Such men and the craft they handled were known on the Atlantic
rivers, but it was on the Mississippi and its branches,
especially the Ohio, that they played their most important part
in the history of American inland commerce
Such men and the craft they handled were known on the Atlantic
rivers, but it was on the Mississippi and its branches,
especially the Ohio, that they played their most important part
in the history of American inland commerce. Before the beginning
of the nineteenth century wagons and Conestogas were bringing
great loads of merchandise to such points on the headwaters as
Brownsville, Pittsburgh, and Wheeling. As early as 1782, we are
told, Jacob Yoder, a Pennsylvania German, set sail from the
Monongahela country with the first flatboat to descend the Ohio
and Mississippi. As the years passed, the number of such craft
grew constantly larger. The custom of fixing the widespreading
horns of cattle on the prow gave these boats the alternative name
of ‘broadhorns,’ but no accurate classification can be made of
the various kinds of craft engaged in this vast traffic.
Everything that would float, from rough rafts to finished barges,
was commandeered into service, and what was found unsuitable for
the strenuous purposes of commercial transportation was palmed
off whenever possible on unsuspecting emigrants en route to the
lands of promise beyond.
