Mike Fink
Encyclopedia
Mike Fink (b.1770/1780?? – ca.1823) called "king of the keelboaters", was a semi-legendary brawler and boatman
Boatman
-Insects:* Lesser water boatman, a water-dwelling insect* Water boatman , types of insect-People named Boatman:* Barny Boatman , English professional poker player* Michael Boatman , American actor...

 who exemplified the tough and hard-drinking men who ran keelboat
Keelboat
Keelboat has two distinct meanings related to two different types of boats: one a riverine cargo-capable working boat, and the other a classification for small- to mid-sized recreational sailing yachts.-Historical keel-boats:...

s up and down the Ohio
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

 and Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...

s.

Historical figure

Mike Fink was born in Fort Pitt
Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)
Fort Pitt was a fort built at the location of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.-French and Indian War:The fort was built from 1759 to 1761 during the French and Indian War , next to the site of former Fort Duquesne, at the confluence the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River...

, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 near Pittsburgh and served as an Indian scout in his teens. Even as a teen, he was an unbeatable marksman, and he earned the name "Bangall" among militiamen at Fort Pitt. When the Indian wars of the region ended in the early 1790s, Fink, like many other scouts, spurned a sedentary life as a farmer. Instead, he drifted into the transport business on the Ohio
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

 and Mississippi
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...

 -- and quickly picked up a new nickname: "the Snapping Turtle."

When he began his career in navigation, he became notorious, both for his practical joke
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...

s, and for his willingness to fight anyone who was not amused. His 180 pound frame stretched 6'3″ in height, and the muscles required to force a keelboat upstream would have made him a formidable opponent to most. It was said that he could drink a gallon of whisky and still shoot the tail off a pig at 90 paces; and Fink himself proclaimed on every possible occasion that he could "out-run, out-hop, out-jump, throw-down, drag out, and lick any man in the country."

He and his friends were supposed to have amused themselves by shooting cups of whiskey from each other's heads. Other repeating episodes in Fink's legends include a tale where he shoots the scalp lock from the head of an Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

, and a story in which he shoots the protruding heel from the foot of an African-American slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 with surgical precision. Hauled into court, he pointed out to a judge that his victim would never have been able to wear a fashionable boot if a good Samaritan, namely himself, had not intervened on the man's behalf.

Besides imagined feats making part of the legend of Mike Fink, it may have also been woven from two (or more) men with the same name. Mike Fink signed up as one of Ashley's Hundred
Ashley's Hundred
Ashley's Hundred refers to the men who responded in 1822 to the flyer, "To Enterprising Young Men: The Subscriber wishes to engage One Hundred men to ascend the River Missouri to its source to be employed for one, two, or three years..."...

 and formed a part of the band that built Fort Henry
Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site
Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site is the site of a partially reconstructed trading post on the Missouri River and the North Dakota/Montana border twenty-five miles from Williston. It is one of the earliest declared National Historic Landmarks of the United States...

. If this man had been the one born at Fort Pitt about 1770, he would have been at least 50 years old. Such an advanced age in that group of men just out of their teens would have been remarked on. (Hugh Glass
Hugh Glass
Hugh Glass was an American fur trapper and frontiersman noted for his exploits in the American West during the first third of the 19th century....

 was called Old Hugh for being in his early 40s.) No journal mentions Fink's advanced age, so it may have been a younger Mike Fink who joined Ashley's group.

Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett
David "Davy" Crockett was a celebrated 19th century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S...

 is supposed to have described him as "half horse and half alligator." Fink wore a red feather in his cap to signal his defeat of every strong man up and down the river.

Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio contained an 1806(1886?) interview with Capt. John Fink, who said that Mike Fink was a relative.

"When I was a lad," John told me, "about ten years of age, our family lived four miles up river from Wheeling
Wheeling, West Virginia
Wheeling is a city in Ohio and Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia; it is the county seat of Ohio County. Wheeling is the principal city of the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area...

, on the river. Mike laid up (landed) his boat near us, though he generally had two boats. This was his last trip, and he went away to the far West; the country here was getting too civilized, and he was disgusted with progress. This was about 1815."


In the management of his business Mike Fink was a rigid disciplinarian; woe to the man who shirked his responsibilities or did not carry his own weight -- literally. He always had his woman along with him, and would allow no other man to speak with her. She was sometimes a subject for his wonderful skill in marksmanship with the rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

. He would have her hold on the top of her head a tin cup filled with whiskey, which he would put a bullet through. Another of his feats was to have her hold it between her knees, as in a vise, and then shoot.


According to the Miami Valley Historical Society (specifically, Miami Valley Vignettes by George C. Crout), until 1815, when he moved west, Mike Fink did not operate keel boats on the Ohio but on the Great Miami River
Great Miami River
The Great Miami River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in southwestern Ohio in the United States...

 from the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

 to Fort Loramie, where portage was made to the Maumee River
Maumee River
The Maumee River is a river in northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana in the United States. It is formed at Fort Wayne, Indiana by the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers, and meanders northeastwardly for through an agricultural region of glacial moraines before flowing into the...

 in order to continue going on up to Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...

.

If it was indeed he who joined Ashley's Hundred, Fink died in the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...

 in 1823 during the course of Ashley's expedition. Some say it was a drunken argument over what he always called a chère amie - a romantic interest. Timothy Field, in 1829, said that in a drunken stupor, when aiming at a mug of beer from the head of his longtime friend, a companion named Carpenter, he shot low; shortly thereafter, his other longtime friend, Talbot, retaliated by killing Fink, using Carpenter's pistol.

In popular culture

The recorded exploits of Mike Fink featured mostly in American broadside ballad
Broadside (music)
A broadside is a single sheet of cheap paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations...

s, dime novel
Dime novel
Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S...

s, and other subliterary texts from before the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 era. The first known reference to the character is in an 1821 farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

, The Pedlar by Alphonso Wetmore. Here, Fink appears as the stereotypical
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

 bully and braggart. He appears frequently in stories involving the Davy Crockett cycle
Literature cycle
Literary cycles are groups of stories grouped around common figures, often based on mythical figures or loosely on historic ones. Cycles which deal with an entire country are sometimes referred to as matters...

, but Fink lacked Crockett's more admirable traits.

Over time, the unlikeable features of the character came even more to the forefront, and Fink was portrayed increasingly as a bully who got his comeuppance. After the Civil War, the character began to be neglected; the mood of Americans disinclined them to admire a bumptious and violent folk hero. In the early 20th century, there was an attempt to revive his popularity, spearheaded by Colonel Henry Shoemaker, a Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 folklorist, who collected Mike Fink tales, and saw the character as a local equivalent to Crockett, but Shoemaker's attempt at reviving the character sputtered.

In 1955, Mike Fink (as portrayed by character actor Jeff York
Jeff York
Jeff York was an American film and television actor who began his career in the late 1930s using his given name Granville Owen Schofield...

) appeared in two episodes of the Davy Crockett miniseries
Davy Crockett (TV miniseries)
Davy Crockett is a five part serial which aired on ABC in one-hour episodes on the Disneyland series. The series stars Fess Parker as real-life frontiersman Davy Crockett and Buddy Ebsen as his fictional best friend, George Russel....

of ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

's Disneyland opposite the popular Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett
David "Davy" Crockett was a celebrated 19th century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S...

 (portrayed by Fess Parker
Fess Parker
Fess Elisha Parker, Jr. was an American film and television actor best known for his portrayals of Davy Crockett in the Walt Disney 1955-56 TV mini-series and as TV's Daniel Boone from 1964-70...

). These episodes were later compiled into a feature film entitled Davy Crockett and the River Pirates
Davy Crockett and the River Pirates
Davy Crockett and the River Pirates is a 1956 live-action Walt Disney adventure film starring Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. It was shot in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois...

, released in 1956. Elements of the Fink legend were present in Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

's rendition, but the character was played mostly for laughs as a foil for the infallible Crockett. Keel boats bearing Fink's name, Mike Fink Keel Boats
Mike Fink Keel Boats
Fink 169 Boats were small boats that navigated the Rivers of America at Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World Resort. An identical attraction called River Rogue Keel Boats still exists at Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris.-History:...

, operated at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom's Liberty Square until they were quietly retired in the late 1990s, when one unexpectedly capsized and dumped guests and cast members into the river.

In 1958, Zachary Ball, known as an author who wrote adventure stories for boys, wrote a fictional account of the early life of Mike Fink entitled Young Mike Fink. Similar to Disney's portrayal of Fink, Ball's title character is good natured and helpful despite his sometimes hooligan and contrary temperament.

Mike Fink also appears in Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...

's parodic fairy-tale The Robber Bridegroom.

In Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...

's The Tales of Alvin Maker
The Tales of Alvin Maker
The Tales of Alvin Maker is a series of novels by Orson Scott Card that revolve around the experiences of a young man, Alvin Miller, who discovers he has incredible powers for creating and shaping things around him...

, an alternate history version of Mike Fink appears in every novel after the first. Unlike other significant characters, he has no magical knack, but, prior to meeting Alvin, he was made invincible by means of a tattoo given to him at birth (similar to Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

). In the books, his invulnerability is what made him a bully; having no conception of pain, he could not appreciate the effects of his actions (Prentice Alvin
Prentice Alvin
Prentice Alvin is an alternate history/fantasy novel by Orson Scott Card. It is the third book in Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker series and is about Alvin Miller, the Seventh son of a seventh son...

). In Alvin Journeyman
Alvin Journeyman
Alvin Journeyman is an alternate history/fantasy novel by Orson Scott Card. It is the fourth book in Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker series and is about Alvin Miller, the Seventh son of a seventh son. Alvin Journeyman won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 1996.-Synopsis:Alvin is a Maker,...

, he resurfaces, grateful to Alvin for both sparing his life and teaching him the folly of his previous life of violence.

In 1998, children's author, Steven Kellogg
Steven Kellogg
Steven Kellogg is an author and illustrator who has contributed over 90 books for children. He is best known for writing books about animals, for which he credits his grandmother ....

 wrote a book entitled Mike Fink: A Tall Tale. As in his other books, Kellogg's account of Fink incorporates tall tales
Tall tale
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories such as, "that fish was so big, why I tell ya', it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!" Other tall tales are completely...

 with vivid illustrations - highlighting the main character's positive side.

Mike Fink is a prime character in the 2007 young-adult historical novel Mississippi Jack
Mississippi Jack
Mississippi Jack is the fifth book in the critically acclaimed Bloody Jack book series. The Boody Jack series begins with Bloody Jack, Curse of the Blue Tattoo, Under the Jolly Roger, In the Belly of the Bloodhound, and continues with My Bonny Light Horseman, Rapture of the Deep, and The Wake of...

by Louis A. Meyer
Louis A. Meyer
Louis A. Meyer Meyer, L.A. , brief autobiography on author's own webpage. Accessed February 25, 2009. writes under the name L.A. Meyer. He is best known as the author of the Bloody Jack seafaring novels. He is also a painter....

. In it, Fink is outwitted by the main character of the book series. He is portrayed as a large, hairy, loud man who constantly boasts about his many feats in life. He is first met while traveling down the Allegheny River
Allegheny River
The Allegheny River is a principal tributary of the Ohio River; it is located in the Eastern United States. The Allegheny River joins with the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River at the "Point" of Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...

 and is later seen in Pittsburgh, where he is put in jail for fighting.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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