It's not every day that you come across a survival story that's so absurd and unbelievable that it gets made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. But as people say, the truth is often stranger than fiction. And the story that I'm covering today is so strange that it's even more wild and bizarre than that Hollywood movie was able to depict it.

So without further ado, settle down, make yourself comfortable. Grab yourself a snack. Welcome back, guys. Let's dove into one of the craziest survival stories ever to be recorded in history. My name is Andy Chang, and this is Hidden Stories.

In 1783, a boy named Hugh Glass was brought into the world near the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although he had a fairly normal childhood and upbringing, his life soon spiraled into very dangerous and terrifying territory. When he was in his mid-thirties, he was a sailor working at sea when his ship was attacked and seized by the famous French pirate John Lafitte.

Although he figured that he was just completely dead. Extremely. Luckily, the pirates offered Hugh, as well as all the other sailors aboard his ship, a choice to either join their gang or die. And since Hugh, obviously it was not ready to die at that young age, he chose to live and boarded their ship as a pirate. But the thing is, being a pirate was much easier said than done as he would go on to recollect the reality of being a pirate foreign topped in horror, anything I could have ever imagined.

There are monstrosities of conduct belonging to a society which has cut itself off from honor and compassion that outsiders can never understand. Spending day after day witnessing extremely cruel and often completely unnecessary murders, and then being asked to commit them himself as well. Completely terrified and traumatized. Hugh, who was a God fearing man who didn't believe in killing others.

But despite being surrounded every day by these savages and just hating his life, he simply had no way to leave. His pirate colony was located on Galveston Island, a small island off the coast of what is now Texas, and was surrounded on almost all sides by land belonging to the Crankworx Indians who are known to be cannibals, who often eat the outsiders that they captured.

And since his colony was also surrounded by murky, dangerous waters where many alligators and poisonous snakes lurked, it was pretty much considered suicide to try to escape. As such, Hugh really had no choice but to just stay with his new pirate gang and try to make the most out of his new life. But after about a year of living with them, Hugh, as well as one of his old sailor friends, would also join the pirates along with them simply could no longer hide their misery, hatred and disgust towards the pirates in their savage ways.

Gradually, over time, the other pirates had eventually realized that Hugh and his friend in particular were just clearly not as devoted towards their cause as the rest of them. As a result, the two were deemed just completely unfit for pirate life and work, and a hearing was scheduled to determine their fates. Now, Hugh and his friend were almost certain that their punishment would be to be killed by being tossed overboard while at sea and drowned, which was basically what the pirates always did in these kinds of situations.

But extremely luckily, on the very evening before their hearing, the two were left alone on the ship while the other pirates went on land to go to a job. The pirates probably figured that with the nature of their surroundings, there was no way they would actually try to escape. But with really no other chance at survival, that's exactly what Hugh and his friend did.

They grabbed some clothes, some food, some tools, and then jumped ship. And although they had to swim for almost two entire miles through the extremely dangerous waters, they both incredibly managed to survive and reached the shoreline of the North American mainland. But although they had successfully escaped from the pirates, they weren't anywhere near safe yet. Despite having successfully traveled further inland to escape the cannibal coracle Indians who lived along the coastline.

He and his friend were entirely lost and had no idea where they were. And while they were searching for a friendly settlement, a point them in the right direction, unfortunately, they stumbled across a band of Wolf Pani Indians. Although these people didn't practice cannibalism like the conquerors, what they did practice was ritual human sacrifice after surviving and enduring so much together.

Hugh had to watch as his friend was burned alive with the stick while being pierced with slivers of burning pine as he stood there, just paralyzed in unimaginable fear. He figured this was it. He was going to be next, and there was nothing he could do about it. But to his surprise, after the death of his friend, the ritual was put on hold.

Turns out the wolf ponies require a period of waiting between each sacrifice, meaning Hugh had at least some time left before his turn. This gave him the opportunity to desperately figure out whether there was anything he could do that could save his life. And when Tom was finally up in the village, chief approached him with the first sliver of pine.

Hugh reached into his shirt and pulled out a package of vermilion, a bright red pigment made from mercury sulfide. Turns out he had learned that Vermillion was something that the Wolf Pony valued above almost anything else. And by some miraculous stroke of luck, he actually had some on him that he had stolen from the pirates. When Hugh gave this package to the village chief as his farewell gift with as much affection and respect as he could muster.

The chief was so impressed that he became convinced that it was a sign from the guts to spare his life. So he did, and he effectively adopted him as his son. Over the next few years, Hugh fully embraced his new life as a wolf pony Indian. He learned what plants and insects were edible, took on a Native American wife, and even went to war with his tribe.

But in 1821, Hugh left the Wolf Pony to go rejoin the rest of society. He probably figured that he'd experienced enough near-death experiences for a lifetime, and now all of that was now behind him. But oh, he had no idea just how wrong he would be. In 1822, Hugh saw an advertisement to join the Rocky Mountain Fur Company as a fur trapper or someone who hunts animals for their fur.

Now, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was a company founded by General William Astley, the lieutenant governor of Missouri, and Andrew Henry, a prominent fur trader. Following the writing demand for beaver fur at the time, they were looking for a tough man to join a 2000 mile expedition up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains to take advantage of the large population of beavers in the area.

Hugh, having extensive experience living in the wilderness and nature from his time with the Wolf Colony, soon joined to try to get in on the lucrative fur trading market. So he and the rest of the 99 men known as Astley's Horse after General William Astley began slowly making their way up the Missouri River. Although it was a brutal and excruciatingly slow journey, the group was gradually making progress.

But on June 1st, 1823, the American Indians who lived in the area and were known to be extremely unpredictable or sometimes just downright hostile to way people launched a surprise attack on Hugh and his new colleagues while they were asleep in their boats. 14 that if General Astley's a horse men ended up dead and many more were injured, including Hugh, who was shot in the leg.

As a result, the group were forced to go back down the Missouri River from where they came from in order to regroup and recover. Since the founders of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, General William Astley and Andrew Henry had already spent too much money financing this expedition, turning back now and heading home empty handed simply was not an option for them both traveling along the Missouri River now being deemed too dangerous, costly and time consuming.

They had to find another way to reach the beaver, rich, Rocky Mountain area. They ended up deciding to send two groups of trappers to travel by foot around the Missouri River to get to their destination. One group would travel west along the way and Cheyenne Rivers, while the second group would travel northwest to Fort Henry to meet up with another group of fur trappers who were ready waiting there.

Hugh was in this second group, which was led by the company's co-founder, Andrew Henry. Unfortunately for him, however, the second group was at far greater risk of danger than the first one. The route that they were traveling along was in territory belonging to the extremely hostile Blackfoot Indians. As such, there was a very real risk that this small group of 30 or so men would be attacked and killed by these aggressive locals.

As expected, shortly after these two groups split up, his group was attacked, taking the lives of two men. But although Indians were probably the biggest concern on Hugh's mind, little did he know he would soon have a much greater threat to worry about. One day, during Hugh and the rest of the trappers, long and tough journey up the Fort Henry, Hugh decided to go ahead of the group by himself to hunt for wild animals, for food.

But as he was searching, he suddenly stumbled across a mother grizzly and her two cuts before he could even react. The grizzly, perceiving him as a threat to her babies, avoided him with her teeth and claws beard. Now, the thing about grizzly bears are they are not only one of the strongest and most lethal creatures out in the wild.

They are at their strongest and fastest when they are protecting their offspring. As a result, although Hugh desperately tried to take down the bear with his rifle before he could even raise it, the mother grizzly was already on top of him, sinking her three inch long, razor sharp nails into him. Hugh screamed as again and again and again, the bear ripped into him with her razor sharp claws and teeth shredding his face, arms, head, chest and throat.

The pain was so excruciating that it almost blinded him, and although he gathered the strength to pull out his hunting knife and repeatedly stab the bear over and over again as a molt him, it was either just so big or just so filled with rage that it didn't even notice his blows. This was the end. It had to be.

The grizzly was simply too ferocious, too quick, too strong for Hugh to do anything. But just as you felt that he was on the brink of consciousness, having lost too much blood to even think properly, much less move on his own to dodge the incoming lethal attacks. Several trappers suddenly rushed out of the woods behind him. They had heard Hugh screams and had come running to help and using the rifles, they managed to take down the mother grizzly before it could inflict any more damage on Hugh's mangled body.

But as they rushed over to Hugh, who was now lying in this large, storied pool of his own blood, the horse sick, he had been shredded so viciously by the bears, claws and teeth that the trappers were surprised to see that he was even still breathing. A hole had been torn into Hugh's neck and windpipe, which caused his breath to leak out of it with every exhale.

His back had been ripped into so many times and so powerfully that his ribs were visible. Yet a broken leg, a shredded scalp, and too many lacerations and gashes all around his body to even count. Seeing the gravity of his injuries, the trappers figured that Hugh would be dead within a few hours at Max. So they decided to just take a few strips from their shirts and bound up his wounds as best they could before setting up camp for the night with the plan to bury Hugh the next morning and then move on with their journey.

But when the next morning came to everyone's shock, he was somehow still breathing. Since they were still in hostile Indian territory, it was too dangerous to just wait any longer. Like sitting ducks. And the group's leader, Andrew Henry, decided that they had to keep moving. So he ordered a makeshift stretcher to be built for Hugh so that he could be carried along with them.

He probably figured that he would die sometime very soon, so they could just bury him wherever they were and then move on with their journey. But after two entire days of traveling like this and Hugh was still ruggedly breathing, Andrew Henry realized that having to drag a body with them was severely slowing them down in an area that they wanted to get out of as quickly as humanly possible.

Realizing that he was endangering the lives of all of his men just to prolong the life of one who was basically already as good as dead, Andrew Henry decided to ask for two volunteers who, for a couple of months worth of wages, would stay behind with Hugh while the rest of the group went ahead, wait for him to die, which couldn't take long, and then bury him before reuniting with the rest of the group at Fort Henry.

That way they can make their journey as quickly and as safely as possible, while also honoring the Christian obligation of giving Hugh a proper burial. Eventually, two people did agree to stay behind and older, very experienced trapper named John Fitzgerald and the youngest trapper in the group, a 19 year old named Jim Bridger, who was on one of his first trapping ventures ever.

As such, Andrew Henry and the rest of the group went on ahead, leaving the two with a still mortally wounded Hugh Glass since he was having trouble breathing, heavily wheezing with every inhale. The two figured that he would be dead at any minute with the nature of his injuries, Hugh was constantly floating in and out of consciousness, and there was nothing Jim and John could do but just feed him a few drops of water every now and then, and maybe wave away some flies.

But as one day passed, and then two and then three and then four. Despite Hugh's injuries and his blood loss and his lack of food and nutrition against all odds by some miracle, he was still alive. By that point, John and Jim were starting to become really stressed. Every single hour longer that they waited there with Hugh increased the risks of being discovered and killed by the bloodthirsty Indians.

For four days they had waited, always anxiously listening around for any signs of movement, risking their very lives to just give this guy a proper burial. But this was he more than they had signed up for. On the fifth day, when the two saw that he was still laying there on the ground, barely conscious and rapidly breathing, John began to argue with Jim that they should just leave him there.

He would be dead any minute now. There was no reason they should keep sticking around and risk being scalped by the Indians for this. They had saved long enough, risked enough, but now it was time to save themselves, he argued. Since Jim had no good logic to go against this, he agreed to move on and meet up with the rest of the group.

But although the two could have just left you there the way he was, John insisted on taking all of his stuff his rifle, his knife, his food supplies in John's eyes, these were all things that his soon to be dead man simply did not need. And he also needed something to prove to Andrew Henry and the rest of the group that Hugh was indeed now dead.

But by taking these items from Hugh, he was basically sentencing him to death. He now had no way of protecting himself if the Indians or even another grizzly bear were to find him. And as Jim and John walked off with his belongings in hand, Hugh dimly watched in fury and despair at the betrayal, but couldn't muster the strength to get up or even shout at them.

He was too beat up, too malnourished, too deprived of blood to do anything but just lay there. And soon he lost consciousness once again. Now all alone in the dark and dangerous forest for the next few days, Hugh continued to float in and out of consciousness, but he had a raging fire building inside his battered body. Now being abandoned by his fellow trappers, heightened his grit, his sheer will to survive by embedding in him a desire to get revenge on them.

Despite everything he had gone through, he simply refused to die. Even with all of his throat injuries. Every time he was a weak, he managed to drink a few gulps of water, managed to down a few berries from a nearby tree to try to recover his strength to begin moving. However, it wasn't until he regained consciousness one day to find a rattlesnake slithering next to him that he was finally able to get Summit using a nearby rock.

He killed the snake and eat it, which gave him the strength to finally try to get up. But the minute he tried to stand up and his weight shifted onto his broken leg, he immediately realized that he wouldn't be able to walk as a result with no other option. He began to crawl his way through the rough terrain towards the nearest settlement.

A training post called for Kiowa more than 250 miles away. Although the sheer thought of having to crawl for that long while being at risk of getting killed by local Indians or another grizzly bear at any given moment would have been too much for most people to even bear, and would have caused them to just give up. Hugh was not.

Most people from his many past experiences and his close brushes with death had become extremely tough. And from his experience living with the Wolf Pony, he knew how to find food and shelter in the wilderness better than almost anyone. As Hugh crawled one tiny step at a time through unimaginable pain for weeks, he fell in the insects, snakes or berries that he could find when he collapsed from sheer exhaustion and found that he could no longer move.

He rested himself until he could push on once again. He even laid on some rotten animal remains that he found so that the maggots would help either dead, infected flesh on his back and help avoid gangrene. One day, Hugh came across a pack of wolves eating a buffalo calf. He waded into the pack, had their fill, and then he was able to have the rest of the buffalo for himself.

The blood and protein in the meat allowed his body to further heal and become stronger. Wounds begin to scab over and his legs felt more solid. Soon, he was finally able to stand and start limping, which greatly increased his speed of travel. He eventually reached the Missouri River, which was the landmark he'd been looking for since for Kubwa is located on it.

A few days after he had begun limping along the river shoreline, he came across a group of Sioux Indians. Unlike the Arikara and the Blackfoot Indians, these Sioux Indians were incredibly friendly and willingly took him in, hoping clean his back wound and even giving him a boots for him to reach for Kiowa quicker and several weeks after being abandoned and left to die, Hugh finally reached civilization again.

However, his journey was far from done. He refused to rest until he had reached Fort Henry and enacted his revenge on John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger, the two men who had abandoned him during his travels so far, he had decided that he would kill both of them for wronging him. After just a few days of recovering his strength at Fort Kiowa, he learned about plans to send a small group of people around 300 miles up the Missouri River to go trade with the friendly Mandan tribe there.

Since these men and villages were far closer to his destination of Fort Henry than his current location for cure was, Hugh immediately signed up for the trip. After six long weeks of sailing, they were finally only around a day away from the villages. At this point, Hugh decided to actually get off the boat and continue traveling to Fort Henry on foot, since he felt it would be faster.

Little did he know this lucky decision would save his life. Very shortly after Hugh had left, his boat was attacked by hostile Arikara Indians, and every man on board was killed. But although he had successfully dodged that bullet, Hugh himself was eventually spotted by some Arikara Warriors leader who began trying to chase him and kill him as well.

But yet another stroke of luck, though he was close enough to the Mandan villagers by that point that he was rescued by them before their America could get their hands on him. Once again, Hugh had escaped almost certain death that many near-death experiences would be enough to disturb almost anyone. But if Hugh was shaken at all, he didn't.

So he just pressed on to a nearby place called Fort Tilton to ask for help on how to navigate the Eric Riffle terrains. The folks there brought him on a boat to the east side of the Missouri River, which was opposite from where the Arikara camps were. But told them that he would be on his own after that.

From there, it was still a 250 mile trek to get to Fort Henry. But given what Hugh had already gone through, that was nothing. But when he arrived there 38 days later, to his incredible shock and frustration. Fort Henry was now empty. A note left at the Post indicated that due to the dangerous ene groups nearby, Andrew Henry had relocated the fort to a safer area south near the mouth of the Yellowstone River.

So Hugh then had to start heading southwest along with Yellowstone, on a trek almost twice the length of his first one. But he'd already come way too far already to give up then. And on New Year's Eve in 1823, Hugh finally arrived to the new Fort Henry with the rifle that he had bought it for Kiowa. It is.

Hence, when the trappers there saw him, their jaws dropped. It was like seeing a ghost. Hugh was a man who had very clearly died. Now, standing in front of them, looking strong and well, of course, they were shocked. But as he was barraged with questions, I thought you were dead. Where have you been? How are you? Alive. He responded with a question of his own.

A burning question, one that he'd been waiting to ask for all those grueling months of slowly traveling. Where are John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger? But to his disappointment and fury, he was told that John Fitzgerald wasn't there anymore. He had apparently just recently quit being a fur trapper and was now on his way to Fort Atkinson, a military for, after all this time of struggling to hunt this guy down.

He had literally been coming down the Missouri River. Writers, Hugh had been growing up and the two had probably crossed paths at some point without even realizing it. Although Jim Bridger was still there at the new Fort Henry, Hugh ultimately decided to forgive him. The guy was still young and since he seemed extremely apologetic and remorseful and he had also been heavily pressured to give into abandoning Hugh by John.

Hugh felt that he wasn't at fault. But that meant Hugh was even more determined to find and punish the person who was at fault. John Fitzgerald. To Hugh's frustration, though, a severe winter storm made it so that he couldn't leave Fort Henry until three months later, in March, when a unique opportunity arose. A message was needed to be delivered to Fort Atkinson, exactly the place where John was that Sir Hugh, along with four other men, began to make their way there.

But at some point during their journey, Hugh and his group were attacked yet again by the American Indians. Although two men were killed instantly, Hugh managed to run away and hide until successfully escaping with his life yet again. Unfortunately, though, the other two men who had come with thought that he had been killed as well, so they just left without him.

Once again, Hugh was stuck all alone in the wilderness in the middle of hostile Indian territory without his rifle. And once again, he managed to beat all odds and survive. And in June of 1824, nine entire months after John Fitzgerald had stolen his stuff and left him to die, Hugh made it to Fort Atkinson to get his revenge.

However, when he walked inside and demanded to know where John Fitzgerald was, he was given some more bad news. After quitting work as a fur, trapper, John had joined the U.S. Army. As a result, he was government property now, which meant that if you were to kill him, he himself would immediately have to be killed afterwards for taking the life of an American soldier.

Despite coming all that way to kill John, in the end, Hugh settled for just receiving his prized rifle back. He didn't warn John, though, that if he ever left the Army, he would again come hunt him down and kill him. Needless to be said, John probably took the threat very seriously. Anyone who could survive through all of that single handedly pulling themselves back from death story and then making the civilization through that much danger while being very injured was without a doubt one of the toughest people to ever walk the earth.

After leaving Fort Atkinson, Hugh returned to work as a fur trapper as the story continued to spread. He became known as a legend, even among the rest of the fur trappers, who are notoriously extremely tough. But as someone who managed to survive that many close death encounters, his luck was bound to run out. Nine years later, in 1833, he was walking over the ice over Yellowstone River when he was once again attacked by the rigorous.

This time, however, he was quickly killed in the ambush after managing to just barely escape from their grasp that many times. The Arikara family caught up to him. Very interestingly, though, in April of that year, some fur trappers came across a group of Indians who claimed to be members of the local from a tribe. But one of the trappers noticed that the rifle that one of the Indians was carrying was the exact one that Huke was used to always use.

As a result, the Indians were captured and quickly discovered to actually be a recruit and were killed. Two events the death of Hugh Glass. Hugh Glass story is a story of grit, a story of forgiveness, and it's a story of survival. So incredible that even The Revenant, the Hollywood movie that depicted its events, had to tone it down to make it more believable.

Hugh Glass. His legacy will be forever cemented in history as one of the greatest survival stories the world has ever seen. With that being said, I hope you found this sweet story interesting. If you're new here. Hi. My name is Andy. I told bizarre, true hidden stories once a week. I personally guarantee you that every single story I cover from here on out will be just as interesting, if not even more interesting than today's.

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