The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans: Boone—Crockett—Carson — Context and Discussion

No craft has been found easier of propulsion to one knowing the art of the paddle. The voyager makes his paddle about as long as his rifle, up to his chin in length. He paddles with the blade always on one side of the canoe. As the blade is withdrawn from the backward stroke, it is turned slightly in the water, so that the course of the bow is still held straight. If he would approach a landing sidewise with his boat, he makes his paddle describe short half curves, back and forth, and the little boat follows the paddle obediently. The advance of the canoe is light, silent, spirit-like. It is full of mystery, this boat. Yet it is kind to those who know it, as is the wilderness and as are all its creatures.

This is the boat of the northern traveler, the voyager of the upper ways. In the South, where the birch does not grow in proper dimensions, the bark of the elm has on occasion served to make a small craft. In different parts of the North, too, the birch canoe takes different shapes. In the northeast the Abenakis made it long and with little rake, with low bow and stern and with bottom swelling outward safely under the tumble-home,—this stable model serving for the strong streams of the forested regions of the North. Far to the west, where roll the great inland lakes, the Ojibways made their boats higher at bow and stern, wider of beam, shorter, rounder of bottom, all the better fitted for short and choppy waves.

Then, under the white fur traders’ tutelage, there were made great ships of birch-bark, the canot du Nord of the Hudson Bay trade, such as came down with rich burdens of furs when the brigades started down-stream to the markets; or yet the greater canot du maitre once used on the Great Lakes, a craft that needed a dozen to a dozen and a half paddles for its propulsion. Again, at the heads of the far off Northwestern streams there were canoes so small as to carry but a single person, propelled by a pair of sticks, one in each hand of the occupant, the points of these hand-sticks pushing against the bottom of the stream. But ever this ship of the wilderness was so contrived that its crew could drive it by water or carry it by land.

Thus were the portages mastered, thus did the man with small gear to hinder him get out from home, westward into the wilderness. Down stream or up stream, this boat went far. Paddle or sail or shodden pole served for the wanderer before the trails were made, and before the boats of the white settlers followed where the savage red men and scarcely less savage white adventurers had found the way.

There were other boats for the early traveler, and these were employed by those that had crossed the Alleghanies on foot and would fare farther westward. The dugout, made of the sycamore or sassafras log, ten to twenty feet in length, narrow, unstable, thick-skinned and a bit clumsy, was good enough for one pushing on down-stream, or prowling about in sluggish, silent bayous. This was the boat of the South in the early days. Soon the great flat-boat succeeded it for those that traveled with family goods or in large parties. The wooden boats came later, the flat-boat after the dugout, the keel-boat but following the far trail of the birch-bark to the upper ways, or perchance passing, slipping down-stream, the frail hide coracle of the hunter that had ventured unaccompanied far into unknown lands.

Above all things in these early days must compactness and lightness be studied. This American traveler was poor in the goods of this world; his possessions made small bulk. This ax made him bivouac or castle, or helped him make raft or canoe. This rifle gave him food and clothing. He walked westward to the westward flowing streams, and there this light craft, dancing, beckoning, alluring, invited him yet on and on, proffering him carriage for his scanty store, offering obedience to him who was the master of the wilderness, of its alluring secrets and its immeasurable resources.

Observe here a creature, a dumb brute, that has saved some centuries of time. Indeed, without this American horse, the American civilization perhaps could never have been. Without the ax, the rifle, the boat and the horse there could have been no West.