(From the original drawing by Charles Alexander Lesueur)
Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, writes May 19, 1833: “We embarked on the Paragon steamboat at Shawneetown ... and after passing Cave-in-Rock Island, a long wooded island, we glided past Cave-in-Rock, a cavern which has been drawn by Lesueur.” Lesueur’s drawing was made about 1825. It is an interior view looking out over the river and conveys a good idea of the Cave’s size and form. However, the opening to the small upper cavity and the leaning pole for climbing into it are placed a little too far to the left.[1]
Maximilian was accompanied by his artist, Charles Bodmer, who, during the course of his travels in North America, made eighty-one pictures, all of which were published in 1843 in the Maximilian Atlas. Most of these drawings pertain to the life of the Indians of the Upper Missouri, and stand today as the first and best record of the costumes of these tribes. Among the subjects presented is his Cave-in-Rock picture, one of the two early views of the Cave now available. Bodmer probably drew it from memory. It shows a landscape interesting in itself, but it is an absolutely misleading presentation of the actual scene. From no point or angle does the view appear as drawn by him, or even suggest such a scene. By the ordinary working of nature no such changes could have been brought about in many centuries. The mouth of the Cave is near the lower end of a long bluff of almost uniform height and opposite the lower end of Cave-in-Rock Island. A camera picture of the lower end of this bluff, made in 1917, appears among the illustrations in this book. Bodmer’s view places the opening in a short bluff that is more or less cone-shaped and opposite or above the head of an island. When high water reaches the mouth of the Cave, as is shown by Bodmer, then Cave-in-Rock Island is submerged many feet and its banks cannot possibly be seen. This picture occurs in a number of books, but without any comments on its gross inaccuracy. Some reproducers have taken the liberty of adding a setting sun in the background.
In 1916, J. Bernhard Alberts, of Louisville, made an impressionistic painting of the mouth of the Cave. His painting is true to the scene as it was at the time of his visit. He also drew a pencil sketch showing a general view of the interior with the inner edge of the mouth in the immediate foreground, the artist’s point of view being from just outside the mouth.
Piracy and Rough Life on the River
It is not clear when Cave-in-Rock first became the headquarters of the criminals who flourished on the Ohio, and preyed upon primitive commerce and travel between Pittsburgh and the Lower Mississippi. Shortly after the Revolution was under way, renegades from eastern communities, corrupt stragglers from the American army, and villains who had had their brutal training in western wilds, began to seek in the Ohio valley refuge from the more orderly and well settled communities. Samuel Mason, who had been an officer in the Continental army, converted the cavern into an inn as early as 1797. While he occupied the Cave, and a few years thereafter, it was known as “Cave-Inn-Rock.” It was ideally located. Every passing boat must reveal itself to those in the Cave who had a long, clear view up and down the river. A lookout could detect boats long before boatmen could perceive the Cave. The bold beauty of the bluff made it pleasant for the boats to run in near the sharply shelving shore, and many travelers were thus simply and easily delivered into the hands of the banditti. As an inn, where drink and rest could be had, it decoyed them; as a scene for shrouded crime it was perfect.
The earliest travelers on the western rivers floated or propelled themselves with paddles and oars in small, clumsy craft. The Indian canoe or pirogue was heavy, but was managed with skill by those accustomed to its use. With the growing stream of settlers and the increasing number of settlements along the Ohio and Mississippi, there arose a necessity for larger craft that would bear heavier burdens. This brought the flatboat era covering the period from 1795 to 1820—that quarter of a century known as the Golden Age of Flatboating. During that era river piracy was at its height. The lighter boats, pirogues, skiffs, and batteaux were to the clumsy rafts and flatboats bearing heavy cargoes what submarines and torpedo boats have been to the heavier ships in later warfare. Inland piracy had its advantage in using the small craft on dark nights for sudden descents and escapes.
In the midst of this period the stately steamboat age began its development. It was inaugurated in 1811 when the first steam-propelled “water-walker” made its laborious and astonishing way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. By 1820 steamboats had become a dependable factor in traffic, and were, to river travel, what the railroad train was later to become to the slow stagecoach and freight wagon. It was inevitable that under steamboat influence flatboats of all types—arks, broadhorns, Orleans boats, keel-boats, and flat-bottomed barges—would follow the primitive pirogues, skiffs, and batteaux into retirement, except for neighborhood use. River piracy waned with the conditions it preyed upon, but not until about 1830 did it cease utterly.
In society, as in nature, everything develops with opportunity and disappears according to necessity. In the primitive age of river craft many travelers were captured or killed by Indians bent on revenge or pillage. These marauders were sometimes led by white renegades. Later, pioneers floating down the Ohio or Mississippi on flatboats came in contact with comparatively few savages, but were exposed to a far more daring and dangerous enemy in the form of river pirates—white men, many of them descendants of supposedly civilized European families. These disappeared as the population increased. Then ensued the reign of the more diplomatic river pirates—the professional gamblers who, for a half century, used cards and other gaming devices as instruments with which to rob those who ventured into their society.