Hugh Glass: The Man Who Refused To Die

Mauled by a grizzly bear. Abandoned by his own men. Left with nothing in the wilderness.

Hugh Glass survived one of the most extreme ordeals in American frontier history — but surviving didn’t mean peace. In this episode, we explore how Glass kept going when everything failed, what really kept him alive, and why his story still matters today.

Sources

hugh glass real story - Reddit Search!

Hugh Glass | Biography & Facts | Britannica

Mountain man Hugh Glass mauled by a grizzly bear | HISTORY

Conquering the Frontier: Homesteading Challenges & Opportunities in Westward Expansion

Quest for Revenge - The Real Story of Hugh Glass

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There are survival stories, and then there are stories that feel impossible to believe. Stories where the human body is pushed well beyond anything it was meant to endure, and yet somehow keeps going anyway. This is one of those stories. Welcome back to the Crash Lessons podcast. I'm your host, Robin, and today we're talking about Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who refused to die even when nature, injury, betrayal, and sheer isolation all seem determined to finish the job. There's quite a bit of background in this story that I cover before I actually get to cover the bear attack and survival, which is what he is infamously known about, known for. But it was a crazy journey, so enjoy this story as there is nothing short of a shock throughout. But first, let's take a quick dive into what life on the frontier was. The American frontier was the expansion westward across America by settlers also known as the Old West or the Wild West. Life on the frontier was not an easy job and was a never-ending job. You couldn't just sit back and relax. There was always something that needed to be done. People living during this time faced many challenges with the lack of infrastructure, isolation, and most importantly the weather, which we know to be very, very unpredictable. They also faced conflict with Native American tribes as they expanded westward. During the American frontier, there were at most two people per mile per square mile, whereas today there are 94 to 99 people per square mile. I had to find a little comparison to help visualize the actual size of the square mile, because I wasn't sure. So if you're like me, then I got a little visual for you. So one square mile is equival is equivalent to over 500 American football fields. I'm not going to get into all of the dimensions and everything, but that's just a little vision visual to give you a comparison. That there was your neighbors were not close at all. With people being so few and far in between, and your closest neighbor was not in sight of you, really, made the problem of isolation have a big effect on people. If there was an illness, then you would be grinding up herbs to you herbs you grew in the garden, or if there was an emergency, then most likely you would have died before they could get the proper treatment or help. You really had to live off the land to make sure you could grow enough grains and hunt enough meat to survive, especially when the weather turned bad and you were hit with a snowstorm or something where you couldn't even make it anywhere for weeks at a time. The vast space between people also had an effect on the mental health, um, which actually had a name. It was called Prairie Madness. Now this is now this is how it was all over. Now this is how it was all over there were communities. I don't know what I wrote there. We're gonna ignore that. The problem was they kept expanding west, and there were no communities that way, so it took some time to actually start building them. And even when there were they were anything big, there was anything big, you could still be a great distance away from the closest community. For some people, if they wanted to trade, they were traveling hundreds of miles by foot or hopefully by horse just to trade. This is why people like Hugh Glass were a key role in their survival during the westward expansion. During trapping expeditions, they navigated their way through places like the Rocky Mountains and established trade roads. While navigating the Rocky Mountains, the mountain men, which is another name for trappers, were able to find major emigrant routes through the Pacific Northwest and discovered the south path which would allow wagons to get through the Rocky Mountains and open up the migration to Oregon and California. Trappers were hired by mostly big fur companies like the Missouri Fur Company or the Hudson's Bay Company, which, a little fun fact, as of 2025 has been around for 355 years, being founded in 1670. Or there was individual traders like William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry, who were actually the people who hired Hugh Glass from 1822 to 1823, and he was a part of a team of trappers hired by them known as Ashley's Hundred. With the trap trappers collecting goods for these trade companies, they were able to establish trading posts, which would also help in the building of communities and permanent settlements, some of which have actually become major cities today, like Detroit, St. Louis, and Winnipeg. Trappers had also created the rendezvous system, which connected Native American tribes with European goods like firearms and tools. This also became a point for trappers where instead of heading back to the city, they would meet at the rendezvous point to trade supplies, ammunition, and entertainment. They were able to pass along their extensive knowledge of survival and the land to settlers and during the harsh winters give them, gave them food and supplies helping them to survive. When trappers went on these expeditions, they were gone for months at a time and sometimes years, carrying as minimal supplies as possible as they had to rely on their knowledge of the land to survive. During this time, beaver pelts were the main focus, sometimes going alone in a partnership or with a group, which Hughlass was part of a group. As far as supplies, they carried rifles, ammunition, traps, blankets, and knives. Trappers would set up traplines that stretched dozens of miles and checked them daily or weekly. Once they had trapped a beaver, they would then skin it, flush the hide, and stretched pallet out to dry. Now they were far into the wilderness, away from civilization, amongst many animals that could be of a threat, and would be attracted to the flesh of the animals that they caught. So in order to stay safe from the predators, they would dig five to six foot holes or caches in the ground to hide the furs until transport. They definitely did not have the best shelters going on during this time period. They were either sleeping under the stars, or best case, they had little cabins, little makeshift cabins for shelter. They had to watch out for dangerous wildlife and always faced possible starvation since they had to live off the land mostly to survive. They also went out in very harsh winter conditions, so there was always a big possibility of losing limbs from exposure to the cold. There is very little known about Hugh Glass's early life, but is believed that he was born in Pennsylvania to Irish parents who had migrated to America from present-day Northern Ireland. Pretty well, anything known about Hugh Glass before the attack is widely known, is widely unknown, sorry, and there are a lot of stories told about him which are pretty hard to back up. I do want to share some stories, but don't take it as a fact. Hugh Glass's life is one of the those stories where there is a bit of back and forth between fact and fiction. Take it with a grain of salt. This is what I have found during my research process, and so this is just what I am sharing. One of the stories that was that he supposedly spent two years of his life as a pirate. Back somewhere between 1816 to 1820, Glass was a sailor and had been captured by French pirate Jean Lafitte, who had been who had then given him the choice to either die or become a pirate, and so he chose piracy for the next one to two years of his life. He had to live in a small colony of Campeche, which is now modern-day Galvinston, Texas. He did end up escaping, but apparently it was very hard to escape because on land on either side of his colony were the Kara Carankoa Native Americans, who it was said were cannibals. There's still a bit of debate as to whether they used human flesh as a source of food or whether it was some type of ritualistic cannibalism, but after looking into it more, there's definitely more to lean towards the side that it was they were ritualistic cannibals, and it is called vengeance cannibalism that they practiced on their enemies after a victory. Then, with the land being unsafe, there was also the waters that surrounded, which were full of alligators and poisonous snakes. But one day, Glass and another one and another guy decided they no longer wanted to live the dreadful pirate life and managed to escape the ship that was sitting off the coast in a cove, swam for two miles before reaching land and living off the land and sea for a short period of time. The pair, after a while, decided to travel inland in the hopes of finding settlement, but apparently that is not what they found. They ended up coming across the Pawnee tribe. This was not a good situation for them to be in and quickly turned bad when Glass's companion was offered up as a ceremonial sacrifice to ensure fertile land and a bountiful season of crops. He had to watch his companion being burned at the stake while also being pierced with silvers of burning pine. After this, Glass was stuck there just waiting for the neck for the next time that they needed a sacrifice. Though they did treat him well during this time, uh he still knew that soon he was going to face the same fate as his companion. When it was his turn, a couple of men approached him to strip him of his clothing and bring him up to the sacrifice. The chief stood next to him, about to make the first piece about to make the first piece pierce into Glass's body with the silver pine, when Glass then had reached back, shoved his hand up his behind, and pulled out a large package of vermilion. So, and for those of you who don't know, vermilion is a bright red colored dust that is made from grinding down the mineral cinnabar or mercury sulfide. Where he got this vermilion from and why it was up his ass, I don't know. I did read that they took they took a few things, um, a few goods and treasures from the pirate ship when they had escaped. So that could very well be one of the things that he took from the pirate ship. Uh, but again, not many details about this story, and also nothing to back it up. So there are many questions about it for sure that we'll never have answers. Uh Vermilion was very precious to the Pawnees, and so the chief then decided to not sacrifice glass and ended up adopting him as his own son. After this, he ended up living with the Pawnee tribe for several several years, learning about plants, insects, and how to live off the land, and even taking a Native American wife before becoming a trapper. William Ashley was the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri, a businessman and militia general who had entered into the fur trade in 1822. Andrew Henry had previous experience running trapping and trading expeditions, so they decided to partner up. Henry would command in the field, and Ashley would handle the logistics and finances, creating the Ashley Henry Fur Company, or otherwise known as the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The two partnered up, and now they just needed to get a crew of people together to go out into the wilderness and do the actual trapping. They posted an ad in the St. Louis newspaper looking for enterprising young men, and this attracted the first group of men to come work for them. The goal for the first group was to create a base camp on the upper Missouri, which would be supplied by Keelboat, and they would then head into the Rocky Mountains from then do their trapping. A keelboat is a, in case anybody didn't know, a keelboat is a 20 plus foot sailboat or river boat that was heavily weighted, that had a heavily weighted keel underneath, and sails making them very stable or not easily capsized, and historically they were used for transporting cargo. They were able to build Fort Henry where the Yellowstone River meets the Missouri. It was during the 1923 resupply trip when Ashley had hired Hugh Glass, William Sublet, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and James Kleiman. They were going from St. Louis to the mouth of the Yellowstone River, which was roughly 2,000 river miles, and it would take them weeks of traveling down the river to get to Fort Henry. Somewhere along their travels, Ashley had received a message from Henry by Jedediah Smith, who was a part of the first group of men. He had traveled up the river by canoe to meet them, saying that they needed horses because the Native American tribe, because a Native American tribe, had run off his herd and he needed the horses to send the trappers into the mountains because the rivers leading from Fort Henry were not suitable for any boats. This happened to be the perfect timing though, because Ashley was coming up on the Arica village who happened to do a lot of horse trading. The plan was to get a herd of horses, have some men take the land route to Fort Henry, and the rest would continue to travel by boat. There were some people who didn't think the Arika tribe should be part of trade for goods westward and thought they were unpredictable, but that didn't stop the men from taking part in trade or controlling the middle, or that didn't stop them from taking part in trade or controlling the middle of the Missouri. So as you can imagine, the Native Americans and the white men did not have the best relationship at this time, but um that didn't stop stop them from trading with each other. I mean, if you each have something the other needs, then well you trade. This is exactly what the world was built on. So Ashley went ashore in the hopes of trading guns and ammunition for horses. There was a bit of a conflict right off the hop because I guess a battle had taken place with the Rickoras and another fur trading company that had led to some deaths within the tribe, and they didn't care if one white man was friends with the other. Um, it was your people, killed one of my people, and it needs to be made right. Uh but after Ashley gave them some gifts, they took it as a peace offering, and the the trade began. Ashley traded them 25 muskets and ammunition for 19 horses. Now there were going to be 40 men plus uh the horses led by Jedediah Smith on land, and the rest of the men were to take the boats. Before they were able to depart, both groups had to wait for a windstorm to pass over. During this time, one of the villagers had warned Ashley that some members of the tribe had planned to attack, whether it was on the day or further along in their journey. Um, Ashley decided not to leave right away, but to stick with the original plan, wait out the storm, and leave as soon as it passed. There, in fact, was a battle that took place on the early morning of June 1st. Now the events of this battle aren't, you know, like I said, aren't proven to be a fact or anything, um, or proven to be exact, but I'm going to tell you how I have read it in different sources. So we'll start on the night before June 1st. The men on the shore had got the horses and made camp for the night while the rest of the men were getting settled on the boat, except for two of Ashley's men, Edward Rose and Aaron Stevens, who decided they were going to wander into the village to find some ladies. Sometime shortly after midnight, a couple of villages, villagers boarded the boat trying to enter Ashley's cabin, but were scared away when he brought out his pistol. All the while, Edward Rose was running back from the village screaming and saying that Stevens had been murdered. Now, the shore crew was debating whether they should go and retrieve Stevens' body, um, run the horses across the river to the other side of the shore for safety, or to stay where they were until sunlight, which is what they had decided on. Before sunrise, a villager had come out and made a deal with the men that he would go and retrieve Steven's remains for one horse, but the villager had returned empty-handed, stating that the remains were too far mangled to be returned. Shortly after this happened, as the sun was rising, the men on the beach could see the Arika warriors loading their guns to attack, and before long, the guns they had traded for the horses were being used against them. Horses were being shot, and the men were using them as barricades to hide behind and shoot back at the warriors on top of the hill. The men on the boats, though, at first very reluctant to try to move them closer for the men on the beach to retreat back. One of the keelboats had run aground on a sandbar, and one man tried to take the canoe to the beach to collect some of the men, but on his second trip he was hit and he disappeared down the river. The men on the beach had no choice but to jump in the river and swim to the keelboats, although not all the men made it. Some were injured and some were not great swimmers, so those ones just ended up getting swept away in the curtain. Current. They eventually got the boat off of the sandbar and they took down the river, collecting any man that they could find along the way. There was only about 15 minutes that had passed from when the first bullet was fired to when the boats took off, and in total, Ashley had lost 14 men and there were 11 injured. Glass, being amongst the ones who um lived, had wrote a letter to the family of John Gardiner who passed away. And I'm gonna read the letter here. Dear sir Okay, some of the it's the spelling and grammar is a bit off. I'm gonna read it, try to read it how it is actually exactly said on the note. Dear sir, my painful duty it is to tell you of the death of your son, who f be befell at the hands of the Indians second June in the early morning. He lived little while after he was shot and asked me to inform you of his sad fate. We brought him to the ship when he soon died. Mr. Smith, young man of our company, made powerful prayer who moved us all greatly, and am persuaded John died in pr in peace. His body we buried with others near this camp, marked the grave with log. His things we will send to you. The savages are greatly treacherous. We traded with them as friends, but after a great storm hour or 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. When the ships finally left the Auricara, they had retreated back down the way they came, so there was a bit of a problem that they were still gonna have to get past the village. Ashley's first plan was to use wooden planks as armor and sail like hell to get by, but most of the men did not really like that idea. They weren't down for that. Instead, they ended up sending the injured men and the men who did not want to be a part of this anymore in one of the keelboats back to St. Louis, stashed his goods at Fort Kioa, which was another fur trading company's post. They dropped off Jededai Smith on the opposite side of the river down a ways so he could sneak by the Erica village and get to Henry to bring in reinforcements, and then the rest of the people on the second keelboat made camp until others came to help. Along with the keelboat of injured people, Ashley had also sent letters explaining what happened, and Colonel Henry Leavenworth, the commanding officer at Fort Atkinson, decided to send 230 men of the U.S. 6th Infantry to the Aricara village. Along the way, they were joined joined by 50 men from the Missouri Ferd Company, 80 men from Ashley and Henry's group, and 500 Lakota horsemen, bringing their total to roughly 900 men, headed towards the Aricaras village. Glass had been shot in the initial firing, so he did not join the men in the march on this village. And yes, that is the first of many injuries for Glass. After about a day and a half of just shooting back and forth at each other, they didn't they did not want to storm the village. They called a ceasefire, and Lavenworth made a deal with the Aricaras and they ended up abandoning their village in the night. Some of the people were not happy with the outcome. And had gone and set fire to the village after the ships started to reach retreat. It sounds like because of all of that, all that went on, Ashley and Henry were kind of down on their fortunes and decided to take land instead of river to Fort Henry and shut it down and then head south into the winter where the Crow people were. Ashley traded some of his valuables that he had stashed in Kiowa for horses, and the first group set out on their way. Glass was a part of this first group. The second group was not able to obtain horses until at least a month later, and so they planned to join for the spring hunt. The Grow people, Crow people are a Native American tribe based in the Yellowstone River Valley. The men explored and trapped around the Wind River range. Um they had great luck to bring bring back a fortune for Ashley and Henry. Getting furs out and supplies back in back in is what created the annual Trappers Rendezvous, which became a huge part in the mountain men era. Glass was a part of the first group that was headed south, led by Andrew Henry. They made their way into the Rocky Mountains mainly on foot with pack animals, and the group number and the group number was either 30 men or 30 plus men, or 30 plus the 13-ish men that had traveled by Keelboat. Apparently, on their way to Fort Henry, there was another attack on the men, killing two and injuring two by a tribe of Native Americans called the Hidatza. Trying my best to pronounce all these out. Apparently, this tribe was very friendly towards white people, and this was the only recorded incident of hostility from this tribe. Sometime in late August or early September, the group was near the forks of the Grand River, near present-day um Shadale Reservoir, South Dakota, when Glass was up ahead scouting for some game for the group, and he came across a mama grizzly bear and her two cubs. The grizzly charged at glass and mauled him. His screams drew over a couple members of the group who in turn killed the bear. Looking at his wounds, Henry did not think that glass would make it through the night, but lo and behold, he did. And with the area being roamed by Native Americans and after all their encounters, he didn't want to take any chances by staying there. So they made a stretcher and carried glass for the next two days. But having to carry glass, though, through having to carry glass ended up slowing down the group and it just put them all on edge. So Henry thought it would be best to have two people stay behind with glass for a few days until he passed away. They would then bury him and then they would head out and meet the rest of the group at port. The two men that stayed behind were John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger. Um I've seen some sources confidently say Jim Bridger. I've seen some not confidently say Jim Bridger. Um but Jim Bridger was also young, a lot younger. And these two men were actually going to receive an$80 bonus, which is roughly$3,000 today. After about five days, though, not able to make any bodily movements, Glass was still very much alive, but Fitzgerald was worried they would be found by the Indians, and so he convinced the younger Bridger that they had to that they had stayed with him longer than he should have stayed alive, and they should leave to get back to safety because surely he would die very soon. Now, because they expected him to pass away very soon, they took all of Glass's supplies with them. They took his gun, his knife, his tomahawk, and his fire making kits. I did also read a source that stated the men had taken off because of an Erica attack. Again, this is something that cannot be confirmed nor denied. Uh, they also had told the group once they caught back up with them that Glass had died. Which we know is not true. Knowing that Glass had now been abandoned with nothing, the desire for revenge on the two of the men that and the two men that left him for dead and his sheer will to live gave glass enough strength to start crawling. After being attacked by a grizzly bear bear while yielding a gun and everyone constantly uh being worried of another bear attack or by Indians, um he was in a very scary situation, exposed to the elements with nothing, and doesn't even have the ability to fight back if anything or anyone were to try and attack him. He knew that he wouldn't make it um all the way with nothing, so he decided to head for Brazus trading post, or also called Fort Kioa, which is about 200 miles away or 230 kilometers. Glass had to make this journey with a broken, shattered leg, punctured through, and deep lacerations in his back that exposed his ribs. I think I saw some of it also like partially scalped. Like he was attacked by a grizzly bear, an angry mama bear. The journey was very slow, obviously, because he could only crawl at this point. Um, but he also didn't have any weapons to hunt game, and being already weak, he definitely couldn't go for go long or really any time without eating anything. So he was just kind of living off of insects, snakes, whatever he could find for himself on the ground along the way while he was dragging himself. Having open wounds, he was at risk of contracting gangrene, so he actually used maggots to eat away at the dead tissue. Gross. Eventually he had come across a pack of wolves that were feeding on a wild buffalo, and Glass waited them out. When they eventually left in the night, he was able to get a decent amount of meat that was left on the buffalo. Um, he waited for out for a little while just eating the meat and allowing his body to gain back some more strength before he continued on the way. He was able to make his way to the river and was given a hide boat from the Lakota Indians and floated down the Missouri River, making it to Fort Kiowa by mid-October. So he spent about six weeks and covered around 200 miles with nothing but the sheer will to live. Glass was hell-bent on getting his revenge on the two men that had abandoned him. So when only a couple of days after he arrived in Fort Kioa, he heard of a group headed upriver, which is the direction he needed to head to find his former companions, led by Antoine Uh Setlu. I don't know how to pronounce that. Um luckily Glass was able to purchase a gun, powder, and supplies while in Kioa on credit because he was one of Ashley's men. Glass was the sixth man of the group and they set out up the river. The men were headed for the Mandan for some trading and would only take a few days to get there. Just before the village, there was a bend in the river, and at this point Glass had gotten the men to let him take the rest of the trek by land. His idea for this was that he would make it to his destination quicker and would also have him cheat death once again. Not long after he got off the boat, the men were attacked by a group of Aricaras, and everyone was killed. Um, oh, but wait, guess what happens next? If you thought he had cheated death yet again, you would be right. This man must be out here walking around with a cloak of invisibility or something, I don't know. While he was walking towards the Mandan village, he was spotted by some Arika woman out collecting firewood, and they had warned their men of a white man approaching. With the Aricara people wanting to kill glass now, two Mandan men had noticed him and decided to come and scoop up glass, saving him from being murdered, and they brought him to Tilton's post, which was a Columbia fur company trading post. One might think after so many close calls with death, and after three narrow escapes from death, that the hands of the at the hands of the Aricaras, you may choose safety over revenge, but nope. Definitely not. Not for him. Later that evening, Glass decided he was going to set out. Like so quick. This man is not even resting. He is so dead set on confronting these guys. So at this point it was late November and the journey on foot would take Glass 38 days. When he finally reached Fort Henry, he did not find what he was looking for. Back in October, after the two men had left Glass and met up with the rest of the crew in Fort Henry, they had decided that because the constant threat and attract and attacks from their Rickeras had been the cause of a shitty fur harvest, that season they were going to move south to the Bighorn River Valley and make a new Fort Henry there hoping for better luck. Of course, Glass had no idea about their move, but somehow he managed to choose the right direction of the new fort and headed in that direction. It is believed that uh note was left for Ashley to find so he knew where the group had moved to, but like much of the story still cannot be confirmed. However, it may be um he made it however, he ended up making it there on New Year's Eve 1823. There was definitely a lot of surprise amongst the men when a thought-to-be dead man came strolling through. After being bombarded with questions from the men, he only had one thing on his mind, the reason he traveled all that way, and that was to find Bridger and Fitzgerald. But he was a little disappointed to learn that only Bridger was there. Um, I don't think I said this early. I think I said he was a young trapper, but Bridger was quite young. He was actually in his teens, and Fitzgerald was more around Glass's age. Um, that's why when the two men left, Glass, it was Fitzgerald who had talked Bridger into doing it, and Glass seemed to have come to the conclusion after talking to Bridger because uh he let the boy be and headed out for Fort Atkinson where Fitzgerald was. This time he wasn't able to just pick up and leave right away because he had to wait out a rough winter, the rough winter weather. This was also kind of perfect timing because Henry needed to get the message of the plans for the upcoming season and needed five men to head upriver to Fort Atkinson, where Fitzgerald would be, to deliver this message, and they were also offered extra pay. So on February 29th, 1824, the five men, Glass, Marsh, Chapman, Moore, and Dutton, headed out. It doesn't seem like anyone can get very down this very far down this river without having some sort of confrontation or issue. When they neared the junction of the Laramie River with the North Plate, they came across what seemed like a group of Pawnee camped on the side of the river. Now thinking they were Pawnee, they decided to go ashore because the Pawnee were known to be friendly with the white men, leaving their rifles and Dutton with the boat. Now remember earlier I had mentioned that Glass had spent some time with the Pawnee tribe, so he felt at ease going ashore, thinking that he was going to be hanging out with some of the Pawnee. Until he overheard them not speaking in Pawnee, but speaking in the Ariquera language. And now we know the relationship with this particular tribe not good. Moore and Chapnit Chapman, who initially ran for the river, did not make it, whereas Glass and Marsh ran for the hills and were able to take cover until dark. Dun, who was still in the boat, set off downstream when he saw Marsh walking around the shore and there was no sign of Glass, so they ended up just continuing on down their way to Fort Atkinson. Again, left alone with nothing to fend for himself, although he did find his knife, flint, and steel on his person, which was huge. That's all a mountain man like Glass needed to survive. He was a couple hundred miles away from civilization at this point, but the timing and circumstances were much better than the first time. He wasn't injured, and it was springtime, so he knew the buffalo would be calving, and having his knife on him allowed Glass to eat pretty good around this time. When Glass had gotten to Fort Kioa, he was informed of Fitzgerald's enlisting in the army, which just assured Glass that he would actually be at Fort Atkinson. Once Glass arrived at Fort Atkinson, he was hellbent on getting revenge. But there was a small problem, and that was since Fitzgerald had enlisted, he was now government property, and they were not going to let Glass just exact his revenge. He didn't end up getting his revenge, but he did get his gun back, and that did make him pretty happy. He was also given$300, which is about$10,000 today. Under the protection of the U.S. government, Glass wouldn't be able to get close to Fitzgerald, so he decided to move on. He spent so much of his year fighting for his life, fighting Native Americans, and full of anger to just have to let it all go in the end. Glass used the money he received to head to western Missouri and became a partner at a trading company headed to New Mexico. Glass then headed to Santa Fe and once there he joined up with the he joined up with Dubriel, a Frenchman, where the two then went on a trading and trapping venture on the Gila River. Glass continued to work in the fur trade industry for a while in a few different places and still continued to get into confrontations with the Native Americans. When Glass moved on from Santa Fe to Teos, he led a trapping expedition and when floating down the river spotted a lonely Native American woman who belonged to a tribe that was in a current war with another tribe who traded with the white man. So they went um they weren't a fan of one another. When they tried to get close and offer some beaver meat, she alerted her tribe and the men were shot at with arrows, killing one man and glass getting shot in the back. After healing, he headed back to the Yellowstone area for more trapping ventures. In 1830, Glass was working the upper Missouri and hunting for Fort Union. Apparently he hunted so many bighorn sheep on the hillside that they became known as Glass Bluffs. You won't see it on a map today, but there was a map in 1974 of the Montana territory that still had them named Glass Bluffs. But for someone who survived a bear attack, starvation, infection, and outright abandonment, Hugh Glass didn't up die didn't end up dying in some dramatic, legendary way. In 1833, while trapping near the Yellowstone River, Glass and two companions were attacked by a group of Ariquera warriors. This time, there was no insane escape, no crawling hundreds of miles, no cheating death yet again. This time, Hugh Glass was killed. And honestly, that's one of the strangest parts of the story. A man who survived injuries that should have killed him almost immediately ended up dying the same way so many mountain men did, doing the job in the wilderness with no safety net. So what's the actual crash lesson here? Because you if you look at Hugh Glass's story closely, pretty much every system failed him. There was no medical care, no emergency rescue, no communication, no shelter, and he was left behind there, left behind, and there was no backup plan. Even the people who were supposed to look after him failed him. He was abandoned, striped of his tools, and written off as dead. So what actually kept him alive? It wasn't strength alone. Plenty of strong people died on the frontier. It wasn't luck alone either, because luck only gets you so far. What kept Hughlass alive was the ability to adapt when everything went wrong. When he couldn't walk, he crawled. When he couldn't hunt, he scavenged. When infection threatened to kill him, he used whatever worked, even if it was horrific and disgusting. When revenge became impossible, he eventually had to let it go. He didn't survive by denying how bad things were. He survived by accepting reality and working with what he had, no matter how small or miserable that was. Today we live with systems designed to catch us when things go wrong. Healthcare, emergency systems, infrastructure, technology, but when those systems fail, even temporarily, the same question still applies. When everything breaks down, what are you left with? Hugh Glass shows us that survival isn't dramatic speeches or heroic moments. It's stubborn problem solving, it's adjusting your expectations, and sometimes it's just refusing to stop, even when progress looks painfully slow. Hugh Glass's story sits right on that line between fact and legend because surviving at that level almost feels unrealistic. But when you strip it all down, the truth is still there. The human body and mind can go a lot further than we think when it absolutely has to. This wasn't a world built for comfort or safety, and Hugh Glass didn't conquer it. He just refused to give up. That's today's Crash Lesson. Thanks for listening to the Crash Lessons podcast. If you if this episode stuck with you, take a second and think about what it says about human limits and what happens when those limits are pushed. And that's all I have for you guys today. So I'm Robin and I'll talk to you guys next time.