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Are you Tough Enough?

Submitted by WileyCoyote on Fri, 06/29/2007 - 1:03am

A true historical story. Is this something you would want your kids to read - or would you think that it is too mean to expect them to understand that determination and attitude can overcome obstacles, and prefer the gentleness of groups all helping and caring for each other?

Glass was born in 1783, and like all men of his time left childhood long before anything even jokingly considered adulthood today. He decided (or circumstance dictated) that he would make a life on the ocean and by the age of fifteen was already pirating English ships with his captain along the coast. People today forget that our modern concept of “childhood” is well… modern.  
He went west after the War of 1812 but he was still a sailor, he manned long-boats on the Missouri River by 1823 for the company of William Ashley and Andrew Henry.
Just south of what is now Lemmon, SD, Glass surprised a grizzly bear and her two cubs while scouting for the party. Using only his knife and bare hands, Glass wrestled the full-grown bear to the ground and killed it, but in the process he was badly mauled and bitten.  A man with a knife and no assistance fighting a grizzly bear must understand the sacrifice required for survival. It is great, but must be given because you have chosen to survive.
His companions arrived on the scene to see a bloody and badly maimed Glass barely alive and the bear lying on top of him. They bandaged his wounds the best they could and waited for him to die. They assumed it would happen quickly but it didn’t. Henry asked for volunteers to stay until Glass was dead and then bury him. John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger agreed and immediately began digging the grave. But after three days Glass was still alive when Fitzgerald and Bridger began to panic as a band of hostile Indians was seen approaching. The two men picked up Glass's rifle, knife and other equipment and dumped him into the open grave. They threw a bearskin over him and shoveled in a thin layer of dirt and leaves, leaving Glass for dead.  
After awhile he regained consciousness to a very real survival situation. He was alone and unarmed in hostile Indian Territory. He had a broken leg and his wounds were festering. His scalp was almost torn away and the flesh on his back had been ripped away so that his rib bones were exposed. The nearest help was 200 miles away at Ft. Kiowa. His only protection was the bearskin hide.
Glass set his own broken leg, and began crawling south overland toward the Cheyenne River about 100 miles away. Fever and infection took their toll and frequently rendered him unconscious. He got water from morning dew and any depression he passed. He ate bugs and any berries or roots he chanced by, and once he had the luxury of chasing off two wolves from a downed bison calf and eat the raw meat.
It took Glass two months to crawl to the Cheyenne River. There he built a raft from a fallen tree and allowed the current to carry him downstream to the Missouri and on to Ft. Kiowa, a point about four miles north of the present-day Chamberlain.
Glass eventually returned to the Upper Missouri where he died in 1833 in a battle with hostile Indians.