Historic Highways of America/Volume 9/Chapter 5
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 southeastern 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, Contrecœur, 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 horse-power. 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."[1]
"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, 'Pit-coal 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."[2]
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. . ."[3]
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.