Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/108

102 In the earliest days the primitive light canoe, the unwieldy pirogue, and the heavy batteau were the common means of navigation on the Ohio. The canoe was made from the bark of trees; quickly made and quickly worn out, if the water was low, by continually coming in contact with the bottom. The pirogue was likewise quickly made; the canoe was paddled, the pirogue pushed by oars or setting-poles. The canoe easily glided up stream; the pirogue ran easily with the current but could not ascend the stream without the expenditure of much labor. Often the words canoe and pirogue were used interchangeably of the same craft; in George Rogers Clark's famous march to Vincennes in 1779, the army, upon arriving at the Little Wabash, February 13, built a boat which in Bowman's Journal is called a "canoe," and in Clark's Memoir, a "pirogue." The batteau, better known in the West as the barge, was a square box of any length, width, and depth. It was distinctively a downstream craft, and in the early days rarely ascended with a load any river of current. The canoe and pirogue, compared with the