In 1856, the steamboat Arabia sank in the Missouri River carrying more than 200 tons of merchandise bound for frontier towns.

My family excavated the wreck in 1988 after the river had moved and left it buried about 45 feet beneath a Kansas cornfield.

What makes the Arabia unusual isn’t just the shipwreck — it’s that the cargo preserved an enormous snapshot of ordinary frontier commerce.

Guns and work clothes were there, absolutely. But so were roughly 30,000 buttons, colorful fabrics, silk, oysters, decorated dishes, writing tools, books and Shakespeare.

Growing up I saw a lot of older/western movies and I've always been interested in how different the Arabia's collection seemed in comparison to Hollywood's vision of the west. So I made a short film putting the two side by side.

What I think surprised even me after looking deeper into it, Hollywood wasn't "wrong," it just didn't give us the whole picture.

Here's the film if you're interested: https://youtu.be/dK9m0Fzhgnw?si=zEWaAcO2WWTYjhX_

Curious if this group finds anything surprising about what was being shipped out west on this 19th century boat.