ommerce and trade in that section, it is to the rivers of the
trans-Alleghany country that we must look for a corresponding picture in
this early period. The canoe and pirogue could handle the packs and kegs
brought westward by the files of Indian ponies; but the heavy loads of
the Conestoga wagons demanded stancher craft. The flatboat and barge
therefore served the West and its commerce as the Conestoga and turnpike
served the East.

CHAPTER V. The Flatboat Age

In the early twenties of the last century one of the popular songs of
the day was "The Hunters of Kentucky." Written by Samuel Woodworth, the
author of "The Old Oaken Bucket," it had originally been printed in the
New York Mirror but had come into the hands of an actor named Ludlow,
who was playing in the old French theater in New Orleans. The poem
chants the praises of the Kentucky riflemen who fought with Jackson at
New Orleans and indubitably proved

That every man was half a horse And half an alligator.

Ludlow knew his audience and he saw his chance. Setting the words to
Risk's tune, "Love Laughs" at Locksmiths, donning the costume of a
Western riverman, and arming himself with a long "squirrel" rifle, he
presented himself before the house. The rivermen who filled the pit
received him, it is related, with "a prolonged whoop, or howl, such as
Indians give when they are especially pleased." And to these sturdy men
the words of his song made a strong appeal:

We are a hardy, freeborn race, Each man to fear a stranger;
Whate'er the game, we join in chase, Despising toil and danger;
And if a daring foe annoys, No matter what his force is,
We'll show him that Kentucky boys Are Alligator-horses.

The title "alligator-horse," of which Western rivermen were very proud,
carried with it a suggestion of amphibious strength that made it both
apt and figuratively accurate. On all the American rivers, east and
west, a lusty crew, collected from the waning Indian trade and the
disbanded pioneer armies, found work to its taste in poling the long
keel boats, "corralling" the bulky barges--that is, towing them by
pulling on a line attached to the shore--or steering the "broadhorns"
or flatboats that transported the first heavy inland river cargoes. Like
longshoremen of all ages, the American riverman was as rough as the
work which calloused his hands and transformed his muscles into bands
of tempered steel. Like all men given to hard but intermittent labor, he
emp