Hugh Glass

Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman and fur trapper associated with the Rocky Mountain fur trade of the 1820s. He became famous after being badly mauled by a grizzly bear during an expedition in present-day South Dakota in 1823.

Companions left Glass behind after assuming he would die, but he survived and travelled a long distance to reach safety. Later retellings greatly embellished the episode, making Glass a legendary figure whose documented life is difficult to separate from frontier folklore.

In Michael Punke’s The Revenant, in 1823, fur trapper Hugh Glass is travelling with an expedition through the upper Missouri and Rocky Mountain borderlands when a grizzly bear mauls him.