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Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You

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Speaker 1: can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to

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Speaker 1: you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging

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Speaker 1: deer stands, or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance

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Speaker 1: apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it

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Speaker 1: out at first light dot com. F I R S

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Speaker 1: T L I T E dot com. Randall, you know

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Speaker 1: what problem I'm having in the restroom?

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Speaker 2: Continue?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not what you think. It's not like a

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Speaker 1: flow issue problem I'm having in the restroom.

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Speaker 2: Is it a stopping issue?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 1: You know how I have that that immaculate Eric von

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Speaker 1: Schmidt painting here fell Custer.

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Speaker 2: I was just looking at it with chili.

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Speaker 1: Well, and you know how there's two urinals. It's a

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Speaker 1: long painting. There's two yurnals. There's a short boy and

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Speaker 1: the tall boy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I always go to the tall boy. I always go right.

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Speaker 1: So you're only getting so I like have studied every

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Speaker 1: single possible detail of half that painting. Yeah, and it's

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Speaker 1: a very like it's a famous painting for really being

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Speaker 1: sort of the most accurate representation from looking from from

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Speaker 1: Custer Hill, last Stan Hill, whatever the hell they call

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Speaker 1: it down, it's like very accurate. I've looked at the

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Speaker 1: point where I see now that he's got blood kind

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Speaker 1: of staining Custer's groin area of his trousers. Custer's kind

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Speaker 1: of already been hit a couple of times. So it's

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Speaker 1: like either a plumber comes and switches the journals, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or like I get a mirror image of the I

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Speaker 1: don't know.

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Speaker 2: I was gonna say, we.

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Speaker 1: Can't think, or you start like I just break to

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Speaker 1: the to the tall boy, start going in the low boy.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, try that, and then they'll give you like a

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Speaker 4: different perspective and experience while you relieve yourself.

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Speaker 1: Well that's but what if people come in, when someone

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Speaker 1: comes in and they're like, why is he going in

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Speaker 1: the low boy? M Can I say something?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: I think, like I also go to the tall one

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Speaker 3: as well, the tall Boy. Yeah, but I mean I

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Speaker 3: don't have any I don't have any like trouble at

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Speaker 3: the low boy. If that's my only option, you know,

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Speaker 3: you know gravity.

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Speaker 1: But even today I went in there are all wrong though,

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Speaker 1: angles are all wrong. Yeah, because like I don't want

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Speaker 1: you guys now to get a weird idea about anything.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Even to day. I went in there being like, damn,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna go look at the right side of the

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Speaker 1: painting again.

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Speaker 2: Well, I went in there to start going to the

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Speaker 2: I went in there today and I saw I had

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Speaker 2: beat and Chile head the door. So I just invited

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Speaker 2: him to join me.

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Speaker 1: And who went to what side?

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Speaker 2: Well, I gave him the courtesy of using the adult

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Speaker 2: sized urinal, and I just you know, squatted my knees

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Speaker 2: a little bit.

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Speaker 1: And then you guys did get out the painting.

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Speaker 2: I did get to take in the left side of

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Speaker 2: that painting, which I admit was pretty new to me.

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Speaker 4: I feel totally left out because I don't know what

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Speaker 4: that painting looks like.

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Speaker 2: Well, you can go in there. It's a unisex restroom

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Speaker 2: now right.

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Speaker 4: Oh wait, we were talking about the downstairs.

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Speaker 1: One of the the hall here.

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Speaker 4: Oh right, And there's a stall in that one too

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Speaker 4: that you could get one.

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Speaker 1: Of those cups. There's a cup that women. Can you

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Speaker 1: use the go at urinals? Yeah, you can just leave

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Speaker 1: it hooked at the low boy if you want, or.

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Speaker 2: You could just stand there and not use.

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Speaker 4: I would definitely lock the door behind.

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Speaker 1: Me if you're using that funnel.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, if I'm using that funnel, I'm not sure I

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Speaker 4: care to use the funnel.

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Speaker 1: You stand there and look, that might look weird too, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Or you lock the door, Just lock the door behind

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Speaker 1: you and then you come out and someone says, were

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Speaker 1: you in there going to the bathroom, and you'd have.

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Speaker 4: To be like, no, no, I was looking at the painting.

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Speaker 1: Well, then they'd say, well, why is the door locked?

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Speaker 4: Because I want to have my own private viewing experience.

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Speaker 1: That's true. That wouldn't seem weird.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't think there's anything weird about this.

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Speaker 1: Later today, there are thing about it. I remember hitting

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Speaker 1: the year that I remember hitting the year when I

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Speaker 1: was the age that Custer died at. Mm, you can't

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Speaker 1: remember what it was, not terribly old. I remember being

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Speaker 1: that year forties and when Seth got married. Did I

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Speaker 1: ever tell you about my speech?

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Speaker 4: Yeah? You officiated his wedding.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I married Seth. I was there, Oh you were there?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah?

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Speaker 1: What can I relive it? For sure?

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Speaker 3: I wasn't there really quick Custer.

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Speaker 1: Custer died at thirty six. Oh god, but I took

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Speaker 1: note when I was Coster's age thirty six, thirty six.

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Speaker 1: I know a lot of people are still idiots at

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Speaker 1: thirty six. So when I when Seth got married, I realized,

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Speaker 1: but I didn't tell anybody. I kept a secret. I

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Speaker 1: realized that he was getting married on the anniversary of

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Speaker 1: Custer's death twenty fourth June twenty four, June twenty three,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember twenty fifth, you sure according to this article,

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Speaker 1: twenty fifth and twenty sixth was the battle, Okay, June

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Speaker 1: twenty fifth. Seth got married on June twenty fifth. So

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Speaker 1: when I get up to do the preaching, I get

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Speaker 1: up and say, today will forever mark a day when

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Speaker 1: a man made a terrible mistake.

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Speaker 4: Sure, Kelsey love that a.

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Speaker 1: Man driven by hubris and pride. That's really good. Oh,

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Speaker 1: and I buttered it up. Forever people, this day will

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Speaker 1: be remembered. And then I was like, I was like,

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Speaker 1: of course, I'm referring to the defeat of General Custer

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Speaker 1: at the Battle a Little Big Horn one hundred and

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Speaker 1: whatever years ago.

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Speaker 2: Today, and the wedding party visibly.

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Speaker 1: Relaxed, and I heard I don't want to name names,

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Speaker 1: but there was a family member there were family members.

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Speaker 1: I don't even want to say what side they were on.

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Speaker 1: There were family members that were already not happy that

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Speaker 1: I was doing it, and then they came away. They

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Speaker 1: came away even unhappier.

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Speaker 4: Steve Sturing the pot, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Even unhappier.

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Speaker 2: I didn't pick up on that vibe.

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Speaker 1: That's what I heard later. It was it was divulged

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Speaker 1: to me. Uh, if you're listening today and then all

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Speaker 1: indications are that you are. At the end, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about mountain men. We're gonna talk about long hunters,

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Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about mountain men. We're gona talk

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Speaker 1: about some other stuff too. We'll explain what those people are,

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Speaker 1: and then we're gonna you're gonna keep on listening. Me

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Speaker 1: and Randall are going to wrap it up. I'm here

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Speaker 1: with Randall. He's gonna I'm gonna ask him about Mexico

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Speaker 1: in a minute. Me and Randall are going to wrap

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Speaker 1: it up. And then in our conversation about market hunting,

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Speaker 1: long hunters, mountain men, a little bit of history about

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Speaker 1: what we mean when we say those things, and then

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Speaker 1: you're gonna hear a chapter called Hunger and Thirst. And

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Speaker 1: this chapter is a sneak peek at our new audio release,

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Speaker 1: which is part of our Meat Eaters American History. If

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Speaker 1: you remember, we did Meet Eaters of American History Volume one,

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Speaker 1: the Long Hunters seventy sixty three three to seventeen seventy

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Speaker 1: five and a minute. We'll explain why that why those dates.

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Speaker 1: Our new volume is volume So now we have Meetaters

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Speaker 1: of American History Volume two, and we jump to and

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Speaker 1: we'll explain why these dates. We're jumping to the years. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: it's Meetater's American History Volume two, The Mountain Men eighteen

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Speaker 1: oh six to eighteen forty. We're gonna explain what that means.

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Speaker 1: So when you hear the word frontiersman, what does it mean,

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Speaker 1: when you hear the word mountain men, what does a

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Speaker 1: mountain man actually mean? We're going to talk about what

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Speaker 1: a mountain man actually means that We're going to talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the history of these different market hunters,

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Speaker 1: and then we're gonna go into a chapter from this book,

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Speaker 1: this audio original called Hunger and Thirst and it's it's

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Speaker 1: Is it available now?

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Speaker 2: If this is released on Monday, No, it'll be available on.

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Speaker 1: Tuesday, available on the eleventh.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is this is today is the tenth tenth.

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Speaker 1: Effectively, it'll probably be fine now. Yeah, it'll probably available now.

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Speaker 1: If not, you buy it and you'll have the next day.

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Speaker 1: It's like eleven bucks, eleven twelve bucks, I think, isn't

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Speaker 1: eleven ninety nine? I think? I think so chapters? Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's five six hours long. It's a five or six

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Speaker 1: hour long history of how many hours you think it

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Speaker 1: came in at twelve chapters?

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Speaker 2: I haven't seen seven hours. I haven't seen it total.

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Speaker 2: I would guess it's closer to yes, seven hours.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's a seven hour history of the

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Speaker 1: mountain men, Jim Bridge, of Jed Smith, John Colter, all

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Speaker 1: those guys are explained, like what actually they did, why

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Speaker 1: they did it. We're going to talk a bunch about

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Speaker 1: the different eras of the market hunters, and then we're

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Speaker 1: gonna a little bit talk about what's to come into

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Speaker 1: future as we kind of go down the line of

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Speaker 1: these American mountain these American market hunters. You know, we

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Speaker 1: should talk about two for a minute. Sure is there's

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Speaker 1: a weird wrinkle like everyone's smooth with the North American

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Speaker 1: model of wild They have conservation and in it is

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Speaker 1: this thing about not commodifying wildlife. But then people are like, well,

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Speaker 1: why can you sell deer hides? You can still sell

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Speaker 1: deer hides, Why can you sell beaver meat? Why can

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Speaker 1: you sell skins? Right? Why can you sell taxidermy?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: Because in the market hunting world, you know, like everyone

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Speaker 1: knows the work that Theodore Roosevelt did for wildlife conservation.

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Speaker 1: One of the big things he did. He kind of

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Speaker 1: waged war on the market hunters. But we still have

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Speaker 1: market hunters.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's i mean, even beyond just

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Speaker 2: the more obvious examples of like selling meat and selling hides.

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Speaker 2: I feel like the commodifying wildlife is one of those

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Speaker 2: elements of the North American model that's always people sort

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Speaker 2: of debate over what constitutes commodifying wildlife, like if you're

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Speaker 2: charging people for access to hunt or whatever. I mean,

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Speaker 2: it's one of those things where people like to make

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Speaker 2: more expansive arguments about what is a violation of the

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Speaker 2: North American model. I feel like it's one of the

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Speaker 2: pillars of the North American model where people debit. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: the scope of it.

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Speaker 1: Another pillar of it is is that you take things

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Speaker 1: you want to do that don't seem like they fit

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Speaker 1: with the North American model, and you argue about how

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Speaker 1: they actually kind of do yeah, oh yeah, rather than

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Speaker 1: just saying you're right, this doesn't fit with the North

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Speaker 1: American model, but I like it. But I like doing this,

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Speaker 1: and I'm not going to try to tell you that

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Speaker 1: it fits yeah, with the North America model of wildlife conservation.

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Speaker 1: One thing, one thing to get into here. Make quick note.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of times when we're doing the show,

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Speaker 1: there's a shitload of people in the room. Right now,

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Speaker 1: there's not crams here, Randalls here because we're doing something

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Speaker 1: a little bit special today. But a reminder some of

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Speaker 1: the people that come in and do the show, you know,

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Speaker 1: we have a whole podcast network, so I sometimes fail

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Speaker 1: to point out how many of the people you know

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Speaker 1: from coming on the show have their own shows that

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Speaker 1: are on our network. So Cal is always in here,

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Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan old Cal Cal in the Wild. That's a feed,

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Speaker 1: that's a podcast feed host Cal's Weekend Review and the

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Speaker 1: Foundation's podcast with Tony Peterson, So they'll sit within our

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Speaker 1: network under the feed Cal in the Wild. We had

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Speaker 1: a Bear Grace, a bear Grease feed, of course, and

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Speaker 1: on the show you've met and heard from many times

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Speaker 1: Clay and Brent Reeves. So the Bear Grease podcast feed

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Speaker 1: has the Bear Grease Podcast has Bear Grease Render episodes

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Speaker 1: and This Country Life episodes with Brent Reeves. We have

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Speaker 1: a Wired to Hunt feed, the Wired to Hunt podcast feed,

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Speaker 1: the Eponymous show with Mark Kenyon, Wired to Hunt, and

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Speaker 1: then Foundations with Tony Peterson, and then of course we

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Speaker 1: have God's Country with Dan and Reed. Isabel. I got

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Speaker 1: a big hunt trip plan with Tony Peterson. Oh that

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Speaker 1: whole secret?

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Speaker 4: Oh I think I know.

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Speaker 1: It's the poverty pat hunt.

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Speaker 2: Oh that is going to be.

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Speaker 1: Yep.

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Speaker 2: Any extra spots on that one?

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Speaker 4: You guys?

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Speaker 1: Did you have fun on in Mexico? I had a

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Speaker 1: great time out in Mexico. What happened? Did you enjoy it?

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Speaker 2: Did you love it there?

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Speaker 1: Oh?

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Speaker 2: My god, I loved every minute of it.

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Speaker 1: What did you like? Randall went on his Was it

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Speaker 1: your first cous to your hunt? RW, first cuz to

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Speaker 1: your hunt, first trip to Mexico? Never been across the

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Speaker 1: southern border? Really?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Do you like it?

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Speaker 2: I loved it? I loved it? Uh yeah, I mean

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Speaker 2: I thought it was sort of an interesting hunt because

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Speaker 2: in some ways it's like a very classic whitetail hunt

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Speaker 2: where you got a bunch of guys staying in the

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Speaker 2: same house and every.

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Speaker 1: Morning smoky house.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and every morning you're drinking coffee and saying like, well,

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Speaker 2: what do you want to go? Do you want to

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Speaker 2: go to that spot or that spot? Do you want

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Speaker 2: to go to that spot or that spot? It's like, oh,

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Speaker 2: we looked at that yesterday, let's check out this other one.

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Speaker 2: So strategically it reminded me of like a very traditional

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Speaker 2: whitetail hunt.

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Speaker 1: But then.

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Speaker 2: You're there's not a ton of hiking, but you're going

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Speaker 2: up and down some steep stuff and falling and you know, no,

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Speaker 2: busting your ass a little bit here and there on

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Speaker 2: because the footing's pretty tricky.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's never ending, thirty degrees slopes covered in gravel.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like there.

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Speaker 1: Isn't hooked to end, nothing's hooked to anything.

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Speaker 2: You need your sea legs. We're like, there is one

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Speaker 2: hike that seth and I did uh, and we sort

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Speaker 2: of got to the we got to take a break,

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Speaker 2: and you're honest, it's like, man I fell hard. I said, Oh,

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Speaker 2: I fell hard too, And we're comparing where we'd fallen.

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Speaker 2: And then Seth said, I fell on that one as well,

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Speaker 2: and all three of us had taken pretty serious spills

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Speaker 2: unbeknownst to one another. So and then you're glassing all day,

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Speaker 2: which is like I can be. I mean, I'm just

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Speaker 2: like always entertained by glassing, and and so like, there

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Speaker 2: are a couple of days, I mean we hiked up

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Speaker 2: to a ridge and we only moved one hundred yards

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Speaker 2: in the course of the whole day, just behind the tripod,

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Speaker 2: glassing and pointing stuff out and finding I mean not

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Speaker 2: even just deer, but we were watching some coyotes chase

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Speaker 2: some deer. Uh, we're finding ducks, We're finding turkeys and

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Speaker 2: mountain lines, no mountain lions. We saw some tracks one day,

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Speaker 2: Seth and I went up this crazy I call it

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Speaker 2: a road, but really the roads down there are just

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Speaker 2: sort of bulldozer cuts. Yeah, and uh, there was some

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Speaker 2: fresh tracks we saw. We saw some fresh coups tracks,

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Speaker 2: and as soon as we stopped to look at those,

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Speaker 2: we realized their lion tracks, you know, right alongside them.

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Speaker 2: Then in the no, just in the in the real

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Speaker 2: loose dust, because yeah, everything is dust. I haven't really

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Speaker 2: brought anything in the house from that hunt. I'm waiting

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Speaker 2: till I can fire up the air compressor and just

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Speaker 2: blow everything out, cause it's just my trip is a

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Speaker 2: different color. My bino harness is a different color. Like

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Speaker 2: everything's covered in that real fine dust that just seeps

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Speaker 2: its way into like zippers and everything you own.

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Speaker 1: For the rest of your life. When you open your

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Speaker 1: tripod legs up and pull them out, they're gonna go They're.

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Speaker 2: Gonna make a different Oh, yeah.

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Speaker 1: For sure, it's like a they'll make a gravelly noise.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to do a good good lens cleaning.

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Speaker 2: All the I cups and all my optics need a

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Speaker 2: good cleaning.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Super fun trip. And uh I've already you know, as

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Speaker 2: soon as I text a couple buddies to say that

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Speaker 2: I was going down there, and they're all like, oh,

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Speaker 2: that's a that's like a bucketless trip for me. And

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Speaker 2: so now I'm ever since I got back. Before I

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Speaker 2: got back, I was kind of thinking about organizing another

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Speaker 2: the next trip down to Old Mexico.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, don't I'm hoped they had on my little

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Speaker 1: area there. Well, you know, I'm joking.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean the thing that blew me away. Actually,

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Speaker 2: one of the things that I was not expecting is like,

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Speaker 2: we stay at the Holiday Inn or whatever. It is

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Speaker 2: a quarter mile from the border checkpoint on the Arizona side,

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Speaker 2: and we got in a little late, like at nine pm.

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Speaker 2: You know, there's not a lot of activity. And then

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Speaker 2: the morning we get up and Seth and I went

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Speaker 2: down to breakfast at McDonald's. No, just in the lobby.

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Speaker 2: We did go to McDonald's on the way back, but

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Speaker 2: you look out in the parking lot and it's all

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Speaker 2: hunting rigs. There's like twelve jacked up pickups with Utah

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00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:41,760
Speaker 2: Arizona plates. They're all towing side by sides. Every single

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Speaker 2: person in the little breakfast nook is wearing camoep and

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Speaker 2: they're all like dudes between the age of thirty five

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Speaker 2: and sixty. And then you get into the checkpoint line

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Speaker 2: and the truck in front of you is a hunter

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Speaker 2: and the truck behind you John right for sure, you

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Speaker 2: know I was. And then you go to like some

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Speaker 2: gas station across the border and the whole thing is

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Speaker 2: basically a staging point for for kus deer hunters. And

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Speaker 2: so that was that was one thing that was a

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Speaker 2: very unexpected wrinkle in It was just like how visible

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Speaker 2: it was. You know, it's like being out in eastern

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Speaker 2: Montana the week before Thanksgiving, so I.

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Speaker 1: Think it's like that all January when they're rutting.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was super cool.

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Speaker 1: But it's the good old days right now in Mexico. Man.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean there was some talk about, you know,

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Speaker 2: in a couple of occasions, it got brought up, like

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Speaker 2: what's going to change, you know, in the next in

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Speaker 2: the next couple of years, especially like politically, and yeah,

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Speaker 2: the you know, like the role of the cartels down there.

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Speaker 2: It's a hunt where like you can't really have your

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Speaker 2: blinders on because it happens in this very specific political,

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Speaker 2: socio economic context. That all I mean, yeah, it was.

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Speaker 1: It.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still sort of just wrapping my head around it.

365
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Speaker 2: But aside from that, it's just super fun hunting deer.

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Speaker 2: In January, I thought my deer hunting for the year

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Speaker 2: was over, and.

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Speaker 1: It's the best.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so great time.

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Speaker 1: Since I've been working on this History Channel show Hunting History,

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Speaker 1: where we'd look into outdoor mysteries, man, people have been

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Speaker 1: hitting me up with all kinds of stuff mysteries.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, someone sent.

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Speaker 1: Me something really interesting the other day, and there was

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Speaker 1: a picture of the f So there's a guy like

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Speaker 1: like a friend of a friend. His dad was an

377
00:19:38,600 --> 00:19:43,440
Speaker 1: FBI agent who worked on the dB Cooper case. There's

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Speaker 1: an FBI agent who interviewed This is so crazy. There's

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Speaker 1: an FBI agent who interviewed all of the people that

380
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Speaker 1: dealt with Cooper before they went and did the drawings.

381
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Speaker 1: The famous compott you know when you come in and

382
00:19:56,520 --> 00:19:59,280
Speaker 1: they tell you what you look like. He sends me

383
00:19:59,320 --> 00:20:03,760
Speaker 1: a picture of the guy, the FBI agent who interviews

384
00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:08,199
Speaker 1: everybody leading into that meeting with the artist. The sun

385
00:20:08,240 --> 00:20:11,439
Speaker 1: bitch looks exactly like the picture of DV. Cooper. It

386
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Speaker 1: was like they described the last guy they.

387
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Speaker 2: Saw the impressible.

388
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Speaker 1: All the reading and all the reading and work I

389
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Speaker 1: did on all the reading and work we did on

390
00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:22,640
Speaker 1: like the DV. Cooper story, which is like the most

391
00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:24,800
Speaker 1: the biggest bottomless pit in the world. I just had

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Speaker 1: to walk away from it eventually, because you can't. It's

393
00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:29,840
Speaker 1: just it's a bottomless pit. And all the reading I

394
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Speaker 1: did about it, no one ever brought that up to me.

395
00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:38,160
Speaker 1: It's like this dude looks like that. They're like, wow,

396
00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:41,440
Speaker 1: let me think they describe the guy they just they're

397
00:20:41,520 --> 00:20:43,159
Speaker 1: describing the guy that just spoke to.

398
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Speaker 2: That's the power of suggestion.

399
00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:48,919
Speaker 1: A lot of people wrote in and saying, how's their

400
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:52,480
Speaker 1: dad or whatever. Uh, here's a weird one, just like

401
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:54,200
Speaker 1: an outdoor mystery. That another one I can't like. I

402
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:57,240
Speaker 1: can't believe I've never heard of this. Yeah, because this

403
00:20:57,320 --> 00:21:01,679
Speaker 1: is this is my home state. Okay, what is nineteen

404
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:11,080
Speaker 1: fifty nine? All right, nineteen fifty nine, William j Wyman.

405
00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: Listen to this. This is a crazy story. There's a

406
00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:22,240
Speaker 1: military pilot, right, Yeah, he's a military pilot, a guy

407
00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:25,679
Speaker 1: named William j. Wyman. His plane disappears over Lake Huron

408
00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:31,240
Speaker 1: while he's flying from Saginaw to kin Ross Air Force

409
00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:34,200
Speaker 1: Base in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. So I mean that base

410
00:21:34,280 --> 00:21:36,000
Speaker 1: is still there. There's ken Ross base in the up

411
00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:39,920
Speaker 1: Guys flying from Saginaw up Lake Huron to kin Ross

412
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 1: Upper Peninsula. His plane goes missing on March five, nineteen

413
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:53,520
Speaker 1: fifty nine. They conduct a big search, no sign of

414
00:21:53,520 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 1: the plane, never find the plane. He's presumed dead, and

415
00:21:57,080 --> 00:22:03,280
Speaker 1: they call it off on April eight. This is insane.

416
00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:07,199
Speaker 1: I never heard this. On April eight, these lighthouse keepers

417
00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:11,359
Speaker 1: go out to Spectacle Reef to reopen their lighthouse and

418
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:19,960
Speaker 1: find that someone had been living in the lighthouse. There's

419
00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:23,800
Speaker 1: a note, and the note's explaining it's a note from

420
00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:27,640
Speaker 1: Wyman in the lighthouse explaining his plane's engine had quit

421
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:30,960
Speaker 1: when he's flying at five thousand feet. His engine quit

422
00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: a mile from the lighthouse Wyman's note. This is a

423
00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:36,840
Speaker 1: quote from Wyman's note. I tried to make it in

424
00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:40,560
Speaker 1: but could not stretch my glide this far. I landed

425
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:43,040
Speaker 1: in the water. I did not try to land on

426
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:45,560
Speaker 1: the ice, and it did not appear to be thick enough.

427
00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:49,520
Speaker 1: The plane went down within two minutes, but before it did,

428
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:52,399
Speaker 1: it floated close enough to an ice floe for me

429
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:56,080
Speaker 1: to jump. The ice was now over two inches thick.

430
00:22:56,680 --> 00:23:00,000
Speaker 1: Another large body of water separated me from the lighthouse,

431
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:03,640
Speaker 1: so I waited. Suddenly the wind shifted to the northeast

432
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:06,880
Speaker 1: and the ice I was on started to move. At

433
00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: the very last moment, one corner of the ice grounded

434
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:17,120
Speaker 1: against the ice packed around the lighthouse. So the letter

435
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:19,399
Speaker 1: goes on, but in short Wyman then runs for the

436
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:21,400
Speaker 1: lighthouse and makes it there, but he gets a little

437
00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:25,280
Speaker 1: wet his clothes, froze before he gets into the door

438
00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:30,280
Speaker 1: of the tower, but in there he finds towels, overshoes,

439
00:23:30,560 --> 00:23:34,600
Speaker 1: gets warmed up. He finds a radio transmitter in the lighthouse,

440
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:39,360
Speaker 1: but can't get it to work. Set up all night,

441
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:43,800
Speaker 1: blinking sos with the tower's winter light, manipulating the tower's

442
00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: winter light. He doubts if rescuers are ever going to

443
00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:53,520
Speaker 1: find him because he hadn't filed a flight plan, so

444
00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: he freezes his ass off in this lighthouse for two nights.

445
00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,920
Speaker 1: The ice thickens up in his no he explains he's

446
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:02,919
Speaker 1: going to try to make the eleven mile track to

447
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:08,880
Speaker 1: the nearest land. His no ends, I'm going to take

448
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 1: some equipment with me, binocular's coat, hat, blankets, et cetera.

449
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,400
Speaker 1: I will turn them in to the US Coast Guard

450
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:19,800
Speaker 1: as soon as I get ashore. They kick off a

451
00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 1: whole other search for Wineman and still today no trace.

452
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 2: Lost twice twice.

453
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:31,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, hell, I'll never hear that.

454
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I think like, when you

455
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:39,240
Speaker 2: get into this realm, there's just a bottomless pit of

456
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:43,439
Speaker 2: stories and mysteries of you know, planes going down and

457
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 2: all kinds of weird stuff happening to people. But yeah,

458
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 2: for it to be in your backyard.

459
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:50,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a crazy story, man, Yep.

460
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 2: I uh.

461
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 1: When I was living in in the Upper I lived

462
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:58,679
Speaker 1: for a very brief time in the Upper Peninsula. It

463
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 1: spent a great deal of time over there over a

464
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:03,680
Speaker 1: bunch of years. I remember There's two things kind of

465
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: interesting when I lived there. Two guys got a shootout

466
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: over bear baits. And the other thing was a guy

467
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: is going to his deer hunting cabin and he parks

468
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: on a steep incline and gets out to open his

469
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:22,720
Speaker 1: own gate, and as he's fiddling with his own gate,

470
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:28,160
Speaker 1: his truck slides forward and pins him against his own gate,

471
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: where he then freezes to death.

472
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 2: I was telling Yanni this story stuck with me because

473
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:40,120
Speaker 2: down in Mexico they love gates, and they're all every

474
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 2: single gate has a different mechanical device holding it shut.

475
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 2: And I was telling Yanni that. At one point, we're

476
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 2: antelope hunting and I went out to open the gate

477
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,360
Speaker 2: to be a you know, I was driving and Sydney

478
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 2: was in the passenger seat. I said, oh, I'll get

479
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 2: the gate for myself. I hopped out forgot to put

480
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 2: it in park, and as I'm up against the fence.

481
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 2: I turned around, the truck's rolling at me and I

482
00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:08,199
Speaker 2: barely get back in time to put the brakes on.

483
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:12,399
Speaker 2: So whenever we opened gates, now, Sydney has like a

484
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 2: multi part checklist of making sure that I've put the

485
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 2: truck in part. But he said he has a I

486
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:20,679
Speaker 2: believe a relative who died the same way, pinned on

487
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 2: his gate, pinned on I believe a mailbox.

488
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, that's how the actor Antony Jelchin died. Do

489
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: you remember that guy?

490
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 3: He was kind of like a young and upcoming actor,

491
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 3: and yeah, he's trucked pinned him against a Yeah.

492
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: Man, I remember some people ran over our mailbox one time,

493
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:40,120
Speaker 1: and my dad was so mad. He went and got

494
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 1: a big chunk of phone pole and dug and set

495
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 1: that thing down, darg a six foot pit and sunk

496
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: it in there and put a bunch of concrete in there.

497
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 2: M h.

498
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: And he said, the next time someone hits his mailbox,

499
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:58,199
Speaker 1: he's going to be here in the morning. Yeah, you

500
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: know in the newspaper article. Whoever has found the old

501
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 1: newspaper article of the they're abandoning the hunt for the Airmen.

502
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: April thirteenth, they abandoned the search for the airman. Did

503
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: you look at the next article port here on Michigan

504
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: April thirteenth. Patrick Butler, twenty two shot himself in the

505
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 1: leg last night while practicing a fast draw. Butler told

506
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,199
Speaker 1: deputies his thumb slipped down the hammer, causing the pistol

507
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:33,959
Speaker 1: to discharge.

508
00:27:35,800 --> 00:27:41,360
Speaker 2: End story, and the headline is wounds himself.

509
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: Here's an interesting one. It is the last thing we're

510
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: gonna talk about before we get in them. What we're

511
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 1: gonna talk about. It's kind of crazy one. The Boone

512
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 1: and Crockett Club has opened up. I shouldn't say crazy interesting.

513
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 1: This is an interesting one. The Boone and Crockett Club has.

514
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: They've unanimously approved or request by the Fort Peck tribes

515
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: to accept bison entries hunted on the Fort Peck Indian

516
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:15,480
Speaker 1: Reservation in northern Montana. Most places, if you were going

517
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: to go shoot a buffalo, you wouldn't be able to

518
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: submit them for Boone and Crockett Club because it wouldn't

519
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,640
Speaker 1: be regarded as a fair chase hunt. Like even if

520
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 1: you shoot, like if you shoot a high fence deer,

521
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,200
Speaker 1: Boone and Krackett won't accept a high fence deer. Yeah,

522
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of rules to Boone and Crockett club.

523
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of rules that go above and beyond

524
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: the what's legal right. They have their own added requirements.

525
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 1: For instance, if you're radio hunting using radio communications, Boone

526
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: and Crockett won't accept your score even if you're allowed

527
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: to radio hunt where you're radio hunting. So they've opened

528
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: up there as a way to applaud the work that

529
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: the Fort Pret tribes have done on creating a wild,

530
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: free range bison herd on their reservation and using a

531
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: sustainable management plan. They've had the animals since nineteen ninety nine,

532
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety nine. They got him from Yellowstone National Park.

533
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: I actually met Robbie who runs that program. But anyways,

534
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 1: if you were to draw a fort Pack bison tag

535
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: and kill a big bowl, you could have a bull

536
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 1: submitted into Boone and Crockett. Boone and Crocket's going to

537
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 1: start accepting it as a fair chase hunt.

538
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 2: That's great, It's very cool.

539
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: No, I like it. Man. I was having a conversation

540
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine who's very involved in the

541
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:40,480
Speaker 1: conservation movement, and I was complaining to him I was

542
00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: complaining to him. He and I have a slight I

543
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:46,719
Speaker 1: don't want to say that I was complaining to him

544
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: about bison management in the state that I disagree with,

545
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: Like I sort of disagree with the direction the state

546
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:00,959
Speaker 1: of Montana is going on bison. Man. I'd like there

547
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: to be more bison more. I'd like to find ways

548
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: to reduce conflict with landowners and create more areas for

549
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: them to be more wild bison. And I do it,

550
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: like in my mind, I'm like, it's like I'm doing it,

551
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: like I think that, Like as a hunter, I'm all

552
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 1: for it. And my buddy's like, but hunters just don't

553
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: see those animals that way. Hunters are gonna you know,

554
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: hunters are gonna go, uh, they're gonna draw blood over elk,

555
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: but they just don't feel that way about buffalo. And

556
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: I'm like, but they should, yeah, and someday they might.

557
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 2: Yeah.

558
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: But he say, hunters don't get riled up about it. Yeah.

559
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 2: I mean, we we went on the buff buffalo hunt

560
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago when my wife drew the

561
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 2: tag on an American prairie, and I have to say,

562
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 2: like that was one of the better like wild ass

563
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,239
Speaker 2: days of hunting that I've had, m M, just like

564
00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 2: out on the prairie, knowing around making stocks on big

565
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:04,920
Speaker 2: groups of buffalo. It was like antelope hunting, you know.

566
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 2: And it was just like not really something I'd ever envisioned,

567
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 2: Like I couldn't really imagine it playing out the way

568
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 2: it did in my mind. But man, it was super cool.

569
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 2: It's like, if I could do that every year, I would.

570
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's funny. There just aren't that many opportunities, no,

571
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 2: and the opportunities that do exist are so varied in

572
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:28,960
Speaker 2: sort of nature and how they play out and where

573
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 2: you're doing it and what happens and who's there. But yeah,

574
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 2: it's tough to it's tough to sort of picture what

575
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 2: a buffalo hunt's like and picture yourself hunting buffalo. But yeah,

576
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 2: it's interesting. I wish more people were fired up about it.

577
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: Hopefully it will be come.

578
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 2: There's nothing more Montana than a buffalo hunt.

579
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: I met a dude. I was at this thing not

580
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: long when I met a guy who did the hunt

581
00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: that I did in Alaska and he wound up getting

582
00:31:57,760 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: in such a pickle he had to call the state

583
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: troopers to get them out.

584
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 2: Wow.

585
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:04,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, same same unit.

586
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 2: I drew river conditions or what.

587
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, ran in all kinds of trouble, got rescued

588
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: by the troopers. So I said, well, did you get one? Yeah,

589
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: he's like you no, uh yeah, all right, So let's

590
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: dig it on, Randall, do me a favorite. You're gonna

591
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: start out, explain Randall, explain what a long hunter is.

592
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 2: So the long Hunters were a group of individuals in

593
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 2: the late colonial period based primarily in western Virginia, you know,

594
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 2: and and like the New River Valley and sort of

595
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:54,960
Speaker 2: the area tucked up against the Appalachian Mountains. And at

596
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 2: the end of the Seven Years War, the end of

597
00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 2: the Anglo Cherokee War, when sort of violence on the

598
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 2: frontier had quieted down, they went across the mountains into

599
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 2: what is now Kentucky continent. Year so like the in

600
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 2: the seventeen sixties, So seventeen sixty three is sort of

601
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 2: how we periodized it, the end of the Anglo Cherokee

602
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 2: Wars in seventeen sixty one. But essentially these were like

603
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 2: cash poor farmers who were basically producing enough crops to

604
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 2: support themselves and didn't really produce a surplus. And so

605
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 2: one way that they could actually make cash to buy

606
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 2: the things they needed was to supply white tailed deerskins

607
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:37,959
Speaker 2: to basically a leather market in Europe, primarily in Europe.

608
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 2: And so guys like Daniel Boone and these groups Casper

609
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 2: Mansker and and it's in the Henry Skaggs. You know,

610
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 2: they're these kind of like remote clan based settlements and

611
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 2: they would get together groups of like thirty or forty

612
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 2: guys cross over the mountains on horseback and white tail

613
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 2: deer hunt for up to a year or more than

614
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:12,760
Speaker 2: a year. And Boone famously spent like two years across

615
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:16,359
Speaker 2: the mountains on a long hunt. But you know, they're

616
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 2: going over into territory where they're not supposed to be,

617
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 2: and they're shooting deer by the hundreds. I mean, they're

618
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 2: accumulating thousands of deer skin pelts, thousands of deer skins

619
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 2: in the course of a hunt and hauling them all

620
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 2: back on horseback and then selling them off. And that's

621
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:45,720
Speaker 2: sort of the cash economy of western Virginia and western

622
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 2: North Carolina during that period was largely based on white

623
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 2: tailed deer skins. So these are market hunters, they're rural people.

624
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 2: They didn't leave behind a lot of records. A lot

625
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 2: of times what you hear about them is sort of

626
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,360
Speaker 2: based on what was written, you know, a couple decades

627
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 2: later when people are writing down stories about the early

628
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 2: settlers in this county or that county, and they say, like,

629
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 2: when he was a young man, he was a long hunter.

630
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 2: But it's sort of this fleeting moment of our history

631
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:20,239
Speaker 2: of market hunting where yeah, hunting deer across the Appalachian

632
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 2: Mountains was, uh, the way you could make a fair

633
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 2: bit of money as someone without a lot of means

634
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,439
Speaker 2: who basically and you also have to have a little

635
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 2: bit of gerr in you too to go out and

636
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 2: do that. You know, it's a dangerous proposition. Yeah, a

637
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 2: lot of gumption, but yeah, that's the long hunters, I think. Uh.

638
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:44,399
Speaker 2: And then the end of the long hunting era really

639
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 2: is brought about, uh, with the onset of hostilities in

640
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 2: the in out the lead up to the American Revolution,

641
00:35:54,719 --> 00:36:00,200
Speaker 2: because the frontier becomes a very violent place and it

642
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 2: becomes exceedingly dangerous to grab a couple dozen guys and

643
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:06,480
Speaker 2: go out on your own for a year at a

644
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 2: time and sort of no man's land when there's a

645
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 2: lot of hostilities going on between tribes that had aligned

646
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 2: themselves with Great Britain, and you know, you're a colonial

647
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 2: land hungry, colonial Westerner, you're kind of the bad guy.

648
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 2: So that's that's sort of what brings an end to it.

649
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 2: There's still some Long Hunters, but a lot of them

650
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 2: are either called into military service, or they stay home

651
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:33,239
Speaker 2: to protect their household, or they're just too scared to

652
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:33,800
Speaker 2: go west.

653
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 1: So there's a few geopolitical wrinkles within the Long Hunters

654
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 1: that I found to be very interesting. Randall's talking about

655
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: these sort of if you picture he's talking about these

656
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: years that it will lead up to the American Revolution,

657
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 1: And when you hear about like revolutionary fervor and the

658
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: building of the like American patriotic movement, you're thinking of like,

659
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 1: you know, Boston and the Boston Tea part already and

660
00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: the establishment of the the Mini Men and Paul Revere

661
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: right and Thomas Paine writing Common Sense, and all these

662
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 1: people who are sort of yearning for liberty and imagining

663
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 1: this country that would get free of England, and you

664
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 1: sort of want to extend that sentiment out to those

665
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 1: frontier settlements, like to to Boon's clan, and these other

666
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,680
Speaker 1: clans that live way out on the frontier. That is

667
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: not really how they're feeling. These are, by and large

668
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: like groups of people who I mean, they've they've been

669
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: born colonists, you know. There many of them are US

670
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 1: born colonists. But they're they're much more aligned in their

671
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:46,279
Speaker 1: own little frontier world than they are tied to any

672
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: sense of like the brewing sense of America. But man,

673
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: they cannot escape, like they do not escape the war. Yeah,

674
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: because like Randall mentioned that when they're going off into

675
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: the first fart what we call the first far West,

676
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 1: when they're going off over the Appalachians to hunt deer,

677
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: Randall said, they're not supposed to be there. They're not

678
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:10,879
Speaker 1: supposed to be there for two things. There's one that's

679
00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:12,400
Speaker 1: kind of obvious. Now. They're not supposed to be there

680
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 1: because there's Native American tribes who claim the land and

681
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: and some like protect it violently protected. But what Randall's

682
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:25,480
Speaker 1: referring to is under own their own colonial law. The

683
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 1: British don't want their American subjects going over there and

684
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 1: causing trouble with tribes, so they're always like Britain is

685
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:39,359
Speaker 1: always trying to like deal with the tribes and try

686
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: to like find a sort of I don't know, man,

687
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: like a sort of some kind of static agreement.

688
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:51,919
Speaker 2: Yeah, wars are expensive, they're costly in lives and and

689
00:38:52,040 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 2: sort of the attention of the colonial administrators and it

690
00:38:54,920 --> 00:39:00,400
Speaker 2: just it's bad for business. And you know, empires rgually

691
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 2: a money making enterprise and so yeah, as if they

692
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:07,279
Speaker 2: can have peaceful borders with the tribes and maintain sort

693
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 2: of stable relationships with the tribes, that's what's best for

694
00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 2: the crown.

695
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you and and tribes are basically saying, like,

696
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:20,360
Speaker 1: what what is with your these crazy redneck hillbilly American

697
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: guys pouring over like they're not supposed to be here

698
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,759
Speaker 1: m hm. But they're often met with hostilities. And then

699
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: as all these tensions start to rise between America and England, uh,

700
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:39,799
Speaker 1: well that is a little more complicated because it's like

701
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:41,760
Speaker 1: such a mess on the frontier for a long time.

702
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: The French to the north and the British are at

703
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:50,839
Speaker 1: odds and they each have mercenary forces. Like if if

704
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:54,319
Speaker 1: you've paid attention, if you ever paid attention to what

705
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: was going on, and if you're looked at like what

706
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: was going on? And portions of Vietnam and Laos and

707
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: Cambodia during the Vietnam War, where we would have these

708
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 1: proxy wars, right, Like the US wasn't supposed to be

709
00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: operating in Cambodian Laos, so we would align with indigenous

710
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:21,239
Speaker 1: groups in Cambodian Laos to like fight the communists. So

711
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:23,880
Speaker 1: we allied with the Mong, like I think, there's like

712
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 1: Montinee forces we allied with, and we would arm them

713
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: and give them direction and they would like kind of

714
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 1: do our bidding. So in the American frontier, it was

715
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:37,080
Speaker 1: always this really complex thing because there was tribes aligned

716
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 1: with the French and they would attack English colonists. And

717
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 1: then later you had, later as the war did get

718
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 1: going and stop this stop the sort of long hunting era,

719
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,839
Speaker 1: you had tribes aligned with the British who would come

720
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: and attack American settlements.

721
00:40:55,760 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think too the you know, there's also

722
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:06,840
Speaker 2: a larger recognition by the seventeen seventies among native people

723
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:13,399
Speaker 2: that with the French out of the picture largely that

724
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 2: if British governance in North America goes away, these Americans

725
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 2: are going to be unrestrained, right, And I think like

726
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 2: a lot of tribes along that line recognized that the

727
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:30,440
Speaker 2: crown was trying to hold back all these settlers, and

728
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:37,080
Speaker 2: if America gains its independence, there's going to be no

729
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 2: restraining force preventing them from gobbling up more land and

730
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,760
Speaker 2: more land. So I think like, in addition to working

731
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 2: as proxies, there's also an understanding among Native people that, like,

732
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 2: this war is for control of North America, and it's

733
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 2: part of this longer, much longer struggle for indigenous autonomy.

734
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: When we got done, if you listen to our Long

735
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:09,919
Speaker 1: Hunters piece, we end it in an interesting I don't

736
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:11,560
Speaker 1: want to call I want to say, it's interesting because

737
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:13,480
Speaker 1: we did it, but we end it in a very

738
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: deliberate way.

739
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:14,720
Speaker 2: Go ahead.

740
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 1: We end the Long Hunters in a very deliberate way

741
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: because we end it at a time when the First

742
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 1: Far West, which we'll call what we call the First

743
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: Far West, sort of melds into what you might think

744
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:31,920
Speaker 1: of when you think of the West. Okay, So if

745
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: you're sitting there right now at home and someone says

746
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:38,200
Speaker 1: you the West, you're typically thinking of the Rocky Mountain

747
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: West in terms of like an American history terms. You're

748
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 1: thinking of the Rocky Mountain West at the time the

749
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:50,280
Speaker 1: West at the time of the colonial period, the wild

750
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 1: West was Kentucky. The wild West was basically south of

751
00:42:55,160 --> 00:43:00,080
Speaker 1: the Ohio River, south of the Ohio River, west of

752
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:02,600
Speaker 1: the Appalachian Mountains. It was like that was kind of

753
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 1: the first what we call the first far West, and

754
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:09,000
Speaker 1: many of the same sort of attitudes play out about it. Right,

755
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: It was like the land of Promise. It started out

756
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: where hunters started kind of like poking holes into it

757
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 1: and finding ways in it because they were hunting. And

758
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: then they're coming back and saying, hey, that place is

759
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:23,240
Speaker 1: pretty sweet. There's a lot of money you made there.

760
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,799
Speaker 1: And so following the tracks of the hunters you have

761
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:28,880
Speaker 1: settlers and people trying to establish towns. And then we

762
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 1: repeat that same thing in the Rockies when we end

763
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 1: the Long Hunters. The way we kind of mainly explained

764
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:39,919
Speaker 1: that what these Long Hunters were is we do much

765
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,360
Speaker 1: of it through the lens of one individual, Daniel Boone.

766
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 1: The name Daniel more than any other name in the book.

767
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: You hear the name Daniel Boone because he's come to

768
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 1: in many ways exemplify the period, the period, and exemplify

769
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 1: the Long Hunters. And A and was esteemed in his

770
00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 1: own time as a hunter Boone. As Kentucky filled up,

771
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: Boone got very bitter about America, and he got very

772
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: bitter about Kentucky. Boone had made a lot of land

773
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: claims and had like bought land from guys that didn't

774
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:20,240
Speaker 1: actually own it and made claims, and then other people

775
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: made claims on top of his claims, and at a

776
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 1: point he would have been on paper extraordinarily wealthy with

777
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: land holdings. But he gets into the legal battle after

778
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 1: legal battle after legal battle, where it's like, well, sure

779
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: you bought it from so and so, but so and

780
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: so didn't really own it, right, Like so and so

781
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 1: bought it under some dubious stuff. Congress undid the purchase.

782
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:47,319
Speaker 1: So yeah, you bought it, but you bought it from

783
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 1: a guy that didn't have it. I don't know what

784
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 1: to tell you about your money, but the land's not yours.

785
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 1: And or he marked areas and then he didn't file it,

786
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 1: which is.

787
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:57,960
Speaker 2: A very common thing throughout America. Like when you talk

788
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 2: about these rolling frontiers, there's layers and layers of land

789
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 2: speculators and fraudulent claims and battles over who has rightful

790
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 2: ownership of land. So Boone is just wrapped up in

791
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 2: all of this and on the losing.

792
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: End comes out of it like Boone comes out of

793
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:19,240
Speaker 1: it broke. He leaves the first far West and goes

794
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:23,920
Speaker 1: to kind of the new western frontier of Missouri. But

795
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:29,840
Speaker 1: he goes to Missouri before the Louisiana purchase. He says

796
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:32,719
Speaker 1: he's never going back to Kentucky. And one of the

797
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: things we talked about in Long Hunters is you have

798
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: this idea of that there's this historian that even said,

799
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 1: or a commentator maybe you remember who it was, who said,

800
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:43,920
Speaker 1: not only is Daniel Boone, he says he's a Kentucky emotion,

801
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but he says that he's an honorary founding father.

802
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 1: He's become, in the American imagination, an honorary founding father.

803
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:57,920
Speaker 1: But Boone one of his final acts as an American

804
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:00,719
Speaker 1: is to be like, I'm done with America. Yeah, done

805
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: with Kentucky, done with America. I'm going to live under

806
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:05,759
Speaker 1: the Spanish crown.

807
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 2: And be a subject of the Spanish king.

808
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: And the Spain said to Boone, hey, come live in Spain,

809
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: come you up, come live in Missouri. We'll give you

810
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: land here. And he's like Audio's America.

811
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:17,879
Speaker 2: Yep.

812
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: So it's funny like this the way that he's that

813
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 1: Boone is this regarded now as this. You know, there's

814
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:28,880
Speaker 1: paintings of Boone going through the Cumberland Gap and they

815
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,839
Speaker 1: kind of set it up like he's like Moses. It's

816
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 1: like he's like a Moses figure bringing his people to

817
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 1: the Promised Land, you know, Like going through the Cumberland

818
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:39,880
Speaker 1: Gap is like the Red Sea being parted, right, And

819
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:42,759
Speaker 1: Boone became very celebrated like this, like a leader of men,

820
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: you know, and he was, but he's like kind of

821
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 1: in it for himself, in it for his family, not

822
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 1: did not identify as an American patriot. But I'm kind

823
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: of getting to the main thing is Boone winds up

824
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 1: in Missouri and then completely out of his own control,

825
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:00,680
Speaker 1: he winds up back in THEE rids up back in

826
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: the US, simply because before he dies, the US buys

827
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:10,800
Speaker 1: does the Louisiana purchase, and thereby takes possession of Boone's

828
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 1: new place in Missouri.

829
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 2: The Frontier caught up with him.

830
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,320
Speaker 1: We end the Long Hunters with this with this place,

831
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:20,799
Speaker 1: like I said, where the first far West melds into

832
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: the new into the new Far West, the second Far West,

833
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 1: the American West is uh, we get into the the

834
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:33,920
Speaker 1: the myth perhaps reality. No one's quite sure that Boone

835
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 1: as an old man. Uh, he starts hunting with a

836
00:47:39,920 --> 00:47:41,880
Speaker 1: he has a slave, and he starts hunting with his

837
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:44,440
Speaker 1: a slave and goes on a bunch of trips with

838
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: a slave toward the end of his life. But before

839
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:51,640
Speaker 1: he gets too terribly old, he hooks up with some

840
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,839
Speaker 1: guys and does or doesn't go up the Missouri all

841
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,920
Speaker 1: the way to the Rockies. People are still like, it's

842
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: really not known. He definitely would go up the Missouri

843
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:04,840
Speaker 1: to hunt. Some people think he made it all the

844
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: way to the up the Yellowstone River. Perhaps. The historian

845
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 1: Ted Franklin Blue has written about what is the evidence

846
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:14,200
Speaker 1: that he did? What is the evidence that he didn't?

847
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:19,000
Speaker 1: But like Boone, the Long Hunter could have been like

848
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:26,160
Speaker 1: a very early version of a mountain man or not. Yeah,

849
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:29,399
Speaker 1: when you looked into it, what did you what did

850
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: you wind up feeling about it?

851
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's he obviously went up river,

852
00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 2: and uh, my sense is that most people are skeptical

853
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:44,920
Speaker 2: of the idea that he made it up to like

854
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 2: see the Rockies. For himself. Yeah, but I think regardless

855
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:54,520
Speaker 2: of whether or not he saw the rockies, that parallel

856
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 2: is really astounding. That Like, he's going up the Missouri

857
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:04,479
Speaker 2: River in the early eighteen hundreds right as this new

858
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 2: sort of like ball of like frontier energy is getting

859
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 2: unleashed westward up that river. And I might be jumping

860
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 2: the gun here a little bit. But one of the

861
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 2: interesting things that I found in the research for the

862
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 2: new book is that as Boone is an old man

863
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,440
Speaker 2: living in I believe Saint Charles, Missouri, sort of in

864
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:36,359
Speaker 2: the Saint Louis area, one of his neighbors.

865
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:40,399
Speaker 1: No, he stayed there at the boat art. He his

866
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: family stayed at the mouth there. Yeah.

867
00:49:44,120 --> 00:49:47,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, but one of his neighbors there towards the end

868
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 2: of his life was a man named John Coulter who

869
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 2: settled there after he lived out one of the most

870
00:49:56,760 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 2: legendary careers as a mountain man.

871
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: Oh is that where Culture wuld up right nearby?

872
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 2: Culture Culter and Boone were neighbors for a brief period,

873
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 2: because Culter died shortly after coming back from the mountains.

874
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 2: But there's all these weird it's a small world, like

875
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 2: a small little fraternity when you in the grand scheme

876
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 2: of things. And so there's all these weird overlaps and parallels.

877
00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 2: But Boone's Boone's life especially is like really interesting for

878
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:28,920
Speaker 2: just mapping all of this historical transformation that unfolds from

879
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 2: east to west in the course of a you know,

880
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 2: a lifespan. Uh.

881
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:38,680
Speaker 1: If I was to become a playwright, and I won't,

882
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: but if I did, I would do a play maybe

883
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: Phil it helped me out and we turn into a musical.

884
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 2: Well, I've already got the one. We've already got the

885
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:53,400
Speaker 2: one play idea in our Uh remember this, We're going

886
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:55,440
Speaker 2: to do a Glengarry Glenn Ross Deer camp.

887
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, epic.

888
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:03,319
Speaker 1: Oh, my buddy's going to see I'm so jealous. Bill

889
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:04,760
Speaker 1: Burr is doing Glengary Glenn.

890
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:08,880
Speaker 3: He's just it's a stacked lineup. It's bil Bert, Bob Odenkirk,

891
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:13,120
Speaker 3: Michael McKeon, Kieran Coulkin's nuts. My buddy's going cool, It's

892
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:15,359
Speaker 3: gonna be awesome. I met Bilbert very briefly, and he

893
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:16,799
Speaker 3: was he seemed to be annoyed with me.

894
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,879
Speaker 1: Does I think you should be? I think that's a compliment. Yeah,

895
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:23,319
Speaker 1: Well I was because I was talking to him. I

896
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 1: was at I was I was back at I was

897
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: at Joe Rogan was doing a comedy club bit. So

898
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:32,520
Speaker 1: I was there hanging out and I got to come back.

899
00:51:32,520 --> 00:51:33,760
Speaker 1: And you know, you hang out with all the comedians,

900
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 1: you just stand there because you're not funny like they are.

901
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:38,359
Speaker 1: Just try to be like. I don't say ship because

902
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: I don't want them to think that I think I'm funny,

903
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, just standing there.

904
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:43,920
Speaker 2: But I've got an idea.

905
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:45,799
Speaker 1: You really wanted to talk to Joe and you could

906
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: tell he was very annoyed that I was like back, like,

907
00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:50,600
Speaker 1: it's like, who's this idiot?

908
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not.

909
00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: Well, he probably knows it. Bill Burr he figured that

910
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:02,640
Speaker 1: out on her. Uh oh the play, Yeah, it's Boon

911
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: Hunt with his slave mm hm as old man and

912
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:10,239
Speaker 1: they have a lot of deep conversations. Another play. Because

913
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: I'm developing this theory that John Colter, that John Colter had, uh,

914
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 1: that John Colter had horrible post traumatic stress disorder.

915
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 2: I don't think that's.

916
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: A stretch now, going through what he went through, and

917
00:52:33,600 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: then the timing of when he quit being a mountain

918
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:39,280
Speaker 1: man and how short his life was after he after

919
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 1: that happened to him. I think that it. I think

920
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: that it kind of blew his mind out. And I

921
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:47,759
Speaker 1: might do another play, follow up play. But I don't

922
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 1: know how to write plays. But you know if I did, Phil, Phil.

923
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:53,479
Speaker 3: No one knows how to write plays until you, until

924
00:52:53,480 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 3: you start writing a play. Anyone can be a play, right,

925
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,360
Speaker 3: anyone can write book, Steve.

926
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 2: No, No, oh, damn. You feel.

927
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:07,120
Speaker 1: We've been talking about market hunters. You know, let's jump

928
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:08,799
Speaker 1: ahead for a minute. We just wrapped up what long

929
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 1: hunters are. So there's an interesting way that American history flows,

930
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:15,319
Speaker 1: and we're trying to like kind of follow this line

931
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:20,319
Speaker 1: of American history where you'll see we have these bracketed

932
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:23,920
Speaker 1: chunks of dates and they're imperfect, but we say eighteen

933
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty three to seventeen seventy five, meaning there's a

934
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 1: big frontier war, you know, a big war between colonists

935
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 1: and tribes on the frontier, and it's just way too

936
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 1: hostile for long hunters to go hunt to the west.

937
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:43,320
Speaker 1: The war dies down, it gets like you're like you

938
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:44,839
Speaker 1: it'd be like, hey, you can go over there and

939
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 1: not die. And they hit it real hard. Probably yeah,

940
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:51,319
Speaker 1: well they let them die. You have less of a

941
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 1: chance you're gonna die if you go on the first

942
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:55,360
Speaker 1: Far West and then all of a sudden war blows

943
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 1: up again. It's just it's like suicide to go hunt

944
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 1: the first Far West. And so the era ends, and

945
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: the primary thing they're after is they're after deer skins.

946
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 1: When I say, it's imperfect because they're also trapping a

947
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: lot of beaver and they're trapping otter because they only

948
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:13,040
Speaker 1: want the deer skins in the off season. You want

949
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:15,880
Speaker 1: thin deer skins, not winter skins. So they would they

950
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 1: would hunt deer, and then at some point beaver furs

951
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:20,959
Speaker 1: had come prime and they would trap beaver and otter

952
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: and some other fur bears. But they're mainly after deer skins.

953
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:31,799
Speaker 1: When we pick up this next big commodity push, this

954
00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:35,280
Speaker 1: next big market hunting push, is when you get into

955
00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: the strictly the beaver trade and we talk about the

956
00:54:37,960 --> 00:54:40,319
Speaker 1: mountain in which we're going to talk about the mountain Men.

957
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 1: When you go through all the mountain Man stories, they

958
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 1: are fixated on beaver skins. They do some odter, for sure,

959
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:53,440
Speaker 1: but they are not also hunting deer. They are not

960
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 1: hunting deer hides. They're eating all kinds of stuff, but

961
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:00,440
Speaker 1: they're very, very focused on beaver.

962
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you read like a journal and they arrive

963
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 2: at a new river valley, they don't say like, oh,

964
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 2: there's no beaver, but it's still kind of cool. There's

965
00:55:11,680 --> 00:55:14,359
Speaker 2: some elk and buffalo and a couple otter here and there.

966
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:17,279
Speaker 2: They just say, no beaver, moving on.

967
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:22,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what they're after. As It's funny because we

968
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:25,239
Speaker 1: talk about we'll explain these date ranges, but we talk

969
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:27,239
Speaker 1: about the main mountain Man air run in eighteen oh

970
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 1: six to eighteen forty. What you get when you get

971
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:34,439
Speaker 1: outside of when you go on the far end of that,

972
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:37,800
Speaker 1: you get where you wind up having these like mountain

973
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:41,520
Speaker 1: Man type figures or what they would call trapper traders

974
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:43,879
Speaker 1: at the time, and you start to see that they're

975
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:49,360
Speaker 1: getting very interested in trading buffalo ropes. So all that,

976
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:52,839
Speaker 1: like Larpenteur, Charles Larpentntuer got is trader. It's like they're

977
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 1: doing some traffic in beaver hides, but there's a there's

978
00:55:55,600 --> 00:55:59,920
Speaker 1: an emerging market for buffalo, and they're engaging with tribes

979
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,040
Speaker 1: to get buffalo. They'll still talk about beaver, but they're

980
00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:04,759
Speaker 1: into buffalo and then if you drift a little while

981
00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:07,919
Speaker 1: later and you drift up into the eighteen seventies, it's

982
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:13,719
Speaker 1: just all buffalo like, that's it. It's the buffalo trade.

983
00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 1: So we're going to do one where we explore the

984
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:19,600
Speaker 1: buffalo trade. And it's funny because when we do that,

985
00:56:20,080 --> 00:56:22,839
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this segue where these like beaver where

986
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:25,279
Speaker 1: the like the American West and the beaver trade in

987
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:29,200
Speaker 1: the West kind of transitions into a buffalo industry.

988
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:36,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the trade in buffalo robes, because initially the

989
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 2: most valuable commodity you can get is a skin with

990
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 2: the hair on. In all buffalo robe, that's an extension

991
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 2: of this bigger umbrella of the fur trade. But by

992
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:54,920
Speaker 2: the eighteen seventies it's a totally different animal. It's a

993
00:56:55,719 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 2: fully industrialized slaughter for just this skin yeap TV used

994
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 2: in leather making.

995
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 1: Later, when we get into the buffalo hide hunters, the

996
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: buffalo hunters, you'll see this. There's this thing that switches. Early,

997
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:15,439
Speaker 1: there's like this thing called there's an air called where

998
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 1: they're they're interested in what they call the robe trade.

999
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:20,840
Speaker 1: And in the eighteen sixties, the robe trade was a

1000
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:24,040
Speaker 1: big deal what they mean by the robe trade is

1001
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: you are American. The American economy wants what they would

1002
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:35,680
Speaker 1: call Indian tanned robes. So tribal hunters that's who drove

1003
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: this market. Is like tribal hunters great planes. Tribes would

1004
00:57:40,240 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 1: go and kill buffalo in the winter time and they

1005
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 1: would they would tan the hides and sell a completely tanned,

1006
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 1: ready to go hide, and that was the robe trade.

1007
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:56,160
Speaker 1: The robe trade eventually moves to the hide trade, where

1008
00:57:56,200 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: you're just selling dried skins, tacked out, dried from any season,

1009
00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:05,000
Speaker 1: didn't matter. We're going to explore that whole thing. But

1010
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of setting up the way that I

1011
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 1: guess the point I'm trying to make is when we're

1012
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:11,440
Speaker 1: looking at like this history of market hunting in the

1013
00:58:11,480 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 1: West and all these different things they're after, we're trying

1014
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:17,600
Speaker 1: to bracket it. But like I said, it's imperfect bracketing

1015
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:21,080
Speaker 1: because these things bleed into each other. Daniel Boone was

1016
00:58:21,080 --> 00:58:26,959
Speaker 1: a beaver trapper in Kentucky and a deer skin hunter.

1017
00:58:27,600 --> 00:58:35,480
Speaker 1: A guy like Jim Bridger was a beaver trapper in Wolming, Montana, Colorado, Idaho.

1018
00:58:35,560 --> 00:58:40,080
Speaker 1: Whatever became a robe trader right It's not like one

1019
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: generation of these people dies and a new generation starts

1020
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:45,640
Speaker 1: up at like it switches. But what we're doing is

1021
00:58:45,640 --> 00:58:49,720
Speaker 1: we're trying to look at the most with hunters and trappers,

1022
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 1: kind of like what are the most sought after commodities

1023
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:56,960
Speaker 1: and when do these commodity markets peak? And so with that,

1024
00:58:57,240 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 1: Randall talk about why explain why we wound up when

1025
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:05,720
Speaker 1: we kicked it around, Why we decided the eighteen oh

1026
00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: six to eighteen forty was the Mountain Man era, because

1027
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: someone might go like, well, they were trapped beaver before that,

1028
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:13,800
Speaker 1: they trapped beaver after yeah.

1029
00:59:13,560 --> 00:59:16,880
Speaker 2: And they're yeah, exactly, And I think for the purposes

1030
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:22,479
Speaker 2: of our project, we chose eighteen oh six. I think

1031
00:59:22,680 --> 00:59:26,600
Speaker 2: maybe August seventeenth. Yeah, we have an exact day eighteen

1032
00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:30,360
Speaker 2: oh six, because that's the date when John Colter turns

1033
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 2: around and heads back up to Missouri to trap beaver.

1034
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:37,360
Speaker 2: And so so really the beginning of our story is

1035
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 2: the Louisiana purchase and the famous Lewis and Clark expedition,

1036
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:47,280
Speaker 2: the core of Discovery, sent by Jefferson to explore a

1037
00:59:47,400 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 2: water route to the Pacific and among the different sort

1038
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 2: of economic opportunities and commodities that they're taking note of

1039
00:59:55,640 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 2: in their journals as they make this you know, unimaginable

1040
00:59:59,320 --> 01:00:02,800
Speaker 2: journey to the Posi I can back is there, they're

1041
01:00:02,840 --> 01:00:06,360
Speaker 2: noting that there's a lot of beaver and at the time,

1042
01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:10,280
Speaker 2: beaver is a very valuable commodity. Beaver fur used to

1043
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 2: make felt. And so by the time they're on their

1044
01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:18,480
Speaker 2: way back to Missouri, the Lewis and Clark expedition, they

1045
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:20,840
Speaker 2: have a hunter with them named John Colter, who was

1046
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 2: recruited specifically for this UH mission. And as they're on

1047
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:29,720
Speaker 2: their way back to Saint Louis, the expedition encounters two

1048
01:00:30,920 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 2: trappers and traders who are headed up the Missouri and

1049
01:00:33,920 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 2: they want to check out some of the stuff that

1050
01:00:36,120 --> 01:00:39,000
Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark and the gang had just been through.

1051
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 2: And so John Coulter seeks to end his term of

1052
01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:46,760
Speaker 2: service with the expedition because he wants to join these

1053
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,600
Speaker 2: guys and head back up river to the you know,

1054
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:55,120
Speaker 2: quote unquote untouched trap in country that they'd seen near

1055
01:00:55,200 --> 01:00:59,440
Speaker 2: the Three Forks of the Missouri outside of present day Bozeman, Montana.

1056
01:00:59,120 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 1: By Cecils Sets House.

1057
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, he basically just wants to go to Set's house

1058
01:01:04,760 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 2: and yeah, and that kicks off, I mean for culture,

1059
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 2: that kicks off a several years of some of the

1060
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:18,600
Speaker 2: most harrowing and uh sort of just job dropping wilderness

1061
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:23,480
Speaker 2: adventures that you can imagine, you know, solo journeys across

1062
01:01:23,560 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 2: fast expanses, running for his life from a group of

1063
01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:31,040
Speaker 2: blackfeet who had captured him.

1064
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: I mean, culture is sort of like having his buddy's

1065
01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:34,960
Speaker 1: gut smeared all over him.

1066
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1067
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 2: Culture is sort of like a I mean, he's almost

1068
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 2: like a comic book character of just like astounding feats.

1069
01:01:41,480 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's funny how little is known about him. Yeah,

1070
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: you know, there's very little known about him. You can

1071
01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:51,720
Speaker 1: kind of tell that he at least got drunk once.

1072
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:56,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got in trouble. He got Yeah, as did

1073
01:01:56,880 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 2: you know several of the Lewis and Clark expedition members

1074
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:03,080
Speaker 2: when there's and they're waiting to head up river because

1075
01:02:03,120 --> 01:02:07,880
Speaker 2: they come down to Saint Louis prior the winner, prior

1076
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:11,040
Speaker 2: to departing to the Pacific, and so sitting around in

1077
01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:14,600
Speaker 2: their camp, there's a lot of disciplinary action required to

1078
01:02:14,680 --> 01:02:15,720
Speaker 2: keep these guys in line.

1079
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:20,959
Speaker 1: But yeah, detail about the Culture deal is when Lewis

1080
01:02:20,960 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: and Clark Expeditions coming down in the Missouri and they're

1081
01:02:23,120 --> 01:02:24,760
Speaker 1: getting close to getting back, you know, they're kind of

1082
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: in the smooth sailing portion of the trip. Colter runs

1083
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 1: into these trappers and he wants to go back up

1084
01:02:30,320 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: with them, and he asked permission, and I was like

1085
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:39,240
Speaker 1: this little detail. Yeah, Lewis and Clark, the leaders say,

1086
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:45,800
Speaker 1: if everyone else here will promise not to ask the

1087
01:02:45,880 --> 01:02:51,600
Speaker 1: same thing, you can go. And everyone agrees, I won't

1088
01:02:51,680 --> 01:02:55,640
Speaker 1: ask to leave it, and thereby they let culteru go.

1089
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:58,520
Speaker 1: If everybody everyone had to promise, they wouldn't ask to.

1090
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:01,360
Speaker 2: If everybody wants to this, we're gonna have a real issue.

1091
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:03,440
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start doing that with my kids. Yeah, one

1092
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:04,760
Speaker 1: of them asks to do something, I'll say, if you

1093
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:06,560
Speaker 1: can get your brother and sister to promise not to

1094
01:03:06,600 --> 01:03:08,080
Speaker 1: ask me the same thing, that's fine.

1095
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:10,520
Speaker 2: It's a good system.

1096
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:11,440
Speaker 1: Nothing would happen.

1097
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:16,720
Speaker 2: It maintains it maintains order. Uh. But yeah, we kind

1098
01:03:16,720 --> 01:03:20,760
Speaker 2: of kicked that. That's cult turning up river is why

1099
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:23,800
Speaker 2: we start with that year of eighteen oh six. And

1100
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 2: you know, when we're talking about mountain men, we're talking

1101
01:03:28,560 --> 01:03:35,760
Speaker 2: about a type of individual who is a nomadic beaver trapper,

1102
01:03:37,320 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 2: and so Culter sort of turning around and heading back

1103
01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 2: up river without a real destination in mind, just wants

1104
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 2: to get out there and accumulate furs. We're sort of

1105
01:03:47,600 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 2: calling him the first mountain Man. And obviously, like anybody

1106
01:03:50,800 --> 01:03:55,280
Speaker 2: could you know, someone could make any number of arguments

1107
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:58,120
Speaker 2: pointing to other figures. This is like one of the

1108
01:03:58,200 --> 01:04:00,960
Speaker 2: choices you make when you're telling a story, is where

1109
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:03,800
Speaker 2: do you start? Where do you end? But I think culture, symbolically,

1110
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 2: especially as associated as he is with the Lewis and

1111
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:11,479
Speaker 2: Clark expedition, the opening up of the Upper Missouri River,

1112
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:15,080
Speaker 2: the Upper Missouri region, and his exploration of the Northern Rockies,

1113
01:04:15,120 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 2: like culture is as good as anybody for sort of

1114
01:04:18,040 --> 01:04:19,640
Speaker 2: the honor of the first mountain man.

1115
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:21,800
Speaker 1: You're hear the Kentucky writer Chris Offitt.

1116
01:04:23,280 --> 01:04:24,240
Speaker 2: The name's familiar.

1117
01:04:24,320 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 1: He wrote a book and a bunch of people had

1118
01:04:25,880 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: a problem with some of the things he said in

1119
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 1: his book, and his response was, you should write your

1120
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:34,120
Speaker 1: own book. Yeah, tell me about it.

1121
01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 2: That's totally fair.

1122
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:39,320
Speaker 1: So that's how we decided. That's that's what that's our

1123
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: that's our choice. Yeah, we debated it. We weighed the

1124
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:44,280
Speaker 1: pros and cons.

1125
01:04:44,360 --> 01:04:46,360
Speaker 2: And we're not the first ones to make that argument.

1126
01:04:46,880 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 2: I mean, I think a lot of a lot of

1127
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:51,160
Speaker 2: historians over the years have argued that Culter, you know,

1128
01:04:51,880 --> 01:04:54,640
Speaker 2: symbolically represents the beginning of a new era.

1129
01:04:56,520 --> 01:04:59,560
Speaker 1: It also helps me know his name, Oh yeah, for sure.

1130
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:03,200
Speaker 1: I mean, because there's other dudes, you know, those dudes

1131
01:05:03,200 --> 01:05:06,880
Speaker 1: that could slip through the cracks. Yeah, but he's just

1132
01:05:06,960 --> 01:05:09,520
Speaker 1: he's convenient because we know about him. And then he

1133
01:05:09,720 --> 01:05:11,840
Speaker 1: did a lot of things to kind of set up

1134
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 1: the trade. Yes, he did a lot of things that

1135
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 1: would sort of push how this would go down.

1136
01:05:18,000 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think before we get into the where

1137
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:28,840
Speaker 2: we end up in eighteen forty, the sort of arc

1138
01:05:29,160 --> 01:05:34,360
Speaker 2: of this Mountain Man era is important to understand sor

1139
01:05:34,440 --> 01:05:37,120
Speaker 2: of the general contours of how it goes because initially,

1140
01:05:39,680 --> 01:05:42,440
Speaker 2: people who want to capitalize on the furs of the

1141
01:05:42,520 --> 01:05:48,960
Speaker 2: Upper Missouri attempt to mimic a model that had been

1142
01:05:49,080 --> 01:05:52,760
Speaker 2: established by the Hudson's Bay Company, which is the Canadian

1143
01:05:53,320 --> 01:05:59,440
Speaker 2: fur trading monopoly, and it had largely operated with big

1144
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 2: forts controlled by traders.

1145
01:06:02,880 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 1: Can can you hold taitwem? You folks listen to no

1146
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:15,440
Speaker 1: doubt you've in some way heard Hudson Bay Company. So

1147
01:06:17,360 --> 01:06:22,840
Speaker 1: just just as America has their holdings okay to the north.

1148
01:06:22,960 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 1: Kind of basically you think of it like, basically the

1149
01:06:24,680 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 1: line was pretty well established our boarder with Canada.

1150
01:06:27,680 --> 01:06:30,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some fuzzy areas, but you could sketch it

1151
01:06:30,920 --> 01:06:34,080
Speaker 2: on a map without too much inaccuracy, like on your

1152
01:06:34,160 --> 01:06:36,160
Speaker 2: understanding of contemporary borders.

1153
01:06:36,240 --> 01:06:42,760
Speaker 1: Like roughly imagine the US Canada border that remained British.

1154
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,640
Speaker 1: And when you hear the word Hudson Bay Company, people

1155
01:06:46,720 --> 01:06:50,360
Speaker 1: kind of think of it like synonymous with the Crown.

1156
01:06:51,720 --> 01:06:54,080
Speaker 1: But what it was is they basically gave a charter.

1157
01:06:55,880 --> 01:06:58,040
Speaker 1: It'd be like like let's say we were to seize

1158
01:06:58,080 --> 01:07:05,400
Speaker 1: Greenland and we then said to a company Bechtel, I

1159
01:07:05,400 --> 01:07:10,440
Speaker 1: don't know, we say to a company, you have soul ability,

1160
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:18,160
Speaker 1: Greenland is effectively yours to conduct business on. It's yours. Yeah,

1161
01:07:18,360 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 1: we're going to control competition to you right for a time,

1162
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:24,960
Speaker 1: and it's like you have the license to conduct business.

1163
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:29,880
Speaker 1: So Hudson Bay Company was a company, but it held

1164
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:34,800
Speaker 1: the like charter from the Crown to exploit the resource.

1165
01:07:34,880 --> 01:07:37,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had a monopoly on all the waters flowing

1166
01:07:37,520 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 2: into Hudson's Bank, which stretches a real long way into

1167
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:43,480
Speaker 2: Western Canada.

1168
01:07:43,560 --> 01:07:46,480
Speaker 1: So they weren't the government. Well it gets tricky because

1169
01:07:46,760 --> 01:07:49,200
Speaker 1: I mean they kind of were the government. Yeah, I

1170
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:52,480
Speaker 1: mean they operated with the blessing of the government, with

1171
01:07:52,560 --> 01:07:55,360
Speaker 1: the force of the government, but they were a company.

1172
01:07:56,480 --> 01:08:00,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not. The Hudson's Bay Company is much are

1173
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:03,320
Speaker 2: too sort of an empire in its own right than

1174
01:08:03,360 --> 01:08:04,760
Speaker 2: it is to like a trading post.

1175
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:09,120
Speaker 1: But there's no American parallel.

1176
01:08:10,920 --> 01:08:13,680
Speaker 2: Not at that time, not an obvious one. Yeah, I mean,

1177
01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:19,879
Speaker 2: I mean, like you could compare it to maybe Exxon

1178
01:08:21,240 --> 01:08:24,080
Speaker 2: As in terms of like it's yeah, not at the time,

1179
01:08:24,160 --> 01:08:28,360
Speaker 2: but like a company that has the power to sort

1180
01:08:28,360 --> 01:08:31,320
Speaker 2: of move the needle in terms of international affairs and

1181
01:08:31,960 --> 01:08:35,720
Speaker 2: control over a huge swat the territory. And but yeah,

1182
01:08:35,760 --> 01:08:41,880
Speaker 2: the Hudson's Bay Company was founded in the late sixteen hundreds,

1183
01:08:42,960 --> 01:08:49,519
Speaker 2: and it set the standard for efficiency and profitability and

1184
01:08:50,640 --> 01:08:53,000
Speaker 2: running a fur trade at a scale that no one

1185
01:08:53,040 --> 01:08:55,799
Speaker 2: had ever really seen before. So they have this network

1186
01:08:55,800 --> 01:08:59,240
Speaker 2: of forts extending to the west through the Great Lakes,

1187
01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:04,280
Speaker 2: and what's happening at these is Native people are the

1188
01:09:04,360 --> 01:09:08,639
Speaker 2: ones supplying the furs and then their trade, the Hudson's

1189
01:09:08,680 --> 01:09:12,840
Speaker 2: Bay Company is trading with Native people for manufactured goods

1190
01:09:12,840 --> 01:09:16,160
Speaker 2: and commodities from Europe. And so the Hudson's Bay Company

1191
01:09:16,240 --> 01:09:23,120
Speaker 2: is this huge logistical like octopus reaching into Western Canada

1192
01:09:23,439 --> 01:09:27,439
Speaker 2: and bringing huge quantities of furs to the east for

1193
01:09:27,560 --> 01:09:28,559
Speaker 2: shipment onto Britain.

1194
01:09:28,920 --> 01:09:32,320
Speaker 1: And if our symbol of the American West becomes the horse,

1195
01:09:33,840 --> 01:09:37,240
Speaker 1: the symbol of the Hudson Bay Company is the canoe. Yes,

1196
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:42,799
Speaker 1: they run a water they run a water based system,

1197
01:09:42,840 --> 01:09:47,720
Speaker 1: and they've developed this whole culture of the voyagers, paddlers,

1198
01:09:47,760 --> 01:09:51,559
Speaker 1: sixty strokes a minute. Yeah, all this shit has moved

1199
01:09:51,600 --> 01:09:55,720
Speaker 1: in giant canoes with dudes that can carry at portages,

1200
01:09:55,800 --> 01:09:58,840
Speaker 1: dudes that can carry two hundred pounds that you can

1201
01:09:58,880 --> 01:10:01,720
Speaker 1: portage two hundred pounds at a time. And they run

1202
01:10:01,760 --> 01:10:04,360
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I mean not there's exceptions, but jenerally,

1203
01:10:04,400 --> 01:10:07,080
Speaker 1: this whole thing is run in canoes.

1204
01:10:08,040 --> 01:10:13,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and I think too like the in addition

1205
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:19,000
Speaker 2: to canoes, the essential ingredient in their operation is having

1206
01:10:19,040 --> 01:10:24,040
Speaker 2: these trade relationships with tribes in the areas where they operated.

1207
01:10:25,080 --> 01:10:27,720
Speaker 2: And they're not always good, like there's obviously flare ups

1208
01:10:27,720 --> 01:10:30,280
Speaker 2: of violence and hostility. But there's there's sort.

1209
01:10:30,160 --> 01:10:30,519
Speaker 1: Of this.

1210
01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:37,040
Speaker 2: Underlying everything they do is they are able to get

1211
01:10:38,280 --> 01:10:45,240
Speaker 2: indigenous people to produce the furs they want wherever they go.

1212
01:10:45,560 --> 01:10:48,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, unlike the Americans who tend to start every negotiation

1213
01:10:48,960 --> 01:10:49,639
Speaker 1: with a shootout.

1214
01:10:49,920 --> 01:10:52,200
Speaker 2: Yes, and so that's what. So that's sort of the

1215
01:10:52,240 --> 01:10:54,439
Speaker 2: start of our story. Is like, all of a sudden,

1216
01:10:54,479 --> 01:10:58,280
Speaker 2: the Louisiana Purchase happens. The United States claims ownership to

1217
01:10:58,280 --> 01:11:01,519
Speaker 2: all these lands west of the miss Sippy River, and

1218
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:06,840
Speaker 2: people who want to capitalize on the beaver firs there

1219
01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 2: begin to imagine like their own domestic counterpart to the

1220
01:11:10,360 --> 01:11:13,920
Speaker 2: Hudson's Bay Company, and they don't really They sort of

1221
01:11:13,960 --> 01:11:16,880
Speaker 2: just try to reproduce this model, and it doesn't work

1222
01:11:17,400 --> 01:11:20,200
Speaker 2: the same on the Great Plains and in the Rockies

1223
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:21,679
Speaker 2: as it did up in Canada.

1224
01:11:22,520 --> 01:11:22,760
Speaker 1: One.

1225
01:11:23,200 --> 01:11:27,240
Speaker 2: The political situation is more fraught, and they are running into,

1226
01:11:28,439 --> 01:11:33,080
Speaker 2: you know, violence and getting themselves on the wrong side

1227
01:11:33,120 --> 01:11:36,840
Speaker 2: of tribes like the Blackfeet, who are more resistant to

1228
01:11:37,760 --> 01:11:40,519
Speaker 2: white incursion. And then the other thing that's sort of

1229
01:11:40,520 --> 01:11:42,080
Speaker 2: interesting when you look at it is that a lot

1230
01:11:42,120 --> 01:11:46,240
Speaker 2: of tribes that they encounter aren't that interested in upending

1231
01:11:46,280 --> 01:11:52,000
Speaker 2: their LifeWay to become beaver trappers. At this point in time,

1232
01:11:52,120 --> 01:11:55,320
Speaker 2: a lot of the people that they're encountering are equestrian

1233
01:11:55,479 --> 01:11:59,400
Speaker 2: buffalo hunting people, and they have a system that works

1234
01:11:59,400 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 2: for them, and it's just not compatible with breaking up

1235
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:10,080
Speaker 2: into small little bands of beaver hunters and hitting every

1236
01:12:10,120 --> 01:12:12,160
Speaker 2: creek and river in the neighborhood and bring them all

1237
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:13,400
Speaker 2: back to these trading posts.

1238
01:12:13,479 --> 01:12:18,120
Speaker 1: So some felt it was demeaning. Yeah, some thought, why bother,

1239
01:12:18,160 --> 01:12:19,880
Speaker 1: I get everything I need from buffalo hunting.

1240
01:12:20,040 --> 01:12:22,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's there's one there's one coat we have

1241
01:12:22,240 --> 01:12:27,200
Speaker 2: in there that's from a tribal member who I believe

1242
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:31,240
Speaker 2: is talking to an emissary from the Hudson's Bay Company.

1243
01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:33,840
Speaker 2: He's kind of gone down to the Dakotas, and he

1244
01:12:33,880 --> 01:12:37,200
Speaker 2: says something like, you know, I could get on board

1245
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:39,920
Speaker 2: with beaver hunting if you could do it on horseback,

1246
01:12:40,960 --> 01:12:43,040
Speaker 2: like if this was like a real hunt, Like, but

1247
01:12:43,080 --> 01:12:46,280
Speaker 2: I'm just not interested in crawling around, as he puts it,

1248
01:12:46,320 --> 01:12:49,320
Speaker 2: in the bowels of the earth, on my hands and

1249
01:12:49,400 --> 01:12:52,000
Speaker 2: knees to catch these beavers. So it's just like not,

1250
01:12:53,720 --> 01:12:59,360
Speaker 2: you know, the American interests are not as readily able

1251
01:12:59,479 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 2: to establish productive trade with the tribes encounter as the

1252
01:13:03,240 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 2: Hudson's Bay Company has been.

1253
01:13:05,600 --> 01:13:08,519
Speaker 1: So there's there's another kind of cool wrinkle in it

1254
01:13:08,560 --> 01:13:12,639
Speaker 1: is they encounter later beaver trappers encounter some big horned

1255
01:13:12,680 --> 01:13:18,200
Speaker 1: sheep hunting specialists, a Shoshone band that peop would call

1256
01:13:18,240 --> 01:13:21,439
Speaker 1: the sheep eaters later maybe at the time they call

1257
01:13:21,439 --> 01:13:25,080
Speaker 1: them sheep eaters high mountain people. And when they's the

1258
01:13:25,080 --> 01:13:27,680
Speaker 1: mountain men, the trappers explain to him that, you know,

1259
01:13:27,680 --> 01:13:30,000
Speaker 1: they were after this giant road and they were kind

1260
01:13:30,000 --> 01:13:33,680
Speaker 1: of like, oh shit, we ate all those yeah, And

1261
01:13:33,680 --> 01:13:35,920
Speaker 1: then he pointed out that they actually burned the hair

1262
01:13:35,960 --> 01:13:37,240
Speaker 1: off and when they get them.

1263
01:13:37,360 --> 01:13:39,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is the valuable part and the only part

1264
01:13:39,720 --> 01:13:40,479
Speaker 2: that they're interested in.

1265
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:42,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, my bad, we ate them. And I

1266
01:13:42,120 --> 01:13:42,439
Speaker 1: think he.

1267
01:13:42,400 --> 01:13:44,240
Speaker 2: Says they burned the hair off of him because they

1268
01:13:44,240 --> 01:13:46,400
Speaker 2: could get better drippings that way from the meat.

1269
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:53,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, keep the fat in. We talked about Colter, like

1270
01:13:53,400 --> 01:13:55,759
Speaker 1: why he's a good guy to talk about, why Colter's

1271
01:13:55,760 --> 01:13:58,200
Speaker 1: help them, talk about the mountain men. Colture kind of

1272
01:13:58,240 --> 01:14:01,639
Speaker 1: has these two besides his time with Lewis Clark Culter,

1273
01:14:01,800 --> 01:14:04,840
Speaker 1: John Colter has these two big adventures. It's sort of

1274
01:14:04,880 --> 01:14:09,120
Speaker 1: the most celebrated adventures of John Colter. One is Colter's Run,

1275
01:14:10,160 --> 01:14:14,680
Speaker 1: which has been reenacted and reenacted in every documentary show

1276
01:14:14,720 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 1: about the West like ad nauseum, right Cultures Run. The

1277
01:14:19,960 --> 01:14:24,360
Speaker 1: other thing is is Coulters. Colter maybe may or may

1278
01:14:24,400 --> 01:14:27,280
Speaker 1: not have been the first European to go through Yelsow

1279
01:14:27,360 --> 01:14:31,840
Speaker 1: National Park, which is called Coulter's Hell. Of these two

1280
01:14:31,840 --> 01:14:34,679
Speaker 1: famous things, it's kind of like one happens like really

1281
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:39,240
Speaker 1: as a mountain man, and one happens in a pre

1282
01:14:39,360 --> 01:14:43,439
Speaker 1: mountain era, because when Colter did his big megahike a

1283
01:14:43,520 --> 01:14:50,960
Speaker 1: midwinter oftentimes solo megahike through the Tetons, through the Absorca's

1284
01:14:51,040 --> 01:14:53,439
Speaker 1: like all over damn place to Yelso National Park. He's

1285
01:14:53,560 --> 01:14:57,640
Speaker 1: trying to establish this Hudson Bay thing. They go up

1286
01:14:57,680 --> 01:15:00,559
Speaker 1: and they build a fort where the Big Corn River

1287
01:15:00,560 --> 01:15:03,760
Speaker 1: flows into the Yellowstone right around there, and they need

1288
01:15:03,800 --> 01:15:07,160
Speaker 1: to go find tribes who want to trap beaver in trade.

1289
01:15:07,840 --> 01:15:11,800
Speaker 1: So that big loop Coulter does is trying to talk

1290
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:13,799
Speaker 1: tribes into becoming beaver trappers.

1291
01:15:14,120 --> 01:15:14,360
Speaker 2: Yep.

1292
01:15:15,080 --> 01:15:16,920
Speaker 1: And then you see just a couple of years later

1293
01:15:17,240 --> 01:15:20,240
Speaker 1: at the Coulter's Run period, the Coulter is trapping beavers

1294
01:15:20,520 --> 01:15:23,040
Speaker 1: and he probably always trapped some beavers. But you see

1295
01:15:23,080 --> 01:15:26,519
Speaker 1: the switch where they're like, it's not that thing Coulter

1296
01:15:26,640 --> 01:15:29,839
Speaker 1: tried to go do, like say hey, boys, trap beavers,

1297
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:32,840
Speaker 1: come sell them to us. Like it just doesn't take off.

1298
01:15:33,280 --> 01:15:38,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's one historian has described this period as

1299
01:15:40,000 --> 01:15:43,200
Speaker 2: a period of trial and error where for interests are

1300
01:15:43,200 --> 01:15:44,760
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how they're going to get these

1301
01:15:44,800 --> 01:15:45,639
Speaker 2: beavers to market.

1302
01:15:45,920 --> 01:15:48,200
Speaker 1: And to make a.

1303
01:15:48,120 --> 01:15:52,280
Speaker 2: Long story short, by the eighteen twenties, it's clear that

1304
01:15:54,760 --> 01:15:58,240
Speaker 2: if the US is going to take advantage of this resource,

1305
01:15:59,120 --> 01:16:02,479
Speaker 2: they're going to send American trappers out to trap the

1306
01:16:02,479 --> 01:16:03,840
Speaker 2: beavers themselves.

1307
01:16:04,360 --> 01:16:08,439
Speaker 1: Tribes be damned, and yeah, not work through the tribes.

1308
01:16:10,920 --> 01:16:15,320
Speaker 1: And the result of that is they need a way

1309
01:16:15,360 --> 01:16:19,200
Speaker 1: to if they're not operating from fixed posts and fixed

1310
01:16:19,240 --> 01:16:22,600
Speaker 1: bases where the furs come to them, they need to

1311
01:16:22,600 --> 01:16:25,519
Speaker 1: find another way to get these huge quantities of furs

1312
01:16:25,560 --> 01:16:27,439
Speaker 1: back to Saint Louis. And so that leads to the

1313
01:16:27,439 --> 01:16:33,639
Speaker 1: invention of the rendezvous, which is a logistical invention whereby

1314
01:16:33,800 --> 01:16:37,600
Speaker 1: every summer there's a fixed location and all these trappers

1315
01:16:37,680 --> 01:16:42,800
Speaker 1: spread acrowd spread across hundreds of miles come together and

1316
01:16:42,880 --> 01:16:46,040
Speaker 1: trade the furs that've accumulated for what they need.

1317
01:16:45,880 --> 01:16:48,639
Speaker 2: To survive the year aheads. So these trappers are basically

1318
01:16:48,640 --> 01:16:51,080
Speaker 2: and these are the mountain meen. They're living year round

1319
01:16:51,240 --> 01:16:54,479
Speaker 2: in the Rockies. They're not traveling back and forth to

1320
01:16:54,920 --> 01:16:59,280
Speaker 2: quote unquote civilization with their harvest. They're living in the

1321
01:16:59,360 --> 01:17:05,040
Speaker 2: Rockies year round, providing all their own meat and shelter

1322
01:17:05,240 --> 01:17:08,040
Speaker 2: and all that. And then once a year they bring

1323
01:17:08,080 --> 01:17:12,879
Speaker 2: their accumulated harvest to this gathering that's like a huge encampment,

1324
01:17:13,720 --> 01:17:15,760
Speaker 2: trading them to the fur companies who come out in

1325
01:17:15,840 --> 01:17:19,639
Speaker 2: caravans with supplies, and then the caravan brings the furs

1326
01:17:19,680 --> 01:17:24,439
Speaker 2: back to market. So this rendezvous is kind of the

1327
01:17:24,479 --> 01:17:28,760
Speaker 2: like the beating heart of the mountain man era. And

1328
01:17:31,040 --> 01:17:34,479
Speaker 2: the first real rendezvous is like in eighteen twenty five,

1329
01:17:34,760 --> 01:17:40,200
Speaker 2: and the last real rendezvous is in eighteen forty, and

1330
01:17:40,280 --> 01:17:43,240
Speaker 2: so that's the end the bookends of like the Rocky

1331
01:17:43,280 --> 01:17:46,280
Speaker 2: Mountain rendezvous system. So that's where you get to circle

1332
01:17:46,360 --> 01:17:48,320
Speaker 2: us all the way back around. That's how we get

1333
01:17:48,360 --> 01:17:50,800
Speaker 2: to the end date of eighteen oh forty. So eighteen

1334
01:17:50,840 --> 01:17:55,479
Speaker 2: oh six to eighteen forty, and yeah, there's certainly beaver

1335
01:17:55,560 --> 01:17:58,519
Speaker 2: trappers after eighteen forty some of these guys go out to.

1336
01:17:58,479 --> 01:17:59,880
Speaker 1: Oregon and the little meetings.

1337
01:18:00,120 --> 01:18:03,280
Speaker 2: They had their own little spinoff rendezvous. Right. But like

1338
01:18:04,280 --> 01:18:08,439
Speaker 2: this like fabled age of the mountain Men that you

1339
01:18:08,479 --> 01:18:12,280
Speaker 2: know was getting headlines in newspapers in New York and

1340
01:18:12,840 --> 01:18:16,360
Speaker 2: you know, international interest in these strange figures who are

1341
01:18:17,120 --> 01:18:23,400
Speaker 2: nomadic trappers. That Golden Age is really the rendezvous period.

1342
01:18:24,120 --> 01:18:28,200
Speaker 1: The one of the reasons that people that grow up hunting,

1343
01:18:29,880 --> 01:18:31,439
Speaker 1: you know, it's true of me, It's true Iran, Like

1344
01:18:31,479 --> 01:18:34,040
Speaker 1: you grow up hunting and you grow up admiring the

1345
01:18:34,120 --> 01:18:37,840
Speaker 1: mountain men. However, like superficially your understanding is of when

1346
01:18:37,840 --> 01:18:40,240
Speaker 1: you're a kid. I kind of got it, but there's

1347
01:18:40,320 --> 01:18:42,120
Speaker 1: parts of it I didn't understand. But I knew enough

1348
01:18:42,160 --> 01:18:45,880
Speaker 1: to know that they were the epitome of self sufficient

1349
01:18:46,080 --> 01:18:48,559
Speaker 1: hunters and trappers, right. They were like the gold standard

1350
01:18:48,600 --> 01:18:56,760
Speaker 1: of American backwoodsman. Part of that is that self sufficiency,

1351
01:18:57,000 --> 01:18:59,160
Speaker 1: Like well, we talked about that Hudson Bay model where

1352
01:18:59,200 --> 01:19:02,880
Speaker 1: you have these big river systems and you have hired canoers,

1353
01:19:03,400 --> 01:19:06,000
Speaker 1: and you have people that live in forts and they

1354
01:19:06,040 --> 01:19:11,320
Speaker 1: grow crops. They might hire hunters. They're supplied with food, right,

1355
01:19:11,360 --> 01:19:13,160
Speaker 1: so you come in in the summer. They get all

1356
01:19:13,240 --> 01:19:15,600
Speaker 1: you bring in, all the flour and sugar and coffee.

1357
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:18,160
Speaker 1: And if you work out a fort for the Hudson

1358
01:19:18,200 --> 01:19:20,439
Speaker 1: Bay Company, you might not really need to leave the fort.

1359
01:19:22,160 --> 01:19:24,960
Speaker 1: And they're fed by Hudson Bay Company. The employees are

1360
01:19:25,520 --> 01:19:27,640
Speaker 1: what's so crazy about the mountainin thing is when they

1361
01:19:27,640 --> 01:19:30,519
Speaker 1: finally hit on this system that works for him, they

1362
01:19:30,560 --> 01:19:34,559
Speaker 1: just say, you boys are gonna have to figure it out. Yeah,

1363
01:19:34,720 --> 01:19:38,720
Speaker 1: and you'll have trappers, You'll have mountain men that'll do three, four,

1364
01:19:38,880 --> 01:19:44,760
Speaker 1: five years and it's it is a diet of wild meat,

1365
01:19:46,200 --> 01:19:51,200
Speaker 1: no support, no structures, no cabins, no support with food whatsoever.

1366
01:19:51,600 --> 01:19:54,600
Speaker 1: They have one chance to resupply, and they have a

1367
01:19:54,640 --> 01:19:57,120
Speaker 1: horse and a pack horse, yeah, or maybe a couple

1368
01:19:57,120 --> 01:19:59,880
Speaker 1: of pack animals, one chance to resupply, one chance to

1369
01:19:59,880 --> 01:20:02,559
Speaker 1: g any news from the outside world, and then they're

1370
01:20:02,600 --> 01:20:03,599
Speaker 1: just figuring it out.

1371
01:20:03,720 --> 01:20:07,639
Speaker 2: Yeah. Three hundred and fifty days a year. They are

1372
01:20:07,720 --> 01:20:11,400
Speaker 2: living off of what they have on their pack horse,

1373
01:20:11,600 --> 01:20:17,880
Speaker 2: which is basically a couple of traps, a rifle, a blanket,

1374
01:20:18,080 --> 01:20:21,559
Speaker 2: a knife, maybe an axe. It's a very limited kit

1375
01:20:22,680 --> 01:20:29,120
Speaker 2: and they're simply going where the beaver are and it's

1376
01:20:29,280 --> 01:20:33,559
Speaker 2: really like a day to day existence. There often aren't

1377
01:20:33,760 --> 01:20:35,960
Speaker 2: long plans of like we're going to hit here, here

1378
01:20:35,960 --> 01:20:38,760
Speaker 2: and here. It's like, we're going to go to this

1379
01:20:38,920 --> 01:20:42,280
Speaker 2: valley see if anybody's trapped at recently we get there,

1380
01:20:42,680 --> 01:20:45,920
Speaker 2: someone tells you, oh. And a lot of times too,

1381
01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:51,280
Speaker 2: they're encountering tribes who might point them in the direction

1382
01:20:51,400 --> 01:20:53,479
Speaker 2: of a place they might want to go, or point

1383
01:20:53,479 --> 01:20:55,160
Speaker 2: out to them that they might not want to go

1384
01:20:55,840 --> 01:20:57,920
Speaker 2: to this other place where they're thinking of going because

1385
01:20:57,920 --> 01:21:00,120
Speaker 2: they're going to get killed if they go there. So

1386
01:21:00,160 --> 01:21:01,559
Speaker 2: it's a very it's.

1387
01:21:01,360 --> 01:21:02,040
Speaker 1: A very.

1388
01:21:04,840 --> 01:21:11,439
Speaker 2: Like improvisational life like it. There's it's the only dates

1389
01:21:11,479 --> 01:21:15,479
Speaker 2: on their calendar are the rendezvous. Other than that, it's like,

1390
01:21:15,520 --> 01:21:17,880
Speaker 2: how can we get as many beaver as we as

1391
01:21:17,920 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 2: we can between now and then we do.

1392
01:21:21,560 --> 01:21:24,800
Speaker 1: We have a chapter in the book called Strangers in

1393
01:21:24,840 --> 01:21:29,320
Speaker 1: a Strange Land, and it's in it we explore this

1394
01:21:29,840 --> 01:21:34,240
Speaker 1: very very complex relationship that the mountain men develop with

1395
01:21:35,160 --> 01:21:39,280
Speaker 1: the tribes. Complex. I'll give you a handful of reasons

1396
01:21:39,320 --> 01:21:45,880
Speaker 1: why it's very complex. There are some tribes Flatheads Nez Perce,

1397
01:21:46,840 --> 01:21:51,640
Speaker 1: who throw in really heavily with the mountain men. They

1398
01:21:51,720 --> 01:21:54,040
Speaker 1: kind of become mountain men. They ride with the mountain men.

1399
01:21:54,040 --> 01:21:56,200
Speaker 1: There groups of camp with the mountain men, like they

1400
01:21:56,240 --> 01:22:01,760
Speaker 1: throw in and become like trappers. Some tribes just absolutely

1401
01:22:01,800 --> 01:22:05,280
Speaker 1: resist them, like the most classic not the most classic,

1402
01:22:05,320 --> 01:22:10,000
Speaker 1: but so like if there was a primary enemy to

1403
01:22:10,040 --> 01:22:14,400
Speaker 1: the mountain mentos the Blackfeet, the Blackfeet never got comfortable

1404
01:22:15,439 --> 01:22:19,760
Speaker 1: with the mountain men trapping beaver on their land. There

1405
01:22:19,760 --> 01:22:21,400
Speaker 1: were other tribes where it was a little more touch

1406
01:22:21,439 --> 01:22:23,800
Speaker 1: and go, like things of the crow is a little

1407
01:22:23,800 --> 01:22:26,479
Speaker 1: more touch and go, but it is very like a

1408
01:22:26,600 --> 01:22:30,160
Speaker 1: very complex part of it. If you look at some

1409
01:22:30,200 --> 01:22:34,280
Speaker 1: of these expeditions, they seem like rolling gunfights. Yeah, they're

1410
01:22:34,280 --> 01:22:37,240
Speaker 1: gonna shootouts all the time, but they're often in shootouts

1411
01:22:38,280 --> 01:22:42,479
Speaker 1: where they're with members from one tribe and they're fighting

1412
01:22:42,520 --> 01:22:46,479
Speaker 1: with the tribe's ancestral enemies, or just trappers are fighting

1413
01:22:46,520 --> 01:22:49,320
Speaker 1: with a tribe, or just trappers are fighting with a

1414
01:22:49,400 --> 01:22:52,640
Speaker 1: faction of a tribe, But then there's other factions of

1415
01:22:52,680 --> 01:22:55,680
Speaker 1: the same tribe that they're not in conflict with. At

1416
01:22:55,680 --> 01:23:02,799
Speaker 1: the same time, they're adopting Native mannerisms, adopting Native dress,

1417
01:23:03,320 --> 01:23:09,439
Speaker 1: marrying Native women, adopting Native religion. At the same time,

1418
01:23:09,560 --> 01:23:13,000
Speaker 1: they're using ways of describing Native Americans, which is like

1419
01:23:13,600 --> 01:23:17,160
Speaker 1: highly derogatory. But then you look like they grow their

1420
01:23:17,160 --> 01:23:20,040
Speaker 1: hair long, they have feathers in their hair, they decorate

1421
01:23:20,080 --> 01:23:23,680
Speaker 1: their horses, they marry Native women, they learn native languages.

1422
01:23:24,160 --> 01:23:28,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a there's a quote from one of

1423
01:23:28,280 --> 01:23:32,320
Speaker 2: the accounts that we looked at where they basically say,

1424
01:23:32,320 --> 01:23:36,280
Speaker 2: you can't pay a free trapper a higher compliment than

1425
01:23:36,320 --> 01:23:39,320
Speaker 2: to tell them you'd mistaken him for an Indian.

1426
01:23:39,520 --> 01:23:45,080
Speaker 1: Yep. Even guys commenting they start walking the mountain men

1427
01:23:45,160 --> 01:23:48,960
Speaker 1: would start walking like an Indian. So it's just this,

1428
01:23:49,160 --> 01:23:52,720
Speaker 1: it's like you can't. On one hand, you want to

1429
01:23:52,760 --> 01:23:57,400
Speaker 1: go like, oh, there were these these great egalitarians, you know,

1430
01:23:57,560 --> 01:24:03,599
Speaker 1: and like totally adapted to this lifestyle. But then what

1431
01:24:03,680 --> 01:24:08,120
Speaker 1: contradicts that is they demonstrate at times a very hostile

1432
01:24:08,240 --> 01:24:12,800
Speaker 1: relationship to tribal members, stereotyping tribal members all the time,

1433
01:24:13,960 --> 01:24:16,200
Speaker 1: not giving people the benefit of the doubt. Then the

1434
01:24:16,240 --> 01:24:17,840
Speaker 1: other hand, you want to go, oh, they were like

1435
01:24:17,880 --> 01:24:22,519
Speaker 1: these rapacious marauders, but what complicates that vision is all

1436
01:24:22,560 --> 01:24:26,400
Speaker 1: the contradictory material about how well they interwove with some tribes.

1437
01:24:27,240 --> 01:24:34,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I think to maybe just step

1438
01:24:34,479 --> 01:24:36,519
Speaker 2: back and look at the bigger picture. It's not like

1439
01:24:36,600 --> 01:24:40,719
Speaker 2: the Mountain Men were this big wave of white quote

1440
01:24:40,760 --> 01:24:46,080
Speaker 2: unquote civilization, you know, coming head to head with Native America.

1441
01:24:46,920 --> 01:24:51,679
Speaker 2: Like there's this pre existing politics in the Northern Rockies

1442
01:24:51,680 --> 01:24:54,519
Speaker 2: in Upper Missouri. All these tribes had these pre existing

1443
01:24:54,560 --> 01:25:00,280
Speaker 2: relationships and power struggles with one another. And it's a

1444
01:25:00,360 --> 01:25:03,640
Speaker 2: very dynamic period of time in Native history because of

1445
01:25:03,680 --> 01:25:07,360
Speaker 2: the instruction of firearms and horse culture has only been

1446
01:25:07,400 --> 01:25:12,480
Speaker 2: there for you know, one hundred and fifty years maybe,

1447
01:25:12,760 --> 01:25:17,040
Speaker 2: and there's trade goods coming down, like firearms coming down

1448
01:25:17,160 --> 01:25:20,680
Speaker 2: from the north from Hudson's Bay Company. And so if

1449
01:25:20,680 --> 01:25:24,759
Speaker 2: you're a tribe like the Blackfeet, and you see American

1450
01:25:24,880 --> 01:25:30,080
Speaker 2: traders and trappers developing good relationships or at least trading

1451
01:25:30,439 --> 01:25:34,479
Speaker 2: material goods with your historic rivals, like all of a sudden,

1452
01:25:34,520 --> 01:25:38,160
Speaker 2: these interlopers are a threat to you. And so the

1453
01:25:38,240 --> 01:25:44,479
Speaker 2: Mountain Men are pretty insignificant in the relative numbers, but

1454
01:25:44,640 --> 01:25:49,599
Speaker 2: like what they represent in terms of upsetting the status

1455
01:25:49,680 --> 01:25:55,360
Speaker 2: quo in Native America is pretty significant. And so I

1456
01:25:55,400 --> 01:25:59,559
Speaker 2: think like part of what we do in that chapter

1457
01:25:59,680 --> 01:26:05,120
Speaker 2: is to explain the underlying dynamics that shape day to

1458
01:26:05,200 --> 01:26:09,240
Speaker 2: day encounters between a mountain man who runs into a

1459
01:26:09,280 --> 01:26:12,479
Speaker 2: band of Shoshone hunters or who runs into a band

1460
01:26:12,479 --> 01:26:17,000
Speaker 2: of Blackfeet hunters or whatever else, because it varies widely,

1461
01:26:18,160 --> 01:26:21,040
Speaker 2: and it also depends on the individuals involved. You know,

1462
01:26:21,080 --> 01:26:24,360
Speaker 2: there are some individuals within tribes who are much more

1463
01:26:24,360 --> 01:26:28,360
Speaker 2: hostile to white incursion, and there are some individuals and

1464
01:26:28,400 --> 01:26:32,200
Speaker 2: those same tribes who are perhaps more accommodating. And so

1465
01:26:32,320 --> 01:26:36,360
Speaker 2: it's just like you never really know what you're going

1466
01:26:36,400 --> 01:26:36,760
Speaker 2: to get.

1467
01:26:37,400 --> 01:26:39,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, a good way to think about it. Like random

1468
01:26:39,960 --> 01:26:42,920
Speaker 1: makes a good point that there was no starting point

1469
01:26:43,120 --> 01:26:47,320
Speaker 1: with Euro American tribal relations. There is, but you have

1470
01:26:47,360 --> 01:26:49,320
Speaker 1: to go back hundreds of years, and even then it's fuzzy.

1471
01:26:49,920 --> 01:26:53,439
Speaker 1: But like earlier we talked about Lewis and Clark, Lewis Clark,

1472
01:26:53,479 --> 01:26:56,120
Speaker 1: they really hit it off with the Nez Perce, right,

1473
01:26:56,160 --> 01:26:58,160
Speaker 1: They kind of made it like a little packed. We

1474
01:26:58,160 --> 01:27:00,160
Speaker 1: would later violate that pack, but long hour to the

1475
01:27:00,200 --> 01:27:02,360
Speaker 1: mountainn Era, we would violate that pack in the mid

1476
01:27:02,400 --> 01:27:05,360
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. But they made a pack and the nets

1477
01:27:05,360 --> 01:27:07,720
Speaker 1: per stay true to it. They're like, we're friendly with

1478
01:27:07,720 --> 01:27:10,280
Speaker 1: the Americans, and they held that for a long time.

1479
01:27:12,200 --> 01:27:17,200
Speaker 1: The only Indians Lewis and Clark killed Blackfeet yep, and

1480
01:27:17,240 --> 01:27:20,440
Speaker 1: Blackfeet did not have a friendly packed with the Americans.

1481
01:27:20,800 --> 01:27:23,120
Speaker 1: So even then, like this guy like Culter, who is

1482
01:27:23,160 --> 01:27:24,880
Speaker 1: part of the Lewis and Clark expedition in our first

1483
01:27:24,880 --> 01:27:30,360
Speaker 1: Mountain man, like he has some exposure to how complex

1484
01:27:30,400 --> 01:27:34,479
Speaker 1: relationships were, right, there's not like a pan tribal I

1485
01:27:34,479 --> 01:27:36,320
Speaker 1: guess the thing people try to picture is that there's

1486
01:27:36,400 --> 01:27:41,639
Speaker 1: like a sort of pan tribal attitude to euro Americans

1487
01:27:41,720 --> 01:27:45,280
Speaker 1: or a pan tribal attitude to the mountain men. It

1488
01:27:45,400 --> 01:27:51,639
Speaker 1: was not. It was allegiances and hostilities and those things

1489
01:27:51,640 --> 01:27:52,599
Speaker 1: that change all the time.

1490
01:27:53,000 --> 01:27:57,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's another there's another quote we use in

1491
01:27:57,320 --> 01:27:59,960
Speaker 2: the book from Elliott West who's been on the podcast,

1492
01:28:00,040 --> 01:28:04,639
Speaker 2: who's a Western historian, and he says, there's a lot

1493
01:28:04,640 --> 01:28:12,320
Speaker 2: of times, sort of unconsciously, people think about Native Americans

1494
01:28:12,520 --> 01:28:16,080
Speaker 2: as sort of just waiting in the background for Europeans

1495
01:28:16,080 --> 01:28:19,160
Speaker 2: to show up on the scene, as if they're apart

1496
01:28:19,200 --> 01:28:26,640
Speaker 2: from history until Europeans arrived there, when really, like Europeans

1497
01:28:26,640 --> 01:28:32,200
Speaker 2: are walking into a political and cultural and socioeconomic environment

1498
01:28:32,400 --> 01:28:40,800
Speaker 2: that is just as complicated as any you know, relationship

1499
01:28:40,840 --> 01:28:43,840
Speaker 2: between royal families in France, or you know, you think

1500
01:28:43,880 --> 01:28:46,240
Speaker 2: about Europe and you think about all this palace intrigue

1501
01:28:46,280 --> 01:28:50,040
Speaker 2: and rivaling factions, and you know, these relationships that go

1502
01:28:50,160 --> 01:28:53,679
Speaker 2: back hundreds of years, and how all this factors into

1503
01:28:53,760 --> 01:28:55,479
Speaker 2: the decisions that are made on the ground. And like

1504
01:28:56,760 --> 01:28:59,360
Speaker 2: that's the same environment that the mountain men are walking into,

1505
01:28:59,400 --> 01:29:03,160
Speaker 2: but they're ignorant to all of that, and so it's

1506
01:29:03,200 --> 01:29:07,000
Speaker 2: really hard to just simplify and say mountain men did this,

1507
01:29:07,200 --> 01:29:13,240
Speaker 2: Native people did this, or there's no like real model

1508
01:29:13,760 --> 01:29:17,080
Speaker 2: of relations that can be simplified between the mountain men

1509
01:29:17,120 --> 01:29:19,120
Speaker 2: and the and the people they encounter.

1510
01:29:19,600 --> 01:29:21,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in the book, we really spelled this out

1511
01:29:21,920 --> 01:29:24,800
Speaker 1: by talking by looking at a period of a few

1512
01:29:24,840 --> 01:29:29,000
Speaker 1: months where a mountain man who kept the Meticulous Journal

1513
01:29:29,080 --> 01:29:34,280
Speaker 1: named Osborne Russell, a period of a few months of

1514
01:29:34,600 --> 01:29:41,080
Speaker 1: examining his interactions with Native Americans wildly varied.

1515
01:29:42,400 --> 01:29:47,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, they shoot at him, He shoots at them. Some

1516
01:29:47,120 --> 01:29:50,080
Speaker 2: of them save his ass, some of them they party,

1517
01:29:49,840 --> 01:29:53,519
Speaker 2: They feed him, they tell him where to go, they save,

1518
01:29:53,640 --> 01:29:57,000
Speaker 2: they steal his stuff, you know, And they were using

1519
01:29:57,040 --> 01:30:00,599
Speaker 2: they in quotes because like he's encountering people from different

1520
01:30:00,640 --> 01:30:02,719
Speaker 2: cultures in different political groups.

1521
01:30:03,360 --> 01:30:04,760
Speaker 1: But he never knows what he's gonna get.

1522
01:30:04,880 --> 01:30:07,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, he never knows what he's gonna get. But the

1523
01:30:07,000 --> 01:30:10,479
Speaker 2: one thing you can say is that his life during

1524
01:30:10,520 --> 01:30:15,000
Speaker 2: those few months is profoundly shaped by his encounters with

1525
01:30:15,120 --> 01:30:17,680
Speaker 2: Native people. And he also one of the things we

1526
01:30:17,720 --> 01:30:22,400
Speaker 2: point out in there is he has learned the Shoshone language,

1527
01:30:22,439 --> 01:30:24,599
Speaker 2: and he takes great pride in the fact that he

1528
01:30:24,640 --> 01:30:28,240
Speaker 2: can speak Shoshone and that he's able to repay his

1529
01:30:29,640 --> 01:30:32,000
Speaker 2: a chief who hosts him for a few days. He

1530
01:30:32,040 --> 01:30:36,000
Speaker 2: says he can repay him by telling jokes in his

1531
01:30:36,040 --> 01:30:39,160
Speaker 2: own language to him, and like that's the mark of

1532
01:30:39,200 --> 01:30:42,639
Speaker 2: a good guest. So it's like, whatever you might assume

1533
01:30:42,760 --> 01:30:47,960
Speaker 2: about how Matin men and Native people interacted, it's probably

1534
01:30:48,000 --> 01:30:51,040
Speaker 2: a lot more. It's a lot messier than you think.

1535
01:30:51,200 --> 01:30:56,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that every every aspect of the story,

1536
01:30:57,240 --> 01:30:59,679
Speaker 1: no matter how well you think you know it, every

1537
01:30:59,680 --> 01:31:04,800
Speaker 1: as to the story, you're gonna you're gonna come away

1538
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:08,000
Speaker 1: from this with being like, oh, there's like a lot

1539
01:31:08,040 --> 01:31:11,000
Speaker 1: more to it than I thought. The way we divided

1540
01:31:11,040 --> 01:31:14,240
Speaker 1: it up, we divided the whole project out. We're gonna

1541
01:31:14,280 --> 01:31:18,120
Speaker 1: we're gonna share one of them right now, We're gonna

1542
01:31:18,120 --> 01:31:21,639
Speaker 1: share chapter six out of twelve chapters. But the way

1543
01:31:21,640 --> 01:31:26,479
Speaker 1: it rolls is we talk about mountain man country, meaning, uh,

1544
01:31:26,640 --> 01:31:29,320
Speaker 1: there's an introduction, and then that introduces the mountain man there,

1545
01:31:29,320 --> 01:31:36,439
Speaker 1: and then we talk about mountain man country meaning since

1546
01:31:36,479 --> 01:31:39,120
Speaker 1: we narrowly define what a mountain man is, we define

1547
01:31:39,240 --> 01:31:44,800
Speaker 1: where the mountain man was. Right. What why at a

1548
01:31:44,800 --> 01:31:48,160
Speaker 1: certain point north you weren't a mountain man. Why at

1549
01:31:48,160 --> 01:31:50,360
Speaker 1: a certain point east you weren't a mountain man. Why

1550
01:31:50,439 --> 01:31:52,400
Speaker 1: at a certain point west you weren't a mountain man.

1551
01:31:52,439 --> 01:31:54,240
Speaker 1: And why at a certain point south you weren't a

1552
01:31:54,240 --> 01:31:58,640
Speaker 1: mountain man. I'll give a clue to one. You go

1553
01:31:58,760 --> 01:32:02,040
Speaker 1: much for it her south? There ain't no beavers, not many.

1554
01:32:02,840 --> 01:32:05,960
Speaker 1: I have two clues. You go north, and you got

1555
01:32:05,960 --> 01:32:10,519
Speaker 1: problems with the British. We explained all that. We explained

1556
01:32:10,560 --> 01:32:12,400
Speaker 1: the start of the mountain man era in a chapter

1557
01:32:12,479 --> 01:32:17,400
Speaker 1: called up the Missouri. We explained kind of who the

1558
01:32:17,439 --> 01:32:20,320
Speaker 1: mountain men were, like, like what kind of dude became

1559
01:32:20,360 --> 01:32:26,040
Speaker 1: a mountain man. It's mixed a lot of orphans and

1560
01:32:26,520 --> 01:32:29,760
Speaker 1: surprising number of people who are escaping indentured servitude is

1561
01:32:29,840 --> 01:32:30,479
Speaker 1: kind of a theme.

1562
01:32:32,720 --> 01:32:34,920
Speaker 2: And we also talk about in that chapter how they

1563
01:32:34,920 --> 01:32:38,360
Speaker 2: become a mountain man. Yeah, how they how they insert

1564
01:32:38,400 --> 01:32:45,920
Speaker 2: themselves into this whole sprawling, logistical, financial, corporate operation.

1565
01:32:46,200 --> 01:32:47,439
Speaker 1: We could have called it, so you want to be

1566
01:32:47,479 --> 01:32:48,080
Speaker 1: a mountain Man?

1567
01:32:49,280 --> 01:32:50,920
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll save that for Volume.

1568
01:32:50,640 --> 01:32:55,680
Speaker 1: Three, Chapter five. Running the Line it's about, like, you know,

1569
01:32:55,760 --> 01:32:59,640
Speaker 1: with all this crazy intrigue and all this you know,

1570
01:33:00,040 --> 01:33:04,759
Speaker 1: tribal interactions and hunting and starving to death and dying

1571
01:33:04,800 --> 01:33:09,719
Speaker 1: and gunfights, we keep reminding people that they were there

1572
01:33:09,880 --> 01:33:14,760
Speaker 1: to catch beavers. Running the Line is like, how were

1573
01:33:14,760 --> 01:33:18,560
Speaker 1: they catching the beavers? How did they trap beaver? And

1574
01:33:19,240 --> 01:33:23,640
Speaker 1: you'll you'll be a little surprised about how much guesswork

1575
01:33:24,120 --> 01:33:26,160
Speaker 1: goes into that. There's a thing we run into working

1576
01:33:26,200 --> 01:33:30,439
Speaker 1: on these projects where there's some things that are so

1577
01:33:30,720 --> 01:33:33,759
Speaker 1: mundane that no one there's some things that are perceived

1578
01:33:33,760 --> 01:33:36,160
Speaker 1: to be so mundane that no one explains it. Like

1579
01:33:36,240 --> 01:33:38,360
Speaker 1: picture one hundred years from now, someone trying to figure

1580
01:33:38,360 --> 01:33:43,599
Speaker 1: out how we flost. Yeah, or and you'd be like, well,

1581
01:33:43,680 --> 01:33:48,120
Speaker 1: I see it says he flost. Well did he start

1582
01:33:48,439 --> 01:33:50,840
Speaker 1: like with his molars? Well, I don't know, just as

1583
01:33:50,840 --> 01:33:53,840
Speaker 1: he f lost Like there's not a really like like

1584
01:33:53,880 --> 01:33:56,000
Speaker 1: the right people weren't writing it down.

1585
01:33:55,920 --> 01:34:00,519
Speaker 2: Or somebody somebody shows up today and they're like, they're

1586
01:34:00,520 --> 01:34:04,120
Speaker 2: on their phones all the time, and someone who's using

1587
01:34:04,120 --> 01:34:07,040
Speaker 2: a phone in their diary, they're not going to say, well,

1588
01:34:07,040 --> 01:34:09,080
Speaker 2: I got on my phone and I opened Instagram and

1589
01:34:09,080 --> 01:34:11,200
Speaker 2: then I got a few emails and when you want

1590
01:34:11,240 --> 01:34:14,000
Speaker 2: to send an email, you have to go click this

1591
01:34:14,080 --> 01:34:17,439
Speaker 2: button and click that button. And so they're not writing

1592
01:34:17,479 --> 01:34:20,719
Speaker 2: that down. But someone who arrives there and goes, holy shit,

1593
01:34:20,840 --> 01:34:23,479
Speaker 2: these guys are on their phones all the time. That

1594
01:34:23,600 --> 01:34:27,240
Speaker 2: person probably has no idea what he's looking at when

1595
01:34:27,280 --> 01:34:29,160
Speaker 2: someone's on their phone. And so a lot of the

1596
01:34:29,240 --> 01:34:32,840
Speaker 2: more detailed accounts we get of like setting traps and

1597
01:34:33,320 --> 01:34:37,440
Speaker 2: trapping operations, they're written by outside observers who find this fascinating,

1598
01:34:38,080 --> 01:34:41,200
Speaker 2: but they don't know what they're looking at necessarily.

1599
01:34:41,240 --> 01:34:46,240
Speaker 1: The analogy we use is picture that you have a plumber,

1600
01:34:47,600 --> 01:34:51,760
Speaker 1: very skilled plumber, and he comes in to do a

1601
01:34:51,840 --> 01:34:54,200
Speaker 1: repair in your house, and then you have a land

1602
01:34:54,240 --> 01:34:56,280
Speaker 1: to a homeowner who has no idea about any of it.

1603
01:34:57,000 --> 01:34:59,360
Speaker 1: And later you say to the homeowner, hey, how did

1604
01:34:59,360 --> 01:35:06,559
Speaker 1: he fix that? I mean, you had like a wrench, Hey,

1605
01:35:06,640 --> 01:35:07,920
Speaker 1: terry turned something.

1606
01:35:08,439 --> 01:35:09,960
Speaker 2: The thing about toilets is.

1607
01:35:11,160 --> 01:35:12,400
Speaker 1: I don't really know. Took about an hour.

1608
01:35:12,520 --> 01:35:13,760
Speaker 2: There's two heights of ur and oil.

1609
01:35:15,080 --> 01:35:18,720
Speaker 1: And often the accounts of like how they did what

1610
01:35:18,760 --> 01:35:22,439
Speaker 1: they did are from people later, outsiders who had no idea,

1611
01:35:23,000 --> 01:35:25,519
Speaker 1: trying to offer up their sort of synopsis of what

1612
01:35:25,560 --> 01:35:28,320
Speaker 1: it was that they saw happening. But we get we

1613
01:35:28,400 --> 01:35:29,120
Speaker 1: get somewhere in it.

1614
01:35:29,600 --> 01:35:30,000
Speaker 2: Uh.

1615
01:35:30,080 --> 01:35:31,920
Speaker 1: The chatter we're gonna share with you guys is hunger

1616
01:35:31,960 --> 01:35:37,360
Speaker 1: and thirst. It's about being in a land of feast

1617
01:35:37,760 --> 01:35:43,559
Speaker 1: and famine. We have a chapter about the rendezvous, so

1618
01:35:43,680 --> 01:35:46,920
Speaker 1: that collection of days at that couple of weeks every year.

1619
01:35:48,439 --> 01:35:52,560
Speaker 1: We have a chapter about the fur. What happens to

1620
01:35:52,600 --> 01:35:55,479
Speaker 1: the fur? How does the fur get to Europe? What

1621
01:35:55,560 --> 01:35:58,320
Speaker 1: does it used for? How does it? Basically this is

1622
01:35:58,400 --> 01:35:59,920
Speaker 1: everything of like how does it get from a tra

1623
01:36:00,040 --> 01:36:03,639
Speaker 1: rappers hands, how does it get turned into a product,

1624
01:36:03,720 --> 01:36:06,719
Speaker 1: and how does that product flow through time and space?

1625
01:36:07,880 --> 01:36:10,080
Speaker 1: Tricks of the trade is just all the crazy shit

1626
01:36:10,120 --> 01:36:11,680
Speaker 1: they knew how to do and how they knew how

1627
01:36:11,680 --> 01:36:15,800
Speaker 1: to do it, amputations, whatever like stuff they had to

1628
01:36:15,840 --> 01:36:19,560
Speaker 1: know and where they got it from. Chapter ten is

1629
01:36:19,600 --> 01:36:24,559
Speaker 1: about what happens in the wintertime, they would spend months

1630
01:36:24,600 --> 01:36:28,559
Speaker 1: just stuck in places. There would spend months stuck in valleys.

1631
01:36:30,200 --> 01:36:35,519
Speaker 1: Every ten days is about death. We pull that name from.

1632
01:36:35,560 --> 01:36:37,120
Speaker 1: There was a historian what was.

1633
01:36:37,040 --> 01:36:41,000
Speaker 2: His name, it's I believe it's from Stanley Vestil's. That's

1634
01:36:41,200 --> 01:36:42,200
Speaker 2: biography of Bridger.

1635
01:36:44,120 --> 01:36:47,760
Speaker 1: There's this one historian who who takes a look at it,

1636
01:36:47,800 --> 01:36:50,720
Speaker 1: and he's he he comes. He has this idea that

1637
01:36:50,760 --> 01:36:53,200
Speaker 1: when he when he takes a look at the time

1638
01:36:53,240 --> 01:36:56,120
Speaker 1: period and the people involved, he throws out that it

1639
01:36:56,160 --> 01:37:01,000
Speaker 1: seems like a mountain man died every ten days. Randall

1640
01:37:01,040 --> 01:37:04,360
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on that. Randall doesn't think

1641
01:37:04,400 --> 01:37:07,639
Speaker 1: that that's right. But what does seem right is one

1642
01:37:07,680 --> 01:37:08,880
Speaker 1: and ten died of violent death.

1643
01:37:09,720 --> 01:37:14,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would point out too, like there's a

1644
01:37:14,680 --> 01:37:19,360
Speaker 2: whole there's so many secondary sources when you're researching this stuff.

1645
01:37:19,400 --> 01:37:23,360
Speaker 2: Like there's a historian who's published article in the journal

1646
01:37:23,360 --> 01:37:25,280
Speaker 2: put out by the Museum of the Mountain Man, where

1647
01:37:25,280 --> 01:37:29,840
Speaker 2: he has cataloged every reference to every mountain man dying

1648
01:37:31,360 --> 01:37:34,360
Speaker 2: and cause of death date, what we know about him,

1649
01:37:34,439 --> 01:37:40,160
Speaker 2: what happened, And so he has like quantitative findings about

1650
01:37:40,200 --> 01:37:43,720
Speaker 2: what killed mountain men and when and why and so

1651
01:37:43,880 --> 01:37:47,080
Speaker 2: when you look at something like that, it's it's tougher

1652
01:37:47,120 --> 01:37:50,439
Speaker 2: to believe sort of the anecdotal like Stanley Vestal argument.

1653
01:37:50,560 --> 01:37:53,760
Speaker 2: But there's no question that a lot of them died.

1654
01:37:53,840 --> 01:37:58,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we we've we're in this. We're able to

1655
01:37:58,880 --> 01:38:01,160
Speaker 1: put some numbers around things. You might be surprised that

1656
01:38:01,200 --> 01:38:04,960
Speaker 1: there's numbers around YEA. One thing that surprised me is

1657
01:38:04,960 --> 01:38:10,799
Speaker 1: is there's about the way we define what a mountain

1658
01:38:10,800 --> 01:38:13,120
Speaker 1: man was. There was there was probably three or four

1659
01:38:13,120 --> 01:38:17,120
Speaker 1: thousand mountain men. Yeah, during the period of talking about it,

1660
01:38:17,120 --> 01:38:19,680
Speaker 1: probably three or four three or four thousand mountain men.

1661
01:38:20,360 --> 01:38:22,280
Speaker 1: Three or four thousand people would have kind of met

1662
01:38:22,280 --> 01:38:23,679
Speaker 1: that definition.

1663
01:38:23,560 --> 01:38:25,880
Speaker 2: At some point in their life, and.

1664
01:38:25,360 --> 01:38:31,960
Speaker 1: And hundreds of them died violently. Yeah. Uh. Chapter twelve,

1665
01:38:32,040 --> 01:38:35,160
Speaker 1: the last one is trapped out, and it's about the

1666
01:38:37,520 --> 01:38:41,360
Speaker 1: it's about the sort of two things. There's the thing

1667
01:38:41,439 --> 01:38:43,720
Speaker 1: that killed the mountain man era, and then there's the

1668
01:38:43,800 --> 01:38:46,120
Speaker 1: other thing that would have killed it if that hadn't

1669
01:38:46,200 --> 01:38:46,559
Speaker 1: killed it.

1670
01:38:49,000 --> 01:38:51,480
Speaker 2: In the end, economics and ecology.

1671
01:38:51,680 --> 01:38:56,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, economics and ecology what we didn't do. If we

1672
01:38:56,080 --> 01:38:57,800
Speaker 1: were smart, we would have done this. I'm only just

1673
01:38:57,920 --> 01:39:00,880
Speaker 1: current to me now. We will have found a way

1674
01:39:00,880 --> 01:39:02,639
Speaker 1: to bleed into the buffalo trade.

1675
01:39:05,880 --> 01:39:07,760
Speaker 2: Well, maybe we can do that. Maybe we can do

1676
01:39:07,800 --> 01:39:11,360
Speaker 2: that bleeding in chapter one of volume three.

1677
01:39:11,560 --> 01:39:15,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll bleed it. That's how it goes. That in

1678
01:39:15,560 --> 01:39:19,440
Speaker 1: short is Yeah, when you hear the term of frontiersmen,

1679
01:39:19,560 --> 01:39:22,160
Speaker 1: which is kind of synonymous with the long hunter, when

1680
01:39:22,200 --> 01:39:23,680
Speaker 1: you hear the term of long hunter, when you hear

1681
01:39:23,680 --> 01:39:25,519
Speaker 1: the term of the mountain man, that's what we're talking about.

1682
01:39:26,760 --> 01:39:29,640
Speaker 1: Dig in more. Check out the chapter where check out

1683
01:39:29,640 --> 01:39:32,440
Speaker 1: the chapter that's coming at you right now, Hunger and Thirst,

1684
01:39:32,640 --> 01:39:38,559
Speaker 1: and then well twelve bucks loven twelve bucks, I think.

1685
01:39:38,600 --> 01:39:41,599
Speaker 1: So to get the complete thing, Meetater's of American History,

1686
01:39:42,439 --> 01:39:47,680
Speaker 1: The Mountain Men, eighteen oh six to eighteen forty dropping now.

1687
01:39:47,840 --> 01:39:50,040
Speaker 2: And if you're listening on the day this comes out,

1688
01:39:50,360 --> 01:39:52,760
Speaker 2: you can pre order and it'll download on your phone

1689
01:39:52,760 --> 01:39:53,320
Speaker 2: at midnight.

1690
01:39:53,439 --> 01:39:55,880
Speaker 1: My guess is you can just buy it. I don't know, yep,

1691
01:39:56,200 --> 01:39:58,559
Speaker 1: it'll I think it'll just be there all of a sudden.

1692
01:39:58,840 --> 01:40:02,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, But for those of you who listen to this

1693
01:40:02,080 --> 01:40:04,320
Speaker 2: the day after it drops, you can go by it

1694
01:40:04,360 --> 01:40:05,400
Speaker 2: and listen right away.

1695
01:40:05,280 --> 01:40:08,880
Speaker 1: Yep, and trust that we are working away on the

1696
01:40:08,920 --> 01:40:12,960
Speaker 1: next one. We're going to jump up to This closes

1697
01:40:13,000 --> 01:40:15,919
Speaker 1: at eighteen forty. So the Long Hunters closed at seventeen

1698
01:40:16,000 --> 01:40:19,960
Speaker 1: seventy five. This picks up at eighteen six, eighteen oh six,

1699
01:40:20,680 --> 01:40:24,720
Speaker 1: This closes at eighteen forty. The next one is going

1700
01:40:24,800 --> 01:40:29,479
Speaker 1: to pick up eighteen sixty five with the end of

1701
01:40:29,479 --> 01:40:34,439
Speaker 1: the Civil War, and it will conclude in the winter

1702
01:40:34,880 --> 01:40:40,000
Speaker 1: of eighty one eighty two, So it'll rap probably in

1703
01:40:40,040 --> 01:40:42,080
Speaker 1: the end. We haven't figured it out yet, but it'll

1704
01:40:42,120 --> 01:40:48,320
Speaker 1: probably wrap of March eighteen eighty two, and that era.

1705
01:40:48,160 --> 01:40:50,880
Speaker 2: Will close outside of Miles City.

1706
01:40:50,680 --> 01:40:54,599
Speaker 1: Perhaps more dramatically than any other era. That era has

1707
01:40:54,680 --> 01:41:00,280
Speaker 1: like a a end, like an end and like an

1708
01:41:00,360 --> 01:41:05,439
Speaker 1: end end, and a very visible legacy, yeah, ecological legacy.

1709
01:41:05,760 --> 01:41:10,479
Speaker 1: And in that one, we're talking about the Buffalo Hide

1710
01:41:11,080 --> 01:41:17,840
Speaker 1: Hunters man, you just kind of start running out of heroes. Yeah,

1711
01:41:18,120 --> 01:41:21,840
Speaker 1: you got Long Hunter heroes, Boom American hero got Mountain

1712
01:41:21,840 --> 01:41:26,240
Speaker 1: Man heroes. Jim Bridger American hero There is no Hide

1713
01:41:26,320 --> 01:41:31,800
Speaker 1: Hunter hero. No, They're all villains. No.

1714
01:41:31,920 --> 01:41:35,479
Speaker 2: And it's I mean, I think that's one interesting tension

1715
01:41:35,560 --> 01:41:38,960
Speaker 2: in this whole larger project is just like when we

1716
01:41:39,000 --> 01:41:42,760
Speaker 2: think of Market Hunters today, it's we think of it

1717
01:41:42,800 --> 01:41:46,760
Speaker 2: as a bad deal for wildlife, and it is, but

1718
01:41:46,920 --> 01:41:51,120
Speaker 2: throughout American history, these people who are engaging in this

1719
01:41:51,280 --> 01:41:55,240
Speaker 2: trade in its various forms also leave behind some of

1720
01:41:55,280 --> 01:42:01,120
Speaker 2: the craziest stories of wilderness adventure that we have. And

1721
01:42:01,160 --> 01:42:04,960
Speaker 2: so you're kind of always wrestling with that tension of like,

1722
01:42:07,560 --> 01:42:12,000
Speaker 2: you don't want to completely romanticize these figures. You know,

1723
01:42:12,040 --> 01:42:14,240
Speaker 2: you want to understand them, why they're actually doing what

1724
01:42:14,280 --> 01:42:17,679
Speaker 2: they're doing, and and and what the consequences of that were.

1725
01:42:18,200 --> 01:42:20,960
Speaker 2: But also it's not interesting if you write a book

1726
01:42:20,960 --> 01:42:24,760
Speaker 2: about how bad the buffalo hunters are, so so you know,

1727
01:42:24,920 --> 01:42:30,759
Speaker 2: especially in that volume, it's kind of a tricky line

1728
01:42:30,800 --> 01:42:34,000
Speaker 2: to toe of like you're not going to write a

1729
01:42:34,000 --> 01:42:36,439
Speaker 2: book condemning the buffalo hunters for the bad things that

1730
01:42:36,439 --> 01:42:39,000
Speaker 2: they obviously did, but you're also not going to write

1731
01:42:39,000 --> 01:42:41,559
Speaker 2: a book celebrating how many buffalo they killed. So it's

1732
01:42:41,640 --> 01:42:44,760
Speaker 2: kind of a yeah, it's a it's a it's a

1733
01:42:44,800 --> 01:42:49,680
Speaker 2: trickier subject, I think in our contemporary perspective.

1734
01:42:50,720 --> 01:42:52,400
Speaker 1: The other day, I was writing a thing where I

1735
01:42:52,439 --> 01:42:56,479
Speaker 1: had to try to talk about try to sum up

1736
01:42:56,520 --> 01:43:00,200
Speaker 1: these different groups, and the best thing I could come

1737
01:43:00,280 --> 01:43:02,200
Speaker 1: up with when I got to the hide hunters as

1738
01:43:02,240 --> 01:43:04,760
Speaker 1: I was like, they're the kind of the greasiest, most

1739
01:43:04,840 --> 01:43:09,120
Speaker 1: louse ridden group.

1740
01:43:09,680 --> 01:43:13,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is which is a standard of evaluation that

1741
01:43:13,479 --> 01:43:14,559
Speaker 2: I often use.

1742
01:43:15,680 --> 01:43:17,520
Speaker 1: On greasy louse riddenness.

1743
01:43:17,560 --> 01:43:21,640
Speaker 2: They are high and just like it's like from a

1744
01:43:21,680 --> 01:43:23,400
Speaker 2: different planet, some of those stories.

1745
01:43:23,560 --> 01:43:29,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're getting into You're getting into like some

1746
01:43:29,600 --> 01:43:32,000
Speaker 1: Cormatt McCarthy blood meridian type shit.

1747
01:43:32,200 --> 01:43:37,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, like very sort of post apocalyptic scenes of destruction.

1748
01:43:37,280 --> 01:43:41,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, uh okay, here it is Chapter six,

1749
01:43:41,560 --> 01:43:50,120
Speaker 1: Hunger and Thirst dig In Chapter six Hunger and Thirst,

1750
01:43:52,280 --> 01:43:56,160
Speaker 1: Despite the rugged, unforgiving landscape on which they made their living,

1751
01:43:56,400 --> 01:44:00,559
Speaker 1: the existence of a mountain man wasn't all scarcity and suffering.

1752
01:44:01,000 --> 01:44:04,519
Speaker 1: Gluttony and excess were a staple of life for these

1753
01:44:04,600 --> 01:44:10,880
Speaker 1: isolated wilderness travelers. In chapter three, I mentioned the most

1754
01:44:10,880 --> 01:44:15,719
Speaker 1: famous mountain man movie of all time, Jeremiah Johnson. You'll

1755
01:44:15,720 --> 01:44:18,000
Speaker 1: have to pardon me as a return to it again,

1756
01:44:18,400 --> 01:44:22,080
Speaker 1: this time to the final conversation of the film, which

1757
01:44:22,240 --> 01:44:25,840
Speaker 1: is the saddest and loneliest one hundred and twenty seconds

1758
01:44:26,120 --> 01:44:29,519
Speaker 1: in the history of American cinema. In it, we find

1759
01:44:29,600 --> 01:44:33,639
Speaker 1: Johnson in the high country pondering with a surprise visitor

1760
01:44:34,120 --> 01:44:37,719
Speaker 1: what month of the year it might be. He's cooking

1761
01:44:37,760 --> 01:44:41,559
Speaker 1: a rabbit on a spit. While nitpicky viewers might note

1762
01:44:41,600 --> 01:44:44,879
Speaker 1: that no wild rabbit on earth would tear as tenderly

1763
01:44:45,000 --> 01:44:47,840
Speaker 1: as that one when cooked in such a fashion, you

1764
01:44:48,000 --> 01:44:51,080
Speaker 1: have to give credit to the filmmakers for capturing the

1765
01:44:51,120 --> 01:44:54,479
Speaker 1: breadth of the diet of the mountain men. By this

1766
01:44:54,640 --> 01:44:57,920
Speaker 1: point in the movie, Jeremiah Johnson has dined on grizzly

1767
01:44:57,960 --> 01:45:02,519
Speaker 1: bear meat, attempted to dine on cutthroat trout, eating elk,

1768
01:45:02,760 --> 01:45:06,679
Speaker 1: eating buffalo, and eating beaver, which he refers to as

1769
01:45:06,960 --> 01:45:15,320
Speaker 1: proper food. One thing that Jeremiah Johnson never eats in

1770
01:45:15,360 --> 01:45:19,760
Speaker 1: the film is the mountain man delicacy known as budant,

1771
01:45:20,320 --> 01:45:23,600
Speaker 1: which was described in real life by the British explorer

1772
01:45:23,720 --> 01:45:28,040
Speaker 1: and writer George Ruxton, who witnessed a memorable scene during

1773
01:45:28,080 --> 01:45:32,920
Speaker 1: his Western travels in the mid eighteen hundreds. Ruxton had

1774
01:45:32,920 --> 01:45:36,160
Speaker 1: been all over the world by this point in his life.

1775
01:45:36,560 --> 01:45:40,160
Speaker 1: Between the ages of seventeen and twenty seven. He'd served

1776
01:45:40,200 --> 01:45:44,120
Speaker 1: in combat in Europe, hunted with indigenous people in northern Canada,

1777
01:45:44,560 --> 01:45:48,160
Speaker 1: and journeyed into the heart of the African continent. But

1778
01:45:48,240 --> 01:45:51,720
Speaker 1: of all those places, none captured his imagination like the

1779
01:45:51,800 --> 01:45:55,920
Speaker 1: rocky Mountain West, and no figure fascinated him more than

1780
01:45:55,960 --> 01:45:59,599
Speaker 1: the American mountain man. At one point in his travels,

1781
01:45:59,680 --> 01:46:03,080
Speaker 1: Roxie and washed as two trappers sat on a dirty

1782
01:46:03,160 --> 01:46:07,719
Speaker 1: saddle blanket with a long coil of budan between them. Now,

1783
01:46:07,800 --> 01:46:11,360
Speaker 1: if you've traveled much in Louisiana, you might have encountered budan,

1784
01:46:11,760 --> 01:46:14,719
Speaker 1: a type of sausage built on a base of hog, liver,

1785
01:46:14,880 --> 01:46:18,599
Speaker 1: and rice. But mountain Man budan was different. They would

1786
01:46:18,680 --> 01:46:22,759
Speaker 1: take the intestine of a buffalo and invert it. Ruxton

1787
01:46:22,840 --> 01:46:26,680
Speaker 1: notes that it would often be partially cleaned, but that

1788
01:46:26,840 --> 01:46:31,080
Speaker 1: this step is quote not thought indispensable. They then fill

1789
01:46:31,120 --> 01:46:36,000
Speaker 1: it with diced buffalo meat, liver, kidneys, whatever, and brown

1790
01:46:36,080 --> 01:46:39,520
Speaker 1: it over the ember of the fire, like a crude sausage.

1791
01:46:40,080 --> 01:46:42,559
Speaker 1: So these two trappers are sitting across from each other

1792
01:46:42,880 --> 01:46:46,559
Speaker 1: on a filthy saddle blanket between them, quote, like the

1793
01:46:46,560 --> 01:46:50,040
Speaker 1: coil of a huge snake. Ruxtan writes, Since one of

1794
01:46:50,080 --> 01:46:53,840
Speaker 1: these budans, and they are eating it from opposite ends,

1795
01:46:54,280 --> 01:46:58,080
Speaker 1: So that quote, the serpent on the saddlecloth was dwindling

1796
01:46:58,080 --> 01:47:02,240
Speaker 1: from an anaconda to a modern sized rattlesnake. The two

1797
01:47:02,240 --> 01:47:04,640
Speaker 1: guys start hurrying to try to eat more of the

1798
01:47:04,680 --> 01:47:09,320
Speaker 1: bu dan than the other before they run out of intestine.

1799
01:47:09,400 --> 01:47:13,479
Speaker 1: Such were the culinary exploits of the mountain men. For them,

1800
01:47:13,680 --> 01:47:16,840
Speaker 1: food was more than just sustenance. It was a source

1801
01:47:16,880 --> 01:47:20,240
Speaker 1: of pleasure, a badge of honor, and a currency of

1802
01:47:20,360 --> 01:47:24,000
Speaker 1: camaraderie in a world where survival often hinged on the

1803
01:47:24,040 --> 01:47:28,600
Speaker 1: strength of one's stomach. But as one historian observed, the

1804
01:47:28,680 --> 01:47:32,280
Speaker 1: mountain man would often spend one month quote luxuriating in

1805
01:47:32,360 --> 01:47:36,000
Speaker 1: the wealth of buffalo meat, and the next quote reduced

1806
01:47:36,080 --> 01:47:40,200
Speaker 1: to the very brink of starvation. They got wild fruits

1807
01:47:40,240 --> 01:47:43,080
Speaker 1: when and where they could. Wild plums and service berries

1808
01:47:43,120 --> 01:47:46,839
Speaker 1: were favorites of Western travelers, but they lived a mostly

1809
01:47:47,000 --> 01:47:52,720
Speaker 1: carnivorous existence. They had a saying, meat's meat, which demonstrates

1810
01:47:52,720 --> 01:47:57,000
Speaker 1: a certain gastronomic open mindedness, the fact that its meat

1811
01:47:57,120 --> 01:47:59,880
Speaker 1: matters more than what kind of meat it is. But

1812
01:48:00,160 --> 01:48:04,080
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they didn't appreciate the idiosyncratic qualities of

1813
01:48:04,120 --> 01:48:08,920
Speaker 1: each Rufus Sage, an American journalists who traveled west to

1814
01:48:09,000 --> 01:48:12,280
Speaker 1: document the culture of the mountain men, shared a sentiment

1815
01:48:12,360 --> 01:48:16,280
Speaker 1: of the era on the qualities of prairie dogs. Quote

1816
01:48:16,439 --> 01:48:20,000
Speaker 1: the flesh of these animals is tender and quite palatable,

1817
01:48:20,320 --> 01:48:24,320
Speaker 1: and their oil is superior in fineness and absence from

1818
01:48:24,439 --> 01:48:29,080
Speaker 1: all grosser ingredients. As we know, the mountain men were

1819
01:48:29,120 --> 01:48:33,439
Speaker 1: living year round in the wilderness. They're staying mobile, enabling

1820
01:48:33,520 --> 01:48:36,040
Speaker 1: them to move from stream to stream in search of

1821
01:48:36,120 --> 01:48:39,479
Speaker 1: fresh beaver sign and they're limited in what they can

1822
01:48:39,560 --> 01:48:43,200
Speaker 1: carry with them in terms of supplies. So the difference

1823
01:48:43,240 --> 01:48:45,960
Speaker 1: between life and death was what sort of food they

1824
01:48:45,960 --> 01:48:49,040
Speaker 1: could pull from the land around them. Hunting, of course,

1825
01:48:49,160 --> 01:48:52,800
Speaker 1: offered the most practical solution to this challenge, and the

1826
01:48:52,840 --> 01:48:56,360
Speaker 1: mountain men were legendary for their ability to put away

1827
01:48:56,560 --> 01:49:01,240
Speaker 1: vast quantities of the meat they killed. William H. Ashley,

1828
01:49:01,439 --> 01:49:04,479
Speaker 1: who you'll remember was one of the partners behind the

1829
01:49:04,560 --> 01:49:07,960
Speaker 1: expedition that led to the creation of the rendezvous system

1830
01:49:08,000 --> 01:49:11,920
Speaker 1: in the first place, claim that quote nothing is actually

1831
01:49:12,000 --> 01:49:14,920
Speaker 1: necessary for the support of men in the wilderness than

1832
01:49:14,920 --> 01:49:18,240
Speaker 1: a plentiful supply of good fresh meat. It is all

1833
01:49:18,320 --> 01:49:23,080
Speaker 1: that our mountaineers ever require, or even seem to wish.

1834
01:49:23,560 --> 01:49:27,800
Speaker 1: Ashley drove the point home with additional clarity. Quote the

1835
01:49:27,840 --> 01:49:32,920
Speaker 1: circumstance of the uninterrupted health of these people, who generally

1836
01:49:33,000 --> 01:49:37,320
Speaker 1: eat unreasonable quantities of meat at their meals, proves it

1837
01:49:37,360 --> 01:49:41,360
Speaker 1: to be the most wholesome and best adapted food to

1838
01:49:41,439 --> 01:49:46,000
Speaker 1: the constitution of man. In the different concerns which I

1839
01:49:46,040 --> 01:49:49,040
Speaker 1: have had in the Indian country, where not less than

1840
01:49:49,080 --> 01:49:52,439
Speaker 1: one hundred men have been annually employed for the last

1841
01:49:52,479 --> 01:49:56,760
Speaker 1: four years and subsists all together upon meat, I have

1842
01:49:56,920 --> 01:50:00,880
Speaker 1: not known at any time a single instance of bilious

1843
01:50:00,920 --> 01:50:04,759
Speaker 1: fever among them. That means a fever with nausea and vomiting,

1844
01:50:04,880 --> 01:50:08,640
Speaker 1: like the flu or any other disease prevalent in the

1845
01:50:08,680 --> 01:50:12,720
Speaker 1: settled parts of our country, except a few instances, and

1846
01:50:12,800 --> 01:50:17,320
Speaker 1: but very few of slight fevers produced by colds or

1847
01:50:17,439 --> 01:50:22,280
Speaker 1: rheumatic affections contracted while in the discharge of guard duty

1848
01:50:22,560 --> 01:50:28,360
Speaker 1: on cold and inclement nights. Of course, Ashley's observation about

1849
01:50:28,400 --> 01:50:32,160
Speaker 1: a lack of infectious disease is likely attributed as much

1850
01:50:32,479 --> 01:50:36,120
Speaker 1: to a lack of outside contact as it was to diet.

1851
01:50:36,720 --> 01:50:40,439
Speaker 1: The mountain men lived in quarantine bubbles to borrow a

1852
01:50:40,439 --> 01:50:44,160
Speaker 1: phrase from the COVID nineteen pandemic, But it wasn't just

1853
01:50:44,240 --> 01:50:47,719
Speaker 1: these white trappers who believed in the supremacy of living

1854
01:50:47,760 --> 01:50:52,000
Speaker 1: off wild game. The planes tribes had long recognized the

1855
01:50:52,120 --> 01:50:55,759
Speaker 1: power of eating meat, and even looked down upon tribes

1856
01:50:55,800 --> 01:51:01,120
Speaker 1: who practiced agriculture or relied on white man's food. Again

1857
01:51:01,320 --> 01:51:04,439
Speaker 1: and again in the historic record you find accounts from

1858
01:51:04,479 --> 01:51:08,280
Speaker 1: white Easterners coming to the West and experiencing a new

1859
01:51:08,400 --> 01:51:12,599
Speaker 1: vitality when adopting the strict diet of wild meat that

1860
01:51:12,720 --> 01:51:17,240
Speaker 1: supported Native American nomadic hunters. A few decades after the

1861
01:51:17,280 --> 01:51:21,719
Speaker 1: close of the Mountain Men era, when sickly malnourished veterans

1862
01:51:21,720 --> 01:51:24,360
Speaker 1: of the Civil War were coming west to try to

1863
01:51:24,400 --> 01:51:28,519
Speaker 1: expel Indians from their buffalo hunting grounds, they encountered in

1864
01:51:28,560 --> 01:51:32,400
Speaker 1: their enemies a level of strength and physical endurance that

1865
01:51:32,439 --> 01:51:38,080
Speaker 1: they could overcome only through advanced firepower and superior numbers.

1866
01:51:38,520 --> 01:51:41,840
Speaker 1: One on one, a white soldier fed on beans and

1867
01:51:41,920 --> 01:51:46,080
Speaker 1: salt pork en hardened bread riddled with larva was little

1868
01:51:46,120 --> 01:51:51,000
Speaker 1: match for a Native combatant raised on buffalo meat. In

1869
01:51:51,120 --> 01:51:54,439
Speaker 1: Evan S. Connell's Son of the Morning Star, which is,

1870
01:51:54,479 --> 01:51:57,519
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the best thing that ever has been,

1871
01:51:58,040 --> 01:52:02,560
Speaker 1: or likely ever will be, written, about General Custer's humiliating

1872
01:52:02,600 --> 01:52:06,040
Speaker 1: defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The author

1873
01:52:06,120 --> 01:52:10,439
Speaker 1: describes an unk Papa Sioux warrior named Gall, who played

1874
01:52:10,439 --> 01:52:14,120
Speaker 1: a central role in that fight. Gall happened to have

1875
01:52:14,200 --> 01:52:20,000
Speaker 1: his portrait taken in the infancy of photography. Conall writes, quote,

1876
01:52:20,400 --> 01:52:24,200
Speaker 1: Gall was a man of such explosive strength that he

1877
01:52:24,320 --> 01:52:29,880
Speaker 1: fairly cracks the photographer's glass. Every plate reveals a leader

1878
01:52:30,160 --> 01:52:35,479
Speaker 1: of prodigious psychic and physical energy. Full length photos make

1879
01:52:35,560 --> 01:52:39,040
Speaker 1: him look squat with short, bent legs and a torso

1880
01:52:39,479 --> 01:52:42,960
Speaker 1: the size of a beer keg. Twelve years after the

1881
01:52:43,040 --> 01:52:46,240
Speaker 1: Great Fight, he stepped on a scale. He weighed two

1882
01:52:46,280 --> 01:52:50,040
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty pounds at the Little Big Horn, with

1883
01:52:50,160 --> 01:52:53,320
Speaker 1: white stripes painted on his arms and a hatchet in

1884
01:52:53,360 --> 01:52:56,960
Speaker 1: one thick hand, and the fullness of manhood. He must

1885
01:52:57,040 --> 01:53:01,400
Speaker 1: have galloped through Custer's desperate troopers like a wolf through

1886
01:53:01,439 --> 01:53:06,520
Speaker 1: a flock of sheep. How's that for a buffalo meat testimonial?

1887
01:53:07,360 --> 01:53:09,880
Speaker 1: And when it came to the preferences of the mountain men,

1888
01:53:10,439 --> 01:53:15,040
Speaker 1: buffalo was top choice. With their wooly hides, massive hump

1889
01:53:15,080 --> 01:53:19,000
Speaker 1: and sharply curved horns, these creatures roamed the great plains

1890
01:53:19,040 --> 01:53:22,639
Speaker 1: and inner mountain valleys of the rockies in herds numbering

1891
01:53:22,760 --> 01:53:26,200
Speaker 1: in the thousands. At the beginning of the mountain Man era,

1892
01:53:26,640 --> 01:53:30,880
Speaker 1: the total population was perhaps as high as thirty million.

1893
01:53:31,680 --> 01:53:36,080
Speaker 1: The animals were seemingly everywhere in mountain Man country, so

1894
01:53:36,240 --> 01:53:40,040
Speaker 1: much so that their absence, rather than presents, would be

1895
01:53:40,120 --> 01:53:43,439
Speaker 1: noted in journals, unless, of course, they were two present.

1896
01:53:44,000 --> 01:53:49,719
Speaker 1: Then you'll encounter mentions of an annoying abundance. One traveler wrote, quote,

1897
01:53:49,880 --> 01:53:53,320
Speaker 1: during our progress, we were obliged to keep men in

1898
01:53:53,479 --> 01:53:58,639
Speaker 1: advance to frighten the buffaloes in our path. That day,

1899
01:53:58,800 --> 01:54:03,080
Speaker 1: the author mentioned his party killed one hundred and ten buffalo,

1900
01:54:03,520 --> 01:54:07,920
Speaker 1: saving only the tongues and hump ribs. I could fill

1901
01:54:07,960 --> 01:54:11,919
Speaker 1: this whole chapter with nothing but accounts of people trying

1902
01:54:11,960 --> 01:54:14,920
Speaker 1: to describe the immensity of the herds, and I wouldn't

1903
01:54:14,960 --> 01:54:17,439
Speaker 1: be able to fit them all in. Here's just one

1904
01:54:17,960 --> 01:54:21,719
Speaker 1: about a herd of unfathomable size trying to cross a river.

1905
01:54:22,240 --> 01:54:26,800
Speaker 1: There was quote such a dense and continuous column that

1906
01:54:26,880 --> 01:54:31,080
Speaker 1: it formed a temporary dam, causing the current to quote

1907
01:54:31,200 --> 01:54:34,760
Speaker 1: rise and rush over their backs. The roaring and rushing

1908
01:54:34,880 --> 01:54:37,800
Speaker 1: sound of one of these vast herds crossing a river

1909
01:54:38,240 --> 01:54:41,560
Speaker 1: may sometimes in a still night be heard for miles.

1910
01:54:42,400 --> 01:54:45,480
Speaker 1: In my own book about the animals American Buffalo, in

1911
01:54:45,520 --> 01:54:48,920
Speaker 1: Search of a Lost Icon, I described the immensities through

1912
01:54:48,960 --> 01:54:53,400
Speaker 1: witness accounts of mass buffalo drownings that occurred as a

1913
01:54:53,440 --> 01:54:58,400
Speaker 1: result of these chaotic river crossings. In May seventeen ninety five,

1914
01:54:58,520 --> 01:55:02,640
Speaker 1: a man counted seven thousand, six hundred and thirty that

1915
01:55:02,840 --> 01:55:07,960
Speaker 1: drowned en Mass in Saskatchewan. In eighteen twenty nine, another

1916
01:55:08,040 --> 01:55:11,520
Speaker 1: man in Saskatchewan counted ten thousand dead in the river.

1917
01:55:12,160 --> 01:55:15,840
Speaker 1: In the early eighteen thirties, a traveler along the Missouri

1918
01:55:15,920 --> 01:55:21,840
Speaker 1: River found multiple sleughs holding eighteen hundred or more drowned carcasses.

1919
01:55:22,440 --> 01:55:26,080
Speaker 1: Another traveler watched thousands of carcasses drift by in a

1920
01:55:26,200 --> 01:55:29,560
Speaker 1: river in a continuous line, where the stench was so

1921
01:55:29,720 --> 01:55:33,280
Speaker 1: bad he couldn't eat dinner. The Indians he traveled with

1922
01:55:33,440 --> 01:55:38,160
Speaker 1: told him every spring was about the same. Given the

1923
01:55:38,200 --> 01:55:41,400
Speaker 1: sheer abundance of these animals at the time, there aren't

1924
01:55:41,440 --> 01:55:44,600
Speaker 1: a lot of mountain man stories about wild and daring

1925
01:55:44,680 --> 01:55:48,040
Speaker 1: buffalo hunts. For the most part, they rode up on them,

1926
01:55:48,320 --> 01:55:51,200
Speaker 1: or did a short down wind sneak on them and

1927
01:55:51,240 --> 01:55:53,960
Speaker 1: shot them through the lungs. Of the rifle slug. There

1928
01:55:54,120 --> 01:55:57,720
Speaker 1: just wasn't much to it. Hunting buffalo was often more

1929
01:55:57,920 --> 01:56:02,000
Speaker 1: of a grocery run than anything else. The mountain men

1930
01:56:02,080 --> 01:56:05,360
Speaker 1: butchered buffalo in what was known as the Indian manner,

1931
01:56:05,720 --> 01:56:09,880
Speaker 1: which wasn't terribly dissimilar to what's known as the gutlass

1932
01:56:09,880 --> 01:56:14,120
Speaker 1: method among big game hunters today, positioning the animal on

1933
01:56:14,200 --> 01:56:17,520
Speaker 1: its belly with the knees folded and legs propped out

1934
01:56:17,560 --> 01:56:20,720
Speaker 1: on either side. To hold the body upright. They'd cock

1935
01:56:20,840 --> 01:56:23,839
Speaker 1: the neck around sideways so it looked like the animal

1936
01:56:24,040 --> 01:56:28,080
Speaker 1: was watching its back trail. This stabilized the animal from

1937
01:56:28,200 --> 01:56:31,320
Speaker 1: rolling in that direction. You could wedge a rock or

1938
01:56:31,360 --> 01:56:34,520
Speaker 1: an old buffalo skull opposite the head to prop it

1939
01:56:34,600 --> 01:56:38,240
Speaker 1: up on the other side. It's hard to generalize about

1940
01:56:38,280 --> 01:56:40,800
Speaker 1: what the mountain men would and wouldn't use from a

1941
01:56:40,800 --> 01:56:44,320
Speaker 1: buffalo carcass once they got started, because it depended a

1942
01:56:44,360 --> 01:56:48,000
Speaker 1: little bit on personal taste and depended a lot on

1943
01:56:48,160 --> 01:56:51,400
Speaker 1: how hard up for food they were. They got picky

1944
01:56:51,480 --> 01:56:55,680
Speaker 1: when resources were abundant. One observer described how men were

1945
01:56:55,800 --> 01:57:00,160
Speaker 1: quote rendered dainty by profusion and would cook only the

1946
01:57:00,320 --> 01:57:05,280
Speaker 1: choicest pieces. So in relatively normal times, when a buffalo

1947
01:57:05,400 --> 01:57:07,920
Speaker 1: was meant to provide a knight's meal for a small

1948
01:57:08,000 --> 01:57:11,600
Speaker 1: band of trappers who weren't worried about what they'd eat tomorrow.

1949
01:57:12,080 --> 01:57:16,480
Speaker 1: Here's what might happen. They'd open up the animal's hide

1950
01:57:16,520 --> 01:57:19,560
Speaker 1: with a cut along the spine. Then they'd peel the

1951
01:57:19,640 --> 01:57:23,640
Speaker 1: hide back on either side, exposing the backstraps, and also

1952
01:57:24,080 --> 01:57:27,960
Speaker 1: a sometimes two inch thick layer of fat along each

1953
01:57:28,040 --> 01:57:31,040
Speaker 1: side of the hump that they would call the depui.

1954
01:57:31,880 --> 01:57:34,400
Speaker 1: This layer of fat was a favorite cut of the

1955
01:57:34,440 --> 01:57:38,920
Speaker 1: mountain men and native people alike. Beneath the fat were

1956
01:57:38,960 --> 01:57:43,040
Speaker 1: the hump ribs, the protrusions of muscle on either side

1957
01:57:43,080 --> 01:57:47,360
Speaker 1: of a buffalo's spine just behind its head. Removing the

1958
01:57:47,440 --> 01:57:51,080
Speaker 1: hump ribs required the use of a hatchet or tomahawk.

1959
01:57:51,800 --> 01:57:56,560
Speaker 1: The Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg described using a buffalo's legs

1960
01:57:56,720 --> 01:57:59,880
Speaker 1: as a mallet to bust off the hump ribs, and

1961
01:58:00,120 --> 01:58:02,920
Speaker 1: he pointed out that the hump ribs were the only

1962
01:58:03,120 --> 01:58:07,800
Speaker 1: bones he'd typically remove from the kill site. Same with

1963
01:58:07,920 --> 01:58:11,920
Speaker 1: the mountain men, who'd often satisfy themselves with just this

1964
01:58:12,120 --> 01:58:16,520
Speaker 1: cut alone, plus maybe the tongue removed through the triangle

1965
01:58:16,600 --> 01:58:20,880
Speaker 1: of soft hide underneath the animal's lower jaw. If more

1966
01:58:20,920 --> 01:58:24,400
Speaker 1: meat was kneeded, or if buffalo were scarce, they would

1967
01:58:24,480 --> 01:58:27,480
Speaker 1: de bone the front and rear quarters as well and

1968
01:58:27,600 --> 01:58:30,720
Speaker 1: bundle it all up, maybe twenty large pieces or so

1969
01:58:31,360 --> 01:58:38,120
Speaker 1: inside folded sacks made from the buffalo's hide. Depending a

1970
01:58:38,240 --> 01:58:42,160
Speaker 1: mood and taste and need, they might also remove the

1971
01:58:42,200 --> 01:58:45,880
Speaker 1: fleece a word for additional layers of fat found beneath

1972
01:58:45,920 --> 01:58:49,640
Speaker 1: the hide. They'd take the femurs and shin bones to

1973
01:58:49,720 --> 01:58:53,040
Speaker 1: be roasted in coals before smacking them open with a

1974
01:58:53,160 --> 01:58:56,720
Speaker 1: rock or hatchet to get out the marrow. They'd crack

1975
01:58:56,800 --> 01:58:59,920
Speaker 1: the skull open with a hatchet and eat the brains raw.

1976
01:59:00,480 --> 01:59:04,000
Speaker 1: They'd drink the blood. They might mimic the planes tribes

1977
01:59:04,040 --> 01:59:08,640
Speaker 1: and drink the mother's milk from ripened mammaries. They'd squeeze

1978
01:59:08,640 --> 01:59:11,480
Speaker 1: the contents of the gall bladder over the liver and

1979
01:59:11,600 --> 01:59:15,760
Speaker 1: eat it raw as well. Sometimes they just drank the

1980
01:59:15,840 --> 01:59:20,160
Speaker 1: gall straight, as one account suggests quote a man could

1981
01:59:20,160 --> 01:59:23,080
Speaker 1: get quite a glow if he took it straight on

1982
01:59:23,160 --> 01:59:37,480
Speaker 1: an empty stomach. The mountain men did not travel with

1983
01:59:37,560 --> 01:59:41,360
Speaker 1: an assortment of cast iron pots and pans and wire grates,

1984
01:59:41,720 --> 01:59:45,560
Speaker 1: which would have been too heavy and cumbersome. Instead, they

1985
01:59:45,600 --> 01:59:49,920
Speaker 1: had a minimalist kit. They demonstrated a fondness for spit

1986
01:59:50,080 --> 01:59:53,720
Speaker 1: roasting meat, often skewing great hunks of buffalo on a

1987
01:59:53,760 --> 01:59:57,440
Speaker 1: green stick and slow cooking it over the glowing embers

1988
01:59:57,480 --> 02:00:01,360
Speaker 1: of a campfire. Out on the prayer, where firewood was

1989
02:00:01,400 --> 02:00:06,160
Speaker 1: hard to find, Buffalo dung served as a substitute. A

1990
02:00:06,200 --> 02:00:09,400
Speaker 1: common technique would be to alternate chunks of fat with

1991
02:00:09,520 --> 02:00:12,960
Speaker 1: chunks of lean meat on a sharpened stick, which would

1992
02:00:12,960 --> 02:00:16,120
Speaker 1: then either be held over the fire or pushed into

1993
02:00:16,160 --> 02:00:20,320
Speaker 1: the ground next to it. In other instances, a big

1994
02:00:20,400 --> 02:00:23,080
Speaker 1: hunk of meat would simply be placed in the coals

1995
02:00:23,120 --> 02:00:27,960
Speaker 1: of a fire directly the mountain man Osbourne Russell described

1996
02:00:28,000 --> 02:00:32,080
Speaker 1: a camp keeper rolling out a quote ponderous mass of

1997
02:00:32,200 --> 02:00:35,880
Speaker 1: bull beef meaning meat from a male buffalo, from a

1998
02:00:35,960 --> 02:00:39,680
Speaker 1: smoldering fire pit, and then smacking it with a club

1999
02:00:40,160 --> 02:00:43,640
Speaker 1: to knock the ashes off of it. Each whack with

2000
02:00:43,720 --> 02:00:46,160
Speaker 1: the club made the chunk of meat fly in the

2001
02:00:46,240 --> 02:00:51,520
Speaker 1: air quote like a huge ball of gum elastic. Once

2002
02:00:51,560 --> 02:00:54,320
Speaker 1: the man dropped his club, the others knew it was

2003
02:00:54,360 --> 02:00:58,440
Speaker 1: time to pull out their knives and dig in. Most

2004
02:00:58,440 --> 02:01:03,720
Speaker 1: accounts suggest that buffalo was typically consumed rare, probably in

2005
02:01:03,760 --> 02:01:06,680
Speaker 1: part because they were too impatient to wait very long

2006
02:01:06,720 --> 02:01:10,240
Speaker 1: for their meals, but also because game meat dries out

2007
02:01:10,320 --> 02:01:15,000
Speaker 1: quickly when overcooked. John Ball wrote a feasting on buffalo

2008
02:01:15,080 --> 02:01:20,200
Speaker 1: meat quote uncooked or slightly roasted on the coals, taking

2009
02:01:20,200 --> 02:01:23,160
Speaker 1: a bite of the fat part with the lean, eating

2010
02:01:23,200 --> 02:01:28,240
Speaker 1: it like bread and cheese. In another instance, George Ruxton

2011
02:01:28,320 --> 02:01:33,680
Speaker 1: observed several men quote retreating from the campfire to enjoy

2012
02:01:33,880 --> 02:01:39,600
Speaker 1: solo their half cooked morsels. Trappers also made jerky and

2013
02:01:39,720 --> 02:01:44,320
Speaker 1: pemmican to preserve their harvests against spoilage. To make jerky

2014
02:01:44,560 --> 02:01:47,640
Speaker 1: or jerk, thin strips of meat cut along the grain

2015
02:01:47,720 --> 02:01:51,120
Speaker 1: would be hung on racks of cottonwood branches or willow stems.

2016
02:01:51,720 --> 02:01:55,200
Speaker 1: Sun Wind and a slow fire underneath the racks would

2017
02:01:55,280 --> 02:01:58,640
Speaker 1: dry out these lean strips into a product that kept

2018
02:01:58,720 --> 02:02:02,720
Speaker 1: well in the aired climb of the west. Pemmican would

2019
02:02:02,720 --> 02:02:06,400
Speaker 1: be produced by removing connective tissue from the jerky, which

2020
02:02:06,480 --> 02:02:10,120
Speaker 1: was then pounded into a sawdust like powder using a

2021
02:02:10,160 --> 02:02:14,040
Speaker 1: wooden mortar. The dried powdered meat would then be mixed

2022
02:02:14,080 --> 02:02:17,800
Speaker 1: with melted fat and or bone marrow inside a sewn

2023
02:02:17,880 --> 02:02:21,720
Speaker 1: up bag made from buffalo hide, with the stitching sealed

2024
02:02:21,760 --> 02:02:26,600
Speaker 1: with buffalo fat like seam sealer on your tent. Other times,

2025
02:02:26,640 --> 02:02:29,760
Speaker 1: the meat, dust and fat or melted marrow would be

2026
02:02:29,840 --> 02:02:33,240
Speaker 1: packed into separate sacks or, as was often the case,

2027
02:02:33,520 --> 02:02:38,240
Speaker 1: buffalo bladders, and then mixed together at meal time. One

2028
02:02:38,240 --> 02:02:42,280
Speaker 1: account mentioned that pemmican was quote used throughout the country

2029
02:02:42,640 --> 02:02:46,920
Speaker 1: as familiarly as we use bread in the civilized world.

2030
02:02:48,000 --> 02:02:51,880
Speaker 1: Of course, buffalo was rarely the only thing on the

2031
02:02:51,920 --> 02:02:56,920
Speaker 1: mountain man's menu. Elk was probably the second most commonly

2032
02:02:56,960 --> 02:03:01,040
Speaker 1: eaten meat after buffalo, Either that or, depending on the area,

2033
02:03:01,480 --> 02:03:04,920
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep they ate, mule de or two and bears

2034
02:03:05,000 --> 02:03:09,800
Speaker 1: both black and grizzly, and pronghorn or antelope. Mountain lion

2035
02:03:09,920 --> 02:03:14,800
Speaker 1: meat or painter meat was especially prized. There were far

2036
02:03:15,200 --> 02:03:18,200
Speaker 1: far more big horn sheep on the landscape back then,

2037
02:03:18,680 --> 02:03:21,840
Speaker 1: before huge numbers of the animals were killed off by

2038
02:03:21,840 --> 02:03:26,280
Speaker 1: a strain of pneumonia introduced to the West by domesticated

2039
02:03:26,360 --> 02:03:30,480
Speaker 1: sheep from Europe. Places that now hold decent herds of

2040
02:03:30,520 --> 02:03:35,480
Speaker 1: elk used to hold tremendous herds of big horns osbourne

2041
02:03:35,520 --> 02:03:39,080
Speaker 1: and russell were called sitting atop a mountain where quote

2042
02:03:39,320 --> 02:03:43,640
Speaker 1: and I could scarcely be cast in any direction around,

2043
02:03:43,880 --> 02:03:48,520
Speaker 1: or above or below without seeing fat sheep gazing at

2044
02:03:48,640 --> 02:03:53,360
Speaker 1: us with anxious curiosity, or lazily feeding among the rocks

2045
02:03:53,360 --> 02:03:58,640
Speaker 1: and scrubby pines. Numerous accounts compare the meat of bighorn

2046
02:03:58,960 --> 02:04:03,000
Speaker 1: or mountain sheep as they were known to mutton. Frequently.

2047
02:04:03,160 --> 02:04:06,720
Speaker 1: Stories about killing sheep remark on the difficulty of getting

2048
02:04:06,760 --> 02:04:11,280
Speaker 1: a shot at and recovering these animals. William H. Ashley

2049
02:04:11,320 --> 02:04:14,720
Speaker 1: observed that quote they were so wild, and the country

2050
02:04:14,840 --> 02:04:19,919
Speaker 1: so rugged, we found it impossible to approach them. Likewise,

2051
02:04:20,000 --> 02:04:23,720
Speaker 1: the artist George Catlan observed that bighorn sheep had a

2052
02:04:23,760 --> 02:04:28,120
Speaker 1: tendency to make themselves quote secure from their enemies, to

2053
02:04:28,200 --> 02:04:31,800
Speaker 1: whom the sides and slopes of these bluffs around which

2054
02:04:31,840 --> 02:04:37,800
Speaker 1: they fearlessly bound are nearly inaccessible. Pursuing these creatures was

2055
02:04:37,880 --> 02:04:43,280
Speaker 1: quote attended with great danger. Osborne and Russell wrote, especially

2056
02:04:43,360 --> 02:04:47,120
Speaker 1: in the winter season, when the rocks and precipices are

2057
02:04:47,160 --> 02:04:52,440
Speaker 1: covered with snow and ice, these efforts were worth the rewards. However,

2058
02:04:53,480 --> 02:04:57,520
Speaker 1: Washington Irving noted that the quote gormands of the camp

2059
02:04:57,640 --> 02:05:01,600
Speaker 1: pronounced big horns to have the flo of excellent mutton,

2060
02:05:02,400 --> 02:05:06,360
Speaker 1: while another count states that sheep were known as quote

2061
02:05:06,760 --> 02:05:11,000
Speaker 1: the game part excellence of the Rocky Mountains, which takes

2062
02:05:11,160 --> 02:05:16,760
Speaker 1: precedence in a commescible point of view. George Ruxton declared

2063
02:05:16,800 --> 02:05:20,440
Speaker 1: it to be a choice supply of meat, certainly the

2064
02:05:20,480 --> 02:05:25,600
Speaker 1: best I had eaten in the mountains. One winter, Osborne

2065
02:05:25,640 --> 02:05:29,280
Speaker 1: Russell and some fifteen of his fellow mountain men attempted

2066
02:05:29,280 --> 02:05:31,800
Speaker 1: to stay as long as they could at a place

2067
02:05:31,840 --> 02:05:36,480
Speaker 1: they called Mutton Hill, forty miles southeast of Fort Hall

2068
02:05:36,800 --> 02:05:40,960
Speaker 1: in southeast Idaho. There they lived on big horn sheep

2069
02:05:41,320 --> 02:05:44,520
Speaker 1: until heavy snows drove the trappers out of the area

2070
02:05:44,680 --> 02:05:49,120
Speaker 1: in February. Another time, in eighteen thirty nine, Russell and

2071
02:05:49,160 --> 02:05:52,280
Speaker 1: some other mountain men attempted to overwinter at Fort Hall,

2072
02:05:52,600 --> 02:05:55,800
Speaker 1: where they figured they could live off buffalo meat. When

2073
02:05:55,840 --> 02:05:59,360
Speaker 1: they got tired of dried buffalo, instead of going lower

2074
02:05:59,440 --> 02:06:02,960
Speaker 1: to seek milder weather, they actually push higher into the

2075
02:06:03,000 --> 02:06:05,840
Speaker 1: mountains to the head of the south fork of the

2076
02:06:05,880 --> 02:06:09,760
Speaker 1: Snake River, and quote spent the remainder of the winter

2077
02:06:09,960 --> 02:06:15,440
Speaker 1: killing and eating mountain sheep. While Ruxton preferred big horn,

2078
02:06:15,640 --> 02:06:19,520
Speaker 1: he was cool with pronghorn as well. The animal, he wrote,

2079
02:06:19,600 --> 02:06:24,000
Speaker 1: quote affords the hunter a sweet and nutritious meat, when

2080
02:06:24,040 --> 02:06:27,560
Speaker 1: that of nearly every other description of game from the

2081
02:06:27,600 --> 02:06:31,080
Speaker 1: poorness and scarcity of the grass during the winter, is

2082
02:06:31,200 --> 02:06:37,080
Speaker 1: barely eatable. Among those barely eatable critters, according to Ruxton,

2083
02:06:37,440 --> 02:06:41,640
Speaker 1: were elk killed midwinter. Quote. The meat of the elk

2084
02:06:41,760 --> 02:06:46,000
Speaker 1: is strong flavored, and more like poor bull than venison.

2085
02:06:46,320 --> 02:06:49,160
Speaker 1: It is only eatable when the animal is fat and

2086
02:06:49,240 --> 02:06:53,320
Speaker 1: in good condition. At other times it is strong, tasted

2087
02:06:53,760 --> 02:06:58,080
Speaker 1: and stringy. The three elk Jedediah Smith killed in mid

2088
02:06:58,160 --> 02:07:01,960
Speaker 1: June of eighteen twenty eight were probably in great shape,

2089
02:07:02,440 --> 02:07:05,560
Speaker 1: as he recorded that quote, men could be seen in

2090
02:07:05,640 --> 02:07:08,800
Speaker 1: every part of the camp with meat raw and half

2091
02:07:08,920 --> 02:07:13,840
Speaker 1: roasted in their hands, devouring it with the greatest alacrity.

2092
02:07:15,000 --> 02:07:19,120
Speaker 1: Bear meat, both black and grizzly, was well regarded. According

2093
02:07:19,160 --> 02:07:22,920
Speaker 1: to Rufus Sage, bear meat quote to be tender and good,

2094
02:07:23,120 --> 02:07:27,800
Speaker 1: should be boiled at least ten hours. Sage recounted an

2095
02:07:27,800 --> 02:07:30,360
Speaker 1: episode when a bear was drawn into camp by the

2096
02:07:30,400 --> 02:07:33,720
Speaker 1: smell of fresh buffalo meat. After several of the men

2097
02:07:33,760 --> 02:07:37,000
Speaker 1: shot and wounded it, the bear charged and spooked off

2098
02:07:37,040 --> 02:07:41,280
Speaker 1: their horses, while the trappers climbed trees for safety until

2099
02:07:41,280 --> 02:07:43,800
Speaker 1: one managed to kill the bear with a pistol shot

2100
02:07:43,880 --> 02:07:48,000
Speaker 1: to the head. They then butchered there quote greasy victim,

2101
02:07:48,800 --> 02:07:52,600
Speaker 1: and enjoyed a ample feast of bear's liver, heart and

2102
02:07:52,720 --> 02:07:57,760
Speaker 1: kidneys basted with fat. Then they filled a large kettle

2103
02:07:58,160 --> 02:08:01,800
Speaker 1: with its fleece and ribs, which they boiled overnight and

2104
02:08:01,960 --> 02:08:06,800
Speaker 1: enjoyed the following day. Osbourne Russell described the preparation of

2105
02:08:06,840 --> 02:08:11,440
Speaker 1: a stew made from two fat grizzly bears. Kettles filled

2106
02:08:11,480 --> 02:08:14,160
Speaker 1: with bear meat and fat were hung over a fire,

2107
02:08:14,640 --> 02:08:17,200
Speaker 1: and the group appointed one of the old trappers to

2108
02:08:17,280 --> 02:08:20,720
Speaker 1: determine when it was done. Having not had much to

2109
02:08:20,760 --> 02:08:24,160
Speaker 1: eat for the past few days, Russell noted that quote,

2110
02:08:24,480 --> 02:08:27,360
Speaker 1: I thought with my comrades that it took longer to

2111
02:08:27,480 --> 02:08:32,760
Speaker 1: cook than any meal I ever saw prepared. Beaver carcasses,

2112
02:08:33,000 --> 02:08:36,400
Speaker 1: being as central to a mountain man's existence as grease

2113
02:08:36,520 --> 02:08:40,400
Speaker 1: to a short order cook, trappers had their preferred ways

2114
02:08:40,480 --> 02:08:44,280
Speaker 1: of dealing with them. The mountain man's passion for beaver

2115
02:08:44,440 --> 02:08:48,480
Speaker 1: tail is well documented. When you pierce a beaver tail

2116
02:08:48,560 --> 02:08:50,920
Speaker 1: on a skewer and let it roast next to a fire,

2117
02:08:51,360 --> 02:08:55,520
Speaker 1: the blackish scaly skinned bubbles and peels away to reveal

2118
02:08:55,560 --> 02:08:59,760
Speaker 1: a tailbone encased and gristle in fat. That's not unlike

2119
02:09:00,160 --> 02:09:03,280
Speaker 1: someone might leave behind on their plate after enjoying a

2120
02:09:03,360 --> 02:09:07,800
Speaker 1: steak during lean times of eating poor or thin game meat,

2121
02:09:08,200 --> 02:09:12,120
Speaker 1: that fat would have been heavenly. As one account described it,

2122
02:09:12,560 --> 02:09:16,440
Speaker 1: the beaver tail was quote considered even a greater dainty

2123
02:09:16,560 --> 02:09:19,680
Speaker 1: than the tongue or the marrow bone of a buffalo.

2124
02:09:20,880 --> 02:09:23,640
Speaker 1: We get another picture of what hungry mountain men were

2125
02:09:23,680 --> 02:09:27,280
Speaker 1: forced to eat from the trapper James O. Paddy, who

2126
02:09:27,360 --> 02:09:30,400
Speaker 1: was born in Kentucky and worked the beaver streams of

2127
02:09:30,440 --> 02:09:34,000
Speaker 1: the Southwest in the late eighteen twenties. He was a

2128
02:09:34,040 --> 02:09:37,520
Speaker 1: fellow I mentioned earlier who cleaned up while trapping on

2129
02:09:37,560 --> 02:09:42,760
Speaker 1: the lower Colorado River, catching thirty six beavers and forty sets.

2130
02:09:43,320 --> 02:09:46,800
Speaker 1: At one point while traveling through some tough country, Paddy

2131
02:09:46,840 --> 02:09:49,320
Speaker 1: and his party got caught for four and a half

2132
02:09:49,560 --> 02:09:53,040
Speaker 1: days without anything to eat, except for a small jack

2133
02:09:53,160 --> 02:09:56,520
Speaker 1: rabbit caught by his dog. It didn't go far. When

2134
02:09:56,600 --> 02:10:01,480
Speaker 1: split among seven men, Patty noted that we were all

2135
02:10:01,520 --> 02:10:05,600
Speaker 1: reluctant to begin to partake of the horse flesh, but

2136
02:10:05,640 --> 02:10:10,560
Speaker 1: they apparently got over whatever uneasiness they felt. Unfortunately, they

2137
02:10:10,640 --> 02:10:14,280
Speaker 1: found that quote the actual thing without bread or salt

2138
02:10:14,400 --> 02:10:18,879
Speaker 1: was as bad as the anticipation of it. Later, Patty's

2139
02:10:18,960 --> 02:10:22,400
Speaker 1: men would kill and eat a raven, which he described

2140
02:10:22,480 --> 02:10:27,760
Speaker 1: as a nauseous bird with unsavory flesh, a buzzard which

2141
02:10:27,920 --> 02:10:32,880
Speaker 1: was disagreeable, and finally, after a bit of heartbreak, a dog.

2142
02:10:33,680 --> 02:10:37,360
Speaker 1: The men drew lots like drawing straws to decide who

2143
02:10:37,440 --> 02:10:41,880
Speaker 1: would be responsible for killing their canine companion. But Paddy

2144
02:10:42,000 --> 02:10:48,360
Speaker 1: noted that the meat was sweet, nutritive, and strengthening rufus sage,

2145
02:10:48,400 --> 02:10:52,440
Speaker 1: couldn't in good conscience hide his affinity for dog meat.

2146
02:10:53,000 --> 02:10:56,560
Speaker 1: Quote justice impels me to say, the flesh of a

2147
02:10:56,600 --> 02:11:00,720
Speaker 1: fat Indian dog, suitably cooked, is not inferior to fresh pork,

2148
02:11:01,120 --> 02:11:04,280
Speaker 1: And by placing side by side select parts of the two,

2149
02:11:04,840 --> 02:11:07,800
Speaker 1: it would be no easy task, even for a good

2150
02:11:07,880 --> 02:11:12,200
Speaker 1: judge to tell the difference whether they liked it or not.

2151
02:11:12,440 --> 02:11:13,440
Speaker 2: The mountain Men.

2152
02:11:13,320 --> 02:11:16,680
Speaker 1: Would have had a hard time avoiding dog because some

2153
02:11:16,720 --> 02:11:20,480
Speaker 1: of the tribes they interacted with would honor visitors by

2154
02:11:20,520 --> 02:11:24,920
Speaker 1: preparing a meal of dog. Right after the mountain Man

2155
02:11:24,960 --> 02:11:29,080
Speaker 1: era in eighteen forty six, the writer and historian Francis

2156
02:11:29,200 --> 02:11:33,480
Speaker 1: Parkman partook of the meal with the sioux. He described

2157
02:11:33,480 --> 02:11:38,480
Speaker 1: the ceremony rather unceremoniously. A woman with a stone headed

2158
02:11:38,520 --> 02:11:43,200
Speaker 1: mallet approached a quote litter of well grown black puppies

2159
02:11:43,520 --> 02:11:47,680
Speaker 1: comfortably nested among some buffalo robes. Seizing one of them

2160
02:11:47,720 --> 02:11:51,280
Speaker 1: by the hind paw, she dragged him out, and, carrying

2161
02:11:51,360 --> 02:11:54,240
Speaker 1: him to the entrance of the lodge, hammered him on

2162
02:11:54,280 --> 02:11:57,520
Speaker 1: the head till she killed him. Holding the puppy by

2163
02:11:57,560 --> 02:12:00,680
Speaker 1: the legs, she was swinging him to and fro through

2164
02:12:00,720 --> 02:12:04,160
Speaker 1: the blaze of a fire until the hair was singed off.

2165
02:12:04,640 --> 02:12:08,600
Speaker 1: This done, she unsheathed her knife and cut him into

2166
02:12:08,640 --> 02:12:12,240
Speaker 1: small pieces, which she dropped into a kettle to boil.

2167
02:12:12,920 --> 02:12:15,760
Speaker 1: In a few moments, a large wooden dish was set

2168
02:12:15,840 --> 02:12:20,960
Speaker 1: before us, filled with this delicate preparation. A dog feast

2169
02:12:21,280 --> 02:12:25,360
Speaker 1: is the greatest compliment a Dakota can offer to his guest, and,

2170
02:12:25,480 --> 02:12:28,880
Speaker 1: knowing that to refuse eating would be an affront, we

2171
02:12:28,960 --> 02:12:32,880
Speaker 1: attacked the little dog and devoured him before the eyes

2172
02:12:33,240 --> 02:12:37,240
Speaker 1: of his unconscious parent. But let's return to the subject

2173
02:12:37,280 --> 02:12:41,600
Speaker 1: of starvation. Patty's account of eating ravens and buzzards opens

2174
02:12:41,640 --> 02:12:44,960
Speaker 1: a window into how bad things could get, even though

2175
02:12:45,000 --> 02:12:49,440
Speaker 1: we know they could get way worse. Anyone wanting to

2176
02:12:49,520 --> 02:12:54,240
Speaker 1: explore the incremental steps of desperation taken by starving folks

2177
02:12:54,720 --> 02:12:57,720
Speaker 1: might look to the infamous story of the Donner Party,

2178
02:12:58,240 --> 02:13:00,440
Speaker 1: which is fair game and in a out of the

2179
02:13:00,480 --> 02:13:04,440
Speaker 1: mountain Men because Jim Bridger himself provided them with some

2180
02:13:04,560 --> 02:13:08,640
Speaker 1: poor advice on their root selection, and doing so he

2181
02:13:08,640 --> 02:13:12,840
Speaker 1: helped them along toward their agonizing ordeal. When stranded and

2182
02:13:13,000 --> 02:13:17,520
Speaker 1: snow bound high in the Sierra Nevadas of California, there

2183
02:13:17,920 --> 02:13:21,120
Speaker 1: the party is forced to eat the starved oxen that

2184
02:13:21,200 --> 02:13:24,360
Speaker 1: were supposed to pull their wagons. They use the ox

2185
02:13:24,440 --> 02:13:28,200
Speaker 1: hides to cover their makeshift shelters, but soon they're boiling

2186
02:13:28,240 --> 02:13:32,280
Speaker 1: and eating dried strips of the ox hide roofs. Then

2187
02:13:32,280 --> 02:13:36,240
Speaker 1: they're eating one another. First they're scavenging the carcasses of

2188
02:13:36,280 --> 02:13:40,400
Speaker 1: the already deceased, but before long they're hurrying one another

2189
02:13:40,600 --> 02:13:44,200
Speaker 1: long to death with the help of a bullet. If

2190
02:13:44,280 --> 02:13:47,440
Speaker 1: dead mountain men could talk, no doubt they'd have better,

2191
02:13:47,720 --> 02:13:51,080
Speaker 1: which is to say, worse stories to tell. But the

2192
02:13:51,160 --> 02:13:54,520
Speaker 1: mountain man Jedediah Smith, who is no stranger to horrible

2193
02:13:54,560 --> 02:14:00,720
Speaker 1: experiences observed that starving men prefer to keep quiet. According

2194
02:14:00,760 --> 02:14:04,880
Speaker 1: to Smith quote, men suffering from hunger never talk much,

2195
02:14:05,440 --> 02:14:09,360
Speaker 1: but rather bare their sorrows in moody silence, which is

2196
02:14:09,440 --> 02:14:14,240
Speaker 1: more preferable to fruitless complaints. One time, a group of

2197
02:14:14,280 --> 02:14:17,320
Speaker 1: mountain men traveling along a tributary of the San Juan

2198
02:14:17,440 --> 02:14:21,000
Speaker 1: River in present day Colorado was caught without food and

2199
02:14:21,080 --> 02:14:24,760
Speaker 1: tried roasting some cactus in a fire. They must have

2200
02:14:24,920 --> 02:14:28,720
Speaker 1: chosen one of the several poisonous varieties on the landscape.

2201
02:14:28,880 --> 02:14:31,800
Speaker 1: A few hours later, the men felt weak and then

2202
02:14:31,840 --> 02:14:36,320
Speaker 1: began to shiver and vomit. An overwhelming sensation of pain

2203
02:14:36,440 --> 02:14:39,080
Speaker 1: took hold in their bowels, and three or four of

2204
02:14:39,160 --> 02:14:42,880
Speaker 1: the men, according to this account, began rolling around on

2205
02:14:42,960 --> 02:14:47,480
Speaker 1: the ground writhing in pain. At this point, the other

2206
02:14:47,600 --> 02:14:50,000
Speaker 1: men and the party decided to kill one of their

2207
02:14:50,120 --> 02:14:53,800
Speaker 1: mules in an attempt to restore their comrades and reduce

2208
02:14:53,920 --> 02:14:56,760
Speaker 1: the suffering of the rest of the group, which by

2209
02:14:56,760 --> 02:15:00,400
Speaker 1: that point had gone without food for nearly seven days.

2210
02:15:00,960 --> 02:15:05,000
Speaker 1: The mule meat quote proved both sweet and tender, and

2211
02:15:05,080 --> 02:15:09,480
Speaker 1: scarcely inferior to beef. Now this is something that you'll

2212
02:15:09,480 --> 02:15:12,800
Speaker 1: see again and again in accounts from this period a

2213
02:15:12,880 --> 02:15:16,920
Speaker 1: hungry party killing and eating their horses and mules, but

2214
02:15:17,040 --> 02:15:20,640
Speaker 1: not everyone gave such rave reviews to the flesh of

2215
02:15:20,680 --> 02:15:26,200
Speaker 1: their domesticated animals. Charles Larpentur described eating the liver and

2216
02:15:26,360 --> 02:15:28,640
Speaker 1: ribs of an old mare shot by one of his

2217
02:15:28,760 --> 02:15:33,080
Speaker 1: comrades as quote, needing a great deal of seasoning to

2218
02:15:33,160 --> 02:15:37,280
Speaker 1: make it palatable. The liver had been thrown into the coals,

2219
02:15:37,400 --> 02:15:41,280
Speaker 1: and quote turned so very black that at first I

2220
02:15:41,360 --> 02:15:45,720
Speaker 1: thought it was impossible to eat any But Larpentur was

2221
02:15:45,760 --> 02:15:49,240
Speaker 1: a generous food critic. He was starving another time and

2222
02:15:49,280 --> 02:15:53,440
Speaker 1: went three days without food. That's when he quote thought

2223
02:15:53,560 --> 02:15:56,640
Speaker 1: of a dried buffalo sinew, which I had in my

2224
02:15:56,760 --> 02:16:00,200
Speaker 1: bullet pouch to men moccasins. I pulled it out out

2225
02:16:00,200 --> 02:16:04,320
Speaker 1: and cut it in two, offering my hunter, meaning his companion,

2226
02:16:04,480 --> 02:16:08,120
Speaker 1: a part of it, which he refused. So without asking

2227
02:16:08,160 --> 02:16:12,600
Speaker 1: a second time, I demolished the sinew, which I found excellent,

2228
02:16:12,920 --> 02:16:17,560
Speaker 1: except that it was too small. In desperate moments like these,

2229
02:16:17,600 --> 02:16:20,640
Speaker 1: the mountain men were liable to devour anything they came

2230
02:16:20,720 --> 02:16:24,240
Speaker 1: across that resembled food, whether they had any right to

2231
02:16:24,320 --> 02:16:28,560
Speaker 1: it or not. Joseph Walker, a Tennessee born trapper who

2232
02:16:28,600 --> 02:16:31,480
Speaker 1: worked out of Taos, New Mexico, and later made his

2233
02:16:31,560 --> 02:16:35,280
Speaker 1: way to the Green River Country, recalled stumbling upon a

2234
02:16:35,360 --> 02:16:39,400
Speaker 1: small Native village in the Great Basin region today's Nevada,

2235
02:16:39,800 --> 02:16:42,920
Speaker 1: whose occupants fled at the site of a party of

2236
02:16:42,959 --> 02:16:46,360
Speaker 1: white men. The mountain men were in rough shape, having

2237
02:16:46,400 --> 02:16:49,040
Speaker 1: been out of food for several days, and they were

2238
02:16:49,040 --> 02:16:53,600
Speaker 1: delighted to discover among the abandoned lodges several bags made

2239
02:16:53,600 --> 02:16:57,800
Speaker 1: of animal skins filled with quote what appeared to be fish,

2240
02:16:58,280 --> 02:17:02,320
Speaker 1: dried and pounded. They stole the bags and ate hartily

2241
02:17:02,360 --> 02:17:05,760
Speaker 1: that night around the campfire. In the morning, they were

2242
02:17:05,800 --> 02:17:08,760
Speaker 1: startled to find that the bags had in fact been

2243
02:17:08,840 --> 02:17:14,400
Speaker 1: filled with insect larvae. In another instant, several trappers, among

2244
02:17:14,480 --> 02:17:18,880
Speaker 1: them Richard Lacy Wooden known as Uncle Dick, were traveling

2245
02:17:18,920 --> 02:17:22,280
Speaker 1: along the Colorado River in eighteen thirty eight when they

2246
02:17:22,320 --> 02:17:26,320
Speaker 1: approached a Yuma village in hopes of securing something to eat.

2247
02:17:26,680 --> 02:17:28,879
Speaker 1: A few of the men brought back to the rest

2248
02:17:28,920 --> 02:17:32,039
Speaker 1: of the party what they assumed to be bred, but

2249
02:17:32,240 --> 02:17:37,000
Speaker 1: noted that it had a very unfamiliar taste. Upon closer examination,

2250
02:17:37,520 --> 02:17:41,600
Speaker 1: the biscuits were in fact cakes made of crushed red ants,

2251
02:17:42,160 --> 02:17:47,240
Speaker 1: mashed together and dried in the sun. Starvation was not

2252
02:17:47,440 --> 02:17:51,240
Speaker 1: the only danger that lurked in the wilderness. There was

2253
02:17:51,360 --> 02:17:55,520
Speaker 1: also the ever present threat of thirst, which is far

2254
02:17:55,600 --> 02:17:59,360
Speaker 1: worse than hunger. When traveling across the prairie on the

2255
02:17:59,360 --> 02:18:02,880
Speaker 1: way back to Missouri, Rufus Sage and his men ran

2256
02:18:02,959 --> 02:18:06,879
Speaker 1: out of water, still fifteen miles away from the nearest river,

2257
02:18:07,800 --> 02:18:12,680
Speaker 1: under the high July sun. He found it to be maddening. Quote.

2258
02:18:12,720 --> 02:18:16,240
Speaker 1: I can endure hunger for many days in succession without

2259
02:18:16,360 --> 02:18:21,400
Speaker 1: experiencing any very painful sensations. I can lie down and

2260
02:18:21,440 --> 02:18:25,640
Speaker 1: forget it in the sweet unconsciousness of sleep, or feast

2261
02:18:25,720 --> 02:18:30,520
Speaker 1: my imagination upon the rich spread tables of dreams. But

2262
02:18:30,640 --> 02:18:35,960
Speaker 1: not so with thirst. It cannot be forgotten sleeping or waking.

2263
02:18:36,360 --> 02:18:39,680
Speaker 1: It will make itself known and felt. It will part

2264
02:18:39,760 --> 02:18:44,119
Speaker 1: your tongue and burn your throat. Despite your utmost endeavors

2265
02:18:44,400 --> 02:18:48,080
Speaker 1: to thrust it from memory. The mountain men did have

2266
02:18:48,160 --> 02:18:51,560
Speaker 1: tricks to get through it. They'd drink the blood of

2267
02:18:51,600 --> 02:18:55,200
Speaker 1: freshly killed game, or even their own piss or. They'd

2268
02:18:55,280 --> 02:18:58,240
Speaker 1: chew the roots of Oregon grape, which were said to

2269
02:18:58,280 --> 02:19:02,359
Speaker 1: have medicinal properties that could stave off the worst effects

2270
02:19:02,400 --> 02:19:06,640
Speaker 1: of dehydration when offered the heart of a dead bison.

2271
02:19:07,040 --> 02:19:10,959
Speaker 1: One man wrote that quote immediately as it touched my lips,

2272
02:19:11,360 --> 02:19:15,000
Speaker 1: my burning thirst got the better of my abhorrence. I

2273
02:19:15,160 --> 02:19:19,360
Speaker 1: plunged my head into the reeking ventricles and drank until

2274
02:19:19,400 --> 02:19:23,880
Speaker 1: forced to stop for breath. But you still just had

2275
02:19:23,920 --> 02:19:28,880
Speaker 1: to press on. That's what Nathaniel Wyis Rendezvous Bound Expedition

2276
02:19:28,959 --> 02:19:32,240
Speaker 1: did in eighteen thirty four. When they went for several

2277
02:19:32,320 --> 02:19:36,959
Speaker 1: days without water in Wyoming, it was miserable. Their tongues

2278
02:19:36,959 --> 02:19:40,440
Speaker 1: were swollen, and their lips were cracked and bleeding from

2279
02:19:40,480 --> 02:19:44,320
Speaker 1: the relentless sun. According to our source, a man by

2280
02:19:44,320 --> 02:19:49,160
Speaker 1: the name of Richardson was quote masticating a leaden bullet

2281
02:19:49,240 --> 02:19:54,840
Speaker 1: to excite the salivary glands. Finally, they took a mangled

2282
02:19:54,879 --> 02:19:58,320
Speaker 1: buffalo and tipped it on its side. One of the

2283
02:19:58,360 --> 02:20:01,520
Speaker 1: men stuck his knife into the air animal's distended belly

2284
02:20:01,920 --> 02:20:05,039
Speaker 1: and was rewarded with a gush of quote green and

2285
02:20:05,120 --> 02:20:13,720
Speaker 1: gelatinous juices mingled with the half digested contents of its stomach. Gagging,

2286
02:20:14,320 --> 02:20:17,800
Speaker 1: the thirst crazed men half heartedly strained the liquid into

2287
02:20:17,840 --> 02:20:22,040
Speaker 1: a tin pan. Hoping to remove the worst of the impurities.

2288
02:20:22,480 --> 02:20:26,720
Speaker 1: And then, with trembling hands, they raised the dripping pan

2289
02:20:26,840 --> 02:20:31,040
Speaker 1: to their lips and drank deep, quote with the satisfaction

2290
02:20:31,120 --> 02:20:35,680
Speaker 1: of a man taking his wine after dinner, a desperate

2291
02:20:35,840 --> 02:20:47,959
Speaker 1: act of survival in a land that knew little mercy.