats, 20%                     1,440,000.
+                                                ------------
+          Total                                 $12,238,000.
+  Add for flat-boats, as above,                   1,380,000.
+                                                ------------
+          Total annual cost of transportation   $13,618,000.
+
+There were steadily employed at the Cincinnati shipyards, during the
+year 1843, in the heavier portions of the work, 320 hands at the
+boatyards, 200 joiners, 200 engine- and foundry-men, 50 painters, making
+the total number of persons employed 770.
+
+Within the same year, there were built at Louisville, New Albany, and
+Jeffersonville, 35 boats, of 7,406 tons, which cost $700,000. These
+boats cost $20,000 each, averaged 211 tons, and cost about $95 per ton.
+
+At Pittsburg, the same year, there were built 25 boats, of 4347 tons;
+the average tonnage of these boats was about 173 tons.
+
+The aggregate number of boats built in 1843, is about as follows:
+
+  Cincinnati,                                  45 boats,   12,035 tons
+  Louisville, New Albany, and Jeffersonville   35 boats,    7,406  "
+  Pittsburg,                                   25 boats,    4,347  "
+  Add for all other places,                    15 boats,    3,000  "
+                                                           ------
+          Total.                                           26,788 tons
+
+The whole tonnage of western boats previous to 1843, being 90,000 tons,
+and the annual loss by destruction and superannuation being twenty per
+cent, the decrease by the latter cause for 1843, was 18,000 tons, and
+the increase 26,788 tons, making a net increase of 8,788 tons.
+
+By the official returns in 1842 it appears that the whole steamboat
+tonnage of the United States was 218,994 tons; this was divided as
+follows:
+
+_Southwest_
+
+  New Orleans,                80,993 tons
+  St. Louis,                  14,725   "
+  Cincinnati,                 12,025   "
+  Pittsburg,                  10,107   "
+  Louisville,                  4,618   "
+  Nashville,                   3,810   "
+                             -------
+      Total                  126,278 tons.
+
+_Northwest_
+
+  Buffalo,                     8,212 tons
+  Detroit,                     3,296  "
+  Presque Isle,                2,315  "
+  Oswego,                      1,970  "
+  Cuyahoga,                    1,859  "
+                              ------
+      Total                   17,652 tons.
+
+_Seaboard_
+
+  New York,                   35,260 tons
+  Baltimore,                   7,143  "
+  Mobile,                      6,982  "
+  Philadelphia,                4,578  "
+  Charleston,                  3,289  "
+  Newbern,                     2,854  "
+  Perth Amboy,                 2,606  "
+  Apalachicola,                1,418  "
+  Boston,                      1,362  "
+  Norfolk,                     1,395  "
+  Wilmington,                  1,212  "
+  Georgetown,                  1,178  "
+  Newark,                      1,120  "
+  Miscellaneous,               4,767  "
+                              ------
+      Total                   76,064 tons.
+
+At this time the steamboat tonnage belonged to the internal commerce of
+the country, as, with the exception of two or three in the Gulf of
+Mexico, we had no steam vessels engaged in foreign commerce. Of the
+whole 218,994 tons, it appears that two-thirds belonged to the West; and
+as a portion of the other tonnage was employed on routes leading to the
+West and connecting with our highways, the commerce of the West no doubt
+amounted to more than two-thirds of the commerce of the Union. And,
+estimating the number of steamboats from their average tonnage, there
+must have been in 1842, one thousand in the United States, of which six
+hundred belonged to the West.
+
+The table of tonnage above given, shows where this vast commercial
+marine was employed; first, in the Mississippi Basin; next, in the city
+of New York; and then on the Lakes. From the port of New York there were
+some seventy or eighty steamboats constantly running--on the Lakes there
+were hundreds. In the valley of the Mississippi the number of steamboats
+they employed was equal to the whole number of those employed in
+England. This will appear from the following statement from McCullough's
+gazetteer of the steamboat tonnage of Great Britain in 1834:
+
+                          _Steam Ships_   _Tonnage_
+  England                      434          43,877
+  Scotland                     105          13,113
+  Ireland                       84          17,674
+  British dependencies          49           8,032
+                               ---          ------
+      Total,                   672          82,696
+
+It appears then that the steamboat tonnage of the Mississippi Valley
+(1842) exceeded by forty thousand tons the entire steamboat tonnage of
+Great Britain (1834). In other words, the steamboat tonnage of Great
+Britain was only two-thirds that of the Mississippi Valley. The
+magnitude of this fact will be best appreciated by considering that the
+entire tonnage of the United States was but two-thirds that of Great
+Britain, showing that this proportion is exactly reversed in western
+steamboat trade. The influence of the West in pushing the steamboat to
+its ultimate use as a common carrier has been most remarkable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THREE GENERATIONS OF RIVERMEN
+
+
+The history of the Ohio Basin rivermen, from those who paddled a canoe
+and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor today on our steamboats has
+never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been
+pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be. Even the student
+who gleans imperfect pictures from the miscellanies preserved in local
+histories, must in the very nature of the case, secure but a poor focus
+on realities. Study as you will, you will only make yourself ridiculous
+when you attempt to talk to one of the old-time rivermen. Your use and
+even pronunciation of words will seem absurd; if the dictionary is on
+your side, so much the worse for the dictionary. An attempt will create
+in the enthusiast much the same feeling that will be felt on giving a
+veteran of Gettysburg a copy of an historical novel describing the
+battle; it may have thrilled you but your old soldier friend will say
+"That man never was in battle." The old riverman will, by his smile,
+make you conscious that you speak in unfamiliar terms, though his manner
+may be politeness itself. "You have never been in battle" will be the
+gist of his implications.
+
+The first generation of rivermen, excluding, of course the Indians,
+would cover the year from 1750 to 1780 and would include those whose
+principal acquaintance with the Ohio and its tributaries was made
+through the canoe and pirogue. The second generation would stretch from
+1780 or 1790 to 1810, and for our purposes will include those who lived
+in the heyday of the keel- and flat-boat. The third generation would
+carry us forward from 1810 to about 1850, and in this we would count the
+thousands who knew these valleys before the railway had robbed the
+steamboat of so much of its business and pride. This classification is
+extremely loose; it will help us, however, to place some limits on a
+subject as boundless as human ambition.
+
+For, taken through the years, the human element in the historical phases
+of these valleys has remained practically unchanged. Greed of the great
+round dollar has been the commanding passion, and nowhere has it burned
+more fiercely. All the crimes, treacheries, deceptions, and frauds
+practiced under the sun have been repeated on the Ohio between Pittsburg
+and Cairo. Some, perhaps unknown elsewhere, have here been committed.
+But here, too, that old-time clear love of living for life's sake only,
+the thing which makes sailors sing the world over, was deeply felt. In
+its lower extremities the river reaches practically southern climes
+while its northern arms reach out into New York and Pennsylvania. On its
+northwestern shore settled many colonies from New England; on the
+south-eastern coast flocked the Virginians. Thus, from the standpoint of
+temperament, the Ohio offers a most remarkable field of study of human
+types. As said, it was the western projection of Mason and Dixon's Line;
+but instead of being a mere geographical technicality, it was a teeming
+highway where passion, hate, love, and fraternity were every day
+displayed until the great crisis was finally passed. For, be it
+remembered, there was civil war on the Ohio long before Fort Sumter
+belched its defiance to secessionism. True, western Virginia and
+Kentucky were not unbalanced by the fervor that swept the South, but
+this river highway between them and Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (as
+loyal as Vermont or Massachusetts) was the meeting-place of hundreds who
+could not meet without striking fire. Brought up in this zone where
+issues were plain and where it was not derogatory to carry a broken nose
+or a blackened eye any time between 1840 and 1860, fired to fast
+thinking and faster action by the passionate current in which they
+lived, were many of the bravest leaders of the Civil War, such as
+Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. Our study here has nothing to do with the
+history of the Civil War, but disclosures made at that time bring out
+most plainly the position of the Ohio Valley in the Union, and the
+political consequences. It has been in place elsewhere to define the
+various stocks of people who entered the Ohio Valley a century ago and
+who have been its controlling spirits since their entrance. Of these the
+rivermen were a part, moved by one and the same force politically. Some
+were of the North and some came up from the South, and they wrangled for
+years over the problems solved by the Civil War.
+
+But now, turning specifically to our classification, let us glance at
+the first generation of Ohio rivermen: those who knew these waters
+before and during Revolutionary days. At the outset it is clear that
+their tasks are as strange to us as the sights upon which their eyes
+feasted and the sounds which day and night were sounding in their ears.
+They were engaged in the only trade known in the valley then--the fur
+trade. At about midsummer, or a little earlier, the fur trade of the
+entire Ohio Basin focused at the mouth of the Monongahela for
+transportation to Philadelphia and Baltimore or on the lower Ohio for
+shipment by canoe down the Ohio and Mississippi. When the curtain of
+actual history arose on the Ohio River, the fur traders formed the
+motley background in the drama in which Céloron, Contrecoeur,
+Villiers, Washington, and Gist stood out clearly in the dark foreground.
+Céloron found them here and there in 1750 and sent them back to Virginia
+with a sharp letter to Governor Dinwiddie. Indeed it was these first
+rivermen who floated on the Ohio in canoes laden with peltry who brought
+on apace the Old French War. Nominally, of course, it was that quota of
+one hundred families with which the Ohio Company promised to people its
+two hundred thousand acre grant between the Monongahela and Kanawha
+Rivers which alarmed the Quebec government; but in reality it was the
+Virginia and Pennsylvania fur traders in whose canoes thousands of
+dollars' worth of beaver skins were being kept from the St. Lawrence.
+From village to village these traders passed, securing from the natives
+their plunder of river and forest. In their long canoes the packs were
+carefully deposited, and payment was made in goods, of which ammunition
+and fire-arms were of most worth. Though these were the first rivermen,
+they as frequently came by land as by water. But, when in their canoes,
+they were the first to ply the western rivers. They, first of white
+men, learned the old-time riffles--many of which became known to
+millions by the names these first _voyageurs_ gave them. They knew
+islands which have long since passed from sight; they knew the old licks
+and the old trails. They practiced the lost arts of the woodsman; they
+had eyes and ears of which their successors in these valleys do not
+know. They did not become white Indians for, it would seem, they did not
+mingle as closely with the red-men as did the French; but they became
+exceedingly proficient in the Indian's woodland wisdom. Browned by the
+sun and hardened by wind and rain and snow they were a strong race of
+men; they could paddle or walk the entire day with little fatigue. Yet
+their day's work was not such usually that it made mere brute machines
+of them. Not as boisterous as the French on the Great Lakes and their
+tributaries, these first Americans in the West were yet a buoyant crew;
+there were songs to be sung as the canoe glided speedily along beneath
+the shadows of those tremendous forest trees; dangers intensified the
+joys, and, as everywhere else, added a flavor to living, a romantic
+tinge to what otherwise might have been commonplace. There was no caste,
+no clique, no faction; even Virginian and Pennsylvanian eyed one another
+more considerately on the Ohio than elsewhere; true, the quarrel at last
+grew bitter, even here, but it was confined to the possession of
+Pittsburg and did not concern the valley as a whole.
+
+With the deepening of the struggle for the Ohio its first generation of
+_voyageurs_ became of great importance. Their knowledge of the river and
+the land through which it flowed was of moment to marching armies,
+scouts and spies, peace commissioners, military superintendents,
+commanders of forts, cohorts of surveyors, land companies, investors,
+promoters, and pioneers. With the passing of the fur trade, a score of
+remunerative openings was at the command of the rivermen who had learned
+well his lesson. Thus with the opening of the new era of the barge and
+keel-boat the old-time _voyageur_ could remain upon the scene, or, like
+Daniel Boone, paddle away to the West and in a new land live over again
+the days when the forests were fresh and green.
+
+With the filling of the Ohio Valley came the introduction of these heavy
+freight craft, the barge and flat-boat, and, almost immediately, the
+keel-boat, the first upstream craft. To row or steer a barge or flat or
+to pole a keel-boat was work no _voyageur_ of earlier times had
+undertaken. It was rougher work than had ever been demanded of men in
+the West and it soon developed rougher men than the West had ever seen.
+Social conditions, growing spasmodically complex in a new country, made
+them worse. Once free of savage red-men, the Ohio Valley became a famous
+retreat for criminals of every class from every state; horse thieves,
+gamblers, and men guilty of far worse crimes were comparatively safe on
+the Ohio by 1800; and, in the descending barge or flat, could pass on
+into a new career under new names in Kentucky, Ohio, or beyond. Added to
+this scum of the older communities must be counted the hundreds who had
+served in the western armies which were now disbanded, many of whom bred
+in roughest surroundings now sank quickly to their social level in the
+fast-filling West they had freed. This type of hardy but vicious manhood
+found hard work awaiting them on the rivers where millions of tons of
+freight were waiting to be moved. They laid down a heavy musket and
+picked up a heavier oar; but the two forms of occupation were not
+dissimilar, for both offered a life of alternate labor and rest. On
+these first freight craft in the West the work was severe in the
+extreme, but it was not continuous; it was often a desperate pull today
+and leisure tomorrow. A writer of a generation ago caught the exact
+spirit of this life at this transitional state:
+
+"The Ohio River being once reached, the main channel of emigration lay
+in the water-courses. Steamboats as yet were but beginning their
+invasion, amid the general dismay and cursing of the population of
+boatmen that had rapidly established itself along the shore of every
+river. The early water life of the Ohio and its kindred streams was the
+very romance of emigration; no monotonous agriculture, no toilsome
+wood-chopping could keep back the adventurous boys who found delight in
+the endless novelty, the alternate energy and repose of a floating
+existence on those delightful waters. The variety of river craft
+corresponded to the varied temperaments of the boatmen. There was the
+great barge with lofty deck requiring twenty-five men to work it
+up-stream; there was the long keel-boat, carrying from twenty-five to
+thirty tons; there was the Kentucky 'broadhorn,' compared by the
+emigrants of that day to a New England pig-sty set afloat, and sometimes
+built one hundred feet long, and carrying seventy tons; there was the
+'family-boat,' of like structure, and bearing a whole household, with
+cattle, hogs, horses, and sheep. Other boats were floating tin shops,
+blacksmith's shops, whiskey shops, dry-goods shops. A few were propelled
+by horsepower. Of smaller vessels there were 'covered sleds,' 'ferry
+flats,' and 'Alleghany skiffs;' 'pirogues' made from two tree trunks, or
+'dug-outs' consisting of one."
+
+"The bargemen were a distinct class of people," writes Mr. Cassedy,
+"whose fearlessness of character, recklessness of habits and laxity of
+morals rendered them a marked people. Their history will hereafter form
+the groundwork of many a heroic romance or epic poem. In the earlier
+stages of this sort of navigation, their trips were dangerous, not only
+on account of the Indians whose hunting-grounds bounded their track on
+either side, but also because the shores of both rivers were infested
+with organized banditti, who sought every occasion to rob and murder the
+owners of these boats. Beside all this the Spanish Government had
+forbidden the navigation of the lower Mississippi by the Americans, and
+thus, hedged in every way by danger, it became these boatmen to
+cultivate all the hardihood and wiliness of the Pioneer, while it led
+them also into the possession of that recklessness of independent
+freedom of manner, which even after the causes that produced it had
+ceased, still clung to and formed an integral part of the character of
+the Western Bargeman. It is a matter of no little surprise that
+something like an authentic history of these wonderful men has never
+been written. Certainly it is desirable to preserve such a history, and
+no book could have been undertaken which would be likely to produce more
+both of pleasure and profit to the writer and none which would meet with
+a larger circle of delighted readers. The traditions on the subject are,
+even at this recent period, so vague and contradictory that it would be
+difficult to procure anything like reliable or authentic data in regard
+to them. No story in which the bargemen figured is too improbable to be
+narrated, nor can one determine what particular person is the hero of an
+incident which is in turn laid at the door of each distinguished member
+of the whole fraternity."[72]
+
+"The crews were carefully chosen. A 'Kentuck,' or Kentuckian, was
+considered the best man at a pole, and a 'Canuck,' or French Canadian,
+at the oar or the 'cordelles,' the rope used to haul a boat upstream.
+Their talk was of the dangers of the river; of 'planters and sawyers,'
+meaning tree trunks imbedded more or less firmly in the river; of
+'riffles,' meaning ripples; and of 'shoots,' or rapids (French
+_chutes_). It was as necessary to have violins on board as to have
+whiskey and all the traditions in song or picture of 'the jolly boatman'
+date back to that by-gone day. Between the two sides of the river there
+was already a jealousy. Ohio was called 'the Yankee State' and Flint
+tells us that it was a standing joke among the Ohio boatmen when asked
+their cargo to reply, 'Pitcoal indigo, wooden nutmegs, straw baskets,
+and Yankee notions.' The same authority describes this sort of
+questioning as being inexhaustible among the river people and asserts
+that from one descending boat came this series of answers all of which
+proved to be truthful:
+
+"'Where are you from?'
+
+'Redstone.'
+
+'What is your lading?'
+
+'Millstones.'
+
+'What's your captain's name?'
+
+'Whetstone.'
+
+'Where are you bound?'
+
+'To Limestone.'"
+
+"It was the highway of emigration," a pioneer has written of the Ohio in
+its early years, "by the old and nearly forgotten flat-boat system....
+I was familiar with the sight of these primitive navigators and their
+sluggish moving vessels when in the early spring days they came down....
+I have seen several generations on a single flatboat, from the white
+haired grand-sire and his aged helpmate, seated in rude chairs of
+domestic manufacture, with split hickory bottoms, down to the infant
+babe nestled in its rough hewn cradle, made by the ax of the stalwart
+young man, father to a group of little 'towheads' who surrounded the
+parents, and their small assortment of household goods. A cow--that
+domesticated helpmate to the family of the emigrating poor--was
+generally tied near the center of the flatboat, and on the lumber or
+planks that were intended, when the voyage terminated, to be made into
+flooring, and combine with the broken up flat-boat to make a quickly
+constructed home at some point on the forest covered hills of Kentucky
+or Ohio, or on the low, flat lands that border the Mississippi.... They
+were going to settle in the wilderness, with a cow, a flitch of bacon, a
+small coop of chickens, and, generally, a large family of children."
+
+Among the heroes of the days of the keel-boat, stands Mike Fink who, in
+his own words, is described as follows: "I can out-run, out-hop,
+out-jump, throw down, drag out and lick any man in the country. I'm a
+Salt-river roarer; I love the wimming and I'm chock full of fight." Of
+this typical leader of his class an old magazine, the _Western Monthly_,
+gives us this description: "His weight was about 180 pounds; height
+about five feet, nine inches; broad, round face, pleasant features,
+brown skin, tanned by sun and rain; blue, but very expressive eyes,
+inclining to grey; broad, white teeth, and square, brawny form, well
+proportioned; and every muscle of his arms, thighs and legs, was fully
+developed, indicating the greatest strength and activity. His person,
+taken altogether, was a model for a Hercules, except as to size." No
+plucky adventure or cunning trickery performed by bargemen from the
+Hudson to the Mississippi but seems to have been accredited by some one
+at some time to Mike Fink. One of these, told of Fink et al., is
+sufficiently typical to represent the other ninety-nine. Voyaging down
+the Ohio, Fink one day noticed a flock of fine sheep on shore, and,
+being out of fresh provisions, he determined to secure a supply of
+mutton without the delay and vexation attendant upon any financial
+exchange. In his cargo was a number of bladders of Scotch snuff.
+Obtaining a quantity of this drug he caught a few sheep, rubbed it on
+their heads and faces, and instantly sent a messenger for the owner
+whose house was not far distant.
+
+By the time this man appeared the sheep Fink had dosed were deporting
+themselves in a manner at once disgraceful to the remainder of the flock
+and prodigiously marvelous to the eyes of their dazed owner. Leaping and
+bleating, the distracted animals were pawing their heads, rubbing them
+wildly on the ground and acting in general as though possessed of devils
+and on the point of dashing down the river bank into the water.
+
+"What's the matter with my sheep?" exclaimed the alarmed owner.
+
+"Don't you know?" said Mike, suspiciously.
+
+"No, I don't!"
+
+"Didn't you ever hear of black murrain?"
+
+"Yes," was the terrified reply.
+
+"Well, that's it--all sheep up the river's got it dreadful--dyin' like
+rotten dogs, hundreds daily."
+
+"You don't tell!" cried the victim; "and what's the cure?"
+
+"Nothin' but killin' 'em to prevent it's spreadin'; it's dreadful
+catchin', is black murrain."
+
+The riverman was at once begged to kill the infected sheep and throw
+their bodies into the current of the river. Mike did not at once agree,
+but when a couple of gallons of peach brandy was named as a
+consideration, he consented. And that night as his boat left the cove
+its freight was increased by many pounds of mutton and something less
+than two gallons of peach brandy. The same story is told of other
+bargemen in various portions of the Union but, whoever was guilty of the
+theft, it is typical of all so far as their attitude to the public is
+concerned.
+
+Such men, being constantly on the move, were hard to place, and as
+difficult to bring to justice as a government official. A keel-boat
+captain surrounded by a swarthy crew which he had treated liberally to
+plunder would not be attacked by any posse in its right mind. On one
+occasion--whether or not the story is true, the spirit of it is no
+misrepresentation--Mike Fink was so earnestly desired that a reward was
+offered for his capture. When his boat was anchored at Louisville an old
+friend of Mike's, a constable, approached him and expressed the desire
+to bring him to trial in order to obtain the promised reward. At the
+same time he assured the culprit that there was no evidence that could
+result in conviction. The keel-boat man took pity on his friend and
+agreed, after some consideration, to acquiesce on one condition: he
+would go if he could be drawn thither in his yawl, surrounded by his
+men.
+
+The condition was agreed to. "Accordingly a long-coupled wagon was
+procured, and, with oxen attached, it went down the hill, at Third
+Street for Mike's yawl. The road, for it was not then a street, was
+very steep and very muddy at this point. Regardless of this, however,
+the boat was set upon the wagon, and Mike and his men, with their long
+poles ready, as if for an aquatic excursion, were put aboard, Mike in
+the stern. By dint of laborious dragging, the wagon had attained half
+the height of the hill, when out shouted the stentorian voice of Mike
+calling to his men, 'Set poles!'--and the end of every long pole was set
+firmly in the thick mud; 'Back her!' roared Mike, and down the hill
+again went wagon, yawl, men, and oxen. Mike had been revolving the
+matter in his mind and had concluded that it was best not to go; and
+well knowing that each of his men was equal to a moderately strong ox,
+he had at once conceived and executed this retrograde movement. Once at
+the bottom, another parley was held and Mike was again overpowered. This
+time they had almost reached the top of the hill, when 'Set poles! Back
+her!' was again ordered and again executed. A third attempt, however,
+was successful, and Mike reached the court house in safety; and, as his
+friend, the constable, had endeavored to induce him to believe, he was
+acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence. Other indictments, however,
+were found against him, but Mike preferred not to wait to hear them
+tried; so, at a given signal he and his men boarded their craft and
+again stood ready to weigh anchor. The dread of the long poles in the
+hands of Mike's men prevented the posse from urging any serious
+remonstrance against his departure. And off they started with poles
+'tossed.' As they left the court house yard Mike waved his red bandanna,
+which he had fixed on one of the poles, and promising to 'call again'
+was borne back to his element and launched once more upon the
+waters."[73]
+
+Our inability to believe such stories is only an additional proof that
+those days might as well be a cycle as a century behind us, so far as
+catching the genuine atmosphere of them is concerned. It was a rough day
+on shore, a day when, so the story goes, a Louis Phillippe could not
+treat an Ohio innkeeper with hauteur (after announcing that he would "be
+King of France") without being thrown into the street to the
+accompaniment of the boast: "We are all Kings over here." English
+travelers in the middle West have probably left truer pictures of actual
+social conditions in the days of the keel-boat and barge than we have
+elsewhere. We think many of these accounts are, like Dickens's _Notes_,
+exaggerated. If any of them are true, all might as well be. And, at any
+rate, whatever the social average, we can be very certain that the
+rivermen had the hardest work and were the hardest type of all laborers
+in the new West.
+
+A hint has been dropped some pages before about the feeling of the
+old-time rivermen concerning the introduction of steam navigation. In
+this series of monographs it has been in place now and then to refer to
+the anger and disgust of every class of men engaged in land
+transportation over the introduction of new methods. The old
+packhorse-men were intensely incensed at the introduction of wheeled
+vehicles on the great routes of trade and immigration, and even opposed
+the widening of Indian trails and the building of roads. The first
+wagons were assaulted and demolished. In turn the "waggoners" and
+teamsters opposed the building of canals and the improvement of the
+rivers. Teamsters, tow-boat men, and rivermen were foremost in opposing
+the railway. Something of the same spirit exists in certain parts today,
+in the struggle which is on, and which is growing more bitter each year,
+between railway and electric roads.
+
+The conflict between the new and the old was probably more fierce on the
+rivers than elsewhere, for the reason that one route was common to all.
+The canal and highway were not often contiguous, and the railway was yet
+further removed, because it followed the waterways which the roads
+frequently avoided. On the river the barge and steamboat moved side by
+side; they landed at the same ports, and never lost sight of each other.
+It was a significant repetition of history, recalling the day when the
+wheeled vehicle was introduced on roads never used save by the
+packhorse-men. In each instance improved methods of locomotion came into
+violent contact with the old. And, as in the case of the struggle
+between angry packhorse-men and wagon- and coach-drivers, the new
+method was a labor-saving invention. No string of ponies could bear what
+a great Conestoga wagon would carry. It took less "hands" to transport a
+given amount of freight on wagons than by the old packsaddle system. The
+difference in the case of barge and flat-boat and steamboat was much
+more marked and the struggle so much more bitter. True it is that in
+both cases the amount of business soon increased with improved
+facilities--for the wagon was as much in advance of the packsaddle as
+the steamer was in advance of the flat-boat--but this did not allay
+temporary hostility.
+
+River life at once underwent a great change with the gradual supremacy
+of the steamboat in the carrying trade of the Ohio and its tributaries.
+The sounding whistle blew away from our valleys much that was
+picturesque--those strenuous days when a well developed muscle was the
+best capital with which to begin business. Of course the flat-boat did
+not pass from our waters, but as a type of old-time rivermen their lusty
+crews have disappeared. The business interests of the new West, growing
+to greater proportions each year, demanded all hands "on deck."
+
+In connection with that first generation of rivermen it was observed
+that social equality was a general rule. There were no distinctions;
+every man was his own master and his own servant. In the days of
+keel-boats and flat-boats conditions changed, as we have observed in the
+case of Mike Fink who was "captain" of his boat and the leader of his
+own henchmen. This has been touched upon in the consideration of the
+evolution of river craft, and may be suggested, only in passing, here;
+the second generation of rivermen were accustomed to obey orders of
+superiors, and society was divided sharply into two classes, the serving
+and the served. With the supremacy of the steamboat this division is
+reduplicated over and again; here are found four general classes, the
+proprietors, navigators, operators, and deckhands.
+
+The upper ranks of the steam-packet business have furnished the West
+with some of its strongest types of aggressive manhood. Keen-eyed,
+physically strong, acquainted with men and equal to any emergency, the
+typical captain of the first half century of steamboating in the West
+was a man any one was glad to number among his friends and
+acquaintances.
+
+But between the pilot house and the deck lay a gulf--not impassable, for
+it was very frequently spanned by the worthy--deep, and significant.
+Until the Civil War "deckoneering" was, largely, the pursuit of whites.
+A few plantation owners rented out slaves to steamboat owners, but
+negroes did not usurp the profession until they were freed. This was
+contemporaneous with the general introduction of steam railways.
+
+A heterogeneous population--not touched in the foregoing
+generalizations--has made the waters of the Ohio Basin its home. They
+may be classed as vagrants, gamblers, and banditti. The first class
+would include both the indolent and the vicious population that has
+swarmed the Ohio and its tributaries from times immemorial. In all sorts
+of conceivable craft, resembling each other only in the sole particular
+of buoyancy, these vagrants have been floating our waters and mooring
+their boats along our shores for a hundred years or more. In house-boats
+of all possible sizes, shapes, heights, depths, and stenches these
+idlers and triflers have lived and trained their sons and daughters to
+live. Their staple means of existence has been fishing and filching,
+and, while living, are seemingly the happiest of people and no questions
+asked. To dig a few hills of potatoes and snatch a few ears of corn or a
+melon, to conciliate and lead away a watch-dog, to "run" the trot-line,
+to barter stolen articles in a contiguous county, makes up the happy
+round of their useless lives. If it is true that every man is as lazy as
+he dare be the Ohio River can boast the most daring set of men in the
+world. It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the last
+century those who were engaged in legitimate business on western waters
+were not considered as holding a respectable social position. "This
+voyage performed," we read in _The Navigator_ for 1818, "which generally
+occupies three month ... the trader returns [from New Orleans] doubly
+invigorated, and enabled to enlarge his vessel and cargo, he sets out
+again; this is repeated, until perhaps getting tired of this mode of
+merchandizing, he sets himself down in some town or village as a
+wholesale merchant, druggist or apothecary, practicing physician, or
+lawyer, or something else, that renders him respectable in the eyes of
+his neighbors, where he lives amidst wealth and comforts the remainder
+of his days--nor is it by any known that his fortune was founded in the
+paddling of a canoe, or trafficking in apples, cider-royal,
+peach-brandy, whiskey, &c. &c. &c."
+
+This refers to the early trader; the house-boater of the later day was
+not, primarily, engaged in any trade, though many were. Nearly every
+kind of a shop known on land has floated on the Ohio. As a class,
+however, the proprietors of these craft were, and are, fishermen. "Queer
+people you meet on the river," wrote a correspondent who recently
+journeyed down the Ohio by canoe, "but perhaps the most interesting of
+all are the 'shanty-boat' tribe. We had had a long, hard morning's pull
+against head winds and had made little progress, were behind time and
+were discouraged. We were passing the lone shanty-boat of a river
+tradesman, tied up on shore, waiting for the wind 'to lay.' Chris hailed
+him and asked leave to boil coffee on his stove. I expected a rebuff,
+but the trader cordially invited us to 'walk in, gentlemen; you seem
+ruther fagged. Set down, set down. I seen you uns a passin' us above
+t'other day, but this old tortus runs night and day and gits ahead of
+the rabbit sometimes while you're taking a nap.' And so the loquacious
+old chap ran on. Glad of a rest, we stayed and drifted with him some ten
+or twelve miles that night, bunking on a pile of bags in a corner. To be
+sure the wily old fox turned our visit to his profit. He proved to us
+plainly, by river logic, what our experience had already shown--that we
+had certain cumbrous baggage that ought to be disposed of, and he bought
+it of us for a song, 'jest to accommodate you uns, you know; I'm allers
+a-buyin' a lot o' no-account truck, jest to help folks out.' Very
+likely! But the information he gave proved so valuable, his bacon tasted
+so good, that night spent with him drifting and resting was so
+pleasant--what did I care if it was all a scheme to strike a trade. Long
+into the night I sat with him as he steered his clumsy craft and shouted
+his queerly quavered songs. Finally he lapsed into silence. The frogs
+took up the song and had a monopoly, except for the gurgling of the
+water and the distant baying of a hound. I was just ready to feel
+romantic and silently soliloquizing the moon, when I heard a loud
+whisper from the other end of the shanty-boat, as one of the trader's
+young hopefuls said to his brother, 'Say, Bill, let's take the skiff and
+go ashore and steal that hound barking.' 'Shet up, you young rascal,'
+said the old man, never losing his good humor. 'You've got dogs enough
+a'ready to start a Noah's Ark. What do yer want with any more? You roll
+in.' Many kinds of people inhabit these shanty-boats. These boats are
+built at a cost of from twenty dollars up to two or three hundred. The
+ground to build on is free. There is no rent to pay. There is change of
+air and scenery. One house serves for winter and summer residences--the
+current and towboat carrying you back and forth. You can always be
+traveling, yet always at home. Your livelihood is gained sometimes one
+way, sometimes another--who questions? A man builds such a home, puts
+his family aboard; or, if he has no family, gets a cook if he
+chooses.... Then he drifts lazily during the summer, fishing, trapping,
+stealing and making his way to warmer climes as winter approaches. Far
+down at New Orleans or elsewhere, spring finds him and he sells out to
+return, or tows back with some fleet of barges, to begin again. Or a
+trader will load up at Pittsburg or Cincinnati with dry-goods, trinkets,
+queensware, everything, and make his way trading with the farmers or
+trappers, until at the end of the journey he has a rich store of
+bartered goods to sell ere his northward return. They are a careless,
+happy-go-lucky tribe of migrants--caring little for the morrow. 'Do you
+see this little chap?' said a big rough-bearded fellow to me one day, as
+he squeezed between his knees a fat, freckled, chuggy, grinning little
+cub. 'Well, he's five year old, born on the river, and he likes it
+better'n any other place. Don't you, hey, Johnny?' And so they eat
+their day's food, sleep in their floating homes, saw their old broken
+fiddles or pump wheezy accordeons, and are happy. Or sometimes as we
+often saw, an honest mechanic will build a cozy floating house, furnish
+it in comfortable style and moor it near his factory, saving rent and
+owning his home."
+
+Several significant social changes wrought by the Civil War have been
+noted; it put an end to the days of the "coasting" trade of the
+flat-boats and to the "deckoneering" of white men. It also marked the
+passing of the old gambling days in the steam-boat business. The three
+previous decades were famous days for a swarm of recognized banditti
+which may be said to have almost lived upon the Ohio-Mississippi boats.
+The opulence and chivalry of Southern planters who traveled largely by
+steam-packets made gambling a source of immense revenue to such as
+always won.
+
+It was always cards, and the steamboat is the ideal hunting-ground of
+the gambler and card-sharp; here is money, and those who have it are
+utterly at leisure. Back in the days of the third generation of
+rivermen, gambling, like drinking intoxicants, was not a social
+disgrace; many men of national reputation "sat in" on games of chance
+which are now outlawed. In such a social atmosphere and in such
+environment little wonder that the river-boats gained most unenviable
+reputation, until at last boat-owners were compelled to prohibit all
+such pastimes. Gamblers at times took possession of steamers and
+captains and clerks had almost no way to protect the passengers. It is
+said that sometimes as high as ten thousand dollars and more has changed
+hands in one night in games played between sporting men and rich
+planters.
+
+The story of one gambler's night is probably typical of the roughest of
+this phase, with the exception of actual murder which was, all too
+frequently, the climax of a night's gaming.
+
+"Coming up on the 'Sultana' one night," a gambler leaves record, "there
+were about twenty-five of the toughest set of men as cabin passengers I
+believe I ever met. They were on their way to Napoleon, Ark. which at
+that time was a great town and known as the jumping off place. In those
+days these Napoleon fellows were looked upon as cut-throats and robbers,
+and thought nothing of murdering a fellow simply to make them appear big
+men with their gang. I had for a partner a man named Canada Bill, as
+game a party as ever strode the deck of a steamboat, and one of the
+shrewdest gamblers I ever encountered. As soon as supper was over this
+gang of Arkansas toughs got in the cabin and of course wanted to play
+cards. Bill had opened up business in the main hall, and a great crowd
+had gathered about him. I saw that most of these devils had been
+drinking, and gave Bill the nod, which he of course understood. He only
+played a short while and left the game, pretending to be broke. Then we
+fixed it up that I should do the playing and he would watch out for any
+trouble. Well, the result was I got about everything the twenty-five men
+had, including their watches, and beat some seven or eight other
+passengers. The men all took it apparently good-natured at the time, but
+as the night wore on and they kept drinking from their private flasks I
+made a sneak to my room and changed my clothes. By the back stairs I
+slipped down into the kitchen and sent a man after my partner. I had
+blackened my face, and looked like one of the negro rousters. I only had
+time to warn him, when a terrible rumpus upstairs told me the jig was
+up, and with their whiskey to aid them they were searching for me, and
+if they caught me it would be good day to me. I paid the cooks to keep
+mum, and Bill made himself scarce. They had their guns out, and were
+kicking in the state-room doors hunting for me. Some of them came down
+on deck, and were walking back and forth by me, cursing and threatening
+vengeance. I heard one of them ask a roustabout if he had noticed a
+well-dressed man down on deck lately. He of course had not, as Bill had
+gone back up the kitchen stairs, and with these devils was raising Cain,
+looking for me, and my disguise had not been discovered under the
+darkness of the night. The boat was plowing her way along up the coast.
+The stevedores were shouting to the darkies, hurrying them along with
+the freight for a landing soon to be reached. The boat's whistle blew,
+and soon she was heading in for the shore. A crowd of these fellows
+were waiting for me, as they suspected I would try and get off. They
+were looking, mind you, for a well-dressed man. As soon as the boat
+landed about ten of them, guns in hand, ran out over the stage to shore
+and closely scanned the face of every person that came off. There was a
+stock of plows to be discharged from the boat's cargo, and noting the
+fact, I shouldered one and with it followed the long line of 'coons'
+amid the curses of the mates, and fairly flew past these men who were
+hunting me. I kept on up the high bank and over the levee, and when I
+threw my plow in the pile with the others, made off for the cotton
+fields and laid flat on my back until the boat got again under way, and
+the burning pine in the torches on deck had been extinguished. It was a
+close call, I can assure you. Bill met me at Vicksburg the next day and
+brought the boodle, which we divided. He said the crowd took lights and
+searched the boat's hold for me after we left the landing. Bill must
+have played his part well, as he told me afterward that they never
+suspicioned him. Yes, I could tell many of my exploits. The river was
+for the greater portion of my gambling career my strongest hold. But
+it's all over now. Even should a man strike a big winning, there are
+always too many smart Alecks about, and you would have to whack up with
+so many that there would be little left for the winner."
+
+The days of gambling on the river boats are not altogether gone but the
+days of the inland-water pirate are days of the distant past. In the
+time of the keel- and flat-boat the Ohio, and its tributaries to a
+certain extent, were infested with gangs of cut-throats and robbers
+whose exploits challenge the pen of a Scott. In certain portions of the
+river boatmen never dared to tie up at night, but kept their craft
+fairly in the swiftest current in order to hasten by these haunts. It
+was the common tradition among boatmen that their craft floated faster
+at night than in daylight; whatever the ground for this belief, it is
+certain the fastest current was all too slow if night found a
+_voyageur_, for instance, in the neighborhood of the notorious Hurricane
+Island between Illinois and Kentucky. Near here one Wilson, according
+to the Kentucky historian Collins, fitted up a "home" in famed
+Cave-in-Rock on the Illinois shore. This great cavern measures two
+hundred feet in length, eighty in width, the entrance being twenty-five
+feet high. Wilson's "place" was known as "Liquor Vault and House of
+Entertainment." "Its very novelty attracted the attention of the boats
+descending the river, and the crews generally landed for refreshments
+and amusements. Idle characters after awhile gathered here, and it soon
+became infamous for its licentiousness and blasphemy. Wilson ... formed
+a band of robbers, and laid plans of the deepest villainy...."[74]
+
+Some of the gang escaped when they found public vengeance aroused
+against them, but some were taken prisoners; Wilson himself lost his
+life at the hands of one of his own gang, tempted by the large reward
+offered for his head. Not long after, in the upper part of this
+mysterious cavern, were found sixty skeletons, confirming the tale of
+systematic confidence, betrayal, and murder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE NAVIGATION OF THE OHIO
+
+
+The neglect of the Ohio River by the United States government cannot be
+better suggested than by comparing the expenditures on that river with
+the appropriations for the great land thoroughfare--the Cumberland Road.
+In thirty-two years (1806-1838) the government spent $6,823,559.52 on
+the Cumberland Road. In seventy-five years (1827-1902) $6,752,042.04 was
+appropriated for the Ohio River and much of that was portioned out to
+the Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas.
+
+It is impossible to determine with absolute assurance when and where the
+first prominent movement looking toward the improvement of the Ohio
+River originated. With the burst of population into the West came the
+realization that the great waterway was a priceless possession.
+
+It would be interesting to know in detail the actual condition of the
+Ohio, say at the dawning of the eighteenth century. That it was greatly
+clogged with sunken logs and protruding reefs and bars, of course, goes
+without saying. Perhaps the average stage of water was less than it is
+today; and yet the vast amount of water that stood in the tangled
+forests and open swamps and meadows drained off so slowly as to maintain
+a more uniform stage of water than is true in our day of alternate flood
+and drought. If less water flowed in the Ohio's bed a century ago the
+volume was at least more uniform than it is today.
+
+As early as January 1817 a resolution was passed by the Legislature of
+Ohio inviting the coöperation of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and
+Indiana for the improvement of their great waterway. Virginia,
+Pennsylvania, and Kentucky promptly responded, and in 1819 a preliminary
+examination was made by General Blackburn of Virginia, General John
+Adair of Kentucky, General E. W. Tupper of Ohio and Walter Lowrie, Esq.
+of Pennsylvania who made reports to their several legislatures under the
+date of November 2, 1819. But during the generation following, each of
+these commonwealths became absorbed in internal improvements. Ohio, for
+instance, between 1819 and 1844, built seven hundred and sixty-five
+miles of canals costing nearly ten millions and almost as many miles of
+turnpike at a cost of four millions. Ohio also built seventy miles of
+railway, and in 1836 began to improve her most valuable river, the
+Muskingum, for slackwater navigation. Thus there was reason enough why
+Ohio could not undertake the improvement of the Ohio River. Her sister
+states were equally engaged with internal affairs, and though some steps
+were taken toward surveying the Ohio along the shores of several states
+the matter was left, as should have been the case, to the general
+Government.
+
+This meant a long delay, but at last, in 1825, the great work was
+undertaken; since 1836 there has been a continual struggle to compel the
+Government to do its duty by the Ohio River and its great commerce. In
+1837 the Government commenced a system of surveys and an improvement of
+the low-water channels by means of riprap stone dams, arranged so as to
+prevent the spread of the water by guiding and maintaining it in
+comparatively narrow channels. The work was put under the direction of
+Captain Sanders of the War Department. This system was continued at
+intervals until 1844, when, the appropriation being exhausted, the work
+suddenly ceased, not to be resumed until 1866.
+
+Something of the difficulties of the old engineers may be estimated from
+the records left by them concerning the various obstructions in the Ohio
+River. "Thirty years ago," wrote an engineer in 1866, "there were
+considerable tracts of woods abounding the stream ... forming dangerous
+obstructions to navigation. Gradually, since that period, the number of
+settlers along the river valley has greatly increased, and the bottom
+lands ... have been cleared; so that comparatively few trees remain that
+are liable to fall into the stream. And the same is true of most of the
+principal tributaries. I refer to this to show the probability that when
+the present snags and logs are removed, a slight expenditure annually
+will keep the river clear of this character of obstructions." The snags
+and logs of generations had been almost untouched by the
+government--"left to the uncertain and unpaid-for attention of private
+individuals." The plan now (1866) to rid the valley entirely of these
+great impediments to navigation marks a new era in the history of the
+Ohio. It was found, upon examination, that in the six hundred odd miles
+between Pittsburg and Louisville there were seventy-five separate points
+where there were snags, forty-nine "logs and loggy places," twenty-eight
+wrecks and seventy-two "sunken boats &c." Between Louisville and Cairo
+there were some sixty additional obstructions of similar nature--a total
+of two hundred and eighty-five obstruction points. A schedule of these
+obstructions, between Pittsburg and Wheeling for instance, will be found
+interesting. The asterisks refer to obstructions in or near the channel
+at comparatively low water:
+
+   _Distance_
+     _from_     _Snags,_  _Wrecks, etc._  _Remarks._
+  _Pittsburg._   _etc._
+  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
+  2-1/2                   Wreck.          In the right channel of
+                                            Brunot's island below the
+                                            point on the left side.
+
+  3                       Wreck.          Same side as last, half mile
+                                            below.
+
+  3-1/3                   Sunken barge.   Left channel Brunot's island,
+                                            first below point.
+
+  4                       2 wrecks.*      Sunken in main channel near
+                                            old pork-house; one of them
+                                            has lately washed ashore.
+
+  9-3/4                   Sunken barge.   In shore on left side in way
+                                            of good landing; above
+                                            Hamilton's house, on Neville
+                                            island, a large coal barge
+                                            has stranded just below, but
+                                            may be gotten off.
+
+  13                      2 wrecks.*      Above Boyle's landing; first,
+                                            on right side, across
+                                            channel, is very dangerous;
+                                            second, in above, left.
+
+  15                      Wreck.          Near Shousetown, left side,
+                                            close in shore.
+
+  16            Snag.                     Opposite Sewickley, a little
+                                            below Boyle's landing.
+
+  16-1/2                  Sunken barge.   Right shore below Sewickley,
+                                            in way of boats at high
+                                            water.
+
+  18-1/2                  Stranded        Coal barge stranded, Logtown
+                            barge.*         bar, below Economy.
+
+  19-1/2                  Sunken barge.*  In channel of two boats,
+                                            Logtown creek.
+
+  21            Snag.                     Below foot of Crow island,
+                                            right side.
+
+  23-2/3        Snag.                     One-third mile above Freedom,
+                                            Penn., right side.
+
+  24            Snag.                     Close in shore at Freedom.
+
+  24-1/4        Snag.                     In main channel, very large,
+                                            below landing.
+
+  30-1/3                  Sunken boat.    Close in to right; not
+                                            dangerous below Raccoon
+                                            creek.
+
+  30-1/4                  Sunken boat.    In channel below last;
+                                            dangerous.
+
+  33-1/2        Snag.                     Opposite Industry, below Safe
+                                            Harbor landing.
+
+  33-2/3                  Sunken boat.*   Left side below last.
+
+  41            Snag.     Sunken barge.   Left channel of Line island
+                                            there is a snag.
+
+  42-1/2                  Wreck.          Wreck of steamer Winchester,
+                                            burnt, left channel of
+                                            Babb's island, Va., shore;
+                                            not much in the way.
+
+  49-3/4                  Sunken boat.*   In channel foot of Baker's
+                                            island; dangerous.
+
+  63            Snag.                     Foot of Brown's island; old.
+
+  63-1/4        Snag.                     Center of River, head of cable
+                                             eddy.
+
+  67                      Wreck and       Left channel, pier Pittsburg
+                            cofferdam.      and Steubenville railroad
+                                            bridge.
+
+  67-1/2                  Sunken barge.   Left side above Steubenville;
+                                            dangerous.
+
+  68                      Sunken barge.   Opposite Steubenville landing,
+                                            center of river.
+
+  70-3/4        Snags.*                   Several in the vicinity of the
+                                            Virginia and Ohio cross
+                                            creeks.
+
+  73-1/4                  Sunken boats.*  Two, right side, above
+                                            Wellsburg, Va.
+
+  76                      Sunken boats.*  Left, below block-house run.
+
+  76-1/2        Snag.                     Right side, below last;
+                                            should come out.
+
+  78-3/4                  Wreck.          Old, opposite brick house,
+                                            close on left shore.
+
+  81-1/2        Snags.                    Two, right of channel, above
+                                            Warren.
+
+  81-3/4        Snag.*                    Old, right side, near
+                                            white frame house.
+
+  83                      Ice breaker.    Head of Pike island, at coal
+                                            shaft.
+
+  84                      Sunken          Edge of bar, not dangerous,
+                            barge.*         opposite brick house.
+
+  87            Logs,                     Left and center, bottom of
+                  etc.                      river, one mile below
+                                            Burlington.
+
+  88                      Sunken boat.    Sunken ferry-boat, close in
+                                            right side, Martinsville.
+
+  89-1/4                  Sunken          At ship-yard, Wheeling,
+                            barge.*         dangerous.[75]
+
+Captain Sanders, in the forties, had estimated that it cost about
+fifteen dollars to remove each ordinary snag from the Ohio. In the
+Mississippi the roots of snags could be thrown into the deep pools where
+they would soon become buried in mud; but on the Ohio such pools were
+not frequent and it was usually necessary to carry the roots ashore and
+destroy them with gunpowder. Sanders reported that up to September 1837
+there had been three thousand three hundred and three obstructions
+removed from the Ohio. In 1839 there had been about ten thousand
+removed; at which time the work ceased. Some of the snags were six feet
+in diameter at the butt and over one hundred feet in length. In a report
+in 1835, on Mississippi improvement, Lieutenant Bowman stated: "It is a
+well-established fact that snags do not move far from where they first
+fall in, the weight of the earth attached to their roots serving as an
+anchor. It is also well established that trees which once float seldom
+form snags. Admitting this, it is sufficiently evident that if the banks
+are once cleared, there can be no subsequent formation of snags."
+
+Second only to such obstructions was the "Falls of the Ohio," the one
+spot in all its course of nearly a thousand miles where steamboat
+navigation was impossible until the construction of a canal, which
+followed the route of the ancient portage path two and one-half miles in
+length between the present sites of Louisville and Shipping-port,
+Kentucky. In this distance the Ohio makes a fall of about twenty-five
+feet caused by a ledge of rocks extending across the river. Steamboating
+is impracticable here save only when the river is at flood-tide.
+
+A company was incorporated by the legislature of Kentucky to cut a canal
+around the falls in 1804, but nothing was done until January 12, 1825,
+when the Louisville and Portland Canal Company was organized, with a
+capital of $600,000. The stock was taken by about seventy persons,
+residing in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New
+York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the United States holding 2,335
+shares, and 1,665 issued to private individuals. Many difficulties
+attended the construction of the work, which was not completed until
+December 5, 1830. During the year 1831 406 steamboats, 46 keel-boats,
+and 357 flat-boats, measuring 76,323 tons, passed through the locks.[76]
+
+The venture was highly successful from a financial point of view thanks
+to outrageous tolls that were charged. A twenty-four thousand dollar
+boat of three hundred tons running between Cincinnati and St. Louis
+expended in tolls in the Louisville and Portland Canal in five years a
+sum equal to her entire cost. "A boat of one hundred and ninety tons,
+owned at Cincinnati, has been in the habit of making her trips from this
+city to St. Louis and back, in two weeks, and has passed the canal
+_four_ times in one month. Her toll, each trip, at $60 per ton, was
+$114, and her toll for one month was $456, or at the rate of $5,472 per
+year, which is nearly half the value of such a boat."[77]
+
+From 1831 to 1843, 13,756 steamboats passed through the Canal, and 4,701
+keeland flat-boats, with a total tonnage of two and a half million
+tons, netting a toll of $1,227,625.20.[78] On the stock owned by the
+United States a cash dividend (to 1843) of $258,378 was earned--$23,378
+more than the Government's original investment. Other stockholders fared
+equally well from this systematic highway robbery. Such a drain on the
+public purse as was the Louisville-Portland Canal in the "good old days"
+would not be countenanced a moment today. The canal was rebuilt and
+enlarged in 1872, and in 1874 it passed into the control of the United
+States by the authority of Congress.
+
+Following is a synopsis of the expenditures on account of the canal
+previous to June 11, 1874, the date when the United States assumed
+complete control and management:
+
+  "Expended by the canal company on original canal.  $1,019,277.09
+
+  Expended by the canal company on subsequent
+    improvements and construction                       120,000.00
+
+  Expended by the canal company for enlargement of
+    canal                                             1,825,403.00
+
+  Expended by the United States for enlargement of
+    canal, from appropriations                        1,463,200.00
+
+  Expended by the United States from funds derived
+    from toll collections                               150,000.00
+                                                    --------------
+          Total cost                                 $4,577,880.09
+
+
+_Cost of the canal to the United States._
+
+  Original stock                                      $ 233,500
+
+  Total appropriations for enlargement                1,463,200
+
+  Canal bonds paid                                    1,172,000
+                                                  -------------
+          Gross cost                                 $2,868,700
+
+  Amount of dividends paid by the canal company to the
+    United States                                       257,778
+                                                     -------------
+          Net cost                                   $2,610,922"[79]
+
+The following table shows the traffic, in tons, of the canal since 1886:
+
+  _Articles._         _1886 to 1901_     _Fiscal year_    _Total for 16_
+                       _inclusive._         _1902._          _years._
+
+  Coal                22,365,240-3/4    1,019,947-1/2    23,385,188-1/4
+  Salt                   124,363-3/4        5,760-1/4       130,124
+  Oil                     60,944-1/4        1,211-1/2        62,155-3/4
+  Whiskey                 21,442-1/4        1,117            22,559-1/4
+  Tobacco                 90,270-1/2        1,705            91,975-1/2
+  Cotton                 140,213            2,299-1/2       142,512-1/2
+  Lumber               3,401,021           85,305-1/2     3,486,326-1/2
+  Corn and wheat         151,621            5,933-1/2       157,554-1/2
+  Iron: ore and
+    manufactured         518,642-1/2       34,634-1/2       553,277
+  Steel rails            685,182          183,016           868,198
+  Produce                 84,396-1/2        4,864            89,260-1/2
+  Hay and straw          198,523-1/2        6,224-1/4       204,747-3/4
+  Flour                   19,830-1/2          510-1/2        20,341
+  Stock                   98,954            4,233-3/4       103,187-3/4
+  Sugar and molasses     125,746-3/4       11,022-1/2       136,769-1/4
+  Staves and shingles    475,310-3/4       34,405-1/2       509,716-1/4
+  Cement                  40,568-3/4          835-3/4        41,404-1/2
+  Miscellaneous        1,319,552           69,518-1/2     1,389,070-1/2
+                      --------------    -------------    --------------
+          Total       29,921,823-3/4    1,472,545        31,394,368-3/4[80]
+
+Since 1825, when the first step toward improving the Ohio was taken, the
+general plan has been to secure additional low-water depths at islands
+and bars by the construction of low dams across chutes, by building
+dikes where the river was wide and shallow, by dredging and by the
+removal of rocks and snags. Various plans of improvement were seriously
+mooted. Among these Charles Ellet's plan of supplying the Ohio with a
+regular flow of water by means of reservoirs was strongly urged upon the
+Government about 1857.[81] Near the same time Herman Haupt proposed a
+plan of improvement by means of a system of longitudinal mounds and
+cross dams so arranged as to make a canal on one side of the river some
+two hundred feet wide, or a greater width, and reducing the grade to
+nearly an average of six inches per mile between Pittsburg and
+Louisville.[82] A few years later Alonzo Livermore secured a patent for
+a combination of dams and peculiar open chutes through the dams,
+arranged so as to retard the flow and lessen the velocity of the water
+from higher to lower pools without interfering with the free passage of
+the boats through the chutes; chutes were substituted for locks.
+
+In 1866 the condition of the river improvements and the great change in
+the river trade--which loudly called for improved methods--is tersely
+summed up by Engineer W. Milnor Roberts as follows:
+
+"For the purpose intended, namely, the making of an improved low-water
+navigation, looking to a depth not exceeding two and one-half feet, the
+general plan designed, and in part executed, under the superintendence
+of Captain Sanders, was judicious; and if all the proposed dams had been
+finished in accordance with his plans there would have been a better
+navigation, especially for low-water craft, than there has been during
+the twenty-two years which have elapsed since the works were left, many
+of them, in a partly finished condition. Some of these wing dams, as
+might reasonably have been anticipated, have, in the course of years,
+been gradually injured by the action of floods, and in some cases
+portions of the stone have been removed by persons without authority,
+for their own private purposes. It is important to note the change which
+has taken place in the coal trade, not only on account of its great and
+increasing magnitude, but on account of the altered system upon which it
+is conducted. Formerly, and at the time when the riprap dams were
+constructed, the coal business was carried on by means of floating coal
+barges, drawing at most four feet water, which were not assisted in
+their descending navigation by steamers, and which never returned, but
+were sold as lumber at their point of destination. The increasing demand
+down the river for the Pittsburg coal, the increase in the value of
+lumber, and the general systematizing of the trade, all combine to
+revolutionize the mode of transportation. It is now [1866] carried on by
+means of large barges, each containing ten to twelve, some as high as
+sixteen thousand bushels of coal, which are arranged in fleets,
+generally of ten or twelve barges, towed by powerful steamers built and
+employed for that special purpose. Enough of these barges are owned by
+the coal operators to enable them to leave the loaded barges at their
+various points of coal delivery, down the Ohio, or on the Mississippi
+and other rivers, while they return to Pittsburg with a corresponding
+fleet of empty barges, to be again loaded, ready for the next coal-boat
+freshet. As these barges, when loaded draw from six feet to eight feet
+of water, it is obvious that they can only descend when there is what is
+now called a 'coal-boat rise' in the river--that is, a flood giving not
+less than eight feet water in the channels.
+
+"This coal shipment from Pittsburg, which in 1844 only amounted to about
+2,500,000 bushels per annum, now amounts to about 40,000,000 bushels per
+annum. I have, in the special report mentioned, referred to the
+construction of railroads as having affected the business which was
+formerly carried on the Ohio river during the comparatively low water.
+The lower the water, the higher the rates of freight and passenger
+travel, when there was no railroad competition; but now, when the prices
+on the river during very low water approach the railroad prices, the
+freight, whenever it can, will of course take the railroad, on account
+of the saving of time and greater certainty of delivery; and thousands
+of passengers always prefer the railroad to the river. But in this
+connection it is proper to note that since 1844 a large local business
+between various points on the Ohio, both freight and passenger, has
+gradually sprung up and become important, which scarcely had existence
+at that time. The population along the river and in the counties in the
+several States bordering upon it, and tributary to the river business,
+has wonderfully increased. So that although a portion of the river
+business has been attracted to the railroad, the business of steamboats,
+as a whole, independently of the coal trade, has become much greater
+than it was in 1844. Meanwhile the coal business has more than kept pace
+with the increase of population and wealth along the Ohio, in
+consequence of a steadily augmenting demand for the Pittsburg coal on
+the Mississippi and other western rivers."[83]
+
+The method of inland navigation by means of slackwater formed by dams
+passable by locks was early proposed for the Ohio River after the first
+experiment made of this method on the Green River, Kentucky, in 1834-36
+by Chief Engineer Roberts. The successful operation of this system on
+the Monongahela and Muskingum Rivers exerted a powerful influence in its
+favor, and for many years its adoption on the Ohio was urged patiently
+though unsuccessfully. At last the important matter was advocated with
+success, and in 1885 the first of a series of locks and movable dams was
+erected at Davis Island, four and one-half miles below Pittsburg. The
+work now is rapidly being completed, the plan being to give a minimum
+depth of six feet of water in the Ohio by means of thirty-eight dams and
+locks between Pittsburg and the mouth of the Great Miami, below
+Cincinnati. This form of improvement will of course be extended in time
+to the mouth of the Ohio.
+
+From past experience with dams in the river, the cost of locks is
+estimated as follows:
+
+For an average lock of six hundred feet length and one hundred and ten
+feet width, with navigable pass of six hundred feet length, and with
+weirs of two hundred and forty feet available openings, all arranged to
+provide six feet navigable depth in the shoalest parts of the improved
+channels of the pools, with an average lift at each dam of seven and
+two-tenths feet:
+
+  Lock, including cofferdam, excavations, foundations,
+    masonry, timber, and ironwork of fixed and movable
+    parts, power plant, machinery, and accessories            $350,000
+
+  Navigable pass; same items as above                          150,000
+
+  Weirs, piers, abutments; same items as above                 170,000
+
+  Miscellaneous, including local surveys, purchase of
+    sites, embanking, retaining, riprapping, and paving
+    of banks, lock employees' houses, storehouses,
+    other buildings, dredging of approaches to locks
+    and passes, dredging of shoals and removal of
+    obstructions in pools, engineering work of
+    location, construction, and inspection, office
+    work of engineering and disbursements, and other
+    contingencies                                              200,000
+                                                              --------
+          Total                                               $870,000
+
+But the extra width and height of lock esplanade filling, extra length
+of weirs, and extra channel dredging, incident to the individual
+locations of the dams, increase the above estimates to final totals of
+from nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars to one million, one hundred
+thousand dollars at the individual dams.
+
+The expenditures of the Government on the Ohio River from 1827 to 1902
+are as follows:
+
+  _Act of Congress._  _Appropriation._  _Remarks._
+  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
+  March 3, 1827,       $30,000.00
+  March 3, 1835,        50,000.00
+  July 2, 1836,         20,000.00
+  March 3, 1837,        60,000.00
+  July 7, 1838,         50,000.00
+  June 11, 1844,       100,000.00
+  March 3, 1847,         6,479.25
+  August 30, 1852,      90,000.00
+  June 23, 1866,       172,000.00       Allotment of money already
+                                          appropriated, for improving
+                                          Mississippi, Missouri,
+                                          Arkansas, and Ohio Rivers.
+  June 23, 1866,        80,000.00       Allotment for snag boats and
+                                          apparatus for improving
+                                          western rivers.
+  March 2, 1867,       100,000.00
+  July 25, 1868,        85,000.00       Allotment for repair,
+                                          preservation, extension,
+                                          and completion of
+                                          river and harbor works.
+  July 11, 1870,        50,000.00
+  March 3, 1871,        50,000.00
+  June 10, 1872,       200,000.00
+  March 3, 1873,       200,000.00
+  June 23, 1874,       150,000.00
+  March 3, 1875,       300,000.00
+  August 14, 1876,     175,000.00
+  June 18, 1878,       300,000.00
+  June 18, 1878,        50,000.00       Harbor of refuge at or near
+                                          Cincinnati.
+  March 3, 1879,       250,000.00
+  June 14, 1880,       250,000.00
+  March 3, 1881,       350,000.00
+  March 21, 1882,      100,000.00       Continuing work on Davis
+                                          Island dam.
+  August 2, 1882,      350,000.00
+  August 2, 1882,       16,000.00       Harbor of refuge near
+                                          Cincinnati, Ohio.
+  July 5, 1884,        600,000.00
+  July 5, 1884,         17,000.00       Same.
+  August 5, 1886,      375,000.00
+  August 11, 1888,     380,000.00
+  September 19, 1890,  300,000.00
+  January 19, 1891,      2,128.87       Relief of Stubbs & Lackey.
+                                          Treasury settlement No. 2593.
+  July 13, 1892,       360,000.00
+  August 18, 1894,     250,000.00
+  June 3, 1896,        250,000.00
+  July 1, 1898,         15,000.00       Allotment for restoring levee
+                                          and banks of Ohio River at
+                                          or near Shawneetown, Ill.
+  March 3, 1899,       375,000.00
+  June 13, 1902,       359,000.00       Amount appropriated, $400,000;
+                                          $41,000 being for Falls of
+                                          Ohio River, at Louisville, Ky.
+                    -------------
+          Total,    $6,565,608.12
+
+
+  Total of appropriations, 1827-1902,   $6,565,608.12
+  Total of allotments, 1827-1898,          352,000.00
+  Received from sales, 1866-1893,            7,790.50
+                                           ----------- $6,925,398.62
+  Appropriations not drawn, 1827, 1852,      5,023.47
+  Allotments not drawn, 1866, 1868,         43,134.60
+  Returned by Treasury settlements,             30.07
+  Amounts transferred to other works,      125,168.44
+                                        --------------    173,356.58
+                                                       -------------
+          Total,                                       $6,752,042.04[84]
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[1] _Transactions American Philosophical Society_ (new series), vol. iv,
+pp. 369-370.
+
+[2] Bonnécamps's journal was accompanied by a MS. map drawn by himself
+upon which were marked all the places mentioned in his journal of this
+expedition (1749). This map was preserved in the archives of the
+Department of the Marine with his journal but disappeared between 1892
+and 1894 and its location today is unknown.
+
+[3] Warren, Pennsylvania; O. H. Marshall's "Céloron's Expedition,"
+_Magazine of American History_, vol. 2, no. 3, (March 1878).
+
+[4] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, vol. lxix, p. 165.
+
+[5] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. iii, pp. 71-72.
+
+[6] Brokenstraw Creek.
+
+[7] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 17.
+
+[8] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, pp. 18-19.
+
+[9] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, vol. lxix, p. 165.
+
+[10] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 21.
+
+[11] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, vol. lxix, p. 167.
+
+[12] For a sketch of Indian occupation of the Allegheny Valley see
+_Historic Highways of America_, vol. iii, pp. 59-62.
+
+[13] Franklin, Pennsylvania.
+
+[14] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 24.
+
+[15] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, vol. lxix, p. 169.
+
+[16] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 25.
+
+[17] _Id._, p. 25. Parkman places Attiqué on the site of Kittanning,
+Pennsylvania (See Parkman's _Montcalm and Wolfe_, vol. i, p. 45). This
+view is supported by Lambing (_Catholic Historical Researches_, January
+1886, pp. 105-107, note 6).
+
+[18] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 26.
+
+[19] This letter, dated August 6, with two others, all bearing the
+signature of Céloron, has been preserved in the archives of the State of
+Pennsylvania. For copy of translation see Rupp's _Early History of
+Western Pennsylvania_, p. 36.
+
+[20] Queen Alliquippa.
+
+[21] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 27.
+
+[22] Toner's _Journal of Colonel George Washington, 1754_, pp. 157-158.
+In this article it was demanded that the English should not return
+across the Alleghenies _for one year_.
+
+[23] Shenango, in English accounts.
+
+[24] O. H. Marshall's 14 Céloron's Expedition,' _Magazine of American
+History_, vol. 2, no. 3, (March 1878).
+
+[25] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 39.
+
+[26] The location of the burial places of Céloron's leaden plates as
+given in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, which would naturally be considered
+authoritative, are inexplicably contradictory.
+
+[27] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 40.
+
+[28] _Id._, p. 40.
+
+[29] _Id._, pp. 40, 41.
+
+[30] St. Yotoc was probably a corruption of Scioto. Father Bonnécamps
+calls it Sinhioto. It was near the present site of Alexandria, Ohio, at
+the mouth of the Scioto River.
+
+[31] Rivière Blanche was a name given by the French to several streams
+which contained unusually clear waters. From distances mentioned this
+was probably the Little Miami. Dunn (_History of Indiana_, p. 65, note
+1) thinks it was the present White Oak Creek.
+
+[32] Rivière à la Roche (Rocky River) was the present Great Miami. It
+was called the "Rocky River" because of its numerous rapids.
+
+[33] _Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_, vol. lxix, p. 183.
+
+[34] Céloron's Journal in Darlington's _Fort Pitt_, p. 52.
+
+[35] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. vi, ch. i.
+
+[36] _The St. Clair Papers_, vol. ii, p. 1.
+
+[37] _Id._, p. 3, note 1.
+
+[38] _Id._, vol. ii, p. 4, note.
+
+[39] _Id._, p. 5, note.
+
+[40] _Id._, p. 5, note. Legally John Emerson had no rights northwest of
+the Ohio River; but as an exponent of the American idea he had a sort of
+justification; see Professor Frederick J. Turner's studies, _American
+Historical Review_, vol. 1, pp. 70-87, 251-268.
+
+[41] _The MS. Harmar Papers_; _St. Clair Papers_, vol. ii, p. 7, note 1.
+
+[42] The rights to certain lands on the upper Muskingum Valley, where
+David Zeisberger had located the Moravian towns in 1773, were vested in
+the Moravian Church. Gnadenhutten, Ohio, was, technically, the first
+white settlement in Ohio after the French locations along the Lakes.
+King's _Ohio_, p. 119.
+
+[43] Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_ (1888), pp. 290-292.
+
+[44] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. viii.
+
+[45] _The Navigator_ (fifth edition), Pittsburg, 1806.
+
+[46] "Planters are large bodies of trees firmly fixed by their roots in
+the bottom of the river, in a perpendicular manner, and appearing no
+more than about a foot above the surface of the water in its middling
+state. So firmly are they rooted, that the largest boat running against
+them, will not move them, but they frequently injure the boat.
+
+"Sawyers, are likewise bodies of trees fixed less perpendicularly in the
+river, and rather of a less size, yielding to the pressure of the
+current, disappearing and appearing by turns above water, similar to the
+motion of a saw-mill saw, from which they have taken their name.
+
+"Wooden-Islands, are places where by some cause or other, large
+quantities of drift wood, has through time, been arrested and matted
+together in different parts of the river."
+
+[47] Harris's _Tour_ (1805), p. 38.
+
+[48] Harris's _Pittsburgh Business Directory for the year 1837_, pp.
+178, 287.
+
+[49] _Id._, p. 277.
+
+[50] _The American Pioneer_, vol. ii, p. 271.
+
+[51] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. i, p. 57.
+
+[52] See note 55.
+
+[53] Cassedy's _History of Louisville_, pp. 64-67.
+
+[54] _American Pioneer_, vol. ii, p. 63.
+
+[55] _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, vol. iv, p. 183; xii, p. 400;
+vii, p. 371.
+
+[56] An itinerary of the route from New Orleans northward is given in
+_The Navigator_ (1817), p. 306. For a description of the journey see
+_American Pioneer_, March, 1842.
+
+[57] _American Pioneer_, vol. ii, pp. 163-164.
+
+[58] Harris: _Tour_, pp. 30-31; cf. p. 139 where the author states the
+historical succession of river craft as: canoe, pirogue, keel-boat,
+barge, and ark.
+
+[59] Interview with William DeForest published in the Cincinnati
+_Commercial Gazette_, May, 1883.
+
+[60] Dr. S. P. Hildreth's _Pioneer History_, p. 205.
+
+[61] Collins's _History of Kentucky_, vol. ii, pp. 113-114.
+
+[62] Burner's _Notes_, p. 400.
+
+[63] Cassedy's _History of Louisville_, p. 64.
+
+[64] Butler's Journal for October 9, 1785, _The Olden Time_, vol. ii, p.
+442. Cf. _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, vol. xi, p. 13, note.
+
+[65] Harris's _Pittsburgh Business Directory (1837)_, pp. 276-277.
+
+[66] Harris: _Tour_, p. 43.
+
+[67] _Id._, pp. 52-53.
+
+[68] _Id._, pp. 140-141.
+
+[69] _The Navigator_ (1811), p. 69.
+
+[70] _The Navigator_, (1811), pp. 31-33.
+
+[71] The authority for these and many of the following facts is derived
+from a _Memorial of the Citizens of Cincinnati to the Congress of the
+United States Relative to the Navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi
+Rivers_, Cincinnati, 1844.
+
+[72] Cassedy's _History of Louisville_, pp. 62-63.
+
+[73] Cassedy's _History of Louisville_, pp. 78-79.
+
+[74] Collins's _History of Kentucky_, vol. ii. p. 147.
+
+[75] _Id._, p. 251.
+
+[76] _House Reports_ 39th Congress, Second Session, Ex. Doc. 56, part 2,
+p. 323.
+
+[77] _Memorial of the Citizens of Cincinnati to the Congress of the
+United States_, 1844, p. 39.
+
+[78] _Id._, p. 38.
+
+[79] _Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, U. S. Army_, 1902,
+Appendix H. H., p. 1978.
+
+[80] _Id._, p. 1980.
+
+[81] _House Records_, 41st Congress, Third Session, Ex. Doc. no. 72, p.
+4.
+
+[82] _Id._, p. 5.
+
+[83] House Reports 39th Congress, Second Session, Ex. Doc. 56. Part II,
+p. 262.
+
+[84] _Report of the Chief of Engineers U. S. Army_, 1902, Appendix D.
+D., p. 1846.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected.
+
+3. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the main text body.
+
+4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break.
+
+5. Certain words use an oe ligature in the original.
+
+6. For longtitude and latitude, the minutes and seconds are placed as
+single quotes within brackets. For example: 38° 47['] 20[''].
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historic Highways of America (Vol. 9), by 
+Archer Butler Hulbert
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41103 ***