In 1832 Blackfeet leader Eagle Ribs and his men shot Bridger with two arrows. Almost three years later, one of those arrow points was still in his back at the 1835 rendezvous. Dr. Marcus Whitman arrived at the Rendezvous and offered to extract the steel point, and trapper Jonathon Keeney recorded: Whitman "cut deep into [Bridger's] sores. . . . The arrow point had struck a bone [and] required the strength of two men to pull it out, and Bridger had to be held down. He bore the operation with only a slight groan or two, and the point actually straightened out when it gave away."
At the 1837 Rendezvous, trapper David Brown noted that Bridger was "one the most remarkable men of this remarkable assemblage. His bravery was unquestionable, his horsemanship equally so, and as to his skill with a rifle . . . he has been known to kill twenty buffaloes by the same number of consecutive shots." He was "tall - 6 feet at least – muscular, without an ounce of superfluous flesh. . . . His cheek bones were high, his nose hooked or aqualine, the expression of his eyes mild and thoughtful and that of his face grave, almost to solemnity. . . . He was perfectly ignorant of all knowledge contained in books, not even knowing the letters of the alphabet."
B. Gratz Brown described Bridger at the 1851 Horse Creek Treaty, the largest assembly of American Indians in recorded hstory. "This man is a perfect original. . . . He is not an educated man, but seems to have an intuitive knowledge of the topography of the country, the courses of streams, the direction of mountains, and is never lost, wherever he may be. . . . He would throw his gun carelessly over his shoulder, survey the country a while with his eye, and then strike out on the course, and never fail to reach the place."
Elizabeth Ferris, and her husband, Benjamin Ferris, the new Secretary of the Utah Territory, arrived at Fort Bridger in 1852. Eizabeth recorded: "This man Bridger strongly attracted my attention. There is more than civility about him—there was native politeness. He is the oldest trapper in the Rocky Mountains, his language is very graphic and descriptive, and he is evidently a man of great shrewdness. [His wife] was simplicity itself. She exhibited some curious pieces of Indian embroidery, the work of her own hands, with as much pleased hilarity as a child, and gave me a quantity of raisins and sauceberrys."
Bridger guided G. K. Warren's Expediton of the Yellowstone River in 1856, and ethnologist James Stevenson wrote: "James Bridger [was a] man whom I regarded as one of the most remarkable among all the early trappers and explorers. While Bridger was with us, he and I tented and hunted together, he for game as meat, & I in the capacity of Asst. Naturalist in quest of mammals and birds for the Smithsonian Insitition. . . . I was interested in him almost as an object of Natural History. . . . Bridger's memory was an encyclopedia. He had a vivid . . . accurate recollection of the details of events connected with his life."
At Fort Laramie in 1866, Margaret Carrington wrote, "To us, he was invariably straightforward, truthful, and reliable. His sagacity, knowledge of woodcraft, and knowledge of the Indian was wonderful, and his heart was warm and his feelings tender wherever he confided or made a friend."
Soldier William Murphy on the Bozeman Trail in 1866 wrote: "James Bridger was with us all the summer of 1866 up until late in the fall. If Colonel Carrington and the officers had followed the advice of Bridger I do not think there would have been nearly as many of our men killed. He told the officers not to follow the Indians and to send more men on escort duty, but they thought he was old and did not know anything about Indian warfare."
A ten or twelve-year-old girl who knew Bridger in Westport, Missouri, later said, "I shall always remember Bridger's kind, blue-gray eyes. . . . I would often go over to see Mr. Bridger. He was always very hospitable and liked to have the children of the neighborhood come to see him. . . . I often saw him riding on horseback or walking over his land, feeling his way along with his stick, accompanied by two or three of his fox hounds. If they started a rabbit, the Old Man would get greatly excited, and halloo the hounds onto the chase."
In his final years, Jim Bridger often sat on his veranda nearly blind and talk about his life. He would often say: "I wish I was back there among the mountains again. You can see so much farther in that country."