Summary of Rinker Buck's Life on the Mississippi

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I spent a year building a wooden flatboat and sailing it down the Mississippi to New Orleans. I was fascinated by the history of America’s westward expansion and the economic woes of America following the American Revolution. I was entranced by the idea of sailing down the Mississippi River.

#2 Yoder built a wooden flatboat and sailed it down the Mississippi to New Orleans. He then bought a cargo of beaver pelts and shipped them to Baltimore, where he sold them at a profit of almost $2,000. He built a reputation for himself as a reliable trader.

#3 The first burst of growth in America was due to the inland rivers, which allowed thousands of Scots-Irish and German settlers to sell their goods to the growing population of New Orleans.

#4 The American economy was built on the internal river trade. The first burst of growth in America was due to the inland rivers, which allowed thousands of Scots-Irish and German settlers to sell their goods to the growing population of New Orleans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350000573

IRB Media

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Insights on Rinker Buck's Life on the Mississippi

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was entranced by the idea of sailing down the Mississippi River and exploring the remote islands and sandbars. I was also eager to see what the American economy was like in the spring of 1782, when Jacob Yoder began marketing his crops via a boat route.

#2

After spending the winter milling his grain into flour and corn meal, Yoder decided to embark along the banks of the Monongahela River at Redstone Old Fort, a wilderness military post and frontier Quaker settlement dating back to 1759. He floated the Ohio River to New Orleans several more times and eventually settled in Kentucky.

#3

The great flatboat era, which opened the frontiers of interior America to the world, began in the 18th century. The exploration of an inland water route to New Orleans occurred just in time, providing the thousands of Scotch-Irish and German settlers streaming into Kentucky and the northwest territory of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana a ready market for their crops.

#4

The American economy in the early 19th century was similar to that of today’s developing countries. The river trade between New Orleans and other hubs like St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Natchez, Mississippi, was worth $200 million or more by the Civil War.

#5

The opening of America’s vast inland water network not only helped develop a young nation into a global export giant, but it also helped connect the sparse, Anglo-Presbyterian frontier with the exotic beauty and opulent wealth of the Creole plantations.

#6

The westerner became the new American prototype and transience became a common lifestyle. The pathway for further western movement became clear. The most zealous advocate for cheap water transport was Zadok Cramer, a lapsed New Jersey Quaker who moved to Pittsburgh in 1800.

#7

The West Indian trade was one of the most lucrative exchanges in the Americas during colonial times. In 1814, Cramer quoted studies that showed the advantages of river transport over ocean shipping.

#8

The flatboats were called broadhorns because the long side sweeps and steering rudders operated off the roofs above decks, and they resembled giant horns from a distance. The simple crew shanties of the 18th century were eventually expanded into elaborate, dormitory-style structures with bunk beds, cookstoves, and a wide living area.

#9

The American Dream traveled down the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Every year, caravans of settlers’ boats would travel down the lower Mississippi and the tributaries of the Ohio to search for new lands.

#10

Flatboats were used to transport logs from Minnesota and Wisconsin to the Mississippi River, and they became a cultural melting pot along the river’s banks. The farm boys of Ohio and Illinois would go to New Orleans, and see the slave auctions and the bales of cotton symbolizing the tragic complexities of a slave-holding South joined by the Mississippi into economic union with the North.

#11

The Mississippi River defined America as a migratory people, radically departed from their European antecedents. In the Old World, stasis, hereditary property rights, and social caste defined prosperity and happiness for the aristocracy and the merchant class, while virtually denying wealth for the common man.

#12

I was researching the Oregon Trail