The Avenging Fury of the Plains- Liver Eating Johnson

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  Anyone else happen to read this book about Liver Eating Johnson? If so what do you think about it???

[Duke0313]

I've never read it, but you obviously have. What's your take on it?

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

Duke, Over the years, I read everything I could get my hands on about Johnson.
It is a history as much as can be put together at this date about him. I found it very interesting, but I have spent lots of time in the same country also. The one thing I had questions about, the author pegs him as a sailor until about 1858. Then he moves from Calif. into the mts. as a hunter/trapper/indian fighter/scout. He apparently was one of the best at these trades. It just seemed to me he aquired these skills too quickly to have hit the mts. in 58 and by '64 was a very skillful mt. man. Still, it was very good. I have reread it several times. 

[Blue Duck]

I read it years ago.  Befor the movie came out "Jerimah Johnson".   It was a good read.  I saw Johnson's cabin on display in Red Lodge Montana a year or two ago...  Pretty cool.

[Hickok]

I have read the book. The book is definately not like the movie. The real Jeremiah was one mean, tough man, and he had to be to survive.

[GatCat]

I haven't read that book, but there was a real good article about in in one of the Gun Digests ( annual version ) about 10 years or so ago. Yep, he was one tough cookie.
Mark

[Graybeard]

Is this Liver eating Johnson supposed to be the same person as Jerimah Johnson the movie is about? If so what is the reference to liver eating about? I recall nothing of the sort in the movie which really is one of my favorites even tho I really detest Robert Redford for the antigun nut he is in real life.

Still the movie is a favorite of mine and I rewatch it from time to time and have seen it well over a dozen times I'm sure.

[hillbill]

as i recall the story, johnson would eat some of the liver of his victims, this was a form of terrorism he used to strike fear into the tribe he had the beef with. the crow i beleive.

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  GB they followed a book called the Crow Killer for the Jerimah  movie...Later the author of Avenging Fury, did some research on the guy who was the basis for both of these stories...It was a guy called Liver Eating Johnson...He was the real article from all I can tell....I have read other references to him in histories.  He was a mt. man from roughly the 1850's until his death...He did not eat any livers, but pretended to eat some of an indians liver that stuck to his knife when he stabbed him...the Fury book has some very good facts..the Crow Killer was a fictional accout of Johnsons life...Johson had his own war with the Souix Indians.. they were his real enemies, and apparently kill many, many of these warriors over the years...The Crows were quite peaceable towards the whites...Johson was apparently one of the most powerful men on the frontier...He could carry antelope minus head and guts slung on each arm...he is often mentioned to carry ahuge Sharps with a scope...

[Graybeard]

Somewhere I believe I have a book about the man the movie was based on and I'm sure I read it many years ago when I bought it but have not in a long long time. I've watched the movied more times than I can count. I do not recall anything in the movie about him eating the liver of the indians he killed. He just killed them and walked away often wounded badly himself.

In the movie he took a group of white folks thru an indian burial ground to reach a stranded group of white folks in wagons before winter caught and killed them. He knew better and almost refused to do it but did anyway. The indians then killed his squaw and the boy he was living with at the time. The boy was the son of the crazy women whose family had been killed.

This was what sent Jerimah on his hunt for the indians that killed them and then the indians of that tribe hunted him down one at a time until the end of the movie.

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  In neither book did Johnson guide anyone to a starving party of settlers...I kind of got the impression he would have told the army to let the settlers starve, it would be better for the west if they did...in the Crow Killer the author had Johnson marry and Indian girl and the Crows were to have killed her and her unborn child...that was what set him on their path...but as the second book this was proven false....The real Johnson was was a pretty bad customer...one of the projects he and his pals worked was the selling of scalps, skulls,& ears to steamboat travelers on the Missouri River...They also cut wood for the steamboats....He apparently had b een a sailor, trapper, hunter, gold prospector, whiskey peddler and drinker...pretty interesting character......

[GatCat]

In the Gun Digest article I mentioned, the author opined that he believed Johnson did not eat the liver..that came about after he killed a Crow with a knife, dug out the liver, and made mention to another white man about eating it.
He later bacame a lawman, and he was in his 60's ( I believe, maybe 70's ) when he disappeared while alone, it is surmised that the Crow finally got him. If he was taken alive, I'm sure his death did not come fast, nor easy !!
I think, all-in-all, he was about on a par with other frontiersmen of his era, tough, realistic, and elevated after death to almost mythical standards.
Mark

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

GC, apparently the Gun Digest article had quite a bit of misinformation..Johnson was a lawman in Montana...his final years were spent in Red Lodge..he left there on a train for Calif. and the old soldiers home...he died there within a year...and was buried in Calif. he was later dug up and reburied in Cody, Wy.  I attended the reburial,,,it was an interesting event...

[GatCat]

Thanks for the ubdated ( correct ) info.
A better ending for the old gentleman, for sure,
Mark

[Junior1942]

GC, apparently the Gun Digest article had quite a bit of misinformation..Johnson was a lawman in Montana...his final years were spent in Red Lodge..he left there on a train for Calif. and the old soldiers home...he died there within a year...and was buried in Calif. he was later dug up and reburied in Cody, Wy.  I attended the reburial,,,it was an interesting event...

Circa 1977 my wife and I spent an entire Sunday afternoon vainly searching "San Juan Hill" in the L.A. VA Hospital Cemetery for Johnson's grave using directions from the aforementioned book.  Several months later I discovered why we couldn't find his grave.  He'd been moved to Wyoming.

[scootrd]

I am always fascinated by these men , some were the first white men to ever see new lands for the first time.
Some blazed new trails such as Bridger Pass , south pass Wyoming etc. John Colter was part of Lewis and Clark expedition, That must have been a awe inspiring adventure. ..

One of my favorite stories is the one of Hugh Glass who killed  a Griizzly with his knife , But so badly wounded no one in the party expected him to survive.  Bridger abandoned him when he fell into unconsciousness thinking he died.. Glass came too alone with broken leg , let maggots eat his flesh torn back and crawled more than 200 miles back to the fort with no rifle.

He later found Bridger , but forgave him because of his young age (he ws in his teens at the time of the incident).
He was eventually killed in his later years by Indians somewhere near Yellowstone I believe.  

Now that's one tough mountain man!!!

Jedidiah Smith also faced a grizzly.  lost portion of his scalp and ear in that encounter.

There was another thread where some were commenting on Man being the Top of the food chain -  and with a rifle are unequal in the woods.

I had read that thread and was thinking about these men what I made a reply ,
I do not feel like the top of the food chain (even with a rifle, best a rifle does is level the playing field -----  somewhat). 

[kynardsj]

It's my understanding that the liver eating thing was to strike fear in the indians Johnson was feuding with. They couldn't make it to the happy hunting ground if they weren't whole. Never read the book but heard that the movie Jerimiah Johnson was loosely based on it. It's still one of my favorite movies.

[srussell]

another book  called   i belive is red men, white men, and mountain men.

[saddlebum]

I have always known him as John Johnston. That's what they call him around Red Lodge. Or used to anyway. I just looked this up and it says he went by several names or has been called by several names. Years ago when I tried to find out more about him there was so much conflicting info on him I gave up trying to figure out the truth. Probably better info by now, maybe.

http://johnlivereatingjohnston.com/