On or around August 23, 1823, Hugh Glass, an American frontiersman and fur trapper, somehow survives a brutal grizzly bear attack in what is present-day northwestern South Dakota. After being abandoned by companions, he is forced to travel more than 200 miles alone to reach safety—crawling, stumbling and eventually floating his way downriver in a makeshift canoe.
According to the Museum of the Mountain Man, which has analyzed all the contemporaneous 19th-century accounts, Glass was on a fur-trading expedition that started in St. Louis and traversed the upper Missouri River with more than a dozen men. While in the Grand River Valley, they encountered hostile members of the Mandan Indian nation who attacked them and killed two of their group. A few days later, Glass reportedly encountered a protective mother bear with two cubs; the big bear charged and severely mauled him. Members of the party heard Glass’ screams and killed the bear.
Glass suffered extensive wounds, including a broken leg, punctured throat and deep back lacerations exposing several ribs. His fellow frontiersmen felt certain he would die from his wounds by the morning—but he didn’t, so they carried him for two days on a litter made from tree boughs. Deep in hostile Indian territory, the group felt an urgency to keep moving. So the leader recruited two volunteers—a man named John Fitzgerald and a youth (likely named James Bridger)—to stay with Glass until he died and give him a proper burial.
Despite eye movements and breathing being his only signs of life, Glass lived for five days after the group departed. The two men, anxious to rejoin the group and convinced he couldn’t possibly survive further, decided to abandon Glass next to a flowing spring. They took his weapons and survival tools.
