The River Pirates
by
A hundred years ago the country near the great rivers in the interior of the United States was a wilderness. It contained only a few people, and these lived in settlements which were widely separated from one another. Hardly any of the great trees had been cut down.
There were no roads, except Indian trails through the woods. Nearly all travelers had to follow the rivers. Steamboats had not yet been invented. Travelers made journeys on flatboats, keel boats, and barges. It was easy enough to go down the Ohio and the Mississippi in this way, but it was hard to come up again. It took about fifty men to work a boat against the stream, and many months were spent in going up the river.
Boats were pushed up the river by means of poles. The boatmen pushed these against the bottom of the river. When the water was deep or the current very swift, a rope was taken out ahead of the boat, and tied to a tree on the bank. The line was then slowly drawn in by means of a capstan, and this drew the boat forward.
Sometimes the boat was “cordelled,” or towed by the men walking on the shore and drawing the barge by a rope held on their shoulders. But when there chanced to be a strong wind blowing upstream, the boatmen would hoist sail, and joyfully make headway against the current without so much toil.
These slow-going boats were in danger from Indians. They were in even greater danger from robbers, who hid themselves along the shore. Some of these robbers lived in caves. Some kept boats hidden in the mouths of streams that flowed into the large rivers.
In 1787 all the country west of the Mississippi still belonged to France. The French territory stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now Minnesota. It was all called Louisiana. New Orleans and St. Louis were then French towns, and the travel between them was carried on by means of boats, which floated down the stream, and were then brought back by poles, ropes, and sails.
The trip was as long as a voyage to China is nowadays. The boats or barges set out from St. Louis in the spring, carrying furs. They got back again in the fall with goods purchased in New Orleans.
In this year, 1787, a barge belonging to a Mr. Beausoleil (bo-so-lay) started from New Orleans to make the voyage to St. Louis. The goods with which it was loaded were very valuable. Slowly the men toiled up against the stream day after day. At length the little vessel came near to the mouth of Cottonwood Creek. A well-known robber band lurked at this place. With joy the boatmen saw a favorable wind spring up. They spread their sails, and the driving gale carried the barge in safety past the mouth of the creek.
But the pirates of Cottonwood Creek were unwilling to lose so rich a treasure. They sent a company of men by a short cut overland to head off the barge at a place farther up the river. Two days after passing Cottonwood Creek the bargemen brought the boat to land. They felt themselves beyond danger. But the robbers came suddenly out of the woods, took possession of the boat, and ordered the crew to return down the river to Cottonwood Creek.
When they turned back toward the robbers’ den, Beausoleil was in despair. His whole fortune was on the barge. He did not know whether the robbers would kill him and his men, or not. The only man of the crew who showed no regret was the cook. This cook was a fine-looking and very intelligent mulatto slave named Cacasotte. Instead of repining, he fell to dancing and laughing.
“I am glad the boat was taken,” he cried. “I have been beaten and abused long enough. Now I am freed from a hard master.”