During the War of the Rebellion, the inventive genius of the whole nation was directed to improvements in manufacture of arms, because was the business of the people - engrossing their thoughts and absorbing their means and energies, and whether the old saw that 'necessity is the mother of invention,' is true or not, it is a well-established fact that many of the most useful inventions, those that confer the greatest benefits, have grown out of the peculiar wants and conditions of man; being especially adapted to the pursuits and industrial development of the different races of men in the successive ages of the world. What but the strange, wild, ever moving life of our American Indian, whose only highways were the rivers, could have led such unskillful, ignorant people, unskilled in the arts and manufacture of almost everything useful thing - to construct so delicate, ingenious, and useful a thing as the bark canoe, requiring a degree of mechanical skill that it would be hard for our artisans to imitate, a craft so light a man can carry it anywhere, and yet so capacious and durable that whole families, with their effects take passage in one of them? And who supposed that Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, had he continued to live among his native New England hills, would have lost a moment's sleep or an hour's time, in working out the details of that intricate, but wonderfully useful machine? But the enormous demand for fine cotton fabrics, and the fact that just then ascertained that the soil and climate of the Southern States were adapted to the production of the finest fiber of cotton, stimulated a poor New England mechanic, who had gone down there with his tools and carpet bag, to give those arrogant Southerners an invention that at once conferred upon those States a commanding position in the commercial affairs of the world. The plow, too, that through all ages and in all countries, was little more than unshapely pieces of wood sharpened, and sometimes pointed with iron, was found utterly inadequate to the demands of our Western soils, and in 1836 began to claim the attention of practical scientific men, for the first time in the world's history, and impelled by the necessity, which the peculiar but fertile soil of the Western prairies involved, that long neglected but indispensable implement of husbandry soon underwent radical improvements, and became 'a thing of beauty,' its polished, case hardened, steel mould board cleaving and flopping over the most sticky prairie loam to be found with as much ease as other plows would scathe a sand bank. How much of the success and material prosperity of the West has been achieved by improvements in this one implement, we shall never realize, but in no other country in the world, not even the practical, inventive New England, can be found such perfect plows as have grown out of the demands of the great West. It is natural, therefore, to expect the inventive talent of this valley should be directed to overcoming the natural obstacles in the way of, or in facilitating the manufacture and transportation of lumber. Every science employs certain technical terms and phrases peculiar to itself, and every branch of industry make use of names and words, which belong exclusively to the art, many of which require explanation in order to be understood by the reader. A few instances of this kind will perhaps occur in speaking of our inventions, and their appropriation to the business of the valley. Every person who has ascended the Mississippi, or any other shallow, sandy river, in low water, on a steamboat, and felt the shock as she ran on a sand bar, must have some idea of the shape or form of the bar, which, in almost every instance is a continually moving mass of sand stretching obliquely across the rive, with a bold, bluff bank and deep water on the lower side, with a thin sheet of uneven depth spread out over the long, upper slope, everywhere getting shallower, until it reaches the very brink, where a perceptible fall is noticed, the current slackened by its fall into deep water, and any one who has observed the course of the boat as she feels her way along, endeavoring to find out where the channel is, has noticed that she ran along on the under side of the bluff bar, perhaps nearly across the river, the channel having changed to the opposite side in that short distance. Now, a raft floating down the river guided with long sweeping oars, need to be kept in the same serpentine channel, because the steamboat has taken the deepest water there is , and the only way it can be made float over the next bar is to keep it up close the bar above, until the draught of water will take it through, which is frequently a difficult task to perform, requiring the maturest judgment, skillful piloting, and rapid handling of the raft. The reader will bear in mind that there is a shallow draft of water probably, over the whole length of this oblique sand bar, and a constant tendency of the raft to drift down with the current on to the bar below, although it may be very thin, and whatever appliances can be brought to bear upon the raft to check its downward force, must be an important auxiliary in guiding the raft; and for many years the raftsmen on this river felt the need of some such mechanical agency, which was at length found in the very simple, but immensely serviceable, contrivance called the 'snatch pole.' Who was its inventor, or precisely where (on what river) it was first used, I have not been able to ascertain, but its great value to the lumbermen on this river induces me to honor it with a minute description, as, but its aid in low water, fifty percent, is saved in running lumber to the Mississippi. The method, or art, of rafting lumber on the Chippewa is very much like that pursued on the Delaware, Susquehanna, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers. Cribs sixteen by thirty-two feet, instead of the old-style platform, is not the invariable shape of the first compact form of raft, into which the lumber is placed and firmly fastened by ironwood 'grub-pins' inserted through two inch plank, those on the under side or bottom of the crib being called 'runners,' and those on the top 'binders.' The grub-pins are turned on a lathe, whth the head on one end, which is neatly fitted into the under side of the lower plank, or runner, so as to make a smooth surface. These cribs are formed on ways, with rollers on which they rest, and when the crib is of the desired thickness - twelve to twenty courses, according to the stage of water -- a strong lever, called a 'witch,' having a heavy iron clamp on one end, is placed over the end of each grub-pin, with a fulcrum bearing on the binder, by which means the grub-pin is drawn upward, thereby causing the runner and binder to be drawn together with great force, and binding the lumber between tightly together, when the grub-pin is securely wedged, and the crib is finished. The fastening, which holds it to the ways, is the removed, and away glides the crib into the water. Seven of these cribs constitute a string, and four of these strings form a Chippewa Raft. The grub-pins are left standing, extend a foot or more above the binder, and by their aid the cribs and strings are united and bound together. By their aid 'snubbing works' are erected on the raft by which it is checked and landed. It is, too, by means of these pins that the snatch-pole and line are operated to check the headway, and also in guiding the raft. This implement is about sixteen feet long and six inches in diameter at the thickest part, which is almost three feet from the lower end. Upon the lower end a strong steel pointed socket is fastened, and a band of iron, to which a strong ring is fastened, being driven down to with in three feet from the end from which it tapers gradually to the upper end. A line called the 'snatch-line' is fastened to the ring and lies coiled up on the stern of the raft, and as it approaches one these intricate passages before described, and before the stern has passed the first named bar, one of the oarsmen seizes a snatch-pole, and bounding into the water, hastens along the bar, in the direction desired to hold the raft, and by rapid movement thrusts the heavy steel point of the pole into the sand, holding firmly the other end at an angle of forty-five degrees, while the pilot, quick as thought, has the rope coiled around first one of the grub pins and then another, as the raft passes on, continually checking downward force, so that by the time the bar is pass� the raft lies nearly still, under the bar. The man returns to the raft with the snatch-pole, and it is easily guided with the oars to the precise channel over the bar below, although involving the necessity of winding along a serpentine route that, without the aid of the snatch-pole, could not have been made, and the raft must have drifted hopelessly upon the bar, where the cribs must be separated and taken at great expense, singly over or around, and down to some convenient place to couple up again. Sand bars are the bane of navigation, either for boats or rafts, on all the Wisconsin tributaries of the Mississippi, and the bed of the Chippewa, for fifty miles from its mouth, is a constantly ever-changing mass of sand, bewildering the pilots and utterly defying all attempts at permanent improvement in its navigation, as several vast sand banks slope down to the river at different points, and every high rise of water displaces immense quantities of sand from these banks, which float along in restless masses, blocking up the old channel, and mocking all human efforts to improve the river or make it a reliable and cheap thorough fare for the navigation of boats and rafts.. And right here I wish to remark that as the Wisconsin River, all the way from Kilbourne City to its mouth, is liable to the same obstructions and impediments as the Chippewa, no positive or permanent improvement of that stream will ever be attained by an means yet proposed, and that nothing short of a canal the entire distance will ever open the long desired and much talked of water communication between the Mississippi and the Lakes by that route. And every dollar appropriated by Congress proposing anything short of a canal from Portage City down, is so much money thrown away.

to table of contents

Copyright Notice: All files on this site are copyrighted by their creator and/or contributor. They may be linked to but may not be reproduced on another site without specific permission from Tina Vickery [tsvickery@adelphia.net] and/or their contributor. Although public information is not in and of itself copyrightable, the format in which they are presented, the notes and comments, etc., are. It is however, quite permissable to print or save the files to a personal computer for personal use ONLY. My very special thanks to Holly Timm for the creation of the graphics used on this page.

last edited [an error occurred while processing this directive]