The Rivermen (Time-Life, The Old West Series)

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THE OLD WEST

THE RIVERMEN

By

the Editors of

TIME-LIFE

BOOKS

with text by

Paul O'Neil

TIME-LIFE BOOKS,

NEW YORK

"

TIME-LIFE

BOOKS

Hemy

Founder:

THE AUTHOR. Paul O 'Neil got a first-hand taste of steamboating in the 1930s when, as a he worked summers aboard Alaska Steamship Company vessels shuttlmg goods and passengers between Seattle and Alaskan ports. After spendmg more than a decade as a Seattle newspaperman, he moved to New York in 1944 where he was successively a staff writer for TIME, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and UFE before becommg a hilltime collegian,

R. Luce 1898-1967

Hedley Donovan Chairman of the Board: Andrew Heiskell Presrrfen/; James R. Shepley Edilor-in-Chief:

freelance in

1973. Since then, he has contributed to

magazine, and has devoted

much

special issues of UFE. to Atlantic

time to the research and writmg of this book.

Vice Chairm an :YKoy E. Larsen

THE COVER The insouciant

Managing Editor :]eny Kom Managing Editors: Ezra Bowen, David Maness, Martin Mann, A. B. C. Whipple

Assistant

Planning Director: Oliver E. Allen Art Director: Sheldon Cotler

Chief of Research: Beatrice

T.

Dobie

Director of Photography: Melvin L. Scott Senior Text Editors: Diana Hirsh, William Frankel

Kerwin Assistant Art Director: Arnold C. Holeywell

Assistant Planning Director: Carlotta

Assistant

Chief of Research: Myra Mangan

became

workaday

part of

in his

1847

along the

life

painting. Lighter

One of a series of such idyllic scenes by the artist, who grew up in the river towns of central Missouri, it records a crew of bargemen at ease after removing cargo from the stranded steamer upstream. The frontispiece sketch of a buckskin-garbed riverman at the helm of a flat-bottomed boat was drawn by youthful New York artist William Cary during one of his two extended Missouri voyages, in 1861 and 1874. Cary brought back sketchbooks so crammed with rich detail that he

Relieving a Steamboat Aground.

used them during the

rest of his

30-year career as a magazine

illustrator.

Valuable assistance was provided by the following departments and individuals of Inc.: Editorial

lection,

vice,

Publisher: Joan D. Manley General Manager: John D. McSweeney Business Manager; John Steven Maxwell Sales Director: Carl G. Jaeger

spirit that early

Missouri River was captured by George Caleb Bingham

Dons

Production,

O

Norman

Time

Airey; Library, Benjamin Lightman; Picture Col-

Neil: Photographic Laboratory,

George Karas; TIME

LIFE

News

Ser-

Murray J. Gart.

Promotion Director: Paul R. Stewart Public Relations Director: Nicholas Benton

THE OLD WEST EDITORIAL STAFF FOR 'THE RTVERMEN Editor: George Constable

Mary Y Steinbauer Moolman, Gerald Simons Designers: Herbert H. Quarmby, Bruce Blair Staff Writers: Lee Greene, Kirk Landers, Robert Tschirky, Eve Wengler Chief Researcher: June O. Goldberg /?esearc/iers; Jane Jordan, Nancy Miller, Picture Editors: jean Tennant,

Text Editors: Valerie

®

Thomas Dickey,

Loretta Britten, Jane Coughran,

Denise Lynch, Vivian Stephens, John Conrad Weiser Design Assistant: Faye Eng

THE TIME-LIFE LIBRARY OF BOATING

HUMAN BEHAVIOR THE ART OF SEWING

Editorial Assistant: Lisa Berger

THE OLD WEST

THEEMERGE.\CEOFMAN

EDITORIAL PRODUCTION

THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS

Production Editor: Douglas B.

Graham

THE TIMELIFE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING

Assistant Production Editors:

Gennaro C. Esposito.

Quahty

Feliciano

Director: Robert L.

Madrid

Young

LIFE

LIBRARY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

THIS

FABULOUS CENTURY

FOODS OF THE WORLD

Cox J. Cambaren Copy Staff: Eleanore W. Karsten (chief), Barbara H. Fuller. Gregory Weed, Assistant Quality Director; James

TIME-LIFE LIBRARY

OF AMERICA

Associate: Seralino

TIME-LIFE LIBRARY

OF ART

J.

GREAT AGES OF MAN LIFE SCIENCE

THE

Florence Keith, Pearl Sverdlin Picture Department: Dolores

A.

LIFE

TIME READING

Traffic:

Spiller

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Carmen McLellan Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously

in

LIBRARY

WORLD LIBRARY

FAMILY LIBRARY

HOW

©1975 Time

PROGRAM

Littles, LIFE N.ATURE

Marianne Dowell, Susan

LIBRARY

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Canada.

Library of Congress catalogue card number

THINGS

WORK

IN

YOUR HOME

THE TIME-LIFE BOOK OF THE FAMILY CAR

THE TIME-LIFE FAMILY LEGAL GUIDE

75-7913.

THE TIME-LIFE BOOK OF FAMILY FINANCE

"

CONTENTS

1

!

A

3,000-mile waterway west 7

2

The great

fur rush upriver

44

3 "Steamboat acomin' I

83

4 No buoys, no beacons, no maps 1

121

5 Good times, bad times 1

159

6 In service to the '

Army

200

Credits

234

Acknowledgments 236

Bibliography 236

Index 238

High-chimneyed paddle wheelers crowd the

(

St.

Louis levee

in the

1850s,

when steamboating was

beginning to

hit its stride.

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A 3,000-mile waterway west great spiral staircase to the

Rock-

avenue to the Orient;

later,

it

provided

was one 19th Century traveler's memorable metaphor for the Missouri, whose tortuous bends led canoeists,

access to the fur riches that drew the

keelboaters and eventually steamboat

thousands of prospectors to

ies"

men from

the Mississippi

all

the

way

first

frontiersmen into the wilderness;

and

after the Civil

Mountain

to Fort Benton, Montana — nearly half

The

above sea level and 3,000 miles from the river's mouth. For generations of explorers and ex-

promises.

a mile

ploiters, the

the West. 1

It

Missouri was

the key to

excited the imaginations of

6th Century geographers as a possible

Rocky

voyage.

Eventually technology overtook the

nvermen. Beginning

in

1859,

railroads

began to intersect the Missouri, siphontraffic. By 1890, when the last packet boat departed from

wrote

the deserted levee at Fort Benton, the

1857,

only reminders of the steamboat's glo-

ing off water-borne

"The broad

mud

sel's entire cost in a single

its

ornenness matched current,

Richardson

unpoetic and repulsive

flowing

conveyed

it

gold.

river's

journalist Albert "is

War,

earn profits that might repay the ves-

in

"

— a stream of

studded with dead tree

trunks and broken by bars.

"

Yet hun-

dreds of steamboats ran this gauntlet to

ry days like

were

river

bends with names

Malta, Sultan, Diana and Kate

Sweeney — each honoring one of the Big Muddy's paddle-wheeled victims.

The its

Missouri River constantly challenged pilots by shifting

course within the confines of steep

bluffs. In this stretch

east of Fort Benton, the river has retreated (at right) from furthe flank of the main trough to form a narrow channel

—

ther constricted

';W

.

'W)s.-,ir

by the treacherous sand bar

at the left.

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Kw

— like

Flat-bottomed Mackinaws

Chance, about

to leave Fort

cheap alternative

the heavily laden Last

Benton

in

1878 — provided

to the stearriboat for

a

downriver-bound

passengers and cargo. After the one-way journey, the makeshift craft

10

were usually ripped apart and sold as lumber.

r >i

—

small, shallow-draft sternFour sturdy "mountain boats" rest at the levee wheelers built to run the upper Missouri

—

of Bismarck,

Dakota

Territory, in

mounted atop the pilothouse bolized

its

187

The

elk antlers

Benton symthe company fleet.

of the steamer

status as the fastest boat in

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The

ramshackle

boomtown

of Fort Benton, farthest navi-

gable point on the Missouri, appears deceptively sleepy during a low-water spell in 1868. When the river was high, as

many

as seven steamboats a day might

caroo for overland conveyance to the

dock

Montana

to

unload

gold camps.

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