The Revenant movie, released in 2015, tells the tale of a man on an arduous journey through the American wilderness, seeking revenge.
Left for dead by his fellows after an attack by a bear, fur trapper Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio sets out on an epic voyage after waking up in a shallow grave.
The film won a heap of awards, including an Oscar for Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio and surprisingly, it is inspired by a true story.
Though some parts of the film are embellished and artistic license is used, here’s what we know about the real-life events behind The Revenant.
What do we know about Hugh Glass?
Hugh Glass, a frontierman, fur trapper and explorer of the area around the Upper Missouri River, was born in Pennsylvania in 1783 and died in 1833.
The story of his 1823 expedition has inspired several films and literary works, but it is not clear how much of it is true and how much has become legend over the years. It was originally told in a publication in Philadelphia in 1825 called The Port Folio and later by several newspapers, but there is no record written by Glass himself as firm evidence of exactly what happened.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Glass set out on a fur trapping mission in 1823, backed by General William Henry Ashley. He joined around 100 men, many of whom had responded to an advert placed in a local newspaper to venture up the Missouri River. Among the group were John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger.
The journey was not easy – Glass was hurt when they were attacked by Native American Arikara warriors. According to some accounts, the group then split up into smaller teams and changed their route to avoid further conflict. It was near what is now Lemmon, South Dakota, that Glass suffered the legendary grizzly bear attack.
According to The Museum of the Mountain Man in Wyoming – a museum dedicated to remembering Hugh Glass and other explorers of the region, run by the Sublette County Historical Society – Glass was at the front of the group as he was searching for game to hunt when he encountered the female bear and her two cubs.
The bear mauled him, leaving him severely hurt and attracting the rest of his team with his screams. The bear was killed, with varying accounts of whether it was Glass himself that killed it or the other men.
Left for dead
Glass sustained a range of injuries, reportedly suffering a broken leg, a neck injury and various gashes across his body. Some accounts suggest his fellow trappers carried him for a while but decided he was slowing them down and putting them at risk of more attacks.
Convinced he was close to death, it was decided a couple of men would stay with him until he died, bury him and then join the others.
John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger were chosen to wait with Glass, but after a couple of days, he still had not died. Convinced he would be dead soon, they left him in a shallow grave, took his weapons and left to join the others.
But Glass survived and as he slowly began to recover, he was able to begin his journey to Fort Kiowa. The frontierman travelled between 200 and 300 miles, moving slowly towards the American Settlement of Fort Kiowa, surviving on whatever food he could find.
Fact or fiction
It is hard to say exactly what happened during his travels as accounts vary and facts have been mixed in with legend over the years. There are suggestions that he survived eating insects and carcasses of animals that had been killed by wolves and crawled for portions of the journey.
The very first report of the story, published in 1825 in The Port Folio, said: “It required no ordinary portion of fortitude to crawl, without firearms, with scarcely strength to drag one limb after another, and with almost no subsistence than wild berries.
“He had, however, the good fortune one day to be “in at the death of a buffaloe [sic] calf which was overtaken and slain by a pack of wolves.”
Some say maggots ate away at part of his leg, but there is little evidence of this. Eventually, it is thought he got hold of a boat and was able to get to Fort Kiowa where he was able to recover some more.
Revenge and forgiveness
Glass had wanted revenge on Fitzgerald and Bridger who had left him to die.
After some fruitless searching, Glass eventually found some of the men from the fur mission at another fort and confronted Bridger. But as Bridger was only 19 years old at the time, Glass decided to spare his life and reportedly forgave him.
As for Fitzgerald, some reports suggest that Glass eventually learned he had joined the army and was therefore protected from Glass exacting his revenge. The Museum of the Mountain Man, which aims to separate fact from fiction, said Glass was keen to get his gun back from Fitzgerald, who had taken it when he abandoned Glass. Reportedly the rifle was returned to him by the captain of the army segment Fitzgerald had joined. Other sources say Glass simply forgave Fitzgerald as well – an important point to note is that in the film, Fitzgerald had killed Glass’s son, but it in reality it is not believed that Glass had any children.
Eventually, Glass joined yet another trapping mission and this time his luck ran out and in 1833 he was killed after another fight with a tribe of Native Americans.
His memory lives on through several books and films, the museum remembering him and a monument near where he was mauled by the bear, in modern-day South Dakota.