I want to tell you about the American pioneer, trapper Hugh Glass
He was born around 1783 in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), the son of Irish immigrants. From his youth, driven by a thirst for wandering, he became a sailor. One day his ship was captured by the famous French pirate Jean Lafitte, who at that time was robbing ships in the Gulf of Mexico. Glass had to remain on the crew of the pirate ship. After 2 years, he managed to escape, and he swam to the shore (2 miles) and set off through wild areas. The Pawnee Indians took him prisoner, but later accepted him into their tribe. Hugh Glass even married an Indian woman. A few years later, Glass traveled to St. Louis with a delegation of Indians. There he remained, deciding not to return to the tribe.
In 1822, Glass joined General William Ashley's company as he founded the Rocky Mountain Fur Campaign in St. Louis. The general recruited a detachment of 100 young men to travel up the Missouri River and explore its sources, and, of course, to harvest furs. The St. Louis newspapers wrote: "...100 enterprising young men are required...to reach the sources of the Missouri...employment - two, three, or four years." Many famous trappers and fur traders of that time joined the detachment, among them were Jim Bridger, Major Andrew Henry, Jedediah Smith, William Sublett, Thomas Fitzpatrick. The unit was later called "Ashley's Hundred"
The detachment set out on a campaign at the beginning of 1823. During the campaign, they encountered Indians, as a result of which several members of the campaign were killed and Glass was wounded in the leg. General Ashley called for reinforcements, as a result of which the Indians were defeated. 14 people (among them Hugh Glass), led by Major Henry, separated from the main detachment and decided to follow their own route. The plan was to head up the Grand River and then turn north to the mouth of the Yellowstone, where Fort Henry was located.
A few days later, Henry's detachment approached the forks of the Grand River. Glass went to pick berries, but in the thickets he encountered a grizzly bear. The she-bear was with two cubs and furiously attacked the hunter. Glass did not have time to shoot and had to defend himself with only a knife. His comrades who came running to his cry killed the bear, but Glass received very serious injuries and was unconscious. Hugh Glass had a broken leg, the bear left deep claw wounds on his body - his ribs were visible on his back. The companions believed that a person with such wounds would inevitably die. Therefore, it was decided to leave him.
The leader of the detachment, Major Henry, left two people with Glass, instructing them to bury him after he gave his soul to God, and he and the main detachment continued on their way. John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger were left with an unconscious Hugh Glass. They dug a grave and began to wait for his death. Five days later, Fitzgerald, fearing that they might be discovered by the Arikara, convinced young Bridger to leave Glass and follow Major Henry. They took Glass's weapons and belongings, believing that he would no longer need them anyway. Returning to the detachment, they reported that Hugh Glass had died.
However, he survived.
Having regained consciousness, he discovered that he was left completely alone, without supplies, water or weapons. Lying nearby was only a freshly flayed skin from a grizzly bear, with which Fitzgerald and Bridger had covered him. He covered his back with the hide, allowing the maggots from the raw hide to cleanse his festering wounds.
The nearest settlement to which the detachment was moving, Fort Kiowa, was 200 miles (about 320 km) away.
Hugh Glass made this journey in almost 2 months.
On the map it looked something like this:
Most of the distance was crawling. Here the survival skills he acquired while living in an Indian tribe came in very handy. He ate mainly berries and roots. One day he managed to drive two wolves away from the carcass of a dead bison and eat the meat.
Hugh Glass had a long recovery. Having recovered, he decided to take revenge on John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger who left him. However, upon learning that Bridger had recently gotten married, Glass forgave the newlywed. Fitzgerald became a soldier, so here too he had to forget about revenge, since the murder of a United States Army soldier at that time meant a death sentence.
After experiencing many more adventures, Hugh Glass was killed along with two other hunters in the winter of 1833 on the Yellowstone River as a result of an Indian attack.
In honor of Hugh Glass, a memorial sign was erected near the city of Lemmon.
The inscription on it reads:
"Hugh Glass, a member of Ashley's Fur Campaign party, under the leadership of Major Henry, took part in a trip along the Grand River in August 1823, separated while hunting and was attacked by a grizzly bear near a bend in the Grand River. He was terribly maimed and could not move. Two men Fitzgerald and Bridger were left with him, but they, believing that he was dead, took his gun and savings and left him. He, however, did not die, but crawled forward. Hugh managed to survive on seasonal fruits and meat, which he obtained when was able to drive off several well-fed wolves from the buffalo they had driven, and, incredibly, along the most difficult route, came out near Fort Kiowa, below Big Bend, which was 190 bird's eye miles from the bend of the Great River. All of the above is a true story. He was killed by the Arikara Indians on on the ice of the Yellowstone River near the Big Horn in the winter of 1832-33, John G. Nelhart immortalized his name in the epic poem “The Song of Hugh Glass.” Lonely, unarmed, terribly wounded, he advanced at night over the high hills to avoid the Indians , and during the day I looked for water and shelter. Guided only by his instincts, he successfully reached Big Bend and Fort Kiowa. Whatever the details, it was a fine example of endurance and courage."
In general, I was inspired to write about Glass by the excellent film “Man of the Wild Prairie,” filmed in 1971 by Richard S. Sarafian.
Hugh Glass was played by famous actor Richard Harris. One of his last works was the role of Emperor Aurelius in the film "Gladiator".
The film struck me first of all with its wildlife footage. Majestic snow-covered forests and mountain spurs. The most powerful picture in terms of impact. The great fortitude of the people who conquered the West. Great actors. In addition to Harris, the film also stars John Huston, who won an Oscar as a director for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The scene where Glass forgives his companions is especially powerful.
One more moment.
In the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, there is a merchant character named Hugh Glass :) Here's an Easter egg
THE REAL HUGH GLASS.
Modern historians know little about the early life of Hugh Glass. Presumably he was born in 1783 in the vicinity of Philadelphia. His origin is also not exactly clear: either his parents were Irish, or Scots from Pennsylvania.
Historians have pondered for decades whether Glass truly endured the extraordinary ordeals he endured or whether they were merely self-indulgent tales. Several researchers are confident that Glass's amazing adventures are not fiction. There are only a few fragmentary pieces of information that partially help trace Glass's life among pirates and Pawnee Indians. But his experience in the Rocky Mountains is confirmed by numerous documents that have stood the test of time. One of the most reliable sources is the published memoirs of George Yount. Joining the Santa Fe fur trade in 1825, Yount traveled to many places in the Rocky Mountains, and he claimed that he became acquainted and befriended Glass.
After 1851, Yount recounted his memoirs to a Catholic priest, the Rev. Orange Clark, who thought Yount's story might make an interesting book. But it was not until after 1923 that paleontologist and historian Charles Lewis turned his attention to the story, edited it, and published it in memoir form in the journal of the California Historical Society.
In his story, Yount recalled that Glass was a pirate. Sometime between 1817 and 1820, he was reportedly a sailor, or perhaps even captain, of an American ship that was captured by the famous French pirate Jean Lafitte. Glass was probably in his thirties when his ship was boarded by Lafitte's adventurers and he was given the choice of joining them or being hanged from the yardarm. Reluctantly, Glass chose life, and spent the next year of his life in the Campichee pirate colony on Galveston Island, which was later incorporated into the state of Texas. The port of Campichee was in a dangerous position, since the mainland on both sides of Galveston Bay was overrun by the Karankawa Indians, who, according to rumors, practiced cannibalism, no matter that it could exist in their ritual form, any person who fell into their hands could end up in their stomachs. At that time, the Texas coast was an unexplored wilderness, and Europeans tried to avoid encounters with this tribe. In addition, Campichee was surrounded by dangerous waters that were home to alligators and poisonous snakes. In general, it was almost impossible to escape from the island.
In his book The Saga of Hugh Glass, historian John Myers wrote: “Glass presented George Yount with a reality of pirate life that, in its horror, eclipsed any possible perception of the trade for those not involved in it. Monstrous behavior belonging to a society that has cut itself off from honor and compassion to such an extent that newcomers can only guess at the cost of forced comradeship.”
It's clear that Glass didn't enjoy his role as a pirate cutthroat. According to Reverend Clark, Yount believed that Glass was a God-fearing man who internally shuddered at the sight of brutal murders being committed every day.
“He shuddered to the depths of his soul and shrank from those bloody atrocities. It could not be hidden from the despotic lord of the emotions of their hearts" (The Chronicles of George C. Yount, California Historical State Society, April 1923).
The moment came when Glass and his certain companion could no longer hide their feelings and negative attitude towards pirate life, and they were considered unfit to work as pirates. While the pirate ship hid in a secluded cove off the coast of what would later be Texas, two men anxiously awaited their fate, preparing for their trial that would take place upon Lafitte's return.
Glass and his comrade were afraid that they would simply be drowned at sea because they had violated the code of pirate loyalty. Fortunately, the evening before the hearing, they were alone on the ship. They decided to take advantage of the moment, since they had no choice. So they took some things and left the ship. After swimming two miles in dangerous water, Glass and his compatriot reached the coast of the mainland, where for some time they lived off the creatures they caught in the sea, often poisonous. Then they decided to go inland, since the Karankawa were prowling the coast in search of human prey. Without any maps, with limited knowledge of the area that would later become part of the Louisiana Purchase, they pressed forward with uncertainty. They covered 1000 miles separating the Gulf coast from Indian Territory, and on the way they did not meet (!!!) any of the warriors of the Comanche, Kiowa and Osage tribes hostile to any strangers, who without any hesitation scalped any white tramps who were not able to resist them , and after some time those who were capable were reduced to the state of motionless bloody bodies. But then, somewhere on the central plains, they found themselves in the hands of the Skiri, or tribe of Pawnee wolves, who practiced human sacrifice, believing that this ritual would guarantee the fertility of their land, and therefore a future good harvest. Glass was forced to watch as his friend was burned alive and as burning pine chips were stuck into his body. One can only guess what he felt at that moment, realizing that the same fate would soon await him.
According to John Myers, Glass would not soon undergo the same ordeal, since the nature of such killing was ritual. In anticipation of the next ceremony, the Pawnee treated the future victim well, "out of respect for the god or spirit to whom it would be dedicated."
Having recovered from the horror he had recently experienced, Glass began feverishly turning over in his mind ways for his own salvation. Sooner or later, the moment came when he thought that his last hour had struck: “Two men approached him, who tore off his clothes, then the leader pierced his skin with a splinter, which was considered a royal privilege. Glass put his hand into his bosom and pulled out a large packet of paint (cinnabar), which the savages valued more than anything else. He gave it to the proud and arrogant warriors, and with a face expressing respect and reverence, he bowed in a final farewell.” The leader was very pleased with his behavior, and he thought that, in this way, God gave him a sign that he should save Glass’s life and adopt him. In his book, John Myers wrote the following about this: “There is no record of any Thanksgiving turkey escaping from an ax raised over it and being promoted to the status of a domestic animal, but if such an event occurred, it was similar to save Hugh Glass."
Glass lived with the Pawnees for several years before entering the fur trade. He completely mastered the way of life of the Indians, married their woman, learned all the edible plants and insects, worked on the land and went to war with the soldiers. There is no doubt that this knowledge helped Glass survive in the wilderness after being attacked by a grizzly bear in 1823. Because of this alone, he can be considered an unusual person in the annals of American history.
Today, beaver trappers west of the Rocky Mountains are called "mountain men." Popular literature and movies often portray them as scabby simpletons, fodder for comic and cowboy stories. But in the early 19th century, fifty years before the traditional image of the cowboy appeared in the West, these mountain men lived through a myth-filled period of American history. This was Hugh Glass's west.
They called themselves mountain people, not mountain men. Mostly they were 20-30 years old, or a little older. It doesn’t matter whether out of curiosity or a rebellious spirit, but each of them decided to leave the comfort of the settlements in order to take
participation in the first commercial enterprise of the American West - the beaver fur trade.
Manufacturers in the US and Europe made their finest felt hats from beaver fur, and this required setting up traps in a remote part of the North American continent. This fishery, together with the trade in its products, connected cities, frontiers and Indians. This industry needed people like Hugh Glass, capable of living for a long time away from civilization, making do with minimal amenities. The mountaineers learned to distinguish hostile Indians from friendly ones, they learned to live with limited supplies a thousand miles from settlements, making do with only a rifle and a few simple tools. They traveled inside a vast space that was in the time of their grandparents. Their training schedule was very steep, and some of them simply did not physically survive to complete their full education. The storytellers among them would tell you that the mountain people live an incredible story every day. But the experience of Hugh Glass, when he was maimed by a grizzly bear and left by his companions to die without weapons or any tools or tools, and at the same time survived, was so incredible that the story about it became a legend among the mountaineers themselves.
Frontiersmen in the Rocky Mountains lived before and after William Ashley's fur trading era, but it was the adventures of Ashley's men on the banks of the Missouri River and among its beaver-rich western tributaries that marked the beginning of the classic "mountain men" period in the American West. The arduous rowing of the Missouri River in 1823 and the intense confrontation in the Arikara Indian villages placed Hugh Glass in the history of Western exploration along with other Ashley men whose personalities would later become legendary: Jedediah Smith, William Sublette, David Jackson, James Clayman, James Bridger , Moses Harris, Thomas Fitzpatrick and many others.
By 1820, renewed interest in the fur trade in the Rocky Mountains prompted St. Louis capitalists to look west. William Ashley, the lieutenant governor of Missouri, as well as a businessman and militia general, decided to enter the fur trade in 1822. Andrew Henry was at that time among the few men experienced in the trapping and fur trade of the Rocky Mountains. As a partner in the new fur company, Henry had to manage the field and Ashley had to supply him with the logistics.
The Ashley-Henry joint venture advertised in St. Louis newspapers in 1822 to recruit Missouri River hunters for their "Young Men's Venture." Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger and boatman Mike Fink were among the first to answer this year's call. The plan was to establish a fort on the upper Missouri, place keelboats there, and use it as a base from which trappers would escape into the mountains. The company had to harvest the fur harvest itself, and not buy it from the Indians for further resale.
In 1822, Ashley and Henry sailed a keelboat into the upper Missouri, and their men built a fort near the confluence of the Yellowstone River and the Missouri River. Ashley then returned to the lower river to organize and supply the 1823 set of hunters. Several trading companies competed fiercely for suitable labor in St. Louis, and Ashley this time had to make do with what was left. Still, he managed to catch a rich catch in the form of Hugh Glass, William Sublett, Thomas Fitzpatrick and James Clayman. And so, weeks of grueling work with poles and towing dragged on, and only occasionally the heavily loaded keelboats (the draft reached 40-60 feet) sailed against the current, filled with driftwood in the Missouri. If you managed to walk 15 miles in a day, then it was a good day. From Fort Henry, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, to St. Louis was approximately 2,000 river miles. In what is now the center of South Dakota, Jedediah Smith arrived from the upper river with a message from Henry to Ashley. Henry was in desperate need of horses because the Assiniboine Indians had stolen his entire herd. The rivers in the mountains beyond Fort Henry were impassable for boats, and Henry needed horses to transport men to hunting areas. Their coordination was well established. Ashley had not yet passed the Arikara villages, which specialized in the horse trade, when, having assembled a new herd, he divided his people, ordering one group to take the horses by land route to Fort Henry, while the rest were to continue towing boats along the Missouri to the same point appointments.
The Arikara, or Sanish, were a tribe of traders and farmers who lived in the middle reaches of the Missouri. Their villages served as trading points for horses from the south and firearms from the northeast, creating an intertribal barter economy throughout the Missouri River region in which the Arikara were middlemen. Arikara farms produced surpluses of corn, beans and tobacco, which they sold, thus making their own direct contribution to this economy. Their merchants did not understand why the intermediary status of the Arikara should become part of American trade extending west of the Mississippi. The Arikara did not want the newcomers to displace them from any kind of commerce along the Missouri River. American traders viewed the Arikara as an unpredictable tribe and did not want to deal with them. They were partly right, as the Arikara occasionally intimidated, robbed, and even killed individual white traders when they tried to pass through their territory. But, on the other hand, how differently could the Arikara react to the invasion of people completely alien to them into the sphere of activity on which the tribe directly depended? Their aggression was natural.
In 1823, two Arikara villages dominated the Missouri Bend and were home to nearly 2,500 people. The rough palisade, built of logs and mud, served as an effective barricade protecting both villages. Inside the palisades were earthen houses - rounded log frames, lined with willow branches and compacted with mud, provided good protection from the weather. From the palisades the open part of the near bank was clearly visible in all directions, and on the other side of the river lay open prairie. Both cities each had a fortified trading post, located in a position from which the river itself was clearly visible.
On May 30, Ashley dropped anchor in the middle of the Missouri opposite one of the villages. By this he made it clear that he wanted to enter into negotiations and open trade, and that he was not going to fight. To prove his peaceful nature, Ashley left his keelboat and went ashore to begin negotiations. During this, the Arikara demanded compensation for several of their warriors killed in a final clash with another fur trading company. Ashley told the Indians that he was not of this company and that his people had nothing to do with this battle, and as proof of his peaceful intentions he offered them gifts. But the Arikara apparently did not differentiate between competing companies of white men, so they accepted gifts as reparations for their lost people, and thought that Ashley had admitted his responsibility in the conflict for the other company. Regardless of what understanding or misunderstanding there was, the conversation soon turned to horses. Ashley had guns and ammunition, the Arikara had horses. According to the report, Ashley exchanged 25 muskets and ammunition for 19 horses. Twenty years earlier, the Arikara had paid the Cheyenne for each gun, a hundred rounds of ammunition and a knife, and one horse brought in from the south, so Ashley clearly overpaid them. If he thought that his confident appearance would create awe among the Arikara, and they would allow him to continue his journey up the river, then the distribution of guns could be regarded as an additional expression of his confidence. The bidding then ended abruptly as Ashley stated that he had no more guns to trade.
The horses needed supervision, so Ashley divided his team into a river group and a land group. He appointed Jedediah Smith as commander of a ground force consisting of forty people, including Glass. These men were to guard the horses outside the lower Arikara village and then drive them to Fort Henry. The boatmen remained aboard two keelboats thirty yards offshore, ready to sail for the same Fort Henry the next day. Both groups would have left the area around the Arikara village immediately after the deal, but they had to wait out the hurricane.
Someone from the Arikara warned Ashley that some warriors were planning to attack the Americans near the village or later on the open prairie. Ashley then decided to stay put and remain calm for now, and leave as soon as the wind died down. The ground party set up camp and settled down to rest. Two of her, Edward Rose and Aaron Stevens, slipped away to an Indian village to mingle with the women there. Accounts of the battle, which took place in the early morning of June 1, are completely at odds with each other. The following is a compilation of facts from several reports, which represents a more plausible version of what happened.
Sometime after midnight, three Arikara warriors climbed onto the boat and tried to get into Ashley's cabin, but he drove them away, waving a pistol. Then shouts were heard from the village below, and Edward Rose appeared running, shouting to the ground party that Stevens had been killed. Those on the shore began to argue about whether to go after Stevens’ body or, despite the darkness, to swim with the horses to the opposite shore. As a result, they decided to be ready and wait for dawn. Before dawn the Arikara called to them and told them that they could go to the village and take Stevens' body for the price of one horse. After a short discussion, the trappers agreed and paid the Indians. However, the Arikara returned without the body and declared that it was so mangled that there was nothing to give.
Dawn cleared up not only the sky, but also the situation. The land party was with their horses on an open bank, on which rose a hill, surrounded by a rude palisade, several hundred yards in extent, marking the boundary of the lower Arikara village. There they saw through the palisade the soldiers hammering charges into the barrels of their guns. The two keelboats were still moored in the swift current of the Missouri. Beside each of them a rowboat or skiff bobbed.
A few minutes later the first musket bullets flew at the people and horses on the shore. A barricade was quickly built from the dead animals, and the hunters could now take aim at the warriors behind the palisades. Some of them were called to the keelboats to pull the boats upstream. Ashley initially ordered the keelboats to be dragged closer to the shore, but his boatmen squatted in fear and could not move from fear. One keelboat was finally brought forward, but within a few minutes it ran hard aground on a sandbar. Then Ashley and one of his men boarded two rowing boats and rowed to the shore, which instantly attracted concentrated fire from the village. Several people from the shore jumped into one of the boats, and it floated towards the keelboat. Then, before the second attempt to reach the shore, the rower was hit by a bullet and the boat began to drift downstream. The Arikara, confident of victory, began to emerge from behind the palisade and approach the men from the ground party. Those of the whites who could swim immediately rushed into the river. Poor swimmers and some wounded quickly disappeared under water. The current carried several men past the keelboat as they reached out to grab it. Meanwhile, the Arikara warriors occupied the entire shore.
Ashley's team pulled the keelboat off the sandbar and floated downstream. The crew of the second keelboat pulled out an anchor and also set their ship freely floating downstream. With this maneuver, the trappers escaped the fire.
Scarcely fifteen minutes had passed since the shooting began, but in that short time Ashley had lost 14 men killed and 11 wounded. The Arikara lost between five and eight warriors killed and wounded.
Shocked by defeat, the expedition surrendered to the will of the current. Subsequently, the trappers tried to find the stragglers and bury those whose bodies were discovered. Hugh Glass, also wounded in this conflict, wrote the following letter to the family of John Gardiner, one of the dead: “It is my painful duty to inform you of the death of your son, who fell at the hands of the Indians in the early morning of the 2nd of June. He lived a little longer after he was shot. He managed to ask me to tell you about his sad fate. We brought him to the ship, and soon he died. Young man Smith, of our company, said a prayer over him, which greatly moved us all, and we are confident that John died in peace. We buried his body with others near this camp, and marked his grave with a log. We will send his things to you. Savages are very treacherous. We traded with them as friends, but after a strong hurricane with rain and thunder, they attacked us before dawn and killed and wounded many. I myself was wounded in the leg. Master Ashley is now obliged to remain in these places until these traitors are justly punished.
Yours, Hugh Glass."
Ashley's original plan (after the battle) was to plank the keelboats and try to pass the Arikara villages as fast as possible, but many of his men rejected this plan and he began to consider other options. He loaded the wounded into one of the keelboats and sent it back to St. Louis. Those who had enough impressions from the Western fur trade sailed with them. Along the way, this boat was supposed to deliver Ashley's goods for storage at Fort Kiowa, where the trading post of a rival fur trading company was located. He also sent Jedediah Smith and a certain French Canadian to the mouth of the Yellowstone River for additional men. Ashley chose a camp site down the river and waited for help to arrive.
Along with the wounded, Ashley sent letters to the troops stationed at Fort Atkinson, to the St. Louis newspapers, and to the senior Indian agent, calling for help, demanding that the Arikara be punished and Missouri reopened to American trade. The commander at Fort Atkinson, Colonel Henry Leavenworth, upon receiving a letter from Ashley, on his own initiative, immediately organized an expedition to the Arikara villages consisting of 230 officers and men of the 6th US Infantry, and personally led it. For the first time, the US Army moved against the Indians west of the Mississippi River. The soldiers themselves advanced on foot along the Missouri, and their food and ammunition were transported on keelboats. Leavenworth named his unit the Missouri Legion. Before arriving at the Arikara villages, he assembled a mixed force consisting of regular infantry, 50 volunteers from the Missouri Fur Company, 80 volunteers from the joint group of Ashley and Henry, and 500 Lakota horsemen. As a result, there were about 900 fighters.
Hugh Glass had not yet recovered from his wound in the first encounter with the Arikara, and so he did not participate in this campaign of revenge.
On August 10, after a day and a half of skirmishing, reconnaissance on the ground for an attack, and having used up almost all the available ammunition for two cannons and a mortar, Leavenworth ordered a ceasefire. He decided to negotiate with the Arikara, despite the fact that his officers persuaded him to begin storming the villages. His decision upset many in the Missouri Legion, especially the Lakota warriors, who lost their chance for glory in battle and went home. Ignoring the objections of his people, who believed that the Arikara should be roughly punished for killing Americans, the colonel entered into negotiations with their leaders. They accepted his conditions, and at night the Arikara silently left their villages. Leavenworth declared victory and ordered the troops to march back to Fort Atkinson. The departing troops saw smoke rising from abandoned villages. It was in defiance of Leavenworth's orders that employees of the Missouri Fur Company set fire to the empty houses. Left without villages, the Arikara lived for the next few years among other tribes (the Mandans and Hidatsas), wandering and, if possible, destroying American trappers.
After an unsuccessful combined (army-friendly Indian trappers) campaign against the Arikara in the summer of 1823, Ashley left the river and headed downriver along the bank. He and Henry now believed that the route to the mountains in the upper Missouri was now closed to them. He demanded too much in terms of people and finances. Simply put, the Indians of the region simply threw the trappers out of there. Now, the only thing the partners could do was to send their people overland into the mountains in order to get at least something after such a disaster. So Ashley went downriver to Fort Kiowa to trade some of his remaining goods there for horses, and Henry led the remaining 30 men (according to trapper Daniel Potts) and six pack horses to Fort Henry. Upon arrival, they locked all the premises and went south to the Crow Indians for the winter. Hugh Glass had by this time recovered sufficiently to go with Henry's group. This happened in August 1823. The battle with the Arikara was the first in a series of trials for Glass when he was a highlander, which almost cost him his life.
It took a month to recruit horses for the second group, led by Jedediah Smith. This party immediately went to the Crow country and was fully equipped for the next year's hunt. Ashley returned to St. Louis to his political duties and to his creditors. His men scattered in search of boron along both banks of the Wind River, and in the process established that the upper Green River was true beaver country. When news of this reached St. Louis in the summer of 1824, Ashley thought that he could now pay off his debts in full if he supported his trappers and brought the furs to St. Louis. His scheme for obtaining goods locally and delivering them soon developed into annual rendezvous (meetings) of trappers and Indians, which emphasized the seasonality of the fishery.
The battle with the Arikara forced Ashley and Henry to abandon the Missouri River region as their main supply line, and they pushed their people into the Rocky Mountains. This strategy brought the era of rendezvous closer. Hugh Glass and the other hunters in Henry's party, as well as Smith's party, left Missouri and headed west overland from Fort Kiowa, creating a cycle of adventures that became the stuff of legend in the American west.
Since Henry's new Fort was located in the territory of a hostile Blackfeet tribe, Andrew Henry walked as fast as he could, worried about the fate of the small contingent of trappers he left there. One of two things, either Hugh Glass voluntarily joined his party, or he was recruited by Ashley and assigned to it. One way or another, this action propelled Glass straight into the clutches of a grizzly bear and into legend.
Henry's men walked, leading pack horses. As stated above, Henry had thirty men, according to Daniel Potts, but according to trapper James Clayman, perhaps thirteen of them made up the crew of the keelboat, which remained on the river, which means that there were only seventeen men in the land party.
This ground party included James Potts and Moses "Black" Harris. Both of them left reports of an Indian attack on their party at the end of August. According to Potts, the trappers "were shot in the quiet hour of the night by the Mandan Grusvants Indians," resulting in two killed and two wounded. The “Grusvants” were not the Gros Ventres of the Prairie, who at that time were part of a confederation of openly white-hostile Blackfeet tribes (the Piegans, Siksikas, Kainas, and Gros Ventres), but the usually friendly Hidatsa of the Missouri River. The participation of the Mandan in the attack is also surprising. This may be the only recorded incident in this tribe's history where they attacked Euro-Americans.
In late August or early September 1823, Henry and the remaining fifteen men came to the Grand River Valley. Hugh Glass, as a hired hunter for the party, was moving at some distance from the rest of the people, searching for game in the bush, when he encountered a female grizzly bear and her two cubs. The bear attacked Glass and seriously injured him. I heard his screams, some trappers followed his voice and shot the bear. Once the severity of Glass's injuries was determined, Henry and most of the experienced trappers concluded that "old Glass would be dead before dawn." However, he was still alive at the hour they had appointed. Due to the wandering hostile Indian parties, Henry decided that it was necessary to move on, so he ordered the construction of a stretcher on which Glass was loaded, and the whole party set off. He was carried for two days, and then, since the slow pace made the threat of a surprise attack greatly increased, Henry called for two volunteers who could stay with Glass for a few days before his death and then bury him. For this he promised them an 80 dollar bonus. This plan allowed the party not only to speed up, but also to fulfill their Christian obligations towards their comrade. The experienced lumberjack John Fitzgerald and the young man who first found himself in the unexplored wilderness agreed to stay. The original account of the incident from James Hall, which was published in 1825, does not name these two brave men. In the other three reports only John Fitzgerald is mentioned. And finally, in 1838, Edmund Flagg's accounts named the second man - "Bridge". In his detailed study of the fur trade in the Rocky Mountains, historian Hiram Grittenden identified James Bridger as a nineteen-year-old youth and the youngest member of Henry's party, based on information left by upper Missouri River keelboat captain Joseph La Barge. Because Grittenden became the first author of a scientific study of historical documents era, many modern historians automatically cite his work, calling the second man James Bridger. Could the real Jim Bridger abandon a dying man, in this particular case Hugh Glass, to his fate?
Despite his faint breathing and eye twitching, Hugh Glass was still alive five days after Henry and the others left. Fitzgerald by this time was imbued with the idea that the Indians would soon find the lagging trio. Therefore, he began to ardently convince young Bridger that they had fulfilled their agreement, since they were guarding Glass much longer than the period that Henry had allotted for his life. Fearing for their own lives and believing that any day Glass would lose consciousness, the two men placed his squalid bed next to a spring oozing from the ground and headed for the fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone. They also took with them a pistol, a knife, a tomahawk and Glass's fire supplies - things that the dead man had no need for.
Realizing that he had been abandoned, Glass exerted all his strength and crawled towards the Missouri River, driven by the desire to survive and take revenge on the two. He needed food, weapons and ordinary hunting supplies, and this he could only get at the Brazeau trading post, another name - Fort Kiowa. This fort was located on the banks of the Missouri, a few miles above the mouth of the White River, and far enough down the river from the Arikara country that the journey would be long and dangerous.
Due to his injuries, the journey was initially tediously slow. Glass ate insects, snakes, whether they were edible or not, his stomach had already encountered such food. A week later he came across wolves in the process of killing and further devouring a buffalo calf. After waiting until the animals filled their bellies and left, he crawled under the cover of darkness to the half-eaten carcass. He remained in this place until only bones remained of the calf. Little by little his body came to its senses, and soon Glass felt a surge of strength. The meat diet made itself felt. Having partially recovered, Glass was now able to cover much greater distances. As they say, God helps those who help themselves, so Glass was incredibly lucky. As soon as he reached the banks of the Missouri, he met some friendly Lakota Indians, who gave him a leather boat, and he sailed downstream. In mid-October 1823, Hugh Glass limped into Fort Kiowa, having traveled over 250 miles.
After many weeks of fighting for his own life, a couple of days into Kiowa, Glass learned of plans to send a small group of traders to the Mandan villages located about three hundred miles upriver. Post manager Joseph Brazeau decided that tensions with the Arikara, which had spread from them to the Mandan, had eased enough for trade to be attempted again. The contingent was to consist of five men led by Antoine Citolux, better known as Langevin. Since Glass was Ashley's man, he was allowed to purchase a rifle, lead, gunpowder, and other goods on credit. He was in a hurry to move to the upper Missouri, hoping to catch Fitzgerald and Bridger at Fort Henry. When Langelin's Mackinaw pushed off from shore one early morning in mid-October, Hugh Glass was the sixth member of her crew. After six weeks of battling prevailing northwest winds and seasonally strong currents, the traders from Fort Kiowa were within one day's sail of the Mandan village. In this part of the river, just below the village, there was a large bend, or oxbow. And at this place Glass asked to be put ashore. He justified his request by saying that the direct route to the Maidan village by land was shorter and less boring than rowing a boat along the big bend. He believed that any time he gained along the way would bring him face to face with his intended victims sooner.
Something protected Glass and led him to the goal he had designated. Unfortunately for Langevin and his men, Brazeau's idea that the Indians had set foot on the road to peace turned out to be deeply flawed. On the same day that Glass stepped off the boat ashore, the Arikara attacked his fellow travelers and killed them all. A few miles from the river, Glass was spotted by women gathering firewood and immediately raised the alarm. A group of Arikara warriors on horseback quickly surrounded the lone trapper. His life was literally hanging by a thread, but then two Mandan men, who were watching this scene from the side, intervened. They decided that they would play a good joke on the Arikara if they took their next victim. They galloped up quickly, quickly pulled Glass onto one of the ponies and rode off just as quickly. A little later they took him to the post of Teton, located near their village, and owned by the Columbia Fur Company. It is not clear what the Mandan warriors were really motivated by when they snatched Glass from the hands of their Arikara friends, but fate again turned out to be favorable to him.
At the Titon trading post, Glass learned of the massacre of Langevin's party and that the people in this place had been living under constant fear of Arikara attack for the past several months. Did Glass himself feel fear now? He survived two extreme events: captivity by pirates and Pawnee. He was involved in three Indian attacks in which 21 people were killed and 16 wounded. He survived a grizzly bear attack on him. Be that as it may, revenge seemed to be in full control of him, since one night he left Titon, taking additional precautions: he crossed to the opposite bank, away from the Arikara camp, located next to the Mandan village.
What was happening at the mouth of Yellowstone at this time? Leaving Fitzgerald and Bridger to care for the "dying" Glass, Andrew Henry's party reached Fort Henry in late October. Because the trappers who first settled at the fort attributed their failures in harvesting furs to the hostility of the Blackfeet, Henry decided to move his enterprise further south to the Bighorn River valley. As a result, a second Fort Henry was erected near the confluence of the Little Bighorn and the Bighorn. This new position was nearly thirty miles south of the mouth of the Yellowstone River.
It was late November when Glass began his cold, long, 38-day journey from Teton Post to Fort Henry; a journey that led him to an empty fort.
There is no historical record describing Glass's feelings when he finally arrived at the deserted fort. It is also unknown how he learned that his company's new fort was built near the Bighorn River. Historians have pondered this, and decided that Henry left a written message at the abandoned post, which indicated the location of the new fort for the people sent by Ashley from St. Louis. Be that as it may, based on information received from a man named Allen, George Yount wrote in his chronicle that Hugh Glass came to the new Fort Henry on New Year's Eve 1824. Once the people had recovered from the shock of seeing the man they thought dead walking, they bombarded him with questions, which Glass answered conscientiously. Finally, he had a chance to ask his own question: Where were Fitzgerald and Bridger? After miles of suffering and hardship, one can imagine the depth of Glass's disappointment when he learned that Fitzgerald was long gone and only Bridger was at the fort. After talking with the young trapper, Glass realized that Fitzgerald was to blame for everything, and he decided to forgive Bridger. Now, in order to punish Fitzgerald and return his rifle, he needed to go to Fort Atkinson on the Missouri, where this desired object may have been located.
Glass spent part of the winter at Fort Henry, and then Henry needed to inform Ashley about current affairs. Henry thought that the message should first be delivered to Fort Atkinson, and from there to St. Louis. Due to poor weather conditions and Indian hostility, he concluded that five men must be selected to successfully complete the mission. Henry offered an additional bonus to those who decided to undertake this dangerous journey. Hugh Glass agreed to go first. Supposedly Fitzgerald was at Fort Atkinson, and he was the only reward that Glass needed
So, Hugh Glass, Marsh, Chapman, More and Dutton, on February 29, 1824, left Fort Henry on the Bighorn River and headed to the military post, which was located at Candle Bluffs on the Missouri River. They walked southeast, crossed the Tongue River, then came to the Powder River and followed it south to the place where it split into its northern and southern branches. From here they followed the south branch until they found themselves in a wide valley, where they turned southeast and, after 45 miles of travel, reached the North Platte River. As they continued along the North Platte, a long period of warm spring weather settled in and the river became free of ice. Then they built boats from buffalo skins and sailed down the river.
Near the confluence of the Laramie River and the North Platte River, the leather boats sailed directly toward the Indian camp. The chief went out to the water, showed with gestures that he was a friend, and in the Pawnee language invited the trappers to visit his camp. Believing that these Indians belonged to the friendly Pawnees with whom Glass had once lived, the mountain men accepted the invitation. Leaving Dutton with all their rifles to guard the boats, Glass, Marsh, Chapman and More, accompanied by the chief, went to the Indian tipis. Soon, during the conversation, Glass realized that they were facing hostile Arikaras, not Pawnees. He signaled to his companions, and at the first opportunity the trappers ran towards the river. More and Chapman were quickly killed, but Glass and Marsh managed to reach the hills and hide until nightfall. Dutton, hearing the sounds of a struggle, cast off from the shore and swam downstream. Soon he met Marsh, who was walking along the shore in the same direction. The two thought that Glass had also been killed and continued on their way. They reached Fort Atkinson in March without further incident.
Again Glass was left alone in the wilderness among hostile Indians. Again he had no rifle, and the nearest white settlement was three or four hundred miles away. However, later comparing his experience, for which he had Fitzgerald and Bridger to thank, with his current situation, Glass said to his fellow trapper: “Although I lost my rifle and all my booty, I felt very rich when I found my bullet-ridden bag, which contained a knife, flint and steel. These unsightly things can greatly lift a man's spirit when he is three or four hundred miles from anyone or any place."
Believing that the Arikara were wandering through the Platte River valley, Glass decided to leave the river and head straight across the rough terrain to Fort Kiowa. Since spring was the bison's calving season, the prairie was full of newborn calves. This allowed him to dine on fresh veal every night and be in excellent physical shape when he reached the Missouri River. At Fort Kiowa he learned that John Fitzgerald had enlisted in the army and was stationed at Fort Atkinson.
Sometime in June 1824, Hugh Glass finally arrived at Fort Atkinson. Burning with a thirst for revenge, he directly demanded a meeting with Fitzgerald, but the US Army had a different opinion on this matter. As a soldier, Fitzgerald was now government property, so the army could not allow Glass to harm him. After listening carefully to Glass's story, the captain returned to him his rifle, which Fitzgerald still kept in his possession, and advised the mountaineer not to remember him as long as he remained a soldier in the US Army.
Overjoyed to have his rifle back and upset that he had failed to spoil Fitzgerald's hide, Glass walked west from Missouri. After several months of doing odd jobs, he decided to try his luck in another part of the country, and joined a fur company that was heading to Santa Fe.
Highlander and friend of Hugh Glass, George Yount, left much of the information relating to Glass's life after his departure from Fort Atkinson. According to Yount, Glass was given $300 at the fort to "appease his desire for revenge, and to compensate him, at least in part, for the hardships he had to endure." He used this money to travel to settlements far west of Missouri, and, in 1824, became a partner in one of the trading enterprises in New Mexico. In Santa Fe, Glass befriended a Frenchman named Dubreuil, and the pair began trading and setting up traps along the Gila River. After a year of such activity southwest of Santa Fe, Glass moved to Taos. There he hired Etienne Provost to catch beaver in southern Colorado, in the territory of the Ute Indians. One day, while canoeing down the river, Glass's group noticed a lone Indian woman on the shore. She belonged to the Shoshoni tribe, which at that time was at war with the Utes and, therefore, was hostile to any whites engaged in trade with their enemy. As soon as Glass and his men swam closer to the woman and offered her beaver meat, their sudden appearance frightened her and she ran away, screaming terribly. The Shoshone warriors, who were resting in the neighborhood, came running to the cry, and in a matter of seconds they fired a cloud of arrows at the confused mountaineers. As a result, one of the trappers was killed, and Glass was left with an arrowhead in his back. He had to endure the pain of a stinging wound the entire 700 mile journey to Taos. There he recovered for a long time, and then joined a group of trappers that was heading into the beaver areas near the Yellowstone River. There is no information about the events in Glass's life during his stay in the Yellowstone area in 1827-28. There is only the story of Philip Covington, who worked in conjunction with William Sublette in the rendezvous caravan during the same years. Glass also attended the Bear Lake Rendezvous in 1828. There is proof of this. Because of the monopoly high prices that Smith, Jackson and Sublette charged at this rendezvous, the independent trappers asked Glass to introduce their group to Kenneth McKenzie and invite the American Fur Company to attend the 1829 rendezvous with the trading caravan. Therefore, after leaving the 1828 rendezvous, Glass headed to Fort Floyd, a post of the American Fur Company, located near the mouth of the Yellowstone River, to talk there with its agent McKenzie.
Glass's movements in 1829 are uncertain, but it can be assumed that he attended the Pier's Hole rendezvous to report to the independent trappers the results of his visit to MacKenzie. He probably did not make the long journey to Fort Floyd in vain, since the American Fur Company planned to send a trading caravan led by Fontenelle and Dripps to the rendezvous in 1830.
In the spring of 1830, Glass set traps in the upper Missouri, in the area of the newly founded Fort Union. According to historian Grittenden, Glass was the fort's hired hunter, and killed so many bighorn sheep on the hillsides opposite the fort that the hills were named Glass Bluffs. On an 1874 map of the Montana Territory, these hills near the mouth of the Yellowstone River are designated Glass Bluffs.
The ledger of the American Fur Company indicates that Hugh Glass, a “free man,” regularly traded at Fort Union in 1831-33. The same ledger indicates that Johnson Gardner, another famous free trapper, was at this fort during the same years. Gardner was a member of the Henry-Ashley party in 1822 and later acted as an independent trapper and trader in the Rocky Mountains. Since Glass and Gardner were in the same Ashley-Henry party, it can be assumed that they had a friendly relationship. It was probably easier for the two old trappers to deal with the trading post together.
To better develop trade with the Crow Indians, in the summer of 1832, Samuel Tulloch was sent to the Yellowstone River. There he was to establish a new trading post near the mouth of the Bighorn River. This trading post was called Fort Cass, and it was located three miles below where the Bighorn River flows into Yellowstone. Soon after the construction of this post, Glass began supplying meat to it.
In the early spring of 1833, Glass left Fort Cass with Edward Rose and Alain Menard to hunt beaver nearby downriver. As they crossed the river on the ice, they were ambushed by the Arikara, who were hidden on the opposite bank. The men were unlucky in that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Arikara raiding party was engaged in horse theft, and was just conducting reconnaissance in the vicinity of the fort when they noticed the approaching trappers. All three were killed on the spot, scalped and completely robbed.
Another employee of Ashley's company, James Beckworth, provided his own account of the death of Hugh Glass, in which he stated that he was at Fort Cass in the spring of 1833 and personally discovered the bodies of three hunters lying on the ice. With the exception of the report that Glass and his two companions were killed on the Yellowstone River in the spring of 1833, no other part of Beckworth's account matches any other proven accounts of the period. Beckworth concluded his version of Glass's story with a description of the funerals of the three trappers, during which the Crow Indians expressed their grief over the death of the celebrated veteran with great emotion.
“We returned to the site and buried three men, whose bodies presented the most terrible image I have ever seen. The crying was terrible. These three were well known and highly valued by the Crows. When their bodies were laid in their final resting place, countless fingers were voluntarily cut off and thrown into the grave. Cut hair and various trinkets were also sent there and, finally, the grave was filled up.”
Soon, the Arikara raiding party that killed Glass and his two companions arrived at the headwaters of the Powder River, where they encountered a trapper camp led by Johnson Gardner. The Indians pretended to be Pawnees, and the trappers allowed them to sit down to warm themselves near their fires. During a leisurely conversation, the trappers drew attention to one of the Indians, who had the Glass rifle known to everyone; other Indians also had things with them that had previously belonged to the killed trappers. As is to be expected in such situations, a heated fight ensued and two of the Arikara were captured, the rest fled. Having examined in detail Glass' rifle and other familiar belongings of his slain comrades, Gardner and the rest of the trappers were filled with revenge. Gardner scalped the Indians and then burned them alive in a fire when they could not clearly explain how they obtained the equipment.
In 1839, Edmund Flagg recorded the death of Johnson Gardner.
“Soon after this he himself fell into the hands of the Arikara, who inflicted upon him the same terrible death.” That is, the Indians burned Gardner alive.
GRIZZLY ATTACK ON JEDEDIAH SMITH.
Hugh Glass was not the only person to be attacked by a ferocious grizzly bear in the fall of 1823. Jedediah Smith joined the Ashley-Henry trapper party in 1822, and, like Glass, took part in Ashley's disastrous attempt in the summer of 1823 to establish trade relations with the Arikara Indians in their villages along the Missouri River. Before leaving for St. Louis, Ashley appointed Smith captain of a party of trappers numbering ten people, gave him the task of leading these people overland west to the country of the Crow Indians and trying to establish a beaver fishery there. Thomas Fitzpatrick was appointed as Smith's deputy, and the party also included William Sublette, Edward Rose, Thomas Eddy, Jim Clayman and others. Andrew Henry, as already stated, led the second party, which went to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and in it was Hugh Glass.
In late September, Smith's party left Fort Kiowa and moved southeast to what is now Pierre, South Dakota, and soon forded the White River. The trappers then turned northwest and headed toward the south branch of the Cheyenne River. Having crossed the mountain range, they entered the Black Hills, from them they descended into the Badlands and went to the Powder River. Smith chose the only route through a vast depression overgrown with bushes. They led their horses, pushing their way on foot through the dense thicket west of Beaver Creek. Suddenly the silence of the day was broken by a loud cracking of branches, and a grizzly bear appeared from the underbrush, clearing its way down into the valley and heading straight towards the people. A terribly growling bear with bared fangs rushed at the column of people, stopped near its middle, turned and walked in a parallel course to its head. Both people and horses reacted to this with panic: people screamed in fear, frightened horses snored furiously. James Kleiman left the only evidence of this incident. Smith, who was walking at the head of the column, ran into the open to divert the attention of the beast. Having emerged from the thicket, he came face to face with a bear. He didn't even have time to raise his rifle. Kleiman described it this way: “The grizzly immediately rushed at the captain, grabbed him by the head and stretched him across the ground. Then he took him by the belt, but, fortunately, his round bag and a large knife were hanging there, which he tore off. However, several broken ribs and a torn head were bad wounds.”
The powerful embrace of the beast would have been fatal for the man if the gray clawed paws had not collided with Smith’s bag and blade. As soon as Smith was on the ground, the bear's razor-sharp claws were used, with which the bear tore and tore his clothes into strips. Kleiman wrote: “He captured almost the entire head of Smith in his capacious mouth, close to his left eye on one side and right ear on the other, and exposed the skull near the top of his head, leaving white stripes where his fangs had passed, and severely tore there is one ear along the outer rim.”
One of the trappers (possibly Arthur Black, who was later credited with rescuing Smith from grizzlies twice), killed the monster before it could completely tear apart their captain. A bloodied, crippled Smith, still conscious, lay at the feet of his men, who stomped around him in confusion, sickened by the sight of blood. Kleiman recalled: “None of us had surgical knowledge, there was no one who would come up, understand everything and say, why are you all walking around here?” No one seemed to have the courage to touch Smith's mangled head and skinned face and nearly flayed scalp to give him the necessary first aid.
Finally, Kleiman asked Smith what should be done? The captain began to give instructions with stoic calm. After sending a couple of men to fetch water, he told Kleiman to take a needle and stitch up the wounds on his head, from which blood was flowing. He rummaged through his things, found scissors and began to cut off the tangled hair on the captain's bloody scalp. With only an ordinary sewing kit, and without any medical knowledge, Kleiman began the first operation in his life to treat such a wound. Having inserted an ordinary thread into the eye of a needle, “I began to stitch all the wounds in the best possible way, according to my abilities and according to the captain’s instructions; I told him that only my ear was left torn, but there was nothing I could do about it.” Smith was not satisfied with this and said: “Try to sew it up somehow.” Kleiman recalled: “Resigned, the stubborn student steadied himself and redoubled his efforts to save Smith’s face. I passed the needle many times, stitching the torn flesh together as beautifully as my hands could."
Within minutes, the fresh embroidery on Smith's torn ear was completed, but the scars of that encounter with a grizzly bear remained with him for the rest of his life (Jedediah Smith was killed by Comanches in 1831). With his eyebrow torn off, his ear torn apart, and scars on his face and head, Smith subsequently always wore long hair that hung loosely over his face, hiding his disfigured appearance. Kleiman put it this way: “We learned an unforgettable lesson about the character of the grizzly bear.”
Water was found one mile from the scene of this terrible incident. The supremely steely Smith was able to mount his horse on his own and ride to the spot where the trappers had set up camp near the water. Kleiman recalled: “We set up one tent that we had and made it as comfortable as possible in application to the prevailing circumstances.”
Later Fitzpatrick went forward at the head of most of the party, while two men and Smith remained in place to wait for the latter's wounds to heal. After almost two weeks he was able to ride normally, and the trio soon caught up with the rest of the group. Their journey continued west into the mountainous regions, and upon arrival they spent the winter in a Crow village on the Wind River, probably near the present-day town of Duboys, Wyoming.
Smith family lore says that Jedediah himself killed the bear that nearly killed him, but this is unlikely. There is also a legend that Smith had the skin and claw of a bear with him when he returned to St. Louis. Whether this is true or not, these relics have not survived anyway.
Although the exact date of the grizzly attack on Smith near the Cheyenne River is unknown, it is likely that it occurred while Hugh Glass was trying to survive by crawling through the brush along the Grand River a couple hundred miles away. Glass became a legend for his remarkable survival of a grizzly bear attack, and Jedediah Smith became a legend among the mountain men for his leadership and research knowledge.
Elizaveta Buta
Survivor Hugh Glass. True story
Those who have been beaten by life will achieve more,
He who has eaten a pound of salt values honey more highly,
He who shed tears laughs sincerely,
He who has died knows that he lives.
1859 Napa Valley
In the last days of summer, the Napa Valley was literally drenched in sunshine. Every square centimeter of George Yount's vast domain was basking in the pre-sunset rays. The air was filled with lively and somehow melancholy sounds. It seemed that with the onset of evening everything here plunged into a light slumber, systematically flowing into deep sleep. Somewhere in the distance, a newly built mill rumbled, the dissatisfied cries of hired workers could be heard, and endless plantations of ripening grapes could be seen. Yount recently completed construction of his own winery. This year he planned to make his first batch of wine.
The valley was safely bypassed by the Gold Rush, and trappers had nothing to do here. More precisely, ten years ago it was impossible to meet a pale-faced person here at all. And a clash with the Redskins also seemed unlikely. The deserted but fertile land of the Napa Valley belonged to Mexico. When George Yount decided he had had enough adventure for his life, he remembered his old connections and turned to an old friend for help. He helped him get sixteen and a half acres of land that no one needed. So George Yount became the first official settler of the Napa Valley. Of course, people already lived here, but there were so few of them that Yunt could rightfully consider himself a conqueror of endless spaces. The improbably rapidly aging fellow trappers, the adventurers whose golden age had ended many years ago, disapproved of Yount's decision to become a farmer. However, everyone has their own path, and it is not for them to judge Yunt. Eventually, even the legendary John Colter returned to St. Louis, got married and became an ordinary farmer. True, it only lasted for a few years. The unprepossessing and hard life quickly killed the legendary trapper. Literally three years after retiring, Colter fell ill with jaundice and died somewhere near New Haven.
George Yount was so busy building a farm that he did not even notice how several years of his life had passed. Not the most disgusting ones, I must admit. He was rightfully considered here the most respected person in the city, or rather, in a small settlement, but that’s not so important. He liked to spend evenings on the small terrace of his house. Old friends, local residents, heads of administration from neighboring settlements and young adventurers often visited him. The latter came here mainly in search of accommodation for the night. The Yount Ranch was open to anyone who needed it. George Yount's only requirement was these evening gatherings on the terrace of his Napa Valley home. Here, together with the guest, according to the old trapper habit, they lit a pipe, and Yount started his endless stories. He was an excellent storyteller, so guests listened with pleasure to stories from half a century ago. Fifty percent of them were complete fiction, but exactly the same amount of them were true. Now, contemplating the surprisingly calm expanses flooded with an endlessly joyful sun, all the stories about the legendary trappers and great expeditions seemed even too realistic. Even if all this did not really happen, all these legends would simply need to be invented for such sunny and quiet evenings of the last days of summer.
In that distant year of 1859, the famous writer and no less famous adventurer named Henry Dana decided to stay at the Yunta ranch. He was a thin, gloomy man in his early forties with a very heavy look. He wore his hair long and was always dressed in a formal suit, topped off with a bowler hat that hid his receding hairline. It was already difficult to discern in him the completely insane guy who abandoned his studies at a prestigious university to serve as a sailor on a merchant ship. And yet he was not adapted to a quiet and measured life. Henry Dana had been a fairly successful politician in Massachusetts for many years. He came to California in connection with some business. Having learned that the legendary George Yount, famous for his stories about trappers, lived nearby, Dana decided to stay at the Yount ranch for some time. All these stories could easily make up more than one book.
Have you ever heard of a man who killed a bear with his bare hands? - Henry asked Dana that evening. They sat on the terrace, George's wife brought them young, even too young, wine, and the conversation smoothly turned to times long past.
I even know a couple of such daredevils,” George chuckled, “the banks of Missouri are full of grizzlies.” Almost every trapper has encountered them, although most often the fight ended before it began. If the bear did attack, the result was not difficult to predict, but sometimes you were lucky. Jedediah Smith, one of Ashley's hundred, killed a bear, Hugh Glass...
I read about a man who killed a bear with one knife. He was considered dead and left, but he crawled three hundred kilometers and still survived. - Henry Dana even leaned forward a little from the curiosity that burned him. He read that story in one of the magazines. It was published by a journalist, a collector of stories, back in the 1820s. Moreover, the author of the article was not at all interested in the man who defeated the grizzly bear. The journalist did not even mention his name at that time, limiting himself to only describing the fight itself. Henry Dana remembered that story for the rest of his life, but did not even hope to find out the details of that man’s life.
His name was Hugh Glass,” George Yount nodded slowly. - A man of amazing honesty. Do you know what the trappers said about him? Born to run. His story began long before the fight with the bear.
1823
Dying is only difficult the first time. Then it turns into a game. Fate loves it when there is a person who challenges it. She always takes the fight. She likes to watch with interest how a person tries to deceive her. No one has ever succeeded in doing this, but sometimes, very rarely, fate gives in to the crazy people desperately trying to overtake it at a turn.
An incomprehensible creature came out into a clearing near the shore of the majestic Grand River. Without a doubt, a predator. Dangerous. All wrapped in the skins of the animals he killed. These predators appeared here recently. They were very similar to the Arikara Indians, to whom the local forests were already accustomed. Yet these predators were different from the Indians. They were much more dangerous and ruthless. Their weapons were capable of destroying any beast in just an instant.
Hugh Glass peered with horror into the shining, black eyes of the bear. The grizzly watched the creature with no less horror. This continued for one, very long moment. Then the clearing was poisoned by the monstrous scream of Hugh Glass. This voice literally destroyed the poor animal’s hearing. All her instincts begged her to run away from here. Then a small, one-year-old bear cub came into the bear’s field of vision. The second one carelessly hobbled towards an incomprehensible creature wrapped in the skins of local animals. The she-bear's instincts instantly changed her mind. She must protect her children, so she cannot run. The animal growled with no less frenzy.
Hugh Glass knew very well that when meeting a bear in the forest, it was important to scare the animal. This is the only chance for salvation. Only this time this technique did not work. The scream undoubtedly scared the grizzly, but she had no intention of running. Two one-year-old bear cubs deprived her of this opportunity. One of the most dangerous and unpredictable animals in the world accepted his challenge. He saw it in the grizzly bear's brilliant black eyes. Just a couple of seconds to reload the gun. He was an excellent hunter, so this was not a problem. As soon as the bear took the first, cautious step towards Hugh, he fired. There was a dull sound, barely audible against the background of the cacophony of screams. Misfire.
Two men ran out into the clearing. They ran to the heartbreaking screams coming from the clearing. One was a little older. His face had long been frozen with indifferent disgust towards what was happening. The second is still just a boy with tousled hair.
These two did not cause fear to the bear. They didn't scream. The bear bent slightly and in one jump overtook Glass. The trapper managed to get his last hope for the fight. Dying is not scary if you know that the last moments of your life will be spent in battle. Glass managed to stick his hunting knife into the animal’s chest. The bear roared in pain. Popping sounds were heard from somewhere on the other side. He didn't even have time to realize that these were shots. His entire consciousness was swallowed up by the giant mouth of a bear with fangs bared in rage.
The bullet that hit the target left the bear no chance to live. There were only a few moments of agony left in her arsenal. In a futile rage, she gathered the strength that was leaving her and struck the most dangerous of the predators in the clearing. Her claws ran down the entire right side of Glass's body. Behind the claws there were deep grooves from which blood flowed. Dying, the bear was still able to neutralize at least one of the trappers in the clearing. This left a chance for life for her children.
This stern man in the picture is a bright representative of a now rare profession - trapper, fur-bearing animal hunter, trap specialist. They could not accurately establish his origin; they say, however, that in his youth he was involved in the activities of Jean Lafitte, a pirate and smuggler. What is known for sure is that Hugh (that was his name) fell for the advertisement of William Henry Ashley in the newspapers of St. Louis in 1822 - “... 100 enterprising young men are required ... to reach the sources of the Missouri ... employment - two, three, or four years" - the ad received a short name - "Ashley's Hundred".
Literally from the first days of the expedition, Hugo established himself as a skilled and hardworking hunter. In August 1823, in what is now South Dakota, Hugh encountered two grizzly bear cubs and their mother. He did not have time to use the gun - the bear attacked instantly. I had to fight with a knife, my comrades arrived and the bear was finished. However, Hugh also suffered seriously. W. G. Ashley was convinced that a person would not survive after such wounds and asked two volunteers to stay with the wounded comrade and bury him. Fitzgerald and Bridger (by the way, a very outstanding personality) volunteered.
Later they will tell the story of the Indian attack, they say they were forced to take the gun and equipment of the dying man and suddenly flee. They had already dug a hole for him, covered Hugo with a bearskin and flashed his heels. But at first they simply said that Hugh died; they came up with the Indians later.
Meanwhile, Hugo had come to his senses and was obviously somewhat surprised by the lack of comrades, weapons and equipment. A broken leg, deep (to the ribs) wounds on the back and suppuration. 300 km to civilization and a knife in hand. I think - at first he swore from the bottom of his heart. Then he threw the skin of a freshly killed bear over the fresh wounds - so that the larvae from the untreated skin would at the same time rid him of gangrene and crawled. The journey to the Cheyenne River took 6 weeks. Diet: berries and roots. Plus, once we managed to drive away two wolves from a killed young bison. On Cheyenne he assembled a raft. Well, you understand, he got to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri.
It took a long time to recover. He took a gun and decided to take revenge. But Bridger had just gotten married and Hugh forgave him in absentia. And Fitzgerald hid in the ranks of the US Army - killing a soldier in those days meant a certain death sentence. In 1833, Hugo was killed by Indians.
It was an interesting time. Conquest of the Wild West. Cowboys and Indians. Heroes. Scoundrels. Researchers. Adventurers. The story inspired Roger Zelazny to write his only non-fiction story. And there is, of course, a film.
At the beginning of the year, a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, “The Revenant,” was released. But as you know, the film is based on a real story, which I would like to talk about in more detail.
Hugh Glass is a famous American pioneer, trapper and explorer, who forever went down in history thanks to his miraculous rescue from the very heart of the American taiga and subsequent adventures.
Here's what we know about him...
Before the advent of the hydrocarbon era, when oil and coal became the most valuable resources in the world, the fur of fur-bearing animals played such a role. It is with the extraction of fur that, for example, the development of all of Siberia and the Far East of Russia is connected. In the 16th-17th centuries in Russia, deposits of silver and gold were practically unknown, but it was necessary to trade with other countries - this is what pushed the Russian people further and further east in search of liquid currency: valuable skins of sable, silver fox and ermine. These valuable skins were called “soft junk” at the time.
The same process occurred in the USA. From the very beginning of the development of the North American continent, European colonists began to buy skins from the Indians and mine them themselves - this wealth was exported in whole ships to the Old World. The French became involved in the fur trade in the 16th century; the British, who established trading posts near Hudson Bay in what is now Canada, and the Dutch in the 17th century. By the 19th century, when the rapid development of industry began, an extensive network of trading companies engaged in the extraction and sale of fur had already formed in North America.
For a long time, the fur trade was one of the pillars of the American economy - long before the gold rush in California and Alaska, thousands of professional hunters flocked to the endless forests of the northwest for furry gold. They were called mountain men or trappers. Not only did they disappear in the forest for years, setting snares and hunting animals with firearms for their own benefit, but they also performed another important role.
These were the first white people in completely wild and unexplored places.
It was they who, along their journey, filled out diaries, maps, made sketches and notes about the rivers they sailed along and the people they met. Subsequently, many of them began to serve as guides for scientific expeditions, accompanying the first caravans of settlers along the Oregon Trail; others established trading posts along the settler routes or were recruited as scouts for the U.S. Army.
During the heyday of the fur trade in the 1820s-1840s, about 3,000 people could call themselves mountain men. One of them was Hugh Glass, who became a true American legend.
Glass was born in 1780 into a family of Irish settlers living in Pennsylvania. From his youth, he felt a craving for adventure, and distant, unexplored lands attracted the young man better than any magnet. And it becomes clear why: the era of the famous conquest of the western lands of North America began in the USA, when every day new groups of pioneers and explorers went further and further to the west. Many of them did not return - Indian arrows, diseases, predators and natural elements took their toll, but the wealth and mystery of distant lands did not stop more and more frontiersmen.
The name frontierman comes from the English word frontier. The frontier in the 19th century was the name given to the area between the wild, undeveloped western lands and the already annexed eastern lands. The people who lived in this zone were called frontiermen. They worked as hunters, guides, builders, explorers and contactors with various Indian tribes. It was dangerous and hard work, interesting, but full of hardships. As the wild lands were developed, the frontier shifted east - to the East Coast itself, until it finally ceased to exist.
Glass probably left home at a young age and went to the frontier in search of adventure and work. Most information about his early life is missing, but we do know that from 1816 to 1818 he was part of the crew of a pirate ship that attacked merchant ships along the rivers and along the sea coast. It is unknown whether Glass voluntarily joined the pirate squad, or whether he was captured and left with no other choice. Be that as it may, 2 years later, during another pirate raid, Glass decided to escape from the ship: he jumped from the ship into the water and swam 4 kilometers to the Gulf Coast. Without any equipment, he walked north day after day, and was eventually captured by the Pawnee Indians. Glass was lucky that the tribal leader allowed him to stay in the tribe and provided him with everything he needed. The American lived with the Indians for 3 years, acquiring the skills of surviving in the wild and hunting animals, learned the Pawnee language and even took one of the Pawnee girls as his wife. Three years later, as an ambassador from the Pawnees, he went to meet the American delegation, and after negotiations decided not to return to the Indians.
In 1822, Glass decided to join the expedition of the famous entrepreneur William Ashley, who planned to explore the tributaries of the Missouri River for hunting grounds for a new fur company, organized by William Ashley himself and his business partner Andrew Henry. Many famous frontiermen and trappers joined the expedition; Hugh Glass also decided to try his luck. The experience gained and excellent physical data seemed sufficient to William Ashley, and at the beginning of 1823, Glass and his detachment set out on a campaign.
A few weeks later, explorers traveling up the Missouri River were ambushed by hostile Arikara Indians. 14 of the squad were killed and 11, including Glass, were wounded. William and Andrew suggested moving on and passing the dangerous section of the river as quickly as possible, but most of the detachment believed that large forces of Indians would be waiting for them ahead, and continuing along the intended route would be tantamount to suicide.
Having sent a boat with wounded comrades down the river to the nearest fort, the Americans began to wait for reinforcements. Finally, in early August, additional forces arrived and attacked the Arikara and drove them back to their settlements. Peace was made with the Indians, and they agreed not to interfere with the group of explorers in the future. After this, the volunteers who came to help went back.
Since the confrontation with the Redskins resulted in significant delays, William Ashley decided to split his men into two groups and send them along two different routes to catch up and explore the area faster. Moreover, although a non-aggression pact was concluded with the Arikara, none of the Americans thought of trusting the Indians, preferring to leave the intended route along the Missouri River. Glass ended up in the second squad, led by Andrew Henry. They had to leave the Missouri River and continue along one of its tributaries, the Grand River. Another detachment rafted down the river and began establishing trade relations with the Crow Indians in order to somehow compensate for the losses from the unsuccessful start of the campaign. Both detachments were supposed to meet at Fort Henry, located upstream (see map).
Some time after the division of the detachment, Andrew Henry's detachment began to be disturbed by the Indian wars of the Mandan tribe: throughout the journey they ambushed the Americans, keeping them in constant tension. The frontiermen managed to avoid deaths, but they were exhausted and wanted to quickly get out of the inhospitable Indian lands.
In early September 1823, Glass and his party were exploring the Grand River. Hugh, who was acting as a hunter, was tracking a deer near a temporary camp when he suddenly came across a mother bear and two cubs. The enraged animal rushed at the man, inflicting many terrible wounds, and only his comrades who arrived in time to the screams were able to kill the grizzly, but Glass had already lost consciousness by that time.
After examining the wounded man, everyone came to the conclusion that Glass would hardly last a few days. As luck would have it, it was on these days that the Mandan Indians most annoyed the Americans and literally followed on their heels. Any delay in progress was tantamount to death, and a bleeding Glass would greatly slow down the squad's progress. At the general meeting, a difficult decision was made: Hugh was left in place along with two volunteers, who would bury him with all honors, and then catch up with the detachment.
John Fitzgerald (23 years old) and Jim Bridger (19 years old) volunteered to carry out the mission. A few hours later, the main detachment left the camp and continued on its way, leaving two volunteers with the wounded Grasse. They were sure that Hugh would die the next morning, but the next day, and two and three days later, he was still alive. Briefly regaining consciousness, Glass fell asleep again, and this continued for several days in a row.
The two volunteers' anxiety about being discovered by the Indians grew, and on the fifth day it turned into a state of panic. Finally, Fitzgerald managed to convince Bridger that the wounded man would not survive in any case, and the Mandan Indians could discover them at any moment, and a bloody massacre could not be avoided. They left on the morning of the sixth day, leaving the dying man nothing but a fur cape, and taking his personal belongings... Later they would catch up with their squad and tell Andrew Henry that they had buried Glass after he had given up the ghost.
Glass woke up the next day, lying under a fur cape from a killed bear. Not seeing two guardians nearby and discovering the loss of personal belongings, he immediately realized what had happened. He had a broken leg, many muscles were torn, the wounds on his back were festering, and every breath was filled with sharp pain. Driven by the desire to live and take revenge on the two fugitives, he decided to get out of the wilderness at any cost. The closest settlement of white people was Fort Kiowa, located at a distance of about 350 km from the place of the bear attack. Having approximately determined the south-eastern direction, Glass began to slowly crawl towards the intended target.
In the first days, he crawled no more than a kilometer, eating roots and wild berries along the way. Sometimes dead fish washed up on the banks of the river, and once he found the carcass of a dead bison half-eaten by wolves. And although the meat of the animal was a little rotten, it was this that allowed Glass to obtain the energy necessary for the further campaign. By making something like a bandage for his leg and finding a stick that was comfortable to lean on while walking, he was able to increase the speed of his movement. Two weeks after the start of his journey, an exhausted Hugh met a detachment of friendly Indians of the Lakota tribe, who treated his wounds with herbal infusions, gave him food and, most importantly, a canoe, with the help of which Glass was able to eventually reach Fort Kiowa. His journey took about 3 weeks.
For several days, Hugh Glass came to his senses, healing his terrible wounds. Upon learning that the fort commandant had decided to send a group of 5 traders to the Mandan Indian village to restore friendly relations, Glass immediately joined the detachment. The Indian village was just up the Missouri, and Hugh hoped that by reaching Fort Henry he could take revenge on Fitzgerald and Bridger. For six weeks the Americans fought their way through the strong current of the river, and when there was a day's journey left before the Indian settlement, Glass decided to leave his fellow travelers, since he considered it more profitable to reach the village on foot, instead of using boats against the current to go around the large bend of the river that was visible ahead. . Glass knew that the more time he saved, the faster he would find the escaped guardians.
At this very time, the wars of the Arikara tribe were approaching the Mandana settlement - the Indians constantly fought with each other, and inter-tribal hatred was often much greater than hatred of the pale-faced invaders. This is what saved Glass - the warriors of the two tribes noticed the white man at the same time, and it so happened that the Mandana Indians, sitting on horseback, were the first to approach him. Deciding to annoy their enemies, they saved the American’s life and even delivered him safe and sound to the nearest trading post of the American Fur Company, located near Fort Tilton.
This is interesting: the traders who accompanied Glass were much less fortunate. They were caught by the Arikara Indians, who killed and scalped all five.
In late November, Hugh Glass began his 38-day trek from Fort Tilton toward Fort Henry. Winter came to these parts unusually early, the river was frozen, and a cold north wind blew across the prairie and snow fell. The temperature at night could drop below 20 degrees below zero, but the stubborn traveler went to his goal. Finally reaching Fort Henry on New Year's Eve, Glass appeared before the eyes of the surprised members of his detachment. Fitzgerald had left the fort several weeks ago, but Bridger was still there, and Glass went straight to him with the firm conviction of shooting the traitor. But, having learned that young Bridger had recently married and his wife was expecting a child, Hugh changed his mind and forgave his former guardian.
Glass stayed at the fort for several months to wait out the onset of cold weather and fulfill the Fur Company's task - to deliver the skins to the fort located downstream of the Missouri. The trappers, consisting of five people, set off on the mission at the end of February. One day they saw an Indian chief in the robes of the Pawnee tribe, standing on the bank of the river and friendly inviting them to go ashore and have dinner at the Indian settlement. Confident that these were indeed the Pawnees, who were known for their friendliness towards the palefaces, the trappers accepted the invitation. The leader did not know that Glass had lived for a long time in the Pawnee tribe and understood Indian dialects, therefore, when communicating with his entourage, he spoke the Arikara language, confident that the Americans would not be able to understand the differences. But Glass realized that the Redskins wanted to outwit them, and in fact it was the Arikara, pretending to be Pawnee, luring them into a trap.
The trappers rushed in different directions, but two of them were immediately killed by Indian arrows. The other two, who ran in the opposite direction from Glass, disappeared into the forests and safely reached the fort, and Hugh himself was once again left alone in a forest full of danger, which the embittered Arikara were combing. But the Indians were not so easy to catch a seasoned fighter, and a few days later Glass safely reached the familiar Fort Kiowa, where he had already come, wounded after a bear attack. There he learned that Fitzgerald had joined the US Army and was currently stationed at Fort Atkinson, down the river.
This time Glass decided to focus entirely on revenge on his former comrade, and in June 1824 he reached the fort. Indeed, Fitzgerald was at the fort, but since he was a US Army soldier, Glass faced the death penalty for his murder. Perhaps this was what stopped Glass from retaliating, perhaps something else, but after some time he abandoned his revenge and decided to continue working as a trapper and guide on the frontier.
A person like Glass simply could not calmly face his death, lying at home under a warm blanket. The Arikara Indian arrow found him nine years later, when he, along with other trappers, went to hunt for fur-bearing animals in the vicinity of the Missouri River.
A few months later, a group of Pawnee Indians came to the Americans to establish trade relations. One of the Indians, in the presence of the trappers, took a flask from his bag and drank. The trappers saw on the flask a characteristic design that Hugh Glass had once made on his flask. The Arikara Indians, again trying to pretend to be Pawnee, were shot on the spot.
Based on real events, the filmmakers emphasize to us. But often, when making films based on real events, filmmakers take liberties with the facts. Some events are a little boring and are neglected, some events are invented to add entertainment to the film and make the plot exciting, intriguing, and interesting. The real story of "The Revenant" is not as spectacular, but also admires the strength and lust for life of the main character. And also, in fact, he forgave everyone.
Was Hugh Glass really a fur hunter?
Yes, a hunter and a pioneer. And this is one of the few facts that are known about him reliably. In 1823, he signed a document requiring him to participate in the exploration expedition of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, organized by General William Henry Ashley, who advertised for expedition members in the Missouri Gazette & Public Advertiser. It was on this expedition that Glass was attacked by a bear.
Did Hugh Glass really convince the hunters to abandon their boats and continue along the river?
No. After the first battle with the Arikara Indians, the organizers of the expedition, General Ashley and Major Henry, decided to go through the mountains.
Did Hugh Glass really have a Native American wife?
Little is known about Glass's life before the bear attack. A hypothesis is also a marriage with an Indian woman, with whom he allegedly fell in love when he lived in captivity among the Indians. And according to legend, he was captured after escaping from the pirate Jean Lafitte. Hugh Glass was an experienced hunter and explorer. Where and how he acquired these skills, one can only guess.