The Truth About Jeremiah Johnson - Western History

The TRUTH about Jeremiah Johnson and Robert Redford's depiction. What if one of Hollywood's most beloved westerns was based on a man so dark, so brutal, and so utterly unlike his film counterpart that the studio couldn't even use his real name? Jeremiah Johnson isn't real. He never was. The man behind the 1972 Robert Redford film was born John Jeremiah Garrison — a Navy deserter who changed his name, ran to the Rocky Mountains, and became the most feared man in the American West. When a Crow raiding party killed his pregnant wife while he was away on his winter trap line in 1847, something in him stopped being human. What followed was a one-man war against the entire Crow nation that lasted twenty-five years and left a body count historians still argue about today. Some say three hundred warriors. Johnson himself once claimed over a thousand. The Crow sent their best trackers after him. Those men never came back. They sent twenty of their finest elite warriors with one mission — find him and end this. Not one of them returned. Not one body was ever found. This is the story Hollywood couldn't tell. The real Liver-Eating Johnson — wilder, darker, and stranger than anything Robert Redford ever put on screen. And remember partners...Never, Trust, A quiet saloon! #JeremiahJohnson #westerns #classicmovies #robertredford #mountainman #wildwest #facts #yourhuckleberry