Half Horse Half Alligator
Published in 1956
The University of Chicago Press

Preface

“These narratives unfold a fascinating story, the like of which no other body of documents can reveal. They show

1. how an American, whose life was lived on three picturesque frontiers between about 1770 and 1823,became a legend;
2. how the legend proliferated in oral tales and a number of greatly varied literary expressions;
3. and how in the end it all but died. In more auspicious times, it is possible that the legendary lore might have inspired a noteworthy literary work, for it had real possibilities.

[What Happened Otherwise in History at that Time: Wikipedia]

1756: Birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1759: French and Indian War: bra

1760: George III becomes the King of  England

1762–1796: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.

1773: The Boston Tea Party.

1775–1783: American Revolutionary War

1776: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

1781: The city of Los Angeles is founded by Spanish settlers.

1783: The Treaty of Paris formally ends the American Revolutionary War.

1785–1795: The Northwest Indian War is fought between the United States and Native Americans.

1786: Frederick the Great dies without issue and is succeeded as King of Prussia by his nephew, Frederick William II.

1787: The United States Constitution is written in Philadelphia and submitted to the states for ratification.

1787: Freed slaves from London establish Freetown in present-day Sierra Leone.

Table of Contents

Mike Fink in History, Legend, and Story

I. SCOUT AT FORT PITT AND IN THE INDIAN COUNTRY . . 3

II. KEELBOATMAN ON WESTERN WATERWAYS …. 7

III. TRAPPER AND MOUNTAIN MAN IN THE ROCKIES … 11

IV. ORAL TRADITION AND PRINTED STORIES 14

V. FOLKLORISH ASPECTS 20

VI. LITERARY ASPECTS 28

THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND

THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN (1828), BY MORGAN NEVILLE .43

MIKE FINK: THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN (1829) …. 56

CROCKETT ALMANACK STORIES (1837, 1839) 62

THE DISGRACED SCALP-LOCK (1842), BY T. B. THORPE . . 67

LETTER TO THE “WESTERN GENERAL ADVERTISER”  FROM “K” (1845) 83

TRIMMING A DARKY’S HEEL (1847), BY JOHN S. ROBB . . 87

MIKE FINK: “THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN” (1847), BY JOSEPH M. FIELD 93

LIGE SHATTUCK’S REMINISCENCE OF MIKE FINK (1848) . . 143

MIKE FINK: A LEGEND OF THE OHIO (1848), BY EMERSON BENNETT 145

CROCKETT ALMANAC STORIES (1850-53) 208

REV. PETER CARTWRIGHT, JOCOSE PREACHER (1850) . . 216

DEACON SMITH’S BULL (1851), BY SCROGGINS …. 220

MIKE’S PRACTICAL JOKES (1852), BY BEN CASSEDY . . . 226

JACK PIERCE’S VICTORY ( 1 874? ) , BY MENRA HOPEWELL . . 231

MIKE FINK LAST OF THE FLATBOATMEN (1883), BY COLO- NEL FRANK TRIPLETT 238

SOME RECENTLY PUBLISHED STORIES ABOUT MIKE FINK (1950-56), BY COLONEL HENRY SHOEMAKER …. 241

A MISSOURI SUPERSTITION ( 1951 ) , BY VANCE RANDOLPH . 250

Two STORIES ABOUT MIKE FINK (1956), BY JULIAN LEE RAYFORD 252

ACCOUNTS OF MIKE FINK’S DEATH FROM MORGAN NEVILLE, “THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN” (1828) < . 260

FROM “MIKE FINK: THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN” (1829) . 260

FROM “MIKE, THE OHIO BOATMAN” (1837) 262

WILLIAM T. PORTER, “To CORRESPONDENTS” (1842) . . 263

JOSEPH M. FIELD, “THE DEATH OF MIKE FINK” ( 1844) . . 263

FROM CHARLES CIST, “THE LAST OF THE GIRTYS” (1845) . 269

FROM FRIEDRICH GERSTACKER, “FLATBOOTMEN” (1847) . 269

FROM J. W. ABERT, REPORT OF AN EXAMINATION OF NEW MEXICO (1848) 271

FROM EMERSON BENNETT, “MIKE FINK, A LEGEND OF THE OHIO” (1848) 272

FROM T. B. THORPE, “REMEMBRANCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI” (1855) 272

FROM JAMES T. LLOYD, “LLOYD’S STEAMBOAT DIRECTORY” (1856) 273

FROM RICHARD EDWARDS AND M. HOPEWELL, “EDWARDS’ GREAT WEST” (1860) 274

FROM JAMES HALEY WHITE, “EARLY DAYS IN ST. Louis” (ca. 1882) 275

List of Illustrations

MIKE FINK, THE OHIO BOATMAN Frontispiece From Davy Crockett’s Almanac . . . 1838 (Nashville [1837) 1

INTERIOR OF A KEELBOAT CARGO Box 1 From T. B. Thorpe, “Reminiscences of the Mississippi,” Harper’s Magazine, 1855 THE CELEBRATED MIKE FINK ATTACKED BY A WOLF . . 41

From Crockett Almanac . . . 1853 (New York, Boston, Baltimore [1852]) A KEELBOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI 51

From Davy Crockett’s Almanac . . . 1839 (Nashville [1838]

FLATBOAT 207

From Lloyd’s Steamboat Directory (Cincinnati, 1856) CINCINNATI IN 1802 253

From John W. Barber and Henry Howe, The Loyal West (Cincinnati, 1865) MIKE FINK HUNTING FOR BEAR 255

From Crockett Almanac … 1853 (New York, Boston, Baltimore [1852]) SAL FINK’S VICTORY OVER AN OLD BEAR AND CUBS . . . 279

From Crockett Almanac … 1853 (New York, Boston, Baltimore [1852])

Mike Fink in History, Legend, and Story

“THIS BOOK BRINGS TOGETHER the narratives, mostly legendary, about a frontiersman famous in the nineteenth century, Mike Fink. Though anyone who has tried to write poetically about this man has had to regret the prosaic nature of his name, the stories about him are the raw materials for a sort of buckskin and linsey-woolsey saga with appeals as American history, as legend, and (in part) as literature.

“One reason is that the action, the danger, and the violence of three frontiers shaped Fink’s life and the stories based upon it. In the years when his countrymen fought the British and the Indians for the Pennsylvania frontier the gateway to the Mississippi Valley he was born and reared there.

“Later, during the decades when the Mississippi and its tributaries were routes of the vast westward movement, he frolicked, fought, and worked as a river boatman.

“At the last, as a trapper, he followed the Missouri to its headwaters, and he was a mountain man in the Rockies when his life ended.

“Another reason is that his roles on the shifting frontiers and his traits (real and invented) as a man made him a symbol of his era and a hero of many legends and stories.

[What and Where Was Fort Pitt? ” Fort Pitt was a British fort built between 1759 and 1761 during the French and Indian War. The fort was located at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, where the Ohio River is formed. The fort was named after William Pitt, the British secretary of state.” Wikipedia]

Image Credit: Reddit

[According to legend, Mike Fink was born at the upper end of the Ohio River, but much of the myth of Mike Fink took place on the Mississippi River. Almost from the beginning of the history of the USA, the Ohio River connected travelers and traders to the Mississippi River. Mike Fink is from that era and from that period of America’s story.]

• [Location

  Fort Pitt was built in 1758 by the British at the Forks of the Ohio River in what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• Relation to the Great Lakes

  The Great Lakes Region was the site of a widespread American Indian uprising in 1763 called Pontiac’s Rebellion. The rebellion was a result of British policies after the French and Indian War and the growing number of settlers crossing the Allegheny Mountains.] Google ai

I. SCOUT AT FORT PITT AND IN THE INDIAN COUNTRY

“Mike was born, it is generally claimed, in one of the little cabins clustered around Fort Pitt, in about 1770 . 1

“1. Pittsburgh is given as his birthplace as early as 1829 (see p. 57). Several contemporaries dated his birth in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Morgan Neville, who quite possibly knew him, indicated that it was earlier; Hiram Kaine in 1845 gave it as 1780. But Mike’s activity as an Indian scout, even if he began and ended it at an early age, seems to indicate 1770 or, at the latest, 1775.

“There is some uncertainty about both the place and his ancestry. It has been assumed that his parents were Scotch-Irish, as were many people in the settlement, but there is a strong likelihood that they belonged to the Pennsylvania German contingent.2

“[2. Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker says that he was told by John Rathfon of Millersburg, allegedly an old friend of the Fink family, that Mike, the son of a German miller, was born “in the Lykens Valley but early in his life went to Pittsburgh where he was reared by an aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Adam Taub (Letter of December 1, 1955, and story of December 1, 1950 [see p. 242].

“Fink is the German word for “finch” and is a common German name. A will dated September 1, 1821, and recorded October 4, 1824, in Pittsburgh casts a great deal of doubt upon Rathfon’s recollection. This is the will of one Mary Fink, who leaves certain property “to her sons” “Jacob, Michael, Daniel, Andrew, and Abraham Fink” (Ella Chafant [ed.], A Goodly Heritage: Earliest Wills on an American Frontier [Pittsburgh, 1955], pp. 146-47).]

“Long before Mike’s birth and for a number of years after, the land between the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers at the point where they form the Ohio River was the scene of fierce conflict. In 1753, young George Washington, en route to Fort Le Boeuf on a diplomatic mission, had written: “I spent some time in viewing the Rivers and the Land in the Fork; which I think extremely well situated for a Fort, as it has the absolute Command of both Rivers.” The strategic location had made the Point an objective of both the French and the British in a bitter contest which had lasted until 1758. Thereafter, the Indians, on their own initiative or as allies of the British during the Revolution, had attacked it and the lands to the west. After the war, the Indians did not feel that they were involved in the British surrender. So sporadic Indian raids continued into the 1790’s, and the danger did not end until the Battle of Fallen Timbers, forty years after Washington had first urged the building of a fort.

H. M. Brackenridge in 1824, looking back to the Pittsburgh of thirty years before, recalled that “the  Ohio . . . was still the boundary of civilization; for all beyond it was called the Indian country, and associated in the mind with many a fireside tale of scalping knife, hair-breadth escapes, and all the horrors of savage warfare.” 3

[3. Recollections of Persons and Places in the West (2d ed.; Philadelphia, 1868), p. 59.]

And Joseph Doddridge, whose memoirs give vivid pictures of life on the upper Ohio in those days, recalls that “we were few in number, and engaged in perpetual hostility with the Indians, the end of which no one could foresee.4

[4. Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars (Wellsburg, 1824).]

During the decades of “perpetual hostility,” the folk of the settlements were gripped by terror again and again. At almost any time (except during the winter) marauding bands of Indians might swoop down upon the families in isolated cabins- or even upon those nestled close to the stockades. The redmen would burn the crops and the cabins, would ravage and kill and scalp, then would dart away with captives. Doddridge tells how it was; ” well remember, when a little boy, the family was sometimes waked up in the dead of night by an express with a report that the [pg. 4]Indians were at hand. The express came softly to the door or back window, and by a gentle tapping waked the family. This was easily done, as an habitual fear made us ever watchful and sensible to the slightest alarm. The whole family were instantly in motion. My father seized his gun and other implements of war. My stepmother waked up and dressed the children as well as she could, and being myself the oldest of the children, I had to take my share of the burdens to be carried to the fort. There was no possibility of getting a horse in the night to aid us … we caught up what articles of clothing and provision we could get hold of in the dark, for we durst not light a candle or even stir the fire. . . . Thus it often happened that the whole number of families belonging to a fort who were in the evening in their homes were all in the little for- tress before the dawn. . . . “5

[5. Ibid. For details about the warfare with the Indians on the Pennsylvania frontier see also Leland D. Baldwin, Pittsburgh: The Story of a City (1937); and Randolph C. Downes, Council Fires on the Upper Ohio (1940), both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press; Samuel P. Hildreth, Pioneer History . . . (Cincin- nati, 1848); C. Hale Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania (2d ed.; Harrisburg, 1931).]

It was on such a warring frontier that Mike was reared. Every male settler was at least a part-time Indian fighter, and the more adventurous, Mike among them, became scouts.

Scouts or rangers were the men who served as guides or as messengers, who defended the forts and who at times invaded the enemy territory as spies or fighters. These were militiamen, but usually they were unattached to any company or fort. They made their most useful and most dangerous forays alone. A scout would go into the forests with a small load of provisions a bit of jerked venison, a small bag of corn meal, tow for wiping his rifle barrel, bullets, and powder and would expect to take care of his needs and of his physical safety with his tomahawk, his knife, or his flintlock.

One story has it that Mike started as a “market hunter” who supplied the markets of Pittsburgh with fresh game. Later, acccording to several accounts, he became a scout. Among the most venturesome of the frontiersmen, we are told by a writer in 1829, “whilst yet a stripling, Mike acquired a reputation for boldness and cunning far beyond his companions. A thousand legends illustrate the fearlessness of his character.” 6

[6. Seep. 53.]

Unless this was an overestimate, about nine hundred and ninety-nine of these legends have disappeared: this same writer tells the only well-authenticated one we have. Skill in shooting was a prerequisite for a scout, as in fact it [pg. 5]was for survival on the frontier. Legend has it that Mike showed unusual talent as a marksman at ten–about the time most frontier youngsters started to learn to shoot–and that at seventeen he was good enough to join the scouts. When he tried, it was said, he could win all the prizes in a match for a beef, which by an ingenious frontier calculation was divided into “six quarters.” This must have meant that from childhood he had skilled himself in the selection, the care, and the use of his rifle.

The “Kentucky rifle,’ so historians of firearms say, was developed especially to meet the needs of frontiersmen. Developed, as it happened, in Pennsylvania, it was designed to load more quickly, to fire more accurately, to hit with more impact, to keep clean longer, and to handle better than its European ancestors. 7

[7. Harold T. Williamson, Winchester, the Gun That Won the West (Washington, 1952), pp. 3-4; Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Our Rifles (Boston, 1946), pp. 9-17.]

The accuracy which westerners acquired with such weapons was a revelation to easterners and to the British during the Revolution. The Virginia Gazette in 1775 reported:

“On Friday last there arrived at Lancaster, Pennsylvania Captain Crescap’s company of riflemen consisting of 130 active and brave young fellows, many of whom were in the late expedition of Lord Dunmore against the Indians. These men have been bred in the woods to hardships and danger from their infancy. With their rifles in their hands they assume a kind of omnipotence over their enemies. Two brothers in the company took a piece of board 5 inches by 7 inches with a bit of white paper the size of a dollar nailed in the center, and while one held the board upright gripped between his knees, the other at 60 yards without any kind of rest shot 8 balls through it successfully and spared his brother’s thighs. Another . . . held a barrel stave close against his body perpendicularly while one of his comrades at the same distance shot several bullets through it. The spectators were told that there were upwards of 50 persons in the company who could do the same.”

Three of Crescap’s men, it was reported elsewhere, “fired simultaneously at a buzzard flying overhead. The bird fell . . . and . . . examination proved that all three bullets had hit their mark.” 8

[8. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History (Boston, 1910), pp. 78-79.]

Stories of frontier marksmanship, before and after the war, are numerous and in many cases authenticated. They hold that from forty paces, shooting at the head of a nail, a good shot could hit the nail squarely; that from fifty yards on a dark night many a [pg. 6] settler could fan a candle flame by hitting the tip, without extinguishing it. At fifty yards up to ninety yards, Daniel Boone and others of his day could “bark” squirrels knock the animals off branches by clipping the bark from beneath their feet. 9

[9. T. B. Thorpe, “Remembrances of the Mississippi,” Harper’s Magazine, XII (December, 1855), 30.]

A knowledge of marksmanship such as this prepared contemporaries for stories about Mike’s great skill with his rifle, “Bangall,” and for accounts of his most renowned trick that of shooting a tin cup perched atop a companion’s head.

The Kentucky Rife was ideal for frontiermen.

Mike Fink called his gun Bangall.

II.  KEELBOATMAN ON WESTERN WATERWAYS

Charles Cist, Cincinnati’s leading historian in the pre-Civil War period, wrote in 1845:

“The first race of boatmen were the spies and scouts whose first employment ceased when Wayne, at the battle of Fallen Timbers and the treaty of Greenville, gave repose and safety to the settlers of the West. Most of them had become unfitted for the pursuits of agriculture a few followed the chase for subsistence when they could pursue the savage no longer as an occupation, but of the mass, part had imbibed in their intercourse with the Indians a … contempt as well as disrelish for regular and steady labor; and the others were … in distress, or in debt, or discontented. … A boatman’s life was the very thing for such individuals. From the nature of their movements, they felt themselves scarcely responsible to the laws, as indeed they were not, except at New Orleans, where the motley crew, whether residents or strangers, have always been kept with the curb bit in the mouth and the rein drawn tightly up. “10

[10. “The Last of the Girtys,” Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review, I (February, 1845), 234]

The first boatmen had disdain for both the Indians and regular work.

Therefore when Mike ended his activity as a scout by becoming a boatman, he was one of a number who did so.

Even before the steamboat, navigation on America’s great network of western waterways played an important part in the nation’s development. Before the national post roads and before the railways, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the many streams running into them were the best routes for settlers to follow and the only routes between farmers or manufacturers and consumers. Through the years up to the Revolution, movement up and down the rivers steadily increased. And the end of the war greatly accelerated river traffic.

Boatmen’s horns echoed along the swarming rivers, and each [pg. 7]  year the number of boats and passengers increased. During twelve months in 1787-88, according to one estimate, some 500 boats carrying 20,000 people, 8,000 horses, 2,400 cattle, 1,000 sheep, and 700 wagons were floated down the Ohio, and there was no falling off in the decades which followed this remarkable year. Cities and towns sprang up on the banks, and settlements dotted what had recently been wilderness. Kentucky was admitted to statehood in 1792, and by 1800 the population had come to number 220,000. And still the boats moved with the currents, bearing farmers and farmers’ families, domestic animals and chickens, plows and products of new-built factories, to the rich new lands of the West. They stopped along the Ohio or the Mississippi, or they made their way into the interior on smaller streams.

The rivercraft of the movers, many hastily built at points of embarkation, were varied. One startled traveler, looking out at the swarm of boats near Pittsburgh, exclaimed, “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 actually see in motion.” 11

[11. Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years . . . (Boston, 1826), p. 14]

There were pirogues great canoes, each stuffed with a family and its household goods. There were arks huge clumsy thick’planked houseboats, which ambled along with the current, with a family housed at one end and stock at the other. There were giant rafts, galleys, canoes, and “monstrous anomalies reducible to no specific class.” 12

[12. Seymour Dunbar, A History of Travel in America (Indianapolis, 1915), I, 288-92; and A. B. Hulbert, Waterways of West- ern Expansion (Cleveland, 1903), give acounts of early Ohio boating from which the details in this and the following paragraph have been drawn.]

Especially numerous and important were flatboats and keelboats. The former (often called broadhorns because of the steering oars slanting from their two sides) were boxlike structures built of green-oak planks; they were partly covered boats, like covered wagons, were great carriers of pioneers. Perhaps a million people lived on them for weeks at a time in the period 1784-1840. On these craft, twenty to forty feet long, men, women, children, kegs, cooking utensils, furniture, and cattle were most intimately jumbled together during long  journeys. Or the boats carried cargoes of freight to southern ports. But flatboats were good only for downstream journeys: they [pg. 8] were knocked to pieces and used for lumber on arriving at their destinations. The long slender keelboats (the larger of which were sometimes called barges) were more versatile. These were built on a keel so as to ride high in the water and were pointed at both bow and stern. They shot downstream more rapidly: the famous “Susan Amelia” “descended from the Falls of the Ohio to Natchez in 14 days and 5 hours” in 181 1. 13

[13. Thomas Sharf, History of St. Louis and County (Philadel- phia, 1883), II, 1088.]

But their great virtue was that they could also go upstream. At its downriver destination, such a boat could increase its crew of from eight to fifteen men to a crew of from twenty to thirty-six men, loaded with merchandise from the South, and crawl northward against the currents. Between 40 and 120 feet in length, 7 to 20 feet in beam, a keelboat could cany from 15 to 50 tons of freight up- or downriver. 14

[14. Leland D. Baldwin, The Keelboat Age on Western Waters (Pittsburgh, 1941), pp. 44-45. Baldwin distinguishes between the keelboat and the barge. We have grouped the two together.]

They therefore made possible upriver commerce on a large scale. (For an authentic drawing, see p. 51.)

These battlers of currents were necessarily manned by boatmen who were giants of might and daring. On each side of the keelboat was a cleated running board extending from prow to stern. On these boards, the boatmen, marching along and push- ing with long poles again arid again and again, had to win desperate battles against the pull of the current. A student can reconstruct the picture

“: . . . can see the two lines of polemen pass from the prow to the stern on the narrow running board . . . lifting and setting their poles to the cry of steersman or captain. The struggle in a swift “riffle” or rapid is momentous. If the craft swerves, all is lost. Shoulders bend with savage strength; poles quiver under the tension; the captain’s voice is raucous, and every word is an oath; a pole breaks, and the next man, though half dazed in the mortal crisis, does for a few moments the work of two. At last they reach the head of the rapid, and the boat floats out on the placid pool above, while the ‘alligator-horse’ who has had the mishap remarks to the scenery at large that he’d be ‘fly-blowed before sun-down to a certingty'” if that were not the very pole with which he “pushed the broadhorn up Salt River where the snags were so thick that a fish couldn’t swim without rubbing his scales off.” 15

[15. A. B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce (New Haven, [ 35 ] HISTORY, LEGEND, AND STORY 1920), p. 71. For a good contemporary description see S. Wilke- son’s article in The American Pioneer, II (June, 1843), 271-73, or Neville’s sketch on pp. 50-51 of this book. See also cut, p. 51.]

“When the channel was too deep for poling, the keelboatmen had to use other methods, equally strenuous. In “cordeling,” [pg. 9] one end of a long rope was tied to the boat’s mast, the other was carried ashore, and the men tugged the boat along not an easy chore when thick brush or cliffs edged the river or estuaries had to be crossed.

“Or if the shore was impossible, the crew might “warp” carry the rope upriver on a skiff and tie an end to a snag in the river, or a tree on the bank, and then pull the boat ahead with a windlass or by hand.

“If the river was high, they might “bushwhack” each grabbing a branch overhanging the stream and walking from bow to stern on the cleated running board. One can sympathize with one boatman’s comment, “If it wasn’t for the name of riding I’d about as soon walk!”

“Fifteen miles a day was the average, if one counts in the days when the wind was right for the use of the sail. The upstream trip from New Orleans to Pittsburgh took four months or more. 16

[16. Baldwin, The Keelboat Age on Western Waters, pp. 64-66.]

“Keelboatmen, or bargemen, were rated the best athletes in the West. They had enough wind to sing as they pushed their poles or tugged the cordelle. When the boats tied up at night, they went coon hunting, or they captured settlers’ daughters and proved, as one of their songs put it, that devils that they were they could “Dance all night, till broad daylight, And go home with the gals in the morning. “17

[17. W. P. Strickland, The Pioneers of the West (New York, 1856), p. 197.]

“The stories about Mile’s love life were told by authors who knew the boatmen’s reputations as heartbreakers.

“But the widespread belief was that keelers preferred less gentle pastimes, such as getting roaring drunk and painting a town bright red, or demolishing barrooms in taverns, 18

[18. Ibid, p. 198; and Wilkeson, op. cit., p. 272.]

or fighting man-to-man, no holds barred, against any brawler who was available. The champion of each boat wore in his hat a red feather which challenged all rival champions.

“Keelers and barg- ers felt that their particular enemies were flatboatmen and raft- men. They met crews of these inferior boats man for man, enough members of the larger crew standing aside so that the numbers would be equal.

‘

“Or perhaps the champions fought a battle in which there were no genteel rules: “No natural weapons were barred. Fists flew at faces, feet kicked wherever they [pg. 10] could find a target; knees bucked at unprotected crotches; teeth sank wherever there was flesh; fingers clutched at throats and thumbs seemed to gouge out eyes from their sockets.” 19

[19. Herbert and Edward Quick, Mississippi Steamboatin’ . . . (New York, 1926), p. 27.]

“Noses were battered, teeth splintered, and blood was plentifully shed when boatmen squared off and shot fists at one another. 20

[20. A. B. Hulbert, in The Ohio River, a Course of Empire (New York, 1906), pp. 209-10, gives an authentic account of a rough- and-tumble fight during which two battlers suffered, between them, two gouged eyes, a nose clipped off close to the face, a lower lip torn over the chin, and two heads sadly bereft of hair. The traveler who described the struggle said that he had been told that he could tell “a good from a vicious” frontier tavern by noticing whether or not the keeper had lost his ears.]

The widespread tales of these violent battles made impressive the mere statement that Mike was the champion of the waterways and inspired stories about his violent fights and his brutal jokes.

III. TRAPPER AND MOUNTAIN MAN IN THE ROCKIES

St. Louis]

“The last episode in Mike Fink’s career began in 1822 in St. Louis. From this city, since 1764, entrepreneurs had sent traders to barter with Indians along the Missouri River. Since 1794, companies, taking advantage of the discoveries of trappers and such explorers as Lewis and Clark and Pike, had been operating from there.

“By 1822, the fur trade had become a thriving business and an important force in the development of the West. The wide-ranging trappers, usually working on their own as Fink had in his early days as a scout, were the “pathfinders” of the Far West. They were to map the courses of empire, to shape the destiny of the redmen, to have much to do with the marking of our northern boundaries. 21

[21. Trappers guided the Mormons to their future home, the United States army to battlefields in New Mexico, the migrants to California and Oregon. See Hiram M. Chittenden, History of the American Fur Trade of the Far West (New York, 1902), I, x-xii.]

“When, therefore, Fink threw in his lot with the fur traders, he stepped into another important era of our history.

“A newly founded company published the following advertisement in the St. Louis Missouri Republican of March 20, 1822:

“To enterprising young men. The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years. For particulars enquire of Ma/or Andrew Henry, near the lead mines in the county of Washington, who will ascend with, and command, the party; or of the subscriber near St. Louis. [Signed] William H. Ashley”22

[22. Quoted in Chittenden, op. cit., p. 262.]

“This was the beginning of the historic Ashley-Henry operation and of an adventure for Fink which was to end with his death.

“In less than a month, St. Louis and the surrounding country had produced the required men a crew of voyageurs, boatmen, [pg. 11] hunters, trappers, and some less-seasoned youths, who (so a rather stuffy account says) “had relinquished the most respectable employments and circles of society.” Among them were two of the most famous of the mountain men Jim Bridger, also known as “Old Gabe,” later to be celebrated as a champion trapper, guide, and teller of tall tales, and Jedidiah Smith, who during a few years was to mate a great reputation for himself as a trapper and trader. 23[

[23. Bridger figured in several dime novels by Ned Buntline and, later, in Emerson Hough’s The Covered Wagon; see Grenville M. Dodge, Biographical Sketch of James Bridger (New York, 1905); see also Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Indianapolis, 1953).]

“They were to be joined by Hugh Glass, whose great fight with a grizzly bear and whose incredible journey, despite a mangled body, through scores of miles of wilderness, were to be celebrated by yarnspinners and by poets. 24

[24. The story has reached print many times. John G. Neihardt’s epic, The Song of Hugh Glass, was published in 1915.]

“And among them was the deposed king of the keelboatmen, whose trade had languished as more and more steamboats replaced keelboats.

“Mike may well have been put in command of one of the seventy-five-foot keelboats used to carry the food and equipment up a stream which was swollen with spring floods and on a rampage. Twenty to twenty-four men were required on each boat, marching along the runways with their poles or cordelling the boat through the muddy waters. The river was bristling with snags: fifty miles below the mouth of the Kansas River, one buckled through one of the keelboats, and the boat and a ten- thousand-dollar cargo lurched out of sight beneath the surface.

“The expedition pushed on past the tepees of the Pawnees, Otoes, and Sioux and, past the occasional lonely cabins of trappers or settlers. Northwest of the Mandan villages, a band of Assiniboine Indians made a sudden attack and stole fifty horses. Otherwise the trip was uneventful but hard. 25

[25. For accounts of the journey, see Dale L. Morgan, op. cit.; John G. Neihardt, The Splendid Wayfaring (New York, 1920); J. Cecil Alter, James Bridger: Trapper, Frontiersman, Scout and Guide (Salt Lake City, 1925).]

“The party stopped for the season at the mouth of the Yellowstone River; Ashley and a few men went back to St. Louis to organize another party of trappers for the next spring. From the fort, small parties went out to hunt and to trap. One of these included Fink and two of his friends, Carpenter and Talbott. The men spent some of the winter on the Musselshell in the Blood Indian country. 26

[26. This was the testimony of a trapper, Western Review, July, 1829. See the story reproduced on pp. 56-61.]

“George F. Ruxton, in his classical Adventures in Mexico and [pg. 12] the Rocky Mountains (1847) gives an idea of the kind of men trappers had to be and of how they lived during such an expedition. “Callous to any feeling of danger/’ they were closer ‘to the primitive savage’ he thought, “than perhaps any other class of civilized men”: their good qualities were “those of the animal”; they were “White Indians.”

“During the hunt [says Ruxton] regardless of Indian vicinity, the fearless trapper wanders far and near in search of “sign.” His nerves must ever be in a state of tension, and his mind ever present at his call.

“His eagle eye sweeps round the country, and in an instant detects any foreign appearance. A turned leaf, a blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of the wild animals, the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in nature’s legible hand and plainest language. All the wits of the subtile savage are called into play to gain an advantage over the wily woodsman; but with the natural instinct of primitive man, the white hunter has the advantages of a civilized mind, and, thus provided, seldom fails to outwit, under equal advantages, the cunning savage. . . .

“At a certain time, when the hunt is over or they have loaded their pack-animals, the trappers proceed to the “rendezvous,” the locality of which has been previously agreed upon; and here the traders and agents of the fur companies await them, with such as sortments of goods as their hardy customers may require, including generally a fair supply of alcohol. “

“It was probably to such a rendezvous at the main camp that Fink and his companions returned.

“Many accounts tell the rest of the story, but the details vary a great deal. A government record baldly states some facts in part of a document recording “deaths of men caused by accidents and other causes not chargeable to Indians.”

“In a few stiff sentences we are told that in 1825, “Marshall was lost in the willow valley near Salt Lake”; in 1823, “Holly Wheeler died from wounds received from a bear”; in 1824, “Thomas, a half breed, was killed by Williams, on the waters of Bear River.”

“In 1822 [probably in 1823] Mike Fink shot Carpenter Talbot soon after shot Fink, and not long after was drowned at the Tetons.” 27

27. Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, Record Book, Vol. XXXII, containing copies of letters from Indian agents and others to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, September 10, 1830, to April 1, 1832.

“A somewhat more detailed version, the first, as a matter of [pg. 13] fact, to be printed, appeared in the Missouri Republican of July 16, 1823:

“By a letter received in town from one of Gen. Ashley’s expedition we are informed that a man by the name of Mite Fink well known in this quarter as a great marksman with the rifle . . . was engaged in his favorite amusement of shooting a tin cup from off the head of another man, when aiming too low or from some other cause shot his companion in the forehead and killed him. Another man of the expedition (whose name we have not heard) remonstrated against Fink’s conduct, to which he, Fink, replied, that he would kill him likewise, upon which the other drew a pistol and shot Fink dead upon the spot.”

“Many writers were to expand and modify the story set down so briefly here: their varied accounts were to afford interesting data for the folklorist and the historian.

“There was a gruesome sequel to the melodrama at Fort Henry on the Yellowstone which has been noticed by historian Dale L. Morgan: 28

[28. Morgan, op. cit., p. 49.]

“Later in 1823, a party of Blackfoot Indians wandered into the fort, which had been abandoned. We have a report about them: “They found nothing except the bodies of two men [Fink and Carpenter] that had been buried therein. According to their usual barbarity, they commenced to open the graves in order to strip the bodies of whatever clothes might be wrapped around them, but finding they were in a putrid state, they left them without further molestation.” 29

[29. Extract from Edmonton Factory Journal (written by Dun- can Finlayson) published in “The International Significance of the Jones and Immell Massacre and of the Aricara Outbreak in 1823,” ed. A. P. Nasatir, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, XXX (January, 1939), 85-86.]

“Thirty-five years later, an Indian interpreter, who bore the intriguing name of Zephyr Rencontre, was able to point out Fink’s grave to A. H. Redfield, Indian Agent for the Upper Missouri.30

[30. “. . , on the sixth of July, the boats for the conveyance of the Crow annuities being finished and loaded, we started on our Yellowstone trip. We ran down in the afternoon six miles and en- camped for the night at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Here my own interpreter, Zephyr Rencontre, pointed out the grave of the celebrated Mike Finch [sic] (Report of A, H. Redfield, September 1, 1858, to A. M. Robinson, 35th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Exec. Doc. I [Serial 974], 440).]

“””We have, then, good evidence that Mike Fink’s body lay a-mouldering in the grave. His soul or, one hopes, a reasonable facsimile went marching on in the many narratives about him.

IV. ORAL TRADITION AND PRINTED STORIES

Abe Lincoln

“In 1825, sixteen-year-old Abe Lincoln was living near the mouth of Anderson Creek on the Ohio River. He was a farm hand and the operator of a ferryboat which crossed the river. Carl Sandburg tells how he talked with customers of many sorts, [ pg. 14] and “Occasionally came a customer who looted as if he might be one of the ‘half-horse, half-alligator men’ haunting the Ohio water course in those years. There was river talk about Mike Fink . . . the toughest of the crowd … a famous marksman and fighter.” 31

[31. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Yeais (New York, 1926), I, 78-79.]

“Sandburg does not give his evidence, and he may have been guessing. But there is a strong likelihood that Lincoln did hear stories about Mike in 1825 or during one of his flatboat trips to New Orleans in 1828 and 1831. For oral stories appear to have been going the rounds in those years.

“Morgan Neville of Pittsburgh in 1828 said that even during Fink’s lifetime “a thousand legends” (including one told by Fink himself) showed his bravery as a scout; and on the rivers, “from Pittsburg to St. Louis and New Orleans his fame was established.” Neville also testified that the tale of the boatman’s death was told to him by a steamboat pilot.

“In 1829, a fur trader wrote from St. Louis, “Many shooting feats of Mike’s are related here by persons who profess to have witnessed them.” An almanac, published in Nashville in 1837, quotes one Captain Jo Chunk’s claim: “There arn’t a man from Pittsburgh to New Orleans but what’s heard of Mike Fink.” 32

[32. Pp. 52, 60, 64.]

In New Orleans in 1842 33

[33. T. B. Thorpe in the Spirit of the Times, July 16, wrote: “Among the flatboatmen [sic], there were none that gained the notoriety of Mike Fink: his name is still remembered along the whole of the Ohio as a man who excelled in everything. . . .”]

and in Cincinnati in 1845 and 1847, 34

[34. Hiram Kaine wrote in the Cincinnati Miscellany or Antiqui- ties of the West, October, 1845: “Mike Fink was … the most celebrated of all the ‘River men/ To this day there is scarce a city between Pittsburgh and New Orleans that has not some tradition in which he bears a conspicuous part … it would take a whole volume to detail half of the strange legends of which Mike was the hero. . . .” Emerson Bennett, in the preface to his novel in 1847, tells of having heard “spicy anecdotes” about Fink which, unfortunately, he does not repeat.]

writers spoke of widespread oral lore.

“In 1847, Joseph M. Field, a widely traveled actor turned newspaper editor, ticked off five places where he had heard stories: “Fifteen years ago, the writer listened to some stories of Mike told by the late Morgan Neville, Esq., of Cincinnati. … In Louisville, subsequently, many ‘yarns’ respecting the early river hero were repeated to the writer; and since that time in New Orleans, Natchez, and, finally, in St. Louis, anecdotes and stories. . . ,” 35

[35. St. Louis Reveille, June 8, 1844. Field’s description of Neville makes rather doubtful the claim that he had talked with him fifteen years before.]

Mark Twain

It may have been in the same decade that young Sam Clemens, in the riverside town of Hannibal, heard the yarn which he knew about Fink possibly from an old-time boatman, who introduced him to typical keelboatmen’s lingo. 36

[36. A passage in Mark Twain’s Letters to Will Bowen, ed. Theo- dore Hornberger (Austin, 1941), p. 18, recalls the instruction received from General Gaines, for a time Hannibal’s leading drunk- ard. Clemens mentioned Fink, twice. In his Notebook No. 16 (February 11 to September 20, 1882) he wrote, “Mike Fink shooting the tin cup off Carpenter’s head.” His working notes for Huckleberry Finn included this one: “Let some old liar of a keelboat man on a raft tell about the earthquake of 1811 … & about Carpenter & Mike Fink” (Bernrd DeVoto, Mark Twain at Work [Cambridge, 1942], p. 65). It is impossible to say whether these passages recorded a remembrance from childhood or a story Twain heard or read when revisiting the Mississippi and reading about the river preparatory to writing the latter part of Life on the Mississippi.]

“It was in the 1840’s that Lieutenant J. W. Abert, on an expedition into New Mexico, at a camp near Valverde, heard some stories: “This afternoon,” he wrote, “we had a festive scene at the camp [pg. 15] of a trader from Missouri, who still had some fine claret and some good old brandy. We had many tales of wild adventures of prairie life, and hair-breadth escapes. We heard of Mike Fink, who, with two other desperadoes, for a time lived in the Rocky Mountains.” 37

[37. “Report of Lieut. J. W. Abert on His Examination of New Mexico in the Years 1846-47,” U.S. 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Exec. Doc., No. 41 (Washington, 1848), IV, 503. See p. 271.]

And in 1858, A. H. Redfield was shown on the Yellow River “the grave of the celebrated” Mike Fink. 38

[38. See n. 30, p. 36. 39. The story about Mike’s test of his woman’s fidelity is mentioned in 1829 but no details are given. A version is given in 1839 and the story is told in full in 1888. Again, the story of Mike’s I 37] HISTORY, LEGEND, AND STORY death is only sketched at first; later many contradictory details are added.

49. One may wonder whether the story in all its horrors ever appeared in print. Is it possible that Mike was so beyond the pales of decency that on occasion he had his woman hold the cup between her thighs while he shot at it?

50. See pp 64 ,262. It should also be noted that Chunk erroneously placed Mike’s death “at Smithland, behind the Cumberland

“The wide geographic spread and the lengthy time span of these testimonials suggest oral diffusion. There are some other signs: Anecdotes about the king of the boatmen which are merely referred to in early stories are later recounted more fully by writers at some distance in both location and time. 39

“Again, some stories, when retold, offer variations which would have been impossible if details had been fixed in printed versions. In particular, the accounts of Fink’s death as set down in widely separate places, at times distant from one another differ considerably. 40

[40. See pp. 260-77.]

“Finally, some writers about Fink appear to know only local phases of his wide-ranging history, some mentioning only his fame as a hunter or marksman, some his celebrity as a boatman, some only his notoriety as a mountain man. 41

[41. For “Scroggins” and some anonymous almanac writers, he was a hunter and a fine shot nothing more. For a number of authors, he was simply a boatman. Lieutenant Abert knew him only as a desperado who lived in the Rocky Mountains. Whether A. H. Redfield knew anything about him before he talked with an Indian interpreter is doubtful, since he called him “the celebrated Mike Finch” (authors’ italics).]

“If the authors had read much about him, it seems probable that they would have picked up and would have mentioned other phases of his biography.

“However, there is no doubting that printed stories as well as oral traditions contributed to Fink’s fame. In some instances, authors, one is sure, based their statements about oral traditions upon published claims rather than upon personal experiences.

“In other instances, authors may well have invented stories on their own or may have adapted to Fink printed or oral tales originally told about others. Mody Boatright believes, in fact, that writers were chiefly responsible for Fink’s fame.

“Folk tales [he says] tend to cluster around certain heroes. Thus Peter Cartwright, most famous of the frontier circuit-riders complains that “almost all these various incidents that had gained currency throughout the country concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me. …” But the accretion of folk tales around a few names is mainly the work of writers, not the folk.

Crockett becomes famous as a hunter [pg. 16] and backwoods politician, and this makes him a suitable peg upon which almanac makers hang a host of anecdotes originally attributed to others. Mike Fink attains notoriety as a fighting keelboatman. Humorists supplying copy for newspapers, almanacs, and thrillers assigned him any traditional adventures they consider to be in character. 42

42. Folfc Laughter on the American Frontier (New York, 1949), pp. 93-94. ‘

Journalists did indeed assign adventures to Fink which seemed appropriate to him. Probably the story Cassedy told in 1852 about Mike and the sheep was stolen from another boatman, as were probably the two stories, “The Disgraced Scalp-Lock” (1842) and “Lige ShattucFs Reminiscence” (1848). 43

43. See pp. 67, 143, 226. Cassedy says his story had been told about another boatman. The 1842 story may well have been suggested by two widely current stories about Mike, one about his shooting a cup off a companion’s head, the other about his shooting off a Negro’s heel. The 1848 story was appropriate for any hearty drinker who told tall tales.

“Some stories that were told about the king of the boatmen were not even particularly appropriate, for instance, “Deacon Smith’s Bull” (1851). 44

44. Pp. 220-25.

“However, since there is pretty good evidence that there was an accretion of tales around Fink in oral lore, even before many writers got at him, and since oral diffusion apparently continued long after, we suggest that both oral and written stories helped the process, the two types probably interacting. What we appear to have here, in other words, is a type of semioral, semiliterary lore. This combination seems to have been characteristic of the United States and different from the folklore of Europe in some ways but like it in others. 45

45. See Richard M. Dorson, “Print and American Folk Tales ” California Folklore Quarterly, IV (July, 1945), 207-15, for a discussion of such tales and the problems involved in their study.

“However the narratives in print originated, there was a considerable body of them, and the story of their appearance shows how Mike Fink’s fame waxed and waned.

Morgan Neville Written Account
The Last of the Boatmen – 1828

“The mediums in which they were published were, to put it mildly, varied. Take the nineteenth-century appearances of the first noteworthy treatment Morgan Neville’s “The Last of the Boatman.” This was first printed in 1828, in what was then sometimes called (appropriately enough) a “female gift book.”

[MORGAN NEVILLE EARLY WESTERN CHRONICLER  by JOHN T. FLANAGAN

“Morgan Neville was the first notable writer of fiction to be born west of the Alleghenies. Son and grandson of Revolutionary heroes and friend of Lafayette, he was the first man to edit a daily newspaper west of Philadelphia and the first to bring into real prominence the new western humor which was later to culminate so grandly in Mark Twain; yet when he died, on March I,1840, the Pittsburgh Gazette, of which he had once been editor, failed even to note his demise. That obscurity has become even blacker with the intervening years until today Neville’s name does not appear in the Dictionary of American Biography, and literary historians dismiss him with scant credit as the “pioneer in what may be called the ‘Mike Fink’ school of short fiction.” 2

“The reasons for Neville’s obscurity are obvious. He was not a prolific writer, few of his fugitive pieces have survived, and the less than a handful of sketches that remain are brief and discursive. Nevertheless, short narrative bits like the “Last of the Boatmen” and “Reminiscence of Pittsburgh” with its charming portrait of the Chevalier du Bac do not deserve to be forgotten; they retain a freshness of observation that belies their age. Itis to gather together what fragments of Neville’s life remain that this paper has been written.

“Morgan Neville was born in Pittsburgh on Christmas Day, 1783. He came from a family long important in the annals of western Pennsylvania. …

“As a boy Neville attended the famous Pittsburgh Academy, the ancestor of the University of Pittsburgh. …

“Tuition was two dollars a quarter. Among Morgan’s classmates were Henry M.Brackenridge, son of the author of Modern Chivalry,and John I.Scull, son of the founder of the Pittsburgh Gazette*

“Brackenridge has left some interesting recollections of these early school days. To him Neville was an indubitable genius: “his accomplishments in everything which can form a perfect gentleman leave him no superior in this country, and few equals.” 5

“Once he and Neville danced a hornpipe together for the edification of the rest of the students. …

Neville Part Owner of Pittsburgh Gazette

” In 1824 Morgan Neville left Pittsburgh for Cincinnati.  In Cincinnati he became secretary of an insurance company and founded and edited for a little less than a year the Cincinnati Commercial Register, the first daily paper west of Philadelphia. …

Poll Preble Frontier Woman

“Another sketch of Neville’s that has survived is entitled “Poll Preble; or, The Law of the Deer Hunt. ASketch on the Ohio.”16 Western in substance and setting, it includes a vigorous portrait of a frontier ferry tender and huntress; but much of the tale is given over to a conventional courtship, with long-winded family history, verbose courtesy, and females ever ready to fall weeping into each other’s arms.

“Neville begins his tale by describing the background, the Ohio Valley in fall: Our climate knows no spring; but our beautiful autumn compensates for this; our October is superior to a European May. The rich hills that border the Ohio for nearly its whole length, are then covered with a foliage distinguished by as great a variety of colours as the richest gardens of the Old World. The red leaves of the gum, the yellow and brown tints of the maple, the still darker crimson of the scarlet oak peculiar to the west, contrast magnificently witht he green of the white oak, the last to burst forth in the spring, and the last to fall in the autumn. When this mass is tipped by the evening sun of an Indian summer darting its subdued rays through the mild mist of that singular season, the effect is beyond description beautiful, and exquisitely calculated for the indulgence of poetical melancholy. After this excursion into scene painting we are introduced into the hut of Gad Doolittle, a tenant farmer who resembles a squatter, where the protagonist passes the night. For breakfast Gad serves his guest fat pork, corn bread, and weak tea sweetened with black maple sugar.

“Following this repast the guest goes to Preble’s ferry to be taken across the Ohio River by Poll herself. Poll is pictured as a buxom and intelligent frontier girlwho manages the dugout which serves as a ferry with all the dexterity of a voyageur. Later we meet Poll once more, this time as the heroine of a deer hunt. A number of buckskin-clad hunters, each equipped with rifle and scalping-knife (to skin the deer), congregate to drive the anmal towards the river, where others are waiting in canoes to dispatch it by bullet or blade.

“Hounds start several deer from their coverts, and one fine stag breaks immediately for the water. Instantly several paddlers pursue it, but watchers on the shore are startled to see Poll Preble in the van, pushing her frail craft forward with utmost speed. For a moment the animal holds his advantage. Then Poll darts close enough to grasp the horns of the swimming stag and, while liftingthe antlers, calls to her lover on shore to put a bullet through the deer’s head.

“For the foremost of the hunters is just behind and the law of the chase stipulates that anyone who participates in the killis rightfully entitled to a portion of the carcass. …

Neville’s Account of Mike Fink

“Meanwhile, other stories had been printed and in some instances reprinted in a variety of other publications. Illustrated with quaint but lively woodcuts, they appeared in the popular Crockett Almanacs of 1837, 1839, 1851, 1852, and 1853-the first published in Nashville, the later ones in several eastern cities.

“They appeared in a sportsmen’s magazine, comic maga- [pg. 18]  zines, a literary journal, a boatmen’s magazine, and the eminently respectable Harper’s Magazine.

“They were published in newspapers scattered throughout the country. Editors included them in anthologies for British readers published in London Transatlantic Tales, Sketches and Legends (1842) and Traits of American Humour, by Native Authors (1852). A journalist named Thomas W. Knox included one tale in a very miscellaneous compilation The Underground World: A Mirror of Life below the Surface, with Vivid Descriptions of the Hidden Works of Nature and Art, Comprising Incidents and Adventures beyond the Light of Day . . . etc., etc. (Hartford, 1873).

“Mike, one presumes, came under one of the “etcs.”

“Mike’s adventures were also included in histories, in a steamboat directory, in collections of tales and legends, in a paper-backed novel, and in three autobiographies of preachers.

“The list is of course incomplete, but it does seem safe to say that during the nineteenth century readers of many sorts and in many parts of the country over a rather lengthy period were introduced, one way or another, to Mike Fink. The dates of publication of the stories we have found show, it seems likely, how his reputation fared. The period most prolific of “original” stories was between 1842 and 1860, when twenty-three were first published compared with four between 1828 and 1841 and four between 1861 and 1883. Original stories plus reprints and rewritten stories grouped as follows:

1828-40 10
1841-50 24
1851-60 23
1861-70 1
1871-80 4
1881-90 7
1891-1900 3
The great decades were the 1840’s and the 1850’s. In the 1840’s, there were two periods of one year each and one period of two years when no stories appeared; in the 1850’s, there were two periods of one year each when none appeared. Between 1828 and 1900, the longest spans without original stories or reprints [pg. 19]  ran from 1861 through 1865 and from 1867 through 1872, periods of five and six years respectively.

“Fink’s fame, then, grew up to the 1860’s; then, abruptly, began to fade. By 1900, he was no longer a vital tradition, although a few original stories about him (some of dubious authenticity) were to appear in the twentieth century.

“When in the 1920’s and 1930’s his name again began to occur frequently in print, he had become a figure of history rather than of living legend.

V. FOLKLORISH ASPECTS

“In both oral and printed narratives, Mike Fink cavorted precariously on a line between history and legend or between folklore and more sophisticated fiction.

“Some material classifies pretty safely as history. There is, for instance, the oral testimony of one Claudius Cadot of Scioto County, Ohio (born in 1793), set down on the basis of an interview by James Keyes in his Pioneers of Scioto County: Being a Short Biographical Sketch of Some of the First Settlers of Scioto County, Ohio (Portsmouth, 1880), pp. 3-4:

“When the war [of 1812] was ended Claudius went on the river to follow keel boating for the purpose of raising money to buy a piece of land. Keel boating on the river was the only place where a man could go to earn money at all; and the wages paid was very low even there. The first boat he applied to was commanded by the celebrated Mike Fink. The boat belonged to John Finch who was one of a company that run keel boats from Pittsburgh to all the various points in the west. Fink eyed young Claudius very closely, and asked him if he could push. Claudius replied that he could try. So Fink, liking the appearance of the young man, agreed to give him 50 cents a day, that being the wages for a common hand on the Ohio at that time. Claudius soon learned the art of keel boating and stayed with Fink a long time. As he went on to the river to make money, he did not spend it as fast as he got it, which was the usual practice among boatmen at that time. He very soon acquired a considerable pile, all in silver. He got Mike to put it in his trunk for safe keeping. Mike observed to him as he had the biggest pile he ought to cany the key.

“It was the usual practice among boatmen at that time when they landed at a town to go up into town and get on a spree. Mike Fink was as fond of spreeing and rowdying as any of his hands, and it was always necessary for someone to stay with the boat. Claudius, [pg. 20]  not choosing to spend his money in that way always remained with the boat, which suited him better than spending his money in drinking and carousing, and was very satisfactory to the captain and the rest of the crew.

Mike Fink was a very noted character in his day. He could scarcely be called a good man, although he had some good traits in his composition. He was one of the most wild and reckless rowdying men of his class. Yet he had respect for a man of different habits, and when a man like Claudius Cadot, whose sole aim was to do his duty and save his money [worked for him], Fink placed greater confidence in him and gave him greater privileges than the rest of his crew. When he paid him at the end of the year he gave him sixty two and a half cents a day, when the bargain was for only fifty cents a day.

“Mr. Cadot followed keel boating four years, during which time he saved money enough to purchase a quarter section of land and settle down to the life of a farmer.

“This bears evidence of authenticity partly because of its context, partly because its picture of Mike as an intelligent businessman is somewhat at odds with the popular conception of Fink which was contemporaneous with it. Yet it is possible that even this apparently straightforward reminiscence is touched by the lore about the boatman, since it makes a great deal of Mike’s constant roistering one of the most persistent motifs in tales about him.

“A similar reminiscence of eighty-two-year-old Captain John Fink appears to be a compound of history and legend. Also based upon an interview this one in 1887 it was published in the Ohio Centennial Edition of Henry Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio (Columbus, 1888), I, 321-22:

“Capt. John Fink in his youthful days arose bright and early. He was smart, and so he got to Bellaire long before the town; indeed, officiated at its birth. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1805. Mike Fink, the last and most famous of the now extinct race of Ohio and Mississippi river boatmen, was a relative, and he knew Mike knew him as a boy knows a man. “When I was a lad/* he told me, “about ten years of age, our family lived four miles above Wheeling, on the river. Mike laid up his boat near us, though he generally had two boats. This was his last trip, and he went away to the farther West; the country here was getting too civilized, and he was disgusted. This was about 1815.  [pg. 21]

“In the management of his business Mike was a rigid disciplinarian; woe to the man who shirked. He always had his woman along with him, and would allow no other man to converse with her. She was sometimes a subject for his wonderful skill in marksmanship with the rifle* He would compel her to hold on the top of her head a fin cup filled with whiskey, when he would put a bullet through it. Another of his feats was to make her hold it between her knees, as in a vice, and then shoot.”

“Here some new facts have the appearance of being part of the informant’s recollection that Mike “generally had two boats” and that he at one time moored his boat near Wheeling. The claim that Mike went “to the farther West” in 1815 seems dubious unless (as is possible) it means that Mike thereafter operated only on rivers west of Wheeling.

“Also, Mike’s stern- ness as a disciplinarian is in contrast with the usual picture of him. 47

“Here and in Cadot’s account there is the possibility that an old man is, humanly enough, showing wisdom superior to that of people who have actually known the boatman by attacking stories which he has heard or read.

“But the rest of the interview is based upon widespread stories about Mike and his women, except for one detail which, according to Victorian standards, had been considered too horrible to record 48

“In 1829, an anonymous author, probably the Rev. Timothy Flint, had mentioned a rifle shot test but had felt impelled to omit the anecdote (see p. 58), and in 1839, a Crockett Almanac had presented a censored version (p. 56).

that he tested his girlfriend’s faithfulness by shooting a cup held between her knees. 49

“A purported interview with an old-time boatman, Captain Jo Chunk, published in 1837, classifies as legend. It appeared in a publication not noteworthy for historical accuracy, a Crockett Almanac.

“Chunk was quoted as saying, “There arn’t a boatman on the river to this day but what he strives to imitate him [Fink], . . . Mike was looked upon as a kind of king among the boatmen, and he sailed the prettiest craft there was to be found about these ‘ere parts.” The information may be correct, but it is also quite in line with tradition. Chunk’s further claim that Mike was “the first boatman who dared to navigate a broad horn down the falls of the Ohio” almost certainly is fiction or legend rather than history. 50

These reminiscences, true and legendary, not only represent the tendency of fantasy to mingle with fact, they also, it happens, give us almost all the information available concerning Fink’s skill or activity as a boatman. 51 Mike’s fame rests upon other talents. As one historian, quoting Mike’s traditional chal- [pg. 22]  lenge, remarks, Mike has “left the record, not that he could load a keelboat in a certain length of time, or lift a barrel of whiskey with one arm, or that no tumultuous current had ever compelled him to back water, but that he could ‘out-run, out-hop, out- jump, throw down, drag out, and lick any man in the county.” 52 One reason may be that the stories as a rule were recorded by writing fellows who knew little about boating. A more important reason probably is that the most memorable stories dealt with something more significant Mike as an archetype and as a heroic figure.

Since the development of the backwoodsman and of his kin spirit, the boatman, as a type, has been traced and documented elsewhere, 53 we shall merely sketch it here. The story starts in the early days of the nineteenth century when the Kentuckian or the backwoodsman, as the generic frontiersman was called, became as well known a type as, say, the stingy Scotsman in many anecdotes of today. He was, in general belief, a man who was lawless, ignorant, rough mannered, strong, a heavy drinker, and a ferocious fighter. Story after story so pictured him. Later, when former Indian scouts, ex-Revolutionary soldiers and fugitives from the law or the plow found that boating offered the roughest adventures and the best tests of a man’s toughness, boatmen won fame as a breed of super-Kentuckians. “With the freer ways of the waters,” as Constance Rourke suggests, “the boatman perhaps emerged more quickly as master of his scene than the backwoodsman.”

When, eventually, western settlers became worried about their reputation, there was, on occasion, a tendency to suggest that the Kentuckians had been maligned because they had been confused by outsiders with the more savage men of the rivers. In 1830, for instance, Mathew Carey wrote:

“… the character of the citizens of Kentucky … is on the whole estimable I am well aware that it by no means corresponds with the prejudices of the generality of the citizens of the other states. One circumstance which tends to perpetuate the prejudice is the conduct of the Kentucky boatmen on the Ohio and Mississippi, [pg. 23] some of whom appear to pride themselves on the roughness and rudeness of their manners “half horse, half alligator, etc.” 54

And James H. Perkins, writing on ‘The Pioneers of Kentucky” in 1845, said:

“The first settlers of Kentucky have had no little injustice done them, in consequence of the existence at a later period of a class of “river men/’ who became, in the view of many, the representatives of the whole race of pioneers. But nothing could be more unlike the boasting, swearing, fighting, drinking, gouging Mike Finks than Boone, Logan, Harrod, and their comrades, the founders of the commonwealth .”55

The indication is that there was a succession of type portrayals: first the Kentuckian or backwoodsman emerged; then an attempt was made to transfer his fame, such as it was, to the boatmen. When Mike Fink rose to pre-eminence among the boat- men, he became the personification of their qualities. As Leland D. Baldwin has remarked:

“Mike Fink was the archetype of the western boatmen. [As we read about him] from the depths of our easy chairs we … follow him in his relaxations of raiding camp meetings, battling with ber- serk rage against other mighty “gougers,” shooting the tin cup from his comrades’ heads, and chasing the spangled skirts of New Orleans. Boastful, blasphemous, and brutal, save for rhetorical pur- poses he acknowledged no code nor deity not of his own making that is, none beyond the spirits that dwelt within the whisky jug. With this familiar oracle ever waiting at his elbow to be consulted Mike toiled and rollicked and gouged his way through the world. “56

Baldwin’s summary of the stories is excellent. The accounts we have of Mike’s victories in single combat, to be sure, are more generalized than we would like. Time and again, we are told that the red feather in his hat and his boasts proclaimed him king bully-boy of the rivers. We are told that when he was stimulated by whiskey and we are instructed that he could drink a gallon a day without staggering he was able to “clear three ballrooms” and to lick two New Orleans gens d’armes sent to arrest him. But the most extensive stories are those which tell of his defeats. One account of a fight, said to have been pub- [pg.24]lished between 1824 and 1826, we have been unable to find: it may be an exception. 57 A few stories, recorded only recently, tell of victories. For the rest in stories at least he was humbled by Peter Cartwright, Jack Pierce, the sheriff of Westport, and probably others. (It may be worth noticing that all these tales came late in the development of the legend.) When he and his crew were involved, they came out better, notably in the narratives of Field and Bennett. But in at least one late unprinted story, he and his crew suffered ignominious defeat. 58

Other stories about Fink during his period as a boatman for the most part tell of his brutal or lawless practical jokes and his marksmanship, often in combination. Early and late, we hear of his unchivalrous treatment of his wenches. We hear often of his shooting off a Negro’s heel for the fun of it, and one story tells how he shot off an Indian’s scalp-lock. We learn of his playfully stealing some of the cargo with which he had been entrusted and of his making a mockery of law courts on several occasions. So he emerges from a whole series of anecdotes and tales as a boatman’s boatman a champion of the unrestrained and unrestrainable roughnecks.

The nature of the stories, and the attitudes which they reveal, cast an interesting light upon the Americans who cherished them. As Daniel C. Hoffman remarks:

“In a folk group the areas of shared interest and common sympathy encompass almost the whole of the people’s lives. Hence, from their socially accepted stories we can infer a great deal about the ways in which members of a group look at their relationships to each other, to nature, to the supernatural, and to others outside the group. In short, we can generalize from the folk tale about the society which it represents. “59

In Fink we have, in Constance Rourke’s words, “one of those minor deities whom men create in their own image to magnify themselves.” In the tales about this savage and lawless brawler, his creators were either tolerant or actually adulatory: “Many of the tales exhibited the broad, blind cruelty of the backwoods; yet many of them insisted that Fink was good.” 60 A British critic comments: “He endeared himself as a lawbreaker to men who [pg. 25]  were hindered by the law in exploiting the lucrative possibilities of the frontier; and he was the more admired for being as distinguished as a drinker as he was as a gunman.” 61 And Bernard DeVoto furnishes an excellent summary;

“The boatmen were the sublimate of frontier hardness. And America, incurably artistic, demanded a culture hero. Mike Fink … be- came the symbol. The legend of Mike Fink is the boatman apotheosized. He was the marksman who could not miss, the bully-boy who could not be felled, unmatchable in drink, invincible to wenches. He was a Salt River roarer. … To the admiration of the frontier, he shot the protruberant heel from a nigger’s foot or the scalplock from an Indian’s head. He fought a thousand combats, whose reso- nance increases through the years till they are hardly separable from Paul Bunyan’s. He was superior to the ethics of timid souls and no court restrained him, though, for a favor, he might ride to one in a keelboat pulled by oxen. . . . His purer escapades rippled across the nation. . . . The water fronts of three thousand miles cherished the less printable stories of a frontier Casanova. Casanova, together with Paul Bunyan, merges into Thor, and Mike is a demigod of the rivers even before he dies the boatman immortally violent, heroic, un- conquerable. “62

The final sentence in the paragraph by DeVoto introduces another way in which the stories were shaped, since it compares Mike with several mythical heroes. As early as 1828, Morgan Neville (partly for literaiy reasons) had compared the river champion with another assortment of such figures Hercules, Roland, “the favourite Knight of the Lion Heart/’ and Rob Roy. Thereafter his name was frequently linked with that of Hercules. /. M. Field in 1844 compared him with Jason and “a river god.” In 1933, a British admirer saw him doubling “the character parts of two national heroes the strong man, Kwa- sind, and the great boaster, lagoo . . . like lagoo he was a great stoiy-teller/’ 63 Beyond the resemblance to particular heroes, however, there is a resemblance to the typical hero. Although the tales about Fink were never fused into a saga or an epic, 64 one may say of them what Richard M. Dorson has said of the stories of Davy Crockett, that in many ways they “possess the leading motives and conform to the growth structure of all Old World heroic story.” 65 [pg.26] 

 Fink, like Old World heroes, is (to quote Dorson) “a mighty hero whose fame in myth has a tenuous basis in fact.” He does not have a “remarkable birth” but he has “precocious strength.” which enables him to handle a rifle, to take part in the defense of the Fort Pitt stockade, and to become a ranger at an early age. He utters “vows and boastings” in story after story, and these parallel in many ways the vauntings of ancient heroes. 66 One of his boasts, in an 1838 almanac story, runs: “I’ve got the hand- somest wife, and the fastest horse, and the sharpest shooting iron in all Kentuck.” This follows the formula of “pride of the hero in his weapons, his horse, his dog, his woman” and the personal name Mike has for his gun, “Bang-all,” or “Old Bets,” also is in the tradition. “From precocious infancy,” says Dorson, “. . . the heroic life cycle is apt to follow an established pattern embroidered with fierce hand-to-hand encounters and conquests, ardent wooings, travels in far lands, and superhuman exploits” and again the parallel is clear.

Finally: “A fundamental requirement of heroic legend is some means of terminating the career of the unconquerable hero in a way that crowns rather than mars his record. Accordingly death, characterized always by a strong sense of fatalism, comes through supernatural decree or artifice, through treachery or overwhelm- ing odds; omens, visions, warnings, and portents inform the champion that his time is up,” says Dorson. Fink died an ex- traordinaiy assortment of deaths. When he left the rivers to go to the Far West, it was something like a defeat and a departure for Valhalla. Then came a death which, according to the earliest accounts of it, was sordid enough. But as time passed, folk fancy and the fancy of fiction writers changed the story time after time, bringing it closer to the patterns of the heroic story. Field in 1844 had Mike treacherously killed because he pleaded for understanding from a man who was afraid of him. In 1847, Bennett had an old crone, who was a fortuneteller, predict the dire event. In 1847, also, Field, in another account, had a super- stitious character, Jabe Knuckles, issue a series of cryptic warn- ings, while a chain of strange coincidences and vengeful pursuits [pg. 27]  led to three interrelated deaths, of which Mike’s was one; “as if,” he said, “fate had but one end reserved for all those who through life had been woven in his checkered history.” And many others modified the account in a variety of ways. 67

Of course there were divergences from the pattern which were unmistakably American. The Old World heroic story was about royalty: these stories were about a king, but a king of keelboatmen. The society of the American stories had as its equivalent for the central hall or gathering place the deck or the cabin of a keelboat or the brothels of New Orleans. And many of the ele ments were comically represented: the boasts and the vows were consciously comic, and so were the accounts of many of the superhuman deeds. Even in its Heroic Age, America was too sophisticated, or perhaps too lacking in the sense of religion, to take all the heroic ingredients without a pinch of salt or a dash of pepper. Yet the tales, relieved though they were by laughter and satire, conformed to many of the traditions of ancient mythology.

VI. LITERARY ASPECTS

In the field of “respectable” American fiction during the years of Mike Fink’s waxing fame, the giants were Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, and Herman Melville. These may seem to be pretty remote from the relatively “unrespectable” writers who wrote about the legendary boatman, yet they had some relationships. Irving showed how legends such as “Rip Van Winkle” (1819), “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), and “The Devil and Tom Walker” (1824) could be adapted to the American scene; and in “A Tour of the Prairies” (1835), Astoria (1836), and Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837), he used life in the Far West as his subject matter. Hawthorne, too, between 1830 and 1851, discovered the attractions and the possibilities of native legends. Cooper in his Leatherstocking novels (1823-41) and other writings wrote vastly popular narratives, with a legendary quality, about frontiersmen and Indians. Melville in his picaresque travel romances [pg.28]  and his sea stories recorded the comic adventures and wanderings of common sailors; here and elsewhere he frequently referred to the West; 68 and in Moby-Dick (1851) he wrote what several discerning critics have seen to be a superbly transfigured tall tale.

And during the first half of the nineteenth century these great writers as well as lesser ones were much concerned with theorizings about fiction which shaped the forms of the writings about Fink. They were worried, for instance, about finding ways to give their writings a national coloration and (astonishing though it now seems) about the possibility of finding characters who were distinctly American. 69 In time, they managed to see that, although Americans did not divide into classes like those of the Old World, they did divide into sectional and occupational classes which were somewhat analogous. “We do most seriously deny/’ wrote the critic W. H. Gardiner belligerently in 1822, “that there is any . . . fatal uniformity among us. … We bold- ly insist that in no country on the face of the globe can there be found a greater variety of specific character than is at this mo- ment developed in these United States/’ He asks rhetorical questions, providing instances: “Is the Connecticut pedlar, who travels over mountain and moor … the same animal with the long shaggy boatman ‘clear from Kentuck’ who wafts him on his way over the Mississippi or the Ohio? … Is there no bold peculiarity in the white savage who roams over the remote hunt- ing tracts of the West?” 70 Gardiner was not unique in seeing boatmen as a class to be pictured imaginatively. Ralph Waldo Emerson in “The Poet” (1844) spoke of “our boats” as part of the “incomparable materials” available for American poetiy. And in 1860, Walt Whitman in “Our Old Feuillage,” talking of the “free range and diversity” within the unified nation, gave this picture among others of similar classes:

“On rivers boatmen safely moor’d at nightfall in their boats under shelters of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the ban/o or fiddle, others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking. . . . [pg. 2 9]  Longfellow in “Evangeline” (1847) made his heroine’s lover a rather ethereal boatman and trapper in the Far West.

But most critics and authors tended to feel that members of such groups were unsatisfactory as main characters in novels or poems. Gardiner said of the “varieties of specific character” he had discovered that they were proper for a minor fictional form, “the popular and domestic tale.” “But where,” he asked, “are your materials for the higher order of fictitious composition? What have you of the heroic and the magnificent?” The trouble, he implied, was that there were no buildings in America with antique associations, and, although the forests were magnificent, “they are connected with no legendary tales of hoary antiquity.” Thus like many writers of his day, including Cooper and Hawthorne, 71 he was worried about America’s brief past.

These attitudes meant two things about the writings on Fink that they were likely to be brief and unpretentious rather than long and heroic, and that they would do what could be done to give him at least a touch of antiquity. Essays, tales, and anecdotes rather than novels or epic poems were used for most of the incidents in Mike’s life. When he got into a longer fiction, such as Bennett’s novel of 1848, though his name was in the title, he almost had to be, in accordance with the fashion, a minor character, disappearing from the book for chapters at a time, while a milksop hero and a peaches-and-cream heroine took over the stage. Or if he became the hero of a longer narrative Field’s serial of 1847, for instance the novelette was destined to remain in its obscure place in a St. Louis newspaper, never to be published as a book. The popular tale was the place for such a lowly character.

Even in writing such tales, however, authors had a try at pushing Mike back into the past. Beginning five years after his death, three stones and a play all took for their title or subtitle “The Last of the Boatmen,” and it was customary for authors to use the phrase in writing about him. Actually he was nothing of the sort. As late as the year 1840, there were four hundred and fifteen arrivals of keelboats (presumably manned by boat- [pg. 30]  men) at Pittsburgh; and in 1847, some fifty-Eve keelboats were still plying the Mississippi. Keelboats were operated in numbers as late as I8S5. 72 Why, then, this dubbing of Fink as “the last of the boatmen” by men who knew better? The reason probably is that the writers were trying to connect this fairly recent figure with a fairly remote age. “Last” was a favorite word during the era as in The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1806), ‘The Last Rose of Summer” (1808), The Last of the Lairds (1826), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), “The Last Leaf’ (1831), The Last of the Foresters (1856), and, in the form of a juvenile story, The Last of the Huggermuggers (1856) . Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who knew a good thing when he found it, used the word in The Last Days of Pompeii in 1834 and thereafter in the titles of three of his novels. 73 Writers about Mike were doing what they could with the magic word to give the embarrassingly new fellow a little antiquing. The same desire doubtless led writers to compare him on numerous occasions with such ancient heroes as Hercules, Jason, Apollo, Roland, and others. One author had the gall to put words into Mike’s mouth that were an elegy for the past “Where’s the fun, the frolicking, the fighting? Gone! gone! The rifie won’t make a man a living now he must turn nigger and work. If forests continue to be used up, I may yet be smothered in a settlement.” 74 But most stuck at giving Fink words so incongruous with his reputation.

The narratives which gave him that reputation were shaped by two influences in addition to the theories about portraying such a character in fiction the nature of their origin and the nature of the genre to which they belonged. The folklore from which many stories derived, as Ruth Benedict has pointed out, is often characterized by the use of authentic details: “Among any people … the pictures of their own daily life is incorporated in their tales with accuracy and detail. . . . People’s folk tales are in this sense their autobiography and the clearest mirror of their life.” 75 Furthermore, many of the stories were humorous. Particularly in a romantic period, humor tends to be anti- romantic, emphasizing the incongruity between its characters [pg. 31] and its style and the pretentious characters and the ornate style of romantic writings. And in tall tales, mundane or even vulgar characters and diction are wonderfully incongruous with the soaringly imaginative scenes and happenings. As Bernard De- Voto has said: “The Fink stories belong to the category of legend or fable, if you like, or folklore. And yet … they are the vehicle of realism. Wearing the form of … humor, realism first enters American fiction; it is with the frontier humor that the realistic depiction of character first becomes a literary force. There had been before it no opposition to the swooning Ange- linas, the bearded barons with pasts in piracy or bastardy, of our romance/’ 76 DeVoto somewhat overstates the case, but the claim that these stories and others like them were important in initiating the development of realism in fiction is a valid one.

The realism in the stories meant that these narratives gave emphasis to an important aspect of the westward movement elsewhere neglected. V. L. Parrington noticed this in relation to the lore about Crockett and Fink (of whom he disapproved):

“The crossing of the Appalachian barrier . . . was an undertaking that had fired the imagination. Romantic in spirit and scope, it was meanly picaresque in a thousand unlovely details. Plain men engaged in it, provident and improvident, hard-working and shiftless; heroes had a share in it, but blackguards and outlaws and broken men the lees and settlings thrown off from the older communities had a share as well. The world that provided a stage for the courage of Daniel Boone and the fighting qualities of George Rogers Clark bred also the Davy Crocketts and Mike Finks and Col. William [sic] Suggses, who discovered their opportunities for the development of less admirable qualities; and it engulfed in its depths a host of nameless adventurers who drifted into the wilderness settlements, drank and quarreled and begot children, . . . spread a drab poverty along the frontier. “77

Parrington is possibly too severe with men such as Fink, and his implication that they scattered poverty as they went westward is subject to some doubt. Some of the rascals doubtless prospered tremendously. And they were important in the movement. When it came to fighting Indians, steering downstream, or battling upstream, and when it came to blazing trails into the [pg. 32]  wilderness, the roughnecks were as useful as the pious brethren, perhaps even more useful. As a British critic suggests: “. . . it is not irrational to admire those of whom Mite was typical, for their defects were defects of qualities which were to make the frontier habitable for law-abiding but less enterprising citizens. They were reckless, and because they were reckless they were useful.” 78

One other literary aspect of the stones is worth a few words the handling of dialogue. The theory of the time recognized that the use of dialect was one of the important devices for the depiction of low characters. Reviewing ten recent novels, Jared Sparks in 1825 found a new vogue of which he approved: “The actors . . . have not only a human but also a national, and often a provincial character . . . exemplified in modes of speech.” 79 A few years later a southern critic was telling authors that novelists’ “success … as delineators of real life … is in proportion to the fidelity with which they copy the diction of whatever rank they introduce of the vulgar, no less than the exalted.” 80

In the varied narratives about Fink, this injunction was quite faithfully followed. Mike had to follow frontier ritual and shout boasts, and writer after writer gave this chamipon of boasters the most imaginative boast he could concoct. 81 He was reputed to be a witty tall talker, and throughout the stories there runs a fine stream of figurative speech mingled with earthiness the typical amalgam of this kind of utterance. In an almanac of 1839, for instance, after telling how wonderful he is, he shouts, “and if any man dare doubt it, I’ll be in his hair quicker than hell can scorch a feather.” Following the idyllic elegy he is given to mouth in Thorpe’s story of 1842, he gets back into character by saying, “If the Choctaws or Cherokee or the Massassip don’t give us a brush as we pass along, I shall grow as poor as a strawed wolf in a pitfall.” In Robb’s story of 1847, he suggests, “Jest pint out a muskeeter at a hundred yards and Til nip off his right hinder eend claw at the second /int afore he kin hum, Oh, don’t!” He emerges from the tangled web of coincidences and improbabilities of Field’s story in 1847 to say, “. . . that cussed [pg. 33]  old cow . . . had the orfullest holler hind its shoulders you ever did see, and the old folks being petiklar careful about the crittur, they jest insisted that I should foller it around in wet weather and bale its bade out. . . .” In Bennett’s melodramatic novel of 1848, he addresses his crew: “Boys, this here’s a night. . . . How the wind rolls and trembles about lite a dying craw-fish, and sprinkles the water in your faces, my hearties; and all for your own good, too. . . . Why, ef it warn’t for sech times like this what in natur would become on ye, my angels? … fur ye never git water nearer to ye nor the river. . . .” Even the pious biogra- pher of the Rev. Peter Cartwright in his anecdote of 1850 gives Mike an appropriate speech: “By golly, you’re some beans in a bar-fight, I’d rather set to with an old he in dog-days.”

Passages such as these led Constance Rourke to say of Fink, “His language was one of his glories, matching his power to push a pole. The ear attuned to delicate melodies may hear only the roar. Yet a loosely strung poetry belongs to these apostrophes, and its elements are worth mastering.” 82 “As a talker,” agrees Mark Van Doren, “he is sublime.” 83

Here the American language began to bring about a revolution in American writing by finding its way into subliterature. Before the end of the century, Mark Twain, reared in a town by the Mississippi, was going to put it into literature to stay. Snatches of talk such as this make the reading of a fair share of these narratives about Mike Fink rewarding even today. Furthermore, these combinations of history and legend, of humor and of fiction good, mediocre, and downright bad teach the reader a great deal about our American past.

NOTES

1. Pittsburgh is given as his birthplace as early as 1829 (see p. 57). Several contemporaries dated his birth in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Morgan Neville, who quite possibly knew him, indicated that it was earlier; Hiram Kaine in 1845 gave it as 1780. But Mike’s activity as an Indian scout, even if he began and ended it at an early age, seems to indicate 1770 or, at the latest, 1775. [ 34]

2. Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker says that he was told by John Rathfon of Millersburg, allegedly an old friend of the Fink family, that Mike, the son of a German miller, was born “in the Lykens Valley but early in his life went to Pittsburgh where he was reared by an aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Adam Taub (Letter of December 1, 1955, and story of December 1, 1950 [see p. 242]. Fink is the German word for “finch” and is a common German name. A will dated September 1, 1821, and recorded October 4, 1824, in Pittsburgh casts a great deal of doubt upon Rathfon’s recollection. This is the will of one Mary Fink, who leaves certain property “to her sons” “Jacob, Michael, Daniel, Andrew, and Abraham Fink” (Ella Chafant [ed.], A Goodly Heritage: Earliest Wills on an American Frontier [Pittsburgh, 1955], pp. 146-47).

3. Recollections of Persons and Places in the West (2d ed.; Philadelphia, 1868), p. 59.

4. Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars (Wellsburg, 1824).

5. Ibid. For details about the warfare with the Indians on the Pennsylvania frontier see also Leland D. Baldwin, Pittsburgh: The Story of a City (1937); and Randolph C. Downes, Council Fires on the Upper Ohio (1940), both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press; Samuel P. Hildreth, Pioneer History . . . (Cincin- nati, 1848); C. Hale Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania (2d ed.; Harrisburg, 1931).

6. Seep. 53.

7. Harold T. Williamson, Winchester, the Gun That Won the West (Washington, 1952), pp. 3-4; Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Our Rifles (Boston, 1946), pp. 9-17.

8. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History (Boston, 1910), pp. 78-79.

9. T. B. Thorpe, “Remembrances of the Mississippi,” Harper’s Magazine, XII (December, 1855), 30.

10. “The Last of the Girtys,” Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review, I (February, 1845), 234.

11. Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years . . . (Boston, 1826), p. 14.

12. Seymour Dunbar, A History of Travel in America (Indianapolis, 1915), I, 288-92; and A. B. Hulbert, Waterways of West- ern Expansion (Cleveland, 1903), give acounts of early Ohio boating from which the details in this and the following paragraph have been drawn.

13. Thomas Sharf, History of St. Louis and County (Philadel- phia, 1883), II, 1088.

14. Leland D. Baldwin, The Keelboat Age on Western Waters (Pittsburgh, 1941), pp. 44-45. Baldwin distinguishes between the keelboat and the barge. We have grouped the two together.

15. A. B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce (New Haven, [ 35 ] HISTORY, LEGEND, AND STORY 1920), p. 71. For a good contemporary description see S. Wilke- son’s article in The American Pioneer, II (June, 1843), 271-73, or Neville’s sketch on pp. 50-51 of this book. See also cut, p. 51.

16. Baldwin, The Keelboat Age on Western Waters, pp. 64-66.

17. W. P. Strickland, The Pioneers of the West (New York, 1856), p. 197.

18. Ibid, p. 198; and Wilkeson, op. cit., p. 272.

19. Herbert and Edward Quick, Mississippi Steamboatin’ . . . (New York, 1926), p. 27.

20. A. B. Hulbert, in The Ohio River, a Course of Empire (New York, 1906), pp. 209-10, gives an authentic account of a rough- and-tumble fight during which two battlers suffered, between them, two gouged eyes, a nose clipped off close to the face, a lower lip torn over the chin, and two heads sadly bereft of hair. The traveler who described the struggle said that he had been told that he could tell “a good from a vicious” frontier tavern by noticing whether or not the keeper had lost his ears.

21. Trappers guided the Mormons to their future home, the United States army to battlefields in New Mexico, the migrants to California and Oregon. See Hiram M. Chittenden, History of the American Fur Trade of the Far West (New York, 1902), I, x-xii.

22. Quoted in Chittenden, op. cit., p. 262.

23. Bridger figured in several dime novels by Ned Buntline and, later, in Emerson Hough’s The Covered Wagon; see Grenville M. Dodge, Biographical Sketch of James Bridger (New York, 1905); see also Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Indianapolis, 1953).

24. The story has reached print many times. John G. Neihardt’s epic, The Song of Hugh Glass, was published in 1915.

25. For accounts of the journey, see Dale L. Morgan, op. cit.; John G. Neihardt, The Splendid Wayfaring (New York, 1920); J. Cecil Alter, James Bridger: Trapper, Frontiersman, Scout and Guide (Salt Lake City, 1925).

26. This was the testimony of a trapper, Western Review, July, 1829. See the story reproduced on pp. 56-61. 27. Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, Record Book, Vol. XXXII, containing copies of letters from Indian agents and others to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, September 10, 1830, to April 1, 1832.

28. Morgan, op. cit., p. 49.

29. Extract from Edmonton Factory Journal (written by Dun- can Finlayson) published in “The International Significance of the Jones and Immell Massacre and of the Aricara Outbreak in 1823,” ed. A. P. Nasatir, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, XXX (January, 1939), 85-86.

30. “. . , on the sixth of July, the boats for the conveyance of the Crow annuities being finished and loaded, we started on our Yellowstone trip. We ran down in the afternoon six miles and en- camped for the night at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Here my own interpreter, Zephyr Rencontre, pointed out the grave of the celebrated Mike Finch [sic] (Report of A, H. Redfield, September 1, 1858, to A. M. Robinson, 35th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Exec. Doc. I [Serial 974], 440).

31. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Yeais (New York, 1926), I, 78-79.

32. Pp. 52, 60, 64.

33. T. B. Thorpe in the Spirit of the Times, July 16, wrote: “Among the flatboatmen [sic], there were none that gained the notoriety of Mike Fink: his name is still remembered along the whole of the Ohio as a man who excelled in everything. . . .”

34. Hiram Kaine wrote in the Cincinnati Miscellany or Antiqui- ties of the West, October, 1845: “Mike Fink was … the most celebrated of all the ‘River men/ To this day there is scarce a city between Pittsburgh and New Orleans that has not some tradition in which he bears a conspicuous part … it would take a whole volume to detail half of the strange legends of which Mike was the hero. . . .” Emerson Bennett, in the preface to his novel in 1847, tells of having heard “spicy anecdotes” about Fink which, unfortunately, he does not repeat.

35. St. Louis Reveille, June 8, 1844. Field’s description of Nev- ille makes rather doubtful the claim that he had talked with him fifteen years before.

36. A passage in Mark Twain’s Letters to Will Bowen, ed. Theo- dore Hornberger (Austin, 1941), p. 18, recalls the instruction received from General Gaines, for a time Hannibal’s leading drunk- ard. Clemens mentioned Fink, twice. In his Notebook No. 16 (February 11 to September 20, 1882) he wrote, “Mike Fink shooting the tin cup off Carpenter’s head.” His working notes for Huckleberry Finn included this one: “Let some old liar of a keelboat man on a raft tell about the earthquake of 1811 … & about Carpenter & Mike Fink” (Bernrd DeVoto, Mark Twain at Work [Cambridge, 1942], p. 65). It is impossible to say whether these passages recorded a remembrance from childhood or a story Twain heard or read when revisiting the Mississippi and reading about the river preparatory to writing the latter part of Life on the Mississippi.

37. “Report of Lieut. J. W. Abert on His Examination of New Mexico in the Years 1846-47,” U.S. 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Exec. Doc., No. 41 (Washington, 1848), IV, 503. See p. 271.

38. See n. 30, p. 36. 39. The story about Mike’s test of his woman’s fidelity is men- tioned in 1829 but no details are given. A version is given in 1839 and the story is told in full in 1888. Again, the story of Mike’s I 37] HISTORY, LEGEND, AND STORY death is only sketched at first; later many contradictory details are added. 40. See pp. 260-77.

41. For “Scroggins” and some anonymous almanac writers, he was a hunter and a fine shot nothing more. For a number of authors, he was simply a boatman. Lieutenant Abert knew him only as a desperado who lived in the Rocky Mountains. Whether A. H. Redfield knew anything about him before he talked with an Indian interpreter is doubtful, since he called him “the celebrated Mike Finch” (authors’ italics).

42. Folfc Laughter on the American Frontier (New York, 1949), pp. 93-94. ‘

43. See pp. 67, 143, 226. Cassedy says his story had been told about another boatman. The 1842 story may well have been suggested by two widely current stories about Mike, one about his shooting a cup off a companion’s head, the other about his shooting off a Negro’s heel. The 1848 story was appropriate for any hearty drinker who told tall tales.

44. Pp. 220-25.

45. See Richard M. Dorson, “Print and American Folk Tales ” California Folklore Quarterly, IV (July, 1945), 207-15, for a discussion of such tales and the problems involved in their study.

46. For details about the publication of stories during the nineteenth century and beyond see the Bibliography, pp. 281-90.

47. Here and in Cadot’s account there is the possibility that an old man is, humanly enough, showing wisdom superior to that of people who have actually known the boatman by attacking stories which he has heard or read.

48. In 1829, an anonymous author, probably the Rev. Timothy Flint, had mentioned a rifle shot test but had felt impelled to omit the anecdote (see p. 58), and in 1839, a Crockett Almanac had presented a censored version (p. 56).

49. One may wonder whether the story in all its horrors ever appeared in print. Is it possible that Mike was so beyond the pales of decency that on occasion he had his woman hold the cup between her thighs while he shot at it?

50. See pp 64 ,262. It should also be noted that Chunk erroneously placed Mike’s death “at Smithland, behind the Cumberland

51. One very recent story (p. 244) tells about Mike’s winning a seven-mile keelboat race. This is the only reference to keelboat races which we have encountered prior to 1955, when Walt Disney produced a movie in which Mike raced Davy Crockett. Disney stated that his story was based upon a legend, but we have not had the pleasure of seeing his source.

52. A. B. Hulbert, The Paths of Inland Commerce (New Haven, 1921), p. 64. A similar comment is made by Dale L. Morgan, op. cit., p. 47.

53. See Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York, 1931), pp. 33-55; Walter Blair (ed.), Native American Humor (1800-1900) (New York, 1937), pp. 27-37; Mody C. Boatright, Folk Laughter on the American Frontier (New York, 1949), pp. 1-33.

54. Miscellaneous Essays (Philadelphia, 1830), p. 396.

55. North American Review, LXII (January, 1846), 87.

56. Western Pennsylvania Historical Review, XVI (May, 1933), 146.

57. A letter from Professor Gilbert H. Barnes of Ohio Wesleyan, August 11, 1930, mentioned his seeing the account in a Pittsburgh newspaper.

58. William E. Connelly, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, said in a letter of May 10, 1930: “In some of my manuscript writings I have an account of a fight between three Big Sandy backwoodsmen who had taken some produce to Louisville in canoes, for sale. Mike Fink and his crew came along and attacked these . . . pioneers who lived in what is now Johnson county, Kentucky. They were powerful men and they completely defeated Mike Fink and all his keelboatmen. One . . . was Henderson Milum, who was six feet, six, and supposed to be the strongest man in the Big Sandy Valley in his day. I knew his discendents [sic] very well. Another was a man named Hanna who had killed a bear on the Big Sandy River without weapons. . . . Another . . . was Peter Mankins, who lived many years on the . . . River but finally moved to Washington county, Arkansas, where he died at the age of 111 years. . . . This fight was on a wharf boat.” A keelboat crew usually totaled at least six men.

59. Paul Bunyan: Last of the Frontier Demigods (Philadelphia, 1952), p. 19.

60. Rourke, op. cit., p. 54.

61. Times Literary Supplement (London), November 16, 1933, p. 794.

62. Mark Twain’s America (Boston, 1932), p. 60.

63. Times Literary Supplement (London), November 16, 1933, p. 794.

64. Neihardt’s Song of Three Friends (1919) is based upon only three of the stories.

65. Southern Folklore Quarterly, VI (June, 1942), 95-102. Dor- son cites as authorities consulted on heroic literature H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature (3 vols.; Cambridge, 1932-40); W. P. Ker, The Heroic Age (Cambridge, 1912); W, P. Ker, Epic and Romance (London, 1922), chap, i; and N. K. Si- dhanta, The Heoric Age of India (London, 1929). A book pub- [ 39] HISTORY, LEGEND, AND STORY lished since Dorson’s article was written and which extends these studies is C.M.Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London, 1952), pp. 91-131. Constance Rourke (op. cit., p. 55) was, we believe, the first student to point out that “Mike Fink embodied the traditional history of the hero. . . .” She did not, however, elaborate upon this claim. In 1844, J. M. Field had seen the “gathering of the mythic haze . . . which . . . invests distinguished mortality with the sublimer attri- butes of the hero and the demi-god” (see pp. 93-142 and 260-77) .

66. See Dorothy Dondore, “Big Talk! The Flyting, the Gabe, and the Frontier Boast,” American Speech, VI (October, 1930), 45-55.

67. Field’s long narrative is on pp. 93-142. For other versions of the story see p. 263.

68. In chap. Ixxxii of Moby Dici he reverses the procedure of writers about Mike Fink who compare the keeler with Hercules when he characterizes Hercules as “that antique Crockett and Kit Carson.” Elsewhere in the book he talks of the legendary White Steed of the Prairies.

69. For a brief consideration of the problem and its initial solution see Blair, op. cit., pp. 17–37.

70. North American Review, XV, 251-52. Compare Ruxton’s characterization of western trappers, p. 13.

71. See Arvid Shulenberger, Cooper’s Theory of Fiction (Law- rence, Kansas, 1955), pp. 11-37; Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Prefaces” to Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860).

72. Baldwin, The Keelboat Age on Western Waters, p. 194.

73. Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes (1835), The Last of the Barons (1843), and Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848).

74. T. B. Thorpe, “The Disgraced Scalp-Lock” (1842). For a discussion of the elegiac motif in frontier literature see Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, 1950) , pp. 51-89.

75. “Folklore,” Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, VI (New York, 1931), 291.

76. “Bully Boy,” Saturday Review of Literature, April 8, 1933, p. 523.

77. Tlie Romantic Revolution in America (New York, 1927), p. 138. 

78. Times Literary Supplement (London), November 16, 1933, p. 794.

79. “Recent American Novels,” North American Review, XXI (July, 1825), 82-83.

80. Southern Literary Messenger, III (November, 1837), 692.

81. Our favorite is the one given to him by T. B. Thorpe on p. 78.

82. New York Herald Tribune, April 2, 1933, p. 4.

83. The Nation, CXXXVI (May 3, 1933), 507.

The Growth of an American Legend

The Last of the Boatmen (1828]
MORGAN NEVILLE

THE MEDIUM OF PUBLICATION and the authorship of the first- known literary work about Mike Fink were, in some ways, rather surprising. For the story about the rambunctious keel- boatman turned up in late 1828, of all places, in a “ladies’ book,” and the author was a gentleman.

Ladies’ books gift books or annual miscellanies were the quintessence of nineteenth-century gentility. Between 1825 and 1865, such volumes were issued by the thousands around Christmas time to serve as suitable presents for the nicest “females” They cost demonstrative swains, as a rule, between $2.50 and $20.00 apiece, in a day when dollars were dollars; and they had the look of being worth such huge prices. They were bound in silk, velvet, or embossed leather, and they were lavishly illustrated and handsomely printed. They bore titles such as The Opal, The Lily, The Casket of Love, and The Offering to Beauty. The contents were appropriate. In the 1840’s Huck Finn found a typical specimen, Friendship’s Offering, on the table of an aristocratic family in the deep South. A look at it led him to decide that it was “full of beautiful stuff and poetry.” So were they all, and both ingredients were likely to be ineffably refined and perfumed to the most ladylike taste. 

The Western Souvenir, a Christmas and New Year’s Gift for 1829 was in some ways typical, a 324-page duodecimo, bound in satin, “embellished” with engravings and dashed with senti- mentality and highfalutin romance. But it differed from eastern compilations, since it appeared in Cincinnati, and its editor, James Hall, boasted, “It is written and published in the Western country . . . and is chiefly confined to subjects connected with [pg. 43 ] the history and character of the country which gives it birth.” The illustrations showed Ohio Valley scenes and people, and the poems and tales (many by Hall) dealt with the new country. The most famous item was “The Last of the Boatmen” signed “N.”

“N.” was Morgan Neville (1783-1840). Grandson of two Revolutionary War generals, son of a colonel, Neville belonged to a wealthy Pittsburgh family. He studied Latin and Greek in the Pittsburgh Academy, then had a varied career as bank cashier, business secretary, lawyer, and newspaper editor. But scion of an established family though he was, he had a taste for fun and adventure. We have glimpses of him dancing the horn- pipe for fellow students, performing in amateur theatricals, joining a company who tried to assist Aaron Burr’s mysterious military expedition, acting as a second in a duel, serving as sheriff of Allegheny County, and leading a militia regiment Few lives during Neville’s youth in Pittsburgh or his later years in Cincinnati were likely to be sheltered; and his was less sheltered than most. Neville’s acquaintances and background furnished materials for this, his most famous sketch. His claim that Fink was “an old acquaintance, familiarly known to me from my boyhood” is completely credible, since Mike evidently had been an Indian scout in Pittsburgh when Neville was a boy there. Neville may well have seen the feat of Mike’s marksmanship which he describes. And couched though it is in fairly ornate language, sprinkled though it is with classical allusions, his sketch gives evidence of being based upon oral stories. He may, as he claims, have heard the “legend” of the deer and the Indian from Mike’s own lips. He may also as he alleges at the end of the sketch (see p. 260) have heard the tale of Mike’s death from an old keelboatman turned pilot. His pictures of himself spinning yarns about the boatman on the moonlit deck of a steamboat and listening to an old pilot’s narrative in a pilot house provide valuable testimony concerning his hero’s fame “from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, and New Orleans” as early as 1828–five years after Fink’s death. [pg. 44] 

I embarked a few years since at Pittsburg for Cincinnati, on board of a steam boat more with a view of realising the possibility of a speedy return against the current than in obedience to the call of either business or pleasure. It was a voyage of speculation. I was born on the banks of the Ohio, and the only vessels associated with my early recollections were the canoes of the Indians which brought to Fort Pitt their annual cargoes of skins and bear’s oil. The Flat boat of Kentucky, destined only to float with the current, next appeared; and after many years of interval, the Keel boat of the Ohio and the Barge of the Missisisippi were introduced for the convenience of the infant commerce of the West.

At the period at which I have dated my trip to Cincinnati, the steam boat had made but few voyages back to Pittsburg. We were generally skeptics as to its practicability. The mind was not prepared for the change that was about to take place in the West. It is now consummated; and we yet look back with astonishment at the result.

The rudest inhabitant of our forests the man whose mind is least of all imbued with a relish for the picturesque who would gaze with vacant stare at the finest painting listen with apathy to the softest melody, and turn with indifference from a mere display of ingenious mechanism, is struck with the sublime power and self-moving majesty of a steam boat lingers on the shore where it passes and follows its rapid and almost magic course with silent admiration. The steam engine in five years has enabled us to anticipate a state of things which, in the ordinary course of events, it would have required a century to have produced. The art of printing scarcely surpassed it in its beneficial consequences.

In the old world, the places of the greatest interest to the philosophic traveller are ruins and monuments that speak of faded splendour and departed glory. The broken columns of Tadmor the shapless ruins of Babylon, are rich in matter for almost endless speculation. Far different is the case in the western regions of America. The stranger views here, with wonder, [pg.45]  the rapidity with which cities spring up in forests; and with which barbarism retreats before the approach of art and civilization. The reflection possessing the most intense interest is not what has been the character of the country but what shall be her future destiny.

As we coasted along this cheerful scene, one reflection crossed my mind to diminish the pleasure it excited. This was caused by the sight of the ruins of the once splendid mansion of Blennerhassett. I had spent some happy hours here when it was the favourite residence of taste and hospitality. I had seen it when a lovely and accomplished woman presided shedding a charm around, which made it as inviting, though not so dangerous, as the island of Calypso when its liberal and polished owner made it the resort of every stranger, who had any pretensions to literature or science. I had beheld it again under more inauspicious circumstances when its proprietor, in a moment of visionary speculation, had abandoned this earthly paradise to follow an adventurer himself the dupe of others. A military banditti held possession, acting “by authority.” The embellishments of art and taste disappeared beneath the touch of a band of vandals: and the beautiful domain which presented the im- posing appearance of a palace, and which had cost a fortune in the erection, was changed in one night into a scene of devastation! The chimneys of the house remained for some years the insulated monument of the folly of their owner, and pointed out to the stranger the place where once stood the temple of hospitality. Drift wood covered the pleasure grounds; and the massive cut stone that formed the columns of the gateway were scattered more widely than the fragments of the Egyptian Memnon.

When we left Pittsburgh, the season was not far advanced in vegetation. But as we proceeded, the change was more rapid than the difference of latitude justified. I had frequently ob- served this in former voyages; but it never was so striking as on the present occasion. The old mode of travelling in the sluggish flat boat seemed to give time for the change of season; but now [pg. 46] a few hours carried us into a different climate. We met spring with all her laughing train of flowers and verdure rapidly advancing from the south. The buck-eye, cotton-wood, and maple had already assumed in this region the rich livery of summer. The thousand varieties of the floral kingdom spread a gay carpet over the luxuriant bottoms on each side of the river. The thick woods resounded with the notes of the feathered tribe each striving to outdo his neighbour in noise, if not in melody. We had not yet reached the region of paroquets; but the clear toned whistle of the cardinal was heard in every bush; and the cat-bird was endeavouring, with its usual zeal, to rival the powers of the more gifted mocking-bird.

A few hours brought us to one of those stopping points known by the name of “wooding places.” It was situated immediately above Letarfs Falls. The boat, obedient to the wheel of the pilot, made a graceful sweep towards the island above the chute, and rounding to, approached the wood pile. As the boat drew near the shore, the escape steam reverberated through the forest and hills like the chafed bellowing of the caged tiger. The root of a tree concealed beneath the water prevented the boat from getting sufficiently near the bank, and it became necessary to use the paddles to take a different position.

“Back out! Mannee! and try it again!” exclaimed a voice from the shore. “Throw your pole wide and brace off! or you’ll run against a snag!”

This was a kind of language long familiar to us on the Ohio. It was a sample of the slang of the keel-boatmen.

The speaker was immediately cheered by a dozen of voices from the deck; and I recognised in him the person of an old acquaintance, familiarly known to me from my boyhood. He was leaning carelessly against a large beech; and as his left arm negligently pressed a rifle to his side, presented a figure that Salvator would have chosen from a million as a model for his wild and gloomy pencil. His stature was upwards of six feet, his proportions perfectly symmetrical, and exhibiting the evidence of Herculean powers. To a stranger, he would have seemed a [pg. 47] complete mulatto. Long exposure to the sun and weather on the lower Ohio and Mississippi had changed his skin; and, but for the fine European cast of his countenance, he might have passed for the principal warrior of some powerful tribe. Although at least fifty years of age, his hair was as black as the wing of the raven. Next to his skin he wore a red flannel shirt, covered by a blue capot, ornamented with white fringe. On his feet were moccasins, and a broad leathern belt, from which hung suspended in a sheath a large knife, encircled his waist. As soon as the steam boat became stationary, the cabin passengers jumped on shore. On ascending the bank, the figure I have just described advanced to offer me his hand.

“How are you, Mike?” said I.

“How goes it?” replied the boatman grasping my hand with a squeeze that I can compare to nothing but that of a black- smith’s vice.

“I am glad to see you, Mannee!” continued he in his abrupt manner. “I am going to shoot at the tin cup for a quart off hand and you must be judge.”

I understood Mike at once, and on any other occasion should have remonstrated and prevented the daring trial of skill. But I was accompanied by a couple of English tourists who had scarcely ever been beyond the sound of Bow Bells and who were traveling post over the United States to make up a book of observations on our manners and customs. There were, also, among the passengers, a few bloods from Philadelphia and Baltimore, who could conceive of nothing equal to Chesnut or Howard streets; and who expressed great disappointment at not being able to find terrapins and oysters at every village marvellously lauding the comforts of Rubicum’s. My tramontane pride was aroused; and I resolved to give them an opportunity of seeing a Western Lion–for such Mike undoubtedly was–n all his glory. The philanthropist may start and accuse me of want of humanity. I deny the charge, and refer for apology to one of the best understood principles of human nature. [pg. 48]

Mike, followed by several of his crew, led the way to a beech grove some little distance from the landing. I invited my fellow passengers to witness the scene. On arriving at the spot, a stout, bull-headed boatman, dressed in a hunting shirt but bare- footed–in whom I recognized a younger brother of Mike, drew a line with his toe; and stepping off thirty yards turned round fronting his brother took a tin cup which hung from his belt, and placed it on his head. Although I had seen the feat per- formed before, I acknowledge I felt uneasy whilst this silent preparation was going on. But I had not much time for reflection; for this second Albert exclaimed–

“Blaze away, Mike! and let’s have the quart.”

My “compagnons de voyage,” as soon as they recovered from the first effect of their astonishment, exhibited a disposition to interfere. But Mike, throwing back his left leg, levelled his rifle at the head of his brother. In this horizontal position the weapon remained for some seconds as immoveable as if the arm which held it was affected by no pulsation. 

“Elevate your piece a little lower, Mike! or you will pay the corn,” cried the imperturbable brother. 

I know not if the advice was obeyed or not; but the sharp crack of the rifle immediately followed, and the cup flew off thirty or forty yards rendered unfit for future service. There was a cry of admiration from the strangers, who pressed forward to see if the fool-hardy boatman was really safe. He remained as immoveable as if he had been a figure hewn out of stone. He had not even winked when the ball struck the cup within two inches of his skull.

“Mike has won!” I exclaimed; and my decision was the signal which, according to their rules, permitted him of the target to move from his position. No more sensation was exhibited among the boatmen than if a common wager had been won. The bet being decided, they hurried back to their boat, giving me and my friends an invitation to partake of “the treat.” We declined, and took leave of the thoughtless creatures. In a few minutes afterwards, we observed their “Keel” wheeling into the [pg. 49] current, the gigantic form of Mike bestriding the large steering oar, and the others arranging themselves in their places in front of the cabin that extended nearly the whole length of the boat, covering merchandize of immense value. As they left the shore, they gave the Indian yell; and broke out into a sort of unconnected chorus commencing with

“Hard upon the beech oar!–
She moves too slow! —
All the way to Shawneetown,
Long while ago.”

In a few moments the boat “took the chute” of Letarfs Falls, and disappeared behind the point with the rapidity of an Arabian courser.

Our travellers returned to the boat, lost in speculation on the scene, and the beings they had just beheld; and, no doubt, the circumstance has been related a thousand times with all the necessary amplifications of finished tourists.

Mike Fink may be viewed as the correct representative of a class of men now extinct; but who once possessed as marked a character, as that of the Gipsies of England or the Lazaroni of Naples. The period of their existence was not more than a third of a century. The character was created by the introduction of trade on the Western waters; and ceased with the successful establishment of the steam boat.

There is something inexplicable in the fact that there could be men found, for ordinary wages, who would abandon the systematic but not laborious pursuits of agriculture to follow a life, of all others except that of the soldier distinguished by the greatest exposure and privation. The occupation of a boatman was more calculated to destroy the constitution and to shorten the life than any other business. In ascending the river, it was a continued series of toil, rendered more irksome by the snail like rate at which they moved. The boat was propelled by poles against which the shoulder was placed; and the whole strength and skill of the individual were applied in this manner. As the [pg. 50] boatmen moved along the running board with their heads nealy touching the plank on which they walked, the effect produced on the mind of an observer was similar to that on beholding the ox rocking before an overloaded cart. Their bodies, naked to their waist for the purpose of moving with greater ease, and of enjoying the breeze of the river, were exposed to the burning suns of summer, and to the rains of autumn. After a hard day’s push, they would take their “fillee,” or ration of whiskey, and having swallowed a miserable supper of meat half burnt, and of bread half baked, stretch themselves without covering on the deck, and slumber till the steersman’s call invited them to the morning “fillee.” Notwithstanding this, the boatman’s life had charms as irresistible as those presented by the splendid illusions of the stage. Sons abandoned the comfortable farms of their fathers, and apprentices fled from the service of their masters. There was a captivation in the idea of “going down the river”; and the youthful boatman who had “pushed a keel” from New Orleans felt all the pride of a young merchant after his first voyage to an English sea port. From an exclusive association together, they had formed a kind of slang peculiar to themselves; and from the constant exercise of wit with “the squatters” on shore and crews of other boats, they acquired a quickness and smartness of vulgar retort that was [pg. 51]  quite amusing. The frequent battles they were engaged in with the “boatmen of different parts of the river, and with the less civilized inhabitants of the lower Ohio, and Mississippi, invested them with that ferocious reputation which has made them spoken of throughout Europe.

On board of the boats thus navigated, our merchants entrusted valuable cargoes without insurance, and with no other guarantee than the receipt of the steersman, who possessed no property but his boat; and the confidence so reposed was seldom abused. Among these men, Mike Fink stood an acknowledged leader for many years. Endowed by nature with those qualities of intellect that give the possessor influence, he would have been a conspicuous member of any society in which his lot might have been cast. An acute observer of human nature has said, “Opportunity alone makes the hero. Change but their situations, and Caesar would have been but the best wrestler on the green.” With a figure cast in a mould that added much of the symmetry of an Apollo to the limbs of a Hercules, he possessed gigantic strength; and accustomed from an early period of life to brave the dangers of a frontier life, his character was noted for the most daring intrepidity. At the court of Charlemagne he might have been a Roland; with the Crusaders he would have been the favourite of the Knight of the Lion-heart; and in our revolution, he would have ranked with the Morgans and Putnams of the day. He was the hero of a hundred fights, and the leader in a thousand daring adventures. From Pittsburg to St. Louis and New Orleans, his fame was established. Every farmer on the shore kept on good terms with Mike otherwise there was no safety for his property. Wherever he was an enemy, like his great prototype, Rob Roy, he levied the contribution of Black Mail for the use of his boat. Often at night, when his tired companions slept, he would take an excursion of five or six rnfles, and return before morning rich in spoil. On the Ohio, he was known among his companions by the appellation of the [pg. 52]  “Snapping Turtle”; and on the Mississippi, he was called “The Snag.”

At the early age of seventeen, Mite’s character was displayed, by enlisting himself in a corps of Scouts a body of irregular rangers, which was employed on the Northwestern frontiers of Pennsylvania, to watch the Indians, and to give notice of any threatened inroad.

At that time, Pittsburgh was on the extreme verge of white population, and the spies, who were constantly employed, generally extended their explorations forty or fifty miles to the west of this post. They went out, singly, lived as did the Indian, and in every respect became perfectly assimilated in habits, taste, and feeling with the red men of the desert. A kind of border warfare was kept up, and the scout thought it as praiseworthy to bring in the scalp of a Shawnee as the skin of a panther. He would remain in the woods for weeks together, using parched corn for bread and depending on his rifle for his meat and slept at night in perfect comfort, rolled in his blanket.

In this corps, whilst yet a stripling, Mike acquired a reputation for boldness and cunning far beyond his companions. A thousand legends illustrate the fearlessness of his character. There was one which he told himself with much pride, and which made an indelible impression on my boyish memory. He had been out on the hills of Mahoning, when, to use his own words, ‘Tie saw signs of Indians being about.” He had discovered the recent print of the moccasin on the grass; and found drops of the fresh blood of a deer on the green bush. He became cautious, skulked for some time in the deepest thickets of hazle and briar; and, for several days did not discharge his rifle. He subsisted patiently on parched corn and jerk, which he had dried on his first coming into the woods. He gave no alarm to the settlements, because he discovered with perfect certainty that the enemy consisted of a small hunting party who were receding from the Alleghany.

As he was creeping along one morning, with the stealthy tread of a cat, his eye fell upon a beautiful buck, browsing on [pg. 53 ]  the edge of a barren spot, three hundred yards distant. The temptation was too strong for the woodsman, and he resolved to have a shot at every hazard. Re-priming his gun and picking his flint, he made his approaches in the usual noiseless manner. At the moment he reached the spot from which he meant to take his aim, he observed a large savage, intent upon the same object, advancing from a direction a little different from his own. Mike shrunk behind a tree with the quickness of thought, and keeping his eye fixed on the hunter, waited the result with patience. In a few moments the Indian halted within fifty paces and levelled his piece at the deer. In the meanwhile, Mike presented his rifle at the body of the savage; and at the moment the smoke issued from the gun of the latter, the bullet of Fink passed through the red man’s breast. He uttered a yell, and fell dead at the same instant with the deer. Mike re-loaded his rifle and remained in his covert for some minutes, to ascertain whether there were more enemies at hand. He then stepped up to the prostrate savage, and having satisfied himself that life was extinguished, turned his attention to the buck, and took from the carcase those pieces suited to the process of jerking.

In the meantime, the country was filling up with a white population; and in a few years the red men, with the exception of a few fractions of tribes, gradually receded to the Lakes and beyond the Mississippi. The corps of Scouts was abolished, after having acquired habits which unfitted them for the pursuits of civilized society. Some incorporated themselves with the Indians; and others, from a strong attachment to their erratic mode of life, joined the boatmen, then just becoming a distinct class. Among these was our hero, Mike Fink, whose talents were soon developed; and for many years he was as celebrated on the rivers of the West, as he had been in the woods.

I gave to my fellow travellers the substance of the foregoing narrative as we sat on deck by moonlight and cut swiftly through the magnificent sheet of water between Letart and the Great Kanhawa. It was one of those beautiful nights which per- mitted every thing to be seen with sufficient distinctness to [pg. 54] avoid danger; yet created a certain degree of illusion that gave reins to the imagination. The outline of the river hills lost all its harshness; and the occasional bark of the house dog from the shore, and the distant scream of the solitary loon, gave increased effect to the scene. It was altogether so delightful that the hours till morning flew swiftly by, whilst our travellers dwelt with rapture on the surrounding scenery, which shifted every moment like the capricious changes of the kaleidescope and listening to tales of border warfare, as they were brought to mind by passing the places where they happened. The celebrated Hunter’s Leap, 1 and the bloody battle of Kanhawa, were not forgotten.

The afternoon of the next day brought us to the beautiful city of Cincinnati, which, in the course of thirty years, has risen from a village of soldiers’ huts to a town, giving promise of future splendour equal to any on the sea-board. 2

1. A man by the name of Ruling was hunting on the hill above Point Pleasant, when he was discovered by a party of Indians. They pursued him to a precipice of more than sixty feet, over which he sprang and escaped. On returning next morning with some neighbours, it was dis- covered that he jumped over the top of a sugar tree which grew from the bottom of the hill [Neville’s note].

2. Neville’s story ends with an account of Mike Fink’s death, which will be found on p. 260.

[pg. 55]

Mike Fink: The Last of the Boatmen (1829)

TIMOTHY FLINT (1780-1840), born and reared in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard, traveled westward in 1815 by coach, flatboat, and keelboat to be a missionary. For years as a preacher he went from one part of the Mississippi Valley to another. His experiences furnished materials for one of the best travel boolcs of the period and for a number of romantic tales and novels. Between 1827 and 1830, he edited The Western Monthly Review, published in Cincinnati, “to foster,” so he said, “polite literature in the west/’ “Mike Fink: The Last of the Boatmen” appeared in the issue of July, 1829.

Since Rev. Flint wrote three-fourths of the contents of the magazine, it is more than likely that he put this article into shape. He was probably, however, more of an editor than an author, since the details about Mike came to him pretty in- directly by his own testimony from “a valued correspondent at St. Louis,” who in turn got them “from an intelligent and re- spected fur-trader.”

The piety of the editor led him to protest that he was showing Fink merely as a specimen of “the monstrous anomalies of the human character under particular circumstances.” It also, unfortunately, caused him to “omit some strange curses and circumstances of profanity,” which we would be glad to have, and to keep from his readers facts about Mike’s rifle shot test of his mistress’s fidelity. (After this tantalizing hint and others, the details were finally to appear in 1888.) Fortunately, though, he says he thought it desirable to follow his correspondent’s example and give the fur trader’s account “nearly in his own words.” One wishes that the “nearly” had been unnecessary, since the [pg. 56] language is still rather too literay for modern taste. But the fur trader, after all, was “respectable”; and the style is close enough to that of talk to convince us that it is fairly authentic.

The anecdotes also look like authentic oral lore transferred to paper. And the fur trader got some of his facts pretty accurate, even though some had not appeared before in print. The story of Mike’s shooting the Negro’s heel had been briefly mentioned in the 1823 news story of his death. However, the raconteur may, as he says, have read court records of his trial for the offense: the old story said nothing about a trial. And the story of Mike’s death (p. 260) mentioned for the first time (so far as we know) the real names of the other two men involved in it. The other anecdotes contain specific details which show knowledge of the river and the frontier and are of a sort likely to have been in circulation. The fur trader and his friend and Flint thus made an important contribution to the growing lore about the boatman. If only Flint had been a bit less pious!

Every reader of the Western Souvenir, so undeservedly brushed, like a summer butterfly, from among its more fortunate sister butterflies, into the pool of oblivion, will remember the vivid and admirable portrait of Mike Fink, the last of the boatmen. People are so accustomed, in reading such tales, to think them all the mere fairy web fabric of fiction that, probably, not one in a hundred of the readers of that story imagined for a moment that it gave, as far as it went, a most exact and faithful likeness of an actual personage of flesh and blood, once well known on our waters, and now no more. We are obliged to omit some strange curses, and circumstances of profanity and atrocity, though they seemed necessary to a full development of character, which it cannot be supposed for a moment we exhibit with any other view than to show the monstrous anomalies of the human character under particular circumstances, as Dr. Mitchell would show a homed frog or a prairie dog in relation to the lower animals. The most eccentric and original trait in [pg. 57] his whole character was the manner in which he subjected his chere amie, when he doubted her fidelity, to a rifle shot test similar to those hereafter described. We are compelled to omit the anecdote altogether. The following addenda to the sketch given in the Western Souvenir are furnished us by a valued correspondent at St. Louis. He has them, as he informs us, from an intelligent and respectable fur-trader who has frequently extended his peregrinations beyond the Rocky Mountains and who was to start, the day after our correspondent wrote, for Santa-Fe, in New-Mexico. Our correspondent assures us that he gives the account of this gentleman, touching the extraordinary Mike Fink, nearly in his own words. We only add that we have followed his example, in the subjoined, in relation to the narrayive of our correspondent.

Mike Fink was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. where his brothers, &c. still reside. He had but little knowledge of letters, especially of their sounds and powers, as his orthography was very bad, and he usually spelled his name Miche Phinck, whilst his father spelled his with an F. When he was young, the witchery which is in the tone of a wooden trumpet called a river horn, formerly used by keel and flat boat navigators on the western water, entranced the soul of Mike, while yet a boy; and he longed to become a boatman. This soon became his ruling passion; and he served as a boatman on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and their tributary streams, which occupation he pursued until this sort of men were thrown out of employment by the general use of steam boats. When Mike first set foot on a keel boat, he could mimick all the tones of a trumpet, and he longed to go to New Orleans, where he heard the people spoke French and wore their Sunday clothes every day. He served out his pupilage with credit. When the Ohio was too low for navigation, Mike spent most of his time in the neighborhood of Pittsburgh, killing squirrels with his rifle, and shooting at a target for beef at the frequent Saturday shooting matches and company musters of the militia. He soon became famous as “the best shot in the [pg. 58] country,” and was called bang-all, and on that account was frequently excluded from participating in matches for beef; for which exclusion he claimed, and obtained the fifth quarter of the beef, as it is called (the hide and tallow) for his forbearance. His usual practice was to sell his fifth quarter to the tavern or dram shop keeper for whiskey with which he “treated” everybody present, partaking largely himself. He became fond of strong drink, but was never overpowered by its influence. He could drink a gallon of it in twenty-four hours without the effect being perceivable. His language was a perfect sample of the half- horse and half-alligator dialect of the then race of boatmen. He was also a wit; and on that account he gained the admiration and excited the fears of all the fraternity of boatmen; for he usually enforced his wit with a sound drubbing, if any one dared to dissent by neglecting or refusing to laugh at his jokes; for as he used to say, he told his jokes on purpose to be laughed at in a good humored way, and that no man should “make light” of them. The consequence was Mike always had a chosen band of laughing philosophers about him. An eye bunged up and a dilapidated nose, or ear, was sure to win Mike’s sympathy and favor, for Mike made proclamation “I am a salt river roarer; and I love the wimming, and how I’m chock-full of fight,” &c. So he was in truth, for he had a chere amie in every port which he visited, and always had a circle of worshippers around him who would fight their deaths (as they called it) for him. Amongst these were two men, Carpenter and Talbot, Mike’s fast friends, and particular confidants. Each was a match for the other, in prowess, in fight, or skill in shooting, for Mike had diligently trained them to all these virtues and mysteries. Carpenter and Talbot figure hereafter. Mike’s weight was about one hundred and eighty pounds; height about five feet nine inches; broad round face, pleasant features, brown skin, tanned by sun and rain; blue, but very expressive eyes, inclining to grey; broad white teeth, and square brawny form, well proportioned, and every muscle of the arms, thighs and legs, were fully developed, [pg. 59]  indicating the greatest strength and activity. His person, taken altogether, was a model for a Hercules, except as to size. He first visited St. Louis as a keel boat man in the year 1814 or 1815, and occasionally afterwards, till 1822, when he joined Henry and Ashley’s company of Missouri trappers. Many shooting feats of Mike’s are related here by persons who profess to have witnessed them. I will relate some of them, and you can make such use of them, as you please. In ascending the Mississippi above the mouth of the Ohio, he saw a sow with eight or nine pigs on the river bank; he declared in boatman phrase he wanted a pig, and took up his rifle to shoot one; but was requested not to do so. Mike, however, laid his rifle to his face and shot at each pig successively, as the boat glided up the river under easy sail, about forty or fifty yards from shore, and cut off their tails close to their rumps, without doing them any other harm. In 1821, a short time before he ascended the Missouri with Henry and Ashley’s company, being on his boat at the landing in this port, he saw a negro lad standing on the river bank, heedlessly gaping in great wonderment at the show about him. This boy had a strange sort of foot and heel peculiar to some races of the Africans. His heel protruded several inches in the rear of the leg, so as to leave nearly as much of the foot behind as before it. This unshapely foot offended Mike’s eye, and out- raged his ideas of symmetry so much, that he determined to correct it. He took aim with his rifle, some thirty paces distant, at the boy’s unfortunate heel, and actually shot it away. The boy fell, crying murder, and badly wounded. Mike was indicted in the circuit court of this county for the offence, and was found guilty by a jury. I have myself seen the record of the court. It appeared in evidence that Mike’s justification of the offence was “that the fellow’s long heel prevented him from wearing a genteel boot.” His particular friend, Caipenter, was, also, a great shot; and he and Mike used to fill a tin cup with whiskey, and place it on their heads by turns, and shoot at it with a rifle at the distance of seventy yards. It was always bored through, without injury to the one on whose head it was placed. This [pg. 60]  was often performed; and they liked the feat the better because it showed their confidence in each other. 1

There are several other strange characters who have spent most part of their lives beyond the verge of civilized society, among the savages. You have recorded the chronicles of Bte. Roy. But the story of Bte. Kiewa, a Frenchman, would surpass it. The history of Mike Shuck, a misanthropic trapper of the Missouri, would be still more strange. He holds communion with no man except to barter his furs and peltries for powder, lead, traps, &c. and then disappears for years, no body knows where. His story has been written after a sort, some years since, by Major Whitmore, of the United States Army.

The sufferings and almost incredible adventures and miraculous escapes of Glass, a Scotchman, would astonish and please all that have a taste for adventures. If my friend, to whom I am indebted for the story of Mike Fink, in part, were not about to depart so soon, I would procure the leading facts in relation to these several persons, as he is familiar with their true history and has frequently seen all of them.

1. At this point occurs an account of Mike Fink’s death, which has been placed on pp. 260-62.

[pg. 61]

Crockett Almanack Stories (1837, 1839)

IN 1834 AND 1835, AS IN 1954 AND 1955, DAVY CROCKETT was the westerner best known and most talked about by his countiy- men. In 1834, the New York Transcript reported that “negroes, dogs, horses, steamboats, omnibuses and locomotive engines” were being named after the famous frontiersman. Books about him were selling briskly, newspapers were dotted with anecdotes headed “Crockett’s Latest,” and a political tour he was making brought huge crowds out to hear his speeches.

In 1836, after his death in the Alamo, he became even more famous than he had been when alive, and he remained so for many years. In 1834, in Nashville, Tennessee, a little paper-backed booklet was published Davy Crockett’s Almanack. This was the first of many such booklets put out not only in Nashville but- after 1836 and up to 1856 in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Albany, and Louisville as well. These contained, in addition to the usual data about the weather, biographies of sundry frontier heroes and characters, accounts of Indian fights, essays about western flora and fauna, and tall tales about legendary characters. They were illustrated with woodcuts, most of them crude and fantastic, but some well-wrought.

It was almost a certainty that a character such as Fink would be celebrated in these publications. “Mike Fink, the Ohio Boatman” was printed in an almanac in 1837 along with what was probably the first published portrait (a quaint, stiff woodcut) of that hero. This bore the title, Davy Crockett’s Almanack, of Wfld Sports in the West, Life in the Backwoods, Sketches of Texas, and Rows on the Mississippi. Its publishers identified themselves, one suspects quite deceitfully, as “the heirs of Davy Crockett.” The sketch, like many others in the Nashville al- [pg.62] manacs, is on the realistic rather than the fantastic side. It adds to testimony about the oral fame of the boatman, gives the interesting (but questionable) information that Mike was “the first boatman who dared navigate a broadhorn down the falls of the Ohio,” and coolly shifts the scene of his death several hundred miles. Captain Jo Chunk’s monologue, compared with the talk of the pilot at the end of Neville’s story (p. 260), shows how writers were progressing in the rendition of colloquial speech.

“Col. Crockett Beat at a Shooting Match” appeared in 1839 in another Nashville issue, The Crockett Almanac, Containing Adventures, Exploits, Sprees, & Scrapes in the West, & Life and Manners in the Backwoods. . . . Published by Ben Harding. . . . Crockett Scared by an Owl. Go Ahead! This story, supposedly told in Davy’s own words, is more typical than the first and more in keeping with the style and the materials of the general run of almanac stones. The language, for the time, is wildly vernacular. The story follows one of the most popular patterns for frontier yarns the exchange of boasts followed by a contest. To this pattern it adapts the story about the pigtails first told in 1829. It may also have adapted or developed an oral anecdote merely referred to in 1829 (“the manner in which he subjected his chere amie, when he doubted her fidelity, to a rifle shot test”). The drinks proposed in the final sentence, “eye-openers,” “phlegm-cutters,” and “anti-fogmatics,” occur often in tales about the drinking prowess of westerners and southerners. The American English Dictionary quotes passages which show that in Massachusetts in 1789 and in Nauvoo in 1845 “antifog- matics” protected drinkers from the unwholesome morning damps.”

MIKE FINK, THE OHIO BOATMAN (1837)

Of all the species of mankind existing under heaven, the western boatmen deserve a distinct and separate cognomen. [pg. 63] They are a sort of amphibious animal kind-hearted as a Connecticut grandmother, but as rough as a Rocky Mountain bear. In high water they make the boat carry them, and in low water they are content to carry the boat or in other words, they are ever ready to jump in and ease her over the sand-bar, then jump on board and patiently wait for the next. Spending the greater portion of their time on the water, they scarce know how to behave on shore, and feel only at home upon the deck of their craft, where they exercise entire sovereignty.

They have not degenerated since the days of Mike Fink, who was looked upon as the most fool-hardy and daring of his race. I have heard Captain Jo Chunk tell the story of some of his daring exploits. “Therear’nt a man,” said Captain Jo, “from Pittsburgh to New Orleans but what’s heard of Mike Fink; and there aint a boatman on the river, to this day, but what strives to imitate him. Before them ‘ere steamers come on the river, Mike was looked up to as a kind of king among the boatmen, and he sailed a little the prettiest craft that there was to be found about these ‘ere parts. Along through the warm summer afternoons, when there wa’nt nothing much to do, it used to be the fashion among the boatmen to let one hold up a tin cup in the stern of the boat, while another would knock out the bottom with a rifle ball from the bow; and the one that missed had to pay a quart for the good of the crew. Howsomever,” continued Capt. Jo, “this wa’nt sport enough for Mike, and he used to bet that he could knock the tin cup off a man’s head; and there was one fellow fool-hardy enough to let him do it; this was Mike’s brother, who was just such another great strapping fellow as himself, but hadn’t as much wit in his head as Mike had in his little finger. He was always willing to let Mike shoot the cup off his head, provided that he’d share the quart with him; and Mike would rather give him the whole of it than miss the chance of displaying his skill.” 1

1. At this point the captain gives an account of Mike’s death, which has been placed on pp. 262-63. [pg. 64]

Col Crockett Beat at a Shooting Match

1839

“I expect, stranger, you think old Davy Crockett war never beat at the long rifle; but he war tho. I expect there’s no man so strong, but what he will find some one stronger. If you havent heerd tell of one Mike Fink,I’ll tell you something about him, for he war a helliferocious fellow, and made an almighty fine shot. Mike was a boatman on the Mississip, but he had a little cabbin on the head of the Cumberland, and a horrid handsome wife, that loved him the wickedest that ever you see. Mike only worked enough to find his wife in rags, and himself in powder, and lead, and whiskey, and the rest of the time he spent in nocking over bar and turkeys, and bouncing deer, and some- times drawing a lead on an injun. So one night I fell in with him in the woods, where him and his wife shook down a blanket for me in his wigwam. In the morning sez Mike to me, ‘I’ve got the handsomest wife, and the fastest horse, and the sharpest shooting iron in all Kentuck, and if any man dare doubt it, I’ll be in his hair quicker than hell could scorch a feather.’ This put my dander up, and sez I, ‘I’ve nothing to say again your wife, Mike, for it cant be denied she’s a shocking handsome woman, and Mrs. Crockett’s in Tennessee, and I’ve got no horses. Mike, I dont exactly like to tell you you lie about what you say about your rifle, but I’m d—- if you speak the truth, and I’ll prove it. Do you see that are cat sitting on the top rail of your potato patch, about a hundred and fifty yards off? If she ever hears agin, I’ll be shot if it shant be without ears.” So I blazed away, and I’ll bet you a horse, the ball cut off both the old torn cat’s ears close to his head, and shaved the hair off clean across the skull, as slick as if I’d done it with a razor, and the critter never stirred, nor knew he’d lost his ears till he tried to scratch ’em. “Talk about your rifle after that, Mike!” sez I. “Do you see that are sow away off furder than the eend of the world,” sez Mike, “with a litter of pigs round her,” and he lets fly. The old sow give a grunt, but never stirred in her tracks, and Mike falls to loading and firing for dear life, till he hadn’t left one of them [pg.  65] are pigs enough tail to make a tooth-pick on. “Now,” sez he, “Col. Crockett, I’ll be pretticularly obleedged to you if you’ll put them are pig’s tails on again,” sez he. “That’ s onpossible, Mike,” sez I, “but you’ve left one of ’em about an inch to steer by, and if it had a-ben my work, I wouldn’t have done it so wasteful. I’ll mend your host,” and so I lets fly, and cuts off the apology he’d left the poor cretur for decency. I wish I may drink the whole of Old Mississip, without a drop of the rale stuff in it, if you wouldn’t have thort the tail had been drove in with a hammer. That made Mike kinder sorter wrothy, and he sends a ball after his wife as she was going to the spring after a gourd full of water, and nocked half her coom out of her head, without stirring a hair, and calls out to her to stop for me to take a blizzard at what was left on it. The angeliferous critter stood still as a scarecrow in a cornfield, for she’d got used to Mike’s tricks by long practiss. “No, no, Mike,” sez I, “Davy Crockett’s hand would be sure to shake, if his iron war pointed within a hundred mile of a shemale, and I give up beat, Mike, and as we’ve had our eye-openers a-ready, we’ll now take a flem-cutter, by way of an anti-fogmatic, and then we’ll disperse.” [pg. 66

The Disgraced Scalp-Lock, or Incidents on the Western Waters (1842) T. B. THORPE

JUST AS EVENTUALLY a story about Fink was destined to turn up in a Crockett Almanac or two, one was bound to appear in the Spirit of the Times (New York, 1831-61 ) . This magazine was, in the 1840’s, the outstanding medium for publishing most of the best anecdotes and yarns produced by certain authors. These were southern and southwestern gentry of the “sporting crowd” of the day interested in the varied (though not unrelated) topics set forth in the journal’s subtitle, “A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature, and the Stage.”

As the editor, William Trotter Porter, boasted in 1846, “In addition to correspondents who described with equal felicity and power the stirring incidents of the turf and the chase, [the Spirit of the Times] enlisted another and still more numerous class who furnished the most valuable and interesting reminiscences of the Far West -sketches of thrilling scenes and ad- ventures in the then comparatively unknown region and the extraordinary characters occasionally met with. . . ”

Porter himself on July 9, 1842, wrote an account of Fink’s death which he had, doubtless, from one of his many widely scattered friends (see p. 263 ) . And in the Spirit for July 16, 1842, he published “The Disgraced Scalp-Lock” by Thomas Bangs Thorpe. This story was to be frequently republished in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thorpe (1815-78) was a New Englander, whose ill health caused him to move to Baton Rouge’s mild climate in 1836. In [pg. 67]  Louisiana and other parts of what was then the frontier, Thorpe, who was an artist of some skill, pictured various western scenes. He edited several newspapers and wrote numerous very popular sketches and stories, one of them the most famous tall tale from the section before the Civil War, “The Big Bear of Arkansas,” published in the Spirit in 1841. ”

The Disgraced Scalp-Lock” testifies with believable authority to Fink’s popularity among southwestern yarnspinners. It is good (as are other sketches by this writer) in its depiction of the class to which its leading character belongs and in its description of western scenery. Also like “The Big Bear” it renders some of its hero’s monologues very well, even including (as few other sketches do) some of Mike’s picturesque profanity. For all this, it strikes one as more synthetic than authentic; It endows Mike with a romantic love of nature and a nostalgia which are hardly in character with his known or even his legendary character. Its happenings, furthermore, are closer to those of melodrama than to those of actuality. Written though it was for one of the most masculine publications of the period, Thorpe’s tale does its best to sentimentalize the rowdy boatman.

In an account of the death of Fink published in 1855, Thorpe similarly was to prettify the grim incident (see p. 272) .

Occasionally may be seen on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers singularly hearty looking men that puzzle a stranger as to their history and age. Their forms always exhibit a powerful development of muscle and bone; their cheeks are prominent, and you would pronounce them men enjoying perfect health, in middle life, were it not for their heads, which, if not bald, will be sparsely covered with grey hair. Another peculiarity about these people is that they have a singular knowledge of all the places on the river, every bar and bend is spoken of with precision and familiarity every town is recollected before it was half as large as the present, or no town at all. Innumerable places are marked out, where once was an Indian fight or a rendezvous of robbers. [pg. 68]

The manner, the language, and the dress of these individuals are all characteristic of sterling common sense; the manner modest, yet full of self reliance, the language strong and forcible, from superiority of mind rather than from education, lie dress studied for comfort rather than fashion; on the whole, you insensibly become attached to them, and court their society. The good humor, the frankness, the practical sense, the reminiscences, the powerful frame, all indicate a character at the present day extinct and anomalous; and such indeed is the case, for your acquaintance will be one of the few remaining people now spoken of as the “last of the flat-boatmen.”

Thirty years ago the navigation of the Western waters was confined to this class of men; the obstacles presented to the pursuit in those swift running and wayward waters had to be overcome by physical force alone; the navigator’s arm grew strong as he guided his rude craft past the “snag” and “sawyer,” or kept off the no less dreaded bar. Besides all this, the deep forests that covered the river banks concealed the wily Indian who gloated over the shedding of blood. The qualities of the frontier warrior associated themselves with the boatman, while he would, when at home, drop both these characters in the cultivator of the soil.

It is no wonder, then, that they were brave, hardy, and open- handed men; their whole lives were a round of manly excitement, they were hyperbolical in thought and in deed, when most natural, compared with any other class of men. Their bravery and chivalrous deeds were performed without a herald to proclaim them to the world they were the mere incidents of a border life, considered too common to outlive the time of a passing wonder. Obscurity has obliterated nearly the actions and the men a few of the latter still exist, as if to justify their wonderful exploits, which now live almost exclusively as traditions.

Among the flat-boatmen, there were none that gained the notoriety of Mite Fink: his name is still remembered along the whole of the Ohio as a man who excelled his fellows in everything–particularly in his rifle-shot, which was acknowledged to be unsurpassed. Probably no man ever lived who could compete [pg. 69]  with Mike Finlc in the latter accomplishment. Strong as Hercules, free from all nervous excitement, possessed of perfect health, and familiar with his weapon from childhood, he raised the rifle to his eye, and having once taken sight, it was as firmly fixed as if buried in a rock. It was Mike’s pride, and he rejoiced on all occasions where he could bring it into use, whether it was turned against the beast of prey or the more savage Indian, and in his day these last named were the common foe with which Mike and his associates had to contend.

On the occasion that we would particularly introduce Mike to the reader, he had bound himself for a while to the pursuits of trade, until a voyage from the head-waters of the Ohio and down the Mississippi could be completed; heretofore he had kept himself exclusively to the Ohio, but a liberal reward, and some curiosity, prompted him to extend his business character beyond his ordinary habits and inclinations. In accomplishment of this object, he was lolling carelessly over the big “sweep” that guided the “flat” on which he officiated; the current of the river bore the boat swiftly along, and made his labor light; his eye glanced around him, and he broke forth in extacies at what he saw and felt. If there is a river in the world that merits the name of beautiful, it is the Ohio, when its channel is

“Without o’erflowing, full.”

The scenery is everywhere soft–there are no jutting rocks, no steep banks, no high hills; but the clear and swift current laves beautiful and undulating shores that descend gradually to the water’s edge. The foliage is rich and luxuriant, and its outlines in the water are no less distinct than when it is relieved against the sky. Interspersed along its route are islands, as beautiful as ever figured in poetry as the land of fairies; enchanted spots indeed, that seem to sit so lightly on the water that you almost expect them as you approach to vanish into dreams. So late as when Mike Fink disturbed the solitudes of the Ohio with his rifle, the canoe of the Indian was hidden in the little recesses along the shore; they moved about in their frail barks like [pg.  70]   spirits, and clung, in spite of the constant encroachments of civilization, to the place which tradition had designated as the happy places of a favored people.

Wild and uncultivated as Mike appeared, he loved nature and had a soul that sometimes felt, whfle admiring it, an exalted enthusiasm. The Ohio was his favorite stream; from where it runs no stronger than a gentle rivulet, to where it mixes with the muddy Mississippi, Mike was as familiar as a child could be with the meanderings of a flower garden. He could not help no- ticing with sorrow the desecrating hand of improvement as he passed along, and half soliloquizing, and half addressing his companions, he broke forth: “I knew these parts afore a squat- ter’s axe had blazed a tree; ’twasn’t then pulling a sweep to get a living, but pulling the trigger done the business. Those were times, to see; a man might call himself lucky.” ‘What’ s the use of improvements? When did cutting down trees make deer more plenty? Who ever cotched a bar by building a log cabin, or twenty on ’em? Who ever found wild buffalo, or a brave Indian in a city? Where’s the fun, the frolicking, the fighting? Gone! Gonel The rifle won’t make a man a living now he must turn nigger and work. If forests continue to be used up, I may yet be smothered in a settlement. Boys, this ‘ere life won’t do Fll stick to the broad horn ‘cordin’ to contract, but once done with it, I’m off for a frolic. If the Choctaws or Cherokee or the Massassip don’t give us a brush as we pass along, I shall grow as poor as a strawed wolf in a pitfall. I must, to live peaceably, point my rifle at something more dangerous than varmint. Six months, and no Indian fight, would spile me worse than a dead horse on a prairie.”

Mike ceased speaking. The then beautiful village of Louisville appeared in sight; the labor of landing the boat occupied his at- tention–the bustle and confusion that in those days followed such an incident ensued, and Mike was his own master by law until his masters ceased trafficking, and again required his services.

At the time we write of, there were a great many renegade [pg. 71]Indians who lived about the settlements, and which is still the case in the extreme south-west. These Indians are generally the most degraded of the tribe, outcasts, who, for crime or dissipa- tion, are no longer allowed to associate with their people; they live by hunting or stealing, and spend their precarious gains in intoxication.

Among the throng that crowded on the flat-boat on its arrival were a number of these unfortunate beings; they were influenced by no other motive than that of loitering round, in idle speculation at what was going on. Mike was attracted towards them at sight, and as he too was in the situation that is deemed most favorable to mischief, it struck him that it was a good opportunity to have a little sport at the Indians’ expense.

Without ceremony, he gave a terrific war-whoop, and then mixing the language of the aborigines and his own together, he went on savage fashion, and bragged of his triumphs and victories on the war path, with all the seeming earnestness of a real *l>iave.” Nor were taunting words spared to exasperate the poor creatures, who, perfectly helpless, listened to the tales of their own greatness, and their own shame, until wound up to the highest pitch of exasperation. Mike’s companions joined in, thoughtless boys caught the spirit of the affair, and the Indians were goaded until they in turn made battle with their tongues. Then commenced a system of running against them, pulling off their blankets, together with a thousand other indignities; finally they made a precipitate retreat ashore, amidst the hooting and jeering of an unfeeling crowd, who considered them, poor devils, destitute of feeling and humanity.

Among this crowd of outcasts was a Cherokee, who bore the name of Proud Joe; what his real cognomen was no one knew, for he was taciturn, haughty, and in spite of his poverty, and his manner of life, won the name we have mentioned. His face was expressive of talent, but it was furrowed by the most terrible habits of drunkenness; that he was a superior Indian was admitted, and it was also understood that he was banished from his mountainous me, his tribe then numerous and powerful; for [pg. 72 ]  some great crime. He was always looked up to by his companions, and managed, however intoxicated he might be, to sustain a singularly proud bearing, which did not even depart from him while prostrated on the ground.

Joe was filthy in his person and habits; in these respects he was behind his fellows; but one ornament of his person was attended to with a care which would have done honor to him if surrounded by his people, and in his native woods. Joe still wore with Indian dignity his scalp-lock; he ornamented it with taste and cherished it, as report said,, that some Indian messenger of vengeance might tear it from his head, as expiatory of his numerous crimes. Mike noticed this peculiarity, and reaching out his hand, plucked from it a hawk’s feather, which was attached to the scalp-lock.

The Indian glared horribly on Mike as he consummated the insult, snatched the feather from his hand, then shaking his clenched fist in the air, as if calling on heaven for revenge, rereated with his friends. Mike saw that he had roused the savage’s soul, and he marvelled wonderfully that so much resentment should be exhibited, and as an earnest to Proud Joe that the wrong he had done him should not rest unrevenged, he swore he would cut the scalp-lock off close to his head the first convenient opportunity he got, and then he thought no more of the matter.

The morning following the arrival of the boat at Louisville was occupied in making preparations to pursue the voyage down the river. Nearly everything was completed, and Mike had taken his favorite place at the sweep, when looking up the river- bank he beheld at some distance Joe and his companions, and from their gesticulations, they were making him the subject of conversation.

Mike thought instantly of several ways in which he could show them all together a fair fight, and then whip them with ease; he also reflected with what extreme satisfaction he would .enter into the spirit of the arrangement and other matters to him equally pleasing, when all the Indians disappeared save Joe [pg. 73 ] himself, who stood at times viewing him in moody silence and then staring round at passing objects. From the peculiarity of Joe’s position to Mike, who was below him, his head and upper part of his body relieved boldly against the sky, and in one of his movements he brought his profile face to view. The prominent scalp-lock and its adornments seemed to be more striking than ever, and it again roused the pugnacity of Mike Fink; in an instant he raised his rifle, always loaded and at command, brought it to his eye, and before he could be pre- vented, drew sight upon Proud Joe and fired. The rifle ball whistled loud and shrill, and Joe, springing his whole length into the air, fell upon the ground. The cold-blooded murder was noticed by fifty persons at least, and there arose from the crowd an universal cry of horror and indignation at the bloody deed. Mike himself seemed to be much astonished, and in an instant reloaded his rifle, and as a number of white persons rushed towards the boat, Mike threw aside his coat, and taking his powder horn between his teeth, leaped, rifle in hand, into the Ohio, and commenced swimming for the opposite shore. Some bold spirits present determined Mike should not so easily escape, and jumping into the only skiff at command, pulled swiftly after him. Mike watched their movements until they came within a hundred yards of him, then turning in the water, he supported himself by his feet alone, and raised his deadly rifle to his eye; its nuzzle, if it spoke hostilely, was as certain to send a messenger of death through one or more of his pursuers as if it were the lightning, and they knew it; dropping their oars, and turning pale, they bid Mike not to fire. Mike waved his hand towards the little village of Louisville, and again pursued his way to the opposite shore. The time consumed by the firing of Mike’s rifle, the pursuit, and the abandonment of it, required less time than we have taken to give the details, and in that time to the astonishment of the gaping crowd around Joe, they saw him rising with a be- wildered air; a moment more and he recovered his senses, and [74] THE DISGRACED SCALP-LOCK stood up at his feet lay his scalp-lock! The ball had cut it clear from his head; the cord around the root of it, in which were placed feathers and other ornaments, held it together; the con- cussion had merely stunned its owner; farther he had escaped all bodily harm! A cry of exultation rose at this last evidence of the skill of Mike Fink; the exhibition of a shot that established his claim, indisputably, to the eminence he ever afterwards held; the unrivalled marksman of all the flat-boatmen of the Western waters. Proud Joe had received many insults; he looked upon himself as a degraded, worthless being, and the ignominy heaped upon him, he never, except by reply, resented; but this last insult, was like seizing the lion by the mane, or a Roman senator by the beard it roused the slumbering demon within, and made him again thirst to resent his wrongs, with an intensity of emotion that can only be felt by an Indian. His eye glared upon the jeer- ing crowd around; like a fiend, his chest swelled and heaved, until it seemed that he must suffocate. No one noticed this emo- tion, all were intent upon the exploit that had so singularly de- prived Joe of his war-lock; and smothering his wrath he retreated to his associates, with a consuming fire at his vitals; he was a different man from an hour before, and with that desperate reso- lution on which a man stakes his all, he swore by the Great Spirit of his forefathers that he would be revenged. An hour after the disappearance of Joe, both he and Mike Fink were forgotten. The flat-boat, which the latter had de- serted, was got under way, and dashing through the rapids in the river opposite Louisville, wended on its course. As is customary when night sets in, the boat was securely fastened in some little bend or bay in the shore, where it remained until early morn. Long before the sun had fairly risen, the boat was pushed again into the stream, and it passed through a valley presenting the greatest possible beauty and freshness of landscape, the mind can conceive. It was Spring, and a thousand tints of green developed them- selves in the half formed foliage and bursting buds. The beauti- [75] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND ful mallard skimmed across the water, ignorant of the danger of the white man’s approach; the splendid spoonbill decked the shallow places near the shore, while myriads of singing birds filled the air with their unwritten songs. In the far reaches down the river, there occasionally might be seen a bear, stepping along the ground as if dainty of its feet, and snuffing the intruder on his wild home, he would retreat into the woods. To enliven all this, and give the picture the look of humanity, there might also be seen, struggling with the floating mists, a column of blue smoke, that came from a fire built on a project- ing point of land, around which the current swept rapidly, and carried everything that floated on the river. The eye of a boat- man saw the advantage of the situation which the place ren- dered to those on shore, to annoy and attack, and as wandering Indians, in those days, did not hesitate to rob, there was much speculation as to what reception the boat would receive from the builders of the fire. The rifles were all loaded, to be prepared for the worst, and the loss of Mike Fink lamented, as a prospect of a fight pre- sented itself where he could use his terrible rifle. The boat in the meantime, swept round the point, but instead of an enemy, there lay in a profound sleep Mike Fink, with his feet toasting at the fire, his pillow was a huge bear that had been shot on the day previous, while at his sides, and scattered in profusion around him, were several deer and wild turkeys. Mike had not been idle; after picking out a place most eligible to notice the passing boat, he had spent his time in hunting, and he was surrounded by trophies of his prowess. The scene that he presented was worthy of the time and the man, and would have thrown Landseer into a delirium of joy, could he have witnessed it. The boat, owing to the swiftness of the cur- rent, passed Mike’s resting place, although it was pulled strongly to the shore. As Mike’s companions came opposite to him, they raised such a shout, half in exultation of meeting him, and half to alarm him with the idea that Joe’s friends were upon him. [76] THE DISGRACED SCALP-LOCK Mike at the sound sprang to his feet, rifle in hand, and as he looked around, he raised it to his eyes, and by the time he dis- covered the boat, he was ready to fire. “Down with your shooting iron, you wild critter/’ shouted one of the boatmen. Mike dropped the piece, and gave a loud haloo, that echoed among the solitudes like a piece of artillery. The meeting be- tween Mike and his fellows was characteristic. They joked, and jibed him with their rough wit, and he parried it off, with a most creditable ingenuity. Mike soon learned the extent of his rifle shot he seemed perfectly indifferent to the fact that Proud Joe was not dead. The only sentiment he uttered was regret that he did not fire at the vagabond’s head, and if he hadn’t hit it, why he made the first bad shot in twenty years. The dead game was carried on board of the boat, the adventure was forgotten, and everything resumed tie monotony of floating in a flat-boat down the Ohio. A month or more elapsed, and Mike had progressed several hundred miles down the Mississippi; his journey had been re- markably free from incident; morning, noon, and night pre- sented the same banks, the same muddy water, and he sighed to see some broken land, some high hflls, and he railed, and swore that he should have been such a fool as to desert his favorite Ohio for a river that produced nothing but alligators, and was never at best half-finished. Occasionally, the plentifulness of game put him in spirits, but it did not last long, he wanted more lasting excitement, and de- clared himself as perfectly miserable, and helpless, as a wild cat without teeth or claws. In the vicinity of Natchez rise a few, abrupt hills, which tower above the surrounding lowlands of the Mississippi like monu- ments; they are not high, but from their loneliness and rarity, they create sensations of pleasure and awe. Under the shadow of one of these bluffs, Mike and his associates made the customary preparations to pass the night. Mike’s enthusiasm knew no bounds at the sight of land again; he said it was as pleasant as [77] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND “cold water to a fresh wound”; and, as his spirits rose, he went on making the region round about, according to his notions, an agreeable residence. “The Choctaws live in these diggins,” said Mike, “and a cursed time they must have of it. Now, if I lived in these parts, Td declare war on ’em, fust to have something to keep me from growing dull; without some such business, Fd be as musty as an old swamp moccasin. I could build a cabin on that ar hill yonder, that could from its location, with my rifle repulse a whole tribe, if they came after me.” “What a beautiful time I’d have of it. I never was particular about what’s called a fair fight, I just ask a half a chance, and the odds against me; and if I then don’t keep clear of snags and sawyers, let me spring a leak, and go to the bottom. Its natur that the big fish should eat the little ones. I’ve seen trout swal- low a perch, and a cat would come along and swallow the trout, and perhaps on the Massissip, the alligators use up the cat, so on until the end of the row.” “Well, I walk tall into varmint and Indian, it’s a way I’ve got, and it comes as natural as grinning to a hyena. I’m a regular tornado, tough as a hickory withe, long winded as a nor’-wester. I can strike a blow like a falling free, and every lick makes a gap in the crowd that lets in an acre of sunshine. Whew, boys,” shouted Mike, twirling his rifle like a walking-stick around his head, at the ideas suggested in his mind. “Whew, boys! if the Choctaw devils in them ar woods, thar, would give us a brush, just as I feel now, I’d call them gentlemen. I must fight some- thing, or 111 catch the dry rot burnt brandy won’t save me.” Such were some of the expressions which Mike gave utterance to, and in which his companions heartily joined; but they never presumed to be quite equal to Mike, for his bodily prowess, as well as his rifle were acknowledged to be unsurpassed. These displays of animal spirits generally ended in boxing and wrestling matches, in which falls were received and blows struck without being noticed, that would have destroyed common men. Occa- sionally angry words and blows were exchanged; but like the [78] THE DISGRACED SCALP-LOCK summer storm, the cloud that emitted the lightning purified the air, and when the commotion ceased, the combatants imme- diately made friends, and became more attached to each other than before the cause that interrupted the good feelings occured. Such were the conversation and amusements of the evening, when the boat was moored under one of the bluffs we have alluded to. As night wore on, one by one of the hardy boatmen fell asleep, some in its [the boat’s] confined interior, and others pro- tected by a light covering in the open air. The moon rose in beautiful majesty, her silver light behind the high lands gave them a powerful and theatrical effect, as it ascended, and as its silver rays grew perpendicular, they finally kissed gently the sum- mit of the hills, and poured down their full light upon the boat with almost noonday brilliancy. The silence with which the beautiful changes of darkness and light were produced made it mysterious. It seemed as if some creative power was at work, bringing form and life out of darkness. In the midst of the witchery of this quiet scene, there sounded forth the terrible rifle, and the more terrible war-whoop of the Indian. One of the flat boat men asleep on the deck, gave a stifled groan, turned upon his face, and with a quivering mo- tion ceased to live. Not so with his companions they in an in- stant, as men accustomed to danger and sudden attacks, sprang ready armed to their feet; but before they could discover their foes, seven sleek and horribly painted savages leaped from the hill into the boat. The firing of the rifle was useless, and each man singled out a foe and met him with the drawn knife. The struggle was quick and fearful, and deadly blows were given, screams and imprecations rent the air. Yet the voice of Mike Fink could be heard in encouraging shouts above the clamor. “Give it to them, boys/’ he cried, “cut their hearts out, choke the dogs, here’s hell afire, and the river rising!” then clenching with the most powerful of the assailants, he rolled with him upon the deck of the boat. Powerful as Mike was, the Indian seemed nearly a match for him; the two twisted and writhed [791 THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND like serpents, now one seeming to have the advantage and then the other. In all this confusion there might occasionally be seen glancing in the moonlight the blade of a knife, but at whom the thrusts were made, or who wielded it, could not be discovered. The general fight lasted less time than we have taken to de- scribe it. The white men gained the advantage, two of the In- dians lay dead upon the boat, and the living, escaping from their antagonists, leaped ashore, and before the rifle could be brought to bear, they were out of its reach. While Mike was yet struggling with his antagonist, one of his companions cut the boat loose from the shore, and with power- ful exertion, managed to get its bows so far into the current that it swung round and floated, but before this was accomplished, and before any one interfered with Mike, he was on his feet, covered with blood, and blowing like a porpoise; by the time he could get his breath, he commenced talking. ** ‘Ain’t been so busy in a long time,” said he, turning over his victim with his foot, “that fellow fou’t beautiful; if he’s a speci- men of the Choctaws that live in these parts, they are screamers, the infernal sarpents, the d d possums.” Talking in this way, he with others took a general survey of the killed and wounded. Mike himself was a good deal cut up with the Indian’s knife, but he called his wounds mere black- berry scratches; one of Mike’s associates was severely hurt but the rest escaped comparatively harmless. The sacrifice was made at the first fire, for beside the dead Indians, there lay one of the boat’s crew, cold and dead, his body perforated with four dif- ferent balls; that he was the chief object of attack seemed evi- dent, yet no one of his associates knew of his having a single fight with Indians. The soul of Mike was affected, and taking the hand of his deceased friend between his own, he raised his bloody knife to- wards the bright moon, and swore that he would desolate “the nation” that claimed the Indians who had made war upon them that night, and turning to his stiffened victim, that, dead as it [80] THE DISGRACED SCALP-LOCK was, retained the expression of implacable hatred and defiance, he gave it a smile of grim satisfaction, and then joined In the general conversation which the occurences of the night would naturally suggest. The master of the ”broad horn” was a business man, and had often been down the Mississippi; this was the first attack he had received, or knew to have been made, from the shores inhabited by the Choctaws, except by the white man, and he, among other things, suggested the keeping of the dead Indians, until daylight, that they might have an opportunity to examine their dress and features, and see with certainty who were to blame for the occurences of the night. The dead boatman was removed with care to a respectful distance, and the living, except the person at the sweep of the boat, were soon buried in profound slumber. Not until after the rude breakfast was partaken of, and the funeral rites of the dead boatman were solemnly performed, did Mike and his companions disturb the coipses of the red men. When both these things had been leisurely and gently got through with, there was a different spirit among the men. Mike was astir, and went about his business with alacrity; he stripped the bloody blanket from the corpse of the Indian he had killed, as if it enveloped something disgusting, and required no respect; he examined carefully the moccasin on the Indian’s feet, pro- nouncing them at one time Chickasas, at another time Shaw- nese; he stared at the livid face, but could not recognise the style of paint that covered it. That the Indians were not stricfly national in their adorn- ments was certain, for they were examined by practised eyes that could have told the nation of the dead, if such had been the case, as readily as a sailor could distinguish a ship by its flag. Mike was evidently puzzled, and as he was about giving up his task as hopeless, the dead body he was examining, from some cause turned on its side, Mike’s eyes distended, as some of his companions observed, ‘like a choked cat,” and became riveted. He drew himself up in a half serious, and half comic expression, and pointing at the back of the dead Indian’s head, there was THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND exhibited a dead warrior in his paint, destitute of his scalp-lock, the small stump which was only left, being stiffened with red paint; those who could read Indian symbols learned a volume of deadly resolve in what they saw. The body of Proud Joe was stiff and cold before them. The last and best shot of Mike Fink cost a brave man his life; the corpse so lately interred was evidently taken in the moon- light by Proud Joe and his party, as that of Mike’s, and they had resigned their lives, one and all, that he might with certainty be sacrificed. Nearly a thousand miles of swamps had been threaded, large and swift running rivers had been crossed, hos- tile tribes passed through by Joe and his friends, that they might revenge the fearful insult, of destroying, without the life, the sacred scalp-lock. Letter to the “Western General Advertiser” from ff K” (1845) KWAS AN UNIDENTIFIABLE CORRESPONDENT of the Western General Advertiser, published in Cincinnati, his home town. In the issue of that paper for January 22, 1845, the editor Charles Cist (1793-1868), Cincinnati’s leading historian, had reprinted one of his own articles. Speaking of the lawlessness of the boatmen, Cist had cited an example. “The graphic pen of Morgan Neville,” said he, “has given celebrity to Mike Fink . . . to whose exploits as a marksman Mr. Neville has done justice; but to whose character otherwise he has done more than justice, in classing him with the boatmen to whose care merchandise in great value was committed with a confidence which the owners never had cause to repent. This was true of those who had charge of the boat; but did not apply to Fink, who was nothing more than a hand on board, and whose private character was worthless and vile. Mike was in fact an illustration of the class . . . who did not dare show their faces in their early neighbor- hoods or homes. . . .” Ks answer, dated February 11, 1845, retailed an anecdote, re- cently told him by “one of the oldest and most respected com- manders of steamboats in the Nashville trade, to prove that Fink “did have charge of merchandise/’ The circumstantial identifi- cation of the informant, the specific minutiae of the account, and the unspectacular nature of the stoiy itself all point to its authenticity. Furthermore, it coincides with the testimony to be given later, independently, by Claudius Cadot (p. 20) and Cap- tain John Fink (p. 21 ) . K’s second story is offered in support of Cist’s claim that Mike was “vile.” It is about Mike’s punishment of his wife Peg who, at least under that name, makes a unique [83] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND appearance here. Its specification of the date and the setting is persuasive, and the action is in character for Mike. The editors admit a slight uneasiness about the stoiy as biography, however, because (although they can cite no parallels) it sounds much like a traditional narrative which may have been told about others. In strong contrast with Thorpe’s sentimentalized picture of 1842, this pair of anecdotes, about two and a half years later, is remarkably realistic. Ks greater closeness to the scene of Mike’s activity and to authentic oral lore probably is an important rea- son for the contrast. MR. CIST: In your paper of January 22d, there is an article from your pen entitled “The Last of the Girtys,” in which you say Morgan Neville has done more than justice to Mike, by classing him with that portion of the keel boat men of his day who were intrusted with the property of others. There is no doubt but that Mike has had charge of many keel boats, with valuable cargoes; and a friend of mine, one of the oldest and most re- spected of the commanders of steamboats in the Nashville trade, related to me within the last four days that, in 1819, he was employed to leave Pittsburgh, and go down the Ohio in hunt of Mike and his cargo, which had been detained by some unaccountable delay. At some distance above Wheeling he found the loiterer lying to, in company with another keel, ap- parently in no hurry to finish the trip. Mike did not greet our envoy in very pleasant style, but kept the fair weather side out, knowing that my friend was able to hoe his own row. Mike was determined not to leave good quarters that night, and all went to bed wherever they could. In the night my friend was awak- ened by some noise or other, and before falling asleep again, he heard Mike say in a low voice, “Well, boys, who’s going to still to-night?” This question drew his attention, as it was something he did not understand. Watching for some time, he saw Mike take a tin bucket, that had apparently been fixed for the pur- [84] LETTER FROM K pose, with a small pipe inserted in its bottom, about the size of a common gimblet. This was taken to a cask of wine or brandy, and a hole made in either cask, the pipe put in, and then a couple of quarts of water turned into the bucket. Then the “still” began to operate, as they drew from the head of the cask until the water in the bucket disappeared. Thus they obtained the liquor, and the cause of their long de- tention [was] ascertained. The very casks of wine that Mike drew from, were returned to the merchant in Pittsburgh, more than a year afterwards, having soured. Thus you see Mike did have charge of merchandize, and to considerable extent. But I did not intend to defend Mike from the charge you have made against him, for in truth, he was all that was “worth- less and vile.” I intended to tell you an anecdote that occurred about the year 1820, just below the mouth of the Muskingum, in which Mike was prominent. There had been several keel boats landed there for the night, it being near the middle of Novem- ber. After making all fast, Mike was observed, just under the bank, scraping into a heap the dried beach leaves which had been blown there during the day, having just fallen from the effects of the early autumn frosts. To all questions as to what he was doing he returned no answer, but continued at his work, until he had piled them up as high as his head. He then sepa- rated them, making a sort of oblong ring, in which he laid down, as if to ascertain whether it was a good bed or not. Get- ting up he sauntered on board, hunted up his rifle, made great preparations about his priming, and then called in a very im- pressive manner upon his wife to follow him. Both proceeded up to the pile of leaves, poor “Peg” in a terrible flutter, as she had discovered that Mike was in no very amiable humor. “Get in there and lie down,” was the command to Peg, topped off with one of Mike’s very choicest oaths. “Now Mi. Fink,” (she always mistered him when his blood was up,) “what have I done, I dont know, I’m sure” “Get in there and lie down, or I’ll shoot you,” with another THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND oath, and drawing his rifle up to his shoulder. Poor Peg obeyed, and crawled into the leaf pile, and Mike covered her up with the combustibles. He then took a flour barrel, and split the staves into fine pieces, and lighted them at the fire on board the boat, all the time watching the leaf pile, and swearing he would shoot Peg if she moved. So soon as his splinters began to blaze, he took them into his hand and deliberately set fire in four different places to the leaves that surrounded his wife. In an instant, the whole mass was on fire, aided by a fresh wind which was blowing at the time, while Mike was quietly standing by en- joying the fun. Peg, through fear of Mike, stood it as long as she could; but it soon became too hot, and she made a run for the river, her hair and clothing all on fire. In a few seconds she reached the water, and plunged in, rejoiced to know she had escaped both fire and rifle so well. “There,” said Mike, “that’ll larn you to be winkin at them fellers on the other boat” There were many occasions of this kind, where Mike and Peg were the actors, all going to show that Mike was one of the very lowest of mankind, and entirely destitute of any of the manly qualities which often were to be found among the bargemen of his day. [86] Trimming a Darky’s Heel JOHN s. ROBB [SOLITAIRE] r mb ST. LOUIS REVEILLE, founded in 1844, shortly became J_ famous as a newspaper in which good western stories were published. John S. Robb, apparently a journeyman printer who had worked his way from the East to St. Louis, contributed some of the newspaper’s best tall tales, signing them with the pseudonym “Solitaire.” One of these, “Trimming a Darky’s Heel,” appeared in the Reveille at an undetermined date and later, like many stories from that paper, was reprinted in Porter’s Spirit of the Times on February 13, 1847, probably not long after its first appearance. The story is an enlargement upon a feat of Mike’s which had been mentioned in a news story of 1823 and again in an 1829 article about the boatman. Whether Robb got it orally or not is hard to say, but there is evidence that he got some material orally, since he tells of Mike’s shooting a cup between a com- panion’s knees. Heretofore the stories had placed the cup on the friend’s head, although a story of his shooting a cup held between a woman’s knees was probably being transmitted orally (seep. 22). Partly because modern readers find it hard to be as blithe as the author about the serious wounding of Mike’s victim, partly because the repartee between Mike and the justice hardly seems sparkling, it is not likely to be considered one of Robb’s best efforts. But it does add to the growing body of lore about Fink’s carefree attitude toward courts of law. In the early days of St. Louis, before the roar of commerce or manufactures had drowned the free laugh and merry song of the [87] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND jolly keel boatmen, those primitive navigators of the “Father of Waters” tied up their crafts beneath the bluff, which then, eighty feet in height, rose perpendicular from the water’s edge in front of the city. On the top of the bluff then, as now, a num- ber of doggeries held forth their temptations to the hardy navi- gator, and they were often the scene of the wildest kind of revelry. At that time Mike Fink, the chief among keel boatmen, was trading to St. Louis, and he frequently awoke the inhabitants by his wild freaks and dare-devil sprees. Mike was celebrated for the skill with which he used the rifle then the constant com- panion of western men. It was his boast that he could “jest shoot whar he’d a mind to with his Betsy,” as he familiarly termed his “shooting iron,” and his companions, for the pleasure of noting his skill, or exhibiting it to some stranger, would often put him to the severest kind of tests. One day, while lying upon the deck of his boat below the St. Louis bluff, with two or three companions, the conversation turned upon Mike’s last shot; and one of the party ventured the opinion that his skill was departing. This aroused the boatmen into a controversy, and from their conversation might be learned the manner of the shot which was the subject of dispute. It was thus: One of the party, at a distance of one hundred yards, had placed a tin cup between his knees, and Mike had, at that dis- tance, bored the centre of the cup. “I’ll swar I don’t hold that cup agin for you, Mike,” remarked the doubter, “for thur is the delicatest kind of a trimble comin’ in your hand, and, some of these yur days, you’ll miss the cup dar.” “Miss thunder!” shouted Mike; “why, you consarned corn- dodger mill, it war you that had the trimbles, and when I gin old Bets the wakin’ tetch, you squatted as ef her bark war agoin’ to bite you!” “Oh, well,” was the reply, “thar’s mor’n one way of gettin’ out of a skunk hole, and ef you kin pass the trimbles off on me, [88] TRIMMING A DARKY’S HEEL why, you kin pass, that’s all; but I aint goin’ to trust you with a sight at my paddles agin at an hundred paces, that’s sartin.” “Why, you scary vaimint,” answeis Mike, bouncing to his feet and reaching for “Betsy,” which stood by the cabin door of the boat, “jest pint out a muskeeter at a hundred yards, and 111 nip off his right hinder eend claw at the second jint afore he kin hum, Oh, don’t/” “Hit a muskeeter, ha, ha!” was the tantalizing response of the other; “why, you couldn’t hit the hinder part of that nigger’s heel up thar on the bluff, ‘thout damagin’ the bone, and that ain’t no shot to crow about.” The negro referred to was seated at the very edge of the bluff, astride of a flour barrel, and one foot hung over the edge. The distance was over one hundred yards, but Mike instantly raised his rifle, with the remark: “I’ll jest trim that feller’s heel so he kin wear a decent boot!” and off went “Betsy.” The negro jumped from his seat, and uttered a yell of pain, as if, indeed, his whole heel had been trimmed off, and Mike stood a moment with his rifle, listening to the negro’s voice, as if en- deavoring to define from the sound whether he was really seriously hurt. At last the boatman who had been doubting Mike’s present skill remarked: “You kin leave, now, Mike, fur that darky’s master will be arter you with a sharp stick”; and then he further added as a taunt “I knowed Betsy was feelin’ for that nigger’s bones jest by the way you held her!” Mike now became a little wrathy, and appeared inclined to use his bones upon the tormentor, but some of the others ad- vised him to hold on that he would have a chance to exercise them upon the constable. In a short time an officer appeared with a warrant, but as soon as Mike looked at him he gave up the thought of either flight or resistance, and quietly remarked to his companions that the officer was a clever fellow, and “a small hoss in a fight.” “The only way you kin work him is to fool him,” says Mike, “and he’s a weazel in that bisness hisselfl” THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND The warrant was produced by the officer and read to the offender, who signified his assent to the demand for his body, and told the representative of the law to lead the way. He did so, and when about to step off the boat he cast his eye back, supposing that Mike was following him, yet a little suspicious. The movement was a prudent one, for he discovered the tail of Mike’s hunting shirt at the very moment the owner was retreat- ing into the small cabin at the rear of the boat, which was immediately locked on the inside! All the boatmen, as if by previous concert, began to leave their craft, each bearing away upon his shoulder any loose implement lying about, with which an entrance into the cabin could be forced. The officer paused a moment, and then went to the cabin door, which he com- menced persuading the offender to open, and save him the trouble of forcing it. He received no answer, but heard a hor- rible rustling within. At length getting out of patience, he re- marked aloud: ‘”Well, if you won’t open the door I can bum you out!” and he commenced striking fire with a pocket tinder box. The door immediately flew open, and there stood a boatman in Mike’s dress: but it wasn’t Mikef ‘You aint arter me, are you, hoss?” inquired the boatman. The officer, without reply, stepped inside of the small cabin and looked around. There appeared to be no place to hide a figure as large as Mike, and there was a fellow dressed just like him. The thought immediately came uppermost in the officer’s mind that the offender had changed coats outside while his back was turned, to go off the boat, and one of the parties that had walked off was Mike in disguise! He was about to step out when a moccasin-covered heel, sticking out of a hole in a large mat- tress, attracted his attention, and when he touched it the heel vanished. He put his hand in to feel, and Mike burst out in a hoarse laugh! “Quit your tiddin’!” shouted he. “Consarn your cunnin’ pic- tur’, IT! gin in ‘thout a struggle.” The other boatman now joined in the laugh, as he helped the TRIMMING A DARKY’S HEEL officer to pull Mike out of his hiding place. He had changed his garments inside the cabin instead of outside. A crowd of the boatmen also gathered around, and they all adjourned to the bluff, where, after taking drinks, they started in a body for the magistrate’s office, who, by the way, was one of the early French settlers. “Ah, ha!” he exclaimed, as the party entered the door; “here is ze men of ze boat, raisin’ ze diable once more time. I shall not know what to do wiz him, by gar. Vat is de mattair now?” ‘Why, Squire/’ broke in Mike, “IVe jest come up with the Colonel to collect a small bill offen you!” “You shall collect ze bill from me?” inquired the Justice. “What for you do the city good to de amount of von bill? Ah, ha! You kick up your heel and raise de batter and de salt of de whole town wiz your noise so much as we nevair get some sleep in de night!” All eagerly gathered around to hear what Mike would reply, for his having a bill against the justice was news to the crowd. “You jest hit the pint, Squire,” said Mike, “when you said that thar word heel/ 1 want you to pay me fur trimmin’ the heel of one of your town niggers! I’ve jest altered his breed, and arter this his posterity kin warr the neatest kind of a boot!” The boatmen burst into a yell of laughter, and the magistrate into a corresponding state of wrath. He sputtered French and English with such rapidity that it was impossible to understand either. “Leave ze court, you raskells of ze boat!” shouted the Squire above the noise. “Allez vous-en, vous rogues, I shall nevair ave nosing to do wiz you. You ave treat ze court wiz grand con- tempt.” The boatmen, all but Mike, had retired to the outside of the door, where they were still laughing, when Mike again, with a sober and solemn phiz, remarked to the Squire: “Well, old dad, ef you allays raise h-II in this ere way fur a little laffin 7 that’s done in your court, 111 be cussed ef I gin you any more of my cases!” THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND Another roar from the boatmen hailed this remark. “Constable, clear ze court in une instant, right avay! Les sacre diables of ze river, no know nosing about how to treat wiz de law. I shall ave nosing to do wiz de whole what you call pile of ze rogues!” “I aint agoin’ to stand any more sich law as this,” remarked Mike. “Consam my pictur’ ef I don’t leave the town!” “Go to ze devil/” shouted the magistrate. “I won’t,” says Mike; “mabbe he’s anuther French Jestis!” Amid a torrent of words and laughter Mike retreated to his boat, where he paid the officer for. his trouble, and sent a hand- ful of silver to the darky to extract the pain from his shortened heel. Mike Fink: “The Last of the Boatmen” (1847), JOSEPH M. FIELD JOSEPH M. FIELD (1810-56), who twice wrote about Fink in the St Louis Reveille, was active in two fields, the theater and journalism. As actor, playwright, and theater manager, and as journalist and editor, he traveled widely, and it is credible that during his travels he heard yarns about the boatman, as he claimed, in Cincinnati, Louisville, New Orleans, Natchez, and St. Louis. He mentioned two storytellers Morgan Neville and Colonel Charles Keemle. Since he described the former as having been “a noble old gentleman” at the age of forty-nine, there may be doubt about Field’s claim that he had talked with him. Keemle, however, was a very close associate as coeditor of the Reveille. Moreover, Keemle had been on the Yellowstone River, at the site of Fink’s death in the spring of 1823. Part of the evidence is an interesting letter of recommendation which he wrote for a Blackfoot Indian named Iron Shirt and there is other evidence (see NasatiYs article, Pacific Northwest Quarter- ly, XXX [Jan., 1939], 83, 101). In 1844, furthermore, Keemle had given Field previously unpublished information about the place of Mike’s death. Field may have had an additional literary source a drama, probably never produced and now lost, The Last of the Boatmen, by an associate of his in the New Orleans theater a few years before James Rees, The account Field wrote in 1844 of “The Death of Mike Fink” was a pretty straightforward one (see p. 263) . The follow- ing is a serial published in 1847. It introduces Mike as a ballad composer, rather believably, since it seems unlikely that either [93 ] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND Field or his friend Keemle would have been capable of compos- ing a ballad as unsophisticated as “Neal Hornback.” Other oral traditions seem, as Field says, to have supplied him with ample material “between truth and fable.” Many phrases in the dia- logue have the sound of authentic boatmen’s talk; and the ac- count of Mike’s roistering in New Orleans, Mike’s story about old Jabe and the slicken’s, Dr. Gravy’s anecdote about his play- ing bear, and Jean Tisan’s yarn about his wife are the stuff of oral tradition. The stoiy as a whole has the foim of a melodramatic novel of the day full of typical claptrap wild coincidences, disguises, sentimental characters, and maudlin maunderings. Despite all these, it has some wonderful stuff in it. Note the passages re- cording the talks and the frolics of the boatmen and the trap- pers, the remarkable renderings of incoherent speech in mo- ments of great stress (as at the time of Mike’s death) . Note par- ticularly the scene, with undertones of symbolism, which shows Fink, the boatman, confronting and refusing to yield to the mechanical enemy of the keelboat the steamboat. This is in a class with John Henry’s contest with the steam drill. Well, the writer has undertaken to write the history of Mike Fink, and if it had not been his custom through life somewhat like Mike Fink himself to get into the scrape first, and then to make his arrangements for getting out of it afterwards, he prob- ably would feel a little uneasy as to his task; for truth to say, un- dertaking to follow Mike, the devil only knows where he may lead one. Fifteen years ago the writer listened to some stories of Mike told by the late Morgan Neville, Esq., of Cincinnati, a noble old gentleman whose pen had done much towards trans- mitting to posterity the fame of the “Last of the Boatmen.” In Louisville, subsequently, many “yams” respecting the early river hero were repeated to the writer; and since that time, in New Orleans, Natchez, and finally in St. Louis, anecdotes and stories, and, above all, the actual facts which are to form the frame-work [94] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN of this history have reached him till, between truth and fable, he is amply supplied with material. The writer, though, is con- scientious to a painful degree, and he wants to “fix things right”; above all, he is afraid of telling “tough stories/’ “stretch- ing things out,” &c., and therefore he intends to be very careful. After the story shall be written, though, he gives fair notice that he will swear to every word of it; when if anybody knows more of the matter than he does, let them meet the same test. Now, then for a good startling commencement. WHEREIN MIKE PLAYS THE DEUCE WITH CERTAIN FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS There was a high time, one evening, in the fall of the year 179-, in a little settlement on the banks of the Monongahela, not far from where stands at present the bustling town of Brownsville. Old Benson’s pretty daughter, Mary, was to be married, and as old Benson had the longest face in the neigh- borhood, talked slower, was tolerably well off as to farm and cattle, and, above all, as he had been the leading man in getting up the log meeting-house, old Benson, of course, was a man of influence and was called “Deacon.” There was something a leetle queer about Mary’s marriage, though, and not a few of the “boys” about, reckoned that “sights” would be seen when Mike Fink should come home. Mike was the tallest, strongest, longest winded fellow in the section, carried the truest rifle, knew more “Ingin ways,” was the wildest hand at a frolic, and, withal, was the greatest favo- rite in the country. He had been “buckin’ up” to Mary Benson for more than a year, and, in fact, Mary was engaged to him; it was notorious that they were to be married that fall, when all of a sudden, taking advantage of Mike’s prolonged absence off in the Alleghanies, old Benson changes his mind, and compels his daughter to marry a man from the lower country, one who was a perfect stranger to everyone except Benson himself, and who, moreover, even during his short residence in the neighborhood less than a month had contrived to set nearly every man, [9?] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND woman and child against him; to be sure the population was not of the densest. Benson was an Englishman by birth, and had lived in New Orleans, and along the lower river. Taggart, Mary’s new suitor, was also an Englishman, had a sort of seaman air with him, and it was in the lower country that he had made acquaintanceship with Benson. He was a heavy, dark browed man, of thirty-five, while Mary was not more than eighteen. Whether it was a matter of mere liking, or of sordid interest this change in the father’s intentionsno- body knew, but he was a cold, severe man, Mary was to be sacri- ficed, and her pale cheeks and streaming eyes were of no effect in averting the doom. Mary was not beautiful exactly, in feature, but there was a mild charm in her feminine character. The western woods at that time contained many emigrant families from the east, but among them all there was not a girl of Mary’s grace. They used to call her “the lady,” and the term ex- pressed exactly the unpretending refinement which entitles a female so to be considered, and which was the natural character- istic of Mary’s mind, untaught as it was. The poor girl loved rough Mike very fondly, for he was the kindest creature in the world to her, but she had none of the heroine about her. She had early lost her mother; she dared not disobey her father, and now, though her heart was breaking, yet she came forward to the sacrifice. As has been said, there was a high time in the settlement. The evening of the marriage had arrived, when, at the last moment, old Benson took it into his head to make another change sending round excuses to all the neighbors, and an- nouncing that the marriage would be a private one. It was un- derstood, moreover, that Taggart would take his bride off with him to the south immediately. Jabe Knuckles’ “store,” a log tenement on the river’s bank, was headquarters that night, for all the idleness, curiosity and indignation of the settlement. A barrel of whiskey was on hand, and other matters no less ex- citing. [96] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN “If s downright cruelty to the young!” cried out Jabe, filling a can, “and Mike Fink is jest nat’rally bound to make a widow of Maty, so as to set things agreeable agin!” “And scalp Deacon Benson!” observed another. “And raise h-11 generally!” suggested a third. “Ingin Pete couldn’t a struck Mike’s trail,” said Knuckles, “or he’d a bin here ‘fore now. I sent Pete off towards the mountains more’n a week ago, when I first smelt out the plot. He knows Mike’s huntin’ grounds. Thunder, don’t it set one’s blood a bilin’.” Jabe took a vigorous swig at the can and the others followed his example. Midnight came and still the crowd remained, hav- ing rung the changes upon Benson’s treachery and Fink’s ex- pected wrath, and growing more and more indignant every mo- ment. Indian fights, flat boat adventures, river yarns, &c., suc- ceeded, the grog passing more frequently after every one, when, between two and three in the morning, a yell without cut short a song of Jabe’s; there was a heavy blow upon the door, and in stalked the long gaunt figure of Mike, followed by a wiiy look- ing half breed, “Indian Pete,” mentioned a moment since. “Mike Fink and too late, by thunder!” roared out Knuckles. “Mrs. Mary Taggart, and in bed at that, since nine o’clock!” shouted another. Mike looked around, wildly, gave a spasmodic swallow, and then seizing a can, washed down his feelings, as well as he could, by a deep, long, fiery draught of the intoxicating liquid. “Poor Mary,” said Knuckles, “they forced her into it!” “To be sure they did!” echoed half a dozen, “and it’ll kill her yet!” “She’s ben lookin’ like a ghost for two weeks!” “And expectin’ you would get back in time to stop it!” Fink gave a perfect yell of rage and anguish. “I’m in time, I tell you!” he cried, trembling from head to foot with the excess of his emotion. “I tell you I’m in time, and you shall see it! Who’ll go with me to shake hands with the bridegroom?” [97] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND .The brains of the whole company were half maddened, and Mike’s proposal was received with a shout. “Hurrah! That’s the talk! Give him a ride to the river; Deacon Benson, too, rot his picter. Mike Fink forever!” another “drink all around” and the crowd were on their way, with shout, and laugh, and savage jest, to inflict something upon Taggart, -what, they knew not. A shout of hate and derision roused the inmates of Benson’s house. It was a substantial log tenement, of two large apart- ments divided by an ample passage way, and with low garrets above lighted by small gable windows. Every thing remained quiet within, but it was a sort of boding stillness. Another ter- rific shout, and Mike Fink, advancing from the crowd de- manded that Benson and Taggart should show themselves. “To git married is a manly act, and one should be proud of it, not skulk to his bridal bed like a coward! Deacon Benson, show yourself with your son-in-law!” Still no reply was given, and amid a storm of reproach and derision, which arose from all hands, Mike stepped onto the rough porch running along the front of the house; at the same instant a shot from one of the windows struck him in the neck, and he staggered back among his companions! A loud shrill scream from within was taken up by the throng without. ‘That shot came from Taggart!” “Kill him!” “burn the house!” “kill Benson, too!” &c.&c. A dozen of them actually ran to collect combustibles, while Mike was borne to a short dis- tance, recovering as he was carried. “A scoundrel like that, boys, can’t carry off Mary Benson! Take her from him, and then give him an Ingin run for it.” Torches were already flashing about the house, and heaps of brush were thrown into the open passage way. A simultaneous rush, notwithstanding that two more shots were fired, placed them all under shelter about the dwelling; and now whirling smoke, and fierce crackling flames told that the work was going on too surely. Screams of terror arose from one of the apart- ments, and Mike, with Knuckles, dashing in a window, sprang through in an instant. Mary lay on the floor in her night dress, [98]

bleeding, and a man was in the act of escaping through the side window. ‘That’s Taggart, Mike,” said Knuckles. Mike fired, and the man dropped from the window as if mortally wounded; and yet he was not so, for several other shots were fired at him, from without, as he jumped a fence and plunged downwards towards the river. Mike bore Mary out in his arms, and saw that she was marked in the face, as if she had received a blow. He took a bitter oath to wreak full vengeance on the coward who had given it. The house was now in a bright blaze, and Benson came forward with his cold, repulsive calm “fairly smellin’ out of him,” as Jabe Knuckles said. ‘Tou have ruined me, Mr. Fink,” said Benson. “You are a snake hearted villain, Benson,” replied Mike, “and 111 see you hanged yet, if watchin’ of your ways will secure justice to you.” MIKE DOES THE AGREEABLE AS A LADY*S MAN Before we hurry matters forward, which it will be convenient to do, let it be known that Mary’s husband, Taggart, was never again seen in the Monongahela settlement after the night of the fire; that Benson himself disappeared with his daughter within three days after that event, leaving no clue behind him; and, finally, that several weeks elapsed before Mike Fink so far re- covered from his wound as to carry his head straight a point which he was rather particular about in this early stage of his career. And now, then, skipping several years, here we are in the midst of a river crowd, at the “grocery” of old ‘Siah Hodgkiss, mouth of Bear Grass Creek, Louisville. Mike Fink was there with his crew, for Mike had been on the river for some time, having changed the hills for the streams, and he was already celebrated from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. Jabe Knuckles was there, too, one of Mike’s “bowers,” but Jabe, unaccountably, had softened down his character, considerably; he was now not loud, but learnedly disputacious and moral, and [99] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND philosophical, and withal, he preferred lying in the sun, think- ing that he was thinking, and reading old almanacs, to pulling his sweep with proper vigor. Yet, broadhoms would float down stream, anyhow, and Mike, who loved Jabe like a brother, used to call him a “tarnal lazy old turtle,” and do his work for him. Mike was “some” in the present crowd, and no mistake, and he was enlightening a portion of it Miss Mira Hodgkiss, by old Hodgkiss, dam Mrs. Hodgkiss, as Mike used to say, especially with a few anecdotes of his “airly and tender youth!” “You see, Miss Miry, I first see sunrise way off in eastern Pennsylvany, whar thar wa’n’t a hill big enough to cool off on, or a river large enough for a strong swaller. Wall, the old folks, too, hadn’t more’n a three foot streak of land, and one cow, and this yer cow finally settled my fortin .” “Cattle’s got more to do with one’s luck than you know of, too, Mike Fink!” solemnly observed Jabe Knuckles, shutting one eye, and not being able to open the other! “A bull is one of the signs!” *Tes, and a sleepy old calf, with a whiskey tit in his mouth, is another of ’em,” sung out Mike, at which there was a great laugh, and “Old Almanac” was requested to “shut up.” “Yes, Miss Miry,” resumed Mike, “that cussed old cow driv me over the mountains; for it had the orfullest holler hind its shoulders you ever did see, and the old folks being petiklar care- ful about the crittur, they jest insisted that I should foller it around in wet weather, and bail its back out, so I quit!” There was another roar at this, and old Hodgkiss drew another pitcher of whiskey from the barrel, and Miss Mira fairly sidled right up to Mike, where he was sitting with his heels upon the little bar, and Jabe moralized about hollow backs and young women, and every body seemed comfortable except old Hodg- kiss, who was about as careful of his daughter as the elder Fink’s were of their own one cattle, and who, moreover, had a great fear of Mike, seeing that he made love to all the gals, and not without a full share of encouragement either. The boatman now [ 100 ] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN squeezed Mira’s hand, and began pouring out a love ditty one, by the bye, which he actually originated: “O, my love she ar handsome, she’s not ver-ri tall, But her modest demeniour, does far surpass all; She’s slim round the middle, her hair it hangs down; She’s a bright morning star, oh, she lives in this town.” The singer growing wanner in his demonstrations, pressed Miss Mira more closely with every modulation. “Well, now, Capting Fink,” at length ventured old Hodgkiss, in a quick, sharp, Yankee, somewhat anxious, but veiy civil voice: “You du sing your songs right straight through and through one, and that’s sartin truth, and I allays said it to Mira and Mira, there’s that pesky bear’s cub, neow, huggin that shoat ter death, and why don’t you go, Mira?” But Mike wouldn’t part with her, and furthermore Mira de- clared that it wasn’t polite to leave people “a singin’ “; and be- sides, a bluff flaxen-headed, handsome little boy that called Mike “daddy,” put after the cub with a sharp stick, and old Hodgkiss was kept in his anxiety. Mike went on, mischievously, and this time with his arm about the girl’s waist: “Pretty Pol-Ii, pretty Pol-li, your dad-di are rich, But I aint no fortin’ what troubles me much” Mike here slipped a gold piece into her bosom, notwithstand- ing his plaint about poverty: “Would you leave your old dad-di and mam-mi, also, And all through the wide world with yer darling boy go?” This cool request Mike seconded by taking a kiss and with- out hurrying the operation, either, and “dad-di” was compelled to come out again with a very funny sort of earnest expostula- tion. “Capting Fink, there aint a family man on the river that don’t jest make you one of themselves, and yeow know how much I care about you skylarkin’ with Mira, but what on airth is the use of troublin’ yourself to amuse her, when you see that she aint enjoyin’ of it!” THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND “Why lor a massy, father/’ said Mira, “if I love a thing on airth, it is singin’. Don’t interrupt the captain, now, really!” Mike, with a loud laugh, followed his humor by pulling the complimentary young lady down on his knee, and singing away as follows: “Oh, some call me rak-ish, and some call me wild, And some say that I pretty maids have beguiled; But they are all liars by the powers er-bove, For I’m guil-ti of nothing but innercent love!” This avowal of “honorable intentions” was capped by an em- brace and kiss of the very warmest character. Mira blushed a little and looked flustered, and Mr. Hodgkiss ‘let right out and had tu du it, tu!” as he declared. ‘Taint that you don’t sing right sweet an’ handsome, Capting Fink, and ‘taint that you aint jest the most pop’lar man on the river, neither; but galls is galls, and whisky is whisky, an’ when they both git into the head at the same time, they’re a leefle dust too hot for each other, that’s all; and there’s Mira, now, all white and red and shamed to death ’bout what you bin a duin’ to her.” Mira recovered her composure, though, very suddenly, and begged to express her entire surprise that her father should go on so about the matter! “Jest as if Captain Fink wasn’t a gentleman! and jest ’cause Captain Fink always will sing and do things when he comes along!” Mike ordered a fresh supply of peach, throwing a handful of silver at Siah’s head, which the publican took care to pick up under the pretense of tilting the barrel; and now, during a tem- porary lull in the confusion, Jabe Knuckles made unsteadily for the door, his weather eye remarkably cloudy, and muttering as he went: “Virgo, that’s another sign! Yes, and twins twins is another!” “What’s that you say, Mr. Knuckles?” called out Miss Mira. “Pre-prediction/” replied the river worthy, disappearing with a “shear.” [102] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN Others of the company were leaving, and one or two were asleep, or otherwise overcome, and ‘Siah made a vigorous effort to get his daughter off to bed, when she “really begged” that her father wouldn’t worry on her account; as Capt. Fink had just promised to give her the true and particular history of his little boy, “Carpenter,” who was now lying asleep in a bunk, at the back of the grocery. “And you needn’t trouble yourself about sittin’ up, nuther, old hoss,” said Mike, “as this yer matter ‘tween me and Mira is of confidential order, prehaps!” MIKE GIVES MISS MIRA THE HANG OF HIS HISTORY “You see, Mira, I’m tol’ble on the wrong side of thirty now, and not jest the hand for telling sure enough love yams; but then you aint twenty yet, and moreover you’re a female and take to sich things constitootianly by natur; and moreover agin, I’ve gotten su’thin to say to you at the end of this yer beginnin’ and that’s what I’m arter, so lay low and listen!” “I was desappinted a good many years ago, Mira poor Mary Benson was a better looking gal than you be, too, and likelier behaved at that; howsomedever” we need not follow Mike through his love story and its catastrophe. “Well,” he continued, “then it was I went on the river, thinkin’, prehaps, I might hear of Mary, some day; but I didn’t; and eventooally broad horns stuck out’r me all over, and I felt hired nat’rally to stick to navigation and be first cap’n, and so here I be and like to remain at that price, I predicate. I’d made three or four trips up and down to Orleens, laden with corn, cat- tle, and other fancy stuff, and brought up, a foot, tall piles of the large-John as the Frenchmen ’bout the old calaboose squar used to say and I was going down on my first keel Mary Ben- son I called her when one of my hands, ‘Ingin Pete,’ who used to hunt with me in the old Alleghany country, got scent of pirates ‘long Arkansaw, and ’twasn’t long ‘fore it was play snake, play possum, I tell you! You see, the half breed was a mighty sour lookin’-varmint, far as face went, and some of these Arkan- THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND saw spekylators got to feelin’ his heart towards me, and he let on that he loved me ’bout as well as they did honesty, and they bit like young catties. Cuttin’ my throat wasn’t good enough for Tngin Pete/ he pretendin’ to have all sorts of a spite agin me, and talkin’ this way he soon cum to see the head devils in the business, and who should they be, but Old Benson and Taggart, that he had given his da’ter to! The hull hells-work of that mat- ter was plain enough, now; Benson had been in the pirate busi- ness before he cum up to Monongahela to whip the devil around the meeting-house, and when his old crony, Taggart, made a call upon him for Mary, he had to give her up or do worse. They were now spekylatin’ together agin, and expected to get me cheap, for certain. A big pile of money and a small chunk of revenge was their bargain, and this was the way they fixed it. Ingin Pete was to keep dark ’till on our way up from Orleans agin, after the cargo had been sold. He was to know all about the money, and on our return to the Arkansaw shore, he was to give the word, when arrangements would be made to catch us foul in the right place. He was to secure our arms dur- ing his watch at night, let the varmints on board and then king- dom come to us! All was settled among ’em and we put out jest as innercent as could be, I tell you! We did’nt work very hard that day, though, I reckon! That trip would a-sooted Jabe Knuckles, and no mistake, but he hadn’t took to boatin’ then. Dark cum, and we tied up only a few miles from Benson and his gang, and now, old ‘Siah, a little more peach and sweetnin’, sense you will set up, and I’ll tell you somethin’ to keep you wide awake ’till daylight!” While Hodgkiss mixed the grog, Mike crossed the apartment and saw that the little boy was sleeping comfortably; Mira closed up to him with deeper interest on his return, and the narrative was resumed. “Without having learned their den exactly, Pete had the hang of their tracks, enough to git along with, and leavin’ only a boy aboard the keel, nine on us set out to trap these river rats. We kept along the bank a few miles to a bayou which we had to [ 104 ] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN ascend; but what should Pete, who was scoutin* discover, as he neared the place, but two men pushing out into the Mississippi, one on ’em Taggart, as he thought; and now wa’nt they watchin’ us, and which was the smartest, that was the question? I stepped out in the starlight, hailed the skiff, and commanded the men ashore, but they fired a signal shot and only pulled out faster. The thing was out; I cracked away tumbled the one that Pete called Taggart into the bottom must a shot him through the head at the same minute the skiff took a whirl against a sawyer and over she went, leavin’ the live rascal hanging onto the branches. All we had to do was to make a rush up the bayou and lose no time about it; and up we went^ and across two clear- ings, and through a belt of timber, and on to a lake, in all about two miles, but here we were stopped. Pete was ahead, and just as he made a sign that all was right, there cum a shower of balls, wounding two on us, and killing Pete outright. Another rash, and we were over a ditch and levee, and down upon a right smart log castle! We heard the sound of horses dashing off through the woods; no more fight was made, and in we marched. There was an old nigger woman and two or three litfle snow-balls, in the first room, but we could get nothin* out of them; and, I tell you what, tremblin’, and feelin’ sick as to what I might find, I went into the second. Simple stories is best, I reckon; there was Mary Benson/” Mike wiped his eyes and paused for a moment. ”Well, when I tell you she died in my arms, that night, I need’nt say how I found her! I knew her, though, spite of sick- ness, and suffering, and she knew me! Taggart was dead, her father was a cut-throat, and her child that boy so like herself, now, as I look at him, she gave him to me to bring up to ways of honesty/ 7 “Mira,” continued Mike, and his voice was full of feeling, “you are young and foolish, and it may be I am wild and wicked. I never mean to marry/ and I’ve told you about poor Mary so as to let you know I’m in airnest! If Tve trifled with you, it’s bin I 105 ] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND because you’re foolish; and I stop it now, you see, ’cause I think it might be to my shame, and the worse for you!” The girl drew off slowly and incredulously as these unex- pected words were uttered. She looked in Mike’s face, but every trace of liquor, excitement, or nonsense, had vanished, and she knew what he was when he chose to be serious about matters. A flush of anger and vicious feeling now passed over her features; anon, succeeded by a few hysteric sobs, when, suddenly conquer- ing her emotion, she gave Mike a strange, half reproachful, half reckless glance, and withdrew. The father had watched the scene with trembling interest. Mean and sordid as he was, he loved his daughter, and dreaded her wilful temper and ungovernable impulses. “Capting Fink,” cried he, as soon as the girl had disappeared, “Mira isn’t good enough for your wife, though her own father has to say it! You deserve a princess, you du! Let me shake your hand, Capting; if I didn’t think you was going to take Mira away, I wish I may be shot! Only kin on airth, too; an old, lone man,” and here the ancient ‘Siah gave way to a most infantile boo-hoo as he would have said himself. Fink drew from his bosom a rude locket, kissed it fervently, breathing the name of “Mary,” shook the old man heartily, honestly by the hand, and then casting a glance of kindly interest on the sleeping boy, and saying he would come for him in the morning, withdrew to his boat. MIKE TELLS A YARN ABOUT A “MADMAN” There was water enough on the “Falls”; it was a bright day in spring, and at an early hour, all hands at their posts, Mike was guiding his clean and trim built “keel,” the Maiyhe still ad- hered to the name, and it had always been a charm to him, he said through the rapids, below Louisville. There was not much peril in the passage, at the moment, and the exhileration was only of the pleasant kind. “That’s like a lady!” cried Mike, as, under the bold and skill- ful guidance of his sweeping stern oar, his craft a moment [ 1061 THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN yielded to a powerful eddy, and then drew out again with a graceful curve. “See how she puts her feet out! Dances like a fairy, by gra- cious!” “As we go as we go Down the O-hi-o, There’s a tight place at Louisville, You know boys, know.” “Jabe Knuckles!” shouted Mike, “one of them Phfladelphy noospapers you’ve got sorted away, tells about a York feller that’s got a steam fixin’ to take boats up rivers without hand, hoss, or hawser! I reckon he’ll never try ‘ginst this water, eh?” “I reckon!” echoed some half a dozen; but Jabe was rather proud of his literary collection and to doubt anything which he had “read,” was almost equal to attacking his own veracity. “I reckon he will, and do it, too if he keeps goin’ on!” said Jabe; perversity, for once, making a prophet. There was a terrible laugh, of course, at Jabe’s expense, one negro hand declaring that it was “jess like de talk ’bout lightnin’ rods! Bress de lor,” he continued, “I nebber had de fuss one ’bout me, an’ I got to be struck yet!” “Ha, ha, ha! shut up, now, Jabe,” roared every body. “Well, boys,” said Mike, “I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but when them things cum about there’ll be no Mike Fink left, I guess. I remember when I wam’t more’n twenty or so, I was on a long tramp down the Ohio, when a stranger cum along in a skiff, and took me aboard, nighly a hull day with him. Well, he was mad, and looked mad, and talked mad, yet I wish I may be shot ef I didn’t like and love him, and remember him to this day; and something of this blasted steam nonsense must a done the mischief to him, too! Why, he pinted out to me half a dozen large cities, that he said he saw places whar a tree ain’t been cut yet! and he talked of deepening the river channel for its commerce, and he’d bin to Louisville, before, and spoke of these falls, and a canal that would one day be built, and all this was to be done by steam! He told me to remember his talk THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND when I’d be older, and then he’d be quiet awhile, and sigh; and then launch out again about coal, and timber, and towns, and farms, and hills echoing the song that was crazing him; and, finally, he wept like a child and longed to be buried on some river knob or other, that his sleep might be lulled by the sounds he spoke of! He was turned of fifty, and his hair was white and his face wrinkled, but his eye was like an eagle’s only wilder, as he spoke, and he kept my heart aching all the while, and cuss me if I know why yet! In the afternoon a squall came on and we put ashore, and there, as we stopped under a rock, he took out his knife, as if he waan’t knowin’ to it, and began cuttin’ his name, I suppose, in the stone. “What on airth was it, Mike?” inquired several. “John Fitch; and right under it he cut somethin’ like a Tceel/ with a sort of paddles at the sides, and a smoke-pipe, and this he said was what was goin’ to do all the wonders!” “Well, that’s a steam boat!” cried Jabe, rousing up a little, “and it’s a good many years since you were twenty, and they only just invented it now in New York!” “Don’t know,” said Mike, “but Fitch ef that war his name, told me he’d run one for a hull day, and made seven miles an hour, on the Delaware, ten years before!” “Now that I don’t believe!” remarked Jabe Knuckles, with great firmness; nor did he or he had never “read it.” The thou- sands now alive, however, who know it, feel as little interest in doing justice to the memory of genius as Jabe did. They were dear of the rapids, and gliding along some two or three miles below, little “Henderson” Fink had named the little boy after a lost friend of his youth who knew already how to handle a rifle, cracking away, occasionally, at the tarrapin, as they lay sunning themselves upon the logs, and his “daddy” en- couraging him, when a canoe suddenly shot out from the Ken- tucky bank and made toward them. A single Indian handled the short paddle a squaw and a few moments brought her along- side. The forest children were not so scarce along our Western waters, forty years ago, and it was common enough for a canoe THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN to make fast to a TceeF or ‘flat,’ and so save themselves the labor of propelling it for a time. The squaw was anything but attrac- tive in her appearance, her garb being sofl’d and ill-arranged, and a bandage covering a portion of her face, as if she had re- ceived a severe injury. To the rude questions and jests of the men, she replied but by signs, and kept her place in the canoe with characteristic equanimity. “Jabe! go and convart that heathen,” said Fink, as noon came around, and the men were gathered in groups about their meal. “She’s a yeamin’ for the truths, about now, I reckon!” Jabe made an offering of some of the fruits of civilization, not forgetting to include a can of its happiest results; but the squaw showed that she did not lack for provisions, of her own rude kind. “The poor, benighted critter!” sighed Jabe, “she aint got any more taste in feedin’ than in prayin* parched corn aint Christi- anity, no how!” “Lost, soul and stomach!” said Mike. “What nation?” de- manded he of the squaw, making a sign at the same time. She appeared to understand him and replied: “Choctaw!” “Why, what on airth be you doin* up here then?” inquired Mike. ” ‘Low you’ve bin on to Washington!” The woman simply pointed south, and said, “Yazoo.” “Just to think how these she varmints do ventur!” said Mike. ‘Too cussed ugly, too, for a cabin passage!” MIKE CONCLUDES TO “MAKE A NIGHT OF IT” Fink, at the head of his boat’s crew, generally “regulated the town” upon each visit to New Orleans, and on this occasion he had been particularly active in the discharge of this duty! He had cleared three French ball rooms, had two levee fights with gens d*armes sent to take him from his boat, paid a fine to the city, and, as a crown to his triumphs, he had broken “a bank”! These were Mike’s relaxations, but, at this time they were un- accompanied by insult, or outrage further than the excitement [ 109 ] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND of “spreeing” begat. There was nothing malevolent about Mike’s heart. His huge frame was animated by a nature warm, gen- erous, impulsive full of the milk of human kindness, and only terrible and dangerous when roused by treachery and wrong. At this time, too, intoxication had not become a vice with Mike; his powerful constitution bade defiance to all assaults, and whilst he was the wildest, most reckless, and, consequently, renowned boatman on the river, he was at the same time one of the most keen and business-like in his serious operations. There was no taking him at advantage. “Wide awake” was his watch- word even on his frolics. In the highest spirits, on the night previous to his departure on his return trip, Mike was at a noted dance house in “the swamp” as the back part of the city, very naturally, used to be called. It is hardly necessary to say that the haunt was one of vice, and even of crime, but it was a usual place of resort for boatmen, nevertheless, and there Mike Fink was ever King of the crowd; the awe of the men, and the hero of that class of females by whom they were surrounded. On this occasion he was accompanied by Jabe Knuckles, and a man by the name of Talbott, with whom he had had some business on the Levee, and whom he took a fancy to for the reason that he was the “ugliest white man yet.” Some dreadful accident or other had disfigured the man. The flesh appeared to have been cut away from under each eye, leaving the balls exposed and horrible to look at, while the upper part of the nose was gone altogether, leaving a frightful gap between the brows and the extremity of the nasal organ. This gap was partially hidden by a patch, but the face altogether was hardly human in its aspect. The injury had destroyed everything like character of expression. The eyes seemed ever glaring, and the mouth lacked their aid in the illustration of meaning and emotion. “If you’re determined to stay, I must leave you, Captain Fink,” said Talbott, “it’s late.” “You can slope, old crawfish,” cried Fink. “Here’s Jabe; my other shirt. Its all right by his almanac.” THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN “Pshaw! youVe danced enough, and drank enough, and there’s not a girl in the house but youVe had a two week’s ac- quaintance with.” “Hush! lay low; 111 know more about that in the morning,” said Mike, with a chuckle of exhilaration, “As for dancing, the thing can’t go on while you’re about, old hoss; your face is cer- tain death to a breakdown!” The ogresse who was known as the head of the establishment, now approached Mike, with a grin, and whispered something which seemed to afford him great satisfaction. “I’m ihar! old eelskin; I’m thar, I tell you! Young, tender, and white, at that hi-i-i”; and he gave an Indian yell that made the bottles ring. Talbott shook his head, bade him goodnight, and departed; but, within an hundred yards of the house, he turned into an open lot, and was there joined in a few moments by another figure. “How does the chance look?” inquired the new comer. “It’s all right!” was the reply. “The new girl catches him. He’ll stay the night. I shall sleep at the ‘Orleans/ to be clear of the matter.” “And he still carries everything about him?” “All! his sales, and the bank into the bargain. We can get it all back at a single rake!” “D m him, and revenge besides!” muttered the stranger. “Old Pauline will be careful to sweeten his night-cap?” “No fear, she’s got the stuff. The room is all fixed, and the girl knows nothing.” “Good night, then!” “Take it easy stop. You are still certain that he never saw you when he came to gamble?” “I have avoided him for five years,” said the stranger. “If I shun him after tonight, though, he must come as a ghost! Good night!” “Good night! at the Gaffe Marigny! breakfast!” They separated. THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND In a chamber of the second story, opening upon the back bal- cony and furnished rather handsomely, with a large bed draped with gauzes, &c., in the Creole style, sat a young girl, listening anxiously to the sounds which came up from below, and thrice intently as Mike’s voice ever and anon was heard. Presently, heavy steps without, and a snatch of a song startled the girl to her feet: “He war crooked backed, hump shoulder-ed, And with thick lips is blessed; And for to make him ug-i-ly, The Lord had done his best!” The door was thrown open instantly closed again by the girl, as Mike passed in, and now, turning the key in the lock, she suddenly faced her visiter. “My God!” exclaimed Fink, actually staggering. “You, Mira and here/” ‘There is no danger to a young girl in your company, Captain Fink!” said Mira Hodgkiss, for it was she, sure enough. “Oh, my God! this airth is gittin’ too bad!” cried Mike. “Oh! you lost unhappy gal; hell-bent and no savin’ on you! Come to this, and so soon, too!” “Many thanks for your pity, Captain; but we’re here about the same time I reckon, and lucky for you, too, perhaps! Sinner or saint, I am not here to ask favors, but to show you that all women didn’t leave the world with Mary Benson! I laugh at your thoughts, and scorn explanation till my heart may soften again. At this moment I’m here to be revenged!” ‘Tour poor father!” cried Mike bitterly. “For youyou al- ways had the devil’s drop in you!” The girl’s whole frame trembled with passion. “Oh, you’re a keen headed, true hearted hero, with your Mary Benson! I’m not so good looking as Maiy Benson/ So well be- haved as Maiy Benson/ Ha! ha! ha! I’m not fit to be the wife of Mike Fink! Ha! ha! ha! And now, here I am with Mike Fink under my foot, to do with him just as I please; ha! ha! ha! To say go or stay live or die, as I like; ha! ha! ha!” [X12] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN ‘The gal’s head’s turned!” muttered Fink, in astonishment. A burst of hysterical sobs, and finally tears, calmed the girl, somewhat, when she again spoke: “I tell you Mike Fink, I’ve followed you in spite more than in love! I never knew what gall and anguish was until you made me feel what contempt was. Go down on your knees, Mike Fink, and kiss that floor before me! Without one word to tell you how I came here, feel in your heart that I’m more of a woman a better woman than your puny Mazy Benson ever was, and then this gnawing in my breast here may leave me! Quick, Mike Fink you’ve not long to spare!” The girl had worked herself into wildness again, and Fink actually thought her crazed. He debated within himself whether or not he should carry her off, forcibly, and make a proper dis- position of her until he could return her to her father. “Poor misdirected creetur,” muttered he, “I oughtn’t to leave you to your fate!” “A devil whispers me to leave you to yours, Fink!” she strug- gled terribly with her feelings. “Listen! I have but to detain you here a few minutes longer and you will be unable to quit a danger that’s near you!” This did not sound so madly, and Mike was instantly on the qui vive. ‘What do you mean, Mira?” said he, advancing, and taking her hand; the girl trembled with emotion. “I do not despise you. It will be your own fault if I do not love you like a brother!” Subdued, and shedding a torrent of tears, she threw herself upon his breast. “I am here to save your life!” sobbed she. “You drank some liquor with the old woman, as you came up?” “I did not,” said Mike; “to play a trick on one of the gals, I poured it into her drink, and she swallowed tie whole mixture.” “Thank God, then!” fervently exclaimed the girl. “You are safe and free, and quit the house this instant!” “Speak on, Mira; give me the hang of it!” cried Mike. ] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND ”Well, then you have won large sums of money, and you carry it about you. You have been to this place frequently, but have never passed the night, and they have been afraid to attack you awake. At last they laid me, a young new-comer, as a bait for you; you were to stay through the night, and they were to have given you a drink to stupify you!” “Wall, if that don’t beat ingin,” laughed Mike, ‘Til gin in! And how did you find all this out?” ‘Tve followed you to this house every time you’ve been to it,” replied Mira. “But how came you to larn the plot; and how kem I not to notice you?” “I was disguised as a ragged Indian girl!” Mike’s breath was fairly taken away from him! Overwhelmed by remorse, and running over with gratitude a perfect Ohio river rise of sensibility he was about bursting into extravagance, when Mira laid her hand on his arm, and made a signal of cau- tion and silence. The single light had been so disposed as to throw the whole chamber, nearly, into shadow; and now draw- ing Mike into the deepest part of it, Mira spoke to him in a low whisper. MIKE PERFORMS CERTAIN MARRIAGE CEREMONIES Time may be saved by giving certain explanations in our own way, and therefore we do so. The idea of following Fink, and watching an opportunity of revenging the slight put upon her in some way of her own just suited the warm passions and wilful temper of Mira, and she put it in execution, as has been seen. She continued in the neighborhod of the “keel,” sometimes before, sometimes be- hind, for many days. Sometimes she even went on board, and contrived to attach little “Henderson” to her, and all without suspicion. She knew the boatmen, and how to humor or repel them. Even after passing the Yazoo, she continued near them, only shooting ahead when near the end of the voyage, so as to land in New Orleans before them. She kept up her acquaintance THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN with the boy, and managed to follow Mite to all his haunts. At the house of old Pauline in “the Swamp” she overheard one day a discussion of plans to entrap Fink. The suggestor was an old, snakish-looking man, and Pauline, the hag, was to receive a large sum, and be held harmless for lending the use of her house. Many plans failed, and the time arrived for Fink’s de- parture, when the old beldame proposed to tempt him by promising to introduce him to a beautiful young female, fresh on the town, and new to vice. Such a one she would procure. Instantly Mira departed, resumed her proper garb, presented herself to Pauline, as an unfortunate who had just been driven from her home; and was seized upon eagerly as the object de- sired. By close attention, she soon learned the further plan of overpowering Fink by a drug, and of entering the chamber through a door situated behind, and affording entrance through an armoire that stood near the bed. “An old man!” said Mike. “Wall I allow he’s not an old enough fox to save his tail this time! Mira! I take all them rash things I said to you down at a gulp; and, now, keep shady and you’ll see sights. The boys are pooty near all back at the keel by this time; Jabe Knuckles went ‘fore I kem up here. Let me jest drap you over the railin’ outside; rouse the reg’lators; bring ’em bade and place ’em round the sheds, and fences, and then wait ’till you hear Mike’s yell, that’s all!” Mira put on a dark dress that hung in the room; wrapped a black veil round her head, quadroon fashion, and was ready in an instant. The sounds below had gradually died away; the mis- chief was within, not watching without the house; and after, through an uncontrollable impulse, opening his arms to the girl and embracing her with a ferocious warmth that more than re- paid his ferocious coldness, Mike stepped out on to the gallery, passed Mira over the rail, and dropped her to the ground, she at the same time feeling the buoyancy of a feather. “She’ll have to run up pooty nigh to BienviHe street,” said Mike, “ten minutes and then back. Reckon I can’t go to sleep jest yet.” [ “51 THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND Within an hour or so of this time, the shriveled wretch, Pauline, and the old “Banker,” rose from their seats in the front bar, below, now closed and fastened, and proceeded towards the back apartments. “You, now, go to bed,” said the villain; “I shall kill them both, the girl first for Fink is secure! I will then throw open the window on the balcony, and it will all pass as a murder through jealousy or revenge. Fink’s character is well known for woman scrapes.” He mounted the stairs cautiously; crossed the room above, to a door in the opposite partition wall; placed his light on a chair, and then knelt down to listen affording, of course, a very pretty murderous picture, and one which has been presented tolerably often in the melodramas. A snore, like that of one of our latter-day asthmatic steamers an intermixture of snort, blow, and whistle, could be heard distinctly; and, now, after a great deal more murderous pantomime, in faying the handle, &c., the hoary ruffian blew his light out and pulled the door open, to- wards himself. His course was still stopped, but after listening again to the now very audible “blow,” and feeling about a mo- ment, another door or panel yielded before him, and the stealthy creeper found himself in a close square closet; this was one of the customary divisions of the armoire. The snore was now tremendous, and after a moment, to take another turn on his nerves, the murderer prepared to let himself in upon his victim. At this instant, while fingers were on the bolt, he became conscious of a strange sort of movement on the part of his prison, and before he could collect his thoughts, himself and closet were whirled with stunning, shattering violence upon the the floor the whole house shaking, and a loud, long, shrill cry rising over all, that might have been a summons for all the savages that ever danced at a torture! “Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ho-wah!” yelled Mike. “Hi-i-i-i-i-i-ow-ow-ow-who-whooh!” in every variety of devilish echo arose from without. THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN Mike fired a pistol into the bed and mosquitoe bar, which latter in a moment was blazing, and, at the same time, half a dozen heads were thrusting in the window, and bursting through the door, from the balcony! “Wake, snakes!” shouted Mike, “tree’s down and now for honey!” At the same moment he jerked open the panel in the back of the armoire; pulled out the entrapped one as though he had been a rat, held him up to the light and dropped him again as though he had been a serpent “Old Benson, by G-d!” cried he. The detected monster, ghastly, and trembling, looked around the room, now full of Mike’s friends, despairingly, but was un- able to articulate. “Poor Mary’s father, too!” muttered Mike, as a pang shot through him. The remembrance of the dead, however, could not excuse the living, for Benson had known Fink all along, and had crept hither, at midnight, to murder him. “Why that’s old double O, that keeps the table, on the Levee!” cried several. He was known to others, though he had always kept out of Mike’s way. “Hang him to the bed post!” “Ride him down to the keel!” Several similar suggestions were being offered, when Jabe Knuckles entered the customary door of the chamber, holding out at arms length, between his finger and thumb, as it were, in the same way in which he might have handled a vicious craw- fishthe scarcely less active Pauline! The shrivelled litfle mon- ster struggled and scolded and blasphemed, but all in vain. Jabe held her up a moment, that all might have a good laugh at her and then deposited her upon the prostrate armoire. “There’s a pair of signs for an almanac,” said he. “If them two aint old Scorpio and the Crab, I’ll never agin look in the book for sunrise!” “A pooty pair!” cried every one jeeringly. “A pair, and a match, too,” shouted Fink, “and cuss me, boys, ef we don’t many ’em!” The suggestion was received with a hurrah, when an incama- [ THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND tion of darkness known on the keel boat as “Gravy,” from his office he was cook and who has heretofore been mentioned as delivering himself of a fixed opinion with regard to lightning rods, stepped forward from the crowd and requested that he might have the honor “ob tyin’ up de young couple!” “Aye! aye! aye! aye! Dr. Gravy for parson” screamed every- body. “And 111 stand up with the groom!” cried Mike. “And boys, well all stand up for the maids,” said Jabe Knuckles. “Captain Fink,” at length said Benson, spasmodically, with the face of a corpse and the soul of a craven, “only spare my life/” “Granted!” said Mike, and his loathing almost took away his stomach for the frolic. The old woman now, also, began to beg, and remonstrate, but all in vain. Benson was taken out on the gallery, and in an inconceivably short time had received a full plumage with the accompanying tar; the “maids” had, also, decorated the bride as fantastically as taste could desire, and, now, the Rev. Doctor Gravy, having robed himself in a sheet, and powdered his clerical phiz for the occasion, advanced be- tween a row of candles to perform the ceremony. “Brudder Knuckles,” said the doctor, “I trouble you for de good book!” and Jabe incontinently handed forth his almanac, observing that “a change might be expected about this time.” “Which am de young couple?” demanded the doctor, with a roll of the eye that set the crowd shrieking. Mike and Jabe, lit- erally, supported their respective parties. “Nobody don’t say nuffin ‘ginst de comfitability ob dese young people, I reckon?” inquired the doctor. “No!” was the thundering response. “Nobody cares much what dar captissimil condominations was, nuther, I reckon?” “No!” “Den nebber after hole you peace, de hull on you!” solemnly proclaimed the doctor. “And now, den, bofe take hands.” The [118] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN trembling wretches obeyed, actually imbecile, through terror. “You take dis woman fo’ you true unlawful wife?” “Well, he does,” said Mike, making the response* “You take dis man fo 7 you true unlawful husband?” “And two better,” said Jabe. “Den,” concluded the doctor, “I pernounce you bone ob one bone an’ flesh ob one flesh, ony take care ob de tough parts. Saloot you bride!” A whirlwind of mirth and frolic hailed the conclusion of the ceremony. “And now, boys, a health all round, and well wish the young couple good night. There is a bar below, and where is that love-draught you prepared for me, Mrs. Bride?” In vain the terrified beldame protested innocence and igno- rance; the draught was produced, and a large glass was poured out for herself and the groom. “All at a swallow!” They drank with a shudder, and the effect, from the powerful dose, was almost immediate. At this moment, the doctor ran up from below, where the crew were emptying the bar, to say, that “de Jonney be dams was a comin*/” “Let them come!” cried Mike, raising his shrillest yell, and rushing down to the street, with his crew at his heels. “Aboard, and fend off,” shouted he. A charge was made upon a party of the gens d’armes, who were approaching with their drawn sabres, but the civic heroes fled at sight of the formidable band which presented itself. As Mike turned down towards the levee, he saw Mira waiting for him. Catching her in his arms, he bore her off with a hug of triumph, and, here, leaving both in this state of high enjoy- ment, we think fit to close the chapter. A SWEET YAJUST, AND A CASUALTY If our readers please, we will now jump onward a short life- timethere or thereabouts and alight on the deck of a keel boat which, in the fall of the year 1822 was descending the Mississippi, a short distance below St. Louis, bound from that [ “9] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND city to New Orleans. It was an afternoon of the “Indian sum- mer”‘; the air was calm, the skies were full of softness, the foliage afforded the usual rich variety of autumn tints, and the keel itself, with its characteristic groups, made the central object of a picture which the pencil of Bingham is now rendering familiar to the world. It -was an open reach of tie river and the keel was gliding down the centre of the current under the simple guidance of a tall, well favored, yet rather lounging looking youth who man- aged the stern oar. He was some twenty-one years of age; had a quick yet somewhat sly glance; a broad, manly under jaw, a wide expressive mouth and “chawed tobacco” of course. His whole appearance spoke of the woods, and streams and the reckless spirit of freedom which they foster. The hands were listlessly distributed about the boat, idle, as might be, but immediately beneath the steersman was gathered a group, apparently laugh- ing at a large, lumbering, dissipated looking man of fifty or so. Loudest among the laughers was another elderly man, probably about forty-five. The voice of this character was loud, and, al- though not in anger, it conveyed something of the absolute and overbearing. His eye, too, had a mingling expression of wicked- ness in it; and the manner in which the tobacco was masticated, rather than anything else, betokened a nervous restlessness. This man, also, had a broken, debauched air about him, and alto- gether, his appearance was as unprepossessing as remarkable. ‘That’s a fact!” roared he. “Jabe Knuckles, there’s, gittin’ pious! want’s to quit boatin* and settle in St. Louis, and all sense lie got goin’ down to Frenchtown to play loto with old Madame Tisan. Ha! ha! ha! Old Louisville yet, for Mike Fink, by thunder!” “Adieu to Saint Louis, I bid you er-dieu; Likewise to the French and the mers-qui-ters too, For of all other nations I do you disdain, Fll go back to Ken-tuck-i ad try her er-gain!” “I tell you what, daddy Mike,” sung out the young steers- man, “you’ve bin wrathy ‘ginst St. Louis, ever sense they fined THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN you for trimming off that nigger’s heel, of the old man’s, with yer rifle!” This reference to a well known piece of deviltry on the part of Mike (it has already been told in the Reveille, by Solitair) 1 appeared to stir that worthy very pleasantly. ‘Well/’ laughed he, “the nigger’s heel stuck r way out over the bluff, and I did redoose his measure about two sizes, that’s a fact. Boys!” roared Mike, “all come aft, and 111 tell you about Madame Tisan and Jabe Khuckles’s pup slickin’s!” ‘That’s all a d d no such thing, Mike Fink,” said Jabe Knuckles, opening his sleepy eyes, and apparently not relishing the story; “I didn’t swaller the first mouthful, and you know it!” ‘Well, hoss, I seed you pullin’ har out of your teeth for a week, any how!” laughed Mike. “Give us that yarn, daddy,” said the steersman. “Old Jabe and the Slicken’s!” sung out everybody. “Well keep her out more in the stream, Henny. First time I kum to St. Louis Jabe was along, of course it was cold weather, and just ‘fore fast time or just after it one or other; greasy Tuesday, or something they call it mardigraw down in Orleans and a raft on us went down, night-time, to a dance doins at old Madame Tisan’s that Jabe’s sweet on, now. Well, there was a awful pollyvooin’ and French fashions, you know, but the galls was mighty pe-art lookin’ as French galls allays is, and it was ‘wooly voo dance Miss?’ and ‘wee Munsheer!’ and dosey-do, and shassey, and toe-nail, and break-down, I tell you, jest as if we’d bin all ‘quainted all ‘long, ony there was a hull lot of French pups about, and they kept puttin’ in their ki-i-i into the rest of the lingo, every now and then, when they got trod on, and then Madame Tisan would go on jest as if she’d pupped ’em herself, and felt a nat’ral affection for ’em. Well, some cake doins was to wind up the ball a sorter slap-jack party, and right over the fire was an almighty big open kittle, full of molasses slickin’s, and grease, to pour over the slap-jacks; and it was a bflin’ and creamin’ up beautiful, I tell you, when jest ’bout then 1. See p. 87 of this book. THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND I broke one of the cussed puppy’s legs, and Madame Tisan mounted me in the most onairihly kind of loud French, pre- haps! The he pallyvous took it up, too, and were might sassy and fighty to one another, I reckon, for I didn’t take the trouble to ask ’em what they said, and they knew better than to cuss me in the vrenak’lar, I predicate, and arter a while, jest to prevent mischief in futer I picked up a couple of the pups they were all over curly, I tell you and, in the row, I popped ’em careful into the kittle!” “Good again, Mike!” “Don’t squirm, old Jabe!” “Dog candy by thunder!” &c., &c., &c. The auditors were in high delight, all except Knuckles. “Well,” continued Fink, “down they went and like the sweet- nin’, I reckon, for they didn’t come up again, and the kittle went on bflin’ and bilin’, and bimeby, boys, it was cake time.” “Oh thunder!” “Well, that takes me/” &c., broke forth the whole crowd, roaring with laughter, in anticipation of the fun. “It was cake time, old Jabe! D’ye hear?” cried Mike, “and the way the slapjacks kem in all smokin’ in French, and the way the plates rattled, was a caution, and every pollyvoo as he got his lowance chassy’d up to the fire place, and old aunty Tisan jest ladled out a reg’Iar rise of sweetnin’ over his plate and then he went to work swallerin’. Wall, it all looked mighty temptin’, and went mighty fast too, and bimeby old Jabe takes his chaw out’n his mouth, chassy’s up with a plate, jest like the rest, and then I gin to wink to the boys and they lay low for the laughin’ time. Aunty Tisan was gettin’ tol’ble down in the kittle, ’bout now, and first thing Jabe did was to begin pickin’ his teeth and spittin’, but it was right good for all that, and he took another turn at it. The pollyvoos, too, began feelin’ their teeth, and the old woman a stirrin’ up faster and faster, and then there was all kinds of nasty faces and next all kinds of sakry damnations and monkey doin’s, and last of all old aunty ladled up one of the pups, safe and sound, all but the har/ Oh, jehu mariar, wa’an’t there a squeal! ‘Sakry ‘mericaine’ was the fust thing sung out, and I jest gin old aunty an idee that Jabe was the man, and lor THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN didn’t she comb him! He aint got the creases out’n his face yet! The ball broke hellniferous, I tell ye; old Jabe has bin ever since playin’ loto with the wider to make up, but it aint no use, boys, for that pup slickin’s still sticks in his teeth and no mistake!” Amid the scream that followed, Knuckles appeared to be very unhappy; the sluggishness that had for years been settling upon his passions seemed to rise a little, and, with something like temper, he retorted: “I reckon, Mike Fink, Aunty Tisan don’t stick in my teeth half as much as Mira Hodgkiss does in youfn!” As if he had been stung by a rattlesnake, Fink sprang to his feet! His face, first livid, grew suddenly purple, and in another half instant he had grappled Jabe by the throat, plucked him from the deck, and was in the act of hurling him overboard, when the youth Henderson left his oar, the hands gathered round, and Fink’s first impulse cooled a little. “Mira Hodgkiss! you dar to say Mira Hodgkiss, you blasted old saipint, you! Man and woman, child and parent years and years gone by, too and all only waitin’ for a chance to stab me! The devil in hell will be the better for it! Keep off, all on you you too, you cussed imp of a black hearted never mind. There’s a streak of an angel in you still, I hope, or ought to be.” Fink addressed the latter words to the youth, Henderson, his son by adoption, playing, at the same time, convulsively, with an immense knife which he wore in his belt, and his features distorted by the workings of rage, hatred and malignity. Knuckles lay gazing at him in stupid amazement; the youth Henderson was shocked and grieved; and the hands, generally, accustomed as they were to Mike’s “ways,” were completely dumb-founded. After further raving, Fink suddenly paused an instant, took a fresh draught of whisky from the can which he had been using, and then called to Henderson: ‘Take your rifle! Go forward! If your heart is true to me, I’ll know it by your shot; if not, the devil is near, and God forgive you!” [ “3] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND As if from a habit of mechanical obedience, the young man took up his piece, went forward to the very bow of the keel boat, and took his position. Fink again filled the can to the brim, placed it on his head, and with a savage, reckless laugh, cried ‘fire!’ Crack went the rifle, and the ball dashed through the tin sides so rapidly that the liquor spirted from the holes, over Fink’s head, leaving the cup itself still standing! The crew gave a loud hurrah; Mike met Henderson, half-way, with a grasp that almost wrung his hand off, and then, approaching Knuck- les, was about to speak more kindly, when a half a dozen voices called out, sharply, “Steam boat/” There she comes, yonder, round the point, and every eye and thought is directed towards her, to the oblivion of all else; for in those days a steam boat was no every day object, and while the rival craft Mike had not yielded his supremacy approach each other, we shall take the liberty of jumping as far back as we lately jumped forward. The reader is sufficiently acquainted with the headlong, reck- less character of Mira; Mike was at least a demi-savage, as far as the conventionalities of society went, and after a few weeks of passion, fiercely indulged and thoughtiesly regarded, they “set- tled down,” as the saying is, into as careless a couple happy, in their own independent way as any of the advocates of the social system might desire to see. Mira had taken her course, as- sumed the responsibility, and teazed Mike with no idle impor- tunities; in fact, the propriety of a more regular partnership in Mike’s domestic arrangements hardly entered her mind. She loved him; would “go her death” for him if necessary, and in the full faith that he thought her the “greatest woman alive,” she stood his whims, humors, and occasional violence. During his stay at Natchez, Mike, unsuspectingly, renewed his acquaint- ance with Talbott, who had kept entirely behind the curtain in the New Orleans affair. He took him on his keel up to Louis- ville, the man’s hideous features, at first, affording a subject of THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN mirth, but soon, in connection with his repulsive habits, render- ing him an object, to Fink, of disgust and abhorrence. “Cuss me if a dog should lick my hand,” said Mike, “who could lie at the feet of that old fiend-face!” They parted, but the acquaintance had been made, and after some months they met again at Natchez, but this time to Fink’s sorrow. We must be brief. Ever a creature of wild im- pulse, Mike became infatuated with a female from the east passionately, helplessly so; and Talbott it was who made the matter known in its worst light to Mira. Fury on her part led to scorn on the part of Fink, and phrenzy brought on the catas- trophe. The same reckless indulgence of spleen which led her to follow Mike now drove her to abandon him and her mo- mentary hatred prompted even to a more desperate step. Tal- bott was the abhorrence of her lover and through this hatred of his she saw her fullest revenge. The man was a monster to her, yet she mairied him/ It is not necessary to describe the scenes of violence which followed. A prey to passion, remorse, and a quenchless thirst for vengeance, Fink from that moment became less a man. Years wore on, and at the battle of New Orleans, he with his crew did gallant service, their rifles pouring death into the ranks of the enemy. Pursuing the British, too, on their retreai; at the head of a small scouting party, Fink met Talbott, and in such a ques- tionable situation as led to a belief that he had been, and still was employed against the American interest. They had a bloody personal encounter; Talbott was nearly killed, and so they lost sight of each other. The name of Talbott, or of Mira, was never breathed within the hearing of Fink, those who knew him care- fully avoiding to rouse the fury which of late years never wholly slept within him. Excitement, violence had become necessary stimulants to him, and under these evil influences, young Hen- derson had grown up to manhood, another Fink in his natural generosity, and, alas, in the promise of his career. Mike had lived to see realized, partially, the dream of John Fitch. Steam boats were rapidly driving “keels” from the Ohio, [ “5] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND and for the last few years he had been employed upon the Mis- souri and upper Mississippi, in carrying between the military posts on those rivers and St. Louis. His present trip was to New Orleans. “Captain Mike, shall we give her the channel?” said the steersman, Henderson, as they neared the approaching boat. Fink’s reply was to set his teeth, give a fierce snort, and grasp the heavy sweep himself. There, standing erect, he fixed his eye upon the steamer, while every muscle hardened, as it were, into granite. He had made an ineffectual attempt to reconcile mat- ters with Knuckles, and the latter, dogged, sullen, and hurt, had gloomily held off. Mike was “dangerous” as the hands remarked. “Guess ole man Jabe hasn’t got shook up dat way his hull life afore!” said Doctor Gravy, who was still alive and “fust as nat- ural!” “Ef he ain’t a cryin’!” said another. “Bin a-growin’ childish ever so long!” was the remark of a third. “Well,” cried the doctor, “foolish or no, ole man Jabe was de fuss I hear say dat dem tings (pointing to the steam boat) would trabble up ‘ginst strong water, one day, ef day kep’ goin’ on, and guess his olmynic was right dat time! De debbles hot water in dem kittles, I reckon! De patent double barrel navum- gation system, dat is! Dis child doesn’t see no use ribbers tryin’ to run down stream no mo’, no how!” “Going to take the bank, aint she?” enquired Henderson, looking at his captain. “If she does, I’ll sink her!” said Fink, setting his jaws more firmly. The were now in a bend of the river, the water was quite low, and a bar from the Illinois shore threw the current close over to the Missouri side. The steamer was laden deeply, appeared to struggle greatly with the stream, and sure enough was about to take the inside. Fink steadily held his course, swerving not an inch, either way; his keel was a very large one; he “despised a steam boat any how,” to use his own words; the wicked spirit [ 126] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN was roused within him, and without any question of courtesy or river regulation being involved in the matter, it simply suited his morose humor, at the moment, not to stir “out of his tracks!” The ascending steamer was a small, old fashioned, “lower cabin” affair, and had a good many passengers. On her deck appeared one group that was somewhat remarkable. By the side of an old man of grizzled locks and hideous aspect stood a young girl of fifteen or sixteen of pleasant, attractive features, of modest sensitive manners, and seated on a bench close by them was a plainly dressed and sickly looking woman, who from her worn appearance might have been forty-five, but who actually was nearly ten years younger. As they looked towards the ap- proaching “keel,” a pleasant spoken and well dressed young man addressed them. “Captain Talbott!” said he, “times are changing on the rivers. Cordelling a boat like that which comes yonder against a current such as this must have been severe work! How would you like me, Miss Jane, to be on the bank, now, with a rope over my shoulder, dragging you on your way to St. Louis?” The girl smiled with a very pleasant expression, and hoped that steam had forever banished such hardship; the elderly woman sighed heavily, Talbott at the same time giving her a glance of harshness and impatience. “Poor mother never wants to hear talk of the river!” whis- pered the girl to the young man, and he, in return, gave her a glance of sympathy and interest. “That keel will be into us if they don’t mind,” growled Tal- bott, at the same time walking forward to join the pilot of the boat, who just then was turning out into the stream. “You’ve put her out too late; she’ll strike us!” said Talbott. “D n! That’s Mike Fink, or the devil!” cried the pilot. AH was confusion in an instant. An attempt to correct the error just committed hastened the catastrophe, and while a thousand orders, cries and execrations arose from the steamer, Fink, the enormous sweep firm within his grasp, stood erect at the stern of his keel, and came terribly down upon them! A THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND crash that hurled the chimneys overboard, that tore the larboard guard and bow to pieces, and sent the water pouring through an hundred gaping seams, told the weight and force of the collision. Ropes were thrown from the steamer to the recoiling keel, but the former was already sinking* The deepest part of the channel, and, look! down down and, now, a sudden lurch, and from the shelving deck every soul is swept into the stream! Among the cries, one call for help is doubly answered to. A youth plunges from the keel, with superior stroke dashes past a second youthful swimmer, who strives for the same ob- ject, and in another moment is making triumphantly for the shore with a fair burthen! “Keel’s sinking, Mike!” roared a dozen throats around that grim steersman. With a savage smile, he was directing the bow towards the bank, but a great portion of his freight was lead, and another moment would complete the disaster. “Shore, all!” cried Fink, and instantly the fated keel was de- serted by all save one. Giving a glance back, as he swam, Mike saw Jabe Knuckles sitting on the deck in the same gloomy ab- straction. “Ashore, Jabe, she’s sinking!” he cried out. Knuckles raised his eyes, fixed them reproachfully upon his old companion, friend and tyrant, crossed his arms upon his breast, but still kept his position. “Are you going to drown, you old fool?” cried out Fink. Jabe did not answer, but there was a movement in his throat, his lips worked, and his eyes seemed to say, “Tool or dog, Mike Fink, I have a heart to be stung by outrage from an old friend,” and even so did that old friend interpret it Wrung with re- morse, Fink turned back to snatch Jabe from his fate, but even as he struck out his bold arms, the boat with its sole tenant vanished from before him, and, just beyond the spot which it had occupied, as though he was the sport of witchcraft, he saw a pale wild female face that filled his soul with horror! ‘Twas real! the eyes were turned upon him! A ghastly smile yet a THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN familiar one flickered as it were upon the water and all was calm again, without a ripple! “Mira!” screamed Fink. Alas, the depths of that dark stream now couched a brain ne’er more to be distraught with misery. Self infliction, outward wrong, she never more should know. Guilt, violence, despair, had wrought their work upon her, would that there were not still at hand another victim. MEKE SETTLES A LOVE AFFAIR Another dash forward with our story! Ascending the brown Missouri, pause at the mouth of the Yellow Stone, where, at the time we write of, the American Fur Company already had an important station. After his wreck, Fink, grown thrice reckless and desperate, goaded as well by his own accusations as by the doubts and cold looks of those with whom he had had connections, loitered about St. Louis for a time, sunk in dissipation, and careless for the future. He was “flat broke,” and, finally, he engaged himself and his “boy,” Henderson, to General Wm. H. Ashley, then actively employed in the fur trade, to hunt and trap for the company, on the usual terms. Fink made his way up to the Fort, and the fire about his heart may be imagined, when al- most the first man he met there was Talbott! This man had like- wise been engaged, as gunsmith a business which he had un- successfully pursued in Louisville, and it was on his way to this employment that he had again, after years, encountered Fink, and fatefully as usual. His wife, the wretched Mira, had been released from a load of life through the reencounter, his daugh- ter, Jane, barely snatched from death, been thrown on his rude hands, thence to draw all she was likely to gain, wherewith to deck her mind. If the meeting at the fort, however, was poison to Fink and Talbott, to Henderson it was quite the contrary; for the fair young creature whom he had rescued from the stream triumph- ing in doing so over the more polished youth who had been her immediate companion he now saw daily, and with a feeling THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND powerful as new to him. Young Edwards, Jane’s travelling friend, was a clerk at the post, and under all circumstances, it was very natural that himself and Henderson should be rivals. Edwards cursed the fortune which had made him second in the rescue of Jane, and Henderson gnashed his teeth, as he thought of his inferior position, and lack of the usual recommendations in female eyes. A dark cloud of passion and violence rested, as ever, above Fink and all connected with him, and for himself he roamed about with scorpions in his breast. His temper grew to be unbearable; he was a terror to all in the fort. The command- ing officer, in the loose state of discipline then customary, found him unmanageable; and for the quiet ones, generally, they wished him at the devil. Henderson, too, had his disturbances, and finally Fink, in a fury, withdrew from the fort altogether, prepared a rude sort of cave in the neighborhood for his winter’s den, and dragged Henderson after him to share his gloom and bitterness. AH was not harmony, even between Fink and ‘Tiis boy,” as he called him. The former had intentionally avoided the sight of Jane Mira’s child, by the man whom, of all earth, he most abhorred; and, apart from this consideration, there was something in the idea of the offspring of Mary Benson and Mira Hodgkiss coming together, which made his blood creep! True, there was no bar of blood, but that of circumstances seemed to him equally forbidding. “If you love me, Henderson,” Fink would say, “y u won’t sting me by giving your heart to the flesh and blood of a domes- tic poisoner, and a traitor to his country. I’d rather see you dead, Henderson, and then die myself on your grave, than you should take that gal!” The youth was silent and gloomy; Mike tetchy and suspi- cious, and thus, by themselves yet unsympathising, they lived together. It was a fine bright day in January, and Edwards was walking with Jane without the fort, on a path which led towards the river. He loved the mild and friendless girl with all his sole, and looked forward to the time when he might place her in a more c 130] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN proper sphere, away from the rudeness and hearflessness of her father. “But you are kind, and encouraging in your manner to Hen- derson,” said Edwards. “He thinks you are in love with him, and, perhaps, Jane” added he, hesitatingly, “he may not be in- different to you?” The girl looked at Edwards almost tearfully. She was timid, and evidently much distressed by this turn in their conversation. “He saved my life, William, you know!- though you, you William were near me; and would have rescued me, I know it!” “The deuce take his fortune!” cried the youth, with a swell- ing heart. “Of course you should be grateful,” continued he, “and I own that he is a better swimmer, and better shot than I am, but-” “He hasn’t got a smooth tongue, and a mean town heart, to talk ‘ginst people who haven’t a chance to be heerd!” cried Hen- derson, advancing, rifle in hand, from a clump of trees and brush through which the path wound. Edwards drew a pistol from his belt and stood on the defensive, Jane at the same time clinging to him in terror. “Oh, indeed, Mr. Henderson,” said she, quickly, yet trem- bling. “Mr. Edwards never speaks of you disrespectfully. He would not do so. He is too good too noble” “Oh, ha, ha, ha! That’s right!” mockingly said the young demi-savage. “He’s too handsome, too! and keeps himself too nice, and sweet, and combed out; and is too fond of love-walks and lyin’/” The last word was yelled out under the impulse of growing rage, and in another second both weapons were lev- elled, when a rifle crack was heard, and Henderson dropped the muzzle of his piece, as if he had received a sudden twinge. “I’ve only creased 2 you, Henny,” said Mike Fink, advancing from the other side towards the path. “Sarved you Mustang fashion, I reckon!” 2. The well known prairie feat of tumbling a wild horse by touching a nerve at the back of the head with a ball. Sometimes the shot is too low, however [Field’s footnote]. THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND The young man put his hand to his shoulder, and stood look- ing, first at Edwards and the girl, and then at Fink. He was boil- ing with rage, but the novelty of the check he had received and his habitual awe of the boatman restrained him. ‘Toung man, you’d a bin a goner in another half shake,” said Mike to Edwards; and now, for the first time, he took a look at the girl. His gaze became riveted for a time, but at last his eye moistened, and he turned away. “She’s like her!” he muttered, “I’d a know’d her, poor thing; ony she’s not got the same fire in her eyenor her heart either, I hope!” “Gal!” said he, advancing suddenly, and with over forced harshness, “these boys, yer, will shed blood on your account, ef you trifle with ’em! Tell my boy, Henderson, right off, that he’s nothin’ to you, and never will be!” Henderson started, and again raised his piece. *T)own with that rifle!” shouted Fink, in a tone of thunder. He was obeyed. “Now, gal, speak.” More dead than alive, the young creature turned from one to the other, incapable of utterance; at length, fixing her eyes upon Edwards, she sobbed out: “Oh, William, William, you will be killed on my account!” and buried her face in his bosom. “Wefl, that’s better than talkin’!” said Fink. “God bless you, gal, and make you happier than your mother! For you, Hen- derson, never cross their path agin, or, my own boy as you are, you make me your enemy. Come!” A HEART-THAW AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Gloomily went the winter with “old Mike” as he was now discourteously called. Shut within his den, he was haunted by phantoms of past times. Mary Benson, her father, Taggart, Mira, Jabe Knuckles, and worse stfll, the thought of Talbott, living within reach of him, and poisoning the very air with his presence, all combined to drive him further down the road which knows no turning. He made but one visit to the fort, and THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN that was marked, as usual, by an act of recklessness and de- fiance. The regulation with regard to spirits was enforced as far as possible at the post, but still whisky found its way there, and on Mike’s burrowing for the winter he had kid in somewhat of a store, for the solace of his solitude. This ran out, though, when taking his rifle he marched up to the fort, looking more like a grisly bear than a human being, gave Talbott, who stum- bled upon him, a thorough start, and entered the store room. He demanded a supply of the liquor which he knew was there and was refused. At tie farther end of the apartment were a number of barrels, kegs, &c., containing stores. Selecting one, he deliberately raised his rifle and drove a ball through the head of it; from the hole spirted a stream of refreshing clearness, when, taking a capacious vessel, which stood at hand, he walked across, placed it beneath the jet, and reloading his piece, cooly waited ’till it was filled. Henderson’s time passed scarcely less heavily. His thoughts still set on Jane, yet forbidden by his pride and spleen from im- portuning her, he was further exiled from the fort by the com- mands of Fink. He was heartily weary of his bondage to his old protector, and only waited the advance of spring to bid him adieu forever. Sympathy, confidence, was not to be restored be- tween them, and constraint and coldness threw a deeper gloom round their wild quarters. At the fort things went comfortably enough. Compelled to know her own feelings Jane had since learned to confess them, and Edwards was the happiest youth that ever posted up trap- per accounts in the wilderness. Talbott selfishly saw an advan- tage to himself in the match, (for the young man was not with- out influence,) and his only dread was that Henderson might yet attempt some violence, urged by love, or that Fink might do as much impelled by hate. While matters were in this state dark rumors began to spread concerning the two tenants of the cave. No one could exactly define their shape, or trace their origin, but they grew darker and fouler; whispers of crime, insinuations of vice, nameless in THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND its character, and finally, through an officer at the post, they reached the ears of the suspected. Still, so artfully had the slan- ders been spread, that at one moment Fink himself would seem to have given birth to them, and anon Henderson might have been thought guilty. The effect on each was of course to widen the estrangement, poison thought, and fit the heart for deeds unnatural. True, Fink and Henderson both felt that their enemy, Talbott, had much to do with the matter, but they had grown to have nearly as little confidence in each other as they had in him. Spring had come; the returning sun loosened the streams, filled the heavens with brightness and the earth with balm. Parties of trappers had returned from the mountains, everything was brisk and gay, and one day it was resolved that “all hands” should go down, in a body, and “rouse out” old Mike from his torpor. A keg of the forbidden was procured, and there they all were round the “Bar’s den.” There were trappers from the mountains; the regular hunters of the post; a number of half- breeds; half as many whole breeds, with their skins and blankets; old Jean Tisan, down from the head waters of the Missouri for the first time in three years; and last, not least, there was “Dr. Gravy,” his wool full of dangling feathers, and his face painted, come to surprise “de ole hoss.” “Gravy” had accompanied Mike to the fort, but had been away all winter in the mountains. ‘Three cheers for old Mike Fink!” Roar after roar went up, filled the air, vibrated through the dull abode of the boatman, and finally touched the slackened strings of his own heart. True, the sounds awakened were rather of an equivocal character, but they roused him from his lethargy, and he came forth. “De Lor! Cap’n Mike,” cried the doctor, “I kim ‘long down to gib you a scare; whew! arter seein* you I go right long take de paint off!” Fink was indeed an “awful pattern” to look at. He shook hands with his old friends, however, and Henderson arriving from a hunt, he even felt a reviving warmth, as he looked at him. There was a fount of feeling in his heart not yet exhausted. [ 134] THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN The keg was broached, the spirit was freely circulated, and the occasion and the season were worthy of each other sunny, and promising still better things. “Yarns” were spun, too, of every variety; river songs were given, and, finally, “the doctor” told how he had “played bar,” on one occasion. “You see, Cap’n Mike, we was ‘camped ‘way off, arter makin’ a cache near de ribber, an’ dis child ob science, myself, was on de ground, an 7 ole /antisan, dar (Jean Tisan) was close up wid him feet to de fire, an’ him mouf, tudder end, wide open, an’ up comes little cap’n major dar, wot’d made a bet wid old Jan ’bout gibbin’ ‘im a scare, and major ses ‘Doctor,’ ses he, ‘put on dis skin’; we’d killed a ‘grisly’ dat same day, ‘an’ git right over old Jan an’ grin, an I’ll gib you big chunk o’ ‘bakker!’ Well, I goes an’ tries to it on, an’ felt bar all over, and over ole Jan I gits, and fuss ting I gib a growl, and den I grin like the debbfl and wot you ‘spose ole Jan done?” “Tell it out,” was the cry. “Wy he ups and gibs me two poun’ of snuff right in the eyes, an’ bress de lor, it make ’em smart so I nebber see dat chunk o’ bakker ob Cap’s dar, yit!” There was a hearty laugh, and the “Cap’n Major” spoken of promised the tobacco once more, and now Jean Tisan became the hero. He was a little weather-stained, wind-dried French- man, over sixty years of age, yet still one of the most active, as he was one of the oldest trappers in the employ of the company. “Aha!” said the veteran, taking 3. big pinch from a special side pocket, “I was get dat trick from someting dat scratch more as grisly bear, good deal, bidam, two bettare!” “Tell it out! Give us the yam!” cried several. “I get him from Madame Tisan, my wife, bidam!” “Not old Madame Tisan, in St. Louis?” enquired Fink, who had gradually thawed into sociability, if not merriment. “Oui, Madame Tisan, St. Louis,” said the trapper. “I was no see her more zen fifteen year, St. Louis, too, bidam! St. Louis all Yankee, and Madame Tisan all hell, vat you call, an’ I say good bye to all de two! I was make St. Louis myself, wis La- c *35 1 THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND clede, mais, first ting, I marry and bring Madame over from Caho, and next ting, contree belong to Yankee doodele, and we have freedom, bidam, wis de constable and de jury, and tax, and dey all help Madame Tisan to faire come ze debbfl in my maison. She make balls for de stranger, and I stay way hunt and nevare come back, and ven I do she scratch my face to drive me away encore, and so one time bidam, ven she give me some cuffs in de nose, I gives her some snuffs in ze eye, and evare since she is veuve vat you call, Weedow Tisan!” This souvenir of Mike’s old acquaintance put him in great glee; the whisky, too, was operating, and he replied to a call, by telling several stories himself. Henderson was also in great spirits, and when he made the first advance towards a reconcili- ation with his old protector, by calling on him to sing “Neal Hornback,” Mike’s heart quite opened towards him. He gave him his hand, took a *T)ig drink” with him, and complied. ‘Ye see, boys,” said Mike, “Neal was boatin’ up Salt river, and Tom Johnston and me stole three kegs of whisky that he was mighty chice about, and he went about lamenting and tellin* me how it was Johnston and Macdannily, and I never lettin’ on nothin’. Well, you see, it made all sorts of a larf, and I jest made a song about it. NEAL HORNBACK 3 My name it are Neal Hornback I sail-ed from Mudford shore, And ven-tur-ed up the Poll-ing fork, Where Indians’ rifles roar. Oh, the matter it are conclu-di-ed, It are hard for to unbin-d, I waded the forks of Salt riviere, And left my kegs behind. An hour or two before day, I pick-ed up my gun, 3. Neal Hornback is a veritable Mike Fink ditty, composed by the boat- man himself. Col. Charles Keemle, of the St. Louis Reveille, took down the words from Mike, on the Missouri, the year that Fink was killed. Fink used to sing the song with a rich sobriety, enjoying the burlesque of it fully [Field’s footnote]. J THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN Returned to my periogue, And saw the mischief done. I laid it on Tom John-sti-on, Who were innercent and clear, But for to destroy my charac-ture, It plainly did appear. I call-ed my friends er-round me, And thus to them did s-a-a-a-y, Macdannilly and Tom John-sti-on, Have stored my kegs er-way. Oh, if they are the lads whot stoled your kegs They have done the verri thing, And if your kegs are miss-ing, You’ll not see them er-gin. Neal’s body it were enormer-ous, His legs were long and slim, Good Lord, it would make you sor-ri, Was you to look on him. He were crook’d back’d, hump’d shoulder-ed And with thick lips is blessed, And for to make him ug-i-ly, The Lord has done his best. A storm of applause followed the song, and Mike once more was in his glory! “Henny,” cried he, seizing Henderson by the hand, “swop shots and be my own son agin’!” The proposal called forth three cheers; cups were filled, rifles were seized, and the two best shots in Missouri took their sta- tions one hundred yards from each other. A scene of this kind has already been described. Shooting objects off his boy’s head was one of Mike’s earliest feats on the river, and, in time, the boy grew to be no less expert. It was Mike’s boast that their skill, nerve, and trust in each other might be thus tested, and at any moment. They stood ready, with their pieces. “Look out, old Mike!” said one of the men from the fort, “he’ll pay you now!” The words meant nothing, but they caused a shade to fall upon the brow of the boatman. “Fire!” .said he.. Fink felt a quick, partially stunning blow on the top of his head, he raised his hand and his matted hair was C’37] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND wet with bloodthe ball had torn up the scalp and glanced off; at the same moment, looking from a clump of trees, some dis- tance beyond Henderson, he saw Talbott! Fink’s heart was on fire; his hand trembled; could his “boy” have meant to harm him? His eye wavered. “Henderson,” said he, “I taught you to shoot better than that!” He raised his rifle, fired, and the ball crashed through the forehead of the young man, who, falling to the earth, was im- mediately surrounded by the crowd. ‘That job was a pretty plain one!” said Talbott, coldly as he sauntered up. Fink, on his knees beside the body, heard not the foul insinu- ation. “LAST SCENE OF ALL” The breath of May stole wooingly along the earth; a velvet sward invited the footstep, and the pleasant shadow of the young leaves fell as an aiiy mantle around Edwards and his fair young Jane, as they left the fort one morning to visit “poor Mike Fink,” for, spite of all violence, even the suspicion of blood foully shed there were those who still followed him with thoughts of kindness and forgiveness. The young couple whom we speak of certainly had cause to remember the boatman grate- fully. ‘Tour father is very wrong, Jane, in his persecution of Fink. He is a crushed and broken man, and his despair and desolation since the death of Henderson, should convince all hearts and soften them, too. The act was not a malicious one.” “Oh, no, no,” cried Jane; “my father himself cannot think so; but their enmity has been so bitter!” “He calls him, publicly, a murderer, Jane, and the faithful negro who alone has clung by Fink, or been permitted to do so, says that the unhappy man is wounded to the soul by the im- putation.” THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN “Shall we be safe in approaching him,” enquired the girl, “or shall we not offend, rather? He shuns every body.” “We will see ‘the Doctor 7 as he is called, first/’ said Edwards. At this moment the negro appeared a short distance before them on the path, waiting, as it would seem, for the young man. “How is he this morning?” asked Edwards. “Dyin’ for sure! Massa Ned,” was the reply. “He won’t drink de whisky you sent down not de fuss drop,” continued the negro; “an’ you know, Massa Ned, it’s bref in de mouf to dem as had drinked like Cap’n Mike.” Fink, had, indeed, not tasted spirit since his unhappy act. With a firm will, ‘though it was, in his case, the only means of sustaining his shattered system, he put it from him. Food was almost an equal stranger to his stomach, and so was he rapidly and knowingly sinking to the grave. “He don’t sleep, nuther,” said the black, sadly, “no mo’ dan a wolf! Soon as night come, he go out on de grave, and dar he lay ’till day, and den he goes back in de dark agin. He’s on de grave, now,” added ‘Gravy,’ “an’ reckon it’s kase he can’t git up. I bin to him, but he tells me ‘no, go ‘way.’ He want to die dar, for sure!” The black led them towards a gully which sloped to the river. The upper part” of this was tolerably smooth in its descent; one side was higher than the other, and a natural cavity here had been enlarged and arranged by Fink, for his quarters. There was an easy ascent of a few steps from the cave to the top of the bank, which was finely shaded by trees; this had been the scene of Henderson’s death, and there, now, was his grave. Passing round the head of the hollow, Edwards and Jane en- tered a thick grove of trees, the underwood serving further as their screen, and from this spot they obtained a sight of him whom they were seeking. The grave was at the foot of a tree, and here Fink lay prostrate, his head and breast upon the mound, and his arms thrown across, as if embracing it. He was so still, so motionless, that he seemed already dead, and Ed- wards thought he was so. The young man stepped forward hast- THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND ily, but the noise at once roused Fink who raised his head, gave an impatient cry as he saw that he was intruded upon and staggered to his cave. His appearance was frightful, unearthly; his features were hardly distinguishable amid the mass of hair which spread over his whole face, but the light from his dark, deep, sunken eyes streamed forth, nevertheless, showing that vitality was still strong within him. “Poor Mike Fink!” sighed the young couple, as they con- tinued their walk by another path. It was noon; the few persons left in charge of the fort (the main force was again off toward the mountains,) were employ- ing themselves carelessly about, when Fink, his rifle across his arm (when did he ever move abroad without it) entered the gate, crossed the area, and disappeared within a doorway which led to the armory. This apartment was the last of a suite of store rooms, &c., remote and somewhat private in its character. Talbott, suddenly raising his head from his work, saw Fink ad- vancing, with his rifle, as described, through the outer division. Snatching up a loaded piece he called to him: “If you come nearer you’re a dead man, Fink!” “I’m come to speak to you, Talbott,” said Mike, “about old matters; about my boy!” The gunsmith had been taken quite by surprise; he was him- self treacherous and vile, and he saw in Fink’s visit only an at- tempt to take a vengeful advantage. “Don’t cross that door, Fink,” cried he, nervously, “don’t; I give you warning!” “I must speak to you about Henderson,” repeated Fink, still advancing. “Another step, and by” The step was taken, but it was Mike’s last. A sharp report rang through the apartment, and the boatman fell heavily, hold- ing his rifle up as he struck the ground, but making no attempt to use it : ‘WeD, now you feel safe,” said he, with more of sadness than reproach, “and can listen to me for a minute.” THE LAST OF THE BOATMEN The gunsmith, in his dastardly nature, could hardly trust his triumph. He was even more nervous than before, but Fink was, evidently, at length his victim, and soon his composure and venom returned together. “I’ve saved you from the gallows, that’s all that can be said!” cried he, exultingly. “Mike Fink, the Boatman! Ha! ha! I felt a day was coming, ha! ha! ha! Old scores will be paid at last. Mira, Natchez, New Orleans, Mississippi river, and some other accounts/ ha! ha! ha!” “God forgive my share of all of them!” said Fink, fervently, as, without attempting to staunch a wound in his breast, his hands still sought his crimsoned bosom. “And some other accounts!” repeated Talbott. “D’ye remem- ber Benson, and the dance house in the swamp? Benson died in the chain-gang, finally, but I first planned that matter! And do you remember Mary Benson’s wedding night? Talbott has owed you something of a grudge for that; but there’s another hasn’t forgotten it Taggart, and he stands before you/” “My God!” said the dying man, as a stream of ghastly light seemed to flow in upon him. ‘Taggart! you, Taggart? Yes, there couldn’t a-bin two such!” ‘Tes; Taggart, whom you drove from the side of his bride from Mary! whom your rifle rendered a fright and a monster for life, on the shore of Arkansaw; whom you have never known, save as another, yet hating and being hated in return, just the same!” Fink, partially raising himself, had fixed his eyes upon the man with deepening horror. As he listened, big drops of sweat beaded upon his forehead; his frame shook; a groan burst from the very depths of his bosom but suddenly, like on the dispersion of a storm, a smile beamed forth; his air became calm, and with a sad but grateful voice he cried: “My heart, after all, did not deceive me! A man aint lost enr tirely whose soul always whispers him when the devil’s near! Taggart, Henderson, my boy, whom you’ve accused me- of mur- THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND dering, was Maiy’s child, your own son! And you you, your- self, with your lies and slanders caused his death, for doubt of treachery unnerved me!” The gunsmith stared in surprise, as he listened, but spoke not. “Jane, too, your other child Mira’s child! Henderson was mad arter her; but my heart was still right! Mira seemed to warn me! Thank me for saving you that sin and anguish, Tag- gart. Your gal, with an innocent hand, may yet smooth your death pillowGod bless her!” Loss of blood, excitement here overcame him; his brain turned; his eye glared, and his mind began to wander. “Ill bring back your daughter, Hodgkiss,” murmured he. “It was my fault, poor gal! and little Henny no mother, and no friends, laid in the earth, too, cold and bloody, and his face turned from me.” Edwards and Jane had returned to the fort, and, more by accident than design, now entered the armory. Shocked and horror-stricken, they sought to render the dying man assistance. Fink, recalled a moment to his senses, seemed to recognize them, and making an effort to join their hands, his last words were: “I didn’t mean to kffl my boy!” Thus died Mike Fink, and, as if fate had but one end re- served for all those who through life had been woven in his chequered history, Talbott or Taggart a few weeks after- wards, driven from the fort more by his guilty imagination than by any fear of arrest, was drowned in an attempt to cross the Missouri. A tender shoot alone remained of these wild, gnarled forest plants, and in June, nature seemed kindly bent on recalling the species to beauty, grace and order. Years have passed, but still, in a fair town on the Missouri bank, resided a couple, who, blessed with all that can make home serene, recall, at moments, earlier, ruder days, and drop a tear to poor Mike, “The Last of ‘the Boatmen/ ” Lige Shattuck’s Reminiscence of Mike Fink (1848) TVJO NAME WAS SIGNED to the following anecdote when it 1\| appeared in the St. Louis Reveille, February 28, 1848. The general pattern is a long-time favorite in American humor: a rustic or frontiersman tells an impossible story to a visitor, and the visitor is taken in. Mike Fink, it happens, is featured in the story; but the tall tale might have concerned any hard-drinking frontiersman, and all frontiersmen were then reputed to be hard drinkers. There is no evidence for or against accepting this as part of the oral lore about the famous fceeler. Interestingly, about a hundred years after it appeared, Van Wyck Brooks appears to have taken this stretcher seriously. In his book, The World of Washington Irving (New York, 1945), he says solemnly that Fink “was supposed to have eaten a buffalo-skin/’ A New England passenger on one of our steamers was inquir- ing very anxiously for an introduction to an old Mississippi boatman, one who knew something about Mike Fink. The clerk informed him that an introduction was unnecessary; if he would go up and talk to the pilot he might leam from him the whole history of the old boatman. Up went the Yankee, and after circuiting round Lige two or three times, he spoke: “How d’ye dew, pilotthey say yeou are an old friend of Mike Fink’s/ 1 “Knew him like a brother,” said Lige. “Well, now dew tell me something about him, some anec- dote,” requested the New Englander. “I don’t know as I recollect any real bright one just now I do recollect his taking a prescription once.” E M3 3 THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND “What was that?” eagerly inquired the stranger. “Why, he eat a whole buffalo robe,” answered Lige, with the greatest gravity imaginable. “Well, dew tell! What in patience did he masticate that for?” further inquired the stranger. Lige turned round to the other pilot, and, winking his eye, ob- served: ‘lie’s sold, ain’t he, Jim?” “You ain’t told me what he chawed the buffalo robe for,” continued the New Englander. “Why, the fact is,” says Lige, “the doctors told him he had lost the coating of his stomach, and as he drank nuthin’ but New England rum, he thought he’d dress his insides up in suthin’ that ‘ud stand the cussed pizen stuff, so he tried buffalo with the bai on, and it helped him mightily.” The anxious inquirer was satisfied. Mike Fink: A Legend of the Ohio (1848) EMERSON BENNETT EMERSON BENNETT, born on a Massachusetts farm in 1823, wandered around for a time, then tried his luck as a writer. In New York and Philadelphia he was unsuccessful, and after a love affair had ended unhappily, he headed West. About 1844, in Cincinnati, he was barely existing by selling linen-stamps and peddling magazine subscriptions. One day in a cheap restaurant he heard two men talking enthusiastically about a story in the Cincinnati Commercial. Recognizing some of the details men- tioned, he asked to see the newspaper. He found that the story was one which he had submitted, without success, in a Philadel- phia contest. The incident was a turning point. He was hired by the Com- mercial, and he started to turn out one thriller after another about the West. Serialized in newspapers, some of these hoisted circulation; when issued in book form, they also sold well some as many as a hundred thousand copies. Within a few years he was a rich man, banqueted by many admirers. He lived in a mansion, hired several servants, and drove spirited trotters. Mike Fink: A Legend of the Ohio, published in 1848, went through at least three editions. This, like other books by Ben- nett, was a sort of a primordial dime novel, although it sold for a larger price. It does not, its author admits a bit sheepishly in the Preface, “give a veritable history of Mike Fink, as some might suppose from reading the title page.” Such a histoiy might, he goes on, be interesting but it would be inappropriate for a romance. Moreover, he questions that a “strictly authen- E THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND tic” account is possible, “from the fact that I have myself made thorough inquiries of such persons as were thought to know something of his history without being able to glean any thing of him beyond a few vague unsatisfactory suppositions, and occa- sionally some spicy anecdotes which . . . were veiy foreign to the purpose. I have also searched every record concerning him that has come to my knowledge, with no other result than to learn his general characteristics, which I have faithfully en- deavored to transcribe ” This seems honest enough, though from what appears in his boot, it is probable that even this modest statement exaggerates his research: he seems to have found whatever material he used in the 1828 sketch by Neville and the 1829 sketch in the Western Monthly Review. But he made the most of what he knew, doing quite a job of building up suspense when he told of Mike’s shooting off the Negro’s heel or shooting the cup. Also, as one would expect of so prolific a novelist, he showed some powers of invention. For one thing, he invented dialogue quite in keeping with Mike’s character some of it excellent. For another, he hit upon the happy idea of getting Mike and his crew into a tangle with the legendary outlaws of Cave-in- Rock. The river pirates who actually operated from that base had been opponents worthy of Fink, and though they had never had quite so bloody and picturesque a chief as Bennett’s Camilla, Camilla was not so unlike such historical chiefs as Mason and the Harpes as one might suppose. In the fashion of the day, Bennett dealt in most of his novel with a pair of pretty and sugary lovers, Maurice and Aurelia. Typical of their kind, they caused a great deal of trouble by get- ting captured by the outlaws and being unable to help them- selves. In addition they had all sorts of problems to solve and many sappy love scenes to go through. Lacking space for the whole novel, we have omitted from the condensation which follows these and much of the sentimental melodrama, concen- trating on Mike and his crew and their adventures. The various headings are adapted from Bennett 7 s. A LEGEND OF THE OHIO THE BOATMAN THE FORTUNE-TELLER It was on a beautiful spring morning, in the beginning of the present century, that along the river at Cincinnati, which at this period was only a small town, containing less than a thousand inhabitants, lay several keel-boats and broad-horns, 1 the crews of which were busy in loading them with freight of different kinds for the up and down river trade. Of these boats, only one, and this of the former class, seemed completely laden, and ready to push into the stream; on the deck of which the crew, some six or eight stalwart fellows, were lounging about in care- less attitudes, apparently awaiting the arrival of some person or persons who were momentarily expected, judging from the manner in which they from time to time glanced almost im- patiently toward the main thoroughfare of the village. Three of the individuals in question were separarated from the rest, and were conversing together near the bow of the boat. “Well, ef they don’t show themselves right soon,” said one, “hang me up for bar-meat, ef I don’t push off without ’em that’s the way to say it.” The speaker was a tall, powerful man, some twenty-eight years of age. His stature was rising of six feet, and his frame and limbs, though perfectly symmetrical, were very muscular, de- noting one of great strength. His hair was thick and coarse, of a coal-black, and his complexion very dark, owing, probably, to long exposure to the weather in all its various changes. His features were rough, and rather coarse, but expressive of some intelligence. He had a light gray eye, which, though it never sparkled under any circumstances, sometimes softened from its naturally cold, stern expression to one of quiet humor. His cheek-bones were large and prominent, his nose very long, his mouth and chin well-formed, thereby adding a look of firmness and decision to the whole countenance. In pleasant repose, there was something about his physiognomy rather attractive 1. More commonly termed flat-boats [Bennett’s note]. THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND and calculated to inspire confidence and familiarity; but at the same time it was plainly evident that the lion was there and that when once angrily aroused he would become a dangerous being to trifle with. His dress was somewhat singular, though characteristic of the time and his profession. Next to his body he wore a red flannel shirt, open about the breast and neck, over which hung a loose blue jerkin barely extending to the upper part of his hip. Coarse linsey trowsers were secured round his waist by a leather belt, to which was attached a sheath, con- cealing all but the handle of a long hunting-knife. Upon his feet he wore moccasins, and on his head a singular-looking cap, roughly formed from the untanned skin of some wild beast TTie two companions to whom the individual just described addressed himself, though bearing no manner of resemblance to him, were still very far from being refined specimens of human- ity. One of them was very tall, gaunt, ill-proportioned, with long bony limbs, a sharp thin face, small blue eyes, light delicate eyebrows, a peaked nose, a tremendous mouth, thin lips, sloping chin, sandy hair, and freckled skin, whose age might be thirty- five, and the characteristic expression of whose countenance was humor and drollery. The other was his opposite in every partic- ular. In height he would not exceed five feet, was square-built, had a large long body, and short legs, that caused him to wad- dle whenever he walked or ran. His arms were long and brawny, and his head, barely raised above his shoulders by a short bull- neck, was enormously large, whereon was a countenance the general expression of which denoted the predominance of the animal over the intellectual and, to a stranger, would have been exceedingly repulsive. His face was wide, with a broad, flat nose, and one small black fiery eye; the other having been gouged out in a fight some time previous to the date of our story, and was now covered with a brown patch. His eyebrows were dark and shaggy and, joining in the center, extended across the nether portion of his low, retreating forehead, and added a look of sul- len fierceness to his otherwise unpleasing countenance. Yet, notwithstanding an aspect so unattractive, the individ- A LEGEND OF THE OHIO ual in question was not so bad at heart as many another of an exterior more polished, an air more refined, and a countenance more smooth and smiling. He had some peculiarities which, though not intentional on his part, were ever productive of mirth at his expense. He used tobacco in every form, and could seldom be found without a large quid between his capacious jaws; besides this, he stuttered exceedingly and was in the habit of using high-flown words with but little regard to their proper signification, which not unfrequentiy produced an effect ex- tremely ludicrous. He was known among the boatmen by the sobriquet of Jack Short, though doubtless this was not his orig- inal appellation. “So y-y-you think you’ll disembark, eh! Mike?” said Jack, in reply to the first speaker, who was none other than the veritable Mike Fink himself. “Think y-yo-you’ll move on to-to the flu- fluctuating current, eh? for a more s-s-salu-bri-brious clime, eh? W-w-well, g-g-go your death on’t, ef you s-s-plit on a sandbar, M-M-Mike”; and the speaker gave the quid in his mouth an extra turn, and expectorated very freely. “Why,” rejoined Mike, “I don’t think thar’s any use in our sunning ourselves here much longer like alligators on a mud- bank, unless we can git up a row to keep our j’ints from being marrow dried. What say you, Dick Weatherhead?” “Why, I’ll tell you what,’* answered Dick, the individual de- scribed as tall, gaunt, and bony; “let’s go and see old Mother Deb, the fortin-teller, to see whether we’re going to be hanged or drowned/’ “Hooray for Deb! she’s a land-screamer, I’ve heerd,” cried Fink; “and so here goes fur a trial.” Saying which, and without more ado, he sprang ashore, and followed by his two companions, at once set off for the resi- dence of Deborah Mowrin, better known among the river men as old Mother Deb, the fortune-teller. Turning to the left, the trio pursued their course along what is now called Front street, which could then boast but a few scattering houses, till they had passed Main street some two [ M9 ] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND hundred yards, when, taking a narrow path that led into the open field, they continued to advance toward a small, miserable- looking hovel, which, standing solitary and alone, formed the extreme boundary of the village in that direction. On approach- ing the building in question, our worthies found the door and shutters closed, while every thing about the structure bespoke it uninhabited. However, this did not deter Mike and his com- panions from making several attempts to gain admittance, by trying the door and shutters, rapping hard, and hallooing lustily. For some time their efforts were without avail, and concluding the old woman was absent, they were about to give up and turn back, when Mike swore he would make one more trial with his fist on the door, and if no one answered to the summons, he would break it down on his own account. This he said in a voice sufficiently loud to be heard by any one within; and as he concluded, he raised his brawny arm, and made the old house tremble to its center. “Open, Deb,” cried Fink, “or by all the fishes of the Dead Sea, 111 snag this old door in less time nor a Massassip alligator can chaw up a puppy!” “G-g-go it, Mike/ 7 cried Jack Short, waddling to and fro, tak- ing a rapid survey of the old edifice with his one eye, and giving his large quid a few extra turns. “G-g-go it, Mike, I say. G-g-give the old thing a few 1-1-lugubrious salutations with y-y-your p-p- ponderosity.” At this moment one of the shutters slightly opened, and dis- played a small portion of an old woman’s head, and a red flan- nel skull-cap. <r Who are ye, and what d’ye want?” cried a shrill, tremulous voice. “We want our fortins told, Mother Deb,” answered Dick Weatherhead, striding forward toward the old woman. “And d’ye thinks I can tell ’em?” rejoined the other, inquir- ingly. “In course ye can,” replied Dick; ” ’cause that’s your trade. A LEGEND OF THE OHIO Every body to thar business, from rowing a flat up to preachin’ the Scriptures, say I.” “T-t-thafs right, Dick,” cried Jack, enthusiastically. “I-I like them q-q-qu-quadrangular t-t-touches, Dick; by G-G-Goliah, I do”; and the speaker took occasion to empty and refill his mouth. “Well, hold on a minute, and I’ll gin ye entrance,” said the old woman; and forthwith the head and skull-cap disappeared from the window, and reappeared at the door. Entering the residence of Deborah Mowrin, our river worthies found themselves in a small, dark, noisome apartment, contain- ing as furniture an old rickety table, a miserable pallet of straw in one corner, two or three iron kettles, used for cooking, and a few rough, three-legged stools. Bidding them be seated, the for- tune-teller proceeded to throw open the shutters, thereby dis- playing her ungainly person in full light. She was a small, inferior-looking being, with sharp, shrewd features, so withered and wrinkled by age and covered with dirt as to make their expression extremely repulsive. For lack of teeth, her cheeks had fallen in, and her nose and chin seemed bent on paying each other a long visit. Her eyes were small and fiery, with which she now peered curiously at the boatmen, as if to read their thoughts. In one long, skinny hand she held a hickory staff, the handle of which was a horse-shoe, nailed on to protect her from witches. 2 Her dress consisted of a dirty brown wrapper, or loose gown, and the before-mentioned red flannel cap, drawn tightly over the crown of her head, beneath which her long flaxen hair fell down around her neck and shoulders in sad disorder, and added a wildness to her otherwise hideous ap- pearance. “Well,” said Mike, after surveying her a moment in silence, 2. Fifty years ago it was currently believed by many of the most re- spectable people in the country that a horse-shoe nailed on to a staff, or over the doors and windows of a dwelling, was a sure safeguard against witches; and the author is personally acquainted witli an old woman who follows the practice of so guarding herself and house even at the present day [Bennett’s note]. THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND “ef you can’t tell fortins, old woman, ’tain’t because thar ain’t no resemblance ‘tween you and the critters what ride broom- sticks through the air when honest folks sleep. Bile me fur a sea-horse, ef I wouldn’t rather crawl into a nest o* wild-cats, heels foremost, than be cotched alone with you in the night- time.” “Silence!” cried the old crone, angrily, producing a dirty pack of cards, “or I won’t tell ye nothing.” “O, ef it comes to that, I’m dumb as a dead nigger in a mud- hole,” rejoined Mike, giving his companions the wink. “So push ahead, Deb, and don’t run agin a sawyer, or you’ll sink afore you can catch breath enough to make a rigular blow on’t.” “Shall I begin with you?” inquired the fortune-teller, arrang- ing her cards as she spoke. ‘Tes, blaze away,” answered Mike; “I can stand it, I reckon; for I’ve stood the fire of a dozen Injens afore now, without winking. Give us a quarter’s worth, Deb, and don’t stop to chaw your words.” “N-n-no, Mother Deb, g-g-give your 1-1-language c-c-circumlo- cution and fluency, 1-1-like I do,” added Jack. The old woman made no reply, but passing the cards to Fink, motioned him to draw from the pack; which done, she exam- ined the selected ones, for a moment or two, very attentively, and then shuffling all together, presented the pack again. This was repeated some three or four times, when at length she said, abruptly: “Ha’ ye got a wife and child, stranger, or any one ye cares for?” “What’s that to you?” answered Mike. “I came here to git my fortin told, not to tell it myself.” ” ‘Cause ef you have,” continued Deborah, “let ’em pray for you!” “Well, that’s consoling,” rejoined Mike, “I s’pose I’m to die, then.” ”Every body’s got to die sometime,” replied the other, eva- sively. A LEGEND OF THE OHIO “But me in particular, a little sooner, I reckon,” responded Mike. “‘Well, blaze away, my broomstick rider, and tell us when it’s to come off, and how.” “As to when, Fll give ye no answer; as to how, why, bloody,” returned the old woman, impressively, “you needn’t fear hang- ing nor drowning.” “J-j-jest t-tell me that s-s-satisfactory inwention,” interposed Jack, moving his quid round with great rapidity, and making a spittoon of one of the old woman’s kettles, that stood by his side. “T-t-tell me that I won’t be h-hanged nor drowned, and you c-c-can jest t-take my surplus rev-revenue; by H-H-Helfen- stein, you can!” “Hold!” cried the old crone, turning fiercely to him, her small red eyes flashed angrily. “Ill tell ye your end now, for inter- rupting me. You shall die a dog’s death! by the spirits of Pluto’s infernal regions, you shall!” “G-g-good for you, Deb,” retorted Jack, with a roar of laugh- ter. “Come, come, Mother She-wolf, row ahead, or you’ll be aground afore you know it,” cried Mike. “And, what’s more, my angel, I hain’t got a thousand years to spare; so blossom out, like a punched painter, and let us have the worst on’t.” “I’ve a mind not to tell ye any more,” returned the fortune- teller, “jest to pay ye for lettin’ me be interrupted; for I sees by your eye, you’re the head man of the three.” “O, well,” returned Mike, evidently feeling himself compli- mented by the closing remarks of the other, “rush ahead, my beauty, and never mind such a snag as Jack here, who has to open his jaws once ‘n a while, to blow like a poip’ise, else he’d choke to death like a cat-fish on a sand-bank. He didn’t much, no how, though he was a right smart while a trying to. Jack,” continued the speaker, addressing that individual more directly, “Jest keep that ugly fly-trap o’ yourn shut, till Deb here gits through, or 111 have to close it with something less easy to chawr nor torbacker.” “I-I’m dumb as a 1-1-leviathan,” replied Jack, THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND “All clear now, Deb/’ said Mike. “Take the chute 3 and run her through.” “First, then/’ rejoined Deborah, ‘let me caution you agin strangers, and to go guarded. Tharll somebody cross your path afore long, that’ll be mixed up with your fate, and for whom you’ll run your life in danger, even ef you don’t lose it. That somebody’s a female.” “Bless her soul!” cried Fink, enthusiastically interrupting the other; “Run my life in danger, say you? Why, take the whole blessed race on ’em together, and each one’s enough to run the d (I teg pardon, Deb didn’t mean to be personal, no how); I say each one’s enough to run let me see to run Dick Weatherhead’s legs off; and they’re long enough to pole a boat up the Massassip, in a high stage of water.” “Nothing like long under-pinins fur travel,” rejoined Dick, satisfactorily, displaying, at the same time, an article of loco- motion, measuring a little less than four feet “I said ye must bewar* o’ strangers,” continued the old woman, unmindful of the interruptions; “and in particular o’ a large, dark-visaged man, with heavy-black whiskers, who you’ll also meet afore long, and who’ll be dangerous to ye. Three times your lifell be in great peril; but ef you survive these ere three, you’ve many years afore ye; yit, as I said afore, your end’ll be bloody!” “Well, it’s o’ no use a whining for what’s got to be,” rejoined Mike. “As well might a stuck wild-cat think o* hollering for mercy. One thing’s sartin, though; ef any one feller gits the bet- ter o* me, in a rough and tumble, or any way he pleases, I’ll for- give him, though his roll o’ sins be as long as Dick Weather- head’s ugly carcass. But how do you know all this, Deb?” “By the invincible spirits o’ Pluto,” answered the fortune- teller, solemnly. “O, you deal in spirits, eh?” returned Mike, winking at his 3. A word in general use among the boatmen, signifying the channel, or main current of the river [Bennett’s note]. A LEGEND OF THE OHIO companions. “Well, so do I, though I ‘spect we differ in the article. Jest give me enough o’ mine, though, and ef I don’t beat you in this here business, III agree to swoller a bar, tail-eend foremost, and climb a peeled and greased saplin’ heels upward. But crowd her through, my beauty, for I’m in a hurry.” “I’ll tell ye no more,” rejoined Deborah, her small eyes gleam- ing fiercely. “You’ve dared to make fun o’ my powers, and ye shall hear no more from me.” “But arn’t we agoing to pay you for’t, my lovely?” “Keep your base coins!” cried the old crone, more angry than ever. “Think ye I’m a begger, to be a slave to your wishes? You’ve insulted me,” she continued, striding up and down the miserable apartment, and gesticulating wildly. “You’ve insulted me, I say; but that’s nothing; I could forgive ye that; but you’ve insulted the powers I sarve; and that I never will forgive. Be- gone! Begone with ye, I say! or woe betide ye!” “Wh-why, you’re gittin’ s-s-sonorously diabolical, arn’t ye?” queried Jack, working his immense jaws, and rolling his one eye from Mike to Deb, and from Deb to Mike, with great rapidity, as one who is looking to dodge a blow from either side. “Well, ef it’s all up, I ‘spect we mought as well start our trotters, boys,” said Mike; “for well catch the fever and ager, sure, ef we stay here much longer; and that’ll shake the day- lights out o’ us.” In less than an hour from the foregoing events, the beautiful keel-boat, Light-foot, Mike Fink patron, was swimming grace- fully down the smooth glassy surface of La Belle Riviere. The boat in question was a handsome specimen of its class, and seemingly rightly named; for great care had been bestowed on its construction; in making it of the lightest draught possible, so that it could be towed up stream without difficulty. In shape it was not unlike the canal-boats of the present day, with a cabin for passengers, very neatly and tastefully furnished. There was, besides, ample room for freight, which, on the present occasion, consisted of produce, destined for the lower country markets. [ 155] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND The day in question was a most delightful one, and on the deck of the Light-foot, as she swam slowly onward, “Like a thing of life,” with the tiny waves of silver rippling musically against her sides, stood, near the bow, a group of individuals, occupied in gazing upon the waters, the green and flowery banks of the river, and the village of Cincinnati, now every moment growing more and more distant, with that quiet, pleased and satisfied look ex- pressed on each of their faces which the day and the scene around them was calculated to inspire in breasts not otherwise occupied by important matters. THE RAPIDS THE MARKSMAN THE INVISIBLE FOE At the time of which we write, the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville, were looked upon by the pioneer pilots of keel-boats and broad-horns with much the same sense of awe and fear as was, in the early settlement of New York, that dangerous pas- sage connecting East River with Long Island Sound known to the mariner far and near by the ominous title of Hell-gate. These falls, however, present little that is attractive or alarming to one not familiar with river navigation. They are simply the rapids of an inclined plane, whose main channel is zig-zag and rocky, over which the water, in a low stage, boils and foams on its swift descent from the upper level. These falls, as we said before, were held in awe by the early boatmen of the river, who knew that a single mistake of the helmsman or pilot would result in their frail craft being dashed to pieces on the surround- ing rocks, and their own lives, to say the least being placed in great jeopardy; in consequence whereof, they were never ap- proached without much anxiety and apprehension. At this point it is we come once more upon the Light-foot, which, in the preceding chapter, we left slowly and gracefully gliding down the glassy surface of the beautiful Ohio. In due time she had arrived at Louisville at this period, like Cincin- THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND nati, only a small village where she had both discharged and taken on freight, and, at the moment presented, was preparing to pass the rapids. Mike Fink on the present occasion stood at the helm; and along the deck of the vessel, with their poles and sweeps in their hands, were ranged the crew, ready to obey his slightest com- mand; while the passengers previously described, together with others who had got aboard at Louisville, were in the cabin be- low, awaiting in much anxiety the moment which would place them in comparative safety, or dash them upon the rocks, and leave them struggling with the rushing waters. “Bow to the right, thar hard over!” shouted Mike, as the Light-foot now shot into the current and began to advance directly toward the first little whirlpool of the rapids, with a gradually increasing velocity. “Stand ready now, boys every one o* ye to your post!” con- tinued Fink, as he noted with an experienced eye each slight bubble or commotion of the waters, indicating the narrow chan- nel through which his boat must be guided, while he stood by the helm like a Hercules, with every nerve braced, ready for any emergency. “All right ahead thar?” “All right!” answered a voice from the bow. “Give her the chute, then! Thar, thar, she goes! steady, all- steady!” As he spoke, the Light-foot touched the rapids, trembled for a moment in every timber, and then darted forward with the most frightful celerity through the many windings of that diffi- cult channel. Now was the period of intense excitement and breathless suspense, as onward shot the light craft, with terrible velocity now plunging, to all appearance, directly upon a rock, and, just as the more timid and inexperienced were about to utter a cry of fear and despair, yielding to the strong hand and unerring eye of the gallant steersman and darting away in an- other direction, apparently to produce the same sad catastrophe but ending in the same harmless manner. On, on she dashes, A LEGEND OF THE OHIO amid the roar and foam of the boiling waters, every plank and timber groaning, creaking, and trembling, like a frightened thing of life. On, on, she rushes, casting the sparkling spray from her beautiful sides and prow, while every tongue aboard her is mute, every eye fixed intently upon the roaring waters, and every heart beating wildly. On, on she plunges in fury, like to the wounded leviathan of the mighty deep, while at the helm stands one, calm and collected, whose steady eye and iron arms still guide her aright. On, on still on ha! that rock! she strikes! yet, no no she has passed it! and now now with a bound, as of joy, she leaps into the deep, calm waters once more, and glides smoothly forward, throwing the silvery particles from hei prow, while a simultaneous shout from the excited boatmen an- nounce that all is safe. “Be the howly St. Pathrick!” cried Pat Flannegan, “It’s me- self that’s niver going over that same spot, widout renumbering all me sins, and crossing meself a couple o’ times or so, jist to keep the divil away, sure; and bad luck to’t for a dirthy place, an’ it is.” “Dirty!” echoed Dick Weatherhead; “why, Pat, what in thunderation would ye call clean, ef a place o* running water, like that is, arn’t?” ‘To the divil wid ye now,” replied Pat, “for taking a feller up for mis-spaking a word of Inglish, jist.” “T-that’s right; gi-give him the s-s-sententious settlers, Pat,” put in Jack Short, winking his one eye, and stirring up the weed afresh. “Well, boys, we’re over now,” said Mike, coming forward, “and who wants to bet me the whisky on thirty paces?” “Ill do it,” cried Dick, “jest to see ye shoot, Mike: for it acterly does a feller good to see that thar rifle o 7 yourn come up to your peepers, and then git so solid like, and blaze away.” Mike now gave orders to have the boat run in to the shore, during which operation most of the passengers came on deck, and learning that he was about to exhibit his skill as a marks- man, became eager for the sight. [ 159] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND “Whar is Carpenter?” asked Mike. “Here I am,” replied a lad of fourteen, coming up from the cabin, “Is your skull fit to butt a nigger’s today, Bill?” continued Mike, addressing the boy. “Why, I don’t know’s it’s quite so thick as all that comes to,” was the reply; “but ef you want to shoot, Mike, I’ll venter it’s bullet-proof, any how.” ‘That’s the talk, my peacock,” rejoined Fink; “so heave ahead, and let’s have a pull, for I’m getting as diy as a salted herrin’.” By this time the boat had reached the right-hand bank of the river; and quitting her at once, the whole party, some eight or ten persons, headed by Fink himself, with his long rifle lying carelessly across his left arm, proceeded to select a convenient spot for deciding the wager. In a few minutes a suitable place was found: thirty yards were paced off by Dick Weatherhead, when the boy advancing to the farther extremity placed a tin cup on his head, and looking Mike coolly in the eye, exclaimed: “Blaze away, Mr. Fink, and be sure you elewate her low enough, or you’ll have to pay, you know.” ‘That’s true as gospel,” replied Fink. As he spoke, he threw back his right foot, deliberately raised his rifle to his eye, and glanced along the barrel. It was now a moment of painful suspense to all save the parties most directly interested, Fink and Carpenter, neither of whom manifested a single sign of doubt or hesitation. Among the rest, however, many of whom had previously seen this daring feat performed, there was not an unblanched face, while some of the passengers gave decided evidences of trepidation. Every eye now became fixed upon the boy, every lip was parted, and every breath so still that the dropping of a leaf might have been distinctly heard; while over each crept an indescribable thrill of awe, as that long rifle lay poised and pointed, motionless as a rock, ready to speed forth its leaden messenger, perchance on a mis- A LEGEND OF THE OHIO sion of death. A moment there now was of painful, almost heart-sickening suspense. “Pray God he may not miss his mark!” whispered Maurice to a fellow-passenger. A nervous pressure of his arm was the only answer returned, as crack went the rifle of Mike, and away flew the tin cup from the head of the boy, some twenty or thirty paces, who, still cool and unmoved, stood eyeing the spectators, not having moved a single muscle, even when the ball struck within an inch of his skull. A tremendous shout now announced Mike the winner of the quart of whisky, for which trifling consideration the life of a fellow-being had been periled. 4 The bet being now decided, the party began their return to the boat, some two hundred yards distant, when all were sur- prised and startled by the sharp report of another rifle, the ball of which grazed the cheek of Mike Fink, and passed through the hat of Maurice St. Vincent, who chanced to be a pace or two in front of him. Mike started, and, wheeling suddenly around, bounded up from the earth, uttered an Indian yell, and tightly grasping his rifle, darted up the steep acclivity near by, from the brow of which the smoke of the discharged rifle could be seen, followed by Maurice and most of the crew, the rest flying to the boat in alarm. When arrived at the summit of the hill, nothing could be discerned of the mysterious marksman; and, after a fruitless search of perhaps a quarter of an hour, the party returned to the Light-foot, which a few minutes after, was again floating down with the current. CAVE-IN-ROCK * THE OUTLAWS THE QUARREL * THE SUM- MARY TRIAL AND SENTENCE THE ESCAPE AND ALARM Some twenty or twenty-five miles below old Shawneetown, in the State of Illinois, and perhaps an hundred rods from the 4. This was a celebrated feat of Mike Fink, and is strictly authentic [Bennett’s note], r 161 i THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND river’s bank, which here, rocky and precipitous, rises to a goodly height, there stood, at the time of which we write, some three or four old cabins that had been erected by the French long prior to the date of our story, and the settlement of this part of the country by Americans. Even at the period here alluded to these buildings were rapidly going to decay, and presented little that would have been attractive to a stranger. But disagreeable as might be their outward appearance, they were comparatively beautiful to the beings who inhabited them, with some of whom we must shortly make the reader acquainted. At the time in question, Illinois was a wild territory, and that portion bordering on the river was thinly settled by various classes of beings of perhaps as many races, among which we may mention the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Anglo- Saxon. As was then common in all territories, the inhabitants, if such they might be termed, looked upon themselves as be- yond the pale of the law, and acted accordingly. With them, in most cases, might made right, and he who had not the will and power to protect his own property and person, stood but a poor [ 162 ] A LEGEND OF THE OHIO chance of having either respected by his neighbors. In conse- quence of this but very few individuals whose intentions and pursuits were honest ventured to reside in a region so dangerous and possessing so few attractions; and, therefore, for those who did so reside, it would be hazarding much, perhaps, to even say of them that their characters were only equivocal. Of all points on the Ohio, from Pittsburgh to Cairo, the one to which we have but now called the reader’s attention was doubtless the worst; and legends of what there took place, nar- rated at the present day, are sufficient to excite in the breasts of the more timid feelings of awe and horror. At this point was congregated that band of outlaws whose deeds and depredations were the terror of the early boatmen and whose cave, in a steep ledge of rocks overhanging the river, is still pointed out to the traveler as he glides up and down the beautiful Ohio on some magnificent steamer. By whom or when the title was given we know not, but at this day the place referred to bears the name of Cave-in-Rock. To Cave-in-Rock, then, reader, we pray you will accompany us, in imagination, at least, at a time when neither of us would have cared to venture there in propria personae. It was a dark, gloomy night, some three or four days from the closing of the chapter immediately preceding, and the rain was descending in torrents upon the miserable roofs of the cabins previously mentioned. In one of these old structures, the most dilapidated of all, were collected some ten or twelve rough, ill- looking individuals. Some were seated on benches round a miserable table, whereon stood a pale light, whose gleams were just sufficient to relieve the apartment from total darkness and exhibit here and there grim, haggard, dirty, unshaved faces, with bloodshot eyes, that shot forth, from beneath low, villainous brows, expressions of the most wild, brutal ferocity, as from time to time their owners emptied the cans of liquor ranged before them. Some were standing upright and talking eagerly, mixing with their conversation oaths of the most diabolical and blasphemous character. Taken collectively, they seemed personi- [ 163 ] THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND fications of Hell’s arch-fiends, let loose from their bonds to revel out a dismal night, and make earth hideous with their orgies. Their costume was in keeping with their persons. On the heads of most were coarse red skull-caps, and the upper parts of their bodies and limbs, where not entirely bare, were covered by shirts striped with red and black, giving to them a wild singular appearance. Around their waists were broad belts, sup- porting pistols, knives and dirks, and their nether limbs were concealed under loose, linsey browsers and heavy boots. They were a mixture of various races, and spoke different tongues though all to some extent understood the English. “It seems to me our cap’en is a long while gittin’ ready,” said one, a large, fierce, cut-throat looking individual, with a red, bloated face, bushy hair, and matted whiskers, who was seated at the table, and who qualified a portion of his sen- tence with an oath. “O, he aTays takes his time, and be to him!” replied another ruffian, of no better exterior than the first, who was seated alongside him, and who, as he concluded, struck the table with the tin can, the contents of which had just passed down his throat. “If Yd a had my way, I’d a had the hearts out on T em afore this!” “O, you’d do great things if you was cap’en, I ‘spose eh! Ned Groth?” rejoined a third, from across the table. “I’d do one thing pretty quick, Mr. Stoker,” returned Ned, sullenly