The Authentic Story of Hugh Glass Read online

  The Authentic Story of Hugh Glass

  True Courage and Survival in the West

  By

  Win Blevins

  © 1973 by Winfred Blevins

  All rights reserved.

  The Authentic Hugh Glass

  A Portrait of Mountain Man Skills

  and

  Mountain Man Luck

  “It was an epic time, which lasted hardly more than a third of a century before civilization swarmed west on trails the mountain men had blazed. Now Blevins sees they are paid the awed honor that is due them, in a book which has the drama and suspense of a novel.” ―Los Angeles Times

  It is said by some that the era of the mountain men is one of the few times when men were truly free. It was a time when Indians were not subjugated. Rather, the mountain men, at only several hundred, learned to get along with the Indians and learn ways of the wilderness that often saved their lives. They also learned which Indian tribes to avoid. Hugh Glass himself was adopted by a Pawnee chief, and during his epic journey from near death to the land of the living, the Indian skills he learned saved his life.

  The time of the Mountain Man was short, barely thirty years, from the era of Lewis and Clark into the 1840s, and it is one of the most exciting times in American history. The mountain men explored the Great American West. As trappers in a sometimes hostile, often glorious, trackless land, their exploits opened the trails for those who would follow—for better or worse.

  Here then is the story of Hugh Glass, a personification of the larger-than-life mountain man.

  The story of Hugh Glass sounds like a yarn, one that was carried all over the plains by green listeners who didn’t understand the game of storytelling. Maybe part of the High Glass story is a yarn, the part before old Glass met up with a grizzly in South Dakota one September morning. After that, it has a lot of wise hands to vouch for it. And it was too good for even mountain men to improve on.

  Glass is said to have been a sailor, perhaps even an officer, working in the Caribbean just after the way with the British. In 1817 he had the misfortune to encounter Jean Lafitte, the pirate who saved Andrew Jackson at New Orleans and then returned to his quiet life of pirating.

  Lafitte captured Glass’s ship and its crew. Lafitte gave Glass the choice of becoming a pirate or being dispatched instantly to another world. Glass made the wise choice, and was taken to Lafitte’s current lair, Galveston Island. After about a year of pirating, Glass couldn’t take it any longer. He rebelled at doing something especially repulsive, and was told he would be executed.

  With a friend, he decided to swim for it. Their chief worries were the cannibalistic Indians over on the mainland. But if they could stay hidden and work their way northeast, they could join an outpost of Americans in Texas near the Louisiana border.

  They swam and managed to escape the Karankawas, but, somehow, they managed to misread the sun enough to travel more northwest than northeast. Instead of getting to Louisiana, they ended up in western Kansas, deep in Pawnee country. A bad stroke of luck.

  The Pawnees captured the two and promptly made a human sacrifice of Glass’s friend. As Glass was about to be given to the gods as well, he handed the chief some vermilion. The chief was so impressed with the gift that he not only spared Hugh’s life, he adopted him as a son.

  So, 1818 or 1819, Glass became a Pawnee and began to master plains craft as he had mastered marine craft. At some later time, his adopted Pawnee father made a journey to St. Louis to see William Clark, now Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Hugh went along and in St. Louis he became a white man again.

  Perhaps some of Hugh’s story is fanciful to this point. But from here on, his life is well-substantiated and even more fabulous.

  In the spring of 1823, Glass enlisted with the Ashley-Henry men who were going up the Missouri River to trap in the mountains. General Ashley, an important political figure in the new state of Missouri, had already sent brigades to the mountains last year, and St. Louis was aflurry with reports that these men were going to bring back a fortune greater than the wealth of the mines of Peru. People said that any man who was enterprising, didn’t mind a little hardship, and didn’t quail at danger, ought to have a try. Glass, who had been quite a wanderer and adventurer on the seas, had fallen for the plains and decided to have a go with Ashley.

  Ashley led the bank upriver to the Arikara villages, where they were attacked by this unpredictable tribe, and forced back down. Fifteen men were killed in the battle, and Hugh was wounded in the leg. It was the worse defeat any American trappers had suffered to date.

  Ashley realized that he had to take some action to keep the river route to the Stony Mountains open; the Arikaras would be even more dangerous after this victory. So he secured help, not only of the rival fur company, but of the U.S. Army. These Rees (as the Arikaras were also called) must be made to know their place.

  Unfortunately the commander of the expedition against the Rees, Colonel Leavenworth, turned the affair into a comic opera of miscalculations. He let the Rees get away scot-free, so they were not chastened but aroused and encouraged to thumb their noses at the ineffective white men.

  Ashley and his field leader, Major Andrew Henry, led their men downriver in great discouragement. The river route was now closed. They had to get to the mountains, and their only choice was a land expedition. At Fort Kiowa they scrounged up a few horses—not enough so that the men could ride, but enough to get the supplies to Fort Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Major Henry would lead one small land party, very carefully. The Rees had disappeared after the ridiculous campaign against them; no one knew where they were, now would not be a good time to find out by accident.

  Henry’s party of thirteen left Fort Kiowa in mid-August, moving up the Missouri and then due west up the Grand River. The plains of South Dakota were scrubby, nearly barren flat, dry, unaccommodating. Henry put men out to the head and to the side to watch for buffalo and for Rees. But on one of the first few nights, an Indian attack left two men dead and two more wounded.

  Glass was not a leader in the party, he was a new man and the party counted on veterans like Black Harris and Hiram Allen. So, after five days and probably a couple of hundred miles out of Fort Kiowa, two old hands were ahead of the main party, hunting. Glass, about age forty, had been his own man too long to traipse along docilely with the others. He liked to be by himself, and he was as stubborn, insubordinate, and independent as any mountain man. He was out ahead, against discipline, looking for some berries, when he stumbled into a thicket and onto a huge grizzly and her two cubs.

  Old Ephraim charged, and Hugh knew what he was in for. He didn’t take off running because he knew where his best chance lay. When the grizzly reached him, she stopped long enough to raise up on her hind legs so that she could swat him with her forepaws. Hugh waited, shoved his fear out of his vision, and when she exposed her chest, shot directly at her heart. Then he dropped his gun and ran desperately, screaming for help at the top of his lungs. (The rifles of the mountain men, unfortunately, fired just once. Then it took thirty seconds to get more powder and another ball in place.)

  The grizzly caught Hugh after a dozen or two steps and with one swipe sent him sprawling. Then she hit the limp body again. Then she tore of a piece of flesh and carried it back to her cubs.

  Black Harris was the first to get there. When he burst into the thicket, one of the cubs took after him and chased him into the river. From chest deep water, Harris shot and killed the cub. The rest of the party ran toward the snarling she-grizzly. They found Glass gamely slashing at her with his knife, but she was mangling him with every swat. When she knocked him down and started to pounce on him again, several m
en fired balls into her. Finally, from Hugh’s original shot, or from the new shots, she keeled over next to Glass’s body.

  When they turned Glass over, they were surprised to find him breathing at all. His face was partly raked away to the bones, his ribs were crushed. An awful tear in his throat bubbled every time he breathed. His body was littered with gashes. Any one of the fifteen wounds was enough to kill him. The men smiled a little, sadly, but admiringly, at the gumption of a man who could live for even a few minutes after having gotten so torn up.

  They hovered, waiting for the old man to die. After a few minutes, they decided to make camp. After the burying, there wouldn’t be time to move that day, anyway. Strangely, when dark came and they turned in, old Glass was still hanging on.

  And in the morning he was still hanging on. Now the whole thing was beginning to get embarrassing. For Glass to live a little while was touching, but for him to survive the night was dangerous.

  Henry did what he had to do. The Rees could be anywhere. It was essential to get out of their territory as quickly as possible. It made absolutely no sense to risk ten lives waiting for another man to die so that they could go through the ritual of duty. The men were getting antsy. But still, Henry could not bring himself to abandon a man who clung so tenaciously to life. So he compromised. He asked for two volunteers to stay with Glass until the old man gave up, bury him, and hightail it after the main party.

  Right off the kid volunteered, a gangly nineteen-year-old of no particular account named Jim Bridger. This young man wasn’t the sort you left in hostile territory alone. Henry looked at the other men. He was an old hand at the mountains and at leading men, so he didn’t berate them. He just told them that the job had to be done, and asked who was willing to do it. John Fitzgerald spoke up.

  It wasn’t fair, he said, a man would be daring the Rees to take his scalp, would get nothing done with the dare, and would get nothing for his trouble in the end. Might even come out behind, ‘cus he might miss the fall hunt if he couldn’t get to the fort quick enough. Maybe, if Henry made it worth a man’s while …

  At least Fitzgerald had been around a little. Maybe he could get this Bridger boy back with all his hair on his head. Henry declared the company would go forty dollars a man to stay behind, if Fitzgerald would stay. Fitzgerald allowed that he would. Forty dollars was two or three months’ pay.

  They broke camp quickly, all of them fidgety about having hung around so long and uneasy about making their way to the mouth of the Yellowstone River with just eight men left. Henry noticed young Bridger standing around self-consciously straight, like he thought everyone was looking at him. Henry had a nagging feeling that Bridger might pay dearly for his chance to look good. He shrugged the feeling off. In this situation, he couldn’t afford it. They cleared out.

  Bridger really didn’t pay any mind to Fitzgerald or the mauled body he was guarding for an hour or two. He sat and stared at his rifle, his mind back home in Missouri where he had been bonded to a blacksmith. Bridger hated that life. He imaged the surprise and envy in the blacksmith’s eyes if he could see his bound boy now. He remembered when, slaving on his folks’ farm on the river above St. Louis, he had watched the keelboats headed upriver, into wilderness country, where a man might show that he could do brave things, the kind of things that other men told stories about. He had longed, at twelve, to go up one of the two great rivers with those men and be one of them. He smiled to himself.

  He needed a moment to take in that Fitzgerald was talking to him. “I’m gonna have a look around,” he said. “Why don’t you see what you can do for him?”

  “Do for him.” It hadn’t quite struck Bridger that they would have to do for old Glass until he went under. He guessed they would. They had to give him his fair chance, even if he didn’t have none. He stood over the body and looked down at it. It looked peaceful, asleep, and maybe resting. Bridger looked at the awful wounds, half bound with strips of Glass’s dirty shirt but still showing raw for all that. Jim felt a little nauseated. He picked a piece of rag from the shirt lying next to Glass, stepped over to the spring to soak it, and poked it into Glass’s open mouth. Glass’s eyelids fluttered a little, and he sucked on a rag. Well, they would just wait, that’s all. At least they had water without even going the twenty steps to the creek, and enough dried meat without having to shoot and make a ruckus that could be heard. There were even buffler berries for a change, if they wanted some.

  He wondered where Fitzgerald was. He himself wouldn’t have even left the thicket to check for Rees. They had all they needed right here and could sit tight and not be seen till the job was done.

  The mouth had stopped sucking, he noticed, and he reached out for the rag. Fitzgerald spoke before Bridger saw him standing behind. “How’s his breathing?”

  Bridger felt around the nose and mouth for the air. “Feeble,” he answered. “And fitful.”

  It seemed callous to say more, but Fitzgerald did. “Won’t be long then, and it’s a good thing. This country makes a man uncomfortable alone.”

  Bridger felt a twinge of resentment. Fitzgerald wasn’t alone, was he? He walked over and got a handful of berries, crushed them, and put them in Glass’s mouth, one by one. He wasn’t afraid to stick the job out. Fitzgerald sat and waited, not paying any mind to Bridger or Glass. Bridger could sense that Fitzgerald’s sitting was uneasy.

  They got into their buffalo robes early that night, since they couldn’t build a fire. Bridger wished to hell Fitzgerald would say something—just anything, just talk, to show that they were two human beings and not something else. He forgot: three human beings, though one couldn’t talk and wasn’t any company. He guessed Glass would be gone by morning. Bridger had seen more than a few dead men, since he’d been in the mountains a year and a half. So that didn’t bother him. That much. He turned his head and peered through the darkness toward the black shape, no more than ten feet away. It was a funny notion, the idea of sleeping that might be alive and might be dead.

  Come morning and Glass was still alive. Fitzgerald checked him and said that the fever had come up in him and he wouldn’t stand against it long. If the tearing up and the losing blood didn’t get him, the fever would take him off pretty quick. Bridger was ashamed of it, but he felt a little relieved. Why, what if old Glass held out for a couple of weeks? What could they do about that?

  He took his turn walking out to check around that day, going slow and quiet and turning himself into all eyes and all ears. This country wasn’t fat, like the upper Missouri country, at least not this time of year. It was decidedly thin. The sun had dried the sandy soil into almost a crust, like it had been in an oven. Sun and wind had got the sagebrush and the cottonwoods crackling dry, and had turned what little green there was to gray.

  This Dakota country swept away in scrubby hills as far as he could see, and as far as he could imagine anybody seeing. Back in Illinois and Missouri the hills didn’t reach so far but hedged in more. Out here everything seemed to be about twice as big, as though proportion had gotten out of hand and everything was twice as far and twice as broad, or twice as high, like the country had been made for men of double size. Bridger didn’t have any words for how big it was or how empty it was, but he could feel the bigness and the emptiness inside.

  When he lay in his robes that evening, he thought of the great sweep of plain around him, and this thicket the only place that was somehow sheltered, and they just one small spot against it all.

  On the third morning, Glass was still alive. Now he seemed delirious. He opened his eyes sometimes, although he didn’t seem to see with them, and babbled things Bridger couldn’t understand. He sat and waited, and listened to Fitzgerald muttering and cursing. It was amazing to him that Fitzgerald could have spent three days with him and not really spoken to him, just talked to himself or talked at Bridger. Some mountain men, Bridger noticed, got to almost dumb brutes, after a while, that couldn’t talk at all.

  On the fourth morning Bridger wasn�
�t sure for a while if Glass was alive or dead. The chest didn’t seem to move, and there were only the barest stirrings around the nose and mouth. He seemed to have gone into a sleep that was near to death. The fever was down some, though.

  It was that afternoon that Fitzgerald finally talked to him. Suddenly friendly, he started hinting that he and Bridger were mighty good fellows to have stayed so long with Glass, risking their own necks. They had certainly gone more than forty dollars’ worth. They had done it because they were not the kind of niggurs that would walk off and leave a dying man and not try to help. But it would be terrible, and not right, if they had to stay a week, or two weeks, or goddamn knows how long until old Glass gave up. Nothing for it, of course, but it still wasn’t right.

  He kept on like that, gentle but clear, that day and evening. Glass stayed in the sleep that seemed near death. Perhaps he would just ease over to being dead any time now, without a sign or sound. The next morning he was the same. Fitzgerald kept angling back to how unfair it was, but gentle, because Bridger didn’t take up his line. He knew where Fitzgerald was headed. That evening Glass was the same.

  The next morning the stubborn old fellow opened his eyes. They were glazed, and at first Bridger wasn’t sure if he could see. Then he knew Glass could, and he told Fitzgerald.

  “I’m glad he can see,” answered Fitzgerald, “because he’s going to need it.”

  He started packing up. “This niggur’s getting out of here, Bridger. I think we’ve overstayed our time. Henry didn’t mean for us to wait five days anyway, just for forty dollars. He thought we’d be right along. This ain’t reasonable.” He was lashing his gear to their one horse. “We used up our medicine, staying this long. This child ain’t crazy.”

  Bridger didn’t say anything. He looked at Glass. His head was wagging back and forth. Might just be delirious. But Bridger thought he could see what was happening, and probably could hear, too. Bridger stared at Glass.