Wandering Aimlessly
DiCaprio-Luckenbill Connection
by Phil Burkhouse
When I allow my mind to wander aimlessly about the earliest white hunters, those indigenous American mountain men, many different names come to mind. Most outdoor-oriented woods walkers have heard of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, but names such as Jedidiah Smith, Joe Meek, Thomas Fitzpatrick, John Fitzgerald, Jim Bridger, Billy Sublette, and John Colter are less familiar names to many people. These early hunter/trappers were men of adventure, danger, and narrow escapes, which is the stuff legends are made of, but don’t forget another name: Hugh Glass.
Hugh Glass was a Pennsylvania boy born about 1780, and the adventures of this fur trapper and frontiersman during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century are legendary. Hugh was part of a fur trading venture that took one hundred men into the upper reaches of the Missouri River, now known as North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.