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Because canal barges were drawn by horses before engines were ever thought of....
They rode horses, drove horse-drawn wagons, and sailed ships including canal barges. And mostly, they walked.
The first Erie Canal was 4′ deep and 40′ wide with small barges. The barges were pulled by mules so it was smelly.
The Erie Canal is still used mostly for recreation and fishing. But there are some barges of corn and wheat for ethanol production using the Erie Canal.
3 types: passenger & cargo, packet, and freight boats. (derived from The Canal Society of Ohio (http://www.canalsocietyohio.org/)) Packets hauled passengers only.
It was part of a canal system across Pennsylvania. It carried canal barges up and over the Allegheny mountains (the same barrier that the "horseshoe curve" solved.
The Erie Canal is located in New York State and connects New York City to Lake Erie. It takes very small barges through the canal from Albany, NY to Buffalo, NY. The Suez Canal is in Egypt. It takes ocean going ships. It connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
A barge is a large flat-bottomed boat. Barges are designed mainly for use on a river or a canal for the transportation of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and must be towed, sometimes by horses.
The Chemung Canal was very similar to the Erie Canal. It connected the Finger Lakes region of New York with the Susquehanna River. Both canals used barges or packet boats.
It is the longest big-ship ( as opposed to sub-sized barges) canal of its type in the World. It is a sea-level canal and does not require locks. it had movable bridges for traffic control at one time- but these were not, strictly speaking, hydraulic locks.
In the U.S., barges were pulled by beasts of burden, such as mules. Steam propulsion did come along, but by that time railroads were all the rage, and the canals fell out of favor. See Sources and related links for a picture.
Because the Panama Canal did not exist.