Dude needed a haircut.
Liver Eating Johnson was ambushed by a group of Blackfoot warriors in the dead of winter on a foray to visit his Flathead kin, a trip that would have been over five hundred miles. The Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies, for a handsome price. He was stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a teepee with an inexperienced guard outside. Johnson managed to chew through the straps, then knocked out his young guard with a two-finger jab between the eyes, took his knife and scalped him, then quickly cut off one of his legs. He made his escape into the woods, and survived on the Blackfoot’s leg until he reached the cabin of Del Gue, his trapping partner, more dead than alive, a journey of about two hundred miles.
John Johnson was the pattern for the feature film, Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford). He also served as an officer in the army, sheriff of Teluride, CO, and was buried in Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteThe book "The Crow Killer" may still be in print. If it is, I urge you to buy it. It's the true story of this remarkable man.
Darn you LL, they have the book at Amazon, ordered it!
DeleteYou won't regret it, Brig. I think that the book was written in the late 1920's from eye witness accounts. He killed the bulk of the great warriors in the Crow nation in man-to-man single combat and after he killed them, he ate their livers. He kept the bones of his squaw/wife and unborn baby in his saddle bags. One could say that John Johnson was not the sort of man that you'd want to mess with.
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