The language of the adjacent
States is still adulterated with the slang of those scoundrels, proving
how short a period it is since they disappeared, and how they must have
mixed up with the reckless population, whose head-quarters were then at
the mouth of the river.

But as the hunting-grounds of Western Virginia, Kentucky, and the
northern banks of the Ohio, were gradually wrested from the Shawnee
Indians, the population became more dense, and the Mississippi itself
became the means of communication and of barter with the more northern
tribes. Then another race of men made their appearance, and flourished
for half a century, varying indeed in employment, but in other respects
little better than the buccaneers and pirates, in whose ranks they were
probably first enlisted. These were the boatmen of the Mississippi, who
with incredible fatigue forced their "keels" with poles against the
current, working against the stream with the cargoes entrusted to their
care by the merchants of New Orleans, labouring for many months before
they arrive at their destination, and returning with the rapid current
in as many days as it required weeks for them to ascend. This was a
service of great danger and difficulty, requiring men of iron frame and
undaunted resolution: they had to contend not only with the stream, but,
when they ascended the Ohio, with the Indians, who, taking up the most
favourable positions, either poured down the contents of their rifles
into the boat as she passed; or, taking advantage of the dense fog,
boarded them in their canoes, indiscriminate slaughter being the
invariable result of the boatmen having allowed themselves to be
surprised. In these men was to be found, as there often is in the most
unprincipled, one redeeming quality (independent of courage and
perseverance), which was, that they were, generally speaking,
unscrupulously honest to their employers, although they made little
ceremony of appropriating to their own use the property, or, if
necessary, of taking the life any other parties. Wild, indeed, are the
stories which are still remembered of the deeds of courage, and also of
the fearful crimes committed by these men, on a river which never gives
up its dead. I say still remembered, for in a new country they readily
forget the past, and only look forward to the future, whereas in an old
country the case is nearly the reverse--we love to recur to tradition,
and luxuriate in the dim record