The death match between Mountain Man Hugh Glass and the silver-tipped she-grizzly has been described in a variety of ways. Frederick Manfred in Lord Grizzly describes a scene where a startled Hugh is stripped of his firearms by the equally startled grizzly.
"She cuffed at the gun in his hands as if she knew what it was for. As it whirled into the bushes, it went off in the air, the ball whacking harmlessly into the white sand at their feet.
Hugh next clawed for his horse pistol.
Again, she seemed to know what it was for. She cuffed the pistol out of his hand too."
The bear claws the Mountain Man "like a heavyweight trying to give a lightweight a going-over in a clinch."
At this point, Frederick Manfred has a badly wounded Hugh getting inside the reach of the enormous bear, wrapping her in his own bear hug in order to keep out of the way of her deadly claws. As Hugh holds on he stabs frantically with his skinning knife. Eventually the grizzly succumbs to the multiple knife wounds and falls dead over the mangled body of Hugh Glass.
John Myers speculates in The Saga of Hugh Glass that Hugh got off a shot before being mauled. Myers points out that grizzly bears do not attack with their teeth but rather with their terribly armed forepaws. In order to do this the grizzly bear will rise up on its hind legs to a full height of nine feet. Because of this method of attack an experienced hunter like Hugh Glass would have been able to get off a shot. The shot mortally wounded the bear but not before it nearly ripped the Mountain Man to death.
Other accounts have members of Hugh's expedition coming to his aid after hearing his shrieks. There may have been one or two other hunters in the near vicinity and they may have helped finish off the grizzly.
Some reports claim the bear was protecting two cubs. If there were cubs in the area they probably would have been killed by Hugh's fellow trappers.
What is known for sure is that after the wrestle the she-grizzly was dead and Hugh Glass was terribly wounded. He was bitten and clawed on his already injured leg, back, and throat. The other trappers were stunned to hear his shallow, raspy breaths as he held on to the barest thread of life. All agreed it was only a matter of time until Old Hugh would be food for the wolves.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Wrestle - Part One
If Hugh Glass had never encountered an angry bruin in the prairies of South Dakota, his life would still have had the elements of Wild West legend. As mentioned in an earlier post, Hugh had a past which included life as a mariner, a pirate, and an adopted member of a Pawnee tribe.
However, the aim of these posts is to compare Manfred's Lord Grizzly to the best factual accounts of the Hugh Glass Grizzly Bear saga. Lord Grizzly is separated into three elements: the wrestle, the crawl, and the showdown. The wrestle is also where this comparison will begin.
According to both fact and fiction, Hugh Glass was not the typical mountain man. When he signed on with the fur company of General William Ashley in 1823 he was considerably older than his fellow trappers. John Myers in The Saga of Hugh Glass places Hugh in his forties while Frederick Manfred imagines him to be in his late fifties. Most of the othe trappers were men in their twenties while one, the legendary Jim Bridger, might have been as young as seventeen. Old Hugh had some education as well. The only example we have of Hugh's own voice is in a letter he wrote to the family of a young trapper named Johnny Gardner who was killed in a raid by the Arikara tribe. Hugh wrote:
Dr Sr:
My painful duty it is to tell you of the deth of yr son wh befell at the hands of the indians 2n June in the early morning. He lived a little while after he was shot and asked me to inform you of his sad fate. We brought him to the ship where he soon died. Mr Smith a young man of our company made a powerful prayer wh moved us all greatly and I am persuaded John died in peace. His body we buried with others near this camp and marked the grave with a log. His things we will send to you. The savages are greatly treacherous. We traded with them as friends but after a great storm of rain and thunder they came at us before light and many were hurt. I myself was shot in the leg. Master Ashley is bound to stay in these parts till the traitors are rightly punished.
yr obt svt
Hugh Glass
This letter appears in both Lord Grizzly and The Saga of Hugh Glass. The ship Hugh mentions would have been one of the keelboats used by the the expedition to navigate the Missouri River. Mr. Smith was Jedediah Smith, a mountain man who would later have an adventure of his own that would rival that of Hugh Glass.
Finally, Hugh was known as a loner and not the sort to take orders very well. In late August of 1823 while Hugh was travelling with a party of trappers led by Major Andrew Henry in what is now northwest South Dakota near the current town of Lemmon, Hugh decided to wander off by himself. Frederick Manfred describes the scene where Hugh, after being slighted by Major Henry and left off a hunting detail, decides to get away from his camp to settle himself down:
However, the aim of these posts is to compare Manfred's Lord Grizzly to the best factual accounts of the Hugh Glass Grizzly Bear saga. Lord Grizzly is separated into three elements: the wrestle, the crawl, and the showdown. The wrestle is also where this comparison will begin.
According to both fact and fiction, Hugh Glass was not the typical mountain man. When he signed on with the fur company of General William Ashley in 1823 he was considerably older than his fellow trappers. John Myers in The Saga of Hugh Glass places Hugh in his forties while Frederick Manfred imagines him to be in his late fifties. Most of the othe trappers were men in their twenties while one, the legendary Jim Bridger, might have been as young as seventeen. Old Hugh had some education as well. The only example we have of Hugh's own voice is in a letter he wrote to the family of a young trapper named Johnny Gardner who was killed in a raid by the Arikara tribe. Hugh wrote:
Dr Sr:
My painful duty it is to tell you of the deth of yr son wh befell at the hands of the indians 2n June in the early morning. He lived a little while after he was shot and asked me to inform you of his sad fate. We brought him to the ship where he soon died. Mr Smith a young man of our company made a powerful prayer wh moved us all greatly and I am persuaded John died in peace. His body we buried with others near this camp and marked the grave with a log. His things we will send to you. The savages are greatly treacherous. We traded with them as friends but after a great storm of rain and thunder they came at us before light and many were hurt. I myself was shot in the leg. Master Ashley is bound to stay in these parts till the traitors are rightly punished.
yr obt svt
Hugh Glass
This letter appears in both Lord Grizzly and The Saga of Hugh Glass. The ship Hugh mentions would have been one of the keelboats used by the the expedition to navigate the Missouri River. Mr. Smith was Jedediah Smith, a mountain man who would later have an adventure of his own that would rival that of Hugh Glass.
Finally, Hugh was known as a loner and not the sort to take orders very well. In late August of 1823 while Hugh was travelling with a party of trappers led by Major Andrew Henry in what is now northwest South Dakota near the current town of Lemmon, Hugh decided to wander off by himself. Frederick Manfred describes the scene where Hugh, after being slighted by Major Henry and left off a hunting detail, decides to get away from his camp to settle himself down:
It was sport to be out on one's own again, alone. The new, the
old new, just around the turn ahead, was the only remedy
for hot blood. Ahead was always either gold or the grave. The
gamble of it freshened the blood at the same time that it cleared
the eye. What could beat galloping up alone over the brow of
a new bluff for that first look beyond?
Old Hugh's motivation according to John Myers in The Saga of Hugh Glass was simply to see new country without being burdened by his younger mates. In any case, Hugh Glass' desire to be alone for a short time led to his chance encounter with the incredible killing machine known by the mountain men as Old Ephraim, the silver tipped Grizzly Bear.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Frederick Manfred
Frederick Manfred was about 76 years old at the time and was signing a book he had written 34 years earlier. He looked like he would have rather been doing something else. When I approached him to sign my copy of Lord Grizzly I was somewhat intimidated as he reminded me of a very tall version of the actor John Carradine. However, he was friendly and probably would have given me all the time and conversation I would have wanted. That is, if I could have thought of something to say to him besides "thanks."
I'm not sure how much Frederick Manfred's works are read today. A quick scan of Amazon.com showed only a couple of his books for sale. It's a shame because he not only wrote of the West but also wrote The Golden Bowl, a novel of the Great Depression that has been compared to The Grapes of Wrath. Like many great authors, several of his novels were considered semi-autobiographical. He was careful researcher and great storyteller. Lord Grizzly is not only the saga of Hugh Glass but a great work of fiction as well.
In the next post, the fictional and non-fictional versions of the Hugh Glass cycle will be compared.
A quick sidenote. The Black Hills to me is not limited to the 125 mile by 60 mile geographical region of western South Dakota. Instead, the influence of the Hills stretches east to the Missouri River and west well into Wyoming and Montana. Therefore, for my purposes, I will consider the history and fiction of these surrounding areas as pertinent to the history of the Hills.
Also, I am not a book reviewer or critic. If I do not like a book I rarely finish it. Therefore, anything appearing in this blog will have my not-very-sought-after seal of approval.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
THE LEGEND OF HUGH GLASS
The fur trade in the upper Missouri region of the land we now call South Dakota began in earnest soon after the Lewis and Clark expedition charted the area in 1804 and 1805.
The spectacular discoveries of Lewis and Clark and the overwhelming demand for fur by wealthy American and European socialites brought into existence the rugged outdoorsman known as the Mountain Man. Spanish and French trappers and hunters had explored and exploited the area for many years prior but the Louisiana Purchase made the fur trade a most American adventure.
There are many Paul Bunyan-esque tales from the Mountain Man era but none tops the saga of Hugh Glass.
Briefly, Hugh Glass was a man who had gone to sea as a young man, had been taken captive and forced to serve the pirate Jean Lafitte, escaping only to be captured and nearly burned alive by the Pawnee. Only quick thinking saved his life and he spent the next few years living with the Pawnee tribe.
However, the true legend of Hugh Glass came after he had joined a fur trading expedition up the Missouri originating from St Louis in 1823.
The amazing account of Hugh Glass and his wrestle with a grizzly bear, crawl of one hundred miles after being left for dead, and showdown with the men who left him will be examined in the fiction of Frederick Manfred's 1954 novel Lord Grizzly, Everett Dick's social history Vanguards of the Frontier, and John Myers biography Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man: the Saga of Hugh Glass.
The spectacular discoveries of Lewis and Clark and the overwhelming demand for fur by wealthy American and European socialites brought into existence the rugged outdoorsman known as the Mountain Man. Spanish and French trappers and hunters had explored and exploited the area for many years prior but the Louisiana Purchase made the fur trade a most American adventure.
There are many Paul Bunyan-esque tales from the Mountain Man era but none tops the saga of Hugh Glass.
Briefly, Hugh Glass was a man who had gone to sea as a young man, had been taken captive and forced to serve the pirate Jean Lafitte, escaping only to be captured and nearly burned alive by the Pawnee. Only quick thinking saved his life and he spent the next few years living with the Pawnee tribe.
However, the true legend of Hugh Glass came after he had joined a fur trading expedition up the Missouri originating from St Louis in 1823.
The amazing account of Hugh Glass and his wrestle with a grizzly bear, crawl of one hundred miles after being left for dead, and showdown with the men who left him will be examined in the fiction of Frederick Manfred's 1954 novel Lord Grizzly, Everett Dick's social history Vanguards of the Frontier, and John Myers biography Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man: the Saga of Hugh Glass.
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