Legends of the Old West - MOUNTAIN MEN Ep. 4 | “Hugh Glass: That Reckless Breed Of Men”
Episode Date: October 2, 2024With his quest for revenge complete, Hugh Glass follows the new Santa Fe trail to territories that will become New Mexico and Arizona. But the call of the Rocky Mountains lures him north again. He hel...ps establish new trading posts and fights one final battle with Native American warriors. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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On August 23, 1823, Hugh Glass was attacked by a grizzly bear that was protecting her
cubs.
Clawed, chewed, and mauled, none of the other mountain men in Andrew Henry's
company thought Hugh Glass would make it. Henry left two men, seasoned trapper John Fitzgerald
and young greenhorn Jim Bridger, to wait until Glass succumbed to his wounds and then provide
him a proper burial. Two days later, Glass hadn't died, and Fitzgerald and Bridger were worried that they would find
themselves surrounded by hostile Native Americans or surprised by another bear.
Fitzgerald convinced Bridger to abandon Glass, a decision Bridger regretted for the rest
of his life.
When they left, they took Glass' rifle and knife and left him with the hide of the grizzly
bear that had attacked
him. They had killed the bear, removed the hide, and used it to cover Glass while he suffered.
But Hugh Glass refused to die. Pulling himself along, then crawling, then limping his way
hundreds of miles back to civilization, Glass focused on revenge against Fitzgerald and Bridger.
When Glass finally and Bridger.
When Glass finally found Bridger at Fort Henry, where the Missouri River meets the Yellowstone
River in the northwest corner of modern-day North Dakota, Glass had a change of heart.
He decided Bridger, who was just 20 years old, was too young and scared to have known
better.
Glass forgave Bridger and set off to find Fitzgerald, but
was disappointed to discover that his archenemy had joined the army and was now under the
protection of Colonel Henry Leavenworth at Fort Atkinson in modern-day Nebraska. Glass
was able to reclaim his rifle from Fitzgerald, but he was not able to exact stronger revenge
against the man who had betrayed him.
In the summer of 1824, with his battle for survival and quest for revenge now done,
Hugh Glass left Fort Atkinson. He had his trusty rifle and $300 in his satchel.
The soldiers of the 6th Regiment were captivated by the living legend and they passed the hat.
the 6th Regiment were captivated by the living legend and they passed the hat. They collected $300 to give to Glass to help him get restarted. It was a small fortune for a man who had survived
on virtually nothing for the past year.
With the money, Glass returned to St. Louis. The city was a hub of activity, a crossroads for traders, trappers, and adventurers.
Glass saw an opportunity to turn his hard-earned notoriety into something more substantial.
He partnered an adventure to move goods along the Santa Fe Trail, a burgeoning route that
promised new fortune in the uncharted territories of the West.
Three years earlier, in 1821, William Becknell, a pragmatic trader from Missouri, had blazed
the Santa Fe Trail.
Becknell had lost a fortune in the Panic of 1819, and he owed creditors the equivalent
of more than $28,000 in today's money. He gathered $300 in trade
goods, set off to Santa Fe, and hoped the fur trappers who swarmed the area would be
willing to pay premium prices for his wares. Others were trying the same thing at roughly
the same time, but Becnel's expedition was the first to successfully navigate the perilous road from Missouri to
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
His journey marked the opening of a significant trade route that became vital to the fur
trade and the broader push of American expansion westward.
The southwest would be a welcome change of pace for a time, but Hugh Glass couldn't
resist the spell of the Northern Rockies.
He would reunite with his fellow mountain men at the annual rendezvous, and then suffer
an attack in the same region that would prove deadly for the 7th Cavalry 40 years in the
future.
From Black Barrel Media, this is an American Frontier series on Legends of the Old West.
I'm your host Chris Wimmer, and this season we're beginning regular stories of the earliest
days of American expansion across the continent.
In this series, we'll focus on the lives and legends of mountain men Jedidiah Smith, Hugh
Glass, and Jeremiah Johnson. This is episode 4, Hugh Glass, That Reckless Breed of Men.
Before William Becknell's trailblazing, the Spanish authorities had tightly controlled
New Mexico and barred foreign trade.
But when Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, the
region opened up, presenting lucrative opportunities for American traders.
Becnel seized his chance and led a small party of men and pack mules laden with
goods. They faced numerous challenges, treacherous terrain, lack of water, and
the constant threat of attack from Native American tribes, but their success on the Santa Fe Trail proved the viability of the route.
Now free of the trade ban imposed by the Spanish government,
the people of Santa Fe were eager to pay top dollar for goods that had previously been unavailable.
When Becnel left Santa Fe a month after his arrival,
he had turned $300 of goods into $6,000 of revenue, around $140,000 today.
It was a windfall, and the Santa Fe Trail quickly became a critical artery for the fur trade.
Traditionally, trappers and traders like those of the Ashley Henry Fur Company had to navigate the Missouri River,
threading their way through territories controlled by the Blackfeet, the Sioux, and the Iriquira.
The Santa Fe Trail offered an alternative. It allowed traders to transport furs and goods
overland from St. Louis to Santa Fe, bypassing the most perilous sections of the Missouri River.
The route significantly reduced the risks
and opened up new markets for American goods in the southwest.
Over the course of three years, big canvas-covered wagons, which would soon become common in
westward expansion, began to replace the less efficient pack mules used by Becknell. The wagons quickly revolutionized the trade and ushered in another new era of the Santa Fe Trail.
And at the same time, one of the fur trade's pioneers, Andrew Henry, was making his exit.
Henry had been a stalwart figure in the early days of the Ashley Henry Fur Company,
which he founded with William
Ashley. He had led the expedition during which Hugh Glass was mauled by a grizzly bear and
then abandoned. The dangers and difficulties of the fur trade had taken their toll on Henry.
By 1824, he decided it was time to retire from the relentless grind of trapping and trading. He returned to St. Louis,
where he dissolved his partnership with Ashley. And as Andrew Henry was returning to Missouri
to live a quieter life in 1824, Hugh Glass was leaving Missouri on another adventure.
Glass and his partners loaded their wagons and hit the trail to Santa Fe. The vast southern
plains stretched out before them, and as it turned out, the trip wasn't much of an adventure.
If there was any such thing as a typical trek across hundreds of miles of raw territory,
this one was it. Hugh Glass and his group reached Santa Fe without much excitement.
They found a bustling market town that was
alive with energy. Traders, adventurers, and Native Americans mingled in the sun-drenched
plazas and exchanged goods and stories from far-flung places. Hugh Glass, a hardened mountain
man with a reputation forged in the wilderness, felt out of place among the merchants and their neatly ordered goods.
Unlike William Bacnall, who had turned his initial investment into a small fortune,
Glass's $300 stake didn't yield the same return. He didn't lose money, but he also didn't make
enough to convince him to trade his days as an explorer for days as a merchant. Santa Fe, despite all its allure
and opportunity, couldn't compete with the call of the wild. Glass's heart remained tethered to
the rivers and forests, to the life he knew best. With little hesitation, he sold his remaining goods
and outfitted himself for another venture into the wilderness. The headwaters of the Gila River beckoned.
Glass believed the river, which runs through modern-day southern Arizona, was still rich
with the promise of untapped furs.
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Setting out from Santa Fe, Glass traveled southwest, crossing the rugged terrain that
led to the Gila River.
The Gila River, with its winding tributaries and hidden valleys, offered the seclusion
and resources Glass sought.
He set his traps and waited, the quiet of the wilderness a comforting companion.
But he soon discovered that the beaver population in the area had been significantly
depleted. Overtrapping had rendered the streams nearly barren. Undeterred, Glass pushed further
into unknown territories. Rumors swirled among the trappers and traders in the region, whispers
that Glass had ventured farther than most. Some said he traveled as far as the convergence of the Gila and Colorado rivers,
a remote and treacherous expanse seldom seen by white men.
Those tales, though difficult to verify, added to the mystique surrounding Hugh Glass.
Whether driven by necessity or sheer wanderlust,
he continued to push the boundaries of the known world.
Two years before Jedidiah Smith ventured down to Southern California, sheer wanderlust, he continued to push the boundaries of the known world.
Two years before Jedidiah Smith ventured down to Southern California, Hugh Glass may have
gotten close if he traveled into the deserts of Southern Arizona.
In early 1825, as Smith was leaving the Flathead Outpost in northern Montana and was heading for the first mountain man rendezvous, Hugh Glass was arriving
in Taos, New Mexico.
Taos was a small but vibrant community in the mountains above Santa Fe.
It was a haven for trappers and traders, and it wasn't surprising that it would become
the home of the most famous of the next generation of mountain men, Kit Carson, the following year. Taos was a place where stories were exchanged over campfires and
deals were struck in the smoky interiors of adobe buildings. Hugh Glass fit right in.
His rugged demeanor and legendary survival tale earned him a measure of respect among
the seasoned men in town. In Taos, Glass resupplied and reconnected with old acquaintances.
The town was a crossroads of cultures, where the influences of Spanish, Native American,
and Anglo settlers blended into a unique tapestry.
For a time, Glass enjoyed the relative comfort of the settlement, but the wilderness always
called him back. While
glass was in taus, a significant event was unfolding farther north. In July 1825,
William Ashley organized a mountain man rendezvous at Henry's Fork of the Green
River, the first of what would become 16 annual events in the northern Rocky
Mountains. Jedidiah Smith, whose success in the Green
River Valley had sparked the idea for the rendezvous, was there along with the young
and ambitious Jim Bridger. The rendezvous was a melting pot of stories and strategies,
a place where fortunes were made and legends grew. But Hugh Glass was notably absent. His
solitary nature and relentless pursuit of new trapping grounds had taken him far
from the gathering of his peers.
By a point in 1825, Hugh Glass determined that the waters of the Gila River out west
and others closer to Taos were essentially trapped out.
If he was going to find pelts, Glass knew he needed to head north, into modern-day
Utah. Glass knew that venturing north would be a challenge. The land was beautiful, but
treacherous. Its rivers and valleys hid both wealth and furs and the constant threat of
attack from native tribes.
Glass knew he couldn't do this trip alone. He joined forces with the renowned trapper and trader, ETN Provo.
They assembled a team and headed for Utah.
But the first trip didn't last long.
While trapping and canoeing down a river,
Glass' group spotted a lone Native American woman along the bank.
The woman, a Shoshone, was an unexpected and potentially dangerous encounter.
The Shoshone were known to be hostile toward white traders who worked with their enemies,
and the Shoshone were at war with another local tribe, so tensions were already high.
Hoping to avoid conflict, Glass and his men approached the woman with an offering of beaver
meat.
But their sudden presence startled her, and she screamed at the top of her lungs.
The piercing scream echoed through the trees and alerted nearby Shoshone warriors.
Within moments, arrows rained down on Glass and his men. One of Glass's trappers fell dead almost immediately with an arrow through the chest.
Then Glass was hit. An arrow embedded itself in his back.
Despite the chaos, he managed to rally his men and retreat swiftly from the ambush site.
When the trappers were able to regroup, they kept retreating. Glass endured the agonizing pain of the inflamed wound as they traveled more than 700 miles
back to Taos.
When the group finally arrived home, Glass faced another harrowing ordeal.
With no formal medical facilities available, he relied on the crude but effective skills of a fellow trapper.
Using only a straight razor, the man carefully extracted the metal arrowhead from Glass's back.
The procedure was excruciating, but Glass endured it with the stoicism that had become his hallmark.
If a full-grown grizzly couldn't kill Hugh Glass, one arrow sure as hell wouldn't
do the job. Over the next few months, Glass allowed his wound to heal as he recuperated
in Taos. Yet, even in recovery, Glass' mind never strayed far from the wilderness.
Glass joined ETN Provo on another expedition, this time venturing farther into the Utah territory.
The party aimed to explore new trapping grounds and trade with various Native American tribes.
As they pushed deeper into uncharted regions, they eventually reached the Great Salt Lake.
Hugh Glass and Etienne Provo were among the first white men to see the lake.
The discovery of the lake, so to speak, is usually credited to Jim Bridger, who was also
in the area at the time.
Whichever explorer was the first white man to lay eyes on the Great Salt Lake, the discovery
of the lake was a significant moment and it marked a key point in the westward exploration
of the American frontier. In that regard, Etienne Provo, a man many people have never heard of,
made a sizable contribution. He continued trapping in the Utah wilderness for another 15 years.
He died in 1850 at the age of 64, and the Provo River, Provo Canyon,
and the town of Provo, Utah are all named in his honor.
In the summer of 1826, the second Mountain Man rendezvous came and went, and Hugh Glass was a
no-show. At that rendezvous, William Ashley sold the Ashley Henry Fur Company to Jedidiah Smith, David Jackson, and Bill Sublette.
The new owners renamed the company the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
Meanwhile, Hugh Glass completed a trip with ETN Provo and then went back to the life of a solitary
trapper. He stayed up in the Northern Rockies and traversed the Yellowstone Country. In the summer of 1827, trappers and traders converged on Bear Lake
in the northeast corner of Utah for the third rendezvous.
Two of the three new owners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company
were able to attend with little difficulty,
but one of the three men had been on a journey for the record books,
though no one knew the extent of it at the time, or if the man had even survived.
In attendance as well for the first time was Hugh Glass. He was there when the other mountain men
fired a cannon to welcome the return of Jedidiah Smith.
Jedidiah Smith had spent the entire year between the rendezvous of 1826 and the rendezvous
of 1827 making his historic trip to California.
He had traveled down through Utah, then through southern Nevada, and then through the Mojave
Desert to the Los Angeles area, and then all the way down to San Diego, then back up through
California's Central Valley
before crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains and surviving a punishing trek across the high deserts of Nevada and Utah.
For the first time in years, Glass was able to talk with a man who had saved his life on the beach
during the Iriquira attack four years earlier in the summer of 1823.
That had been two months before Glass was mauled by the bear, and three months before
Smith survived his own bear attack.
They exchanged stories and showed the scars of their bear encounters, though Smith conceded
that Glass had had the worst experience.
The rendezvous was a blend of business and festivity. Traders, trappers, and Native Americans exchanged goods, stories, and camaraderie.
Beaver pelts, the lifeblood of the fur trade, were purchased at $3 per pound.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company, under Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, appeared to have had
a successful year, primarily due to the markup of goods
and supplies sent west by William Ashley under his new business venture as the sole supplier
of the company.
However, there was grumbling among the trappers about the high prices of Ashley's goods.
It was a perennial complaint in the harsh realities of frontier life.
The 1827 Bear Lake Rendezvous took a darker turn when a violent skirmish erupted with members of the Blackfeet Nation. According to trapper Daniel Potts, the conflict involved
about 20 Blackfoot warriors who entered the camp to murder a man and woman from the Snake Tribe.
Blackfoot warriors who entered the camp to murder a man and woman from the Snake Tribe. The White Traders were allied with the Snake Tribe Trappers. Another friend of Hugh Glass,
James Beckworth, who was known for his flair for embellishment, claimed it was an all-out
battle involving more than 300 trappers and their native allies. According to Beckworth,
the White Trappers and the Snake Trappers fought the Blackfeet for six hours.
If it was true, the length of the battle probably would have set a record for the
longest sustained battle in the West until the Battle of the Rosebud in the summer of 1876.
As Jim Beckworth claimed, the Blackfeet lost 173 men.
Some historians have called Beckworth the quote, immaculate liar, based on his propensity
to exaggerate and story tell better than any other mountain man.
So it's more likely that the battle was a skirmish.
While a small number of white trappers were injured, none died.
But multiple Native Americans lost their lives, though the exact
number remains unknown.
Despite the conflict, the rendezvous continued and wrapped up around July 13th.
Glass, like many others, left the gathering with new supplies and new stories, ready to
face the challenges of the upcoming year.
A year later, the trappers and traders returned to Bear Lake
for the 1828 Summer Rendezvous,
and once again Hugh Glass was in attendance.
This time, the anticipation was palpable.
As the trappers gathered,
another significant engagement loomed.
Approximately 200 to 300 Blackfoot warriors
attacked Robert Campbell's party just a few miles from the rendezvous site.
The situation was dire, but the proximity to the rendezvous proved fortunate.
60 to 70 trappers and several hundred friendly Native Americans rushed out to reinforce Campbell's group.
According to some accounts, the Blackfoot Warriors retired before the
reinforcements arrived and avoided a full-scale battle. This year's rendezvous lasted through
the early part of July. Unlike previous years, there was no pack train to return the FURs
to St. Louis, so the partners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Smith, Jackson, and
Sublette, took on the responsibility themselves.
The added effort proved worthwhile. The furs sold in St. Louis that year were valued at
$35,810, which would be more than a million dollars today. By any measure, it was a fantastic
year for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and that was starting to cause
tension among the trappers.
The owners of the Rocky Mountain Company were making money on furs, and they were making
money on the goods that were sold at the rendezvous through their supplier, William Ashley.
As the 1828 rendezvous ended, Hugh Glass set out to see if he could do something to help
his fellow independent trappers.
In the summer of 1828, the American Fur Company,
founded by one of America's first millionaires, John Jacob Astor,
initiated the construction of Fort Union at the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers.
The fort was strategically placed near the abandoned Fort Henry, the second of the two
locations that used that name.
At the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, the fort was ideally located to
dominate the fur trade in the Upper Missouri region.
Kenneth McKenzie, head of the newly formed Upper Missouri Outfit, directed the establishment
of the fort as a critical hub for trading. At the 1828 rendezvous, rumors circulated that
the Upper Missouri Outfit would soon be in a position to send a supply caravan to the
Rockies. The whispers sparked hope among independent trappers, who were eager for competitive pricing and new supplies.
To confirm the validity of the rumors,
the trappers asked Hugh Glass if he would venture north to learn the truth.
In the late summer or early fall of 1828,
Glass arrived at Fort Floyd,
about 120 miles short of the future home of Fort Union. Mackenzie was headquartered at Fort Floyd, about 120 miles short of the future home of Fort Union.
Mackenzie was headquartered at Fort Floyd while Fort Union was being built,
and Hugh Glass consulted the company man about his plans.
Late that fall, Mackenzie dispatched men and goods to the Fort Union site,
and he offered Hugh Glass a job.
and he offered Hugh Glass a job. Glass accepted part-time work as a hunter for the Upper Missouri Outfit at Fort Union.
He supplied meat to the fort and spent his spare time trapping in the surrounding areas.
Glass' reputation as a legendary mountain man preceded him, and he quickly became a
respected figure among the men of the outfit.
The esteem in which Glass was held by his peers was evident when they christened a keel
boat in his honor, naming it the Old Glass.
Furthermore, the High Bluffs along the south side of the Missouri, east of its junction
with the Yellowstone, became known as Glass Bluffs, a name that
endures to this day. During his time at Fort Union, Glass formed a good relationship with
Kenneth Mackenzie. Mackenzie valued Glass's expertise and knowledge of the land, and Glass
found the semi-structured life at the fort a welcome respite from the relentless unpredictability of a lone trapper's existence. Fort Union clerk James Hamilton took a particular
interest in Hugh Glass. Hamilton was captivated by the tales of survival and
adventures and he began documenting Glass's experiences with the intention of
eventually publishing them. Unfortunately, the manuscript has been lost to time, leaving only the echoes of Glass'
stories to be passed down through oral history and fragmented accounts.
That's one of the reasons why Hugh Glass' life, outside of his famous encounter with
the bear and quest for revenge, is shrouded in mystery. Fall turned to winter, and Glass's movements in the new year of 1829 are not well documented,
but it's assumed he attended the 1829 rendezvous at Pierre's Hole.
By the spring of 1830, Glass was back in the Upper Missouri region, trapping and hunting
while based at Fort Union. The American Fur Company's
ledger books from 1831 to 1833 have a log for Hugh Glass, which marked a transition
from the life of a solitary trapper to a more settled existence. During that time, he was
joined by Johnson Gardner, another renowned trapper. Gardner, like Glass, had chosen the upper Missouri
country for its rich trapping grounds and the relative stability offered by the trading
post. The Gardner River, Gardner's Hole, and the town of Gardner, Montana are all named
for Johnson Gardner. For Glass and Gardner, their years at Fort Union represented a balance
between the rugged independence
of the trapper's life and the emerging structures of the fur trade industry.
The sun was setting on the brief era of the free-ranging fur trapping mountain men.
In the fall of 1832, the American Fur Company expanded its influence in the Yellowstone region
by building Fort Cass at the junction of the Yellowstone River and the Bighorn River,
a place that would be pivotal to the stories of Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse,
and the Battle of the Little Bighorn 44 years in the future.
Fort Cass was strategically positioned to cultivate trade with the Crow Nation.
Samuel Tullock of the American Fur Company supervised construction,
and keen listeners might perk up at the name Tullock in the area of the Bighorn River.
Tullock's Creek is a stream in southern Montana that was a signpost for Custer's detachment in June of 1876.
When Custer and the Seventh Cavalry reached the creek,
Custer was supposed to send messenger George Herrendeen
to ride to General Alfred Terry's Column
so that the two units could coordinate an attack
on Sitting Bull's Village.
But Custer refused to let Herrendeen leave,
and thus General Terry's Column had no idea
where Custer was or what
he was doing.
In 1832, Samuel Tullock's new fort quickly became a focal point for the region's fur
trade.
Shortly after its completion, Hugh Glass relocated from Fort Union to Fort Cass.
His role as a hunter was crucial in supplying meat to the fort, and his presence
added a layer of security and expertise to the fledgling outpost. As fall passed into
winter, Glass settled into his routine at Fort Cass. However, the call of the wilderness
remained strong. In the early spring of 1833, at 49 or 50 years old, Glass departed Fort Cass to trap Beaver,
a short way downriver from the fort.
Two other trappers went with him.
They were all seasoned and confident, but as they ventured out onto the frozen Big Horn
River, they were unaware that danger lurked nearby.
It would be an abrupt and somewhat shocking end to Hugh Glass' story,
even though the action was all too common in the West.
As Glass and his companions crossed the ice, they were ambushed by a large party of Iriquira
who were concealed on the opposite bank. The Iriquira, who were intent on stealing horses,
had been scouting the area around Fort Cass when they spotted the trappers.
The attack was swift and vicious. The warriors overwhelmed and shot all three men. Within seconds,
Hugh Glass and his two friends were dead on the frozen river. The warriors scalped the trappers,
stole everything of value, and left the trappers' bodies on the frozen river. The warriors scalped the trappers, stole everything of value, and
left the trappers' bodies on the ice. Jim Beckworth, a friend of Hugh Glass and another
member of Ashley's Hundred, provided an account of Hugh Glass' demise. He claimed to have
been at Fort Cass in the spring of 1833 and discovered the bodies of the three trappers
lying on the ice. Beckworth's version of the story, while vivid, included details that don't match other verifiable
accounts from the period.
Nevertheless, he described the burial of the trappers and the profound emotional reaction
of members of the Crow Nation to their deaths.
Beckworth said, numberless fingers were voluntarily chopped off and thrown into the graves.
Hair and trinkets of every description were also contributed, and the graves were finally filled up.
The story did not end with the burial of Glass and his companions. Some members of the Iriquira
Party moved on to the headwaters of the Powder River, where they encountered a group of trappers, led by Glass's friend, Johnson Gardner. The Iriquira posed as a friendly tribe,
and the trappers welcomed the warriors to their campfire.
But then one of the trappers noticed a warrior carrying Hugh Glass's rifle. It was the same gun
that John Fitzgerald had taken from Glass 10 years earlier, when he left Glass for dead, and the one Glass had reclaimed after his improbable survival and
legendary quest for revenge.
Now, the rifle betrayed the men who had killed him, ensuring a final measure of vengeance
from Glass' fellow mountain men.
Gardner and his trappers pounced on the Iricara and interrogated them about the rifle and other items that were probably stolen.
When the Iriquera couldn't provide satisfactory explanations for how they had acquired the items, the trappers scalped the warriors and buried them alive.
Hugh Glass' life and death left an indelible mark on the history of the American frontier.
His endurance and survival skills stood out even among the toughest and most rugged explorers
of the West.
A monument to Hugh Glass now stands near the site of the bear attack on the southern shore
of the present-day Shade Hill Reservoir in Perkins County, South Dakota.
The nearby Hugh Glass Lakeside Use area,
a campground and picnic area,
serves as a reminder of his extraordinary life.
Glass's story, filled with moments of incredible hardship
and resilience, continues to inspire.
His legacy is one of enduring spirit
and unyielding determination,
but also a stark testament to the wild, untamed frontier.
Because Hugh Glass refused to die, his story will live forever.
Next time on Legends of the Old West, it's the first half of the story of the man who
became the embodiment of myth and legend in
the Mountain Man era. He's commonly known as Jeremiah Johnson, and he was nicknamed Live-Reading
Johnson and Crow Killer, though as you'll hear, virtually every part of his story is up for debate,
including his name. That's next week on Legends of the Old West.
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written by Matthew Kearns. Original music by Rob Velier. I'm your host and
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