Mike Fink (sometimes Miche Phinck) is best known for being a river boatman in the literature of the American frontier, often as a peripheral figure in Davy Crockett narratives. His life and achievements were primarily recorded in cheap, printed materials circulated in the decades following his death in the 1820s. Fink was a loud-mouthed keelboat captain with a large personality and even larger ego who spent most of his time on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, preferring the water to “civilization.” Known as both a marksman and a brawler, he stands as a symbol of pride for a vanishing way of life.
This illustration portrays legendary American river boatman Mike Fink (c. 1770–1823). “The King of the Keelboaters,” Mike Fink was a larger-than-life figure who was the anti-hero protagonist of tall tales of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. An ornery brawler and boaster, Fink often appeared as a minor character in tales of Davy Crockett, representing a glimpse into the lost age of the keelboat, which opened up trade on the frontier in early America. (Lebrecht Authors/Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis)
It is possible that some stories about the legendary Mike Fink may have originally been about other real men bearing the same name. However, the historical Mike Fink was born in the frontier town of Fort Pitt (later Pittsburgh) in Pennsylvania, to possibly French Canadian parents around 1770, although some sources claim 1780. It had been suggested that Fink rejected his mother’s milk at birth in favor of whiskey, which has been a common claim intended to indicate both an early onset of adulthood and an extra helping of apparent manliness or machismo. Although that is a clear exaggeration, he did serve during his teenage years as an accomplished marksman in the Indian wars of the 1790s, where he earned the nickname “Bangall” from the militiamen to indicate his expert shooting.
As an adult, Fink moved on to spend his time operating keelboats, transporting people and goods prior to the rise of steamboats. He was a loudmouth and a braggart, but he had a good deal of skill to match. It was said, primarily by Fink himself, that he could “out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out-brag, out-drink, an’ out-fight” anyone around (Cohen and Dillingham 1994, xvi). Fink had a propensity and talent for violence, and never felt at ease if it had been too long since his last brawl. Having defeated many capable fighters, he decided to denote his combat dominance along the river by placing a red feather in his cap. He was also known as a scoundrel and a trickster, using his wiles to outsmart and cheat residents living on the rivers. On one occasion, he tricked a farmer into thinking his sheep were sick so that he could receive payment for disposing of them. He accepted brandy for his services with the “sick” sheep and then secretly made off with the resulting meat as well.
While Davy Crockett was known as “the King of the Wild Frontier,” Fink earned the names “the King of the Keelboaters” and “the Last of the Boatmen.” The latter title was indicative of Fink’s character. He had a great love for nature and a distaste for both technology and civilization. Fink repeatedly moved further and further away from places he considered too civilized and rejected multiple offers to work on the newer steamboats, which he considered to be abominations.
Fink showed a consistent disregard for human life, including his own life and those of his loved ones. Beyond enjoying a good fight, Fink also made a habit of shooting cans, cups, and other objects off the heads and from between the clenched knees of whoever was nearby, including his friends and wife. Fink’s wife tends to play a small role in the tall tales, since he forbade her to talk to anyone else.
The circumstances surrounding Fink’s death are shrouded in mystery. Most seem to suggest that he died at Fort Henry, which some place at the mouth of the Yellowstone River in Montana while others locate it in North Dakota. There are dozens of variants of his death story, but little truth is certain outside of the details recorded in a report from the Rocky Mountain Fur Company for whom he was working at the time.
The stories generally suggest that in the year before his death, Fink had joined up with Ashley’s Hundred (another name for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company) and helped to build Fort Henry. It was on this endeavor that Fink is supposed to have died. Fink was shot and killed in a disagreement with his companions over his marksmanship. As was his custom, Fink took aim at a cup of whiskey on the top of his friend Carpenter’s head, only to shoot and kill him instead of hitting the cup. Although he maintained his innocence, he was shot and killed by his other friend Talbot in retaliation, possibly with the dead man’s gun. Some accounts suggest that his uproarious and abrasive personality and apparent bad blood between Carpenter and himself may have led Talbot to doubt his innocence or pushed him over the edge. Whatever the case may have been, it was precisely the traits that made Mike Fink who he was that led to his demise.
The height of Fink’s popularity in tall tales came during the Jacksonian era, which stretched from around Fink’s death until the years leading up to the American Civil War. During this time, Fink’s vibrant personality fit in with the culture of the American Southwest. This was exemplified in bragging contests, which were popular in the literature of the Jacksonian era. Mike Fink’s Brag is both an excellent example of this genre and among the most popular pieces of Fink literature. Within it, Fink declares, “I’m half wild horse and half cock-eyed alligator and the rest o’ me is crooked snags an’ red-hot snappin’ turtle” (Cohen and Dillingham 1994, xvi). In this brag, Fink embraces both a connection to nature and an animalistic ferocity that were typical of his persona.
Fink makes his earliest known appearance during his own lifetime in Alphonso Wetmore’s 1821 comical play The Pedlar. Morgan Neville’s 1828 The Last of the Boatmen may, however, be the earliest work to feature Fink as a primary character, where he was portrayed as someone who failed to appreciate the good aspects of both cultural and economic progress. Generally speaking, he was roughly as popular as his contemporary Davy Crockett, with whom he often appeared in stories, during the first half of the nineteenth century.
As the political climate in the United States changed in the years leading up to the Civil War, however, Fink’s popularity waned. During this time, the issue of slavery came to dominate public attention, and by the end of the war, the keelboat culture, which had largely ended with Fink’s death, was far removed from the sociocultural contexts of postwar America.
Fink did not disappear entirely, although a clear decline in popularity and presence relative to legends like Crockett was clear. During this time, Fink’s reputation also suffered, as the formerly formidable brawler was now less impressive. He started as many fights as always, but in these later stories, the previously unbeatable Fink was now regularly bested. He never shared Crockett’s heroic qualities, but in the antebellum period he was still a likeable character. This changed as time went along.
Fink benefited from a brief resurgence in popularity in the mid-twentieth century, owing in large measure to a Mike Fink character appearing in a series of television episodes and a movie about Davy Crockett produced by Walt Disney Productions. The movie, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956), detailed a story of Crockett and Fink challenging one another to a river race to New Orleans, only to eventually join forces against a group of river pirates. Through it all, Fink was part of a narrative of a legendary era of frontiersmen: a heroic, larger-than-life past that successfully spoke to the pride of the American Southwest, immortalizing a way of life, at least partially invented, that has long since passed on.
Neil Terrence George
See also Boone, Daniel; Bridger, Jim; Crockett, Davy; Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind; Tall Tales
Further Reading
Allen, Michael. 1990. Western Rivermen, 1763–1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Blair, Walter, and Franklin J. Meine, eds. 1956. Half Horse, Half Alligator: The Growth of the Mike Fink Legend. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cohen, Hennig, and William B. Dillingham, eds. 1994. Humor of the Old Southwest. 3rd ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Kellogg, Steven. 1998. Mike Fink: A Tall Tale Retold and Illustrated. New York: HarperCollins.
Osborne, Mary Pope. 1991. American Tall Tales. New York: Knopf.