This historical marker about Glass that is located near Shadehill Reservoir in northwest South Dakota.(South Dakota Historical Society Foundation photo)

It is difficult to imagine a man dragging himself a mile through brush, across gullies and along the river breaks to safety. Hugh Glass not only dragged himself a mile, but hundreds. With each yard he put behind him, he came closer to civilization and immortality.

An historic marker that overlooks Shadehill Reservoir in northwestern South Dakota tells the saga of Glass.

Glass was a mountain man who was part of a fur trapping expedition led by Andrew Henry in 1823. The expedition was bound for the mouth of the Yellowstone River when it passed south of what is now Lemmon that fall. While hunting alone one morning, Glass was attacked by a female grizzly bear. He survived and made his way to Fort Kiowa, about 200 miles away.

Glass bout with a bear became well-known, and many fictional accounts are based on Glass story. According to Lord Grizzly by Frederick Manfred, Glass regained consciousness after the grizzly bears attack to the grim reality of being alone and unarmed in hostile Indian territory. His leg was broken; his scalp was almost torn off; his ribs were exposed where the flesh on his back had been ripped away; and his wounds were festering.

Glass set his broken leg and began crawling toward the Cheyenne River, about 100 miles away. His anger at being abandoned by his comrades and his desire to stay alive drove Glass as he crawled by night and rested by day.

Once he reached the Cheyenne River, Glass fashioned a dugout boat out of a cottonwood and used it to float down the Missouri River until he reached Fort Kiowa, about four miles north of present-day Chamberlain. The desire for revenge drove him on, to a new fur trading post on the Yellowstone and Big Horn rivers. There he found Jim Bridger, one of the men he believed had left him for dead. He confronted Bridger and forgave him. Bridger lived to become one of the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides in the Western United States.

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Moment in South Dakota History