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Yet we have a large number of accounts and journals from our history from those individuals who were literate describing the lifestyles of those around them who were not. These written accounts increase greatly towards the end of the Nineteenth Century as the population and literacy rates increased and mass produced printed material become more popular. One of the best and most detailed written accounts is an early one; The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Those guys had a number of tussles with the "white bears" in their travels, most often initiated when they peppered said bears first with one or more round lead rifle balls

We have a number of detailed biographies of Mountain Men, often in their own words, and certainly by the early Twentieth Century numerous authors were recording the accounts and reminiscences of elderly Plains Indians.

One of the most famous 19th Century Plains Indians who's life we know about in detail was the Cheyenne leader Dull Knife (1810-1883), who's life encompasses much of our Western History. Dull Knife is famous as the guy who led the breakout of the Northern Cheyenne from Oklahoma in 1878, and again the mid-Winter escape from Fort Robinson, Nebraska in the middle of a blizzard in the middle of winter.

The name "Dull Knife" reportedly came from an incident that had occurred when he was a young man. A grizzly charged the column when the camp was on the move, whereupon Dull Knife, who plainly weren't no slouch, put himself between the column and the bear, engaging it with a knife which turned out to be not as sharp (or pointy?) as he would have liked.