Keelboatman

A keelboat was a long river boat with a keel, a roofed cargo hold and a crew cabin, 40 to 80 feet long. Before steamboats it was the main boat for upriver travel: the crew pushed it against the current with long poles, or walked the bank hauling it on a towline called a cordelle.

Unlike a flatboat, broken up for lumber after one trip downstream, a keelboat made the return trip. After the 1820s steamboats took over the main rivers, and keelboats worked mostly on tributaries such as the upper Missouri, often in the fur trade.