Floating on the Missouri

by James Willard Schultz, Eugene Lee Silliman (Editor)

This is a true story of a float trip down the Missouri. It compares, in some ways, to the most famous float trip in American literature, the one that Huck Finn took down the Mississippi.

At the end of his trip, young Huck says, “…I reckon I got to Light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

That young escapee, to extend the comparison, is epitomized in James Willard Schultz. Just expelled from military school, the seventeen-year-old Schultz goes West, stays, grows up and lives among the Indians, marries into the Blackfoot tribe, and lived the kind of life he loved.

In the fall of 1901, Apikuni and his Piegan wife, Nataki, took a long float trip down the Missouri. They camped out and lived off the land for the entire trip, from Fort Benton to the juncture off the Missouri and Milk rivers. The account of that trip is presented here in book form for the first time.

Like Huck’s adventure, this was something more than a simple float trip. It was a trip through space and time through memories of early experiences along the river, of friends and enemies (Assiniboines, Crees, Sioux, and others), of early white trappers and traders, of carefree days of the buffalo hunt, of a naturalist’s dream world populated with the deer, eagle, antelope, fish, bear, wolf, and animals known only in Indian mythology.

This idyll was nostalgic trip that could not be repeated, for the river and world were changing, Apikuni and Nataki knew first-hand the many changes of the past and sensed the momentous changes coming.

With the advance of the white man’s world, with the dams and reservoirs, it would be impossible for today’s adventurer to duplicate the trip described here. But, for the armchair adventurer, it is still possible, though the account that has been left for us, to take this remarkable trip.

142 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1979

About the author

James Willard Schultz, or Apikuni, (born August 26, 1859, died June 11, 1947) was a noted author, explorer, Glacier National Park guide, fur trader and historian of the Blackfoot Indians.

James Willard Schultz (J.W. Schultz) started writing at the age of 21, publishing articles and stories in Forest and Stream for 15 years. He did not write his first book until 1907 at age 48. The memoir: ''My Life as an Indian tells the story of his first year living with the Pikuni tribe of Blackfeet Indians East of Glacier. In 1911, he associated himself with publishers Houghton Mifflin who published Schultz's subsequent books for the next 30 years. In all, Schultz wrote and published 37 fiction and non-fiction books dealing with the Blackfoot, Kootenai, and Flathead Indians. His works received critical literary acclaim from the general media as well as academia for his story telling and contributions to ethnology. Sometime after 1902, while living in Southern California, Schultz worked for a while as the literary editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Reviews

[Robert Cimrhakl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lived on this section of the river and this is well detailed,,very real,

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a simply told, short first person account recalling a trip Schultz made in his middle-age with his Piegan Blackfoot wife floating a segment of the Missouri River through north central Montana in a small flat bottom wooden boat at the turn of the 20th century. It gives a glimpse into a time and place that was short-lived; travel in the American West after the extermination of the great bison herds and annihilation of Native Americans but before the age of large scale agricultural development and dam building that wrung the last vestiges of the untamed West out of existence.

Schultz describes the trip like a journal interspersed with stories, Indian mythology and folktales, recollections of the past and longing for what had been lost in their lifetimes. Like the transitional time in which he lived, Schultz adapted the knowledge he gained in his early ventures in the West as an explorer and fur trader into his writing later in life, telling about the Old West of his youth. When he took this trip he was still holding on to some of the old ways, living off the land along the river but the game were not abundant as it had been.

[Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed floating along the river with Schultz and his wife.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesing book, especially if you've spent anytime on the Missouri River between
Fort Benton and James Kipp park.

Good tales.

[Joe Rodeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, not great. I'd recommend this for younger, say middle school, readers with a taste for geography, wildlife, and hunting. It's a journal, very basic and easy going.