Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation (An American Portrait)
The facts (if they are facts) about the life of Hugh Glass are indeed sketchy. In 1823, while a member of the Henry expedition exploring the Upper Missouri region, Glass was horribly mauled by a grizzly bear. Two men were left with him, presumably instructed to bury him once he died. But the men, possibly spooked by approaching Indians, abandoned him. Remarkably, Glass survived and dragged his own mutilated body hundreds of miles to the safety of a fort, subsisting on roots and berries and avoiding hostile Indians. A decade later, he was killed in an attack by Arikara Indians. Even in his own lifetime, the epic of his survival became the stuff of embellishment and legend. Coleman makes a strong effort to examine the reliability of these stories and fill in the blanks of the life of Glass. Yet he acknowledges that Glass remains a “missing person.” Still, Coleman’s sweeping account tells us much about the environment of the Northwest frontier and the men who braved it, and this fine work also offers insight into the process of myth making. --Jay Freeman