Across the Wide Missouri

Across the Wide Missouri is a 1951 American Technicolor Western film based on historian Bernard DeVoto's eponymous 1947 book. The film dramatizes an account of several fur traders and their interaction with the Native Americans. Directed by William A. Wellman, the film stars Clark Gable as cunning trapper Flint Mitchell, Ricardo Montalbán as Blackfoot Iron Shirt, John Hodiak as Brecan, María Elena Marqués as Kamiah, a Blackfoot chief's daughter Mitchell marries and later falls in love with, J. Carrol Naish as Nez Perce Looking Glass, and Adolphe Menjou as Pierre. Howard Keel, as Mitchell's son "Chip Mitchell", narrates. Plot In the 1830s in the Rocky Mountains, fur trapper Flint Mitchell meets at the summer "rendezvous" with other mountain men, cashing in his furs, drinking, and enjoying contests among his friends. He organizes a hunting "brigade" into the beaver-rich Blackfoot territory, buying horses and recruiting trappers, despite protests from his Scottish friend and former trading partner, Brecan, who lives among the Blackfoot and warns him that the land belongs to them. Flint outbids Brecan for Kamiah, the granddaughter of Blackfoot medicine man Bear Ghost and adopted daughter of a Nez Perce chief, Looking Glass. Brecan wants to return her to the Blackfoot, to promote peace between the tribes, while Flint wants to marry Kamiah and ensure the brigade's safety. Pierre, a French Canadian trapper, and Captain Humberstone Lyon, another Scotsman, who fought in the Battle of Waterloo, join Flint on the dangerous expedition. Kamiah successfully guides Flint and his men on their trek through the high passes filled with crippling snow drifts, and delivers them to the Blackfoot territory, where they build a stockade. Flint narrowly escapes capture and death at the hands of Ironshirt, a young Blackfoot prince and war chief, who kills Baptiste DuNord, one of Flint's best trappers. Ironshirt steals the brigade's horses, but Flint impresses Bear Ghost, who orders them returned.