Captain W. W. Withenbury's 1838–1842 "Red River Reminiscences"

5. The Relief and Hunter Above

The Reminiscences  37 River County tax rolls. Gamble had been a keelboatman using the eastern route around the raft according to the March 21, 1872, Daily Shreveport Times. The Mariner under Capt. J. W. Gamble advertised in the January 14, 1841, Shreveport Intelligencer and Caddo Beacon that she would run regularly during the boating season from the raft to Fort Towson. Gamble was no longer a resident of the state by 1846 according to a court summons in the May 13, 1847, Clarksville Northern Standard. 9. The voyage of the Rover under Capt. Crooks through this area in 1836 is described in detail in the March 1, 1836, Arkansas Gazette. The Hunter under Capt. B. Crooks advertised in the January 14, 1841, Shreveport Intelligencer and Caddo Beacon that she would run regularly during the boating season from the raft to Fort Towson. 10. The Mariner was snagged at Pecan Point on March 10, 1841, according to William Lytle’s Merchant Steam Vessels of the United States, 1807–1868. The machinery was used by John Dyer at Berlin on the Upper Red River to build the Red River Planter, on which Dyer served as captain and Gamble as pilot, as indicated in Letter 18. 5  The Relief and Hunter Above • The Relief and Hunter remained on Upper Red River through 1841, operating upriver from the head of the raft in conjuction with boats from New Orleans to the foot of the raft, with the portage serving as the point of transfer for up and down freights.  P assing without comment the first season of the Hunter and Relief, after their success in having overcome the varied obstacles met with before reaching 38  Red River Reminiscences Upper Red River, I leave them quietly in possession of the entire field, (after the sinking of the Mariner,) and will only say, that before the season was over, the planters and merchants of the country had learned to look with anxiety for their coming and going, trip after trip; and as Captains Crooks and Ross, each for himself in his own peculiar manner, had made his own special friends, the whole people learned to regard as a “Special Providence” the coming among them of these two Western boats, and their crews of sober, earnest business men. The trade proper of Upper Red River at this period of its history was from the “Pine Hills,”1 Texas— which are twenty-five miles above Fort Towson, to the head of the Raft, a distance (computed at that early day2 ) of about six hundred miles. From the head of the raft to the foot of the same, where the New Orleans boats came regularly to exchange freights with the Hunter and Relief, and the passage through it by the Concord, which was in the spring of 1839,3 the Government work on it had been suspended for the time, and the accumulation of drift wood had filled it up again, increasing its length some eight miles, up to Phelps’ Bluff, but leaving the river in a navigable (?) condition from Hurricane Bluff (the head of the raft in 1839, but in 1841 the foot) to Shreveport, so that at the date I am writing of, the raft was confined between these two points, Hurricane Bluff the foot, and Phelps’ Bluff or “Fogleville” the head. At Fogleville, alias the “Dead Fall,” were congregated a number of teamsters with their oxen and carts, ready and willing to do their part in the transportation business, thus forming the connecting link between the Lower and Upper Red River boats. The teamsters who were located temporarily at the “Dead Fall” were of the rougher sort, as might be expected, while those of the planters’ resident in the neighborhood, who willingly took a part whenever there was a “rush of business,” were quiet, industrious The Reminiscences  39 men, and seemed disposed to perform their part promptly, and when their services were not required, return to their homes, holding themselves in readiness to come again when called upon. The rougher element at Fogleville required a head, and as every man was “working on his own hook” the conflicting interests were liable to come in collision. Accordingly, by unanimous consent , one man was agreed upon as a sort of arbitrator. This man, it seems, had come to this place providentially, for, by his excellent administrative and executive talent, he was able to keep tolerable “good...