Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Mountain Men?

The tough old buzzards, young really, that lived back then in the mountains.

Trapping fur, living amongest the Indians, and mostly just staying alive.

Any you admire the most, story's about them?

Liver Eating Johnson.

Rumors, legends, and campfire tales abound about Johnson. Perhaps chief among them is this one: In 1847, his wife, a member of the Flathead American Indian tribe, was killed by a young Crow brave and his fellow hunters, which prompted Johnson to embark on a vendetta against the tribe. According to historian Andrew Mehane Southerland, "He supposedly killed and scalped more than 300 Crow Indians and then devoured their livers" to avenge the death of the wife, and "As his reputation and collection of scalps grew, Johnson became an object of fear."

The legend says that he would cut out and eat the liver of each man killed. This was an insult to Crow because the Crow believed the liver to be vital if one was to go on to the afterlife. This led to him being known as "Liver-Eating Johnson".

About half way thru "The Big Sky" Iv read it before. Good read, they were some tough SOBs Love that time frame, in History!

Hugh Glass, the man Leonardo's "The Revenant" movie was based on. Tough does not even begin to describe the man (Glass, NOT that puzzy DiCaprio).

Great book "Give Your Heart to the Hawks".

The movie was great, enjoy yearly for sure !

Liver Eating Johnson and Hugh Glass certainly have to be up there. I believe Johnson's war against the Crows lasted 20 years or so.

For me its got to be John Colter. Left Lewis & Clark at the Mandan villages to go back into the Rockies. Not in any way diminishing the ones that came later, but Colter and the two guys that went with him were hundreds of miles away from anyone who could remotely be considered an ally. Just being the first white man to see what he saw must have been something.

Most historians think this is probably not accurate. But there are apparently periods in his life where there's no historical record of what he was doing so you never know for sure.

As far as mountain men there were lots of great characters including Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson and many more. Their like will probably not be seen again in America.

"Give Your Heart to the Hawks" started me off. Books on
Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, Joe Meek, Old Bill Williams, Joe Walker, Uncle Dick Wooten, Kit Carson, Russel Osborne and many others.

Most of the mtn men had at least some idea of what was out there. The Corp of Discovery had none whatever. They had the advantage of numbers but not a clue as to what to expect. I can imagine how Lewis felt as he walked up to the top of the great divide expecting to see the ocean but only seeing another 500 miles of mountains in front of him... while snow flakes were falling on his head.

Journal of a Trapper

By Osbourne Russel

Really a great book with no make believe

Good Books recalling that time period:

Blood & Thunder

Empire of the Summer Moon

Undaunted Courage

Give Your Heart to the Hawks

Crow Killer

The mountain men were certainly cut from a tougher cloth than most, but my hat goes off to any of the early pioneers that crossed the Oregon Trail or helped settle the West.

Outside of Baker OR is an Oregon Trail Interpretive Center with lots of interesting things there, definitely worth an hour or three if you’re ever passing through Baker on I-84. But as you walk in there is a life size diorama of a wagon train and up front is a young women on foot with a man, probably her husband, on horseback with a muzzle loading rifle across the saddle. Sweat beads their brow, they are tired and dirty, looking ahead wearily but hopefully toward an uncertain future.

They are just mannequins but something about them really struck me with the reality of those days and made me realize they were real flesh and blood people and not mythical figures in a history book. Here you are in your early twenties, living comfortably or not on a farm in Pennsylvania or North Carolina or wherever and you uproot yourself, your wife and possibly very young children to strike out across a hostile and unknown wilderness. Cholera, drowning at river crossings, dangerous animals, hostile "savages", even just crossing the Rockies could kill you. All for a dream that may or may not pan out when you reach Oregon.

It all sounds so adventurous from the comfort of reading about it, but those people – most of them the same age as our millennials – lived it and many of them did die in the attempt.

My hat is off to all of them.

I am rereading "Mountain Man" by V Fischer.
Great book!

Kit Carson's biography is basically the history of the West. The scope of important events he was part of is mind boggling.

If I remember correctly one of the two men that left Hugh Glass to die was a young Jim Bridger.

According to Wikipedia, you are correct. It also says that Glass found him, to exact revenge, but forgave him because of his youth. He later found the other man, John S. Fitzgerald, but was unable to kill him as he had enlisted in the Army, and Glass feared retribution from the Army. Fitzgerald's Captain did force him to return Glass' Hawken rifle that Fitzgerald had stolen when he and Bridger abandoned him. He warned Fitzgerald that he would kill him if he ever left the Army. Glass never got the chance, as he was killed by Arikara indians nine years later in 1833.

"Face the North Wind" Excellent book about trapping in Northern Saskatchewan. A camp of a cousin of mine is also mentioned in the book, which made it even more enjoyable for me.

These are worth reading, in my opinion.

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