Background
Glass was born in Pennsylvania to Scot-Irish parents who had immigrated from Ulster in present day Northern Ireland. His life before the bear attack is uncertain.
Glass was born in Pennsylvania to Scot-Irish parents who had immigrated from Ulster in present day Northern Ireland. His life before the bear attack is uncertain.
According to George C. Yount, who talked with him at the Bear River rendezvous in the winter of 1828-29, Glass had been a sailor and on being taken prisoner by Jean Lafitte was forced to join the pirate’s band. On the Texas coast, he escaped, only to be captured by Indians; but his life was spared, and while visiting St. Louis with a delegation of the tribe he regained his freedom.
His documental history begins with the spring of 1823, when he joined Ashley’s second Missouri River expedition. He was in the two battles with the Arikaras and about August 15 joined Andrew Henry’s party on its return to the mouth of the Yellowstone.
While proceeding somewhat apart from his com- panions he was attacked by a grizzly bear and so terribly injured that his death was momentarily expected. This episode, with its sequel, has been variously related in prose and verse.
Henry, pressed for time, left the wounded man in charge of two trappers and resumed his march. These trappers, who according to tradition were James Bridger, then nineteen years old, and a certain Fitzgerald, took from Glass his rifle and equipment and rejoined the party, reporting him dead and buried.
Glass, however, slowly regained strength, and after some days began crawling toward Fort Kiowa, more than a hundred miles away, which eventually he reached and where he gradually recuperated.
In the winter, vowing revenge for the wrong done him, he joined an expedition to Henry’s new post at the mouth of the Bighorn. Here he found Bridger, whom on account of his youth Glass readily forgave. Months later, at Fort Atkinson, he came upon Fitzgerald.
His resentment had now cooled, however, and on recovering his favorite rifle he declared the account closed. His subsequent adventures carried him to New Mexico and thence on trapping tours over a wide range of the West.
He is believed to have been killed by Blackfeet on the upper Yellowstone in the early spring of 1833.
In trapper talk, he was the hero of many desperate encounters with the savages. A man of many eccentricities - one of which was his habit of marching and camping at some distance from his fellows - he was highly esteemed for his integrity, truthfulness, and dauntless courage.
