John Liver Eating Johnston

John Liver Eating Johnston. Farmer, sailor, teamster, trapper, hunter, guide, scout, deputy, Union Private, trader, and more. A frontiersman born in New Jersey, sailing the seas then digging for gold in the Montana Territory and continuing to live a robust, adventurous life in the west dodging arrows, bullets, fists, weather, animals, until the frailty of old age came upon him.

John Liver Eating Johnston was known as John Johnson, Jack Johnson, John Johnston, Liver Eating Johnson, the Livereater,  and probably other names no one would dare say with him nearby. He was noted to be surly, extremely strong and a loner. But did you know his birth name was Garrison? 

What kind of man was he? What was his roots? What did he do to be remembered even now 107 years after his demise? And, who is he related to? Where is he buried? How big was he?

There are many seeking the answers to these questions and more.

Do, write in, ask, seek answers, add your own findings. Information is out there, in archives, libraries, diaries, and folk's dusty memories. A culmination of gathered facts can bring Johnston's real life to canvas.

Fouch photograph

Dr. James S. Brust wrote a fine article on John H.  Fouch in the American Heritage Magazine  (November 1992 Volume 43, Issue 7)  History's Homepage:    AmericanHeritage.com  

This image is the first known photograph of Johnston. He was on scout during the 1876-1877 Sioux campaign in Montana Territory.

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  This is the Hunter Hot Springs photo. See the fellow in the beard?  Supposedly that is Johnston. Jason Leaf has spent a considerable amount of time researching this picture.

See: http://www.huntershotsprings.org 

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Calamity Jane at age 33. Photo by H.R. Locke.Henry R. Locke was an American photographer in the 19th century who photographed the Wild West. He ran a studio in Deadwood, South Dakota. He photographed the Black Hills area, Deadwood, Crow Indians, farmers, miners, railroads, but also Calamity Jane (1885) and the Little Big Horn battlefield.

NEW FROM HARLEY O'DONNELL

Montana Monographs is a series of interviews, anecdotal historical stories and short biographies of the pioneers of Montana in the 1870’s and 1880’s. It was edited by, my grandfather, I.D. O’Donnell in the late 1920s. The stories, with archival photographs, cover over 60 pioneers including John Burkman (Custer’s orderly), “Calamity Jane”, “Liver Eating” Johnson, Parmly Billings, “Teddy Blue” Abbott, “Swordbearer”, and “White Quiver”.
 
Diamond R. Brown was building trading posts on the “Whoop Up” trail in the 1870’s. Joseph Cochrane, Johnnie Reardon and Forest Young were here when the Nez Perce came through in September 1877. This was the time of the “Indian Wars”.  Montana Monographs is an accurate snapshot of what life was like in the “Clarks Fork Bottom” in pioneer days.
 
Montana Monographs is available for $34.95 plus $5.00 shipping (in the US) from Harley O'Donnell, 1133 S. 72nd St. W., Billings,  Montana,   59106.
My e-mail address is HOdon21621@ aol.com.

Liver Eating News:

     Montana Quarterly(Myths of the Mountain Man by John Clayton) Spring issue 2006

Calamity Jane by James D. McLaird(University of Oklahoma Press) with a fine chapter noting the wild west show of 1884 she, Johnston and others were in.

    ▪     The fictional biography, Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson by Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker (1969) ISBN 0253203120

Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher

    ▪     Jeremiah Johnson, a 1972 film by Sydney Pollack starring Robert Redford
    ▪     John Johnston (spelled with a "t"), Felton & Fowler's Famous Americans You Never Knew Existed, By Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler, Stein and Day, 1979 ISBN 9780812825114

For recent academic scholarship on "Liver-Eating Johnson", see the following book chapter and journal articles:

Jon Axline, "In League with the Devil: Boone Helm and 'Liver-Eatin' Johnston'," in, Still Speaking Ill of the Dead: More Jerks in Montana History, edited by Jon Axline and Jodie Foley. Guilford, Connecticut and Helena, Montana: Two Dot,Globe Pequot Press, 2005.

Nathan E. Bender, “Perceptions of a Mountain Man: John “Jeremiah Liver-Eating” Johnston at Old Trail Town, Cody, Wyoming.” The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal v.1 (2007): 93-106. Published by Museum of the Mountain Man, Pinedale, Wyoming.
Nathan E. Bender, “The Abandoned Scout’s Revenge: Origins of the Crow Killer Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson,” Annals of Wyoming v. 78 n. 4 (Autumn 2006): 2-17. Published by the Wyoming State Historical Society.
Nathan E. Bender, “A Hawken Rifle and Bowie Knife of John ‘Liver-Eating’ Johnson,” Arms & Armour: Journal of the Royal Armouries, v. 3 n. 2 (October 2006): 159-170. Published by the Royal Armouries, Leeds, England.

NEW NEW NEW NEW Johnston biography, written by Dr. Dennis McLelland, entitled, The Avenging Fury of the Plains, John 'Liver-Eating' Johnston, Exploding the Myths - Discovering the Man

AVAILABLE AT:

buybooksontheweb.com 

Johnston was portrayed by actor Robert Redford, in the movie, Jeremiah Johnson as a character separate from the historical facts. The book details, and corrects, the many errors about Johnston's life as found in the historical fiction of Thorp and Bunker's The Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson.