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The Revenant - A thread
I'm researching a piece on 18th century First Americans and the Arikara chiefs, who grew the Arikara culture into a dual village so large, that Lewis & Clarke stopped and paid respects to the tribe at the mouth of the Grand River and Missouri Rivers in 1804. The Arikara chiefs had some strange ways. If a chief came back from an unsuccessful raid, the Arikara would vow to ''cast off his robes." Which is Arikara leader crazy-speak for he is going to kill the next stranger he meets.
Casting off of robes was likely the cause of the massacre of Ashely's Hundred on June 2,1823. The result was the indian attack depicted in the opening of the film 'The Revenant.' My thesis for the cause of the attack was the number of self-declared leaders in the Arikara tribe and the casting off of robes lead to the near extinction of an native American tribe.
There were TWO men mauled by actual grizzly bears on that 1823 furing expedition. One was Hugh Glass. Leo DiCaprio can tell you all about him. That was in South Dakota, at the Shadehill Reservoir. The other was Jedediah Smith. Smith had his scalp ripped off, his ear danggling and had to beg his close friend, James Clyman, to sew his scalp and ear back on. This is the price of discovery of South Pass. Yes, it had been discovered before but the Civil War interrupted the significance of the prior discovery.
The ferociousness of the grizzlies was even noted in the diaries of Lewis & Clark - of putting .50 balls fired from Kentucky long-rifles - into the brain pans of grizzly bears, and yet the bear kept coming. Lewis is quoted as saying that 'curiosity' among all the men concerning the grizzly bear were all well satisfied.
The true story of Hugh Glass is so much better than the movie and about 30% of what happened in the film is true. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) went on to become one of the owners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company after buying out William Henry Ashley. Nobody killed anybody and everyone prospered but those 13 - two whose names have been lost to history - who were ambushed under a flag of parley, on a sandbar at the mouth of the Grand River, before dawn on the morning of June 2, 1823.
That afternoon, Jedediah Smith lead the first memorial service ever recorded in Dakota Territory, over the two fresh graves. Among the bereaved were Fitzgerald, Ashley, Hugh Glass, James Clyman, & Jim Bridger. Hugh Glass wrote a letter to John S. Gardner’s parents:
Dated June 2, 1823
Author - Hugh Glass
I'm researching a piece on 18th century First Americans and the Arikara chiefs, who grew the Arikara culture into a dual village so large, that Lewis & Clarke stopped and paid respects to the tribe at the mouth of the Grand River and Missouri Rivers in 1804. The Arikara chiefs had some strange ways. If a chief came back from an unsuccessful raid, the Arikara would vow to ''cast off his robes." Which is Arikara leader crazy-speak for he is going to kill the next stranger he meets.
Casting off of robes was likely the cause of the massacre of Ashely's Hundred on June 2,1823. The result was the indian attack depicted in the opening of the film 'The Revenant.' My thesis for the cause of the attack was the number of self-declared leaders in the Arikara tribe and the casting off of robes lead to the near extinction of an native American tribe.
There were TWO men mauled by actual grizzly bears on that 1823 furing expedition. One was Hugh Glass. Leo DiCaprio can tell you all about him. That was in South Dakota, at the Shadehill Reservoir. The other was Jedediah Smith. Smith had his scalp ripped off, his ear danggling and had to beg his close friend, James Clyman, to sew his scalp and ear back on. This is the price of discovery of South Pass. Yes, it had been discovered before but the Civil War interrupted the significance of the prior discovery.
The ferociousness of the grizzlies was even noted in the diaries of Lewis & Clark - of putting .50 balls fired from Kentucky long-rifles - into the brain pans of grizzly bears, and yet the bear kept coming. Lewis is quoted as saying that 'curiosity' among all the men concerning the grizzly bear were all well satisfied.
The true story of Hugh Glass is so much better than the movie and about 30% of what happened in the film is true. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) went on to become one of the owners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company after buying out William Henry Ashley. Nobody killed anybody and everyone prospered but those 13 - two whose names have been lost to history - who were ambushed under a flag of parley, on a sandbar at the mouth of the Grand River, before dawn on the morning of June 2, 1823.
That afternoon, Jedediah Smith lead the first memorial service ever recorded in Dakota Territory, over the two fresh graves. Among the bereaved were Fitzgerald, Ashley, Hugh Glass, James Clyman, & Jim Bridger. Hugh Glass wrote a letter to John S. Gardner’s parents:
Dated June 2, 1823
Author - Hugh Glass
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