The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie

First published: 1947

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: 1830-1843

Locale: Western United States

Principal characters

• Boone Caudill, a mountain man
• Teal Eye, his Indian wife
• Jim Deakins, his friend
• Dick Summers, an old hunter
• Jourdonnais, a keelboat captain
• Poordevil, a half-witted Blackfoot
• Elisha Peabody, a Yankee speculator

The Story:

In 1830, Boone Caudill sets out alone for St. Louis and the West after a fight with his father. Taking his father’s rifle with him, he heads for Louisville to get out of the state before his father can catch him. On the road, he meets Jim Deakins, an easygoing redhead, and the two decide to go west together. At Louisville, where the sheriff and Boone’s father are waiting for the runaway, he and Jim are separated. Boone escapes by swimming the Ohio River to the Indiana shore.

When Boone is falsely accused of attempted theft and jailed, Jim, who followed him after their separation, steals the sheriff’s keys and releases him. Together the boys continue west.

In St. Louis, they sign on as part of the crew of the keelboat Mandan. Most of the crew are French, as is the leader, Jourdonnais. The boat is headed for the country of the Blackfeet with a store of whiskey and other goods to trade for furs. Teal Eye, the young daughter of a Blackfoot chief, is also on board the ship. She was separated from her tribe for some time; Jourdonnais hopes to gain the friendship of the Indians by returning the young woman to them.

The keelboat moves slowly upstream by means of poles, a tow rope, and oars. Boone and Jim find a friend in Dick Summers, the hunter for the Mandan, whose job is to scout for Indians and keep the crew supplied with meat. He makes Boone and Jim his assistants. Jourdonnais is worried about getting to Blackfoot country before winter, and he works the crew hard. At last, they pass into the upper river beyond the mouth of the Platte River. All the greenhorns, including Boone and Jim, are initiated by being dunked in the river and having their heads shaved.

At last they are in buffalo country. Summers takes Boone with him to get some fresh meat. Attacked by a hunting party of Sioux, the white men escape unharmed, but Summers expects trouble from the hostile Indians farther along the line. A few days later, the Mandan is ambushed by a large Indian war party. Only the swivel gun on the deck of the boat saves the men from death.

Shortly before the Mandan arrives at Fort Union, two men try to sabotage the cargo. At Fort Union, Jourdonnais accuses the American Fur Company trader McKenzie of trying to stop him. McKenzie denies the charge, but he tries to argue Jourdonnais out of continuing upriver and offers to pay double value for the Mandan’s cargo. Jourdonnais refuses. At Fort Union, Boone meets his Uncle Zeb, an old-time mountain man. He predicts that the days of hunting and trapping in open country are nearly gone. Boone and Jim, however, do not believe him.

When the Mandan arrives in Blackfoot country, Teal Eye escapes. The crew begins to build a fort and trading post. One day, Indians attack and kill all but the three hunters: Boone, Jim, and Summers. For seven years these three hunt together, and Summers makes real mountain men out of the other two. In the spring of 1837, the three head for a rendezvous on the Seeds-Kee-Dee River, where they can sell their furs and gamble, drink, and fight with other mountain men. They take with them a half-witted Blackfoot named Poordevil.

At the rendezvous, Boone kills a man who said that he was going to take Poordevil’s scalp. Then, after they have their fill of women and liquor, the three friends leave the camp. Summers, however, does not go hunting with them. No longer able to keep up the pace of the mountain men, he goes back to settle in Missouri. Boone, Jim, and Poordevil head up the Yellowstone toward Blackfoot country. The journey is Boone’s idea. He knows that Teal Eye is now a grown woman. Her beauty remained in his memory all those years, and he wants her for his wife. On the way to Three Forks, Boone steals a horse from the Crow Indians and takes a Crow scalp, two actions that will help him make friends with the Blackfoot Indians.

They come upon a Blackfoot village ravaged by smallpox, but Boone refuses to stop until he is certain that Teal Eye is dead. At last he locates her. She is with a small band led by Red Horn, her brother, who sells her to Boone.

Life is good to Boone. For five years he lives happily among the Blackfoot Indians with Teal Eye as his wife. Jim lives in the Blackfoot camp also, but he often leaves for months at a time to go back down the Missouri. He craves companionship, while Boone enjoys living away from crowds. On one of his trips, Jim meets Elisha Peabody, a shrewd Yankee speculating upon the future prosperity of the Oregon Territory, who wants someone to show him a pass where wagons can cross the mountains. Jim and Boone contract to show him a suitable pass. Before Boone leaves, Teal Eye tells him that he will have a son when he returns.

The expedition has bad luck. Indians steal all the horses and wound Jim badly. Then snow falls, destroying all chances to get food. Finally, Boone is able to shoot some mountain goats. Jim recovers from his wound, and the party goes ahead on foot. Boone and Jim show Peabody the way across the mountains and into the Columbia Valley. It is spring when Boone returns to Teal Eye and his son.

The child, born blind, has a tinge of red in his hair. The baby’s blindness brings a savage melancholy to Boone. Then some of the old Indians hint that the red hair shows the child is Jim’s baby. Boone lays a trap to catch Jim with Teal Eye. Jim, suspecting nothing, finds Teal Eye alone in her lodge; he tries to comfort her about her child’s blindness and the ugly mood of her husband. Boone mistakes the intent of Jim’s conversation. Entering the lodge, he shoots Jim in the chest, killing him. He curses Teal Eye and leaves the Blackfoot camp. Then he heads back to Kentucky to see his mother before she dies.

In Kentucky, he finds his brother married and taking care of the farm. Boone grows restless. Slowly it comes to him that he was wrong about Jim and Teal Eye, for he notices that one of his brother’s children has a tinge of red hair. His mother says that there is red hair in the family. When a neighbor girl insists that he marry her because he made love to her, Boone starts back to the West. He longs both for freedom and for Teal Eye.

In Missouri, he visits Summers, who now has a wife and a farm. Over their whiskey, Boone reveals to Summers that he killed Jim. He knows now that he made a mistake. Everything is spoiled for him—Teal Eye and all the West. The day of the mountain man is nearly over; farmers are going to Oregon. Without saying good-bye, he stumbles out into the night. Summers can see him weaving along the road for a short distance. Then the darkness swallows him, and he is gone.

Bibliography

Astro, Richard. “The Big Sky and the Limits of Wilderness Fiction.” Western American Literature (Summer, 1974): 105-114. Astro maintains that The Big Sky fails as a nostalgic historical novel depicting the fall of a tragic hero. Boone Caudill, a one-dimensional character who is ignorant of the effect of time on historical details, cannot learn from friends or enemies, cannot gain wisdom, and symbolizes bankrupt primitivism.

Cracroft, Richard H. “The Big Sky: A. B. Guthrie’s Use of Historical Sources.” Western American Literature 6 (Fall, 1971): 163-176. Cracroft describes how Guthrie augments authenticity by writing into The Big Sky language, scenes, and incidents from works by Henry Marie Brackenridge, John Bradbury, Washington Irving, and George Frederick Ruxton, among others.

Erisman, Fred. Reading A. B. Guthrie’s “The Big Sky.” Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 2000. A concise analysis of the novel. Includes bibliography.

Farr, William E., and William W. Bevis, eds. Fifty Years After “The Big Sky”: New Perspectives on the Fiction and Films of A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2001. Reprints papers delivered at a 1997 conference commemorating the fiftieth year of The Big Sky’s publication. Includes pieces examining Guthrie’s work and placing him within the broader context of the American West. Several pieces focus on The Big Sky, including essays about the female characters and the elements of classic myth and tragedy in the novel.

Ford, Thomas W. A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Critical biography and introductory overview of Guthrie’s work. Chapter 3 treats The Big Sky in terms of its plot, Guthrie’s desire to present facts about mountain men and to convey his love of the West, the novel’s landscape pictures, its themes of destructive violence and encroachment of civilization, its Calvinistic meditations, and its unadorned handling of time and space.

Gale, Robert L. “Guthrie’s The Big Sky.” Explicator 38 (Summer, 1980): 7-8. Sees Jim Deakins’s offer of his own flesh to feed Boone Caudill and the goat’s gift of blood to Boone as forming a Holy Eucharist which Boone ignorantly spurns, resulting in unsociability and natural desolation.

O’Connell, Nicholas. At the Field’s End: Interviews with Twenty-two Pacific Northwest Writers. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. This volume, an expanded edition of a book originally published in 1987, includes an interview with Guthrie, in which he discusses the influence of the region upon his writing and other aspects of his work.

Petersen, David. “A. B. Guthrie, Jr.: A Remembrance.” In Updating the Literary West, sponsored by the Western Literature Association. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1997. An overview of Guthrie’s work.

Stewart, Donald C. “The Functions of Bird and Sky Imagery in Guthrie’s The Big Sky.” Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 19, no. 2 (1977): 53-61. Presents interlocking bird and sky similes and metaphors as transforming a well-organized novel into coherent, imaginative art. Demonstrates how images individualize characters and actions, underline moods, and elucidate themes.