The Missouri River was a Native American river road. They settled along the river. Plains tribes traveled its waters in carved log canoes and buffalo skin bull boats. The river connected different tribes and made trade between them possible.1 Trading posts and military forts located along Missouri for easy access and added security. Early white settlements also located along Missouri.
One well-known journey along Missouri took place in 1804-1806 with the Corps of Discovery led by Lewis and Clark. The explorers were searching for a water route across the country. They traveled to the headwaters of Missouri, crossed the Rocky Mountains, and then traveled on the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, they mapped the terrain and recorded the weather, plants, animals, soil, and minerals they came across. The Corps was also expected to
establish friendly relations with all the Indian tribes. The expedition proved there was no water route across the country. The information they gathered along the way spurred the migration west.
Many different types of watercraft traveled on the Missouri River. Canoes, mackinaws, bull boats, keelboats, and steamboats traveled the muddy waters. The canoe was used for local trips and for sending mail and freight down the river. Mackinaw boats carried heavy freight downstream. Tribes along Missouri built small one-person round bull boats. Sometimes a fleet of over one hundred could be seen on the river. Bull boats were often used to transport buffalo meat from a recent hunt downstream.
Traders adopted bull boat construction methods and made much larger ones capable of carrying up to 6,000 pounds of furs. A light sapling frame would be covered with a skin of stitched-together bull buffalo hides caulked with fat. Trader bull boats were oval rather than round. They were awkward to handle, leaked, and became waterlogged, but were still useful because they only sat 10 inches low in the water.
Traders also used keelboats to haul trade items to the upper Missouri. Steamboats began traveling the Missouri River in 1819. By 1859, there was more steamboat traffic in Missouri than the Mississippi. The Missouri River route between St. Louis and Montana
could only be traveled during the summer months because ice blocked upper Missouri for the winter. The first steamboats served the fur trade. The Yellowstone was the first steamboat to reach
Fort Pierre Chouteau in 1831. Later, boats carried military troops and supplies. Missouri was a difficult river to navigate. Strong currents, shallows, submerged trees, and other hazards sank many boats. Over 400 steamboats sank on Missouri during the steamboat era. As more and more railroads built into the territory, steamboats became less important as a means of transportation. When the steamboat fleet was destroyed in the spring of 1881 by high water and ice while docked at Yankton, the industry never recovered.