"It was clear from the manner in which his guard eyed Johnson that he had never counted coup. He fingered his long knife lovingly, in an almost desperate desire to be the warrior who might take the scalp of the Crow Killer."
This is the book that inspired the movie Jeremiah Johnson. There is little biographical information available on the authors.
Jeremiah was, by the way, his middle name. In real life he was a Mountain Man known as John Johnson (or John Johnston). He headed west toward the Rockies before the Civil War, took a member of the Flathead tribe to wife, returned home from a trapping expedition to find her murdered by the Crow, and spent years wreaking vengeance upon the Crow for their transgression. We are fairly sure that most of this really happened, though in the case of John Johns(t)on it's hard to separate myth from fact.
He earned the nickname "Liver-Eating" from his practice of removing the livers of his Crow enemies and eating them raw. Several of his acquaintances testified to this practice, and given the times and places Johnson inhabited I'm confident that the stories are true. He was a man living on the very edge of civilization, and the details of his exploits aren't always pleasant.
This said, I really enjoyed Crow Killer, and it forms an excellent companion to the movie it inspired. It reads like something Robert Louis Stevenson might have written, and the points at which its narrative intersects with history will be of great interest to anyone versed in the Wild West.
Oh, and anyone who enjoyed The Revenant would probably also like this book. Some of Johnson's exploits and associates seem to have influenced that movie, too.
Related Entries:
"Astoria" by Peter Stark
"The Oregon Trail" by Rinker Buck
"Historic America: The Northwest" by Jim Kaplan
沒有留言:
張貼留言