The Big Sky by A.B. Gutherie

The Big Sky is a book by A. B. Guthrie written in 1947. I recall seeing the movie which was based on the novel. However, it was much shorter in scope and to my way of thinking, did not do justice to the characters or the book in general.




Guthrie’s various depictions of the wild west, the Indians and the mountain men show grandeur, human frailty and base motives, brutality, disease, and extreme hunting descriptions. The big sky is indeed a book that lives up to its name. Throughout the entire work one is continually engulfed in descriptions of the majestic and wild territories that are the living space of the principal characters. It follows Boone Caudel who leaves home in Kentucky and meets up with Jim Deakins. Having been raised by a mean father Boone is apparently given to a mean component in his psychological makeup which is brought to the fore all too often. Yet he is conscientious and will fight to the death for what he believes in. Boone is a man of few words and is economical in actions as well. In contrast, Jim Deakins compliments Boone by being a bit more gregarious and light hearted. The second part of the book and the main scene of the movie is the trip up the Missouri in the keelboat Mandan. This is the launch vehicle for the main characters to start their life as mountain men.

Guthrie is a master at making the reader feel that the language and situations of the crew on the keel boat ,Mandan, are genuine even though some of the language is so true to the period and folk (I assume) that it is hard to understand at times. He uses contractions and, to us, misplaced words that are strange to say the least; yet make the characters true to the place and the time. Apparently Guthrie has done a lot of research to make the reader feel that he is back in time, among early Americans in the early American wilderness.

Again, as I said at the beginning, one of the overpowering messages of the book is the magnificence of the big sky country. and Guthrie is a master at describing the feelings one must have when encountering this grandiose and as the story evolves fragile country.

The river boat is loaded with whiskey, vermilion and beads to trade with the Indians. Also a young squaw, Teal Eye, is aboard who has been rescued from a crow raiding party and is being returned to her father. This gesture, hopefully will show good faith with the blackfeet tribes who are among the most warlike and dwell in the area where the Mandan will go.

Somewhere on the upper reaches of the river one morning the crew awakes to find Teal Eye is gone. Also during that morning the blackfeet attack and kill everybody on the boat except Boone, Jim and Dick Summers who manage to escape separately and later get together. They become beaver trappers and buffalo hunters and traverse the great big sky country. During The rendezvous, a mountain man jamboree a very telling incident occurs which brings to light incites into Boone’s personality.

Dick Summers is older than the others. His age is not mentioned but one can assume he is late forties or fifties; I would guess that would be considered a ripe old age for a mountain man. He decides that this life is too strenuous and he goes back to Missouri and takes up farming. But to get to this decision in his life Guthrie goes into his mind and describes what he is thinking; his feelings, emotions, and life story. And me, being in the 70’s, I can validate what he is going through even if our life situations are completely different. At various points in one’s life based on body chemistry and experience one realizes that there has been more life behind than there is in front. And this truth is not just a fact it is an all encompassing sensate.

This is a passage from the book; how Dick feels about getting old.
“Summers wondered whether he had done bad or good. He had saved his hair, where better men had lost theirs, he had seen things a body never would forget and done things that would stay in the mind as long as time, he had lived a man’s life, and now it was at an end, and what had he to show for it? Two horses and a few fixings and a letter of credit for three hundred and forty-three dollars. That was all, unless you counted the way he had felt about living and the fun he had had while time ran along unnoticed. It had been rich doings, except that he wondered at the last, seeing everything behind him and nothing ahead. It was strange about time; it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop-a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst. He wanted to fight it then, to hold it back, to catch what had been borne away. It wasn’t that he minded going under, it wasn’t he was afraid to die and rot and forget and be forgotten; it was that things were lost to him more and more-the happy feeling, the strong doing, the friends he had fought and funned with, the notion that each new day would be better than the last, good as the last one was. A man’s later life was all a long losing, of friends and fun and hope, until at last time took the mite that was left to him and so closed the score. Boone didn’t understand until he got old. He wouldn’t know that a man didn’t give up the life but that it was the other way around. And yet it had been so short that looking back he would say it was only yesterday he had put out for the new land and the new life. A man felt cheated and done in, as if he had just got some sense in his head, no more than hit upon the trick of enjoying himself slow and easy, savoring pleasures in his mind as well as his body, than his body began to fail him, The pleasures drew off, farther and farther like a point on a fair shore, until he could only look back and remember and wish.”

During the trail mapping expedition Jim Deakins is shot and their horses are stolen. While they struggle for survival Boone is able to shoot some game and they eventually are able to walk out. But at one point things look bleak and Jim fears he will not make it.
Here is another passage from the book about Jim’s philosophical meandering. Devoid of all religious and biblical teachings Jim’s thoughts cut to the most simple existential thoughts.
“You think there is a hell sure enough, Boone? It nigh made me take to God, Boone, hearing Clemens play and sing. If’n I close my eyes I can hear him plain, the nice tunes twangin’ out and the voice with them and the mountains theirselves seemin’ to crowd round and listen. Hi-yi. Don’t sound so good when I sing it, but even a Injun song was something in Clemens’ mouth, like as if it brought God down from the sky. Instead of takin’ to God, I took liquir and woman, but God seemed all around just the same, Seems like he must have felt good, too. Seein’ us caper, It’s ag’in nature he would be set against frolics. Sometimes , lyin’ with a woman and the night thick and a wolf singing from a hill, I figgured God was close. I figgered He must be a friend, Boone, and not no stiff and proper son of a bitch puttin’ my name down for hell. Sometimes when I looked out over the plains, so far and mighty it dizzied the eye, I figgered God was there, too. Who made it all and give a body an eye to see with and a heart to feel with if ‘twarn’t God? ………………
I’m thinkin’ God done it , all right, for there wasn’t nobody else to. No use to think, though, A man can think his mind to a nub and not know anything about God. He’s got to die, I reckon, to find out, and then, if he’s dead like a dog or cow, he don’t find out then. That’s what frets me, Boone, maybe not even knowin’ after I’m dead and so never knowin’ in all my life.

At the end of the book, Boone visits Dick Summers. Dick breaks out the jug and the conversation becomes morose. Boone tells Dick about his reasons for killing Jim. Boone’s quick conclusions and extreme actions based on perceived events caused this murder, And now he is not so sure he was justified. As he walks off into the night he has feelings of guilt and thinking that he can’t go back to the big sky country due to his actions.