In 1823, a 24 year old fur trapper named Jedediah Smith was leading a group through the Black Hills when a grizzly bear charged out of the brush and slammed into him. The bear took his entire head into its mouth. It broke his ribs, tore his scalp open from his eye to his ear, and nearly ripped his ear completely off. When the bear finally ran off, his men stood around in shock. Nobody knew what to do. So Smith, bleeding and barely conscious, told one of them to get a needle and thread and sew him back together. The man stitched his scalp back down. Then he told Smith the ear was too far gone. Smith told him to sew it on anyway. So he did. Ten days later, Smith was back on his horse. For the rest of his life he wore his hair long to cover the scars. Then he went on to become one of the greatest explorers in American history. In 1826, he led a party across the Mojave Desert and became the first American to reach California over land from the east. The Mexican governor thought he was a spy and ordered him out. On his way back, he became the first person of European descent known to cross the Sierra Nevada from west to east, and then crossed the Great Basin desert, hundreds of miles with almost no water. At one point a man in his party collapsed from the heat, and they buried him in cool sand just to keep him alive while Smith went looking for water. The next year, on another trip through the Mojave, his party was attacked and ten of his men were killed. The year after that, in Oregon, he left camp one morning to scout ahead. While he was gone, his camp was attacked and fifteen of his men were killed. Smith and three others were the only survivors. He carried a Bible everywhere, and was known for not drinking, not smoking, and not cursing, in a profession full of men who did all three. By his early 30s he had walked, ridden, and paddled more of the American West than almost anyone alive. In 1831, he was guiding a wagon train down the Santa Fe Trail. They were out of water, so he rode ahead alone to find some. He ran into a band of Comanche warriors at the Cimarron River and was killed. He was 32. His body was never found. His friends only learned what happened when Comanche traders showed up in Santa Fe trying to sell his rifle and pistols.