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.