Life on the Mississippi
with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to
the sun.
The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the
present city of that name, where they found a 'religious and political
despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a
sacred fire.' It must have been like getting home again; it was home
with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.
A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadow of
his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware, and
from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific,
with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy
achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums
up:
'On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous
accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the
Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of
the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks
of the Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked
deserts and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by
a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of
Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half
a mile.'
CHAPTER 3
Frescoes from the Past
APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no, the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate
and time-devouring a process as the discovery and exploration had been.
Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the river's borders
had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty more before
the river had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the river and
the time when it may be said to have become the vehicle of anything like
a regular and active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne
of England, America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV. and
Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had gone down in
the red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was
beginning to be talked about. Truly, there were snails in those days.
The river's earliest commerce was in great barges--keelboats,
broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New
Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back
by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months. In time
this commerce increased until it gave employment to hordes of rough and
hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships with
sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties
like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless
fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane; prodigal
of their money, bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of barbaric
finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main, honest, trustworthy,
faithful to promises and duty, and often picturesquely magnanimous.
By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years,
these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers
did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in
New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.
But after a while the steamboats so increased in number and in speed
that they were able to absorb the entire commerce; and then keelboating
died a permanent death. The keelboatman became a deck hand, or a mate,
or a pilot on the steamer; and when steamer-berths were not open to him,
he took a berth on a Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructed
in the forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.
In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end to end
was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managed by hand,
and employing hosts of the rough characters whom I have been trying to
describe. I remember the annual processions of mighty rafts that used
to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,--an acre or so of white,
sweet-smelling boards in each raft, a crew of two dozen men or more,
three or four wigwams scattered about the raft's vast level space for
storm-quarters,--and I remember the rude ways and the tremendous talk
of their big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their admiringly patterning
successors; for we used to swim out a quarter or third of a mile and get
on these rafts and have a ride.
By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now-departed
and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in, in this place, a
chapter from a book which I have been working at, by fits and starts,
during the past five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course
of five or six more. The book is a story which details some passages in
the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard
of my time out west, there. He has run away from his persecuting
father, and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice,
truth-telling, respectable boy of him; and with him a slave of the
widow's has also escaped. They have found a fragment of a lumber raft
(it is high water and dead summer time), and are floating down the river
by night, and hiding in the willows by day,--bound for Cairo,--whence
the negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a
fog, they pass Cairo without knowing it. By and by they begin to suspect
the truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by
swimming down to a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead
of them, creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering the
needed information by eavesdropping:--
But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to
find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such
a black night, now, that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big
raft and crawl aboard and listen--they would talk about Cairo, because
they would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or
anyway they would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or
something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could most
always start a good plan when you wanted one.
I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light. By and by, when I got down nearly to her,
I eased up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all
right--nobody at the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was
most abreast the camp fire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and
inched along and got in amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather
side of the fire. There was thirteen men there--they was the watch on
deck of course. And a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and
tin cups, and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing--roaring,
you may say; and it wasn't a nice song--for a parlor anyway. He roared
through his nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long.
When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then
another was sung. It begun:--
'There was a woman in our towdn, In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell,) She
loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twysteas wed'l.
Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo, Ri-too, riloo, rilay--She loved her
husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l.
And so on--fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he was going
to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow
died on; and another one said, 'Oh, give us a rest.' And another one
told him to take a walk. They made fun of him till he got mad and jumped
up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lame any thief in the
lot.
They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there
jumped up and says--
'Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my meat.'
Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together
every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with fringes,
and says, 'You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done;' and flung his hat
down, which was all over ribbons, and says, 'You lay thar tell his
sufferin's is over.'
Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and
shouted out--
'Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted,
copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me!
I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a
hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly
related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take
nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in
robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm
ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the
thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according
to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is
music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold
your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!'
All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and
looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking
up his wrist-bands, and now and then straightening up and beating his
breast with his fist, saying, 'Look at me, gentlemen!' When he got
through, he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, and
let off a roaring 'Whoo-oop! I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that
lives!'
Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down
over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged
and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and
drawing in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle
about three times, swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he
straightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times,
before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout like
this--
'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's
a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working!
whoo-oop! I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start! Smoked
glass, here, for all! Don't attempt to look at me with the naked
eye, gentlemen! When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and
parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for
whales! I scratch my head with the lightning, and purr myself to sleep
with the thunder! When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe
in it; when I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm
thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the
earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and
spread! I put my hand on the sun's face and make it night in the earth;
I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself
and crumble the mountains! Contemplate me through leather--don't use the
naked eye! I'm the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The
massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments,
the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life! The
boundless vastness of the great American desert is my enclosed property,
and I bury my dead on my own premises!' He jumped up and cracked his
heels together three times before he lit (they cheered him again), and
as he come down he shouted out: 'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for
the pet child of calamity's a-coming!'
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first
one--the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in
again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time,
swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into