Chapter XXIII

_A Pioneer Steamboatman_

The same year and the same month in the year that witnessed the

advent of the first steamboat on the Upper Mississippi, likewise

witnessed the arrival in Galena of one who was destined to become

the best known of all the upper river steamboatmen. In April, 1823,

James Harris[G] accompanied by his son, Daniel Smith Harris, a lad of

fifteen, left Cincinnati on the keel boat "Colonel Bumford", for the

Le Fevre lead mines (now Galena), where they arrived June 20, 1823,

after a laborious voyage down the Ohio and up the Mississippi.

[G] Captain Daniel Smith Harris was born in the state of

Ohio in 1808. He came with his parents to Galena, Ill., in

1823, where he attended the frontier schools, and worked in

the lead mines until 1836, when he commenced his career as

a steamboatman, which was developed until he should become

known as the greatest of all the upper river steamboat owners

and captains. In the year 1836, in company with his brother,

R. Scribe Harris, who was a practical engineer, he built the

steamer "Frontier," which he commanded that season. In 1837 the

two brothers brought out the "Smelter," which was commanded by

Daniel Smith Harris, Scribe Harris running as chief engineer.

In 1838 they built the "Pre-Emption," which was also run by

the two brothers. In 1839 they built the "Relief," and in 1840

the "Sutler," both of which he commanded. In 1841 they brought

out the "Otter," which Captain Harris commanded until 1844,

when the two brothers built the "War Eagle" (first), which he

commanded until 1847. In 1848 he commanded the "Senator"; in

1849 the "Dr. Franklin No. 2"; in 1850 and 1851 the "Nominee";

in 1852 the "Luella," "New St. Paul" and "West Newton"; in

1853 the "West Newton"; 1854, 1855 and 1856 the "War Eagle"

(second), which he built. (See picture of "War Eagle" on page

120.) In 1857 Captain Harris built the "Grey Eagle," the

largest, fastest and finest boat on the upper river up to that

time, costing $63,000. He commanded the "Grey Eagle" until

1861, when she was lost by striking the Rock Island Bridge,

sinking in five minutes. Captain Harris then retired from the

river, living in Galena until his death in 189-. As a young man

he took part, as a Lieutenant of Volunteers, in the battle of

Bad Axe, with the Indians under Chief Black Hawk.

A word in passing, regarding the keel boat. Few of the men now living

know from actual observation what manner of craft is suggested by

the mere mention of the name. None of this generation have seen it.

A canal boat comes as near it in model and build as any craft now

afloat; and yet it was not a canal boat. In its day and generation

it was the clipper of the Western river to which it was indigenous.

Any sort of craft might go downstream; rafts, arks, broadhorns, and

scows were all reliable downstream sailers, dependent only upon the

flow of the current, which was eternally setting toward the sea.

All of this sort of craft did go down, with every rise in the Ohio,

in the early days of the nineteenth century, from every port and

landing between Pittsburg and Cairo, to New Orleans. They were laden

with adventurers, with pioneers, with settlers, or with produce of

the farms already opened along the Ohio and its tributaries; corn,

wheat, apples, live-stock--"hoop-poles and punkins", in the slang of

the day--in fact anything of value to trade for the merchandise of

civilization which found its _entrepôt_ at New Orleans from Europe

or the Indies. The craft carrying this produce was itself a part

of the stock in trade, and when unloaded was broken up and sold as

lumber for the building of the city, or for export to Cuba or other

West Indian ports. The problem was to get back to the Ohio with the

cargo of merchandise bought with the produce carried as cargo on the

down trip. The broad horns and arks were an impossibility as upstream

craft, and thus it came about in the evolution of things required for

specific purposes, that the keel boat came into being.

This boat was built to go upstream as well as down. It was a

well-modelled craft, sixty to eighty feet long, and fifteen to

eighteen feet wide, sharp at both ends, and often with fine

lines--clipper-built for passenger traffic. It had usually about four

feet depth of hold. Its cargo box, as it was called, was about four

feet higher, sometimes covered with a light curved deck; sometimes

open, with a "gallows-frame" running the length of the hold, over

which tarpaulins were drawn and fastened to the sides of the boat

for the protection of the freight and passengers in stormy weather.

At either end of the craft was a deck for eight or ten feet, the

forward or forecastle deck having a windlass or capstan for pulling

the boat off bars, or warping through swift water or over rapids.

Along each side of the cargo box ran a narrow walk, about eighteen

inches in width, with cleats nailed to the deck twenty-eight or

thirty inches apart, to prevent the feet of the crew from slipping

when poling upstream. Of the motive power of these boats, Captain H.

M. Chittenden, U. S. A., in a recent work on the navigation of the

Missouri River in early days, says:

"For the purposes of propulsion the boat was equipped with

nearly all the power appliances known to navigation, except

steam. The cordelle was the main reliance. This consists of a

line nearly a thousand feet long, fastened to the top of a mast

which rose from the centre of the boat to the height of nearly

thirty feet. The boat was pulled along with this line by men on

shore. In order to hold the boat from swinging around the mast,

the line was connected with the bow of the boat by means of a

"bridle", a short auxiliary line fastened to a loop in the bow,

and to a ring through which the cordelle was passed. The bridle

prevented the boat from swinging under force of wind or current

when the speed was not great enough to accomplish this purpose

by means of the rudder. The object in having so long a line was

to lessen the tendency to draw the boat toward the shore; and

the object in having it fastened to the top of the mast was

to keep it from dragging, and to enable it to clear the brush

along the bank. It took from twenty to forty men to cordelle

the keel boat along average stretches of the river [the

Missouri], and the work was always one of great difficulty."

For poling the men were provided with tough ash poles, eighteen or

twenty feet long, with a wooden or iron shoe or socket to rest on

the bottom of the river, and a crutch or knob for the shoulder. In

propelling the boat, ten or a dozen men on each side thrust the foot

of their poles into the bottom of the river, and with the other end

against their shoulders, walked toward the stern of the boat, pushing

it upstream at the same rate of speed with which they walked toward

the stern. As each pair--one on each side of the boat--reached the

stern, they quickly recovered their poles, leaped to the roof of

the cargo box, and running forward jumped to the deck and replanted

their poles for a new turn of duty. By this means an even speed was

maintained, as in a crew of twenty there were always sixteen men

applying motive power, while four others were returning to the bow

for a new start. The writer, in his childhood, has stood for hours on

the banks of the St. Joseph River, in Niles, Michigan, watching the

crews of keel boats thus laboriously pushing their craft up the river

from St. Joseph, on the lake, to Niles, South Bend, and Mishawaka.

They were afterward to float back, laden with flour in barrels,

potatoes and apples in sacks, and all the miscellaneous merchandise

of the farm, destined for Detroit, Buffalo, and the East, by way of

the Great Lakes.

In addition to cordelling, as described above, the long line was

also used in warping the boat around difficult places where the men

could not follow the bank. This was accomplished by carrying the

line out ahead in the skiff as far as possible or convenient, and

making it fast to trees or rocks. The men on the boat then hauled on

the line, pulling the boat up until it reached the object to which

the line was attached. The boat was then moored to the bank, or

held with the poles until the line was again carried ahead and made

fast, when the process was repeated. In this manner the greatest of

up-river steamboatmen, Captain Daniel Smith Harris, prosecuted his

first voyage from Cincinnati to Galena, in the year 1823. It probably

required no more than four or five days to run down the Ohio, on the

spring flood, to Cairo; from Cairo to Galena required two months of

cordelling, poling, and warping.

About the time the keel boat "Colonel Bumford" was passing St. Louis,

the steamer "Virginia" departed for the upper river with a load of

supplies for the United States military post at Fort Snelling. She

had among her passengers Major John Biddle and Captain Joseph P.

Russell, U. S. A., and Laurence Talliaferro, United States Indian

Agent for the Territory of Minnesota. The "Virginia" arrived at Fort

Snelling May 10, 1823, the first boat propelled by steam to breast

the waters of the upper Mississippi. She was received with a salute

of cannon from the fort, and carried fear and consternation to the

Indians, who watched the smoke rolling from her chimney, the exhaust

steam shooting from her escape pipe with a noise that terrified them.

The "Virginia" was scarcely longer than the largest keel boat, being

about a hundred and twenty feet long, and twenty-two feet beam. She

had no upper cabin, the accommodations for the passengers being in

the hold, in the stern of the boat, with the cargo-box covering so

common to the keel boats of which she herself was but an evolution.

What did the young steamboatman see on his voyage from Cairo to

Galena in 1823? In his later years, in speaking of this trip, he

said that where Cairo now stands there was but one log building,

a warehouse for the accommodation of keel-boat navigators of the

Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Cape Girardeau, St. Genevieve, and

Herculaneum were small settlements averaging a dozen families each.

St. Louis, which was built almost entirely of frame buildings, had a

population of about five thousand. The levee was a ledge of rocks,

with scarcely a fit landing place on the whole frontage. Alton,

Clarksville, and Louisiana were minor settlements. What is now Quincy

consisted of one log cabin only, which was built and occupied by John

Woods, who afterwards became lieutenant-governor of the State of

Illinois, and acting governor. This intrepid pioneer was "batching

it", being industriously engaged in clearing a piece of land for

farming purposes. The only settler at Hannibal was one John S.

Miller, a blacksmith, who removed to Galena in the autumn of 1823. In

later years, Hannibal was to claim the honor of being the birthplace

of "Mark Twain", the historian of the lower Mississippi pilot clans.

The last farm house between St. Genevieve and Galena was located at

Cottonwood Prairie (now Canton), and was occupied by one Captain

White, who was prominently identified with the early development

of the Northwest. There was a government garrison at Keokuk, which

was then known as Fort Edwards, and another at Fort Armstrong, now

Rock Island. The settlement at Galena consisted of about a dozen log

cabins, a few frame shanties, and a smelting furnace.

If he were looking only for the evidence of an advancing

civilization, the above probably covers about all he saw on his

trip. Other things he saw, however. The great river, flowing in its

pristine glory, "unvexed to the sea"; islands, set like emeralds in

the tawny flood, the trees and bushes taking on their summer dress

of green in the warm May sunshine; prairies stretching away in

boundless beauty, limited only by his powers of vision. Later, as his

craft stemmed the flood and advanced up the river, he saw the hills

beginning to encroach upon the valley of the river, narrowing his

view; later, the crags and bastions of the bluffs of the upper river,

beetling over the very channel itself, and lending an added grandeur

to the simple beauty of the banks already passed.

His unaccustomed eyes saw the wickyups and tepees of the Indians

scattered among the islands and on the lowlands, the hunters of the

tribe exchanging the firelock for the spear and net as they sought

to reap the water for its harvest of returning fish. It was all

new to the young traveller, who was later to become the best known

steamboatman of the upper river, the commander of a greater number

of different steamboats than any of his compeers, and who was to

know the river, in all its meanderings and in all its moods, better

than any other who ever sailed it--Daniel Smith Harris, of Galena,

Illinois.

[Illustration: ALTON, ILLINOIS. Looking down the river.]