The Backstory: Surviving a grizzly attack

Attacked by a grizzly bear in 1823 and left for dead by his companions, Hugh Glass crawled for 200 miles through the wilds of South Dakota. The true story behind Leo DiCaprio’s 2015 flick The Revenant is one of the wildest survival stories ever told.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Did you see the Leo DiCaprio flick The Revenant. It's
about a guy, a massive killer bear, and fellow frontiersman
who abandoned the guy, leaving him for dead. A terrifying
adventure of survival that's actually based on a true story.
I'm Patty Steele, ripped apart by a grizzly and making

(00:20):
it back to civilization with a vendetta. That's next on
the backstory. The backstory is back. We look back at
the Western Frontier and we're either amazed that anybody would
launch themselves into that like totally untamed world, or we
romanticize it and wish we could get a taste of

(00:42):
that life. Well, Western America in the early nineteenth century
was a vast wilderness. Yes, it was filled with adventure
and larger than life characters, but if you chose that path,
it was a major gamble. The story of Hugh Glass
is about a guy who took that gamble and whose
sheer will power and survival instinct was almost unbelievable. Glass

(01:06):
was a fur trapper, frontiersman, and pretty much the ultimate survivor.
In fact, his story inspired one of Leo DiCaprio's most
successful movies twenty fifteen's The Revenant. The story got kind
of hollywoodized, course, but the real life story is just
as drama fueled. It's the summer of eighteen twenty three

(01:27):
and there's a lot of money in the fur trade.
Hugh Glass is in his early forties and he's ready
to cash in with a fur trading expedition, a band
of trappers and explorers venturing into uncharted, dangerous territory one
morning in what is now South Dakota. The trappers set
out looking for game and scouting for hostile tribes. The

(01:50):
region is home to Native Americans, some friendly, some not
so welcoming, but it's also alive with nature. Glass moves quietly,
but suddenly, from behind a thicket, a massive grizzly bear
charges at him. Before he can react, the bear jumps
on him, knocking the wind out of him and slamming

(02:10):
him to the ground. The bear's claws raak across his
back and his chest. Its teeth tear into his flesh.
The pain is white hot, but glasses survival instincts kick in.
He grapples with the bear, and with his knife, manages
to stab it. It's a violent dance that they do. Meanwhile,

(02:32):
his fellow trapper is hearing the screams come running. They
fire their muskets, killing the grizzly. But Glass is a mess,
his scalp partly torn off, deep gashes all over his body,
a broken leg, and he can barely breathe with broken
ribs and possibly a punctured lung. The men are horrified

(02:53):
and they don't think he's going to survive. They do
what they can, bandaging wounds, giving him SIPs of water,
but they know that carrying him through the rugged terrain
would be dangerous for him and more importantly to them,
would slow them down, and staying with him would put
them at risk of attacks from Arikkara warriors who were

(03:13):
shadowing them. Their leader, Major Henry, offers to pay anybody
willing to stay with Glass until he dies so he
can get a proper burial. Two men agree, John Fitzgerald,
a seasoned trapper, and Jim Bridger, a nineteen year old
eager to prove himself. After the others leave, the two
volunteers start digging a grave, expecting Glass to die within hours,

(03:38):
but that doesn't happen. Glass hangs on days pass The
older guy, Fitzgerald gets nervous that hostile tribes will find them.
He pressures young Bridger, saying they should just leave, and
he finally agrees with him. They lay Glass in a
shallow grave, covering him with a bit of dirt and leaves.

(03:59):
They take glass rifle, knife, and supplies because those are
pretty valuable and he's going to die anyway, they think,
And they catch up with the main party, telling them
that Glass has died and gotten a proper burial. Who
would guess that Hugh Glass's story wasn't over Imagine regaining
consciousness in crazy pain, only to realize you've been abandoned,

(04:22):
buried alive in the middle of nowhere, without weapons, food,
or any hope of rescue, and you're almost paralyzed with
pain and with the wounds. But Glass refuses to give up.
He drags his broken body out of the shallow grave.
He can barely see from the dried blood crusting over
his eyes. He knows that Fort Kiawa is the nearest outpost,

(04:46):
a trading post about two hundred miles away, and he
decides he's going to try to head there. He begins
by literally pulling himself along the ground. He eats what
he can find buries, roots and inside. At one point,
he finds a rattlesnake and after killing it, eats it raw.
Not pleasant but life saving. He treats his infected wounds

(05:11):
with a traditional Native American remedy, placing maggots on them
and allowing them to eat his dead flesh in order
to slow the infection. Weeks go by, and then Glass
hears rushing water. It's the Grand River and he knows
it will lead him to Fort Kioa. Then he runs
into a group of Sioux warriors, but they're friendly Lakota Sioux.

(05:33):
They take him in, tend to his wounds, and give
him food and shelter. Finally, after Glass regains some strength,
the Elkota give him some supplies and weapons, and he
heads out toward Fort KIHOA weeks later, he arrives and
is almost unrecognizable. The other trappers are shocked, but Glass

(05:54):
wants justice. The two that deserted him have rejoined the
main expedition, and he goes looking for them. He catches
up with the younger guy, Jim Bridger, at a trading post.
Bridger clearly feels terrible, and Glass decides it's really Fitzgerald
who made the deadly call, so he moves on from him.
Now the problem is, Fitzgerald has now joined the army

(06:17):
and attacking a soldier is actually punishable by death. After
confronting him, he simply turns him in to his commanding officer.
It's all he could do. All they can do is
force Fitzgerald to return Glass's gun, and with that that
chapter is over in Glass's life. Over the following years,

(06:40):
Hugh Glass continues working as a trapper and a guide,
but in eighteen thirty three, about ten years after his
miraculous survival, Glass is part of a skirmish with the
Arikara tribe along the Yellowstone River. It's all over. He
dies at the age of fifty, but it's sort of
a fitting for a guy who always lived on the

(07:02):
edge of civilization. Hugh Glass's story is a testament to
the human spirit, the understanding of other cultures, and the
ability of an individual to challenge the wilderness and find
his way to safety. Hope you're enjoying the backstory with

(07:25):
Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new
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you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks,

(07:47):
the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
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to me with comments and even story mary suggestions on
Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the

(08:08):
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.