How’s this for a full life?
·
Hugh Glass, if you saw the film The
Revenant, or read the book by Michael Punke or were already familiar with
this mountain man who survived a tussle with a bear to crawl an injured 300
miles through hostile territory and still put more years in front of him.
·
Pre-Legendary Bear Attack he…
·
Was a sailor who was captured by Jean the “Gentleman
Pirate of Barataria” Lafitte and forced to become a pirate for a spell.
·
He and a shipmate eventually jumped ship off
the coast of Texas and swam to shore.
·
End of the adventure? Not quite.
·
The two ex-pirates were then captured by the Pawnee.
They endured well enough to be adopted by the tribe where Glass accrued much of
his survival prowess including crossing swollen rivers, navigation without
compass, know what plants were and were not edible, stone age hunting etc.
·
Once he escaped the Pawnee, Glass embarked
upon the expedition that led to the bear attack, I’ll skip all those adventures
as they have been covered often.
·
Post Bear attack life was no less colorful.
·
Glass endured a fight with a band of Utes and
recived an arrowhead in the spine. He travelled roughly 700 miles before having
another mountain man remove the projectile from his backbone.
·
Was Glass done with adventure?
·
Nope.
·
In the winter of 1832, a running fight with
the Arikara [the same tribe he had tussled with during the Ashley Expedition]
commenced on the Yellowstone River.
·
Glass and two other companions did not
survive this encounter, but it seems safe to say that this was one hard to kill
hombre.
Mountain Man, Plainsman, add Waterman
to the Triumvirate.
·
Most of us know that mountain men were legendary
for their survival prowess in the elevated fastnesses of the North American continent.
·
Plainsmen were known for similar know-how and
skill on the vast American Plains [formerly “The Great American Desert”] and the
actual deserts of the US and Mexico.
·
An equally common phrase at the time was
Waterman. A Waterman was an expert at fording rivers, running rapids, river
navigation, swimming, survival fishing, seine trapping, canoeing, kayaking, keel
boating, river-reading, and generally all things aquatic.
·
The phrase “He’ll do to ride the river
with” was high praise, meaning you knew your stuff.
The Frontier-Sailing Connection
·
It seems knowledge of sailing and its value
was not something limited to the Coasts. As we saw in the Hugh Glass example,
he began as a lawful sailor before his sojourn as a pirate.
·
Historian and actual Westward traveler,
Francis Parkman makes technical remarks regarding sailing in his opus The Oregon
Trail; he offers these remarks as if “We all know this, right?”
·
I find again and again references to sailing
knowledge in old journals and letters, not mere use of the lingo but phrases
and uses that prove the authors of said pieces knew the ropes. One from an
actual Mississippi riverboat gambler [more on this colorful character another
day as he’s got a lot to offer regarding armed and unarmed combat.] This wild personage
offers how often he and other sharpers would take “yachts” [sailing vessels]
out for speed cruises and drinking sessions.
·
And this knowledge was not limited to the “White
Settlers.”
·
We often think of the American Indian tribes
as either landlocked or using canoes in the Eastern woodlands and perhaps
kayaks in the Northern climes but there is a superlative volume from 1959 by Horace
P. Beck titled “The American Indian as a Sea-Fighter in Colonial Times”
that details just how common and impressive this knowledge of wind, wave, tide,
current, tack, jibe, beats, runs, martial maneuvering etc. was.
Comparisons.
·
It is hard not to ponder the CV of individuals
like Hugh Glass, or the fluid and wide knowledge and abilities of mountain men,
plainsmen, watermen, rough ‘n’ tumble sailors and not make comparisons to our
own selves today.
·
Are we as widely knowledgeable as these
folks?
·
As widely experienced?
·
Do we seek even a tenth of the adventure?
Choices
·
I am well aware that not all from days of
yore were such hard-chargers. The cities and towns were full to the brim with those
who stayed put…
·
But there was an astoundingly remarkable
number of folks who chose not to stay put and it is always of these folks that admiring
remarks are made.
Two Quotes
·
“To the hard-shelled men who built with
nerve and hand that which the soft-bellied latecomers call the ‘western myth.’”-Louis
L ’Amour in his dedication to the novel Bendigo Shafter
·
And the next is from anthropologist Jean Malaurie
writing in The Last Kings of Thule: A Year Among the Polar Eskimos of Greenland
[1956].
·
“When adventure does not come to him,
the Eskimo goes in search of it.”
May we all be a bit more nervy as
we gain able hands, harden our shells and search for a bit more adventure!
[For techniques, tactics,
and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School Boxing, Mean-Ass Wrestling,
Street-Ready Frontier Scrapping & Indigenous Ability culled from the
historical record see the RAW Subscription Service, or stay on the corral fence
with the other dandified dudes and city-slickers. http://www.extremeselfprotection.com
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