August 27, 2025 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Robert Redford took on the role of Jeremiah Johnson in 1972, audiences fell in love with the image of a rugged mountain man who carved out a life in the wilderness. But the real Johnson lived a life far stranger and harsher than Hollywood ever showed. Historian Ashley Hlebinsky joins us to pull apart fact from folklore and reveal what Hollywood got right—or wrong.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. The lore and
legend of the American mountain Man is a story that
only seems to grow with time. In twenty fifteen, Leonardo
DiCaprio played the legendary mountain man Ugh Glass in the Revenant.
In nineteen seventy two, Robert Redford starred as the title
(00:30):
character in Jeremiah Johnson. Here to separate fact from fiction
is Ashley Lebinski. Ashley is the former co host of
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the former curator in charge
of the Cody Firearms Museum, and she's president of the
Gun Code LLC.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Here's Ashley.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I used to run this very large museum in the
American West, and on display at that museum there was
a firearm called a hack and rifle and a booie
knife with a sheath.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And these two things belonged to a man named Liver
eating Johnson, although that was not really his name. His
name was John Johnston with a T.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But he also at some points in his life went
by John Garrison, John Johnson with no tea because spelling
standardization wasn't a thing in the eighteen hundreds, Jack Johnson,
and then by his prolific mythic name liver Eating Johnson, and.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
A lot of people who'd come to.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
The museum would also call him Jeremiah Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And the reason behind that was because of a movie
that was starring.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Robert Redford called Jeremiah Johnson in nineteen seventy two. And
so basically, you've got the man, you've got his artifacts,
and then you've got a whole host of nonsense somewhere
in the middle in order to kind of understand who
he was and why people are so obsessed with him
even today.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now, part of that really plays.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Into people's fascination with the American West, especially the early
American West. So before trains, before mass migration out west,
you know these rugged men, kind.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Of scary looking men a little bit that would go
out west and they were basically mapping the terrain. But
then they were.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Also hunting, trapping, trading with Native Americans. And all of
those people that went out there had very kind of
iconic stories. One of them is Hugh Glass, who you know,
was attacked by a bear and then abandoned by his
people and basically had to drag himself to afford So
all of these stories are just larger than life. So
(02:46):
it makes perfect sense that liver eating Johnson's story is
no different and because of the movie, because of a
novel by Vartis Fisher called Mountain Man, his life is
just larger than life. Actually, so here's a few things
we do know about him.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
That are true.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
So he was born John Garrison, but he did change
his name to John Johnston at some point, and like
I said, his name appeared in newspapers and records as
John Johnson without the tea with that again is because
it didn't have spelled check on and their newspaper reports.
So he actually was born in eighteen twenty four and
(03:25):
he lived in Little York, New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And kind of like.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The start of a lot of stories about, you know,
rugged violent men.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is that he grew up in a very violent home.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
And so he was one of six siblings, and he
had an alcoholic father who really kind of beat up
on him, and so it kind of starts that beginning
to understanding his life.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
He stood at six feet tall, he was over two.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Hundred pounds, so just this really impressive looking person.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
But this idea of his violent.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Nature is also what kind of mules this mythology behind
who he is, and a lot of that comes from
an academic book that was written in the middle of
the twentieth century called Crow Killer, and the.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Book is fascinating. I highly recommend the read.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
However, it's based almost exclusively an oral tradition, and oral
tradition was a huge part of Native American customs, the
mountain Man custom when you were moving out west, and
so it's understandable you're sitting around the campfire, you're telling stories,
and one of the stories that was told was about
liver eating Johnson. And this story was passed down and
(04:35):
it begins in eighteen forty seven.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
The previous winner, John Johnston, was.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Living out west and he married a flat had Indian
woman and right.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
After their nuptials, he was called away to.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Go do work and he left her at their cabin
and when he returned in May of eighteen forty seven,
he found her murdered by the Crow Indians. So the
story goes he declared war on the coronation and that
he single handedly killed dozens of Crow warriors and ultimately
he was attacked by a Blackfoot.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Chief the wolf and several of his men, and the.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Story gets so weird, so they capture him, and it
says that he was able to chew through his leather
cuffs that they shackled him with, and he attacked a
guard with a kick and blow to the face, and
that he cut off that man's leg and ate it
as he kind of made his grand escape and got
(05:32):
back to safety, and that he continued to kill these
crow warriors until eighteen sixty eight he was tired of
fighting and he rode into the camp of Crow chief
Gray Bear, which would blossom into a lifelong friendship. So
this is part of that story. The other part of
that story is the liver eating part. So if you
(05:53):
believe the part about the eating a leg, I mean,
I guess it doesn't sound totally crazy.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
That he would be eating livers.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
But this story basically said that he was carving out
the livers of his foes, so the Crow warriors, and
eating them. And part of that story, if I understand
it correctly, is that to the Crow nation.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
You know, the liver was considered the way.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
To pass on to the afterlife, so in a sense,
he was eating their souls. But this story kind of
kept going and growing bigger and bigger, passed on by
different tribal nations passed on by different mountain men, and
then you know, basically immortalized in this academic book that
then became a novel, became a.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Movie, and here we are.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
The interesting part of this, though, is there is primary
source documentation from this time period that don't put him
in the West in eighteen forty seven. They actually put
him in the Mexican American War around this time, and
his obituary actually in the Carbon County Democrat, states that
he went to shore for leave and never came back
(06:52):
after violently attacking a lieutenant in his command. But a
military pension that Johnson claims in eighteen eighty four, so
that he was in the Navy.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Until the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
The primary source documentation implies that he always had a
great relationship with the cronation.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And in fact he had issues.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And declared war on the Blackfeet and the Sioux, which
does kind of follow the trajectory of a lot of
mountain Man history. The Blackfeet and the mountain Man really
didn't get along. And the piece about the liver, actually
there's some reports that say that that was a joke
that he started, and I guess be careful things you
(07:31):
joke about because it becomes basically like a game of
telephone when you pass on oral histories. So if you
don't want to believe that he was, you know, in
the West, and you know until the eighteen sixties, or
even if you want to believe that he was out
there earlier, because I will say when I was running
the museum, nobody cared when I corrected the story. They
still wanted to know the story as they, you know,
(07:51):
saw it when they watched the movie. But there are
some things that we know after that time period. So
he moved out west in the eighteenth sixties, and he
was a deputy sheriff in Montana. So he spent some
time in Colson, Montana, and then he moved to Red Lodge, Montana,
and he did fight in the Plains Indian Wars. But
(08:13):
he stayed there until eighteen ninety nine when he was
admitted to the Santa Monica National Soldier's Home. And he
died on January twenty first, nineteen hundred, so right at
the turn of the twentieth century, which is actually pretty
late when you consider the Mountain Man era. By that
point you're getting a much more modern America. The trans
Continental Railroad, you know, is put into place. People are
(08:33):
living out in the American West, so it's kind of,
you know, this bygone era that he's now passing away.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And you know, things really.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Change as you get into the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
After the Robert Redford became.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Out in nineteen seventy two, Jeremiah Johnson, Robert Redford actually
had his body removed and moved to Cody, Wyoming. And
I don't know why Cody, but I mean there's a
lot of Western stuff in Cody.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So if you're planning on visiting his grave, he's not
in California anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
You can go to this small town of nine thousand
people and there's this repurposed ghost town of old buildings
that were from all over the West that they've kind
of put together so you.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Can go and see them all in one place.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And if you walk about twenty yards out of that
little ghost town, you can go and visit his grave.
And a lot of people go because of Robert Redford
as well.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Ashley Lebinski. And
by the way, Ashley's done some terrific storytelling for us,
and that includes Annie Oakley, Eli Whitney, The Story of
the Cult Revolver, and Sarah Winchester. Go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and take a listen. We're very grateful to
(09:46):
have her as a regular contributor here on our American Stories.
The story, the Myth and the Facts of Mountain Man
Jeremiah Johnson here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. The lore and
legend of the American mountain Man is a story that
only seems to grow with time. In twenty fifteen, Leonardo
DiCaprio played the legendary mountain man Ugh Glass in the Revenant.
In nineteen seventy two, Robert Redford starred as the title
(00:30):
character in Jeremiah Johnson. Here to separate fact from fiction
is Ashley Lebinski. Ashley is the former co host of
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the former curator in charge
of the Cody Firearms Museum, and she's president of the
Gun Code LLC.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Here's Ashley.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I used to run this very large museum in the
American West, and on display at that museum there was
a firearm called a hack and rifle and a booie
knife with a sheath.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And these two things belonged to a man named Liver
eating Johnson, although that was not really his name. His
name was John Johnston with a T.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
But he also at some points in his life went
by John Garrison, John Johnson with no tea because spelling
standardization wasn't a thing in the eighteen hundreds, Jack Johnson,
and then by his prolific mythic name liver Eating Johnson, and.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
A lot of people who'd come to.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
The museum would also call him Jeremiah Johnson.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And the reason behind that was because of a movie
that was starring.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Robert Redford called Jeremiah Johnson in nineteen seventy two. And
so basically, you've got the man, you've got his artifacts,
and then you've got a whole host of nonsense somewhere
in the middle in order to kind of understand who
he was and why people are so obsessed with him
even today.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now, part of that really plays.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Into people's fascination with the American West, especially the early
American West. So before trains, before mass migration out west,
you know these rugged men, kind.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Of scary looking men a little bit that would go
out west and they were basically mapping the terrain. But
then they were.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Also hunting, trapping, trading with Native Americans. And all of
those people that went out there had very kind of
iconic stories. One of them is Hugh Glass, who you know,
was attacked by a bear and then abandoned by his
people and basically had to drag himself to afford So
all of these stories are just larger than life. So
(02:46):
it makes perfect sense that liver eating Johnson's story is
no different and because of the movie, because of a
novel by Vartis Fisher called Mountain Man, his life is
just larger than life. Actually, so here's a few things
we do know about him.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
That are true.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
So he was born John Garrison, but he did change
his name to John Johnston at some point, and like
I said, his name appeared in newspapers and records as
John Johnson without the tea with that again is because
it didn't have spelled check on and their newspaper reports.
So he actually was born in eighteen twenty four and
(03:25):
he lived in Little York, New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And kind of like.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The start of a lot of stories about, you know,
rugged violent men.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is that he grew up in a very violent home.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
And so he was one of six siblings, and he
had an alcoholic father who really kind of beat up
on him, and so it kind of starts that beginning
to understanding his life.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
He stood at six feet tall, he was over two.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Hundred pounds, so just this really impressive looking person.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
But this idea of his violent.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Nature is also what kind of mules this mythology behind
who he is, and a lot of that comes from
an academic book that was written in the middle of
the twentieth century called Crow Killer, and the.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Book is fascinating. I highly recommend the read.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
However, it's based almost exclusively an oral tradition, and oral
tradition was a huge part of Native American customs, the
mountain Man custom when you were moving out west, and
so it's understandable you're sitting around the campfire, you're telling stories,
and one of the stories that was told was about
liver eating Johnson. And this story was passed down and
(04:35):
it begins in eighteen forty seven.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
The previous winner, John Johnston, was.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Living out west and he married a flat had Indian
woman and right.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
After their nuptials, he was called away to.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Go do work and he left her at their cabin
and when he returned in May of eighteen forty seven,
he found her murdered by the Crow Indians. So the
story goes he declared war on the coronation and that
he single handedly killed dozens of Crow warriors and ultimately
he was attacked by a Blackfoot.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Chief the wolf and several of his men, and the.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Story gets so weird, so they capture him, and it
says that he was able to chew through his leather
cuffs that they shackled him with, and he attacked a
guard with a kick and blow to the face, and
that he cut off that man's leg and ate it
as he kind of made his grand escape and got
(05:32):
back to safety, and that he continued to kill these
crow warriors until eighteen sixty eight he was tired of
fighting and he rode into the camp of Crow chief
Gray Bear, which would blossom into a lifelong friendship. So
this is part of that story. The other part of
that story is the liver eating part. So if you
(05:53):
believe the part about the eating a leg, I mean,
I guess it doesn't sound totally crazy.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
That he would be eating livers.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
But this story basically said that he was carving out
the livers of his foes, so the Crow warriors, and
eating them. And part of that story, if I understand
it correctly, is that to the Crow nation.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
You know, the liver was considered the way.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
To pass on to the afterlife, so in a sense,
he was eating their souls. But this story kind of
kept going and growing bigger and bigger, passed on by
different tribal nations passed on by different mountain men, and
then you know, basically immortalized in this academic book that
then became a novel, became a.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Movie, and here we are.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
The interesting part of this, though, is there is primary
source documentation from this time period that don't put him
in the West in eighteen forty seven. They actually put
him in the Mexican American War around this time, and
his obituary actually in the Carbon County Democrat, states that
he went to shore for leave and never came back
(06:52):
after violently attacking a lieutenant in his command. But a
military pension that Johnson claims in eighteen eighty four, so
that he was in the Navy.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Until the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
The primary source documentation implies that he always had a
great relationship with the cronation.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And in fact he had issues.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And declared war on the Blackfeet and the Sioux, which
does kind of follow the trajectory of a lot of
mountain Man history. The Blackfeet and the mountain Man really
didn't get along. And the piece about the liver, actually
there's some reports that say that that was a joke
that he started, and I guess be careful things you
(07:31):
joke about because it becomes basically like a game of
telephone when you pass on oral histories. So if you
don't want to believe that he was, you know, in
the West, and you know until the eighteen sixties, or
even if you want to believe that he was out
there earlier, because I will say when I was running
the museum, nobody cared when I corrected the story. They
still wanted to know the story as they, you know,
(07:51):
saw it when they watched the movie. But there are
some things that we know after that time period. So
he moved out west in the eighteenth sixties, and he
was a deputy sheriff in Montana. So he spent some
time in Colson, Montana, and then he moved to Red Lodge, Montana,
and he did fight in the Plains Indian Wars. But
(08:13):
he stayed there until eighteen ninety nine when he was
admitted to the Santa Monica National Soldier's Home. And he
died on January twenty first, nineteen hundred, so right at
the turn of the twentieth century, which is actually pretty
late when you consider the Mountain Man era. By that
point you're getting a much more modern America. The trans
Continental Railroad, you know, is put into place. People are
(08:33):
living out in the American West, so it's kind of,
you know, this bygone era that he's now passing away.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And you know, things really.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Change as you get into the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
After the Robert Redford became.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Out in nineteen seventy two, Jeremiah Johnson, Robert Redford actually
had his body removed and moved to Cody, Wyoming. And
I don't know why Cody, but I mean there's a
lot of Western stuff in Cody.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So if you're planning on visiting his grave, he's not
in California anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
You can go to this small town of nine thousand
people and there's this repurposed ghost town of old buildings
that were from all over the West that they've kind
of put together so you.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Can go and see them all in one place.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And if you walk about twenty yards out of that
little ghost town, you can go and visit his grave.
And a lot of people go because of Robert Redford
as well.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Ashley Lebinski. And
by the way, Ashley's done some terrific storytelling for us,
and that includes Annie Oakley, Eli Whitney, The Story of
the Cult Revolver, and Sarah Winchester. Go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and take a listen. We're very grateful to
(09:46):
have her as a regular contributor here on our American Stories.
The story, the Myth and the Facts of Mountain Man
Jeremiah Johnson here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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