McConnell, S. (2025). Mountain man on horseback, carrying a Sharps rifle. AI-assisted sketch created from a descriptive prompt. Fictional representation generated for illustrative purposes using image-creation software.
Beneath Rattlesnake Mountain
For many years, I’ve been drawn to the allure of frontier stories—like some kind of amateur sleuth—hoping not only to understand the past, but to feel that quiet satisfaction when you manage to unravel a forgotten thread of history. But some frontier stories just refuse to give up their past. Jeremiah Johnson—the mountain man buried under the shadow of Rattlesnake Mountain, at the edge of the Absaroka Range—left behind a life that blurs fact and folklore. His reported conflict with the Crow, said to have been set off by the killing of his Flathead wife and child, stretched into years of brutal revenge and ended, somehow, in peace. In many retellings, Johnson is cast as a stoic figure of man versus wilderness. But the actual Crow had names, families, and reasons of their own. That they later requested Johnson be buried with full honors in Cody, Wyoming, suggests something deeper than a frontier vendetta. It points to a longer cycle—violence, survival, and something like reconciliation.
The trouble with Johnson’s story is that most of it rests on oral tradition. The best-known version comes from Crow Killer, a 1958 biography shaped more by secondhand accounts and frontier storytelling than by documentation. It’s vivid but unverified. No known Crow oral histories preserve their side of the conflict, and the individuals he reportedly fought remain unnamed in any surviving record. Even the most infamous detail—his reported removal and eating of Crow livers—may have been invented, exaggerated, or intended as psychological warfare. The 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, was based loosely on Crow Killer and Vardis Fisher’s 1965 novel Mountain Man, blending the two into a highly fictionalized retelling. It introduced entirely invented characters, including “Paints His Shirt Red,” “Bear Claw,” and “Swan”—the name given to Johnson’s Flathead wife. None of these figures have any basis in the historical record. These additions helped separate fact from folklore, cementing his place in the American imagination.
In truth, only a handful of details are firmly grounded. He served in the U.S. Navy during the 1840s and lived in the American West under the name John Johnston. He worked as a trapper, guide, and lawman in Montana and Wyoming. He fought in the Civil War, served as a scout under General Nelson A. Miles around 1876–77, and later became town marshal in Red Lodge, Montana. He died in a veterans’ hospital in Los Angeles in 1900. In 1974, his remains were exhumed and reburied in Cody, in a ceremony attended by members of the Crow Tribe. One of the pallbearers was Robert Redford. Whether that reburial reflected forgiveness, mutual respect, or simply the passing of time, it marked a quiet closing of distance between former enemies. Everything else—his marriage, the vendetta, the liver-eating, the number of killings, even parts of his personality—comes from a shifting mix of anecdote, exaggeration, and myth.
McConnell, S. (2025). Close-up of Johnson’s equestrian memorial, Old Trail Town. A frontal view of the bronze statue depicting Johnson on horseback. Below it, the engraved plaque reads: John Jeremiah “Liver Eating” Johnson, 1824–1900. No More Trails. His military-issued headstone, placed at the base of the plinth, confirms his Civil War service. A five-pointed metal star—likely a Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) grave marker, possibly placed by the Women’s Relief Corps—stands to the right of the headstone. The star is angled toward the memorial, making its face difficult to read. Rattlesnake Mountain rises in the distance beyond the cemetery enclosure. The photograph also shows Cedar Mountain on the left—also called “Spirit Mountain” in Crow tradition—a reminder that this land carried stories long before anyone carved out Highway 14. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Old Trail Town Museum.
The Legend, As It’s Told
According to legend, Johnson headed west in the late 1840s and settled near the Little Snake River in what is now northern Colorado. There, he was mentored by an experienced mountain man named John “Jack” Hatcher, who taught him how to trap, hunt, and survive in the wilderness. The two men spent several years in the mountains together, and when Hatcher eventually retired from the life, he gave Johnson his cabin. By the early 1850s, Johnson had established himself as a skilled trapper. He traded furs with local tribes and developed a working relationship with the Flathead.
At one point, a Flathead chief offered Johnson his daughter in exchange for goods—likely a rifle, blankets, and other supplies. Johnson accepted. Her name isn’t recorded in any surviving account. The two reportedly lived together in a remote cabin in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana, nestled between the Bitterroot and Sapphire Mountains. Before leaving for the hunting season, he stocked the cabin with food and ammunition. He taught her to shoot; she helped him learn her language. Unbeknownst to him, she was pregnant. When he returned months later, he found the cabin ransacked, his wife’s body decomposed, and the skull of their unborn child still within her remains. The attackers, according to legend, were Crow.
McConnell, S. (2025). Framed portrait of John “Liver-Eating” Johnson, Old Trail Town Museum. Interior view of a preserved frontier cabin in Cody, Wyoming, displaying a framed historical photograph of Johnson beside a weathered buffalo skull. The original image, dated circa 1876–77, is one of the few widely accepted portraits of Johnson. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Old Trail Town Museum.
Montana Memory Project. Circa 1876–77. John “Liver-Eating” Johnson holding rifle. Public domain. AI-assisted reconstruction based on this original image, taken during Johnson’s service as a scout under General Nelson A. Miles. The original portrait—reproduced above in a museum setting—is held by the Montana Memory Project and remains one of the few surviving photographs attributed to Johnson’s frontier life. This rendering extends the original frame to a landscape format and restores missing visual elements, including the full length of the Sharps rifle. Facial structure and clothing have been refined to remain faithful to the source while clarifying degraded details. Created solely for educational and documentary use.
The Making of a Myth
The loss of his wife and unborn child became a turning point. What followed was a personal vendetta. Over the next several years—some say decades—Johnson tracked down and killed an unknown number of Crow warriors. The most repeated detail, though unverifiable, is that he cut out and ate parts of their livers as a form of psychological warfare. The name “Liver-Eating Johnson” stuck.
As his reputation spread, the stories took on a life of their own. One story claims the Crow sent a war party of twenty warriors to kill him. None returned. Another tells of his capture by the Blackfeet, who planned to turn him over to the Crow. According to legend, Johnson escaped, killed his guard, cut off the man’s leg, and used it for both food and defense while traveling 200 miles through winter terrain. Later accounts say he made peace with the Crow and came to call them his brothers. By then, the world had changed. Johnson worked as a prospector and freight hauler. He served as a sniper in the Union Army, returned to Montana after the war, and became a lawman in towns like Coulson and Red Lodge. Those who knew him described him as a private, gruff man—respected more than liked.
Crow Country
The land Johnson moved through—today marked by the Bighorn Mountains, Shell Canyon, and Rattlesnake Mountain—was part of a much older geography. This was Crow country. For generations before Johnson arrived, the Crow hunted across a wide swath of the northern plains and mountain valleys. Their territory stretched from the Yellowstone River to the Tongue and Bighorn rivers, down into what’s now northern Wyoming. Seasonal migrations took them through the foothills of the Absaroka Range and into the high basins around present-day Cody. These were not remote wildernesses but deeply familiar homelands—shaped by movement, ceremony, and survival. What Johnson saw as frontier, the Crow knew as a center of their world.
Nearly seventy years before Johnson’s time, explorer John Colter—formerly a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition—passed through this same terrain. He’s credited as the first documented white man to explore the greater Yellowstone region, and possibly the first to describe its geysers and geothermal features. In 1807, Colter crossed what is now the Shoshone River near Cody and pushed westward, moving alone through lands firmly held by the Crow. The isolation Colter described would later be romanticized by men like Johnson, but it was never uninhabited. These mountains and valleys were already mapped in memory, traversed by trails, and shaped by generations of human presence.
The Crow homeland extended into lands bordered by rivals and trading partners alike. To the north and west, they shared contested borders with the Blackfeet Confederacy—an often hostile relationship marked by raids and retaliation. To the northwest, the Salish—known historically as the Flathead—moved seasonally through the mountain corridors and maintained a longstanding network of trade. These were not isolated cultures. Political alliances shifted, hunting grounds overlapped, and intermarriage sometimes served as diplomacy. Johnson’s marriage to a Flathead woman likely arose from this cultural exchange—a union shaped by proximity as much as necessity. Into this complex terrain stepped men like Johnson, who moved through a world that was already claimed, remembered, and fiercely defended.
McConnell, S. (2025). Pyramid Peak above Shell Canyon. Rising from the arid benches west of the Bighorns, Pyramid Peak dominates the skyline above Shell Canyon. This dry, broken country—cut by draws, sparse juniper, and scattered sage—was once familiar ground to the Crow, who moved between seasonal hunting ranges. Later, Jeremiah Johnson followed the same corridors, tracking game across unforgiving terrain where water was scarce and the climb into higher country was constant. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of the Bighorn National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.
McConnell, S. (2025). Shell Falls, Shell Canyon. The canyon is stark and steep, carved into the western edge of the Bighorn Mountains. Its exposed rock and plunging drops create a landscape both desolate and striking—once part of the roaming grounds of mountain men like Jeremiah Johnson and John Colter. The descent into the canyon is sudden, with sharp turns and steep walls that close in quickly. Shell Creek runs far below, its scale humbling. The sound of Shell Falls hits first—loud, fast, and relentless—crashing through rock layers deposited over hundreds of millions of years. The stillness known by early trappers still lingers here. No signage marks the trail—just stone, water, and weather. This is nature, unfiltered. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Bighorn National Forest.
McConnell, S. (2025). Shoshone River, west of Cody. Photographed along Highway 14 toward Yellowstone, this stretch of the Shoshone River marks the western edge of what was once Crow country. The terrain opens up here—wide riverbeds, layered ridges, and exposed rock—reminding us that these were not isolated pockets but part of a vast, interconnected landscape. Jeremiah Johnson would have moved across this terrain without boundary or warning. The river remains constant, carving west through high country once claimed and contested. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of the Shoshone National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.
McConnell, S. (2025). Shell Creek Below Shell Canyon. Tucked beneath steep limestone walls, this stretch of Shell Creek flows along the canyon floor just east of the Bighorn Basin. Though much of Shell Canyon is rugged and enclosed, this point offers direct access to the water—one of several natural stops along Highway 14 that align with older trails once used by the Crow. Seasonal migrations took Crow families from winter camps in the basin up toward the high country each spring, following routes shaped by terrain, game movement, and the availability of fresh water. Shell Creek, fed by snowmelt from the Bighorns, has long cut a reliable channel through this landscape, carving deep corridors that doubled as travel routes. The geology here is part of the Paleozoic sequence common across the Bighorn Mountains—layered sedimentary rock that has resisted erosion and created the sheer canyon walls. Though no formal trail remains, the alignment of modern infrastructure with these old paths reflects a longer history of travel through this pass. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of the Bighorn National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.
What Remains
Today, Jeremiah Johnson is buried under the shadow of Rattlesnake Mountain, just west of Cody. From there, the Absaroka Range rises toward Yellowstone. It’s part of the same mountain country he likely moved through during his years in the West. The Bighorns—further north—remain tied to the stories that shaped his legend, even if much of that history is unverified. Whether he hunted for vengeance, survival, or simply became the subject of growing exaggeration, the line between fact and folklore blurred early and never quite settled. The exact truth may never be known. But the landscape endures, and so does the story.
The grave is marked by a plain stone and a weathered plaque. Behind it, the mountain casts a long shadow. In front, traffic hums along Highway 14.
Out beyond town, the terrain is still remote, still quiet. But the landscape has changed. What was once open frontier became the town of Cody, founded in 1896. At its western edge, Johnson’s grave sits beneath Rattlesnake Mountain. But it’s hard to imagine that world standing here today—roughly a mile from Johnson’s grave—in the parking lot of Bubba’s Bar-B-Que, looking across Highway 14 toward Riverside Cemetery and the Walmart parking lot—where men like Colter, Hatcher, and Johnson once fought to survive.
The facts may be uncertain—but anyone who trapped through a Bighorn Mountain winter probably earned the right to a few embellishments.
McConnell, S. (2025). Bust of John Colter, Old Trail Town, Cody. Though not a contemporary of Jeremiah Johnson, John Colter helped set the course for those who followed. A former member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806), Colter was among the first white men to leave the expedition and remain in the West, charting and hunting alone in territory that had never before seen a Euro-American presence. In 1807–08, he passed through what would later become Yellowstone National Park and much of present-day northwestern Wyoming, including regions long used by the Crow and Shoshone. His presence marked a turning point—by the time Johnson arrived, decades later, Native tribes were already familiar with white traders, soldiers, and settlers. That was not the case in Colter’s time. He moved alone across ground where he was often the first outsider seen. His dramatic escape from a Blackfeet war party—stripped naked and forced to run for his life over open plains—became legend even in his own day. The bronze bust stands at Old Trail Town in Cody, near the thermal basin once called “Colter’s Hell,” a site that predates formal exploration of Yellowstone by more than half a century. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Old Trail Town Museum.
Reference Materials:
Bender, N. E. (2006). The abandoned scout’s revenge: Origins of the Crow Killer saga of Liver-Eating Johnson. Annals of Wyoming, 78(4), 2–17.
Thorp, R. W., & Bunker, R. (1983). Crow Killer: The saga of Liver-Eating Johnson. Indiana University Press.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Liver-Eating Johnson. Wikipedia. Retrieved May 11, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver-Eating_Johnson
Legends of America. (n.d.). John “Liver-Eating” Johnson – Mountain man and lawman. Retrieved May 11, 2025, from https://www.legendsofamerica.com/liver-eating-johnston/
Pollack, S. (Director). (1972). Jeremiah Johnson [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Image Sources
McConnell, S. (2025). Mountain man on horseback, carrying a Sharps rifle. AI-assisted rendering. Fictional image created from descriptive prompt; not based on any known historical figure or artifact.
McConnell, S. (2025). Close-up of Johnson’s equestrian memorial, Old Trail Town. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Old Trail Town Museum.
McConnell, S. (2025). Framed historical image of John “Liver-Eating” Johnson. Photograph of a public domain image, circa 1876–77. Source: Montana Memory Project. Displayed at Old Trail Town Museum, Cody, Wyoming.
Montana Memory Project. (circa 1876–77). John “Liver-Eating” Johnson holding rifle. Public domain. AI-assisted rendering based on the original image, adapted for educational and documentary use.
McConnell, S. (2025). Pyramid Peak above Shell Canyon. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of the Bighorn National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.
McConnell, S. (2025). Shell Falls, Shell Canyon. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Bighorn National Forest.
McConnell, S. (2025). Shoshone River, west of Cody. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of the Shoshone National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.
McConnell, S. (2025). Shell Creek Below Shell Canyon. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of the Bighorn National Forest, U.S. Forest Service.
McConnell, S. (2025). Bust of John Colter, Old Trail Town, Cody. Photograph taken by the author. Courtesy of Old Trail Town Museum.