Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1934-01-17

F11 o. |
He could hit like fourth-proof light
min and every lick he made In the
woods let In q whole acre Of sunlight. He could
out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, %out-brag, out-drink
and Outright, 'rough-an-tumble, no hollis barred,
airy man on both sides of the river from Pitts
burgh to New Orleans an back ag'in to ST.
Louiee." Whoopl Also Cock -a-doodle-dool And,
likewise, what a mani
He was Mike Fink. one Of Americas super
men, who differs from such myth-heroes as Paul
Bunyan, the lumberjack Pecos BIZ, the cow
boy; and John Henry, the negro stake driver In
that there actually was such a person as Mike
FINK even though In the favorlte frontier pastime
Of telling tall stories he has become halfleg-
endary, half-real. He was the apotheosis of a
type of frontiersmen who fourlshed in the days
when the k~eelboats piled the Ohio and the Mis-
sissippi rivers and as such he is the subject of
a recent biography by Walter Blair and Frank
lin j. Meme, published recently by Henry Holt
and company.
Long before the first railroads were built west
of the Alleghenies and before there were any
national roads, these two rivers were the only
routes to market for the pioneer farmer. The
principal market was New Orleans and the
quickest way to get there was by k~eelboat, a
typically American craft designed for a particu-
lar American need. 1t was a slender, pointed
oN0sf 0Au"ibS VDlJ ~ " on uCut Vi Wdltf, anu
so 1t was able to navigate the shallow waters of
the larger tributaries of the Ohio-the Licking,
the Hooking, the Scioto, the Musklngum, the
Miami and the Wabash. 1t could be easily
steered as 1t fioated down these streams into
the Ohio, then into the Mississippi and so on
to New Orleans. Such a trip, of course, was not
without Its dangers. The steersman had to know
the channel, as we'll as the later steamboat cap
tains had to know 1t, to avoid being hung up on
a sandbar. Then. too, he had to watch out for
planters (big trees still standing upright in
the midst of the swirling waters), "sawyers"
(huge branches which bobbed up and down In
the currents, partly hidden, partly revealed) and
snags of all kinds. Added to these dangers were
those of white outlaws In their famous strong
hold of Cave-in-Rock and rowing Indians every
where along the banks of the two rivers.
The return trip from New Orleans had Its
hardships and its dangers, too. The keelboats
had to be warped" ''cordelled." "bushwhacked,o
poled and sailed against the strong current all
the way to Pittsburgh. To handle such boats
required men of Drawn, men with ''the strength
of an OK, the courage of a lion, a hide of ALI
gator toughness to shed rain, snow, bullets and
Indian arrows and an interior of castiron to
digest a diet consisting mostly of salt pork and
whisky"
More than that, the keelboatman had to be a
handy man with his fists, for he was constantly
thrown into contact with tough men and his fell
low keelboatmen were just about the toughest
of the lot. Their fights among themselves and
with others equally tough would make a modern
prize fight seem like the spanking you give a
bad child. mo natural weapon was barred; fists
flew at faces, feet kicked wherever they could
find q target; knees bucked at unprotected
%crotches; teeth sank wherever there was flesh
fingers clutched at threats and thumbs seemed
to gouge out eyes from their sockets. Noses
were battered, teeth s~plintered and blood plenti-
fully shed when boatmen squared off and shot
fists at one another"
From all of which 1t is clearly apparent that
the man who rose to leadership among them had
to be quite some" and such was Mike Fink,
bully boy Of the Ohio and king Of the Mississippi
keelboatmen.
But Mike Fink's historical Importance is more
than the fact that he was the typical keelboat-
man. For the keelboat era was a comparatively
brief one and that craft was eclipsed by the
steamboat just as 1t was reaching its heights
of usefulness. Mike lived on three distinct from
tiers and his career on all three contributed to
the mass of legends which cling about his name
and helped make him an American myth hero.
He was born on the Pennsylvania border
shortly before the Revolution and grew up In
the crude settlement which clustered around Fort
Pitt. He was just about as tough q y~oungster
as he later became a tough man. He could out
wrestle, out-swim, out-run and out-swear all the
other boys Of the settlement. At the age of thir-
teen he took his first Indian scalp and he seems
to have taken a delight in killing the "red mig
gers" as the Indians were known among the
ruthless frontiersmen around Fort Pitt.
At the age of fifteen he was the champion
rifle shot and after a while, when the frontiers
men engaged In their favorite pastime of hold
ing shooting matches, Mike and his f~avorite
rifle, "Or Bang-All," were excluded. For the
exclusion, asserted a contemporary, Mike claimed
and obtained the hide and tallow (of the
beef they we're shooting for) for his forbearance.
His usual practice was to sell his quarter
to the tavern or dram shop keeper for whisky,
with which he treated everybody present, par
taking largely himself"
So the first period In Mike Fink's life was that
of crack shot, champion hunter and Indian scout
on the Pennsylvania frontier. Then came the
rush Of settlers beyond the Alleghenies after
the Revolution and this region became "too
crowded" for him. The keelboat era on the Ohio
began and opened up an opportunity for Mikes
energies. He won a right to a place on a keel
boat by beating up a champion keelboat fighter
who had challenged him after the fashion of
the times-and this at the age OF seventeen or
eighteen.
o. a down-river trip, this paragraph from
Blair and Meine's book gives a typical picture
THE keel moved on, past Indian Loggstown,
past Legionville. where General Wayne encamped
In 1902, on down the river. The boatmen for the