PACKHORSE AND CONESTOGA WAGON
Our predecessors, the North American Indians, had no horses. An early
explorer of Virginia said that if the country had horses and kine and were
peopled with English, no realm in Christendom could be compared with it.
The crude means of overland transportation common to all savages, the
carrying of burdens on the back by various strappings, was the only mode
known.
Travel by land in the colonies was for many years very limited in amount,
and equally hazardous and inconvenient. Travel by boat was so greatly
preferred that most of the settlements continued to be made on the banks
of rivers and along the sea-coast. Even perilous canoes were preferable to
the miseries of land travel.
We were slow in abandoning our water travel and water transportation.
Water lines controlled in the East till 1800, in the West till 1860, and
have now great revival.
Transportation was wholly done by water. When horses multiplied,
merchandise was drawn short distances in the winter time on crude sledges.
Packhorses were in common use in England and on the Continent, and the
scrubby, enduring horses raised here soon were used as packhorses. Their
use lingered long over the Alleghany Mountains, as it did on the mountains
of the Pacific coast; in fact the advance guard of inland commerce in
America has always employed packhorses.
The first appearance of the Conestoga wagon in history (though the wagons
were not then called by that name) was in 1755, when General Braddock set
out on his ill-fated expedition to western Pennsylvania. There led thither
no wagon-road, simply an Indian trail for packhorses. Braddock insisted
strenuously to the Pennsylvania Assembly upon obtaining their assistance
in widening the trail to a wagon-road, and also to secure one hundred and
fifty wagons for the army. The cutting of the road was done, but when
returns were made to Braddock at Frederick, Maryland, only twenty-five
wagons could be obtained. Franklin said it was a pity the troops had not
been landed in Philadelphia, since every farmer in the country thereabouts
had a wagon. At Braddock's earnest solicitation, Franklin issued an
ingenious and characteristic advertisement for one hundred and fifty
four-horse wagons, and fifteen hundred saddle- or packhorses, for the use
of this army. The value of transportation facilities at the time is proved
by Franklin's terms of payment, namely: fifteen shillings a day for each
wagon with four horses and driver, and two shillings a day for horse with
saddle or pack. Franklin agreed that the owners should be fairly
compensated for the loss of these wagons and horses if they were not
returned, and was eventually nearly ruined by this stipulation. For the
battle at Braddock's Field was disastrous to the English, and the claims
of the farmers against Franklin amounted to twenty thousand pounds. Upon
his appeal these claims were paid by the Government under order of General
Shirley. Franklin gathered these wagons and horses in York and Lancaster
counties, Pennsylvania, and I doubt if York and Lancaster, England, would
have been as good fields at that date.
[Illustration: A Wayside Friend.]
Braddock's trail became the famous route for crossing the Alleghany
Mountains for the principal pioneers who settled southwestern Pennsylvania
and western Virginia, and all their effects were carried to their new
homes on packhorses. The only wealth acquired in the wilds by these
pioneers was peltry and furs, and each autumn a caravan of packhorses was
sent over the mountains bearing the accumulated spoils of the
neighborhood, under the charge of a master driver and three or four
assistants. The horses were fitted with pack-saddles, to the hinder part
of which was fastened a pair of hobbles made of hickory withes; and a
collar with a bell was on each horse's neck. The horses' feed of shelled
corn was carried in bags destined to be filled with alum salt for the
return trip; and on the journey down, part of this feed was deposited for
the use of the return caravan. Large wallets filled with bread, jerked
bear's meat, ham, and cheese furnished food for the drivers. At night the
horses were hobbled and turned out into the woods or pasture, and the
bells which had been muffled in the daytime were unfastened, to serve as
a guide to the drivers in the morning. The furs were carried to and
exchanged first at Baltimore as a market; later the carriers went only to
Frederick; then to Hagerstown, Oldtown, and finally to Fort Cumberland.
Iron and steel in various forms, and salt, were the things most eagerly
desired by the settlers. Each horse could carry two bushels of alum salt,
each bushel weighing eighty-four pounds. Not a heavy load, but the horses
were scantily fed. Sometimes an iron pot or kettle was tied on either side
on top of the salt-bag.
Ginseng, bears' grease, and snakeroot were at a later date collected and
added to the furs and hides. The horses marched in single file on a road
scarce two feet wide; the foremost horse was led by the master of the
caravan, and each successive horse was tethered to the pack-saddle of the
one in front. Other men or boys watched the packs and urged on laggard
horses.
I do not know the exact mode of lading these packhorses. An English
gentlewoman named Celia Fiennes rode on horseback on a side-saddle over
many portions of England in the year 1695. She thus describes the
packhorses she saw in Devon and Cornwall:--
"Thus harvest is bringing in, on horse backe, with sort of crookes of
wood like yokes on either side; two or three on a side stands up in
which they stow ye corne, and so tie it with cords; but they cannot so
equally poise it but ye going of ye horse is like to cast it down
sometimes on ye one side sometimes on ye other, for they load them
from ye neck to ye taile, and pretty high, and are forced to support
it with their hands so to a horse they have two people women as well
as men."
At a later date this packhorse system became that of common carriers. Five
hundred horses at a time, after the Revolution, could be seen winding over
the mountains. At Lancaster, Harrisburg, Shippensburg, Bedford, Fort Pitt,
and other towns were regular packhorse companies. One public carrier at
Harris Ferry in 1772 had over two hundred horses and mules. When the road
was widened and wagons were introduced, the packhorse drivers considered
it an invasion of their rights and fiercely opposed it.
It is interesting to note that the trail of the Indians and the
horse-track of these men skilled only in woodcraft were the ones followed
in later years by trained engineers in laying out the turnpikes and
railroads.
We are prone to pride ourselves in America on many things which we had no
part in producing, on some which are in no way distinctive, and on a few
which are not in the highest sense to our credit. Of the Conestoga wagon
as a perfect vehicle of transportation and as an important historical
factor we can honorably and rightfully be proud. It was a truly American
product evolved and multiplied to fit, perfectly, existing conditions. Its
day of usefulness is past, few ancient specimens exist; and little remains
to remind us of it; the derivative word stogey, meaning hard, enduring,
tough, is a legacy. Stogeys--shoes--are tough, coarse, leather footwear;
and the stogey cigar was a great, heavy, coarse cigar, originally, it is
said, a foot long, made to fit the enduring nerves and appetite of the
Conestoga teamsters.
This splendid wagon was developed in Pennsylvania by topographical
conditions, by the soft soil, by trade requirements, and by native wit. It
was the highest type of a commodious freight-carrier by horse power that
this or any country has ever known; it was called the Conestoga wagon from
the vicinity in which they were first in common use.
These wagons had a boat-shaped body with curved canoe-shaped bottom which
fitted them specially for mountain use; for in them freight remained
firmly in place at whatever angle the body might be. This wagon body was
painted blue or slate-color and had bright vermilion red sideboards. The
rear end could be lifted from its sockets; on it hung the feed-trough for
the horses. On one side of the body was a small tool-chest with a slanting
lid. This held hammer, wrench, hatchet, pincers, and other simple tools.
Under the rear axletree were suspended a tar-bucket and water-pail.
In the interesting and extensive museum of old-time articles of domestic
use gathered intelligently by the Historical Society of Bucks County,
Pennsylvania, are preserved some of the wagon grease-pots or _Tar-lodel_,
which formed part of the furniture of the Conestoga wagon. A tree section
about a foot long and six inches in diameter was bored and scraped out to
make a pot. The outer upper rim was circumscribed with a groove, and
fitted with leather thongs, by which it was hung to the axle of the
wagon. Filled with grease and tar it was ever ready for use. Often a
leather _Tar-lodel_ took the place of this wooden grease-pot. The wheels
had broad tires, sometimes nearly a foot broad. The wagon bodies were
arched over with six or eight bows, of which the middle ones were the
lowest. These were covered with a strong, pure-white hempen cover corded
down strongly at the sides and ends. These wagons could be loaded up to
the top of the bows and carried four to six tons each,--about a ton's
weight to each horse.
[Illustration: Conestoga Wagon.]
Sleek, powerful horses of the Conestoga breed were used by prosperous
teamsters. These horses, usually from four to seven in number, were often
carefully matched, all dapple-gray or all bay. From Baltimore ran wagons
with twelve horses. They were so intelligent, so well cared for, so
perfectly broken, that they seemed to take pleasure in their work. The
heavy, broad harnesses were costly, of the best leather, trimmed with
brass plates; often each horse had a housing of deerskin or bearskin edged
with scarlet fringe, while the headstall was gay with ribbons and ivory
rings, and colored worsted rosettes.
Bell-teams were common; an iron or brass arch was fastened upon the hames,
and collar and bells were suspended from it. Each horse save the
saddle-horse had a full set of musical bells tied with gay ribbons; among
these were the curious old ear-bells. In England these ear-bells dangled
two on each side on a strap which passed over the horse's head behind the
ears and buckled into the cheeks of the headstall. On the forehead stood
up from this strap a stiff tuft or brush (a Russian cockade) of colored
horsehair fixed in a brass socket. Even the reins were of high colors,
scarlet and orange and green. The driver walking alongside, or seated
astride the saddle-horse, governed the perfectly broken and intelligent
creatures with a precision and ease that was beautiful to see. A curious
adjustable seat called a lazy-board was sometimes hung at the side of the
wagon, and afforded a precarious resting place.
These teamsters carried a whip, long and light, which, like everything
used by them, was of the finest and best materials. It had a fine
squirrel-skin or silk "cracker." This whip was carried under the arm, and
the Conestoga horses were guided more by the crack than by the blow.
All chronicles agree that a fully equipped Conestoga wagon in the days
when those wagons were in their prime was a truly pleasing sight, giving
one that sense of satisfaction which ever comes from the regard of any
object, especially a piece of mechanism, which is perfectly fitted for the
object it is designed to attain. An American poet writes of them:--
"The old road blossoms with romance
Of covered vehicles of every grade
From ox-cart of most primitive design
To Conestoga wagons with their fine
Deep-dusted, six-horse teams in heavy gear,
High hames and chiming bells--to childish ear
And eye entrancing as the glittering train
Of some sun-smitten pageant of old Spain."
The number of these wagons was vast. At one time over three thousand ran
constantly back and forward between Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania
towns. Sometimes a hundred would follow in close row; "the leaders of one
wagon with their noses in the trough of the wagon ahead." These "Regulars"
with fully equipped Conestoga wagons made freighting their constant and
only business. Farmers and teamsters who made occasional trips, chiefly
during the farmers' dull season--the winter--were called "Militia."
A local poet wrote of them:--
"Militia-men drove narrow treads,
Four horses and plain red Dutch beds,
And always carried grub and feed."
"Grub," food for the driver, and feed for the horses was seldom carried by
the Regulars; but the horses when unharnessed always fed from the long
troughs which were hitched to the wagon pole.
All these teamsters carried their own blankets, and many carried also a
narrow mattress about two feet wide which they slept upon. This was
strapped in a roll in the morning and put into the wagon. Often the
teamsters slept on the barroom floor around the fireplace, feet to the
fire. Some taverns had bunks with wooden covers around the sides of the
room. The teamster spread his lunch on the top or cover of his bunk; when
he had finished he could lift the lid, and he had a coffinlike box to
sleep in--but this was an unusual luxury. McGowan's Tavern was a favorite
stopping place. The barroom had a double chimney and fire-places; fifteen
feet of blazing hearth meant comfort, and allured all teamsters. The blood
of battle stained the walls and ceiling, which the landlord never removed
to show that he "meant business."
The Conestoga wagons were in constant use in times of war as well as in
peace. They were not only furnished to Braddock's army, as has been told,
but to the Continental army in the War of the Revolution. President Reed
of Pennsylvania wrote to General Washington in 1780 that "the army had
been chiefly supplied with horses and waggons from this state
(Pennsylvania) during the war," and it was also declared that half the
supplies furnished the army came from the same state. Reed deplored the
fact that a further demand for over one thousand teams was to be made on
them, and said the state could not stand it.
During the War of 1812 these wagons transported arms, ammunition, and
supplies to the army on the frontier. Long lines of these teams could be
seen carrying solace and reenforcements to the soldiers.
[Illustration: THE STAGE WAGGON.
While the old waggoner is stopping to drink, poor Jack the soldier is
bidding his wife good bye.--She has come a long way with her children to
see him once more: and now is going home again in the waggon. She does not
know whether she shall ever see him again.--Jack was obliged to leave his
country life, and his good master, and his plough and his comfortable
cottage, and his poor wife and little ones to go and be a soldier, and
learn to fight, because _other people_ would quarrel.]
In England a huge, clumsy wagon was used for common carrier and passenger
transportation, until our own day. It was inferior to the Conestoga wagon
in detail and equipments. Illustrations from an old print in a child's
story-book are given of these wagons on page 251. Their most marked
characteristic was the width of wheel tire. From the middle colonies the
Conestoga wagon found its way to every colony and every settlement; nor
did its life end in the Eastern states or with the establishment of
railroads. Renamed the "prairie schooner," it carried civilization and
emigration across the continent to the Golden Gate. Till our own day the
white tilts could be seen slowly travelling westward. The bleaching bones
of these wagons may be still seen in our far West, and are as distinct
relics of that old pioneer Western life as are the bones of the buffalo. A
few wagons still remain in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County; the one
painted by Hovenden in "Westward Ho" is in the collection of the Bucks
County Historical Society. One toiled slowly and painfully, in the year
1899, up the green hillsides of Vermont, bearing two or three old people
and a few shattered household gods--the relics, human and material, of a
family that had "gone West" many years ago.