ere enumerated, were allowed to drift down
stream with the current, being steered by long sweeps hung on pivots.
The average speed was about three miles an hour, but the distances
made were considerable, from the fact that in the earliest days they
were, from fear of Indians, usually kept on the move through day and
night,--the crew taking turns at the sweeps, that the craft might not
be hung up on shore or entangled in the numerous snags and sawyers. In
going up stream, the sweeps served as oars, and in the shallows long
pushing-poles were used.

As for the boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats
of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves--"half horse, half
alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given
to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse
drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at
the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried
from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently
traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally
stopped over night in the settlements, and the arrival of a squadron
was certain to be followed by a disturbance akin to those so familiar
a few years ago in our Southwest, when the cowboys would undertake
to "paint a town red." The boatmen were reckless of life, limb, and
reputation, and were often more numerous than those of the villagers
who cared to enforce the laws; while there was always present an
element which abetted and throve on the vice of the river-men. The
result was that mischief, debauchery, and outrage ran riot, and in the
inevitable fights the citizens were generally beaten.

The introduction of steamboats (1814) soon effected a revolution. A
steamer could carry ten times as much as a barge, could go five times
as fast, and required fewer men; it traveled at night, quickly passing
from one port to another, pausing only to discharge or receive cargo;
its owners and officers were men of character and responsibility, with
much wealth in their charge, and insisted on discipline and correct
deportment. The flatboat and the keel-boat were soon laid up to rot on
the banks; and the boatmen either became respectable steamboat hands
and farmers, or went into the Far West, where wild life was still
possible.

Shipment on the river, in the flatboat days, was only during the
spring and autumnal floods; although an occasional summer rise, such