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

12. At Erwin’s Bluff

The Reminiscences  77 12  At Erwin’s Bluff • The Relief was at Erwin’s Bluff, waiting for a rise to proceed upstream through Sewell’s Canal. In the latter part of the letter, an exploratory party in a skiff and on land sets out to see what the conditions are above.  A s I left the Relief tied up below the bridge at Caddo Prairie, and as the bridge question is that which most agitates and interests steamboatmen in these parts to-day, I will venture to explain a little about the bridge across Black Bayou, connecting Erwin’s Bluff and the Erwin plantation, which was a part of the Caddo Prairie in the days of which I write, but which is a lake now, during all the months of the year when this route from Shreveport to upper Red River is navigable.1 This bridge was simply a plantation convenience, and was built to facilitate the negroes, mules, and the overseer crossing from “the quarters,” which were on the bluff, to the prairie cottonfield on the opposite or eastern side of the Bayou. The field contained about seven hundred acres, and there were no buildings on that side of the bayou except the gin-house, a few “cotton pens,” and stables for the mules, while on the bluff was Colonel Erwin’s house, the kitchen and the negro quarters. No more beautiful or convenient arrangement of hill and prairie could be imagined or desired than was here found, and Colonel Erwin was often heard to say that if he had been appointed to arrange matters to his own 78  Red River Reminiscences liking, he could not have bettered his Caddo Prairie Plantation, as it was in 1840–41. The crossing of the bayou had heretofore been done by means of a “ferry flat;” but as a sudden rise in Black Bayou, which any heavy rain would produce, (as it took its rise in the hills in the immediate vicinity,) or a runaway negro, was liable to displace “the flat” and put the whole plantation to inconvenience, Colonel Erwin decided to build the bridge; but as the bayou had been made and declared a navigable stream by the Government, and several steamboats had already passed through it, he wisely bethought himself to build the bridge so that it should answer all plantation and neighborhood purposes and still be no obstruction to steamboat navigation. (How unlike some of the men and corporations of our day, who have selfish purposes to serve.) Colonel Erwin did not know the breadth of the Relief or Hunter, but in order to be certain of placing the trestles of his bridge wide enough apart to allow them to pass without difficulty, he made a journey up Red Bayou to the “Jim Gamble Trees,” and there he measured the distance between the ends of the remaining logs on either bank, where Captains Crooks and Ross had cut them, and built the bridge of just as wide a span as were these logs, not dreaming that a larger boat would ever attempt to pass this way. The bridge was so constructed that the floor and timbers could be taken up and replaced by the crew of the passing boat, in which labor the whole force of the plantation were ready to assist if necessary . This explanation was made by Colonel Erwin to Captain Ross as soon as it could be done after exchanging congratulations and “drinks,” on the evening of our arrival at the bridge; and as it was a “sure thing” that we could not go more than a mile above the bridge without a considerable rise in the bayou, which must come The Reminiscences  79 from the Red River, it was deemed best to remain below the bridge for a while, and wait for a movement of waters. Captain Ross at once decided to remain at this point and see what was in store for him in the way of water to get through Sewell’s Canal, which tapped Black Bayou but a few hundred yards above the bridge, and Red Bayou to the river above the raft; and Colonel Erwin, and the neighbors generally, pledged him every assistance in their power whenever he should deem it prudent to undertake further progress. I have now brought my readers with me from New Orleans, which city we left on the 2d day of December, and...