Woodhawks and Steamboats of the Upper Missouri River
The Upper Missouri River Break National Monument is 149 miles of rugged, unforgettable prairie and river landscape. The ‘Breaks’ or ‘Badlands’ section (61 miles stretching from Judith Landing to James Kipp Recreation Area) contains some of the most picturesque and wild landscape within this notable monument. About 131 miles downriver from Fort Benton, Montana is a campsite called, Woodhawk Creek. This site is maintained by the BLM, has a pit toilet, picnic tables and a beautiful, healthy grove of cottonwood trees. Although we rarely camp overnight here, we usually stop at this location for lunch and a quick jaunt up a rugged road to an amazing lookout point. This viewpoint allows one to stand at the center of one of the most unique parts of this river course - a massive, nearly 2 mile long horseshoe bend in the river. We love this viewpoint, and although the hike up to the viewpoint can often be a bit hot, it is always worth it.
Just upriver from this point is the famous Nez Perce (Nee-Mee-Poo) National Historic Trail. In June 1877, the Nez Perce led by Chiefs Joseph, Looking Glass, Tulhuulhulsuit and Whitebird, left their homelands and set out for Canada to avoid capture and being forced to reside on a reservation. The trail begins in Oregon and follows the 1,200+ mile journey through modern day Idaho, Wyoming and finally terminates in Montana, 40 miles south of the Canadian border. On the picture of the map, the purple dotted line traces their route. It crosses the Missouri River and heads north just about 4 miles upriver from Woodhawk campsite.
Furthermore, the Corps of Discovery camped on either side of this site on May 25, 1805 and July 30, 1806.
Are you organizing a river trip? Consider purchasing the waterproof mile-by-mile river map and our published guidebook and history digest.
From BLM river maps
Interested in experiencing this incredible history first hand? Consider joining a guided canoe trip with us!
What are Woodhawks?
The following history piece is just one of many, many more contained in our history digest and guidebook (written by the company’s founder). To learn more and purchase this invaluable history resource, click here. Pages 177-180
Woodhawk Creek is named for the men who set up shop on the banks of the Missouri to supply the steamboats with fuel-wood for their boilers, which consumed as many as twenty-five to thirty cords per day (a cord is basically the equivalent of the amount of wood that, when chopped, can fill the bed of a pick up truck). The ‘wookhawks’ were an independent breed of men, and the work they performed was physically demanding. They led an isolated existence and were extremely vulnerable to attacks by hostile Indians. Their lives were dangerous, and often short (okay, Hobbes).
Since the steamboats could only navigate the river during a short high=water period from April through June, the woodhawks spent the winter months cutting down trees and bucking the logs to lengths that fit in the steamboat boilers. The cottonwood trees that grow only along the river were quickly depleted, so the woodhawks had to venture off0river into the breaks for the pine tress that grew there, which the steamboat captains preferred due to their great heat value. Logs were skidded, either by hand or with horses, substantial distances to get them to the river banks; here the wood would be stacked for sale to the passing steamboats.
Although the woodhawks preferred cash for their wood, the steamboat captains, much preferred barter with supplies such as flour tobacco, sugar, whiskey and other necessities which the boats had bought cheaply in St. Louis.
A glimpse of a woodhawk’s life can be had from reading the following journal excerpts. They were written in 1869-70 by Peter Koch, a young Danish immigrant who joined a wookhawking crew at the mouth of the Musselshell River, located just a few miles below James Kipp Recreation Area. They are printed in our history digest with permission of the University of Montana.
Oct. 4 - Commenced chopping. Blistered my hands and broke an ax handle.
Oct. 8 - Twenty-five years old and poor as a rat. Cut down a tree on the cabin.
Oct. 20 - Cutting while Joe is on guard. Snow tonight.
Oct. 24 - Killed my first buffalo. He took 7 Spencer and 6 pistol balls before he died. River full or ice.
Nov. 7 - A Gale of wind. Those Arapahoes who camped abt. 10 days at Jim Wells woodyard have moved down the river after shooting into his stockade.
Nov. 15 - Chopped hard all day. B.M. says 3 cords. Fred camp back all wet. He has started in a skiff with Dick Harris, both drunk, and upset at Squaw Creek.
Nov. 25 - Fred and Olsen started out wolfing. We stopped chopping on account of shooting and shouting in the hills. Joe and I found 4 wolves at our baits.
Dec. 10 - Sick. No meat.
Dec. 11 - Sick yet. Bill, Joe and Mills went to Musselshell, said Indians had attacked and stolen 3 horses and mule but lost one man.
Dec. 24 - Christmas eve. No wolves.
Jan. 16 - Awful cold. Froze my ear.
Jan. 17 - Too cold to work. Went up to Musselshell. Froze my nose.
Jan. 24 - Thawing heavily. Mills drunk.
Jan. Mar, 22 - Saw three geese. (Spring has come, gentle Annie.) Martin sick.
April 24 - Sixty Crows went up the river after Sioux to avenge the killing of 29 Crows. They were all looking dreadful, had their hair cut off, their fingers and faces cut, with the blood left on their faces.
May 9 - One hundred and seventy cords on the banks. We put fire to the brush piles. The fire spread and burnt up 50 cords. We were played out before we got it checked. Nothing to eat.
May 13 - Wind turned an started the fire again. About 20 cords burned.
May 22 - The ‘Nick Wall’ (a steamboat) passed about two o’clock in the morning without stopping.
May 23 - 40-50 Indians showed themselves at Musselshell the 20th. The crazy Frenchman started toward them and was badly beaten but when firing started they turned and ran.
May 24 - Raining. The ‘Ida ‘Reese’ passed about daybreak without our knowing it.
May 28 - Sold ‘Deerlodge’ about 10 cords.
June 13 - The ‘Sallie’ passed after midnight and took on 15 cords of wood.
June 16 - The ‘Ida Stockdale’ passed without stopping. We threw 6 cords back from the bank to keep it from falling into the river.
July 4 - Indians firing at us from nearest cottonwood trees and all through the sage brush. The balls whistled pretty lively but we returned the fire and drove them from their shelter. We went out and found one young warrior killed by a shot through the upper thigh. We got his gun, bow and arrows and two butcher knives and threw his body in the river. Waring scalped him.
After 1870, Peter Koch quit woodhawking and worked for a time as an Indian trader and surveyor, eventually making good as a director of the First National Bank in Bozeman, Montana.
John Jeremiah Johnson aka ‘Liver-Eating Johnson’
Courtesy of the Montana Historical Society
Of the many famous mountain-men of this era, you have probably heard the name Jeremiah Johnson, most likely from the famous movie staring Robert Redford. But, did you know he started out as a woodhawk? The following excerpt is also from our history digest. To read more amazing stories of the early West, click here.
Woodhawks were frequently targets of Indian attacks. In some cases, the woodhawks were simply a convenient target towards whom the Indians could vent their anger for the injustices that whites had heaped upon them. However, the Indians frequently attached the steamboats, and they knew that a steamboat without a wood supply was in trouble.
In early years of the steamboats, they carried their own ‘wooding’ crews, but later began to purchase from woodhawks. One of the very first woodhawks was a man named John Johnson, who later became known as “Liver-Eating Johnson." Johnson was known to have come up the Missouri in 1843 and to have set up shop on the Missouri near the mouth of the Musselshell in 1846. His primary activities at first were trapping and hunting, but as the steamboats began to come into Montana, he diversified to woodhawking.
Johnson was described as being a ‘mountain man’ who was burly, red-headed, quick, strong and wilderness savvy. He married a Flathead Indian woman, and while he was away on a trapping foray, his pregnant wife was murdered in their cabin by a Crow party.
In revenge for this, Johnson became a nightmare for the Crow tribe. He would hunt down Crow Indians and began killing and scalping them; it became known among the Crow that he was also eating his victims’ livers - raw.
Crow chiefs then selected twenty braves to track down Liver-Eating Johnson and kill him. The braves were to act singly until one of them succeeded in tracking him down and killing him.
By 1855, it was rumored that eighteen of the hand picked assassins had failed in their attempts on Johnson’s life, and in fact, had lost their lives - along with their scalps and livers - in the process. Apparently, the Crow decided upon a truce with Johnson and the feud subsided.
Whether Johnson actually ate the livers is an open question. Some of his companions swore that he did, '“only spitting out the gristle,” while other said that he would cut out his victim’s livers and simply rub them over his face and beard, which it itself would have impressed any of the victim’s companions who may be been hiding while observing the attempted assassination.
By the time the Upper Missouri entered its heyday of steamboating in 1860’s and 70’s, Johnson was aging and had taken on some younger partners in this woodhawking business. It is said that even then he experienced little Indian trouble. A journal entry that was made by a passenger on a Missouri RIver steamboat that passed Johnson’s woodyard recounts that, “Along the brink of the riverbank on both sides of the landing a row of stakes was planted an each stake carried a white, grinning Indian skill. They were evidently the pride of the inhabitants and a little to one side, as if guarding them, stood a trapper well-known throughout easter Montana by the sobriquet of Liver-Eating Johnson. Hew was leaning on a crutch with on leg bandaged, and the day being hot his entire dress consisted of a scan, much shrunken red undershirt reaching just below his hip. His matted hair and bushy heard fluttered in the breeze and his giant frame and libs, so freely exposed to view, formed and exceedingly impressive picture.”
Click here to learn a bit more about this incredible and infamous man.
Guided Trips on the Upper Missouri River in North Central Montana
Since 1994, our guide service has offered guided canoe trips on the Upper Missouri River. We focus solely on multi-day, guided trips, and our goal is to offer unrivaled service, locally-sourced and home-grown meals, the highest quality gear and as much historical & geological interpretation as you can handle while always having fun. We hope to disperse after the trip as friends.
Montana's Upper Missouri River is one of the premier canoe trips in the United States and the most unspoiled segment of the entire Lewis & Clark Trail. The river corridor is blessed with outstanding scenery, spectacular geology and abundant wildlife. A Class One river, with no rapids, the canoeing is accessible to all levels of experience and can be enjoyed by all, from beginners to advanced paddlers, including all ages from two to ninety years old!
Every trip includes unique, daily hiking opportunities, historic site exploration & interpretation and, of course, relaxation whether it be leisurely paddling your canoe, enjoying the sounds along the riverbank or unwinding around a campfire.
Find out more about our top-of-the-line canoes, paddles, and list of provided equipment as well as a sample trip menu of our local, fresh and inspired camp meals.
