Free Andrew Jackson by H.W. Brands

Indians, . . . observing his helpless situation, singled him off from the rest of the fleet, intercepted him, killed and took prisoners the whole crew.” Others in the expedition shuddered in helpless horror. “Their cries were distinctly heard by the boats in the rear.”
    In mid-March the expedition reached the Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee River, an infamous stretch of rapids. “The water being high made a terrible roaring, which could be heard at some distance among the driftwood heaped frightfully upon the points of the island, the current running in every possible direction. Here we did not know how soon we should be dashed to pieces, and all our troubles ended at once. Our boats frequently dragged on the bottom, and appeared constantly in danger of striking; they warped as much as in a rough sea.” When, to the amazement of all, the expedition passed this trial without loss of life, Donelson thanked “the hand of Providence.”
    They reached the Ohio in late March. “Our situation here is truly disagreeable,” Donelson wrote from the banks of the larger river. “The river is very high, and the current rapid, our boats not constructed for the purpose of stemming a rapid stream, our provision exhausted, the crews almost worn down with hunger and fatigue.” Donelson’s plan was to ascend the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland, and the Cumberland to the Big Salt Lick. But some of those who had traveled downstream so many weeks couldn’t bear the thought of pushing their way up, against the Ohio’s spring torrent, and so chose to continue down the Ohio to the Mississippi. Donelson stuck to the original plan. “I am determined to pursue my course, come what will.”
    The distance to the Cumberland’s mouth was only fifteen miles, but it consumed four hard days of rowing, poling, and picking their way through the eddies close to the Ohio’s shore. When they reached the Cumberland, some in the group thought it looked too small to be that river. Donelson couldn’t be certain. “But I never heard of any river running in between the Cumberland and Tennessee,” and so he ordered the fleet to enter the stream. Within a day it broadened, suggesting that they were indeed on the right river. They assuaged their hunger by shooting buffalo that came down to the stream to drink. The beasts had had a hard winter; their flesh was edible but poor. By contrast a swan, having wintered in the south, “was very delicious.” Yet the swan meat didn’t go far, and the food situation grew more dire. “We are without bread, and are compelled to hunt the buffalo to preserve life. Worn out with fatigue, our progress at present is slow.”
    Progress continued to be slow for three more agonizing weeks. The travelers supplemented their buffalo diet with greens they called “Shawnee salad.” Several of the travelers decided they could go no farther and dropped out along the river. But on April 24, after four months on the water, the resolute core of the expedition reached its goal. “This day we arrived at our journey’s end at the Big Salt Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Captain Robertson and his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to restore to him and others their families and friends, who were entrusted to our care and who, some time since perhaps, despaired of ever meeting again. Though our prospects at present are dreary, we have found a few log cabins which have been built on a cedar bluff above the lick by Capt. Robertson and his company.”
     
    T he remarkable thing about the Donelson voyage was not the hardship the emigrants survived, which, though daunting, differed in degree rather than kind from the trials men and women in the West endured every day. Rather, the remarkable thing was the little distance the voyagers netted for all their time and effort. Their river miles amounted to nearly a thousand, but they ended up barely a fifth that far from the place they started. A crow