The primitive forms of craft continued in use, upon the Ohio River, long after the introduction of the steamboat. The business of the country was small, and a few boats served the purpose. It was only after the steamboats had become very common, growing in numbers with the country, that they absorbed the great part of the carrying trade.

The lumber from the upper river was all rafted, and in the spring and early summer, when the water was high, the rafts were a leading feature of the river life. They were made up through the winter on the small branches of the Allegheny, and floated out on the first spring freshet.[314] Sometimes several rafts would be joined together, till they would cover an acre of space, or even more. On these were built shanties for the men, and vast heaps of shingles, and lath in bundles occupied a part of the space. As the region of Pennsylvania and New York, drained by the Allegheny, was a pretty good place to emigrate from, families were constantly leaving for the countries down the river, and made these rafts available as the means of moving. Indeed, for the purpose, nothing could be more convenient, for the movers could build themselves a comfortable shanty of the loose lumber, a shed for their horses and cows, if they wished to take them along, and be quite at home during a journey, that would often occupy three or four weeks.[315]

Howell says, "Often I have seen the shanties of two or three families, with wagons, horses, cows, and even poultry, all snuggly situated, with room for the children to play outside. I have seen the women washing, and a clothes-line hung with the linen."[316] Hall also gives us a pleasing account of this mode of travel. "Today we passed two large rafts lashed together, by which simple conveyance several families from New England were transporting themselves and their property to the land of promise in the western woods. Each raft was 80 or 90 feet long, with a small house erected on it, and on each was a stack of hay, round which several horses and cows were feeding, while the paraphernalia of a farm yard, the ploughs, wagons, pigs, children, and poultry, carelessly distributed, gave to the whole more the appearance of a permanent residence, than of a caravan of adventurere seeking a home. In this manner these people travel at slight expense."[317]

The smaller forms of boats, the skiffs, and the pirogue were still in use on the Ohio. The total expense of two people, for a voyage of seven hundred miles in a skiff, down the Ohio, was but seven dollars each.[318] Birkbeck speaks of forming two pirogues, out of large poplars, lashing them together, and placing large planks across both, thus creating a roomy deck and good covered stowage, making it possible to take a bulky as well as a heavy cargo.[319]

Arks, which Schultz says were not much used on the Ohio in 1807 were at this period often used by emigrating families to transport themselves down the river.[320] They were long floating rooms, built on a flat bottom, with rough boards, and arranged within for sleeping. Boatmen were hired, provisions were laid in, and when the end of the voyage was reached the boat was sold.[321] They were sometimes called flat bottoms, and described as being "planked up at the sides, and covered at the top." Emigrants generally procured them at Pittsburg and Wheeling, and after reaching their destination sold them to persons wishing to take produce to market.[322] This was a pleasant and cheap method of traveling.[323] About 1817-1818 hundreds of these boats were to be seen on the river, great numbers of them being built at Pittsburg.[324] Tranchepain describes a boat which must have been a form of ark. He says, "During our voyage we passed a great many flat-bottomed boats. Some of them were small, and merely contained an emigrant's family and its furniture. Some of the emigrants who were better off, were going to the Missouri and the Illinois, and their boats, besides their family, contained also a small wagon, and two or three horses. These boats are built in the shape of a parallelogram, whose sides are in the ratio of three, four, or even five to one. They are planked up on each side and behind, and are protected by a slightly curved roof made of thin boards, their height being in the interior about that of a tall man. The upper part of the front, and a few feet on each side of the front are left open like a sort of balcony. From this opening project two long oars which serve to steer the boat, and, in case of necessity, to move it out of the way either of a sand bank, or of a mass of drift wood. Each boat is often divided into two or more apartments, one of which has a fireplace and chimney; so that each of these strange habitations might not inappropriately be termed a floating cottage."[325] Flint describes the flat boats used by emigrants as being from forty to one hundred feet in length, fifteen feet wide, and carrying from twenty to seventy tons. They were very large and roomy, and had separate apartments, fitted up with chairs, beds, tables, and stoves. He says, "It is no uncommon spectacle to see a large family, old and young, servants, cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, fowls, and animals of all kinds, bringing to recoll-ection the cargo of the ancient ark, all embarked and floating down on the same bottom; and on the roof the looms, ploughs, spinning wheels, and domestic implements of the family."[326] Family boats cost from $30 to $50 in Pittsburg.[327] These boats were sometimes tied end to end, two boats carrying as many as forty people.[328] In 1818-1820 "family boats are almost continually in sight," on the Ohio, near Louisville.[329]

The larger sort, called Kentucky Arks, and of about 150 tons burthen, were used for purposes of trade. They contained a vast assortment of articles, such as horses, pigs, poultry, apples, flour, corn, peach brandy, cider, whiskey, bar iron and castings, tin, copper wares, glass, cabinet work, chairs, millstones, grindstones, and nails. These boats passed down the Ohio, selling what they could at the river towns.[330] When the crew reached New Orleans they sold the boat, and returned overland or by steamboat.[331] Latrobe describes the ark as "a broad flat-boat with a deck of two or three feet elevation above the water. They have generally a small window fore and aft, and a door in the middle, a peep into which will show you a goodly store of pots, pans, or flour barrels. A narrow ledge runs round them for the convenience of poling. A small chimney rises above; racoon and deer skins, the produce of the hours spent ashore, are nailed on the sides to dry. The larger are propelled by four oars, and I have occasionally seen them surmounted by a crooked mast or top mast. Here you will meet one fitted up as a floating tinshop, gleaning many a bright dollar from the settlers. Others again are of a more simple construction, and have merely a temporary deck supported upon rails, through which the sheep and other live stock may be descried. Hay for their consumption will be piled above, and cabbages stowed away in a compartment behind."[332]

The flat-boat belonged to the same class as the ark. Their construction was temporary and they were broken up at New Orleans as not being sufficiently strong to be freighted up the the river.[333] These flat boats or Orleans boats as they were sometimes called, were from twelve to twenty-five feet wide, and from thirty to ninety feet long, and carried about seven hundred barrels of flour.[334] Farmers built these boats and sent their produce to New Orleans in them.[335] Freight on board a flat boat in 1817 was 50 cents per cwt.[336] In 1818, one traveler on a steamboat counted as many as 643 flat boats descending the Ohio and Mississippi.[337] In one month, in the early part of the year 1831, it was estimated that one thousand flat boats entered the Ohio from the Wabash, with cargoes estimated at $2000 each.[338] Five hundred of these boats passed Vincennes.[339] In 1827, Bullock says that there were from 1200 to 1500 flat boats, averaging from 40 to 60 tons, at New Orleans.[340] Basil Hall in 1827-1828 counted about 100 arks at New Orleans.[341] The margin of the shore at New Orleans was lined in the early part of the year 1831, with these flat boats from all parts of the upper country.[342] The descent of a flat boat to New Orleans, if in autumn, usually occupied fifty days.[343]

Retail trading boats continued in use on the Ohio. Every considerable landing place on the Ohio and Mississippi, had in the spring, a number of stationary and inhabited boats, lying by at the shore. They were often dram shops.[344] Flint says, "While I was at New Madrid, a large tinner's establishment floated there in a boat. In it all the different articles of tinware were manufactured, and sold by wholesale and retail.[345] A still more extraordinary manufactory, we were told, was floating down the Ohio, and shortly expected at New Madrid. Aboard this were manufactured axes, scythes, and all other iron tools of this description, and in it horses were shod. In short it was a complete blacksmith's shop of a higher order. I have frequently seen in this region, a dry goods shop in a boat, with its articles very handsomely arranged on shelves."[346]

Keel boats were still used on the Mississippi and Ohio in low stages of water, and on the boatable streams where steamboats did not run. Before the introduction of the steamboat, there were six times as many of these boats used as afterward.[347] These boats were used to carry merchandise down the river, eight or ten boatmen being required for a journey down stream,[348] and from twelve to twenty-four to pole the boat up stream.[349] Emigrants sometimes took passage down the Ohio in keel boats.[350] As early as 1817 the steamboats were beginning to supersede them.[351]

Barges, varying from 40[352] to 170[353] tons burthen, were used in the transportation of merchandise. About twenty[354] or twenty-five[355] hands were required to work an ordinary barge upstream, the boatmen being able to make about six or seven miles per day against the current.[356] During the years 1812-1818 these barges were used to carry large cargoes both to and from New Orleans.[357] These boats often were equipped with sails, masts, and rigging. From ninety to one hundred days was a tolerable passage from New Orleans to Cincinnati. In this way the intercourse between Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, and St. Louis, for the more important purposes of commerce, was kept up with New Orleans.[358] A rather interesting article appeared in the Louisiana Gasette of October 24, 1815, which was as follows: "The steamboats now in use cannot carry one twentieth part of the goods that might be in demand from this city (N. O.)—the common barges, always slow and expensive in their operations are in a great measure paralyzed by the few steamboats in use, the bargemen know that steamboats will always have the preference, hence they are prevented from preparing barges, the expense being great, and the barge owners generally men of very limited means, so that the public will be worse served than if steam were not in operation unless a spirit is immediately diffused that will bring the steam navigation into use commensurate to the demand of transportation."[359] As time went on the barges fell into disuse,and about the year 1830, few were to be seen.[360]

In 1818, two thousand people were regularly employed as boatmen on the Ohio, and they were proverbially ferocious and abandoned in their habits, though possibly with many exceptions.[361] The shores of the Monongahela in 1819, were lined with barges, keels, and arks or flats, waiting for the rise of the Ohio.[362] During 1821-1823 flat bottoms, keels, and barges[363] found constant employment in the carrying trade to and from New Orleans.[364] As late as 1828 or 1830, flats, arks, and barges were to be seen at New Orleans.[365] The flats seem to have continued in the greatest numbers after the introduction of the steamboat.

There were on the Ohio many other forms of craft which I shall briefly mention. The Allegheny or Mackinaw skiff was a covered boat carrying from six to ten tons.[366] "Dugouts," named from the manner of making them, and canoes hollowed from trees were to be seen in great numbers. These boats and skiffs were used to cross the rivers, and a select company of travelers often descended the river in them to New Orleans.[367] Flat boats, worked by a wheel, driven by the cattle that they were conveying to New Orleans, were to be seen; also horse boats of various construction, used for the most part as ferry boats, but sometimes as boats of ascent.[368] Boats moved rapidly up stream by wheels, after the steam construction, propelled by a man turning a crank.[369] Flint says, "in this land of freedom and invention, with a little aid perhaps, from the influence of the moon, there are monstrous anomalies, reducible to no specific class of boats, and only illustrating the whimsical archetypes of things that have previously existed in the brain of inventive men, who reject the slavery of being obliged to build in any received form. You can scarcely imagine an abstract form in which a boat can be built, that in some part of the Ohio or Mississippi, you will not see, actually in motion."[370]

As the steamboat was perfected, and increased in numbers and importance, many of these strange craft were destined to disappear, and prior even to the year 1830, many of them began to be superseded by the larger and more swiftly moved steamboats.