In our lust for the sensational, we often embrace fiction over the truth. This human tendency was vocalized in the famed western movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when a newspaper editor said these words at the film’s end: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

And so it is with mountain man, Jeremiah Johnson. Only his name was not Jeremiah Johnson.And he was not a mythical warrior who single-handedly killed hundreds of Crow Indians.

However, his true story is no less impressive or memorable than the fictionalized movie. It justbecame lost in the legend.