The Pioneer Boys of the Mississippi; or, The Homestead in the Wilderness

by St. George Rathborne

On board the flatboat things soon began to assume a settled condition. Mr. Armstrong had been unanimously elected the leader of the expedition, and every member was bound to yield him obedience.

System had been early established, and each one knew just what was to be expected of him or her, so that there was no confusion.

The household goods, save what might be needed in the way of coverings for the night, or additional clothing, had been stowed away in as compact shape as their ingenuity could devise; and in the hold of the boat a place had been found for the accommodation of this material. It consisted chiefly of a few household treasures, handed down from ancestors across the seas. The pioneers did not possess much in the way of furniture. Tables, beds and chairs they expected to make afresh when they had reached the Promised Land. A few strong oaken or cedar chests, bound in brass it might be, contained their belongings for the most part; with what few cooking utensils that were needed, these latter also in brass or copper, which was much used in those early days.

Besides the Armstrongs, the passengers and crew of the flatboat consisted of three families. First there was Mr. Harkness and his wife, a fourteen-year-old daughter named Susan, and also a nephew, one Amos Terry, from New England, and with some of the peculiarities of speech that even at this early day marked the difference between those whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and the descendants of those settling in Virginia or Carolina.

Then there were the Bancrofts, father, mother, and three children, all of the latter rather small; and the Waynes, who had a boy, Rufus, about eight years of age, and a small baby.

Two more persons there were aboard the boat at the time of leaving. Pat O’Mara, the good-natured Irish trapper, meant to stick to his friend, Mr. Armstrong, through thick and thin, in this new venture, feeling partly responsible through having told the wonderful tales that had so stirred the ambitions of these voyagers. Blue Jacket, also, was with them, though he only expected to go a few days’ journey into the west, when he would say good-bye, and return to his people, never expecting to see these white friends again.

Seven men and two boys capable of bearing arms constituted their full fighting force; a pitiful company when one considers the nature of the dangers that were always awaiting the hardy pioneers whenever they cut adrift and pierced the wilderness. But such a thing as fear was next to unknown to any of them; and, as they turned successive bends of the river, always unfolding some new and beautiful feature of the remarkable scenery, both men and women felt that surely good fortune must await them in the favored land beyond.

They were not much given to sentiment. The hardships of that time made people very practical; and yet no nature could withstand the magnificent sunset that greeted their eyes, hours later, when many miles had been left behind.

It must have seemed to some of those who stood and drank in the glorious picture with a feeling almost of awe, as though the sun had never before gone down in the midst of such splendor and that he was beckoning them onward to where their new homes were to be founded.