| Summary: | PRE-SETTLE MENT ANNALS 41 work on the steamboat, which they then called the Pioneer. There was no pleasure in this as tlie water was low and the men bad to haul on the lines all day and chop wood all night by lantern, and we had a hard time to get the boat to Georgetown. " The mail was now extended from Fort Abercrombie to Pern-, bina, and William Tarbell and Geo. W. Northup were employed as carriers, using carts in summer and dog-trains in winter. Ultimately the Pioneer passed into the hands of the Hudson Bay company, was dismantled, and her engines used to run a saw-mill. THE INTERNATIONAL. The next boat to be placed upon Red river was called the International. She-was built at Georgetown in 1861.* This boat contained the machinery and other belongings of the stranded Freighter which had been hauled by ox-teams across the prairies late the previous fall and in charge of C. P. V. Lull.f The timber for the hull was cut along Red river, and sawed by the old fashioned pit method, one man working the lower end of the saw below in a pit, and another the upper end upon the log above. The International measured 137 feet in length, 26 feet beam, and was rated at 133 tons. She was owned by Burbank & Company. Nick Huffman, evidently referring to the'year 1862,. wrote: "In the spring we all went on the boat, with Capt. Barrett, Pilot John'K. Swan, and the usual crowd of rousters. We run by day, and chopped wood by night, as the Indians did not allow any woodchoppers to stay on the river, and so the boat had to get its own wood. The Indians owned the whole country then. It was steamboating under difficulties as the Indians were inclined to be hostile and took everything from the settlers. The whole, crew soon gave out and had to quit." * According to the sketches the. date of the International runs from 1859 to 18G3 inclusive. A. W. Kelly, of Jamestown, N. D., came to St. Paul in 1801, arriving there on the day of the battle of Bull Run. He then went, to Georgetown where he helped to build the International. ■ This fixes the building of the boat in the latter half of the year 1801. The boat was probably not launched until the spring of 1802. t "There was an old steamboat lying in the Minnesota river six miles below Big Stone lake which was intended to come over into Red river in 1857. There was a big flood in tlie Minnesota river and Captain Davis thought he could run the old Freighter, for that was the name of the boat, into the Red river, but the water went down and theboat was left stranded. - The boat wras sold at sheriff's sale, and was bought by Burbank of tlie stage company. There was a Welshman left in charge of the boat and here he stayed nearly four years away from wife and children with nothing to eat, only what he could hunt and fish. "In the fall of 1800 we took a lot of teams, wagons and tools, under orders from Burbank and took the boat to pieces and brought it to Georgetown. We found the boat and the little Welshman all right. "A second trip was necessary for the machinery. There were two big boilers, but we brought them safely to Georgetown whore the boat was rebuilt. We did not reach Georgetown till after Christmas with the last load and tlie weather was very cold."—Nick Huffman's Story. Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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