Hugh Glass - Long Walk Home

His name was Hugh Glass and his story is one of the most incredible ever told. Glass was an American fur trapper relatively well known during his life for exploring the West. In 1822, Glass responded to an advertisement to “ascend the river Missouri,” with a fur trading company. In August of 1823, while still on the trip, Glass was scouting alone and chanced upon a grizzly bear with two cubs. Before he could ready his weapon, he was attacked and badly mauled. Before going unconscious, he fought back and stabbed the bear several times, eventually killing it.

 

When his friends arrived on the scene, they found him unconscious next to a massive dead grizzly bear and assumed he was dead. Two of his friends were in the process of burying him when Arikaree Indians attacked and were forced to flee. Glass soon regained consciousness, finding himself completely alone in the wild with no weapons or equipment. With a broken leg, numerous cuts, and bare ribs showing, Glass set his own leg and wrapped himself in the pelt of the bear he had just killed to begin his trek back to Fort Kiowa over 200 miles away!

Eating mostly wild berries and roots, he allowed maggots to eat the dead flesh on his leg to prevent gangrene. Eventually he reached the Fort and established himself as one of the most famous and skilled frontiersmen in American history.