Captain Gordon’s Map of the Ohio River (1766)Click here for larger image sizeCaptain Gordon’s Map of the Ohio River (1766)From original in Library of Congress
Click here for larger image size
From original in Library of Congress
The campaign of General John Forbes in 1758, which ended French rule on the Ohio, gave the Ohio Valley to the English. From this time on, the entire sweep of territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the present Pittsburg may be termed English territory. While England now nominally came into possession of all of this portion of New France, the lands on either side of the Ohio River below Pittsburg were claimed by the Indian nations inhabiting them, and the Crown attempted, in the Proclamation of 1763, to preserve these lands for the Indians by prohibiting the migrations of the colonists. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, and the expansion of Virginia into the vast tract south of the Ohio have been recounted.[35]It is sufficient to recall here that this treaty gave to Virginiathe entire southern bank of the Ohio and all the territory southward to the banks of the Tennessee. The treaty was made with the Iroquois, the conquerors of half a continent, not with the Delawares and Shawanese and Southern Nations, who camped and hunted there. These dependents of the Iroquois contested the treaty stoutly and not until 1774 did the Shawanese even pretend to agree to its stipulations. This agreement was secured by what is known as Dunmore’s War and was the direct result of General Andrew Lewis’s bloody victory over the allied Indians at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, October 10, 1774. It is not less than significant that this decisive battle which assured the Old Southwest to the Americans, should have been fought practically over the burial place of Céloron’s fifth leaden plate which claimed the land for France. By the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the entire southern shore of the Ohio had been abandoned by Indians, though for many years they continually invaded the pleasant country which was fast filling with a scattered white population.
The story of the conquest and occupation of the northern side of the Ohio River is as bitter and bloody a tale as that of the southern side. The artificial division of the Middle West into states has resulted in some very artificial historical distinctions; the Ohio River has perhaps never been considered a mighty boundary line on the brink of which civilization paused for many critical years. The northern bank of the Ohio was, through many years, known as the “Indian Side;” and while western Virginia and Kentucky were counting their tens of thousands, the “Indian Side” was forbidden territory. The Ohio River was the western boundary of the colonies and of the United States for seventeen years: from 1768 until 1785. When, in 1783, the United States by the Treaty of Paris came into possession of the territory between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, the “men who wore hats” had not purchased an acre of land north and west of the Ohio River from its bareheaded inhabitants.
In 1785 at the Treaty of Fort McIntosh the United States secured from its actual possessors (the Iroquois claims having beensatisfied at a second treaty at Fort Stanwix, October 1784) the first grant of land north of the Ohio. The western boundary line of the United States now began on Lake Erie, ascended the Cuyahoga, descended the Tuscarawas to the site of Fort Laurens, ran west to the portage between the Miami and St. Mary Rivers; ascending the Maumee to Lake Erie it followed the lake shore to the starting point. The lands south, east, and west of this line were given to the United States so far as the Indians “formerly claimed the same.” This was the first of a long series of treaties each of which gave the northwest side of the Ohio River to the United States.
Thus in 1785 the Ohio Valley legally became a part of the territory of the United States.
By an ordinance immediately passed by Congress, this tract of land north of the Ohio River was ordered to be surveyed, the lots to be sold by the Government in order to create a fund to pay the war debt. A geographer and surveyors were appointed to survey and plat seven ranges of townships westward from the Pennsylvaniaboundary. These were to be sold by townships by commissioners of the loan office of the several states after proper advertisement.
Thus, at the stroke of a pen, the Ohio River became a division line between empires differing wholly from each other. The “Virginia Side” was peopled by southerners according to the Virginia system, which allowed a man to take and mark for himself unappropriated lands. Thus the entire southern shore of the Ohio had been occupied by Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and North Carolinians. By act of Congress the New England system was extended to the land lying north of the Ohio; the land was to be properly surveyed and sold. The Ohio River at once became the western projection of Mason and Dixon’s Line. In some such way as Chevalier has suggested, the Ohio River became a division fence between Roundhead and Cavalier. South of the river, lands were taken up by southerners in the old Virginia way; north of the river the New England system obtained, as though prophesying that the dominant race was to be of New England stock. It was amomentous turning point in the history of the Central West when Congress made the New England system operative on the “Indian Side” of the Ohio, banishing at once and forever from that great area the strife and suffering caused by the thousand conflicts of overlapping “tomahawk claims” and incorrect and confusing “surveys.”
But these acts of Congress were far more easily passed than enforced. In the first place, even before the land north of the Ohio was purchased by the United States, white settlers began crossing the Ohio and settling on the “Indian Side.” By the year 1780 the Indian Side of the river had been quite wrested from the savages, at least from Pittsburg down to the Scioto. Mclntosh had built Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas and, with the help of others, the Delawares had been driven from the Muskingum Valley. Clark had captured Illinois and it was now a part of Virginia. Many invasions from Kentucky had passed up the Scioto and the Miamis, In all these campaigns the soldiery was largely made up of the border settlers of western Pennsylvania and Virginia, andthey somehow conceived the notion that they were as much entitled as any one to the splendid lands from which they had driven the Indians. Heretofore the states and the Government had done everything in reason to encourage the western movement and protect it. No one perhaps realized that the Ohio River was to be considered, in any sense, a boundary line. Yet the United States recognized the Indian right and took such means as were possible to accomplish an utterly impossible thing. The lands on the northern side of the Ohio River were to be preserved to the Indians until purchased from them. It was even decreed that retaliatory raids of the whites should not cross the Ohio. As early as 1779 “trespassers” of a law as inherently impossible as the Proclamation of 1763, made settlements on the Indian Side of the Ohio “from the river Muskingum to Fort Mclntosh, and thirty miles up some of the branches of the Ohio river.”[36]Colonel Brodhead at Fort Pitt immediately despatched Captain Clark to drive off the intruders.
The commissioners at the Fort Mclntosh treaty (1785) were not blind to such possibilities, and took occasion to forward the following instructions to Colonel Harmar at Fort Pitt, January 24, 1785: “Surveying or settling the lands not within the limits of any particular State being forbid by the United States, in Congress assembled, the commander will employ such force as he may judge necessary in driving off persons attempting to settle on the lands of the United States.”[37]The task laid upon Colonel Harmar was a most unpopular and impossible one. By this time the country south of the Ohio was teeming with a great restless population.
There were, by 1785, a hundred thousand people in what we know as West Virginia and Kentucky. The first comers had fallen upon the very best lands and appropriated them. There is no doubt that all the fertile “bottoms” along the southern shore of the Ohio River had been “staked out” and more or less “improved” by this time. Washington alone, through his agents Crawford and Freeman, had secured notless than sixty thousand acres on the Ohio and Little and Great Kanawha before this time. Other far-sighted, enterprising men, like Patrick Henry, had secured other tracts of land. It must be remembered, too, that this was a day of no roads; lands lying away from the immediate river valleys could be reached and improved only with the greatest difficulty.
It is therefore no wonder that the southern shore of the Ohio was crowded at this time with a swarm of pioneers whose uncouth faces and unkempt appearance suggested plainly the labor they had endured to reach and hold the river—their goal. They looked across to the fertile bottoms on the Indian Side and the splendid stretches of land in the valleys of the Muskingum, Hocking, Scioto, and Miami Rivers. They and their children had conquered that land; under a score of fierce leaders they had flung themselves upon the upper Muskingum and driven the Delawares away to the Lakes, or upon the Scioto and sent the Shawanese scurrying up the Sandusky or Maumee. Yet there on the trees on the other side were nailed proclamationsfrom the commanding officer at Fort Pitt warning them against settling on those lands.
Little wonder they defied the proclamation. In less than two months after Colonel Harmar had received the instructions to drive off all settlers from these lands of the United States, he sent a force under Ensign Armstrong down the river from Pittsburg. His report was most alarming;[38]he affirmed that there were three hundred families at the falls of the Hocking and an equal number on the Muskingum; on the Miami and Scioto Rivers the number of “intruders” was placed at fifteen hundred. “From Wheeling to that place [Miami],” he wrote, “there is scarcely one bottom on the river but has one or more families living thereon.” These settlers “were equal to self-government,” writes William Henry Smith, “and, if undisturbed, would soon have laid the foundations of a State on the Ohio.”[39]Indeed, a call was issued by these pioneers March 12, 1785, for an election of members to a convention for the framing of a constitutionfor the government of a new state; elections were to be held at the mouths of the Miami, Scioto, and Muskingum Rivers and one at the house of Jonas Menzons in the present Belmont County, Ohio. The advertisement of these elections was signed by John Emerson and its final paragraph denied the right of Colonel Harmar to dispossess the settlers on the Indian Side, in the following terms:
“I do certify that all mankind, agreeable to every constitution formed in America, have an undoubted right to pass into every vacant country, and there to form their constitution, and that from the confederation of the whole United States, Congress is not empowered to forbid them, neither is Congress empowered from that confederation to make any sale of uninhabited lands to pay the public debts, which is to be by a tax levied and lifted [collected] by authority of the Legislature of each State.”[40]
On January 31, 1786, a treaty was concluded at the mouth of the Great Miami with the Shawanese. The United States received from that dangerous nation a title to the lower Ohio Valley. But the general government was by this time at its wits’ end to keep the acquired territory from the restless inhabitants of its own impoverished colonies. Colonel Harmar wrote the Secretary of War now that he had, by force of arms, driven off all intruders for a distance of seventy miles below Pittsburg, but that the number beyond “was immense” and that nothing could prevent the lands being occupied in the old Virginia way “unless Congress enters into immediate measures.” Congress took the cue and resolved that if troops stationed at Pittsburg could not enforce its commands, a new garrison must be established on the lower Ohio. Accordingly Colonel Harmar was ordered to take post on the north side of the Ohio between the Muskingum and the Miami Rivers, where he could successfully keep the front ranks of the immigration army from crossing the river, and where he could also protect the surveyors of the seven rangesfrom any insults of the Indians.[41]Under this order Fort Harmar was erected at the mouth of the Muskingum River (Marietta, Ohio) in 1785. Fort Harmar and Fort Finney, erected at the mouth of the Miami, nominally accomplished the purposes for which they were erected; the immigration movement across the Ohio was stopped until preparations had been made for it. They were the first legal homes of Americans north of the Ohio River after the Revolutionary War.
In the meantime propositions for the government of this great region north of the Ohio River were being debated in Congress; and finally it was declared to be the “Territory Northwest of the River Ohio” by the Ordinance of 1787. This famous act had been pending three years in Congress, but was passed within twelve days of the arrival in New York of Dr. Manasseh Cutler, hero-preacher and skilled diplomat; he came as the authorized agent of an Ohio Company of Associates which had been formed by Revolutionary veteransunder the leadership of General Rufus Putnam in Boston in 1786 with special reference to the western land bounties promised by Congress in 1776 to faithful soldiers. The Ordinance organized from the lands ceded to the government by the several states the magnificent territory now occupied by the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The act itself was conceived in a petition signed by these Revolutionary soldiers composing the Ohio Company of Associates, and forwarded by General Putnam to General Washington, praying that the Government redeem its worthless scrip by grants of western land.
This a grateful government was willing to do. The difficulty was that it would be hazardous to organize a territory, to be suckled and protected at great expense, unless a considerable fraction of the area thus organized should be populated and developed by worthy citizens. The Ohio Company of Associates offered to take a million and a half acres. This was not satisfactory to the delegates in Congress. It was a mere clearing in all that vaststretch of territory between the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes. It was, therefore, on a momentous mission of reconciliation that Dr. Cutler hurried to New York. The “Territory Northwest of the River Ohio” could not be erected unless the Ohio Company took a considerable part of the lands. The Ohio Company, on the other hand, could not take land without the assurance that it was to be an integral part of the United States. The Ohio Company would make the Ordinance possible; the Ordinance made the Ohio Company’s purchase possible.
In order to realize the hopes of his clients, and, at the same time, satisfy the demands of the delegates at Congress, Dr. Cutler added to the grant of the Ohio Company an additional grant of three and a half million acres, taken by a Scioto Company on behalf of Colonel Duer and others. Thus by a stupendous speculation, unhappy in its results but compromising in no way the Ohio Company or its agent, and by shrewdly, though without dissimulation, announcing his determination to obtain lands from the individual states if Congresswould not now come to terms, Dr. Cutler won a signal victory. The famed Ordinance was passed, corrected almost to the letter of his amendments, and Congress entered into the greatest private contract it had ever made. It was signed by Dr. Cutler and Major Winthrop Sargent for the Ohio Company and Samuel Osgood and Arthur Lee for the Treasury Department, October 27, 1787.
Speaking in general terms, therefore, the Ohio Valley from the Pennsylvania line to the mouth of the Muskingum was, in 1785-86, surveyed into the “Seven Ranges;” southwest of this, down the valley, came the Ohio Company grant of 1787. This embraced the lands from the seventh through the seventeenth range. The earnestness of these New Englanders is suggested by the immediate payment of half a million dollars down, when the contract was signed with the United States, and by the immediate arrival on the Ohio of the Ohio Company’s vanguard of settlers. These forty-eight “Pilgrims of Ohio,” under the leadership of the noble Putnam, reached the Youghiogheny byway of the Old Glade Road through Pennsylvania in the midwinter of 1787-88. On the seventh of the following April they landed at the mouth of the Muskingum. Here, across the Muskingum from Fort Harmar, they built their pioneer castle, around which grew up Marietta—named in honor of Marie Antoinette, whom its founders, old Revolutionary veterans, had learned to love. In July, General Arthur St. Clair, the newly-appointed governor of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio arrived, and with imposing ceremony, the administration of the great Territory was inaugurated. Within two years five colonies had been planted by the Ohio Company, four in the Muskingum Valley and one on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Little Kanawha River. The “Indian Side” of the “white foaming river” had now received its first permanent quota of white settlers.[42]
In the same year, 1787, John Cleves Symmes and associates, largely from New Jersey, entered into correspondence with Congress for the purchase of a million acres of land north of the Ohio, lying between the Little and Great Miami Rivers. This “Symmes” or “Miami” purchase was achieved, and the Marietta pioneers saw the Miami settlers passing down the Ohio late in 1788 en route to their lands two hundred miles away. In point of daring no pioneer movement in America, save only the founding of Boonesborough, Kentucky, was more plucky than the founding of what is now Cincinnati. In December, Losantiville (Cincinnati) was settled, opposite the mouth of the Licking River. The Symmes company also settled Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami, and North Bend (Indiana) a little to the west. Each of the three settlements vied with the others for supremacy. Judge Symmes located at North Bend, but Fort Washington was erected at Losantiville and, the name being changed to Cincinnati, that settlement became the metropolis of the Ohio River below Pittsburg; the seat ofgovernment of the Northwest Territory was moved hither in 1790.
Therefore in 1790, when the Indian War broke out, the northern bank of the Ohio was settled, in a certain sense, between the mouths of the Muskingum and Scioto and the mouths of the Little and the Great Miami. But these light spots in all the darkness of the Black Forest, as the West was familiarly called, were, after all, but one shade lighter than the surrounding wilderness. The population of the Ohio Company settlements was only a few score; Cincinnati, six years after its founding, could only number, garrison and all, an equal number of hundreds. The founders of Cincinnati, like those of Marietta, were of the best of colonial and revolutionary stock; but, because of the contaminations of the rough frontier, their settlements became what Pittsburg was throughout its early history. General Richard Butler, had he lived, might well have written Governor St. Clair at Cincinnati in 1800 the same words he penned General Irvine at Pittsburg in 1782—“am happy to find you can manage the d—ls of that country and theb—tes of the garrison.” Of Pittsburg in 1782 General Irvine wrote his wife: “There never was, nor I hope will there ever be, such a wretched, villainous place as this.” Of Marietta, equally disagreeable pictures were drawn by contemporaneous writers. It was a question whether or not the leaven of New England could leaven the whole lump. It did—with the help of good Virginian blood.
The next tract of land to be opened was that lying between the Ohio Company’s purchase and Judge Symmes’s, a six thousand square mile tract bounded on the east by the Scioto and on the west by the Little Miami. This was the Virginia Military District. The Old Dominion had voted her soldiers upon continental and state establishment bounties in western lands. The land that was granted (practically the old Henderson purchase between the Green and Tennessee Rivers) did not prove large enough. Virginia, guarding against this very contingency, had reserved the tract between the Scioto and Little Miami for bounty lands when she ceded her county of Illinois to the Government in 1784. Therefore in 1790 Congress passed a law “directing the Secretary of War to make return to the Governor of Virginia of the names of the Virginia officers and men entitled to bounty-lands, and the amount in acres due them.” The same act authorized the agents of the said troops to locate and survey for their use, between the two rivers, apparently in the wretched Virginia fashion, such a number of acres of land as, together with the number already located on the waters of the Cumberland, would make the amount to which they were entitled; these locations and surveys to be recorded, together with the names of those for whom they were made, in the office of the Secretary of State. The President was then directed to issue letters patent for these lands to the persons entitled to them, for their use or the use of their heirs, assigns, or legal representatives. The Secretary of State should forward these deeds to the executive of Virginia, to be delivered to the proper persons. It will be seen that the national Government issued the deeds, but did not make the surveys.[43]
The Indian War which raged from 1790 to 1795 was fought almost wholly north of the Ohio River basin with Fort Washington as the base of supplies.[44]The conflict delayed the pioneer movement into the Ohio Valley but, after the treaty of Greenville (1795), the movement was renewed with a rush. The Virginia Military District now (1796) began filling with Virginians, and under good and great men such as General Nathaniel Massie and Duncan McArthur, subsequently governor of Ohio, became a power in the old Northwest.
We have intimated that the original Ohio Company purchase and the Virginia Military District adjoined; upon the utter failure of the Scioto Company, which had been a party with the Ohio Company in its first contract, the additional lands taken by Colonel Duer came again into the possession of the United States and were known as Congress Lands. This tract embraced about four thousand square miles and stretched over the twenty odd miles on the Ohio between the Ohio Company lands and those of the Virginia Military District.
Thus at the opening of the actual pioneer period, about 1800, we find both shores of the Ohio dotted with settlements. In Virginia and Kentucky there are Pittsburg, Charleston, Wheeling, Limestone (Maysville), and Louisville; and on the old-time Indian Side are Beaver (Fort Mclntosh), Wellsburg, Marietta (Fort Harmar), Gallipolis, Manchester, Columbia, Cincinnati; and Madison and Clarksville, Indiana. By 1800 there are forty-five thousand inhabitants in the entire Northwest Territory, of which probably twenty-five thousand are in the Ohio Valley. Kentucky contains a population of over two hundred thousand; not such a large fraction are on the Ohio however, as is true in the Northwest Territory. The question of conquest is past, though still for a decade the British, who have sullenly withdrawn across the Detroit River, will continue to incite the Indians until Harrison shall annihilate Tecumseh’s confederacy at Tippecanoe in 1811. But so far as the Ohio Valley is concerned the question is one of occupation; and now come the streams of immigration from all easterly points of the compass to this great waterway.
Putnam’s Map of the Ohio River and Settlements (1804)Click here for larger image sizePutnam’s Map of the Ohio River and Settlements (1804)
Click here for larger image size
As the eighteenth century neared its close the great highways converging upon Pittsburg and its neighboring towns on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela became the routes of the great flood-tide of immigration which in a day filled the Middle West with towns and cities. The emigrant reached navigable waters at Pittsburg, if he came over Forbes’s Road or the Pittsburg Pike; if he followed Braddock’s Road he found himself on navigable waters at Brownsville, or, continuing the land journey, he reached Wheeling on the Ohio. If he came over the Genesee Road through New York he would reach the Allegheny waters at Warren or Watertown, Pennsylvania.
At any of these points he would, perhaps, provide himself with a handbook of information concerning his prospective route.One of these,The Navigator, was published in Pittsburg in the first year of the nineteenth century by Zadok Cramer. Its title-page (fifth edition) affirms the book to be “the trader’s useful guide in navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; containing an ample account of these much admired waters, from the head of the former to the mouth of the latter; a concise description of their towns, villages, harbours, settlements, &c with particular directions how to navigate them, in all stages of the water, pointing out their rocks, ripples, channels, islands, bluffs, creeks, rivers &c. and the distances from place to place.”[45]
Perhaps the typical emigrant would not secure such a guide book but the information for which he made eager inquiry at his port of embarkation is contained here and is of great interest to the student of the times because of the variety of matters treated. Of the Ohio and its two great tributaries let us quote the following information:
“Monongahela
“This river rises at the foot of the Laurel Mountain, in Virginia, thence meandering in a N. by E. direction, passes into Pennsylvania, and receives Cheat river from the S.S.E. Thence winding to a N. by W. direction, separates Fayette and Westmorland from Washington county, and passing into Allegheny county receives the Youghiogheny river at Pittsburgh, fifteen miles below the mouth of the former, and by land, fifty-five below Cheat. The Monongahela is about 450 yards wide at its mouth, measuring from the top of bank to bank, and in the fall and spring freshes has water enough to carry ships of 400 tons burthen; these, however, subside quickly and render the navigation for such vessels very precarious. One great difficulty attending the navigation of vessels of burden down this river arises from the almost impossibility of keeping them in the proper channel, it being in many places very narrow, and full of short turns around points of islands which are numerous. This observation will also apply to the Ohio, especially as low down as Wheelen [Wheeling], ninety miles below Pittsburgh.”
The waters of the Monongahela River,in those days as in these, were very muddy, and had it not been for the magnificent trees which abundantly lined the firm banks, the stream could not have been termed very beautiful. These trees were chiefly walnuts, black-oaks, hickories, maples, and button-woods, and afforded a bountiful supply of logs for the many sawmills which the pioneers had already erected along the river at the mouths of the various tributaries. Mr. Cramer tells us that the lumber obtained from these logs was floated down to Pittsburg, Wheeling, or some more remote point, and sold for a price ranging from a dollar to a dollar and a half per hundred feet. The country of the Monongahela was, even at this early day (1806), well populated; the land along the river was fertile and productive, and sold at any price from twelve to thirty dollars an acre. The “bottoms” contained many valuable sugar-maples and Cramer estimated that, if properly managed, each tree would yield four pounds of maple-sugar per annum—about one dollar a tree each season.
“The mean velocity of the current ofthis river is about two miles an hour, and is in a middling state of the water, uninterrupted with falls, impeding the navigation, from Morgantown to its mouth, a distance of one hundred miles; thence upwards the navigation is frequently interrupted by rapids, but is navigable however for small crafts for fifty or sixty miles further. The west branch in high water is navigable for fifteen miles, and communicates with a southern branch of the Little Kenhawa, by a portage of eight miles.”
According toThe Navigator, such cereals as wheat, oats, barley, rye, and buckwheat were already raised to “great perfection” in the valley of the Monongahela. It was a soil especially adapted to raising exceptional wheat crops and Mr. Cramer informs us that the flour made from Monongahela Valley wheat sold for two dollars more per barrel in New Orleans than Kentucky flour. Apples and peaches were staple fruit crops of the Monongahela country and these fruits were not infrequently made into brandy. Peach brandy was a luxury in the South and sold at a dollar a gallon.
“Allegheny
“This is a beautiful, large and navigable river, taking its rise in Lycoming county, P. within a few miles of the head waters of Sinemahoning creek, a navigable stream that falls into the Susquehanna river, to which there is a portage of 23 miles. Thence pursuing a N. course passes into New-York state, winding to the N. W. about 20 miles, turns gradually to the S. W. enters Pennsylvania, and meandering in about that direction 180 miles, joins the Monongahela at Pittsburgh.
“Few rivers and perhaps none excel the Allegheny for the transparency of its waters....
“Its mean velocity is about two miles and a half an hour. In its course it receives many large and tributary streams; among these are the Kiskimenetas, Mohulbuckitum, Tobas, French creek, &c. French creek is navigable to Waterford; thence to Lake Erie is but fifteen miles portage. To render the communication more complete the legislature of Pennsylvania have passed a law for the erection of a turnpike between Waterford and Erie. Another communication to lake Erie is by way of Chataughque creek and lake; here is a portage of only nine miles, and affording ground for an excellent waggon road. We understand a ware-house is already established at Chautaughque lake. The navigation by this route is said to be the best of the two. At the mouth of a creek, also called Chautaughque emptying into lake Erie, a town has been recently laid off called Portland nine miles from Chataughque lake. This town is about thirty miles below the town of Erie, and ten below the line between Pennsylvania and New-York, John M’Mahon proprietor.”
The trade between the Allegheny River and the Lakes was at this time well established and, it was predicted, would become of great importance. Pittsburg was receiving from Onondaga salt works in New York State two thousand barrels of salt annually. Immense quantities of timber were also constantly being hurried toward their destinations by the current of the Allegheny. Quite an extensive trade in salt fish from Lake Erie was carried on in 1806, and Mr. Cramer expresses an earnesthope that this trade would be encouraged to the extent of superseding the importing of fish from beyond the mountains, for the fish brought over the mountains then cost twelve cents while those from Lake Erie could be offered for four cents and perhaps less per pound.
“In return we could send up whiskey, bar-iron, castings, cider, bacon, apples, glass, nails, &c. and this would be keeping trade among ourselves, which is always preferable to the sending away specie for articles of home consumption. It has been suggested that merchandize could be bro’t to Pittsburgh from New-York, by way of the lake and down this river, for about three cents a pound, which is one half less than is given from Philadelphia. By this route, there would be a portage of fifteen miles from Albany on the Hudson to Schenectada on the Mohawk, 10 miles around the falls of Niagara, and fifteen between Erie and Waterford, making in all forty miles land carriage from New-York to Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvanians, however, are struggling for a turnpike road all the way over the mountains, which when compleated, will no doubt tend to lessen the very heavy carriages that are now paid on merchandize of all kinds.”
The current of the Allegheny River is much more rapid than that of the Monongahela; and in the days ofThe Navigator, as now, the clear, transparent waters of the Allegheny marked their course across the yellow, muddy waters of the Monongahela. And even three miles below the junction, the waters of the Allegheny were to be distinguished from the Monongahela. “Here [at the junction of the two rivers] the Allegheny is about 450 yards wide, and when an island lying to the right is completely washed away, which is accomplishing rapidly, the river here will be at least 800 yards wide. Will not the inquiring mind, on examination, have cause to entertain an opinion with us, that the bed of this river has greatly shifted its situation; and that it once washed the hill now a considerable distance to the east; and that the ground on which Pittsburgh now stands has been made by its withdrawing, through time and accident, from that hill to its present channel?
“Ohio
“This river commences at the junction of the two above mentioned rivers, and here also commences its beauty. It has been described, as ‘beyond all competition, the most beautiful river in the universe, whether we consider it for its meandering course through an immense region of forests, for its clean and elegant banks, which afford innumerable delightful situations for cities, villages and improved farms: or for those many other advantages, which truly entitle it to the name originally given it by the French, of La Belle Rivière.’ This description was penned several years since, and it has not generally been thought an exaggerated one. Now, the immense forests recede, cultivation smiles along its banks, towns every here and there decorate its shores, and it is not extravagant to suppose that the day is not far distant when its whole margin will form one continued village.”
Mr. Cramer further states that his reasons for such a supposition are numerous. Among those which he gives are: the large tracts of fertile lands that are connectedwith the Ohio River by means of the navigable waters that empty into it; the high, dry and usually healthy river bottoms of exceptional extent, fertility and beauty; and the extraordinarily superior navigation of the Ohio, by means of whose waters the abundant products of these extensive and fertile lands must eventually be distributed.
“At its commencement at Pittsburgh, it takes a N.W. course for about 30 miles, then turns gradually to W.S.W. and pursuing that course for about 500 miles, winds to the S.W. for nearly 160 miles, then turns to the W. for about 276 miles, then S.W. for 160 miles, and empties into the Mississippi in a S.E. direction, about 1100 below Pittsburgh, and nearly the same distance above New-Orleans, in lat. 36. 43 m. N. It is amazingly crooked, so much so indeed, that in some places a person taking observations of the sun or stars, will find that he sometimes entirely changes his direction, and appears to be going back again; but its general course is S. 60 d. W. Its general width is from 500 to 800 yards, but at the rapids and near the mouth, it is considerably wider.”
We can easily agree with Mr. Cramer that the numerous islands, found in the Ohio River, added greatly to its picturesque grandeur; yet, he reminds us, they caused many shoals and sandbars and greatly embarrassed navigation. Some of these islands contain several acres of rich and fertile soil and,The Navigatortells us, were covered with a luxuriant growth of timber; when cleared and planted with fruit trees the orchards thrived amazingly, bearing the choicest fruit and the crop seldom failing. This was also the case when fruit trees were planted on the river bottoms, the excellent crops, in both instances, being due to the same cause: a sandy, fertile soil.
“In times of high freshes, vessels of almost any tonnage may descend, and it is never so low, but canoes and other light crafts can navigate it. Many of the impediments that are now met with while the water is low, might in a dry time be got rid of, and that at a very inconsiderable expense: at least the expense would be by no means inadequate to the advantages accruing from the undertaking, if properly managed.
“Rocks that now, during the dry season, obstruct or render dangerous the navigation of the large flat bottomed, or what are called Kentucky boats, might be blown, even a considerable depth under water; channels might be made through the ripples, and the snags and the fallen timber along the banks entirely removed.
“These improvements together with many others that might be enumerated will undoubtedly, sooner or later, be carried into effect, as they appear to be a national concern of the first importance.
“The Ohio has on its left in descending a part of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and the S. W. territory; on the right, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana territory. It receives in its course many large, navigable streams, the principal ones are, Big Beaver, Muskingum, Little and Great Kenhawa, Sandy, Scioto, Little and Great Miami, Licking, Kentucky, Salt, Green, Wabash, Cumberland and Tennessee; these will be more particularly mentioned in their proper places.”
It is of interest to note what Mr. Cramer has to say of the fish of the Ohio River.He tells us they were numerous and of various kinds: the catfish, weighing from three to eighty pounds; the buffalo, from five to thirty; the pike, from four to fifteen pounds; the sturgeon, from four to ten; the perch, from one to twenty-five; the sucker, from one-half a pound to six pounds; and occasionally a few herring were caught. A fisherman, drawing in his seine in the spring of 1805, found among other fish, it is said, a few shad of three or four pounds. These were caught at Pittsburg. A great many felt disposed to dispute that these were salt water shad considering the great distance from the sea, but all who tasted of them positively identified them, in taste and shape, as the shad which were caught in the Delaware River. Eels and soft-shell turtles, though occasionally caught, were not plentiful in 1806. The numerous and various kinds of wild ducks and the few geese which frequented the river often furnished food for pioneers descending the Ohio; for the purpose of shooting ducks and geese, turkeys, and occasionally a deer or bear, the boats were always well supplied with fire-arms.
“We should be glad could some method be devised to ascertain annually the state of the trade of our rivers—could not houses for this purpose be established, say at Pittsburg and Louisville, to take an account of all cargoes that descend the Ohio? A statement of this kind published yearly would show the growing increase of our exportations, and no doubt would be interesting to the trading part of the community, and perhaps have a tendency to rouse the spirits of the more indolent and careless.
“To the vast quantities of produce and articles of our own manufacture that are sent down this river, consisting of flour, whiskey, peach brandy, cider, beer, bar-iron, hollow-ware, earthern-ware, cabinet works, boots, hoes, plow-irons, mill-irons, chairs, biscuit, bread, cheese, bacon, beef, pork, lumber, linen, &c. &c. we must not forget to mention a part of the articles which are brought up in return, viz. large quantities of cotton, furs, peltries, lead and hemp. As the articles of cotton and lead can be brought up in this way much cheaper than by bringing them over the mountains, and as they are in great andconstant demand in this country, we hope that those concerned will use all due exertion in pushing this part of our trade, which in time we may presume will become a very considerable object to those engaged in it.”
The “Instructions” inThe Navigatorto emigrants afford a very clear idea of the nature and needs of river travel in the first half-decade of the eighteenth century: The first thing to be attended to by emigrants was to secure a boat, and be on the alert to take advantage of the first flood. Mr. Cramer speaks with emphatic indignation concerning the dishonesty often manifested by the builders of the river boats. He asserts that a great per cent of the accidents which happened on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were due either to unpardonable carelessness or stinginess of the builder, who either slighted his work or used unfit timber. He earnestly recommends the appointment of boat-inspectors to be stationed wherever boats were built, thereby avoiding many serious accidents caused by unsafe boats. Mr. Cramer attempts to impress upon all who werepurchasing Kentucky boats that those intended for navigating the Mississippi must necessarily be constructed differently and of much stronger timber; he suggests and urges that the owner have them narrowly examined, before embarkation, by one who understands the form and strength of a boat suitable for navigating the Mississippi River.
“Flat and Keel boats may be procured at New-Geneva, Brownsville, Williamsport, Elizabethtown, M’Keesport, on the Monongahela, and perhaps several places on the Youghiougheny; at Pittsburgh, Beaver, Charlestown, and Wheelen, Marietta, Limestone, Cincinnati, the Falls, &c. and at most of the above places vessels of considerable burden are built and freighted to the Islands, and to different ports in Europe, their principal cargoes consisting of flour, staves, cordage, cotton, hemp, &c.”
The spring and autumn were the two seasons when the Ohio could be most advantageously navigated. The spring season began at the breaking up of the ice, about the middle of February, and lasted for three months. The fall season generally began in October and lasted until the advent of winter, or about the first of December. At this time the forming ice prevented navigation. These spring and fall freshets, however, could not be called periodical, as they entirely depended upon the rainfall and the earliness or tardiness of the beginning and ending of winter. Nor were these seasons of high water entirely confined to the spring and autumn. It commonly occurred that in the summer season a heavy rainfall in the Appalachian ridges, where the creeks and rivers that flow into the Monongahela take their rise, would cause a considerable freshet in the Ohio; or a swelling of the current of the Allegheny and other rivers often happened in the summer months and occasioned a sufficient amount of water, if taken immediate advantage of, to render the navigation of the Ohio perfectly possible. These out-of-season freshets, however, subsided rapidly and if the owner of a boat wished to take advantage of one and go down the river, he had to embark immediately.
“When provided with a good boat andstrong cable of at least 40 feet long there is little danger in descending the river in high freshes, when proper care is taken, unless at such times as when there is much floating ice in it. Much exertion with the oars is, at such times, generally speaking of no manner of use; indeed it is rather detrimental than otherwise, as such exertion frequently throws you out of the current which you ought to continue in, as it will carry you along with more rapidity, and at the same time always takes you right. By trusting to the current there is no danger to be feared in passing the islands as it will carry you past them in safety. On the other hand, if you row, and by so doing happen to be in the middle of the river on approaching an island, there is great danger of being thrown on the upper point of it before you are aware, or have time to regain the current. In case you get aground in such a situation, become entangled among the aquatic timber, which is generally abundant, or are driven by the force of the water among the tops or trunks of other trees, you may consider yourself in imminent danger; nothing but the presenceof mind and great exertion can extricate you from this dilemma.
“As frequent landing is attended with considerable loss of time and some hazard, you should contrive to land as seldom as possible, you need not even lie by at night, provided you trust to the current, and keep a good look out; if you have a moon, so much the better. When you bring to, the strength of your cable is a great safe-guard. A quantity of fuel and other necessaries, should be laid in at once, and every boat ought to have a canoe along side, to send on shore when necessary.
“Though the labour of navigating this river in times of fresh is very inconsiderable to what it is during low water, when continual rowing is necessary, it is always best to keep a good look out, and be strong handed.—The wind will sometimes drive you too near the points of the islands, or on projecting parts of the main shore, when considerable extra exertion is necessary to surmount the difficulty. You will frequently meet with head winds, as the river is so very crooked that what is in your favour one hour, will probably be directlyagainst you the next, and when contrary winds contend with a strong current, it is attended with considerable inconvenience, and requires careful and circumspect management, or you may be driven on shore in spite of all your efforts. One favourable circumstance is, that the wind commonly abates about sunset, particularly in summer.
“Boats have frequently passed from Pittsburgh to the mouth of Ohio in 15 days, but in general 10 days from Pittsburgh to the falls is reckoned a quick passage.
“Descending the river when much incommoded with floating ice, should be as much as possible avoided, particularly early in the winter, as there is a great probability of its stopping your boat; however, if the water is high, and there is an appearance of open weather, you may venture with some propriety, if the cakes are not so heavy as to impede your progress, or injure your timbers; the boat will in such case, make more way than the ice, a great deal of which will sink and get thinner as it progresses, but on the other hand, if the water is low, it is by no means safe to embark on it when anything considerable of ice is in it.
“If at any time you are obliged to bring to on account of the ice, great circumspection should be used in the choice of a place to lie in; there are many places where the shore projecting to a point, throws off the cakes of ice towards the middle of the river, and forms a kind of harbour below. By bringing to in such a situation, and fixing your canoe above the boat, with one end strongly to the shore, and the other out in the stream sloping down the river, so as to drive out such masses of ice as would otherwise accumulate on the upper side of your boat, and tend to sink her and drive her from her moorings, you may lie with a tolerable degree of safety.—This is a much better method than that of felling a tree on the shore above, so as to fall partly into the river, for if in felling it, it does not adhere in some measure to the trunk, or rest sufficiently on the bank, the weight of accumulated ice will be apt to send it adrift, and bring it down, ice and all, on the boat, when no safety can be expected for it. The reflection here naturally occurs, howeasy it would be, and how little it would cost, in different places on the river where boats are accustomed to land, to project a sort of pier into the river, which inclining down stream, would at all times insure a place of safety below it. The advantages accruing from such projection to the places where they might be made would be very considerable, bring them into repute as landing places, occasion many boats and passengers to stop there, who otherwise would not, and soon repay the trifling expense incurred by the erection.
“The above observations are more particularly applicable to the Ohio; the following apply to the Mississippi, and point out the greatest impediments and the most imminent dangers attending the navigation of this heavy-watered and powerful river:
“These are, 1st. The instability of the banks.
2. Planters, sawyers, and wooden islands.[46]
“We shall endeavor to instruct the unexperienced navigator how to avoid them. The instability of the banks proceeds from their being composed of a loose sandy soil, and the impetuosity of the current against their prominent parts, which, by undermining them unceasingly, causes them to tumble into the river, taking with them everything that may be above. And if when the event happens boats should be moored there, they must necessarily be buried in the common ruin, which unfortunately has been sometimes the case. For which reason, navigators have made it an invariable rule never to land at or near a point, but always in the sinuosity or cove below it, which is generally lined withsmall willows of the weeping kind, whence some call them although improperly, willow points, and which being generally clear of logs and planters, the landing is easily effected, by running directly into them, the resistance of the willows destroying a part of the boat’s velosity, and the rest is overcome without much exertion by holding fast to the limbs which surround you.—In those places the river generally deposits the surplus of soil, with which it is charged from the continual cavings of the points, and so forms new land on one side by destroying some on the other.
“The banks of this river from where it receives the Missouri to its mouth, being with a few exceptions below high water mark, an immense country is inundated, when the river is in its highest state, by which those extensive swamps are formed and supplied, which prove the nurseries of myriades of musquitoes and other insects (to the no small inconvenience of the traveller) and the never failing source of grievous diseases to the inhabitants. There are also streams, which at all times sally forth from the main river with astonishingrapidity, and whose vortex extends some distance into the stream. Boats once sucked into such bayous are next to lost, it being almost impossible to force so unwieldy a machine as a flat bottomed boat against so powerful a current. It will therefore be safest for boats, never to keep too close to shore, but to keep some distance out in the river. To avoid planters and sawyers requires nothing more but attention, for they always occasion a small breaker whereever they are, and if your boat seems to be hurried towards them row the boat from them, else if you are dilatory you must abide by the consequence.
“Wooden-Islandsare more dangerous than real ones the former being an obstacle lately thrown in the way of the current, and the bed of the river not having had sufficient time to form that bar or gradual ascent from the bottom of the river to the island, which divides the current at some distance from the point of the island above water, the current will hurry you against them, unless you use timely exertion. From all this it must be evident how imprudent it is attempting to go after night,even when assisted by a clear moon; but after you are once arrived at Natchez, you may safely proceed day and night, the river from that place to its mouth being clear, and opposing nothing to your progress but a few eddies into which you may occasionally be drawn and detained for a short time.”
The evolution of craft on the Ohio River portrays in a remarkable manner the economic development of the Central West. Being the one practicable artery in the empire between the Appalachian uplift and the Mississippi, and the Blue Ridge and the Great Lakes, this river was, from the beginning of the eighteenth century onward, the main route of immigration and commerce, and the story of those years is contained in the story of these craft which carried the freight and fortune of the millions who came and built homes and labored here.
The greater the detail with which this study is examined the more interesting and enlightening it becomes. Of the score and more of distinctive craft which regularly plied this waterway not one but is significant of some change in the social order ofthings, indicative of some open or secret development which, unnoticed at the time perhaps, marked a new forward movement in our social evolution. Such an indication may be thought slight but it was a straw which marked the direction of the sweeping current of advance, and the swiftness of it. Compared with the evolution of methods of travel by land, the evolution on our rivers was rapid and spectacular. The “freighter” or “Conestoga” of 1790 was practically the same as that of 1840: a half century had witnessed little change in wagons and stages, save minor improvements. But compare the craft of 1790 on the Ohio with that of 1840. The canoe, pirogue, keel-boat, “bark,” barge, brig, schooner, galley-boat, batteau, and dug-out were forgotten—a consequence of the early application of steam-power to boats rather than to vehicles. When, in 1811, “The Orleans” went steaming down the Ohio from Pittsburg, and when, six years later, the “Washington” convinced a desparing public that steamboat navigation would succeed on “western waters” the new era in western history dawned.
In the earliest days the primitive light canoe, the unwieldy pirogue, and the heavy batteau were the common means of navigation on the Ohio. The canoe was made from the bark of trees; quickly made and quickly worn out, if the water was low, by continually coming in contact with the bottom. The pirogue was likewise quickly made; the canoe was paddled, the pirogue pushed by oars or setting-poles. The canoe easily glided up stream; the pirogue ran easily with the current but could not ascend the stream without the expenditure of much labor. Often the words canoe and pirogue were used interchangeably of the same craft; in George Rogers Clark’s famous march to Vincennes in 1779, the army, upon arriving at the Little Wabash, February 13, built a boat which in Bowman’sJournalis called a “canoe,” and in Clark’sMemoir, a “pirogue.” The batteau, better known in the West as the barge, was a square box of any length, width, and depth. It was distinctively a downstream craft, and in the early days rarely ascended with a load any river of current. The canoe and pirogue, compared with thebarge, were craft of little burden though those of generous size would carry the loads of a score of men. The barge or batteau was the freight craft and could be loaded with any burden the stage of water permitted.
These three craft reigned supreme on the Ohio and its tributaries probably until the close of the Revolutionary War, or about 1785. The canoe never abdicated and never can so long as man loves the water; at numerous points along the Ohio today many a tourist may be seen enjoying the exquisite delight of “paddling his own canoe.” The batteau or barge has its direct descendant in the wooden and magnificent steel barges in which thousands of tons of coal and ore are transported yearly up and down the Ohio. The pirogue has been forgotten. But in the era of exploration and conquest these boats had a story which disproves the adage that history repeats itself. The history of that last half of the eighteenth century cannot be repeated here or elsewhere. There is no other valley in the world that is to be found, explored, conquered, reconqueredand settled like the Ohio Basin. What a line of daringvoyageursthat was from La Salle to Céloron and Washington, who feasted their eyes upon the virgin beauty of La Belle Rivière, from their heavily-loaded, long canoes; in these craft came the explorers of Ohio and Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois; they ploughed the waters of the Muskingum far back in the distant day when those waters were, as the name implies, clear as an elk’s eye; they forged slowly up the Licking and Scioto, the Beaver and the Kanawhas. In the early days the canoe was the customary bearer of two significant kinds of freight: wampum and Indian goods and presents, and packs of peltry. The history of the canoe cannot be repeated, for the Indians are vanished who loved the bright presents brought to them from the East; and the fur bearing animals which once supplied the eastern markets are gone. We speak of the value of our cargoes on the Ohio today; it is great, truly; but what would be the value today of the furs brought in one season down the Wabash, Licking, Miami, Scioto, Kanawha, Muskingum, and Beaver and upthe Ohio to Pittsburg, in those days when canoes bore their precious tons of freight? Compared to the number of persons engaged in it, the old trade (in today’s markets) would be considered a hundred per cent more remunerative.
The burdens those long canoes could bear should not be underestimated. When Washington made his journey down the Ohio in 1770 he “embarked in a large canoe,” October 20, at Pittsburg, “with sufficient store of provisions and necessaries, and the following persons, besides Dr. Craik and myself, to wit: Capt. Crawford, Joseph Nicholson, Robert Bell, William Harrison, Charles Morgan and Daniel Rendon, a boy of Capt. Crawford’s....”
In the era of conquest the canoe played an important part in transporting small bodies of men swiftly and, which was frequently not less important, silently, to their destinations. But now it was that the heavy barge acquired importance as a factor in the making of the West. It was the quarter-master’s and commissariat’s sole reliance, and in these great clumsy hulks which floated with the current, sometimeswith the aid of sails, were transported the armament and stores which made possible the forts that at once came into existence in the valley—Forts Mclntosh, Henry, Harmar, Finney, Washington, and others. These boats were huge boxes, covered and uncovered, square at each end, and flat-bottomed. A batteau, in distinction from a barge, was widest in the middle and tapered to a point at each end, of about fifteen hundred-weight burden and could be managed by two men with oars and setting-poles.[47]
The batteau form was more or less adopted by later barges; but the ordinary early barge was much the shape of the present-day coal barge. The “canal boat” form, or batteau, was a later development.
American expansion westward, as elsewhere suggested, was favored more by the Ohio River than by any and all others: it ran the right way. Throughout the earlier decades of the pioneer era the greater portion of traffic was down stream. Even in the later days of steamboating the downstream traffic was ever heaviest. In 1835 the total tonnage received and entered atthe port of Pittsburg was 63,221 tons; of this, 41,533 tons was export. In 1837 the total number of boats arriving at Pittsburg from February 10 to July 1 was five hundred and ninety-three; the total number departing was five hundred and eighty-two.[48]If the upstream trade did not equal the downstream trade in the days of steamboats, it can be readily imagined how great was the difference in the days of rowed and pushed craft. Upstream traffic began to thrive with the founding of Pittsburg and other cities in the upper Ohio Valley. A market was then created, and the product of the lower valley began to ascend.
Thus dawned the era of the famous keel-boat, the first craft of burden that plied to and fro on western waters. True, the name was applied to craft that came earlier. Colonel Burd, the English officer who led one of the marauding expeditions from Detroit into Kentucky in the Revolutionary War, came from the lakes and ascended the Licking in keel-boats. It is given on good authority that Tarascon, Berthoud andCompany of Pittsburg introduced the use of keel-boats on the Ohio in 1792.[49]
The keel-boat heralded a new era in internal development, an era of internal communication never known before in the Central West. As a craft it is almost forgotten today. Our oldest citizens can barely remember the last years of its reign; but the cry of the steersman to “lift” and “set” that once rang in our river valleys, is still one of the undying memories of their childhood days. It was a long, narrow craft perhaps averaging twelve to fifteen feet by fifty, and pointed at both prow and stern. On either side were provided what were known as “running boards,” extending from end to end. The space between, the body of the boat, was enclosed and roofed over with boards or shingles. A keel-boat would carry from twenty to forty tons of freight well protected from the weather; it required from six to ten men, in addition to the captain, who was usually the steersman, to propel it upstream. Each man was provided with a pole to which was affixed a heavy socket,The crew, being divided equally on each side of the boat, “set” their poles at the head of the boat; then bringing the end of the pole to the shoulder, with bodies bent, they walked slowly along the running boards to the stern—returning quickly, at the command of the captain, to the head for a new “set.” “In ascending rapids, the greatest effort of the whole crew was required, so that only one at a time could ‘shift’ his pole. This ascending of rapids was attended with great danger, especially if the channel was rocky. The slightest error in pushing or steering the boat exposed her to be thrown across the current, and to be brought sideways in contact with rocks which would mean her destruction. Or, if she escaped injury, a crew who had let their boat swing in the rapids would have lost caste. A boatman who could not boast that he had never swung or backed in a chute was regarded with contempt, and never trusted with the head pole, the place of honor among the keel-boat men. It required much practice to become a first rate boatman, and none would be taken, even on trial, who did not possess greatmuscular power.”[50]Under certain circumstances it was serviceable to catch hold of the bushes and trees on a river’s bank and pull a keel-boat upstream; this was commonly known as “bushwhacking” and was particularly useful in times of high water. The number of keel-boats on the Ohio was not as large, probably, as would be supposed. It is on record that from November 24, 1810 to January 24, 1811—two winter months—twenty-four of these craft descended the “falls” of the Ohio at Louisville. It is probable that at this time there were not over three or four hundred keel-boats regularly plying the Ohio and its tributaries.
The narrowness of the keel-boat, it will be noted, permitted it to ply far up the larger tributaries of the Ohio and to a considerable way up its smaller tributaries—territory which the barge and flat-boat could never reach. It is probable, therefore, that the keel-boat brought much territory into touch with the world that otherwise was never reached save by the heavy freighter and the pack-saddle; indeed it isprobable that this was the greatest service of the keel-boat—to reach the rich interior settlements and carry their imports and exports. The place of the keel-boat is now taken by such packets as the Greenwood and Lorena which bring to Pittsburg the produce of such valleys as the Kanawha and the Muskingum. In this connection it is proper to emphasize a fact suggested elsewhere: that the inhabitants of the Central West, from the earliest times until today, have found the favorite sites of occupation to be in the interior of the country, beside the lesser tributaries of the Ohio.[51]Thus as the pioneer settlements spread up on the Licking, Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, and Miami, a boat like the keel-boat, which could ply in any season of the year and on the narrow creeks and “runs,” was an inestimable boon. Again, take for instance the salt industry, which in the day of the keel-boat was one of the most important, if not the most important, in the Central West; as values were a century ago the best of men did well to “earn his salt.” These salt springsand licks were found at some distance from the main artery of travel, the Ohio, and it was the keel-boat, more enduring than the canoe, and of lighter weight and draught and of lesser width than the barge, which did the greater part of the salt distribution, returning usually with loads of flour. The heyday of the keel-boat was also the day of the portage path—which played a most important part in the development of the land. These portages or carries were mostly located far in the interior where rivers flowing in opposite directions took their rise. The keel-boat was the only craft of burden that could ascend many of our streams to the carrying-place; they were also less unwieldy to carry than the old batteau which was used also in the portage carrying-trade.[52]Mention has been made of Burd’s invasion of Kentucky during the Revolutionary War, in keel-boats. If this was not a misnomer it is probable that they were brought from the lakes and carried across the portage, as was done in the case of Hamilton’s capture of Vincennes.
The keel-boat may be considered, therefore, the first upstream boat of burden which plied the Ohio and its tributaries; its special functions: first, the upstream trade, second, to touch and connect interior settlements and do the carrying-trade of the portages.
The great craft of burden on the Ohio and its larger tributaries were the barges and the flat-boats, the latter commonly known as the Kentucky “broad-horns” or Kentucky boats, and New Orleans boats. The Ohio and Mississippi barge resembled the “West Country” barges of England and the “wherries” of London. They were great, pointed, covered hulks carrying forty or fifty tons of freight and manned by almost as many men. They were the great freighters of the larger rivers, descending with the current and ascending by means of oars, poles, sails and cordelles—ropes by which the craft was often towed from the shore. The following description of a barge journey, from the pen of the famous naturalist Audubon, is perhaps one of the most accurate left to us:
“We shall suppose one of these boats under way, and, having passed Natchez,entering upon what were called the difficulties of their ascent. Wherever a point projected so as to render the course or bend below it of some magnitude, there was an eddy, the returning current of which was sometimes as strong as that of the middle of the great stream. The bargemen, therefore, rowed up pretty close under the bank, and had merely to keep watch in the bow lest the boat should run against a planter or sawyer. But the boat has reached the point, and there the current is to all appearance of double strength and right against it. The men, who have rested a few minutes, are ordered to take their stations and lay hold of their oars, for the river must be crossed, it being seldom possible to double such a point and proceed along the same shore. The boat is crossing, its head slanting to the current, which is, however, too strong for the rowers, and when the other side of the river has been reached, it has drifted perhaps a quarter of a mile. The men are by this time exhausted, and, as we shall suppose it to be 12 o’clock, fasten the boat to a tree on the shore. A small glass of whiskey is givento each, when they cook and eat their dinner, and after resting from their fatigue for an hour, recommence their labors. The boat is again seen slowly advancing against the stream. It has reached the lower end of a sandbar, along the edge of which it is propelled by means of long poles, if the bottom be hard. Two men, called bowsmen, remain at the prow to assist, in concert with the steersman, in managing the boat and keeping its head right against the current. The rest place themselves on the land side of the footway of the vessel, put one end of their poles on the ground and the other against their shoulders and push with all their might. As each of the men reaches the stern, he crosses to the other side, runs along it and comes again to the landward side of the bow, when he recommences operations. The barge in the meantime is ascending at a rate not exceeding one mile in the hour.