There was nothing easy about frontier life. If you lived into your 40s, you were a novelty. Those who survived were of hearty stock, and their tales of survival still live today. We sifted through the stories and found some of the hardiest frontier folk to live through it all. Keep in mind, for the most part, these are indeed stories and tough to verify. So take them with a grain of salt. If just half of their trials are true, then “tough” doesn’t begin to describe them.
James Beckwourth (1798-1866)
Compared to life as a slave, life on the frontier must have seemed like been Club Med. This might help explain why this one former slave went on to become one of the most famous mountain men of the West. Born into slavery in Frederick County, Virginia, Jim Beckwourth’s mother was a slave and his father was an Englishman. Roughly 20 years later, Beckwourth received his freedom and hooked up with General William Ashely’s outfit, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Called “Ashley’s Hundred,” this group of trappers working the Rocky Mountain West was a who’s who of mountain men. Men such as Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass and Jedediah Smith were among the 100, and Beckwourth no doubt learned how to survive on the frontier with the best. Beckwourth’s time on the frontier is captured in the book The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians. While some of the numbers are embellished in the book, the events recounted by Beckwourth likely happened. And they may even have happened to him.
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Hugh Glass (1783-1833)
As Hugh Glass crawled, dragged and limped some 200 miles from Fort Kiowa after being mauled by a grizzly and left for dead by his “companions,” I have to wonder if his fuel to live came from revenge or the off-chance that he would help Leonardo DiCaprio win his first Oscar. Unless you’ve been living a mountain man’s existence these past couple years, you’ve likely heard of Hugh Glass and his famous crawl. Before his bruin encounter, Glass was forced to be a pirate alongside Jean Lafitte. He and a companion escaped near Galveston two years later. After their escape, they were captured by the Pawnee in Kansas. Glass watched as the Pawnee impaled and burned his friend alive, and Glass gave the gift of cinnabar to the Chief. This saved his life. He went on to join the Rocky Mountain Fur Company where he met a young Jim Bridger and John Fitzgerald—the two men who would leave him for dead. Glass eventually reunited with both men, but killed neither.
John Wesley Powell (1834-1902)
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