Children of the Levee

Lafcadio Hearn, O. W. Frost

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813152547
• eBook ISBN: 9780813194608
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Social Sciences

Cincinnati in the 1870's was the largest inland city in the nation. Much of its prosperity and growth it owed to the commerce which floated along its Ohio River boundary on the way between Pittsburgh and New Orleans. This traffic also sustained a unique African American culture—saloonkeepers, boardinghouse operators, entertainers, and women who served the steamboat hands between trips.

Into this great western metropolis came young Lafcadio Hearn, who after several tentative starts became a newspaper reporter first for the Enquirer and then for the Commercial. Drawn to the Ohio River by his interest in the unusual, Hearn found beneath the rough surface of levee life a kind of cosmopolitan tolerance which emphasized the essential humanity of the community.

Hearn's twelve sketches—here reprinted as a unit for the first time—are perceptive and sympathetic, yet not highly subjective and romanticized. Collectively they form an important comprehensive picture of African American life in a border city just after the Civil War. Among the earliest of his writings, they also foreshadow the course Hearn's life was to take in New Orleans, the West Indies, and finally Japan.

Levee Life

ALONG THE RIVER-BANKS on either side of the levee slope, where the brown water year after year climbs up to the ruined sidewalks, and pours into the warehouse cellars, and paints their grimy walls with streaks of water-weed green, may be studied a most curious and interesting phase of life—the life of a community within a community,—a society of wanderers who have haunts but not homes, and who are only connected with the static society surrounding them by the common bond of State and municipal law. It is a very primitive kind of life; its lights and shadows are alike characterized by a half savage simplicity; its happiness or misery is almost purely animal; its pleasures are wholly of the hour, neither enhanced nor lessened by anticipation of the morrow. It is always pitiful rather than shocking; and it is not without some little charm of its own—the charm of a thoughtless existence, whose virtues are all original, and whose vices are for the most part foreign to it. A great portion of this levee-life haunts also the subterranean hovels and ancient frame buildings of the district lying east of Broadway to Culvert street, between Sixth and Seventh streets. But, on a cool spring evening, when the levee is bathed in moonlight, and the torch-basket lights dance redly upon the water, and the clear air vibrates to the sonorous music of the deep-toned steam-whistle, and the sound of wild banjo-thrumming floats out through the open doors of the levee dance-houses, then it is perhaps that one can best observe the peculiarities of this grotesquely-picturesque roustabout life.

Probably less than one-third of the stevedores and ’longshoremen employed in our river traffic are white; but the calling now really belongs by right to the negroes, who are by far the best roustabouts and are unrivaled as firemen. The white stevedores are generally tramps, willing to work only through fear of the Work-house; or, some times laborers unable to obtain other employment, and glad to earn money for the time being at any employment. On board the boats, the whites and blacks mess separately and work under different mates, there being on an average about twenty-five roustabouts to every boat which unloads at the Cincinnati levee. Cotton boats running on the Lower Mississippi, will often carry sixty or seventy deck hands, who can some seasons earn from forty-five dollars to sixty dollars per month. On the Ohio boats the average wages paid to roustabouts will not exceed $30 per month. ’Longshoremen earn fifteen and twenty cents per hour, according to the season. These are frequently hired by Irish contractors, who undertake to unload a boat at so much per package; but the first-class boats generally contract with the ’longshoremen directly through the mate, and sometimes pay twenty-five cents per hour for such labor. “Before Freedom,” as the colored folks say, white laborers performed most of the roustabout labor on the steamboats; the negroes are now gradually monopolizing the calling, chiefly by reason of their peculiar fitness for it. Generally speaking, they are the best porters in the world; and in the cotton States, it is not uncommon, we are told, to see negro levee hands for a wager, carry five-hundred-pound cotton-bales on their backs to the wharfboat. River men, to-day, are recognizing the superior value of negro labor in steamboat traffic, and the colored roustabouts are now better treated, probably, than they have been since the war. Under the present laws, too, they are better protected. It used at one time to be a common thing for some ruffianly mate to ship sixty or seventy stevedores, and, after the boat had taken in all her freight, to hand the poor fellows their money and land them at some small town, or even in the woods, hundreds of miles from their home. This can be done no longer with legal impunity.

Roustabout life in the truest sense is, then, the life of the colored population of the Rows, and, partly, of Bucktown—blacks and mulattoes from all parts of the States, but chiefly from Kentucky and Eastern Virginia, where most of them appear to have toiled on the plantations before Freedom; and echoes of the old plantation life still live in their songs and their pastimes. You may hear old Kentucky slave songs chanted nightly on the steamboats, in that wild, half-melancholy key peculiar to the natural music of the African race; and you may see the old slave dances nightly performed to the air of some ancient Virginia-reel in the dance-houses of Sausage Row, or the “ball-rooms” of Bucktown. There is an intense uniqueness about all this pariah existence; its boundaries are most definitely fixed; its enjoyments are wholly sensual, and many of them are marked by peculiarities of a strictly local character. Many of their songs, which have never appeared in print, treat of levee life in Cincinnati, of all the popular steamboats running on the “Muddy Water,” and of the favorite roustabout haunts on the river bank and in Bucktown. To collect these curious songs, or even all the most popular of them, would be a labor of months, and even then a difficult one, for the colored roustabouts are in the highest degree suspicious of a man who approaches them with a note-book and pencil. Occasionally, however, one can induce an intelligent steamboatman to sing a few river songs by an innocent bribe in the shape of a cigar or a drink, and this we attempted to do with considerable success during a few spare evenings last week, first, in a popular roustabout haunt on Broadway, near Sixth, and afterward in a dingy frame cottage near the corner of Sixth and Culvert streets. Unfortunately some of the most curious of these songs are not of a character to admit of publication in the columns of a daily newspaper; but others which we can present to our readers may prove interesting. Of these the following song, “Number Ninety-Nine,” was at one time immensely popular with the steamboatmen. The original resort referred to was situated on Sixth and Culvert street, where Kirk’s building now stands. We present the song with some necessary emendations:

“You may talk about yer railroads,

Yer steamboats and can-el

If ’t hadn’t been for Liza Jane

There wouldn’t a bin no hell.

Chorus—Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone,

Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone,

Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone,

Way down de ribber road.

“Whar do you get yer whisky?

Whar do you get yer rum?

I got it down in Bucktown,

At Number Ninety-nine.

Chorus—Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone, &c.

“I went down to Bucktown,

Nebber was dar before,

Great big niggah knocked me down,

But Katy barred the door.

Chorus—Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone, &c.

“She hugged me, she kissed me,

She tole me not to cry;

She said I was de sweetest thing

Dat ebber libbed or died.

Chorus—Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone, &c.

“Yonder goes the Wildwood.

She’s loaded to the guards,

But yonder comes the Fleetwood,

An’ she’s the boat for me.

Chorus—Oh, ain’t I gone, gone, gone, &c.”

The words, “ ’Way down to Rockingham,” are sometimes substituted in the chorus, for “ ’way down de ribber road.”

One of the most popular roustabout songs now sung on the Ohio is the following. The air is low, and melancholy, and when sung in unison by the colored crew of a vessel leaving or approaching port, has a strange, sad sweetness about it which is very pleasing. The two-fold character of poor Molly, at once good and bad, is somewhat typical of the stevedore’s sweetheart:

Molly was a good gal and a bad gal, too.

Oh Molly, row, gal.

Molly was a good gal and a bad gal, too.

Oh Molly, row, gal.

I’ll row dis boat and I’ll row no more,

Row, Molly, row, gal.

I’ll row dis boat, and I’ll go on shore,

Row, Molly, row, gal.

Captain on the biler deck a-heaving of the lead,

Oh Molly, row, gal.

Calling to the pilot to give her, “Turn ahead,”

Row, Molly, row, gal.

Here is another to a slow and sweet air. The chorus, when well sung, is extremely pretty:

Shawneetown is burnin’ down,

Who tole you so?

Shawneetown is burnin’ down,

Who tole you so?

Cythie, my darlin’ gal,

Who tole you so?

Cythie, my darlin’ gal,

How do you know?

Chorus—Shawneetown is burnin’, &c.

How the h—1 d’ye ’spect me to hold her,

Way down below?

I’ve got no skin on either shoulder,

Who tole you so?

Chorus—Shawneetown is burnin’, &c.

De houses dey is all on fire,

Way down below.

De houses dey is all on fire,

Who tole you so?

Chorus—Shawneetown is burnin’, &c.

My old missus tole me so,

Way down below.

An’ I b’lieve what ole missus says,

Way down below.

Chorus—Shawneetown is burnin’, &c.

The most melancholy of all these plaintive airs is that to which the song “Let her go by” is commonly sung. It is generally sung on leaving port, and sometimes with an affecting pathos inspired of the hour, while the sweethearts of the singers watch the vessel gliding down stream.

I’m going away to New Orleans!

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye!

I’m going away to New Orleans!

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye!

Oh, let her go by!

She’s on her way to New Orleans!

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye!

She bound to pass the Robert E. Lee,

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye!

Oh, let her go by!

I’ll make dis trip and I’ll make no more!

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye!

I’ll roll dese barrels, I’ll roll no more!

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye!

Oh, let her go by!

An’ if you are not true to me,

Farewell, my lover, farewell!

An’ if you are not true to me,

Farewell, my lover, farewell!

Oh, let her go by!

The next we give is of a somewhat livelier description. It has, we believe, bee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Introduction
• A Child of the Levee
• Dolly
• Banjo Jim’s Story
• Pariah People
• Jot
• Ole Man Pickett
• Levee Life
• Black Varieties
• “Butler’s”
• Auntie Porter
• The Rising of the Waters
• Genius Loci
• About the Author