Legends of the Old West - MOUNTAIN MEN Ep. 4 | “Jim Bridger: Into The Wild”

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

In 1822, eighteen-year-old Jim Bridger joins the Ashley-Henry fur company and travels up the Missouri River to trap beaver in the West. But before he learns the basics of trapping, Arikara warriors attack the company. And then a grizzly bear attacks Bridger’s friend, Hugh Glass. In the years following the attack, Bridger becomes the first American to taste the waters of the Great Salt Lake and he helps organize the first Mountain Man Rendezvous. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. It was a dangerous time to travel. The Bridger family was moving west, and the war between the United States and Britain was moving with them. That summer, the summer of 1812,

the British captured Fort Maconac in Michigan. The British and their allies in the Iroquois Confederacy, led by Tecumse, captured more than a thousand American soldiers at Fort Detroit. And at a place called Chicago, an Indian word meaning onion field, potawadami warriors ambushed a surrendering American garrison and killed 68 people. In about 15 years, that field would become a city, and the Americans who started it would change the first G in the name to a sea, and dropped the U at the end of the word to pronounce it Chicago. That was the Western frontier, now called the state of Illinois, into which the Bridger family moved in 1812. The father, James, and the mother, Chloe, packed up their possessions and their three kids in Richmond, Virginia, and traveled to six-mile prairie near the Mississippi River in the southern portion of Illinois territory. James Bridger worked as a surveyor, and Chloe ran the household and

raised the kids. At that time, the middle child, James Felix Bridger, known as Jim, was eight years old. Within five years of the move, most of his family would be gone. When Jim was 12, his mother fell ill and died. His father was away on a surveying trip, which left Jim, his brother, and his sister to cope with their mother's death alone. Jim's brother died the same year, some sources say from the same illness. In the following year, Jim's father died. In less than two years, Jim Bridger lost his mother, his father, and his brother. Jim was 13 and he and his younger sister were orphans. An aunt on his father's side came to care for them,

but Jim had to go to work to provide for the family. His first job was on a flatboat ferry. Next, he apprenticed to a gunsmith named Philip Creamer. As an apprentice, Jim traveled 170 miles north of his home to the Potawatomi Indian Agency in Peoria, where the government hired Philip Creamer to repair guns, traps, kettles, and farming tools. Jim Bridger pumped bellows, hauled iron, and cleared ashes, and it was Jim's first time living

among Native Americans. He saw Potawatomi families going about their daily lives. He watched interpreters translate, and he saw frontiersmen communicate with flying fingers and sign language. It was an introduction to a world Jim Bridger would inhabit for the rest of his life. In 1822, Bridger was 18 years old. He never learned to read or write, as he'd been too big working to attend school. He had no money saved, no connections, and no family beyond the sister he was trying to support. And that was when someone read him an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette. William Ashley and Andrew Henry were looking for 100 enterprising young men to ascend the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and trap beaver. Everyone in St. Louis was talking

about it. Bridger crossed the Mississippi River from Illinois to Missouri and traveled 70 miles to Andrew Henry's lead mine in Washington County to apply. The tall, wiry recruit was young and he had no combat experience, but he had worked on a flatboat and he knew gunsmithing. The captains accepted him, and Jim Bridger marked an X next to his name in the company ledger. Bridger planned to send his earnings to his sister. If he was sharp, he could make a pile of money. If he wasn't, he would be another nameless trapper lost to the wilderness, the weather, or the warriors. In the spring of 1822, Jim Bridger boarded a keel boat on the Missouri River and headed upstream toward the Rocky Mountains with the men who would be known

as Ashley's Hundred. Some would become well known to history, some would become legends, and some would never get anywhere near the mountains. They would have a violent and eye-opening introduction to the West long before they laid their first beaver trap. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling two important American frontier stories, that of the first mountain man, John Colter, and one of the most famous Jim Bridger. They were trailblazers in the truest sense of the word, and we finish with three episodes about Jim Bridger. This is episode four, Jim Bridger, Into the Wild. The keel boat of the Ashley Henry Company carried Jim Bridger and the other men of the crew 1500 miles up the Missouri River to the mouth of the

Yellowstone, where they built Fort Henry number one in August 1822. Bridger drew his equipment from the company clerk, beaver traps marked against his account at roughly double their wholesale cost, and a Sheffield knife with an eight-inch blade for skinning and close combat. And if he hadn't known the kind of world he was entering, he certainly did within the first nine months in the West. In the first nine months, the company lost 24 men. Blackfoot Warriors killed four trappers above Great Falls.

Two men died during a drinking game gone wrong. The contest was called Shooting the Cups, in which two men stood across from each other with cups of whiskey balanced on their heads. They took turns firing at the cups. During one round, Mike Fink, a boatman, shot and killed a young trapper named Carpenter. A man named Talbot did not believe Fink's shot was an accident, so Talbot shot and killed Mike Fink. Three men were blown up when a man smoked a pipe too close to stores of gunpowder.

One man drowned, and the list kept going from there. And those were just the losses before the real trouble started. In the spring of 1823, William Ashley brought a second expedition up river with fresh supplies and recruits. Among them were soon to be famous Jedediah Smith and Hugh Glass. Ashley stopped at a cluster of Erika Ra villages to trade for horses, and that was the spark which lit the fire. The Erika Ra were already hostile. The Missouri Fur Company, the outfit led by Manuel Lisa,

which had employed John Coulter and Andrew Henry more than a decade earlier, had recently killed two Erikaa. The Erikaa were primed for a fight, and Ashley's men just happened to be the next ones up the river. On June 2, 1823, the Erikaa killed one man who wandered into their village and then opened fire on the rest of the company, who were camped on a sandbar near the Grand River in present-day South Dakota.

Warriors killed 14 of Ashley's men and wounded 10 more. They stole or killed 19 horses and captured a boat and 31 guns. Half of Ashley's remaining men deserted on the spot. Some historians say Jim Bridger was upriver at Fort Henry when Jedediah Smith, who had been at the battle, arrived by canoe with word of the disaster. Then when Henry called for volunteers to go downriver and reinforce Ashley, Jim Bridger was among the 20 men who answered. Other historians say Bridger was actually at the battle, and he was rescued

by Jedediah Smith. Whatever the case, the U.S. Army responded two months later by sending Colonel Henry Leavenworth with 220 soldiers for the army's first engagement against Indians west of the Mississippi. The soldiers added Ashley's surviving trappers, men from the Missouri. furry fur company and hundreds of Sioux warriors who were eager to fight their old enemies. But the campaign was a fiasco. Leavenworth issued orders to attack and then canceled them. He offered peace on terms that returned almost nothing, three rifles, one horse, and 18 robes for the 14 men the Erika Ra had killed. The trappers were disgusted. Indian agent Joshua Pilcher wrote to Leavenworth and said, You have, by the imbecility of your conduct and operational

created and left impassable barriers. The Erika-Raw attack forced Henry and Ashley to change their plan. The Missouri River was too dangerous. They decided to abandon the river and travel overland to the Rocky Mountains. Jedediah Smith led one group west toward the Big Horn River. Andrew Henry led the other along the Grand River toward Fort Henry. On that Overland March, late in the summer of 1823, Hugh Glass met his grizzly Hugh Glass was part of Andrew Henry's group of 30 men ascending the Grand River near the

Ericorah villages. One afternoon, Glass wandered off the line of March and surprised a large grizzly. He shot the bear but only wounded it. The grizzly attacked. Other trappers rushed in, shooting at the animal and trying to distract it, but the grizzly attacked Glass again and again before it finally died and fell on his body. If Jim Bridger was there and many historians believe he was, he saw Hugh Glass nearly torn apart. Glass's scalp was raked open. His body was a mass of lacerations. He seemed to bleed from everywhere.

Andrew Henry set up camp around the severely injured man, expecting to bury him in the morning. But Glass didn't die that night, and Henry couldn't wait to see how Glass's situation played out. The trappers were in the hostile territory of the Erycarat, who were also known as the Erykeri, which trappers often shortened to re, like viewers see in the movie The Revenant. Andrew Henry offered $80 to two volunteers to stay with Hugh Glass until he died. Then they would bury him and catch up to the group. A young man stepped forward to volunteer, and then the money enticed John Fitzgerald to volunteer as well.

Henry and the rest of the men moved on, while Fitzgerald and the, quote, younger man, began their vigil over Hugh Glass. For days, Fitzgerald and the younger man waited, and Glass didn't die. Each day increased the danger until finally Fitzgerald announced they were leaving. The younger man refused, but Fitzgerald was older and he insisted. Henry had already determined the younger man could not stay in the woods alone, so the younger man left with Fitzgerald, who took Glass's rifle and ammunition.

When they caught up with Henry, Fitzgerald reported that Hugh Glass was dead. The younger man did not contradict him, but Hugh Glass, of course, was not dead. Glass crawled to a stream, kept himself alive on cherries and buffalo berries, and eventually dragged himself more than 200 miles south to Fort Kiowa. When Glass finally tracked down the younger man at Fort Henry No. 2 on the Big Horn River, Glass chose not to take his revenge. The boy was described as an unwilling and over-persuaded accomplice. Glass saved his fury for Fitzgerald.

But when Glass found Fitzgerald at Fort Atkinson, Fitzgerald had enlisted in the army and was protected from retaliation. Whether or not Jim Bridger was the younger man has been debated for 200 years. In 1839, an error-prone author named Edmund Flagg, published an account naming the volunteers as Fitzgerald and Bridges. Some took that as proof of Bridger's involvement. But Flagg got numerous factors. wrong, dates, rivers, and details of events. And by 1839, Jim Bridger was a well-known figure.

If Flag had heard Bridger, he would have published it that way. The earliest and most reliable accounts from Moses Harris who heard the story directly from Glass and from Philip St. George Cook identify Fitzgerald and an unnamed youth of 17 years of age. They don't mention Bridger, who was 19 at the time. James Climmon, who knows. knew Bridger well, wrote of the glass story years later and did not name Bridger either. The only word from Bridger himself came through James Stevenson, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who hunted and camped with Bridger for years and served as Bridger's reader and writer. When Stevenson received an inquiry about the matter, he responded,

Bridger told me the story of your glass, but there was no desertion. Bridger may have been the young volunteer, but there's not enough evidence to state it as fact. Regardless, the story attached itself to Bridger and stuck with him for the rest of his life. But back in the autumn of 1823, a couple months after the Bear attack, Jim Bridger was with Andrew Henry and the other men of the company at the second location of Fort Henry. And it's probably no coincidence that Henry chose to build his second fort at the junction of the Yellowstone and Big Horn Rivers, near the spot where he had worked for Manuel Lisa at Fort Raymond 15 years earlier. The geography of the fur trade had not changed in that time, only the names had.

The crow told the trappers that Beaver were so abundant on the other side of the Wind River mountains, the men wouldn't even need traps. But getting there was difficult, and knowledge from the crow would lead to one of the most impactful developments in the history of the West. When some of the men in Andrew Henry's company tried to cross the Wind River Mountains in February 1824, deep snowdrifts turned them back. James Clyman asked the crow how to get a cross, spreading a buffalo robe on the ground and using heaps of sand to represent the mountains. A crow man rearranged the sand piles and showed them that if they traveled south along the eastern front of the Wind River Range,

they would find a level crossing. That crossing was South Pass, a broad, gentle gap across the continental divide, 15 miles wide and so gradual that the trappers were not even sure they had crossed the divide until they saw the streams flowing west. It would become the main route across the Rockies for the next three decades, for trappers, immigrants headed for Oregon, and gold seekers headed for California. Jim Bridger, traveling under John Weber's leadership, was among the first white men to use South Pass.

They trapped the waters of the Green River in what is now Wyoming and worked south and west into Bear River country in modern-day Utah. Bridger was learning every day. He scouted for beaver cuttings and slides and waded knee-deep into icy streams to set his traps. But in the wild, he was always on edge. One night, hearing a noise and seeing eyes flashed near the campfire, Bridger raised his rifle and fired,

only to discover he had killed one of the company's mules. He had to pay for the mistake from his earnings. Through the autumn of 1824 and the winter of 1825, Weber's group followed the Bear River north out of the snow-capped Uinta Mountains, trapping as they went. The Bear River's winding course is shaped like a giant question mark, and trappers asked, how far west does it go? They argued amongst themselves about the river's course,

and some of them made a wager. 20-year-old Jim Bridger was selected to find the answer. Bridger mounted his horse and followed the Bear River alone. The river took him through Bear River Canyon, a deep two-mile gorge with towering rock walls. It was the kind of place that could fill a man with wonder and fear in equal measure. It was picturesque, but it was also a perfect spot for an ambush. Even friendly Indians might kill a lone man for his horse and gun.

but Bridger safely emerged from the canyon and continued to follow the river. When the canyon walls fell away, the Bear River flowed into a great expanse of water that extended for miles. Its choppy surface was dotted with white caps. Bridger rode to the shore and tasted the water. It was heavy with salt and a white rim of salt edged the shoreline. Seagulls and pelicans flew over the gray-green water and hilly islands broke the surface. The land-sart surrounding the water was arid with few trees along the shore. The Great Salt Lake is the largest natural lake between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, and the largest salt lake in the western hemisphere.

Indigenous peoples had known of it for thousands of years, and another trapper, E.T.N. Prost had seen the southern portion from a distance in 1824. But Jim Bridger became the first Euro-American to go to the shore, taste the water, and learn that it was a salt lake. He made his way back to Weber's camp and described what he had found. Some of the trappers supposed it must be the Gulf of California or the Pacific Ocean, and they were pleased to hear there was a source of salt nearby, as they had been short for some time, and they were tired of putting gunpowder on their meat for flavor.

By the summer of 1825, Bridger had been in the wilderness for more than three years. He had wintered with the crow, crossed South Pass, trapped the Green River, and tasted the water of the Great Salt Lake. And now, for the first time, the scattered trappers organized something new, a great gathering they called a rendezvous. In early July of 1825, 120 trappers gathered on Henry's Fork of the Green River. William Ashley hauled supplies overland from St. Louis, and his clerks set up scales to weigh the beaver pelts. John Weeber's party, including Bridger, brought in the largest Hall, 3,100 pounds of beaver fur. When Ashley's clerk finished tabulating all the returns, the total came to 8,829 pounds of beaver skins, worth nearly $50,000 in St. Louis. That was an

enormous sum. The wealthy in St. Louis built their homes for a fraction of that amount. But the economics of the fur trade were designed to benefit the men who organized the expeditions, not the men who waded into icy streams to set the traps. Bridger bought his equipment on credit from the company at roughly double the wholesale cost. Like most industries, the real wealth flowed to the company owners like William Ashley, who eventually used his fur trade profits to fund a run for governor of Missouri and then a seat in Congress. In 1826, William Ashley left the fur trading business. His partner, Andrew Henry, had retired after the 1824,

season and returned to Missouri. In 1826, Ashley sold the company to Jedediah Smith, Davy Jackson, and William Sublette. Ashley continued to be a supplier who took goods to the annual rendezvous for a couple years until he turned to politics. Four years later, in 1830, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette decided to leave the mountains, and they sold the business to five men. Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, William's brother, Henry Frayb, and, you. Jean-Baptiste Jervais. The new partners called their enterprise the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and they hoped they were finally set up to make real money. Instead, they inherited more debt, and they faced two opponents which would squeeze them from both sides, Blackfoot warriors

who killed their men and stole their horses, and the American Fur Company, the brainchild of John Jacob Astor and one of the wealthiest corporations in the world, which intended to crush them. By the 1832 rendezvous in a mountain valley called Pierre's Hole in Idaho, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was stretched thin. They had 168 packs of beaver pelts, roughly 13,000 pounds worth more than $58,000 in St. Louis. But even that was not enough to cover what they owed. When all the debts were calculated, they were still $5,400 short. And then, just as the rendezvous was breaking up, a Grover's.

The Guant War Party appeared at the south end of the valley to put every dollar in jeopardy. Two hundred warriors and maybe as many as 500 stood against the motley crew of a couple hundred mountain men. A trapper whose Iroquois father had been killed by the Gravant rode out to meet a grouvant chief under a flag of truce. The trapper grabbed the hand of the chief and signaled to a friend to open fire. As the chief fell, the trapper grabbed the dead man's scarlet blanket and raced back to the trapper line. and the Battle of Pierre's Hole was on.

The Grosvant fortified themselves behind a breastwork of logs, saddles, and packs. The trappers charged. A ball fractured William Sudlitz left arm. A trapper named Sinclair was killed. Others crawled toward the barricade on their hands and knees while musket balls hailed around them. A Canadian trapper raised his head above the breastwork and two musket balls nearly took it off his shoulders. A grovant chief taunted the trappers from behind the barricade and shouted that there were 400 lodges of their tribesmen nearby.

They would arrive soon to avenge their dead. The message was garbled in translation and reached the trappers as news that the main camp of the rendezvous was under attack. Most of the mountain men raced back to check and found the camp was untouched. By the time they returned to the battleground, the grovant had slipped away, leaving 10 dead warriors and 32 dead horses behind them. Five mountain men had been killed, and at least a dozen were seriously wounded. The Battle of Pierre's Hole was the largest engagement between fur trappers and Native American warriors,

and it would remain one of the largest battles in that region of the West for another 34 years, until Sue and Cheyenne warriors led by Red Cloud attacked a U.S. Army column about 200 miles away in northern Wyoming. After surviving the Battle of Pierre's Hole, life did not get easier for the men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick rode north into Blackfoot country with 60 men, and for once, Blackfoot warriors were not the immediate problem. Trappers of the rival American Fur Company followed their every move. Every place Bridger trapped, the American Fur Company's men, probably 60 in number, trapped also. Two brigades of trappers crowded into Beaverfield's only busy.

big enough for one. The streams were being stripped bare, and the game scared off. Bridger and Fitzpatrick tried everything to shake off their well-funded rivals. They left their campfires burning and slipped away in the night, but American Fur's scouts found them. They waited through miles of streams to hide their tracks. American Fur found them again. Finally, Bridger and Fitzpatrick made a decision born of pure frustration. If they could not lose the competition, they would lead them into a trap. The two men led their company toward the three forks of the Missouri,

deep in Blackfoot country, and did not stop to set a single trap along the way. Finally, a tactic worked. When the American fur trappers realized they weren't gaining anything by staying near the Rocky Mountain boys, they moved away. One group of American fur trappers

went to the Madison River, and the other went to the Jefferson River. That left Bridger and Fitzpatrick to trap the Gallatin River. But with brigades of trappers on all three forks of the Missouri River, they easily attracted the attention of Blackfoot warriors. On the Madison River, the American fur trappers came across a smoldering fire and fresh buffalo carcasses. As they crossed a dry ravine, 20 rifles fired from the gully.

The horse of the leader of the group was shot and fell on him, pinning the trapper to the ground. He killed one of the attackers, but before his men could reach him, a Blackfoot warrior, smashed him with a tomahawk. Leading the attack was a chief called Eagle Ribs, who was a member of the Blackfoot Buffalo Society, a prestigious warrior group similar to the famous Cheyenne dog soldiers. Eagle Ribs wore polished buffalo horns as a headpiece, an honor held only by the bravest of the brave

who had taken eight scalps from trappers with his own hand. On the Jefferson River, a similar attack happened to the second group of American fur trappers. One trapper was killed and several were wounded. And then it was Bridger's turn on the Gallatin River. Bridger's men spotted a large Blackfoot force and the two sides faced each other across open ground. Eagle ribs and a small party advanced bearing a peace pipe.

Bridger rode forward to meet them, bringing along a Blackfoot woman who had been captured by the crow and was now married to a Mexican trapper named Loretto. The woman would serve as an interpreter, but the council never progressed to that stage. Bridger saw movement among the warriors and cocked his rifle. Eagle Ribbs, who was extending his hand, heard the click. Eagle Ribbs grabbed the barrel of Bridger's rifle and twisted it downward.

The gun discharged into the earth. Bridger struggled for the weapon and his horse turned. A Blackfoot warrior drew his bow and fired an arrow deep into Bridger's shoulder blade. A second arrow followed. Eagle Ribbs wrenched the rifle from Bridger's hands and struck him with it. Bridger crashed to the ground as Eagle Ribbs leapt onto Bridger's horse and rode away. What followed was one of the strangest moments of the fur trade era. Loretto's wife, the woman who was supposed to be the interpreter,

had rushed across the potential battleground to her Blackfoot relatives when she recognized her brother. Now as the fight started, she wanted to go back to her husband and baby, but the warriors stopped her. Loretto heard her cries and ran across the open ground between the two forces carrying the baby and placed the child in his wife's arms. Both sides stopped the escalation and watched the unusual sight. A Blackfoot chief, moved by the Mexican man's courage, allowed him to return to the trappers. Loretto would not be harmed, but his wife and child would not go with him, and Loretto never saw them again. When the Blackfoot retreated, the trappers rushed to Bridger. His shirt was soaked with blood from the two feathered arrows protruding from his back.

The arrowheads, supplied by the British, had razor-sharp edges. The trappers pulled the first arrow out smoothly, but the second wouldn't budge. They pulled harder, and the wooden shaft came free, but the three-inch iron point stayed buried in the bone. Digging it out would require more surgical skill than anyone in camp possessed. They splashed whiskey on the wounds, patched them as best they could, and left the arrowhead where it was. Jim Bridger would carry the arrowhead in his back for three years until he met a doctor named Marcus Whitman, who was traveling to Oregon to start a Christian mission to convert the local tribes. Whitman's wife Narcissa would soon join him, and they would eventually help educate Jim Bridger's first child,

until they suffered one of the most notorious massacres of the West. Next time on Legends of the Old West, travelers begin to follow in the footsteps of the Mountain Men and make the journey to Oregon and California. They'll include the Whitmans and the Donner Party and more. The fur trade ends. Jim Bridger is unlucky in marriage, but lucky in business when he builds Fort Bridger in Wyoming.

Until Brigham Young and the Latter Day Saints arrive. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. To binge all the episodes of a new season, and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or sign up through the link of the show notes, or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Matthew Kearns,

additional writing by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.