Introduction : race and the antebellum western steamboat economy
From plantation to freedom : African American steamboat workers and the pan-Mississippi world
Below the pilothouse : the work culture of steamboats
Living blood for gold : African American families and the Mississippi River
Boats against the current : slave escapes on the western rivers
Rascals on the antebellum Mississippi : the Madison Henderson Gang
Emancipation and steamboat culture
Epilogue : the decline of Mississippi River steamboating.