Boats on the Missouri: Mackinaws, Keeled Boats and the Coming of Steam

A Mackinaw boat traveling up the Missouri, sketched by William de la Montagne Cary in 1868. Public domain.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition — the Corps of Discovery — was far from the first to travel the lower Missouri River. By 1714, the French explorer Etienne Véniard de Bourgmont recorded that the Arikara, then living in central South Dakota, had "seen the French and know them."

After the expedition, more and more trappers and traders came, using the Missouri as a highway to the many Native peoples of the Great Plains. At first they used large canoes and boats of similar size, but soon only two kinds of craft could carry much cargo to Native communities.

Mackinaw boats

• Flat-bottomed, with pointed prows, up to 12 feet wide and 75 feet long.
• The design came from the Great Lakes and reached the Missouri in the early 19th century.
• Rowed or poled by a crew of five or six, with a sail in case the wind cooperated.

Keeled boats

• More popular, and like the boat the Corps of Discovery used.
• Pulled upstream on a long rope, poled by sheer muscle, or sailed when the wind was right.
• They could carry 20 to 30 tons of cargo.

The age of steam

The fur companies began replacing these labor-intensive boats once steamboats proved themselves. The first, the Yellow Stone, reached Fort Union — near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, close to today's North Dakota–Montana border — in 1832.

Beyond the Yellowstone, Mackinaws and keelboats were still needed until "mountain boats" — shallow-draft steamers built for the Missouri's shallow water — could go all the way to Fort Benton, Montana, another 400 river miles upstream. There, goods were loaded onto wagons for the rest of the journey across the West.

Sources

Based on "Boats on the Missouri," Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, National Park Service, citing Wood, Hunt and Williams, Fort Clark and Its Indian Neighbors; a work of the United States government in the public domain.