Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. II, Part 66

Author: Rowland, Dunbar, 1864-1937, ed
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Atlanta, Southern Historical Publishing Association
Number of Pages: 1032

USA > Mississippi > Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. II > Part 66

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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1, 1890, and still holds that position. He is an active member of that organization, and has edited all of its publications, to which he has also contributed a number of articles. He is the author of a school history of Mississippi, 1900.

Rio, a post-hamlet in the southwestern part of Kemper county, on Oktibbeha creek, about 15 miles from Dekalb, the county seat. It has two churches. Population in 1900, 32.

Ripley, the county seat of Tippah county, was platted in 1835, and incorporated in 1837. It is an important station on the Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City R. R., 30 miles east by north of Holly Springs, and about 15 miles north of New Albany. What was known as the Ripley Railroad originated in the brain of Col. Wm. C. Falkner, and was built in 1872. It ran north from Ripley to Mid- dleton, Tenn., and is said to have been the first narrow gauge rail- road built in the United States. Col. Falkner was the president of the road. It now forms a part of the M. J. & K. C. R. R.

Ripley has a money order postoffice, a telegraph office, an ex- press office, a newspaper office, and two banking institutions. The Tishomingo Savings Institution was established here in 1897, and has a capital of $10,000; The Bank of Ripley was established in 1904, capital $30,000. The Southern Sentinel is a Democratic weekly, established May 1, 1878, by Capt. Thos. Spight, the pres- ent congressman from the Second congressional district. It is now owned and edited by A. C. Anderson, and is a leading newspaper in this section of the State. Ripley has five churches, a high school, a courthouse and jail and several mercantile establishments of im- portance. Its population in 1900 was 653, and in 1906 was estimated at 900. Among the industries of the town may be mentioned a saw and planing mill, a Munger system ginnery, a large brick mf'g. plant, and a stave factory. The following fraternities have lodges here-Masons, Knights of Honor, Knights of Pythias, and Wood- men of the World. There are 5 rural free delivery routes emanating from Ripley.

Risingsun, a post-hamlet of Leflore county, on the Yazoo & Mis- sissippi Valley R. R., 3 miles south of Greenwood, the county seat, and nearest banking, telegraph and express town. It is located near the west bank of the Yazoo river. Population in 1900, 72.

Rivermen. No account of river transportation in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys is complete without some reference to the river- men who manned the various craft. The complete history of these boatmen would include the early rivermen who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat and bring us down to the men who labor on the modern steamboats. This story has never been written in full, but enough has been told to give us some insight into what manner of men they were, and the incidents of their daily life. Only brief mention need be made of the men who plied the primi- tive canoe and pirogue. They were the explorers and fur traders- the old time voyageurs, the first to ply the western rivers. They first learned the old-time riffles-many of which became known by the names these early voyageurs gave them. "They knew

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islands which have long since passed from sight; they knew the old licks and the old trails. They practiced the lost arts of the woodsmen; they had eyes and ears of which their successors in these valleys do not know. Browned by the sun and hardened by wind and weather they were a strong race of men; they could paddle or walk the entire day with little fatigue. Not as boister- ous as the French on the Great Lakes and their tributaries, these first Americans in the West were yet a buoyant crew." Among them "there was no caste, no clique, no faction." (Historic High- ways, Hulbert.) Their detailed knowledge of the rivers and land was of great importance to the men who followed them-to march- ing armies, scouts and spies, peace commissioners, military su- perintendents, commanders of forts, cohorts of surveyors, land com- panies, investors, promoters, and pioneers, and especially to the later rivermen. With the filling of the valleys came the passing of the fur tra'e and the opening of the era of the freight craft, such as the flat-boat, and the barge and keel-boat; some of these early rivermen remained upon the scene and others moved farther west to renew their old life. Says Hulbert: "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. They were a type of hardy but vicious manhood who found hard work awaiting them on the rivers where millions of tons of freight were to be moved." Another writer of a generation ago wrote:

"The Ohio river being once reached, the main channel of emi- gration lay in the water-courses. Steamboats as yet were but be- ginning 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 variety of river craft corre- sponded to the varied temperatments of the boatmen. There was the great barge with lofty deck requiring twenty-five men to work it upstream ; 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 a 'family boat', of like structure, and bearing a whole household, with cattle, hogs, horses, and sheep. Other boats were floating tin-shops, whiskey shops, dry-goods shops. A few were propelled by horse-power."

"The bargemen were a distinct class of people," writes Ben Cas- sedy in his "History of Louisville," "whose fearlessness of char- acter, recklessness of habits and laxity of morals rendered them a marked people. . . . In the earlier stages of this sort of navi- gation, 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 (Ohio and Mis- sissippi) were infested with organized banditti, who sought every occasion to rob and murder the owners of these boats. Besides

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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 hardi- hood and wiliness of the pioneer, while it led them also into the possession of that recklesness 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. The crews were carefully chosen. A 'Ken- tuck,' 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 im- bedded 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."

Among the heroes of the days of the barge and keel-boat stands Mike Fink, who has thus described himself: "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." He was a typical leader of his class and many marvelous stories are told of this man.

Mention has already been made about the feeling of the old- time rivermen concerning the introduction of steam navigation. River life at once underwent a great change with the gradual su- premacy of the steamboat in the carrying trade. The "sounding whistle" blew away from the valleys much that was picturesque, and well developed muscles no longer commanded the same pre- mium. The flat-boat did not pass away, but the old-time river- men, as a type, have disappeared. The preceding generation of rivermen were accustomed to obey the orders of superiors, and they were sharply divided into two classes, the serving and the served. Mike Fink was "captain" of his boat and the master of his men. On the steamboat this division is reduplicated, and there are found four general classes, the proprietors, navigators, operators, and deckhands.

River Transportation. The story of river transportation, in connection with the history of Mississippi, can be best told by tracing the evolution of river craft and commerce on the Missis- sippi river. Along the entire western border of the State the great stream pursues its turbid, impetuous course, and the earliest white settlements were in the neighborhood of its banks, or ad- jacent to tributary streams which gave ready access to its waters. The same craft, broadly speaking, which plied the waters of the Mississippi, traversed the inland waters of the State. True, the barges, keels, flats and steamboats, on the Big Black, Yazoo, Pearl, Tallahatchie, Pascagoula and Tombigbee, were identical in all save size, with the craft on the larger stream. Space is wanting, were it possible, to detail the story of inland transportation in Mis-

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sissippi, and we shall only attempt an outline of the broader as- pects of the subject.

To reach the isolated settlements of the Natchez District in southwestern Mississippi, before the opening up and improvement of the well known overland routes through the Territory, the long and dangerous sea voyage from the Atlantic Coast States, via the foreign port of New Orleans, and the lower reaches of the Mis- sissippi river, was often undertaken. Another route of travel was by way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Navigable waters were easily reached in the latter part of the eighteenth century by im- portant roads which converged at Pittsburg and neighboring towns on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela. The Ohio and the Mississippi were long the great liquid highways to the west and southwest. Before the days of steam navigation, the bulk of traffic was ever downstream, and the Ohio and Mississippi flowed in the RIGHT DIRECTION. Down these mighty streams at the dawning of the nineteeth century poured an ever increasing vol- ume of immigration and commerce.

Compared with the evolution of methods of travel by land, the evolution of river craft was rapid and spectacular. A half century witnessed little change in wagons and stages, and the "freighter" or "Conestoga" of 1790 differed but little from that of 1840. The same period, approximately, witnessed a change in river craft which ran the whole gamut from the primitive canoe and pirogue, through the later barge, keel-boat, flat-boat and sailing vessel, to the palatial river steamers of the '40's. Each marked some change in the social order of things, some development, unnoticed at the time perhaps, in the development of western civilization.

Many types of early river craft were in use at the same time, and no stated periods can be named in which one style of river craft was in exclusive use. The canoe continued in use long after it had subserved its original purposes of a cheap, light and quickly made craft, especially adapted to the wants of the aborigines, and the early explorers and traders. The crude up-stream crafts of burden, such as the keels and barges had their beginnings as far back as 1742, and overlap the era of steam; while the heavy, lum- bering, downstream flat-boats, were in use by the thousands on the Mississippi, long after the steamboats plied its rapid and treacherous currents, and, indeed, are in common use today in their modified forms.

It is nevertheless true that prior to the close of the Revolution- ary War, the canoe, pirogue and batteau types of river craft reigned supreme on the inland waters. The customary freight of the canoe was wampum and Indian goods and presents, packs and peltries. Nor should its carrying capacity be underestimated. Though frail, and commonly built from the bark of trees. it could be made long, and freighted with a score of men and their sup- plies for an extended voyage.

The words pirogue and canoe were often used interchangeably, but were technically distinct. Both were quickly made, but while

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the canoe was paddled and easily glided up stream, the pirogue was pushed by oars or setting-poles, ran easily with the current, and only ascended the stream by the expenditure of much effort. Both were boats of a primitive and undeveloped period.

The batteau was a downstream craft and commonly known on the Mississippi as a barge. It differed, however, from the barge in being wider at the middle and tapering at each end like the modern "canal boat."

The early Mississippi barge was a square box of any length, width and depth, and rarely ascended the river with a load. The barge and batteau were essentially craft of burden and could be loaded according to the prevailing stage of water. Furs, peltries, Indian supplies, and the armament and stores for the early west- ern forts were floated down stream in their clumsy hulks.

As population poured into the upper Mississippi and Ohio val- leys, and prosperous settlements arose such as St. Louis, Pitts- burg, Cincinnati, and other towns, the surplus products of these regions increased vastly in amount, and were shipped south in constantly increasing bulk. They found a ready market among the rich planters of the lower Mississippi, in New Orleans and Mobile, and many ship loads were sent to the eastern seaboard, to the West Indies and to European ports. At the same time new and better markets were created for the staples of the South, such as sugar, molasses, fruits, etc. The era from 1780-1817 was essen- tially that of the barge, the keel-boat and the flat-boat-all crafts of burden. The famous keel-boat was the first upstream boat of burden to ply the southern and western waters. Its functions were two-fold: first, the upstream trade, second, to touch and connect interior settlements and do the carrying trade of the numerous portages. The keel-boat heralded a new era in the internal devel- opment of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. (Historic Highways, vol. 9, p. 113.) "It was a long narrow craft, 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", ex- tending from end to end. The space between, the body of the boat, was enclosed and roofed over with boards and 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-re- turning 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 man 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 push- ing or steering the boat exposed her to be thrown across the cur-

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rent, 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 keel-boat men. It required much practice to become a first rate boatman, and none would be taken, even on trial, who did not possess great muscular power." (The American Pioneer, vol. II, p. 271.)

The barges of this period were great, pointed, covered hulks carrying forty or fifty tons of freight (the very largest carried 60 to 80), and manned by almost as many men. (There were, of course, numerous small barges in use as well, that could go wher- ever a keel-boat went, and used on certain portage and path trades on the smaller streams. The small barge was practically a keel- boat, varying only in shape and the absence of running-boards.) The great freight barges of the Mississippi went down stream with the current and ascended by means of oars, poles, sails and cordelles. The important up-river cargoes on the Orleans barges were sugar and molasses, and sometimes, coffee, dry goods and hardware, and they came down stream laden with the products of the west such as peltry, skins, flour, lead, tobacco, hemp, bacon, pork, beef, apples, whiskey, peach brandy, cider, beer, iron, lard, cotton, butter, millstones, etc. Like the keel-boats, they plied regularly up and down stream, but were unable to ascend the smaller rivers or reach portages of the large streams by reason of their draught and size. The regular trip to New Orleans and back to Louisville or Cincinnati required two months for the down- ward and four for the upward voyage, or six months altogether, and only two trips a year could be made by the same boat. Never- theless, the line of inter-communication was maintained by a suc- cession of boats owned by enterprising men. It is probable that the number of barges and keels engaged in the up and down stream commerce on the Mississippi to New Orleans never exceeded 40 in any one year. Between the peace of 1783 and the surrender of Louisiana in 1803, the Spanish maintained a regular trade and intercourse between New Orleans and upper Louisiana. Spanish barges were common on the upper as well as upon the lower Mis- sissippi; and extensive commercial houses at St. Louis, St. Charles, Kaskaskia and other towns upon the river conducted the trade. (Navigation and Commerce, Monette.)

The commerce of the Ohio region passed beyond the limits of the United States and entered the Spanish port of New Orleans, by virtue of commercial treaties with that nation. Monette writes that the exports from the United States by this route agreeably to the Custom-house register, at Loftus' Heights, from January 1 until June 30 of 1801, were conveyed in four hundred and fifty flat-boats, twenty-six keels, two schooners, one brig and seven pirogues.

The flat-boat was the important craft of the era of immigra- 36-II

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tion, the friend of the pioneer. It was the boat that never came back, a downstream craft solely. The flat-boat of average size was a roofed craft about forty feet long, twelve feet wide and eight feet deep. It was square and flat-bottomed and was man- aged by six oars ; two of these, about thirty feet long, on each side, were known as "sweeps" and were manned by two men each; one at the stern, forty or fifty feet long including its big blade, was called the "steering oar"; a small oar was located at the prow, known as the "gouger," which assisted in guiding the boat through swift water. One man only was required at the steering oar and at the gouger. These flat-boats were of two types, the "Kentucky" and "New Orleans," and Kentucky and New Orleans were the destinations of the great majority. The nominal differ- ence between a Kentucky and New Orleans boat was that the former was only half roofed over, while the latter was stronger and entirely covered with a roof.

The Navigator, published by Zadok Cramer in Pittsburg, in its edition of 1811, and calling itself "the trader's useful guide in navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers" was a guide book for emigrants. How to buy or build a flat-boat was the first query of the pioneer father as he finally arrived at one of the ports on the upper Ohio. Often several families joined their fortunes and came down the river on one "flat," a motley congregation of men, women, children, and do- mestic animals, surrounded by the few crude, housekeeping uten- sils which had been brought over the mountains or purchased at the port of embarkation. To such emigrants as contemplated a trip down the Mississippi the Navigator had this to say: "The boats intended for the Mississippi must be much stronger in their timbers, and more firmly built than those for the Ohio only. They ought also to be caulked better, and much higher all around, better roofed, and have a longer and stronger cable; and it would be well, if proprietors can afford it, instead of taking alongside a canoe, to procure a kind of long boat, that would carry, in case of a ship- wreck, a leak, or other accident, 20 or 30 barrels of flour or whis- key. This provision might be sometimes perhaps the means of saving a part of a cargo, and the boat would sell at Orleans, if well and neatly made, for as much as it might cost at Pittsburgh, or any other place where they could be purchased."

Collins, in his History of Kentucky states that Captain Jacob Yoder took the first flat-boat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans in 1782. From this time on they were used in increasing numbers. Both in early and more recent times, they were always used or sold at their destination for lumber, and their owners and crews, except for the few who preferred to work their passage north on the barges and keels, returned to their homes on foot and on horseback by way of the overland trails through Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee, a long, wearisome journey of 1,000 miles or more. The boatmen, returning home on foot after selling out their flatboats and cargo in New Orleans and

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Natchez, often made wagers to beat the post to Nashville, and generally won. The celebrated "Walking" Johnson, the greatest pedestrian of his day, beat the mail three times, on a wager, be- tween Natchez and Nashville.

The Kentucky "broadhorns" or "broadhorn flat-boats," as they were also called, were provided with a tin horn by means of which some one on board would announce the arrival of the boat, or make its presence known in case of fog. This "weird music, re- verberating from hill to hill, was heard far and wide, and was welcomed by the country people." (Hulbert.) The History of the flat-boat comes down within the present generation, and the beginning of the War of 1861-65 saw numerous flat-boats on the Mississippi. Once the sign of the emigrant, these boats in the '50's had assumed the distinctive role of freighters, and bore their cargoes to the southern ports or retailed them along the Missis- sippi river plantations. A man of enterprise would build a "flat", buy up the agricultural produce of his neighborhood, load his un- wieldy craft and await the "fall rise." The boats were loaded through a trapdoor over the bow and the cargo stored away in the hold. Apples and potatoes were the staples for through freight; but the boats intended to "coast" (peddle the cargo to the planta- tions) also included in their cargoes cider, cheese, pork, bacon, and often cabbage. Apple and peach brandy were profitable in- vestments; the peach brandy being often little more than apple brandy, with a few peaches in it, and palmed off on the thirsty negroes as the genuine article. The preparations for the three thousand mile journey were soon made by the owner of a flat-boat. He would ship a few farm hands for a crew, and all would live in the stern of the boat separated from the cargo by a partition. Lit- tle work was required of the crew, except to keep the craft in the current. If the boat was intended for the coasting trade, business began at the first large plantations. The plantation overseers lib- erally patronized the "coasters", and paid for their purchases in drafts on New Orleans. The negroes sometimes were allowed to make their own purchases, and would often exchange molasses for brandy even, gallon for gallon. Arrived at his destination, the owner sold the balance of his stock and his boat, bought sugar and molasses with the proceeds, embarked with his freight on a packet for home, and thus cleared two profits.

After the War 1861-65, the flat-boat men found a sad and im- poverished South. The negroes were "free", the overseers gone and the coasting trade was ruined. Since 1865 through freights were found the only profitable ones.

A few words will suffice to explain the other familiar types of early river craft, such as the "ark", the galley, the brig and the schooner. Harris thus describes the ark, which was the primi- tive type of house-boat: "These boats are generally called 'Arks'; and are said to have been invented by Mr. Krudger, on the Juan- ita, about ten years ago (1795). They are square, and flat-bot- tomed; about forty feet by fifteen, with sides six feet deep;

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Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. II, Part 66

Author: Rowland, Dunbar, 1864-1937, ed Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Atlanta, Southern Historical Publishing Association Number of Pages: 1032

Author: Rowland, Dunbar, 1864-1937, ed
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Atlanta, Southern Historical Publishing Association
Number of Pages: 1032