Methods of the River Trade.

As soon as the Revolutionary War came to an end adventurers in Kentucky began to trade down the Mississippi.  Often these men were merchants by profession, but this was not necessary, for on the frontier men shifted from one business to another very readily.  A farmer of bold heart and money-making temper might, after selling his crop, build a flatboat, load it with flour, bacon, salt, beef, and tobacco, and start for New Orleans. [Footnote:  McAfee MSS.] He faced dangers from the waters, from the Indians, from lawless whites of his own race, and from the Spaniards themselves.  The New Orleans customs officials were corrupt, [Footnote:  Do.  VOL III-8] and the regulations very absurd and oppressive.  The policy of the Spanish home government in reference to the trade was unsettled and wavering, and the attitude towards it of the Governors of Louisiana changed with their varying interests, beliefs, caprices, and apprehensions.  In consequence the conditions of the trade were so uncertain that to follow it was like indulging in a lottery venture.  Special privileges were allowed certain individuals who had made private treaties with, or had bribed, the Spanish officials; and others were enabled to smuggle their goods in under various pretences, and by various devices; while the traders who were without such corrupt influence or knowledge found this river commerce hazardous in the extreme.  It was small wonder that the Kentuckians should chafe under such arbitrary and unequal restraints, and should threaten to break through them by force. [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, iv., 630.]

The most successful traders were of course those who contrived to establish relations with some one in New Orleans, or perhaps in Natchez, who would act as their agent or correspondent.  The profits from a successful trip made amends for much disaster, and enabled the trader to repeat his adventure on a larger scale.  Thus, among the papers of George Rogers Clark there is a letter from one of his friends who was living in Kaskaskia in 1784, and was engaged in the river trade. [Footnote:  Draper MSS.  Letter of John Williams, June 20, 1784.] The letter was evidently to the writer’s father, beginning “My dear daddy.”  It describes how he had started on one trip to New Orleans, but had been wrecked; how, nothing daunted, he had tried again with a cargo of forty-two beeves, which he sold in New Orleans for what he deemed the good sum of $738; and how he was about to try his luck once more, buying a bateau and thirty bushels of salt, enough to pickle two hundred beeves.

    Risks of the Traders.