I have long been fascinated with the lives of the frontiersmen, scouts, pathfinders and Mountain Men of the Old West. This interest is just as keen as my yearning to know more about the feral white men of the much older Appalachian Frontier. It has been different though, for I have never been out West, and have never set foot in the Rocky Mountains. I live in the graveyard of the first Aboriginal American frontier, and wonder, from two equally great distances, about its last.

For such a wondering mind the figure of John Liver-Eater Johnson [or Johnston], who, on one hand, does not receive a word of mention in most relevant books, and, on the other, is the subject of much mythology and folklore—including the ridiculous figure of 247 Crow Indian livers he is supposed to have eaten raw—is the subject of ultimate interest. Recently, Ishmael, one of our readers, and his lifelong friend, Ben, both men who grew up and hunted in the Rocky Mountains, have offered to guide me on a physical search for this half-mythic, yet all too real, badass.

We have committed to September of 2016. This would certainly rank as the adventure of a lifetime for a city hick like me, and I would not squander the opportunity by going in half read. Over the next 13 months I will be reading on the Liver-Eater and his era, the setting, and the occupations attributed to him, in an attempt to winnow away exaggerations, fabrications and false attributions. I will be conducting this preliminary reading as I did for my history of ancient boxing. As with that project, much can be sifted into its proper context through diligent reading, but little will be known without walking in the subject’s footsteps.

The object will not to be just to ascertain the facts—many of which cannot be known—about this man’s darkly shadowed life, but to put the dual images of the man into historical perspective. He is either extolled as the ultimate ‘Man among Men’ [a feared and hated figure on the order of Lewis Wetzel of the earlier Appalachian and Northwest Frontiers] or he is ignored, utterly.

As I read through the research material that I have collected over the decades, and which Ishmael is currently shipping east by the box load, my impressions will be published under this tag on the site. In July of 2016, I will publish them in a book, ship copies to Ishmael and Ben, and then maybe try to learn how to ride a horse!

Once out West, the search for he who I wager was an unrepentant soul will fall mostly to my partners in this endeavor. The record of the feral, white, liver-eating race warrior that emerges from this investigation will be a team effort, of which I expect to be the least of three contributors. I will then, as the remains of the nation passes under the stewardship of yet another chief unfit to walk in our subject’s moccasins, compile our notes into a book, the title of which will be left up to Ben and Ishmael, and we should get the thing in print by the close of 2016.

-James LaFond, 7/6/15