John Jeremiah Johnson - Liver Eater

JJ was a giant of a man.  He stood six foot two, weighed 260 pounds, and was reportedly cut like a Greek statue.  In short, he was not the kind of man you wanted to fuck around with.  Born to fairly boring parents in New Jersey in the early nineteenth century, JJ quickly got bored and decided it was time to skedaddle.  At age sixteen he joined the navy to fight in the Mexican War, but soon got in trouble for his habit of not obeying orders and punching his superior officers.  Given that the old timey navy used to hang people for such offenses, he quickly skedaddled and made his way north into the Rocky Mountains where he was adopted by a lonely old fur trapper who taught him the trade (of fur trapping that is).  JJ stayed in the Rockies for most of his life, working as a fur trapper and a wood hawk, which despite the cool name just meant he cut up wood for use on steamships.  Early in his career JJ married a woman of the Flathead Indian tribe, by which we mean he bought her from her father.  JJ, quite happy with his new bride, built her a cabin, and then left for the winter to tend his traps.  While he was gone a group of Crow Indians found the cabin and killed his wife.

JJ arrived back at the cabin in spring to find the skeletal remains of not only his wife, but also his unborn baby.  Understandably upset, JJ swore revenge against all Crow and went on a twenty-five year rampage.  JJ wandered the Rocky Mountains like some of kind of murderous phantom, killing any Crow he found.  People wandering the mountains, both Indians and whites, reported finding slain Crow scattered hither and thither, their heads scalped, and their livers cut out and consumed.  Yeah, that's right, he ate their livers.  Why?  Who the fuck knows.  Over the two and a half decades of JJ's rampage over 300 Crow were reportedly killed, making JJ one of the most proficient serial killers in American history, you know, if Americans of the time had considered Indians people.  Tales of these exploits were told around many a campfire and JJ was given the moniker Liver Eating Johnson, in part to help differentiate him from the other Johnson's of the area, which included Pear Loving Johnson and Long Toes Johnson.  What's that?  You've never heard of Pear Loving Johnson?  Well, that's probably because nobody gives a shit about you if your only claim to fame is that you really love pears, unless I guess there was a more literal meaning.

Anyways, the Crow, decidedly upset about the wanton murder, sent their best twenty warriors to kill JJ.  What exactly happened to this elite commando team is unknown, but none of them came back.  The Blackfoot tribe were somewhat luckier.  They managed to capture JJ by trickery.  They tied him up with leather thongs and made plans to give him as a gift to the Crow.  JJ, having none of that shit, ate the leather bindings, killed his guard with a single punch, and then used the guard's own knife to scalp him and cut off his leg.  JJ then used the unfortunate guard's severed leg as a club to battle his way out of the village.  It was a 200 mile journey to safety, one JJ made in the dead of winter, surviving by eating the leg, which he also used to kill a cougar.  Some might question why JJ didn't just eat the cougar, but then again, such questions are usually reserved for sane people.

After the whole eating a leg thing, JJ took a short break from serial killing to join the Union Army and fight in the Civil War as a sharpshooter.  After the war he went back to killing Crow until he finally got bored and declared a treaty.  The Crow were decidedly okay with this.  Vengeance had been done, and besides, JJ had gotten into the whiskey peddling business and living Crow drank significantly more whiskey than dead ones.  JJ continued to live in the Rockies for some time, even being appointed a deputy sheriff and then a town marshal in Montana for a time.  When JJ turned seventy-five he apparently decided it was time to die.  He wandered his way westward to Los Angeles, for god only knows what reason, and died in a veteran’s home a month later.  Seventy-four years later, a group of students successfully got his remains relocated to Wyoming, which from the surviving Crow's point of view, was probably not all that awesome.

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