Hugh Glass was born near the end of the 18th century. For someone who would make his name in the untamed American west this was either the perfect time to come into the world or the worst. The territory that would later form the western States was raw, primordial, without cities or towns west of St. Louis, hostile to outsiders, and dangerous to anyone that lived there. America had bought this territory from Napoleon when he needed the money to wage war against the British Empire while Glass was still a boy, The United States lacked the resources, or even the population to fully claim it. Into the breach stepped adventures, traders, and entrepreneurs. Glass was among them.
One version of his story has him becoming the captive of Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte and pressed into service to man his fleet. After his escape from life as as a pirate he went westward to join the Pawnees, or perhaps, taken captive by them before winning freedom. He took a Pawnee wife and later joined a delegation of chiefs to represent the tribes interests in Saint Louis.., When Saint Louis trader, General William Henry Ashton assembled a hundred trappers to establish his financial empire in the Rocky Mountains, Glass was chosen as a guide. Ashton business model was innovative, and characteristically American. His beaver trappers would be largely self financed free trappers. Up until then the fur trade in North America had relied on native Americans to do the trapping, and hired men ( engages) to do the trading. What Ashley introduced was a little like Uber going up against entrenched taxi interests. It was wildly successful, and it would change the history of the west beyond anything that had happened since the Louisiana Purchase.
Glass became famous not as a successful trapper or even an explorer, but for the awful mauling he received from a Grizzly sow and his overcoming those injuries after being left for dead by his companions. His story became entwined with the story of the western fur trade. It's also the basis of the Oscar winning film the Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His struggle to survive was almost super human, and if anything, even more dramatic and improbable than the drama captured on film.
I loved the movie, but was disappointed to find it had played so fast and loose with the story as it has been recorded. I don't fault it for moving the action from its Great Plains setting to the Rockies. The cinematography is stunning, and the setting more in keeping with the old west as we imagine it. Anyhow, where can you film in the Dakotas that looks anything like that territory before large scale farming, powerlines and roads, the damming of its rivers, or fracking?
Ashton's hundred would become the vanguard of the movement that would discover the ranges and valleys of the western United States long before other European Americans would arrive on their way to the oilfields of California or the forests of Oregon. After the beaver of the American west were nearly wiped out from trapping those trappers who against all odds were still alive, would guide explorers and surveyors, and emigrants. Manifest destiny was their destiny, made manifest. Their trails became the west's highways, as their camps would become our cities and towns.
In the almost two centuries since Glass's ordeal so much has changed. It's astonishing that much of the scenery has not.
As an itinerant bicyclist in the west, looking for a little adventure I move daily through scenes that excite the history buff in me. This last week I cycled from the Northeastern corner of California to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, then South to the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, Mono Lake and the Owens Valley. Wagon trails passed through here during the California gold rush. Kit Carson, himself a former trapper, guided the explorer John C. Fremont across this same route so little changed by the passage of time. To see what they saw, to drink from the same springs and bath in the same hot springs, to watch the moon's rise over the mountains as they did, is a privilege and a thrill. The trail is a little smoother for the grading and the paving, the ride a little faster on two wheels, but the continuity is astonishing. Best of all there's so little danger anymore of being mauled by angry bears, or pierced with arrows .
One version of his story has him becoming the captive of Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte and pressed into service to man his fleet. After his escape from life as as a pirate he went westward to join the Pawnees, or perhaps, taken captive by them before winning freedom. He took a Pawnee wife and later joined a delegation of chiefs to represent the tribes interests in Saint Louis.., When Saint Louis trader, General William Henry Ashton assembled a hundred trappers to establish his financial empire in the Rocky Mountains, Glass was chosen as a guide. Ashton business model was innovative, and characteristically American. His beaver trappers would be largely self financed free trappers. Up until then the fur trade in North America had relied on native Americans to do the trapping, and hired men ( engages) to do the trading. What Ashley introduced was a little like Uber going up against entrenched taxi interests. It was wildly successful, and it would change the history of the west beyond anything that had happened since the Louisiana Purchase.
Glass became famous not as a successful trapper or even an explorer, but for the awful mauling he received from a Grizzly sow and his overcoming those injuries after being left for dead by his companions. His story became entwined with the story of the western fur trade. It's also the basis of the Oscar winning film the Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His struggle to survive was almost super human, and if anything, even more dramatic and improbable than the drama captured on film.
I loved the movie, but was disappointed to find it had played so fast and loose with the story as it has been recorded. I don't fault it for moving the action from its Great Plains setting to the Rockies. The cinematography is stunning, and the setting more in keeping with the old west as we imagine it. Anyhow, where can you film in the Dakotas that looks anything like that territory before large scale farming, powerlines and roads, the damming of its rivers, or fracking?
Ashton's hundred would become the vanguard of the movement that would discover the ranges and valleys of the western United States long before other European Americans would arrive on their way to the oilfields of California or the forests of Oregon. After the beaver of the American west were nearly wiped out from trapping those trappers who against all odds were still alive, would guide explorers and surveyors, and emigrants. Manifest destiny was their destiny, made manifest. Their trails became the west's highways, as their camps would become our cities and towns.
In the almost two centuries since Glass's ordeal so much has changed. It's astonishing that much of the scenery has not.
As an itinerant bicyclist in the west, looking for a little adventure I move daily through scenes that excite the history buff in me. This last week I cycled from the Northeastern corner of California to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, then South to the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, Mono Lake and the Owens Valley. Wagon trails passed through here during the California gold rush. Kit Carson, himself a former trapper, guided the explorer John C. Fremont across this same route so little changed by the passage of time. To see what they saw, to drink from the same springs and bath in the same hot springs, to watch the moon's rise over the mountains as they did, is a privilege and a thrill. The trail is a little smoother for the grading and the paving, the ride a little faster on two wheels, but the continuity is astonishing. Best of all there's so little danger anymore of being mauled by angry bears, or pierced with arrows .
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