Saving the Mandan: The near death of a historic Montana symbol

This article by Ken Robison originally appeared in the Helena Independent Record on April 21, 2022."Toward the end of the busy tourist season of 2021, Fort Benton faced a critical decision: Should the keelboat Mandan be saved?

The Mandan, built for the 1952 filming of famed author A.B. Guthrie’s classic movie, “The Big Sky,” has graced the historic levee at Fort Benton since 1964. Yet, in the fall of 2021, it was clear that without care and preservation, the keelboat had reached a stage where many were saying, “Tear it down.”

A few others responded, “Well, not so fast, after all it represents an important era in our past heritage.”

Meanwhile continued inaction threatened to solve the dilemma as snow, ice and rain further rotted the core to total ruin.

So, through the pages of the Fort Benton River Press I posed a question to the community: “What do we lose if we tear the Mandan down?” I suggested it’s a movie prop, more representational than real keelboat. Its wood is rotting and its mast endangered. It’ll cost much to belatedly begin to preserve and protect it. So, shall we let it go — maybe even replace it with a real keelboat?

But, I advocated, not so fast.

Before we destroy the Mandan, let’s think about what it represents. What does the Mandan mean to Fort Benton, all Montana, and to the nation? Can it be saved? But first, let’s look at a touch of history.

Joel Overholser, Fort Benton’s journalist-historian, wrote, “The keelboat Mandan was built as a lead character in the movie, ‘The Big Sky’ by A.B. Guthrie, Jr." His book, "The Big Sky," came out with acclaim in 1947.

When Guthrie received a Pulitzer Prize two years later for his follow-on book, “The Way West,” many believed the prize was one book too late.

In the words of a reviewer: “The (Big Sky) novel is stunning in its descriptions of the (Missouri) river and of the large lonely places, mountains, wildlife, and seasons of the West... I enjoyed this Western with the grandeur of its portrait of the West and with its portrayals of a rare, flawed and wild way of life. This is a book for reflective readers of American literature and for lovers of the West.”

Just over 50 years after Guthrie created “The Big Sky,” highly respected Montanan scholars William E. Farr and William W. Bevis surveyed Montana literature over the previous five decades and concluded:

“For better or for worse, A.B. Guthrie Jr.'s The Big Sky has been ... the master narrative, the canonical text of texts of modern Montana literature and historical thought, since its initial publication in 1947. As such, for those of us intimately involved in regionalism in its manifold forms it has informed and influenced much of our thinking -- overtly or insidiously, depending upon one's perspective -- over the last five-and-a-half decades. It taxes the imagination to perceive of another 20th century literary work that has had a similar impact on the inter-mountain West's collective consciousness. There simply is none.

... though Montana's literary outpouring has been nothing short of astonishing over the last half century, if you only have time ever to read one novel about Montana, read The Big Sky.”

In 1952, “The Big Sky” movie was first released in Chicago and then New York City. The “western premiere” of “The Big Sky” followed at the Civic Center in Great Falls a few days later in August 1952, with a parade, a speech by Gov. John W. Bonner, and a Blackfeet tribal initiation.

In this first showing west of the Mississippi, festivities began with a parade down Central Avenue to the Civic Center. The parade featured the Elks drum and bugle corps, the Cascade County sheriff’s posse, the Blackfeet contingent and pioneer western vehicles from Charlie Bovey’s collection at Old Town at the Fairgrounds. Bonner spoke, thanking RKO-Radio Pictures, distributors of the film, for their donation to Montana of the early American keelboat Mandan, a "star" in the filming of the movie.

Nine Blackfeet attended the ceremonies. Members of the tribal council, they adopted Guthrie into the Blackfeet tribe during a program on the Civic Center stage.

“The Big Sky,” which starred Kirk Douglas, opened to critical acclaim with one reviewer writing: “This sublime 1952 black-and-white masterpiece by Howard Hawks is a particular favorite of mine -- mysterious, beautiful, and even utopian.”

n 2007, I received a fascinating email from Ron Swartz, the son of one of the crew that built the Mandan for the movie. Swartz, of Columbus, Ohio, wrote:

“Recently I discovered that Ft. Benton is home to the movie keelboat Mandan used in the 1952 film ‘The Big Sky.’ As the son of one of the crew who built this and two other versions of Mandan I’d be interested in how and when it was acquired by Ft. Benton ... three duplicate boats were built for different purposes in the filming.

“One remained in Hollywood where it was used for sound stage shooting. This one remained on display in Los Angeles at Travel Town in Griffith Park for many years. The other two were trucked, in pieces to Moran, Wyoming where the location filming was shot... One of the two Wyoming boats was used for shooting on Jackson Lake which was used to represent the lower reaches of the Missouri River. The third boat was used on the Snake River below the dam. This represented the smaller, swifter Missouri.“While the first two boats used sail and man power for motivation, the one on the Snake was equipped with two inboard diesel engines to assist with moving the boat in the swift current. Following the filming, the two location boats were given away allegedly to the Park Service. Apparently, one made its way to Ft. Benton.”

Our “Keelboat” file at the Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton provided the rest of the story. Keelboats brought trade goods to Fort Benton and other trading posts on the Upper Missouri for three decades before steamboats successfully navigated the upper river. These keelboats carried down furs and bison robes gathered in trade with the Blackfeet and other Native Nations.

The research staff employed by Winchester Pictures Corp. spent many weeks gathering knowledge about keelboats before the replicas were built. According to Guthrie, the boats built were accurate to the last detail from tiller to prow and keel to masthead.

After completion of filming for “The Big Sky” movie, Montana “outbid” both Wyoming and Missouri, apparently because Guthrie was Montanan. Howard Hawks, producer and director of the movie, donated the Mandan to the Montana Historical Society, and it was hauled in sections to Helena.

For more than a decade, the 63 foot by 12-1/2 foot keelboat was displayed in an open area behind the then new Veterans-Pioneer Memorial, home of the Montana Historical Society.

In 1964, Ted Yates borrowed the Mandan for use in making a Lewis & Clark documentary on the Missouri River at Fort Benton. While the Mandan was being unloaded from a highway department truck, the keelboat was damaged. Undaunted, Yates stuffed the interior with plastic foam and completed filming the boat on the river.

Because of the damage, the Montana Historical Society placed the Mandan on loan, to remain on display in Fort Benton. In 2005, the loan was made permanent.

For half a century, the movie prop keelboat Mandan has been a “Star” on the levee at Fort Benton.

Yet, the Mandan is much more than a movie prop. It represents an era in Montana history when keelboats were the king of river transportation before the steamboat era. And, most importantly, the Mandan represents one of Montana’s finest authors, A.B. Guthrie, who lived on the Rocky Mountain Front, and it symbolized both the greatest book -- “The Big Sky” -- and the finest movie, “The Big Sky,” about the fur trade on the Upper Missouri. Author -- book -- movie, all among Montana’s very finest. No replacement keelboat will relate directly to Guthrie and "The Big Sky" book and movie. So, I advocated, let’s save the Mandan.

Local debate over the fate of the Mandan ended with the Community Improvement Association (CIA) determining that the iconic keelboat could and should be saved. With funds raised from the Montana History Foundation and other sources, the CIA recruited Montana woods master Kirby Mathews of Deer Lodge to lead the effort to reconstruct the Mandan.

This July a volunteer crew, led by Mathews, Garvey Wood and Henry Schnackenberg, began work on phase one of the Mandan rescue mission. For 10 days, the crew worked long hours to stabilize and rebuild the most endangered sections of the keelboat with plans in place for a second phase when funds are raised and time permits.

With the phase one work successfully completed and follow-on plans, the keelboat Mandan is being rescued as an important historic visible symbol of "The Big Sky" and early river transportation during the fur trade era.

Long live the Mandan.