On August 25, 1823, fur trapper Hugh Glass suffered a near‑fatal attack by a grizzly bear near the Grand River. Detailed as a hunter for Major Andrew Henry’s Rocky Mountain expedition, Glass was scouting ahead through a dense thicket when he startled a mother grizzly with her cubs. The bear instantly charged, tearing at his throat and crushing his limbs before his companions could intervene.
The confrontation left Glass mangled, unconscious, and unable to stand. Believing his death was imminent, Major Henry left two young men behind to watch over Glass and provide a proper burial when he expired. However, after several days, the attendants panicked under the threat of hostile native parties, took Glass’s rifle and equipment, and abandoned him entirely alone in the wilderness.
Against all structural odds, Glass regained consciousness to find himself weaponless and deep in frontier territory. Driven by raw determination and a desire for accountability, he crawled over 200 miles toward Fort Kiowa, a harrowing survival trek that inspired the 2015 Academy Award‑winning film The Revenant. His historic journey remains a definitive account of frontier endurance, recording the extreme physical boundaries of human survival during the early American fur trade era.
Image: Hugh Glass and the Grizzly – newspaper illustration via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
