uoted in Turner, "Rise of the New West," pp. 79-80.

Arrived at the Ohio, the emigrant either engaged passage on some form of
river-craft or set to work to construct with his own hands a vessel that
would bear him and his belongings to the promised land. The styles of
river-craft that appeared on the Ohio and other western streams in
the great era of river migration make a remarkable pageant. There
were canoes, pirogues, skiffs, rafts, dugouts, scows, galleys,
arks, keelboats, flatboats, barges, "broadhorns," "sneak-boxes," and
eventually ocean-going brigs, schooners, and steamboats. The canoe
served the early explorer and trader, and even the settler whose
possessions had been carried over the Alleghanies on a single packhorse.
But after the Revolution the needs of an awakening empire led to
the introduction of new types of craft, built to afford a maximum of
capacity and safety on a downward voyage, without regard for the demands
of a round trip. The most common of these one-way vessels was the
flatboat.

A flatboat trip down the great river was likely to be filled with
excitement. The sound of the steam-dredge had never been heard on the
western waters, and the streambed was as Nature had made it, or rather
was continually remaking it. Yearly floods washed out new channels and
formed new reefs and sand-bars, while logs and brush borne from the
heavily forested banks continually built new obstructions. Consequently
the sharpest lookout had to be maintained, and the pilot was both
skilful and lucky who completed his trip without permitting his boat
to be caught on a "planter" (a log immovably fixed in the river bed),
entangled in the branches of overhanging trees, driven on an island, or
dashed on the bank at a bend. Navigation by night and on foggy days was
hazardous in the extreme and was avoided as far as possible. If all went
well, the voyage from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati could be completed in six
or eight days; but delays might easily extend the period to a month.

One grave danger has not been mentioned--the Indians. From the moment
when the slow-moving flatboat passed beyond the protection of a white
settlement, it was liable to be fired on, by day or by night, by
redskins; and the better-built boats were so constructed as to be at
least partially bullet-proof. Sometimes extra timber was used to give
safety; sometimes the cargo was specially placed with that aim in view.
The Indians rarely went beyond the wa