Fort Union Trading Post RIVER TRANSPORTATION

"I HAVE SEEN NOTHING the channel, while the bosseman were fifty feet long and nine feet MORE FRIGHTFUL..." shouted orders and the voyageurs wide, with three-foot gunwales; So recorded Father Jacques pulled at the rate of fifteen miles they drew thirty inches. Mackinaws Marquette upon seeing the per day. It took a keelboat crew six were the cheapest down stream Missouri's discharge into the months to travel from St. Louis to transportation available since Mississippi in 1673. Marquette and Fort Union, and an additional forty steamboats usually could not carry Louis Joliet were probably the first days to Fort McKenzie, located on all the furs gathered at the forts. white men to see the Missouri the Missouri River in west-central They were built for a one-way trip. River. The mighty Missouri is 2,950 Montana. The trip consumed one A mackinaw could carry 300 packs miles long and drains a watershed boating season. The introduction of of furs covered with buffalo skins to of 580,000 square miles. It is a chief steamboats serving the up-river provide watertight protection. A tributary of the Mississippi River. posts was initiated in 1832 by the mackinaw crew consisted of a The Missouri was the water high American Fur Company to cut the steersman plus five men. way connecting St. Louis and Fort high costs of transporting goods by Mackinaws traveled in fleets of six Union, a distance of 1800 miles. labor-intensive keelboats. to twelve boats for protection and assistance and averaged 100 river KEELBOAT PERIOD BUILT FOR A miles per day. Keelboats were once the princi ONE-WAY TRIP pal craft conveying trade goods up Large posts such as Fort Union ERA OF STEAMBOATS river and cargoes of furs down had chantiers or boat yards for the Fort Union was an active fur river. Such boats averaged sixty feet construction of mackinaw boats. trading post for thirty-nine years long, eighteen feet wide, with a five Constructed of two-inch cotton- (1828-1867). Steamboats came to foot cabin above the deck and cost wood planks, typical mackinaws or passed by for thirty-five of those $2,500 to build. Keelboats featured a sharp bow and stern, with a swiv el gun mounted on the bow for protection. These boats each car ried twenty tons of trade goods and were pulled, poled, or rowed up the Missouri. A keelboat crew consisted of a patron or captain, bosseman or assistant patron, and twenty voyageurs who literally pulled the boat up river. Additional passengers might include hunters and trappers en route to the mountains. The entire complement was termed a Fur Trade Brigade. The voyageurs pulled the keelboat along by means of a 300-yard cordell rope attached to the upper portion of the boat's mast. The patron kept the boat in Rudolph F. Kurz's 1851 sketch of the St Ange. Mackinaw boats took furs, robes and pelts downriver to St Louis warehouses, where they were then sent on to New York and European markets.

years. The fort was located on the great jubilation the Yellow Stone Benton. From 1860 to the aban north bank of the Missouri River, reached Fort Union on June 16, donment of Fort Union in 1867, some three miles above the mouth 1832. Fort Benton became the final head of the Yellowstone River. Built For the next twenty-seven years, of steam navigation on the great chiefly for the Assiniboine Indian Fort Union was the effective head Missouri. trade, Fort Union rapidly became a of navigation of the Missouri River. major establishment under the per The arrival of the annual steamboat sonal direction of Bourgeois was cause for great celebration Kenneth McKenzie. The goods among the upper Missouri forts. reaping riches for the American Fur Each successive year after 1832, the Company were dependent upon American Fur Company sent one the river highway and reliable boat steamboat per year to Fort Union. transportation. This single boat per year became In a move to improve trans two steamboats in the 1850s, owing portation to its upper river posts to competitive pressures and lucra and to cut the costs of keelboats, tive government contracts required the American Fun Company built by Indian treaties. In 1859, the the Yellow Stone during the winter American Fur Company's Chippewa of 1830-1831. The idea of bringing became the first boat to reached a steamboat 1800 miles up the Brule Bottom just below Fort Missouri to Fort Union is credited to Kenneth McKenzie, the bour geois and head of the Upper Missouri Outfit (U.M.O.), head quartered at Fort Union. Through long experience in the fur trade, he realized that Missouri River steam boat transportation could be used to the advantage of the American Fur Company and at the expense of its competitors. The Yellow Stone departed St. Louis in April 1831 on its pioneer ing voyage, but due to the inexperi ence of its captain in navigating the upper Missouri, the boat reached only Fort Tecumseh, in present day South Dakota. In 1832 the Yellow Stone again departed St. Louis in March to take advantage of the upper river's 'June Rise." Amid Shallow draft steamboats made navigation of the fickle Missouri possible.