HISTORY OF THE CHIPPEWA VALLEY - CHAPTER 21 - Inventions


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Faithful Record of all Important Events, Incidents, and
Circumstances that have Transpired in the Valley of the
Chippewa from its Earliest Settlement by White People,
Indian Treaties, Organization of the Territory and State;
Also of the Counties Embracing the Valley, Senatorial,
Assembly and Congressional Districts, and a Brief
Biographical Sketch of the Most Prominent Persons in the
Settlement of the Valley. BY Thomas E. Randall 1875.  Free
Press Print.  Eau Claire, Wisconsin

CHAPTER 21 - Inventions

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 passé 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.