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Speaker 1: This is the me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. Don't podcast.

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Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther,

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Speaker 1: stay longer. Alright, I want to. I want everybody to listen,

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Speaker 1: really like, what's this noise that's satisfying? Don't think I'm

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Speaker 1: actually holding the firearms. I don't think the federal government

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Speaker 1: regards these his firearms different. I think it's like a

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Speaker 1: different set of rules. It's a it's a repple covered.

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Speaker 1: We're visiting with Michael Pump, who wrote The Revenant um

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Speaker 1: and as a forthcoming book. No, it's now, yes. Now.

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Speaker 1: The last time Michael punk was on, he teased his

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Speaker 1: next book, which is called Ridgeline, and he was being uh,

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Speaker 1: he was being diplomatic but also a good salesman and

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Speaker 1: didn't like lay the whole thing out, save something for

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Speaker 1: later about Ridgeline. UM. And so he's here to talk

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Speaker 1: with us about Ridgeline. And he brought a couple of

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Speaker 1: show and tell pieces and arrow uh circa. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: is it can you get specific? Uh? Not too specific.

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Speaker 1: It's I think it's designed to look like the arrows

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Speaker 1: that they would have had in the eighteen sixties, for example.

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Speaker 1: And I think it's probably pretty accurate. It's got a

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Speaker 1: a manufactured metal arrowhead, which would be accurate for that

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Speaker 1: era steel trade point I was here and referred to exactly,

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Speaker 1: but otherwise I think it was there was an attempt

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Speaker 1: made to use the traditional style of building the arrow.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, and this year pistol, that pistol which would

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Speaker 1: have been comfortable to the ones used by the officers

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Speaker 1: and non commissioned officers and non commission officers in the

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Speaker 1: in the infantry or in the caffree especially, And it's

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Speaker 1: a it's a replica of an eighteen fifty one thirty

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Speaker 1: six caliber Colt. Shall shoots thirty six caliber lead ball

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Speaker 1: out of it. That's right. If I was gonna like

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Speaker 1: line up guns that I if I had to get

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Speaker 1: hit by one, I don't know, I wouldn't be like,

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't relish getting hit by this one. But there's

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Speaker 1: worst things to get hit by. Well, they by the

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Speaker 1: time they got around to the to the Colt forty five,

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Speaker 1: they had decided that they should up the caliber of

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Speaker 1: the caliber and they went from thirty powder charge. I

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Speaker 1: would guess, but there's something, Um, yeah, there's something about

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Speaker 1: I can't remember what it is, but there's something about

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Speaker 1: these where they're not quite firearms that's interesting. And I

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Speaker 1: think you can order them the mail. It doesn't need

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Speaker 1: to go through Uh, don't take my word for it,

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Speaker 1: you know what I'm like. I think you can order

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Speaker 1: one of the he's in the mail and just shows

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Speaker 1: up at your house, doesn't need to go through an FFL.

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Speaker 1: I don't know the answer. I'm not gonna argue with you.

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Speaker 1: We'll look it up till else you're doing. I believe

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Speaker 1: that's the pistol carried by wild Bill Hiccock and in

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Speaker 1: his hand. I think he was definitely a firearm and

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Speaker 1: I would not have wanted to be on the receiving

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Speaker 1: end of of him. No, did you notice? And um,

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Speaker 1: did you watch the ball? The buster scrugs? You don't

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Speaker 1: watch that, No, dude, it's never check it out. It's

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Speaker 1: funny's he's Buster scrug sits down to a card game

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Speaker 1: and there's a guy that he sits down to a

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Speaker 1: card game and he wants to get dealt in, but

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Speaker 1: some guy has just left and they're like, no, you

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Speaker 1: gotta play that hand, and he's like, I don't want

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Speaker 1: to play that hand, and he takes a look and

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Speaker 1: it's aces and eights dead man's hand. And then later

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Speaker 1: that day yeah yeah, but it wasn't even dealt to him.

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Speaker 1: He just sat down at the table and peaked at

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Speaker 1: aces and eights and that's all. It's all rushing a

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Speaker 1: lot more than the writer. This gentleman here, Um, how

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Speaker 1: much this stuff is still active? So you're a writer?

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Speaker 1: Are you still you're still a lawyer? Do you keep

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Speaker 1: like up on lawyer business? Are you supposed to send

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Speaker 1: in a check or anything? Every day? I sent in

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Speaker 1: a check in order to keep up my inactive bar

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Speaker 1: status mostly, so that's what you maintain. Yeah, I'm not.

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Speaker 1: I'm not a practicing lawyer. But it's like, it's not

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Speaker 1: once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Well, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: it's not once a member of the bar, always a

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Speaker 1: member of the bar. You've got to keep up your

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Speaker 1: bar membership mostly by paying dues and not taking additional testing.

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Speaker 1: Thank god no, because I wouldn't do that again. So

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Speaker 1: but you do keep it, You do keep going. You

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Speaker 1: can't fall off for twenty years and decided to send

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Speaker 1: in a check and resume or can you. I don't.

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Speaker 1: It's a different state by state. Every state regulates their lawyers,

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Speaker 1: and honestly, I haven't kept track of it because I

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Speaker 1: hope not to ever be a practicing lawyer again. Do

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Speaker 1: you do your own contracts stupidly because you'll you'll review

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Speaker 1: of your own book contract. Yeah, but I've stopped doing

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Speaker 1: that more and more because I am I'm both uh

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Speaker 1: dumb and thinking I know enough to to look at

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Speaker 1: him and cheap enough that I don't want to pay

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Speaker 1: a lawyer. And I've gotten a little bit smart about

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Speaker 1: that over the years and started paying somebody to look

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Speaker 1: at him, which has worked out well for me. Um,

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Speaker 1: I was gonna tell your story was just too complicated

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Speaker 1: in her mind. Used to being an ambassador, former US

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Speaker 1: Trade rep and then former ambassador to the World Trade Organization.

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Speaker 1: It was I was the deputy U. S. Trade Representative,

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Speaker 1: part of an agency called the US on the opposite

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Speaker 1: of the U. S Trade Representative, and at that same

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Speaker 1: job involved being the US Ambassador to the World Trade

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Speaker 1: Organization in Geneva. So that was kind of a two

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Speaker 1: fer when you did that that you have to live

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Speaker 1: in Geneva. I did for six years. Oh here we

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Speaker 1: talking about that? Yea, so it was we We moved

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Speaker 1: to Montana in two thousand and three. I was born

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Speaker 1: and raised in Wyoming and then lived out east for

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Speaker 1: a while. I went to school out there, came back

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Speaker 1: to Montana after I wrote The Revenant. That's when I

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Speaker 1: quit my law firm job. Is after we sold The Revenant,

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Speaker 1: I decided to come out live in the West and

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Speaker 1: be a writer back home. Yeah, and uh, my wife

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Speaker 1: is my wife, Tracy is from Livingston, Montana. I grew

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Speaker 1: up in Wyoming. We decided for a number of years

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Speaker 1: between Wyoming and Montana and ended up in Missoula. When

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Speaker 1: you were in Wyoming, you were still in the yellow

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Speaker 1: Stone Basin, right, Well, I was born in the Big

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Speaker 1: Horn Basin in Lovell, Wyoming and lived there. Tell about

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Speaker 1: third grade, and that still counsels the Elstone Basin. True,

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Speaker 1: true enough, I think if it is as Big Horn Basin. Um.

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Speaker 1: But I want to say you you because you were.

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Speaker 1: You were in the sort of broader drainage of where

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Speaker 1: your book takes place, for sure, the other side of

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Speaker 1: the Big Horns, because the powder rivers on the eastern

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Speaker 1: side of the Big Horns but uh, levels on the

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Speaker 1: western side. But I looked up as a boy at

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Speaker 1: the Big Horn Mountains and those were kind of the

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Speaker 1: the mountains that uh sparked my initial imagination about all

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Speaker 1: things Western Mountain related. Uh, we're gonna get into Ridgeline

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Speaker 1: real deep. But it uh takes place at the what's

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Speaker 1: the closest town, the Fort Fetterman. Yeah, today it's uh,

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Speaker 1: the site of Fort Fetterman and the battlefield are between

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Speaker 1: Sheridan and Buffalo. Was I telling you the story about

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Speaker 1: something I knew from that area? Who? When I mentioned

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Speaker 1: the Fetterman massacre fight? I don't think you told me

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Speaker 1: that he's like oh brother. Every year in school? Yeah that.

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Speaker 1: Now for the field trip, well, in Level we would

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Speaker 1: go over to the Cody Museum Cody. Our field trip

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Speaker 1: every year was to Cody. But of course that museum

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Speaker 1: if you people haven't been there, is one of the

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Speaker 1: there's three museums and Cody and they're some of the

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Speaker 1: Their really kind of Smithsonian quality museums are unbelievable. And

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Speaker 1: that was another thing that really sparked my imagination as

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Speaker 1: a boy, including the original painting of Custer's Last Stand

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Speaker 1: that they have there by the German duter by the No,

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Speaker 1: it's by well, it's by Paxson. He's uh, the artist's

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Speaker 1: name is Paxson. I don't know about his background. He

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Speaker 1: was like the guy that you know, the famous like

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Speaker 1: anheuser Busch representatives. It's a different one that was German.

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Speaker 1: Well wait, no it's not. Um, I think it may

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Speaker 1: be a slightly different one. It looks it's a it's

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Speaker 1: kind of similar layout. And you know the one called

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Speaker 1: after the fight? Um, is that the one that's in

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Speaker 1: on the battlefield side. Yeah, it's in the Olive. There's

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Speaker 1: the one in the Olive and Miles City where GOLs

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Speaker 1: mccraid eyes I think, and um and people like right

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Speaker 1: on it, gff. I've thought many times about going in

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Speaker 1: there and just trying to strike a deal with them

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Speaker 1: and get that Damn. I want the whole wall. I like,

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Speaker 1: I'll cut the wall out, put a new wall in.

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Speaker 1: But it's it's their massacrerent Is, they're mutilating the it's

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Speaker 1: the it's a painting of of them ransacking the battle

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Speaker 1: site right right. It's a phenomenal painting there looking it's

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Speaker 1: like you know, like people have written on there, like

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Speaker 1: for a good time called Jesse. You know the one

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Speaker 1: that was in Uh. I think you're right. It's the

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Speaker 1: packs and one that was a Budweiser commercial in bars

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Speaker 1: for decades at the in the last quarter of the

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Speaker 1: of the century, along along with the buffalo. Look that

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Speaker 1: up a mounted buffalo head. I can answer the other

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Speaker 1: thing we're talking about. So, antique firearms and replicas of

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Speaker 1: antique firearms do not fall under the National Firearms Act,

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Speaker 1: even if manufactured after Some Modern versions of flint locks, matchlocks,

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Speaker 1: and percussion fired guns do not require the involvement of

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Speaker 1: an FFL. Told you Bush like Ann Heuser Busch bought

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Speaker 1: Custers last fight. The packing win are in different one

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Speaker 1: trying to find out they hung it all over bars

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Speaker 1: and everything. No, Cassily Adams. Okay, so I'm looking at

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Speaker 1: right now. You know a guy named Curly that fought

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Speaker 1: in the fight, Uh, one of the Scouts of Custer. Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: here's the I know we're not here to talk about

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Speaker 1: Custer battlefield, but there's an interesting story about this dude.

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Speaker 1: Is that Curly was a crow. Curly was a crow scout.

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Speaker 1: Is he in the photo with the Grizzly? No, that

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Speaker 1: was Dull knife. That was a guy that was killed.

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Speaker 1: I think I think that guy was killed and it

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Speaker 1: rattled not Custer, but rattled one of Custer's guys. I

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Speaker 1: think he got shot in the head very early on

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Speaker 1: as they were writing into the camp. Yeah, and like

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Speaker 1: his some of his according to Son of the Morning Star,

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Speaker 1: I think some of his brain matters splattered on an

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Speaker 1: officer and the officer never quite got back to where

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Speaker 1: he needed to get mentally. Curly either. Here's why there's

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Speaker 1: like a lot of questions about so the Anheuser Busch

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Speaker 1: buys his painting called Custer's Last Fight, and it was

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Speaker 1: based on a crow scout named Curly's description of the battle.

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Speaker 1: I gathered there's like a little uh debate about whether

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Speaker 1: Curly was there or not. Some people say that see

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Speaker 1: some of his re scouts and stuff, like did they

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Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen the next day and

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Speaker 1: he did like a like a death ceremony. They knew

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Speaker 1: what was coming and Custer got pished off. They were uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, not all in or yeah, they were like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this isn't right. And some people are reportedly skinnied out

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Speaker 1: the night before. Curly claims to have survived that he

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Speaker 1: was at the battle and got away and he led him.

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Speaker 1: He later met that guy gaul Um, a Sue warrior

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Speaker 1: named gaul and gall said to him, Um, you must

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Speaker 1: have turned into a bird that day, because that's the

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Speaker 1: only way you got out of there. Like, wasn't buying

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Speaker 1: it that he had escaped. But um, don't we talking

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Speaker 1: about though? Uh? We were talking about the painting, the

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Speaker 1: paction painting, and yeah, go ahead, Well I was just

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Speaker 1: what I was asking about it. I think I was

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Speaker 1: saying that we were talking about field trips as as

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Speaker 1: a kid, and that paction painting at the of the

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Speaker 1: Custom Battle just really fueled my boyhood imagination of that

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Speaker 1: whole era. And yeah, and that museum, those museums are

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Speaker 1: in Cody or unbelievable. It's kind of a little envious

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Speaker 1: that of being able to, you know, to grow up

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Speaker 1: like really amused or you know, enthralled by Mountain men

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Speaker 1: and the Indian Wars and to actually live there, because

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Speaker 1: you know, if you're living in West Michigan and that's

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Speaker 1: all you can think about, it's just all is very drafts.

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Speaker 1: Well there was that was a cool thing growing up

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Speaker 1: in Wyoming, and in fact, There was an old lady

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Speaker 1: that lived next door to me when I was a

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Speaker 1: boy in Level. Her name was Mrs Weathersby, and she

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Speaker 1: was ninety years old, so this was in you know,

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and she was the lady in the

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Speaker 1: neighborhood who handed out vanilla way for cookies to the

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Speaker 1: kids and told stories about you know, her life, and

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Speaker 1: she remembered as a as a little girl. In Level, Wyoming,

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Speaker 1: a mountain man named John Blue riding out of the

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Speaker 1: Big Horn Mountains twice a year into Level, Wyoming to

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Speaker 1: to do his twice a year shopping before he you know, requisitor,

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Speaker 1: you know, stocked up and went back out to his

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Speaker 1: cabin in the Big Horns. So I love that, even

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Speaker 1: in my lifetime, I can almost touch some of those

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Speaker 1: people who lived that. And that's an amazing thing about

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Speaker 1: that history is it's it's not that long ago, for sure,

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Speaker 1: if you if it was fresher one year in some

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Speaker 1: of these areas that haven't been they haven't had all

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Speaker 1: the subsequent stories overlaid the landscape too, you know, And

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Speaker 1: the landscape in some of these places hasn't changed that much.

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Speaker 1: And I mean that's one of the things I love

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Speaker 1: about the Fetterman Fight is compared to the Custer Battlefield.

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Speaker 1: And I love the Custer Battlefield. It's it's haunting and

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Speaker 1: amazing and a cool place to visit. But that valley

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Speaker 1: has changed a lot more than the valley where the

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Speaker 1: Fetterman Fight took place, and there's just a lot more

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Speaker 1: people that visited. One of the things I love about

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Speaker 1: the Fetterman Battlefield is a lot of days you can

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Speaker 1: go out there and wander the battlefield miles of it

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Speaker 1: and not see any other people, and so it's really

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Speaker 1: it's not hard to imagine at all, and it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's a cool place I went to some of the

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Speaker 1: I've ever told you. But for a while I was

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Speaker 1: going to do a book about the Nez Perce War

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Speaker 1: me too. Yeah, I did a lot of traveling for

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Speaker 1: I blew a whole summer on the man. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: was already to write that book when I got the

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Speaker 1: assettership and had to abandon the book because I knew

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Speaker 1: that I was not gonna be able to finish it.

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Speaker 1: So that was And then you know, when when he surrendered,

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Speaker 1: you know his famous I will fight no more forever,

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Speaker 1: which may or may not have what he said I was.

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Speaker 1: I was good. I was walking the whole damn thing.

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Speaker 1: I was gonna walk that wholes and I in my

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Speaker 1: path with a I had a backpack and a pack

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Speaker 1: raft when I started out and did quite a bit

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Speaker 1: of it, I was gonna call my book I will

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Speaker 1: walk no More forever. But well, that'd be the way

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Speaker 1: to do. But I eventually just lost the thread and

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Speaker 1: gave up on it. But either way, I want a

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Speaker 1: lot of those battle sites, and they're not even like

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Speaker 1: very effect. They're not even really interpreted. So you gotta

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Speaker 1: kind of look at you gotta sort of play historian

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Speaker 1: at the sites and be like, if that's the mile

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Speaker 1: they're talking about, or if that's the bridge they're talking about.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure someone knows, But but a little big horn

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Speaker 1: is so well interpreted. Yeah, And actually the Feederman Battlefield

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Speaker 1: is a is a nice combination of being the way

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Speaker 1: that it was but having some interpretive guides. And I

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Speaker 1: think the State away Aming has done a pretty good

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Speaker 1: job on those guides, including by the way, giving both

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Speaker 1: a this the U. S. Soldier perspective and also the

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Speaker 1: native perspective in terms of how they were looking at it,

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Speaker 1: and so it's it's it's pretty cool that they've managed

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Speaker 1: to mix it in, but still there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: area for speculation about where specific things might have happened,

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Speaker 1: and there's just a lot that is not really known

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Speaker 1: at the end of the day about the battle itself.

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Speaker 1: Once they rode over that ridgeline, none of the none

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Speaker 1: of the whites survived, and uh, there are lots of

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Speaker 1: interesting accounts, uh from from Native participants, but they're they're

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Speaker 1: not all consistent, and so there's just a lot of

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Speaker 1: room for speculation. We know how it ended, but in

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Speaker 1: terms of what it was, I thought it was perfect

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Speaker 1: for for a novel because there there is a lot

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Speaker 1: we don't know, and so you've kind of got the

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Speaker 1: major mile posts there, but there's it was there was

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Speaker 1: plenty of space to kind of fill in what people

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Speaker 1: were thinking, you know, what specific things were happening in

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Speaker 1: over the course of the battle, and it it just

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Speaker 1: made it perfect I thought for fiction. Okay, let's let

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Speaker 1: it hang there for a minute, because I gotta we

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Speaker 1: gotta cover a couple of things. But well, nor thing,

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Speaker 1: are you do you still do the public policy for Amazon?

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Speaker 1: I do? How did you do do that? Plus all this well,

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Speaker 1: uh in part because I've got kids in college, you know,

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Speaker 1: about making a living as a as a writer, which

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Speaker 1: is uh up and down. Um, but uh yeah it

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Speaker 1: was really good every couple of years. The publishing industry

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Speaker 1: is not the fastest industry in in America, and so

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Speaker 1: things things that wind slowly, even if you've got a

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Speaker 1: bit of a tail wind. But so yeah, I still

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Speaker 1: have a day day job for Amazon Web Services. Michael,

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Speaker 1: I hope you don't take offense this and it's a compliment.

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Speaker 1: Really get I get worried about the interest me where

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Speaker 1: my interest style. You know, I know how this show works.

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Speaker 1: There's usually an ambush your two so so here here

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Speaker 1: it comes. I mean, I mean this is for your

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Speaker 1: title writer, lawyer, policy analyst, US Trade rip. You look

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Speaker 1: exactly like how I would imagine someone with those titles

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Speaker 1: to look. It's perfect, absolutely perfect, no idea what them

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Speaker 1: for the ace don't like glass? Yeah, like Phil looks

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Speaker 1: like an audio engineer, but I think Michael looks even

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Speaker 1: more like a writer, lawyer, policy analyst in US trade REP.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to take that,

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Speaker 1: but I thank you. It's a comp you could picture

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Speaker 1: him like a menal guy yelling at to get out

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Speaker 1: of his yard. It's really it's really satisfying with those titles.

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Speaker 1: How old are you? We're probably the same. I'm fifty six.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, you got a lot of yours. But I'm

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Speaker 1: glad that you saw were the same? You tell are

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Speaker 1: you for seven? Man? I'm a decade older than you? Really,

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Speaker 1: spri Man, I'm ship man. I can see him fronting

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Speaker 1: like like an indie folk band, too ye, or yelling

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Speaker 1: at kids a good obviously, Okay, check this out. We

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Speaker 1: got couple we're gonna get back into. We're gonna get

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Speaker 1: back into ridgeline hardcore. We've got a couple of things

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Speaker 1: we gotta go over. Um. I always here about this

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Speaker 1: every now and then, but this is the explain this

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Speaker 1: Spencer Brewed X. Yeah, it's the seventeen year hatch and

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Speaker 1: it's coming this year. This has been covered a lot,

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Speaker 1: like by every big news source there is, CNN, Fox

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Speaker 1: and we better, we better getting out of it. We

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Speaker 1: have covered it, we covered about two weeks ago. Go ahead,

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Speaker 1: play it out. The Brewed X hatches coming and it's

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Speaker 1: all these cicadas now, I think, but why is it

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Speaker 1: brewed X. I think I think there's like, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think there's like brewed x I, brewed X, brewed x I.

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Speaker 1: I like this is the numerals, So I got you.

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Speaker 1: So this is like a generation whatever. This is like

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Speaker 1: a generation of them that they've been hanging out in

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Speaker 1: the ground as little eggs for seventeen years. And I

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Speaker 1: think something that other outlets have done a poor job

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Speaker 1: of describing is where exactly it takes place at When

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Speaker 1: national news sources are covering, it's like, oh man, there's

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Speaker 1: gonna be the whole country. You're like the whole continent.

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Speaker 1: That's not really the reality, though. It's basically, like my understanding,

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Speaker 1: pretty much every state that touches Kentucky and Tennessee, which

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Speaker 1: is a lot of them, but that that region has

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Speaker 1: the brewed X hatch coming um and this is really

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Speaker 1: good for fish and really good for turkeys. Millions per

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Speaker 1: acre from New York to Georgia and west of the Mississippi,

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Speaker 1: the epicenter of our nation's capital, Washington, d c. Cicadas

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Speaker 1: per square foot here, it's just expresses what it means

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Speaker 1: for turkeys. Turkeys like to eat them so they don't

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Speaker 1: have to hunt around for food. And then raccoons like

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Speaker 1: to eat them, so they get all gorged up on

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Speaker 1: Cicadas don't eat turkey eggs. So if you like to

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Speaker 1: hunt Jake's next year is your year you like to

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Speaker 1: hunt long beards. Three. I think for most folks it

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Speaker 1: was just gonna be really annoying, like trying to drive

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Speaker 1: across a bridge that has a lot of lights on it,

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Speaker 1: or trying to play a softball game in June. They're

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Speaker 1: incredibly loud. I like that noise though, Man's it's it's

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Speaker 1: a cool sound, you know, the thing that you um.

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Speaker 1: You know, earlier I was talking about how your childhood

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Speaker 1: is better mine. One thing that uh that now like

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Speaker 1: living in the in the arid West. You know, ah,

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Speaker 1: when I go back home to Michigan on a summer night,

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Speaker 1: the cophony of sound at night, tree frogs. But it's

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Speaker 1: just like you go out into a swamp at night

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Speaker 1: and like a canoe and it's it's almost disorienting how

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Speaker 1: loud it is at night there. You just don't have

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Speaker 1: that air and air landing once the once the crickets

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Speaker 1: quiet down, you know, it's pretty quiet. It's just like

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Speaker 1: then the jungle, like you know, the Amazon and stuff.

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Speaker 1: It's even more. It's it's almost like you want like

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Speaker 1: shut up, shut up, shut up. Associate for a minute.

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Speaker 1: I associate cicadas with anxiety. When I was ar cicada

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Speaker 1: showed up in late summer. UM, so like a mid

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Speaker 1: August you'd start hearing cicadia's at night and it's like,

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Speaker 1: damn it, school starting against you. I was going to

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Speaker 1: take a shopping for clo two days they're coming. Uh

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Speaker 1: like nothing good came as you know, uh here at

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Speaker 1: meat eat or we have a very modest vaccination incentive

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Speaker 1: program um hunter Bucks. I was insistent that we have

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Speaker 1: a vaccination incentive program, but it wasn't able to get

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Speaker 1: people rallied and eventually somehow settled at a hunter Bucks.

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Speaker 1: Did you did you claim your hunter bus? Yeah, Phil,

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Speaker 1: Yeah that's probable. But you send your you send it

404
00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 1: and get your hunter Bucks. Good good, good, good good.

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00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:09,720
Speaker 1: It's a good program. Uh this but not as good

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00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:13,680
Speaker 1: as this one? Well no, you know, maybe dollar for dollar.

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00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:15,719
Speaker 1: It is like so different people are doing all these

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Speaker 1: different things that get people to get vaccinated. Free donuts,

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Speaker 1: free milk shakes, free beer, free lamination of your vaccination card,

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Speaker 1: a free ride to get vaccinated. Ohio's launching a million

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Speaker 1: dollar lotto. Oh yeah, they're vaccine there. People are lying

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Speaker 1: and curve is just like a straight line million bucks man.

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Speaker 1: But to enter, you gotta get vaccinated. Uh, Maine, this

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00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:47,159
Speaker 1: is great. Maine does fish. You get a fishing license,

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Speaker 1: if you get vaccinated, you get a hunting license. If

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Speaker 1: you get vaccinated, you can get a park pass. If

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00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 1: you get vaccinated, you get a main state park day pass.

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Speaker 1: Who the hell get the day pass? And you can

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Speaker 1: just get the pass well once a wildlife park pass.

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Speaker 1: The other one is a state park day pass. Get

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Speaker 1: an ll being gift card, and then uh some other

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00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 1: things that really care about baseball tickets in a race

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Speaker 1: car ticket. Here's what this again is a little bit

424
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: blown out of proportion. There's about a hundred and sixty

425
00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:25,240
Speaker 1: thousand licensed hunters in Maine and they are paying for

426
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: up to five thousands of these, so that doesn't go

427
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 1: very far. So is it kind of like a hurry

428
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 1: up and get years now kind of thing or hoping

429
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: you don't look in at the fine print? Right? I

430
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: saw you know listeners sent this in was talking about

431
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: you're you're you said you're gonna deprive Maine of You're

432
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: gonna deprive Mains Fish and Game Agency of three hundred

433
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:49,719
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in license sales. But I don't really understand

434
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 1: that because they're buying the licenses. It's I mean, it

435
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:55,480
Speaker 1: says the main Department of Health and Human Services will

436
00:24:55,560 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: purchase up to five thousand hunting passes license, So I

437
00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: don't think they're depriving the state agency of all that revenue.

438
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:10,160
Speaker 1: So I think that his the listeners great, But then

439
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:12,280
Speaker 1: he he also points out it's not a great because

440
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:20,479
Speaker 1: he points out this COVID was so overwhelmingly positive for

441
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson funding because early on everyone was getting armed

442
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:30,159
Speaker 1: up two get their neighbors whatever they were gonna do

443
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,840
Speaker 1: early in the pandemic. And then everybody started going out

444
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: hunting and shooting all the time, and buying all kinds

445
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: of fishing equipment and hunting equipment and taking up sports

446
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 1: shooting because you can just go off by yourself and

447
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,400
Speaker 1: didn't need to try to go to the whatever hordfest.

448
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,800
Speaker 1: Monsters are rock whatever people used to go to. They

449
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 1: play outside now and so it's flooded. The Pittman Robertson

450
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: fun with conservation money. So it's like a you know,

451
00:25:57,840 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: if they missed out on a few bucks here, it's

452
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:04,720
Speaker 1: still unbelievable amounts of firearm industry money that has gone

453
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: into um, you know from a Pittman Robertson funding standpoint,

454
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: is the good old days of wild byfe funding right

455
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 1: now and probably will continue to run that way for

456
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: a number of years here with a lot of threats

457
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: against gun ownership, it's not that's not gonna slow down. UM.

458
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: Interested paper came out about mountain lions. Explain this one spencer,

459
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: you're gonna explain stuff. We covered this on our website,

460
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 1: the media dot Com. You can go there and type

461
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: in study fines Mountain lions have an unexpected predator. To

462
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 1: read the whole thing, well, we'll touch you on some

463
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:40,119
Speaker 1: of the main points. He wasn't unexpected to me, though

464
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:44,120
Speaker 1: the headline didn't ring true to me. I think it's

465
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: unexpected m especially in like the the abundance of it

466
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: once once you get into it. That was unexpected. So

467
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:57,119
Speaker 1: this study took place in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem in

468
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:01,200
Speaker 1: northwestern wyom and about nine square mile area. They generally

469
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 1: like when you see the g y e. It's about

470
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:06,159
Speaker 1: the size of Indiana what they kind of lump in.

471
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:10,160
Speaker 1: You know, this specific location was selected because the researchers

472
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 1: and studying the line population wanted there to both be

473
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: wolves on the landscape and hunting aloud. Some of the

474
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:20,400
Speaker 1: studies in the past didn't have both of those factors

475
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:23,160
Speaker 1: when they were looking at mountain lion populations, but this

476
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:26,040
Speaker 1: had both those criteria. I mean, they wanted to have

477
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 1: wolves and human mountain lion hunting in the same area.

478
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: So that's how this area got selected. They noticed between

479
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: the year two thousand and eight percent decrease in cougar populations.

480
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: To determine this, they use an integrated population model, lion

481
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: Den's abundance estimates for different animals, GPS, and VHF color data.

482
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 1: So you should take solace like this was very thorough

483
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 1: in doing this, and they termed there were three factors

484
00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: that caused the Kouger decline human hunting, wolves, kill and kittens,

485
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: and starvation. Now, the lead researcher, Mark L. Brock, said,

486
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: the big take home on these papers that wolves had

487
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: the strongest effect on the survival and the abundance of

488
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: mountain lions in the system. It's dramatic. Wolves are power

489
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 1: on the landscape. We saw cats respond, but we thought

490
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: it was anecdotal. The strength of the wolves effects surprise

491
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: every one of us. I've heard a couple of things

492
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 1: related to this. Um Remy Warren one time was looking

493
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 1: at a lion on a kill and a group of

494
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: wolves came in and the lions ran up a tree

495
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: and they ate his thing. That was exactly something that

496
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: they had observed on the starvation fronto. It was a

497
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: number of factors. One was the wolves had just knocked

498
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: back elk populations in general during this period, there was

499
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 1: a thirty percent decline in elk population, so that caused

500
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: some of the starvation. The thing you just mentioned where

501
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: they had literally run him off kills, um. And then

502
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 1: the other one, the big one, was they valued the

503
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 1: elk population ship lift and where they were hanging out

504
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: as a seventy shift in the location of the elk herd.

505
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: So the wolves were blocking out from mountain lions in

506
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 1: two ways. This is a quote from Mark L. Brock, again,

507
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: the lead researcher. One by moving them into places where

508
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: mountain lions were uncomfortable, like the wide open and too

509
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 1: by literally chasing them off their kills. So now instead

510
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: of the elk hanging out in the mountains and dark

511
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: timber wolves pushed them out of there into wide open spaces,

512
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:28,479
Speaker 1: which was a problem for mountain lions. I read a paper.

513
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 1: I think she's gonna be on soon. One of the

514
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: people that was involved in this, a carbon Carmen van Biancy.

515
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: She's coming on right, She's she researches predators, and we

516
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: had her arm. We're talking about this thing where um,

517
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: the presence of wolves on the landscape, how it shifts

518
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: the prey base, you know, saying that it moves like

519
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: the how how white tails and mule deer. It moves

520
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: white tails out into more white tailey stuff. They head

521
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: out in the open, you know, out in the flats

522
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 1: more and it moves mule deer into more mule deally stuff.

523
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 1: They tend to go up, try to go up into

524
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: the more craggy gordy country, and white tails go out

525
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 1: and it kind of emptied out more of the mid

526
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: range habitat. They were linking this. Two hunters reporting seeing

527
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 1: like so much fewer game. They were trying to so

528
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: much fewer game in the presence of wolves and they're

529
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 1: talking about that there the hunter. Human hunters haven't adjusted

530
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: yet to the shift, and they're going where they've always

531
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: gone to find deer, right, but the deer aren't there anymore.

532
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 1: The deer moved into new kinds of country. Another thing

533
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:31,560
Speaker 1: I remember reading about this though, is I can't here

534
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 1: and feel speculation or not. But someone was saying, with

535
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 1: lions losing their kills all the time, they kill more

536
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: stuff because they can't camp out on and need it

537
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: for three or four days. It's like they get it,

538
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: it's gone. They gotta get something that's gone. They gotta

539
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: get something that's gone. And that when people look at

540
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,959
Speaker 1: the decline of big game populations in the presence of wolves,

541
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: that's like another factor is that that they're not able

542
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: to They don't they're not able to kill something and

543
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 1: need it like they normally would, they lose it to quickly.

544
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: So on on the unexpected front here, when we talk

545
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: about the predation, only about a third of kitten survived

546
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 1: until they were six months old, and then only a

547
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: quarter ever made it to their first birthday. Wolf predation

548
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 1: was the primary cause of their death. Now, the lead

549
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: researcher again said this is the lowest survival rate ever

550
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: reported for kittens anywhere. Mm hmm uh. And then then

551
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:27,880
Speaker 1: he went on to say that the researchers would often

552
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: find kitten parts strown strown across the ground after wolf

553
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: care after a wolf kill, which he interpreted as the

554
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: wolves treating cats as competition, So they weren't just going

555
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: in there like kill the cats, neath the cats, They're

556
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: just eliminating them off the landscape. Jordan Stiller is the

557
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: writer of this article, being a good journalist, reach out

558
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: to an independent third party, our buddy Jim Haffelfinger, And

559
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: so what do you think of this study that was

560
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: done because the study was funded I believe by Panthera,

561
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: which is like the heavy metal band. Yeah, exactly, like

562
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: a kind of like a cougar conservation group. So Jordan's Jim,

563
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:11,959
Speaker 1: he said, what do you think of the study? Like,

564
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: did did they get it right? Was this? Uh? Did

565
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: they have some bias? And Jim said it was interesting

566
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: and it was solid from a scientific standpoint, and he

567
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:24,440
Speaker 1: really appreciated the discussion portion of the paper and how

568
00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:27,719
Speaker 1: it remained reasonable without speculation. But he said, it's it's

569
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: really important to um not ignore the thirty percent elk

570
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: population decrease. That's like the most important part of this

571
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: whole thing. I don't I don't follow. Jim was saying that, oh,

572
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: that that can't be like emphasized enough. That the wolves

573
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: knocked back elk herds by and that's food by right,

574
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: the starvation element. So what's next? Now? This is maybe

575
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 1: just like the new reality for that area wherever wolves

576
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,720
Speaker 1: and mountain lions exist, and this is probably what it

577
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: looked like pre European contact, or closer to it than

578
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: it was before. Overall, this probably is gonna be less

579
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 1: cats in the area, but more cats hanging out in

580
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:19,240
Speaker 1: open spaces where else where elk currently are um In

581
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: Osborne Russell's journal in the end, he has these little

582
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: summations of wildlife. He I think. He says that wolverines

583
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 1: are common, tells all that about probably pretty effective predators, right,

584
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: and uh, but what happened to them? They like wolves

585
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: eating all that eating, all all those carcasses, all those

586
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: just you know, carcasses on the landscape. I don't know

587
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:50,880
Speaker 1: send that I did over the half a finger CEO

588
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: thinks about that. Uh. Spencer keeps reporting on people rescuing

589
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: birds that die and it's always so sad. So there's

590
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 1: always a dark twist ending which like someone rescues a bird,

591
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: brings it to the rescue place, and they were like

592
00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: the bird died. So our friend Greg Lemon from Montana

593
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: Fish Walting Parks wanted to point out an actual raptor

594
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:21,319
Speaker 1: that was saved, happy ending, it's very cute. A rough

595
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: legged hawk got hit by a car, had blood in

596
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 1: both eyes, went to this raptor facility Spencers always talking about,

597
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:34,280
Speaker 1: and it's fine. And then you'd like to add Spencer

598
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: and stead of your rafter Dian stories. All the time.

599
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: He was also sharing that that FWP rehabilitates raptors. Oh,

600
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:51,839
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry they did that. I thought they

601
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: did that in conjunction with the Oh this is their

602
00:34:54,640 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 1: own rehabilitation center, but they rehabilitate is wide. He said, uh,

603
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:02,319
Speaker 1: like all the way up to bear cubs. And then

604
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 1: in this last week they had a house sparrow come

605
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:08,359
Speaker 1: in as well. Mm hmm. Really I didn't have beb

606
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:12,359
Speaker 1: and it did it? How sparrow died before moment talking

607
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: boy about that, I don't know. Um, okay, good, Sorry

608
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 1: about that. Greg. I didn't mean to take credit away

609
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:24,800
Speaker 1: from your outfit. Now this fascinating, Michael, get anything to

610
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:26,719
Speaker 1: add by any of this stuff? Are you cool? Cool?

611
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: These guys did a survey this last thing we're talking about. Uh.

612
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 1: British international market research and data analytics company did a

613
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,800
Speaker 1: survey of people, like asking people of like, what wild

614
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: animals they feel like they could whoop in a fight?

615
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: Just Americans? Just at pent of Americans feel that they'd

616
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: be bested by a goose in a fight. Um yeah,

617
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 1: so more most Americans and overwhelming hum. A number of

618
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: Americans things that they would best a rat, slightly fewer

619
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:12,359
Speaker 1: people who could best a house cat, slightly fewer could

620
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:17,400
Speaker 1: best a dog or goose. Um. More people felt that

621
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: they could whoop a dog than the eagle. Depends it

622
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: was a large dog or a medium dog. People are like,

623
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:28,879
Speaker 1: it goes like I'd be able to whoop a medium dog. Um,

624
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 1: I'd be a little less likely to whoop an eagle,

625
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: but I'd be a lot less likely to whoop a

626
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 1: big dog. Yeah, that's a respectively think that they can

627
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:42,920
Speaker 1: beat a medium sized dog. This is like without and

628
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 1: this is like you know, hand to hand hand. I

629
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 1: forgot to say it's hand to hand hand to hand combat.

630
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: A weird one is that people think they could whoop

631
00:36:53,960 --> 00:37:01,480
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee. And you're not gonna whoop a chimpanzee. Percent

632
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 1: of Americans think they could whoop a chimpanzee. Am I

633
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,840
Speaker 1: reading that right? I need to put my cheats on. Sorry,

634
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:14,439
Speaker 1: the woman's jumping out of elephant enhand sick? Say? That's

635
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: six eight percent of Americans they think they could defeat

636
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:24,239
Speaker 1: an elephant in handdand grabam by that big snout and

637
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:29,320
Speaker 1: pitch that snout. Offer of Americans know they could whoop

638
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: a wolf. Nine more Americans think they could whoop a

639
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 1: crocodile than an elephant. Hmmm. Somehow Americans think they are

640
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 1: better off whooping a polar bear than a grizzly and

641
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:47,279
Speaker 1: someone that he the person that shared us with his

642
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: blames the Coca Cola commercials for que defying polar bears.

643
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 1: Ron McGill is that leads you Wild leads zoologists from

644
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 1: Zoom Miami and he does this weekly hit on a

645
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: sports show that into and listeners can call in and

646
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: asking questions, And for the last five years, the most

647
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: common question he gets is like, what would win and

648
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:11,320
Speaker 1: fight between crocodile and polar bear? What would win a

649
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 1: fight between a gorilla uh and an elephant? Stuff like

650
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 1: that his last hit, which was a few days ago.

651
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:21,839
Speaker 1: On the episode, they had basically like ran him through

652
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:23,440
Speaker 1: this whole list, like what did people get right? What

653
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: they get wrong? Like what's the best fight from this list?

654
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:28,360
Speaker 1: And he had said the thing people got wrong the

655
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,919
Speaker 1: most be what you said, Steve chimpanzee. He's like you, you

656
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,560
Speaker 1: you would not stand at change against chimpanzee. They didn't

657
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:36,919
Speaker 1: see Planet of the Apes apparently, Yeah, they're like those

658
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 1: things play for keeps? Ron, could you like put it

659
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 1: in context? Like why couldn't we be the chimpanzee. He's like, okay,

660
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: well a chimpanzee like with with no effort at all,

661
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 1: can just like rip apart of coconut. He's like, that

662
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: would be your skull, Like no problem there. They just

663
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:55,719
Speaker 1: have like unbelievable strength. You ever see those chimpanzees. This

664
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: is disgusted. This made me not like chimpanzees. I used

665
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: to be pro chimpanzee. You ever see that footage them

666
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: ripping apart that poor little monkey and eating it? Yeah,

667
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:08,919
Speaker 1: they catch a little monkey and tear them limb from

668
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 1: limb and eat them alive. That might have been a

669
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: Nature's Metal. No, it was on something different. I wanted.

670
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:18,719
Speaker 1: I feel like they've shown some grouco chimpanzee eyes and

671
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 1: genitals immediately, like you're done, and just think about this picture.

672
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:26,359
Speaker 1: There's a chimpanzee and you clock back and punch him

673
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 1: as hard as you can possibly punch them. There's no

674
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:32,479
Speaker 1: way you can knock out a chimpanzee. They also asked around,

675
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:34,879
Speaker 1: They're like, what would what would genuinely be the best

676
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: fight on the list, Like, what's what's like a fifty

677
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: fifty fight between the human and one of the animals.

678
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,360
Speaker 1: The only guess what it was? Well, this would be

679
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: the whooping a medium sized dog. People think they're in

680
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,439
Speaker 1: he said. Kangaroo, He said, a kangaroo would genuinely be

681
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: like a good tear down, knockout fight. That's one of

682
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: my favorite videos of all time. You ever see that

683
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: Australian guy that that cold cock that kangaroo the greatest

684
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 1: video ever because he's got his dog's got his dog

685
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 1: and they getting they the kangaroo like looks like it's

686
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:12,320
Speaker 1: square and off. He squares off in a boxer stands

687
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: and hits it so hard that it turns its face

688
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: by degrees. The man hits the kangaroo. What what is

689
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 1: the situation that they're even like fighting in there? And

690
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:27,239
Speaker 1: he comes in a kangaroo. It's the weirdest thing I got.

691
00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: So if you go to YouTube or whatever, look up

692
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:34,879
Speaker 1: like man punching kangaroo. My kids watch this five thousand times.

693
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 1: When we got onto it. All of a sudden, the

694
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: guy bails out of his truck and runs up and

695
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:42,439
Speaker 1: there's a kangaroo with its arm around a dog's neck

696
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: holding the dog standing there holding it under in a headlock.

697
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:50,759
Speaker 1: A kangaroo or a dog and a headlock. That's pretty sophistically.

698
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: The guy runs up to it, and the kangaroo drops

699
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,840
Speaker 1: the dog and puts up his dukes. I'm not kidding you,

700
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: puts up his dukes. The guy reflexively goes into a

701
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: boxer stance they do, like a little pirouette or whatever,

702
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:10,720
Speaker 1: and he hauls back and hits that kangaroo so hard

703
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: it turns the gives the kangaroo pretty much whiplash, and

704
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 1: then the guy squares off like it's gonna be another punch,

705
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: and then him and his dog walk Away. It's great

706
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:24,880
Speaker 1: video's greatest video ever. Rod said, that would be a

707
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:38,440
Speaker 1: genuinely good fight and it could go either way. You

708
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: want to see me watch this transition. Did you know

709
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:43,240
Speaker 1: about this transition? It's in here. I may have written

710
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: it because it's in the graphic. You know what they

711
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 1: use the image for the fighting for the six percent

712
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:52,440
Speaker 1: of people that think they could whoop a grizzly is

713
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 1: a scene from the Revenant, and that was based off

714
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: Michael Punk's pook The Revenant, and he's sitting right here

715
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 1: to my left top that huge glass. Was not unarmed though,

716
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: that was one thing. So you had a knife, he

717
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: had a knife, had a knife. Okay, why here, let's

718
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: start with this question about No, I can't decide where

719
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: to start with Ridgeline. I got two you decide, it's uh,

720
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 1: it's it's guest choice. Give us a quick overview of

721
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: what happened. Oh can I can I read this? Yes?

722
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 1: I think well, I want I want to read that.

723
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 1: What do you call the quote in the beginning of

724
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: the book here it is, it's it's a beauty, It's

725
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 1: a real beauty. The full story of what happened in

726
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: that brief hour of bloody carnage at high noon under

727
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 1: the wintry sky of December one, eighteen sixty six will

728
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: never be known. It's pretty good leading and as I said,

729
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: kind of opens a door for fiction. Yeah, so tell

730
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,719
Speaker 1: us what happened that day, and just like roughly, they're

731
00:42:57,719 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 1: gonna get into the lead up, like why that happened,

732
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,439
Speaker 1: but just give a brief overview and then my next

733
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:04,120
Speaker 1: question you can decide which you want to tackle first.

734
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: How do you decide on historical fiction versus nonfiction? So

735
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:13,400
Speaker 1: I'll answer I'll answer them in order. Um, briefly, what

736
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:17,839
Speaker 1: happened at high noon on that wintry day, wintry day,

737
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 1: December one, in the Powder River Valley of Wyoming is

738
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:31,080
Speaker 1: ten decoys, ten Native American decoys, a mixture of Lakota,

739
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 1: Cheyenne and Arapaho decoyed a group of cavalry and infantryman

740
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: out of Fort phil Karney away from the safety of

741
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,399
Speaker 1: the fort. And we're skillful enough as decoys to lead

742
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:52,359
Speaker 1: them over a ridgeline ah about two and a half

743
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:56,759
Speaker 1: miles away from the They were not supposed to go.

744
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: They were not supposed to go over that, And it

745
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 1: turns out for good reason, because on the other side

746
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:06,480
Speaker 1: of that ridgeline, very much to their surprise, were is

747
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 1: a force probably numbered around two thousand combined Cheyenne, Lakota,

748
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:19,920
Speaker 1: Arapaho warriors led by Red Cloud, and into that trapped.

749
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:26,040
Speaker 1: These calvarymen and infantrymen fell and were wiped out to

750
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:32,439
Speaker 1: the man men killed. It was the worst, most mostly

751
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 1: by earrows. It was the worst defeat in US military

752
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:40,360
Speaker 1: history for a decade until the the Battle of the

753
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: Little Big Horn. Mhmm. I don't remember if he mentioned

754
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: the book, but I've seen elsewhere that the decoys, as

755
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: part of their strategy, were mooning the U. S soldiers.

756
00:44:50,800 --> 00:44:56,200
Speaker 1: That's something you found to be true. I've read that before. Um.

757
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what I think about that, whether that

758
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: actually happened. I uh, I mean, who knows. They probably

759
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:04,840
Speaker 1: were doing a lot of things because they kind of

760
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:08,880
Speaker 1: lead the cavalry that was out in front along for

761
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: quite a distance. You. UM, I'm not sure that that

762
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: was the it's a good story. I'm not sure that

763
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,799
Speaker 1: that piece of it actually happened or not. Uh. They

764
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: certainly were successful in making them angry and getting them

765
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:29,680
Speaker 1: to chase uh, and in defiance of direct orders that

766
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 1: they had not to go over this particular origin line.

767
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 1: So whatever they did, it worked, and I kind of

768
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 1: play with that in the book. But to your question

769
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 1: of why fiction versus nonfiction, UM, I've written both. The

770
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:48,800
Speaker 1: This is my second novel. The first novel was The Revenant,

771
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:51,399
Speaker 1: and Origin Line is the second. And I've written two

772
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction books. And for me, one of the things

773
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 1: that made me decide to do a novel versus nonfiction

774
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:03,760
Speaker 1: is that I think this is a story where there's

775
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:07,360
Speaker 1: so much that is unknown that it really we know

776
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 1: a lot about the context, all the things that happened

777
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: before and after, but when it comes to the battle itself,

778
00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:13,799
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a fair amount of mystery there.

779
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: And it just made it perfect to me for a

780
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:22,000
Speaker 1: a a fictionalized version, as opposed to something like the

781
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 1: story of the mining disaster and Butte that I wrote about,

782
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:29,359
Speaker 1: where there were seven daily newspapers in Butte, Montana at

783
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: the time of the disaster, all of which we're covering

784
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 1: this incident and government reports about it, etcetera, etcetera. You

785
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:39,960
Speaker 1: just had all sorts of of of historical material to

786
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: work with, where you didn't need as much of the

787
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: of the fictionalized piece. So that was that was kind

788
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:47,439
Speaker 1: of one thing that played into it. I could see

789
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 1: that being warranted in this case. I hadn't thought about

790
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 1: it that way. Um, particularly if you look at at

791
00:46:53,920 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: Crazy Horses involvement. I don't know if you've ever read LARRYM. Merchery,

792
00:46:57,520 --> 00:46:59,920
Speaker 1: there was a series where like novelists would write these

793
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: I was famous Americans and Larry McMurtry, um, you know,

794
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:09,000
Speaker 1: most famous. He wrote Lonesome Dove h He wrote the

795
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: Crazy Horse one, which is very short, very short, and

796
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:15,800
Speaker 1: it begins with Larry E. Merchany basis staying I don't know. Well,

797
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 1: it was like basically it was like I'll tell you

798
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:21,200
Speaker 1: what we don't know, and that's kind of what the

799
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 1: book called goes like. And there's not even a photograph

800
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 1: of Crazy Horse because he never allowed himself to be photographed,

801
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 1: so unlike a lot of the most famous Native American leaders.

802
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: There are photographs who Red Cloud, for example, there are

803
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: lots of photographs Crazy Uh sitting bowl. Crazy Horse. There's

804
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 1: no there's no photograph. He never allowed himself to be photograph.

805
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:45,360
Speaker 1: He's so mysterious, very mysterious. They don't they took his body.

806
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 1: His people took his body. No one knows where they

807
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,399
Speaker 1: put the body. It's not even clear who stabbed him.

808
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:54,120
Speaker 1: I think that there's like a lot of what what

809
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: happened at the time of his death. He was in

810
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 1: Nebraska correct, yes, and he was in he was in

811
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:03,240
Speaker 1: UH military. He was like under some kind of house arrest.

812
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: He's being returned to UH to confinement reservation and run

813
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:11,920
Speaker 1: off to another one in order to take care of

814
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:15,279
Speaker 1: his of his wife. He was captured, brought back. He

815
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 1: saw that he was going to be imprisoned, and he resisted.

816
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: And the story that ah to me makes I think

817
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: there's the most support for is that he was grabbed

818
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 1: by two Native policemen and then stabbed with a bayonet

819
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: by a US soldier. I know there was when I've

820
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: read about it, it was that there is like some

821
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:46,279
Speaker 1: historical disagreement about who gave the death blow. But but

822
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: I remember Ian Frasier writing that um, his disdain for

823
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:54,719
Speaker 1: the white man was still strong that even after he

824
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: was stabbed and he was dying, he refused to be

825
00:48:56,719 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 1: laid in the bed exactly. UH. He wanted to lay

826
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:03,440
Speaker 1: on the ground and died in the company of his

827
00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: of his father, that that evening after being stabbed, and

828
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:11,719
Speaker 1: then presumably somewhere within there his body is hidden. You

829
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:13,880
Speaker 1: would you would think that, I mean, I guess, we

830
00:49:13,920 --> 00:49:16,920
Speaker 1: don't know, but that's what you would think. M hm.

831
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 1: So the point being about that is it allows I

832
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:26,560
Speaker 1: can see that there's reward and risk and taking the

833
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:30,839
Speaker 1: approach to take sure because you're taking a stab at

834
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: it right and perform stab but it's it's I shouldn't

835
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:37,920
Speaker 1: use the word STABBU you stabbed death. You're taking a

836
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,320
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess, yeah, yeah, for sure. And

837
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: uh and I actually the book doesn't cover that part

838
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:48,799
Speaker 1: of Crazy Horses life. It pretty much stops with with

839
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:53,280
Speaker 1: the fetterment fight. That doesn't go forward the ten years

840
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:57,320
Speaker 1: that personality that you established personality, But for sure, and

841
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:01,240
Speaker 1: and and I grapple with that a lot as a

842
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: as a writer, and I think there's even writing fiction

843
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:07,600
Speaker 1: that there's a huge responsibility to get the history right.

844
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:11,359
Speaker 1: And I take that super seriously. And I think it's

845
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:14,720
Speaker 1: especially important today when frankly, I feel like as a

846
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 1: as a nation, we're losing our grip on fact versus

847
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: fiction and veracities. Yeah maybe, um, but I think that

848
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 1: as I for the books that I write, I want

849
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 1: to not do anything that would lead a reader to

850
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 1: a a conclusion that I think is not accurate about

851
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:42,319
Speaker 1: what happened historically or about what people were like. And

852
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: so in writing about Crazy Horse I and all the

853
00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: other characters good and bad, I've had a real sense

854
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:52,280
Speaker 1: of responsibility to kind of do the research on the

855
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: characters in order to kind of have the best sense

856
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 1: that I could about what they were like as people,

857
00:50:58,040 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: and then to write a story. It is consistent with that,

858
00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:03,920
Speaker 1: even recognizing that you're making up lots of stuff. I mean,

859
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:06,760
Speaker 1: in a novel, you write about what people are thinking,

860
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:09,840
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know. You're writing about conversations that

861
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 1: they had, we don't know. But I hope that I've

862
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,120
Speaker 1: done this book in a way that that is true

863
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:19,560
Speaker 1: to history and to the characters. In the end, in

864
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:21,160
Speaker 1: a secondary I want to get to the sort of

865
00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:23,080
Speaker 1: the lead up to this fight. But in the end,

866
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:25,839
Speaker 1: you do like you have some people that you paint

867
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: as a napped and ye, yes, like I guess not

868
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 1: villain isn't the right word, but some of them, yeah,

869
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:34,840
Speaker 1: I would call him villains. Some real questionable characters in

870
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:37,600
Speaker 1: the book, and then in the end you have some

871
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: notes well that that lay out off the case I

872
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:44,799
Speaker 1: lay out your case. I've take an additional step at

873
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: the end of Ridgeline, and I did the same thing

874
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:49,080
Speaker 1: at the end of The Revenant, where I have a

875
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: section that is historical notes and basically any place where

876
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 1: I explicitly wrote something that I knew was not correct,

877
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 1: I tell the reader about that, and then I give

878
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,480
Speaker 1: sources that the reader can can use to go do

879
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:08,360
Speaker 1: additional nonfiction reading. And again, I feel like when I

880
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:10,239
Speaker 1: read a book or see a movie, I always wonder

881
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 1: did that really happen or not? And so at the

882
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: end of my book, I have a section that kind

883
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 1: of attempts to answer that question. Sorry. On the media

884
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:22,360
Speaker 1: dot Com, we read an article last year called the

885
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: Genre Revived the New Age of Westerns, and we sort

886
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:28,239
Speaker 1: of talked about how there's been a shift like since

887
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, when Westerns had a lot of clean violence,

888
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 1: bright colors, gunshots that never bled, and then you get

889
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:38,480
Speaker 1: into the nineties and there's like sort of it becomes

890
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: very action here we and then in like the two thousands,

891
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:45,600
Speaker 1: and now it's like sort of dark. There's a lot

892
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 1: of character development, um, and there's not years much violence,

893
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 1: and if you are like a violent person, they're like

894
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: kind of the dumb person when they're loose with gunfire.

895
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:56,200
Speaker 1: And it's just been like this huge shift over less

896
00:52:56,239 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 1: seventy years and the whole genre of Westerns. Has there

897
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: been any kind of similar shift with like historical fiction

898
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:07,359
Speaker 1: or not. Um, that's a great question. I'm not sure

899
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 1: that I can answer it in a very generalized way

900
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 1: because I think people write so many different kinds of

901
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:18,200
Speaker 1: historical fiction, ranging from stuff that's just barely influenced by history. Too.

902
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:21,000
Speaker 1: I hope I'm at the other end of the spectrum

903
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: in terms of wanting to tell a very entertaining story

904
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:25,760
Speaker 1: but having it be as true to history as possible.

905
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:29,279
Speaker 1: So I do think it's interesting how I would say

906
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: slightly differently in terms of how I would characterize Westerns.

907
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: I think the Western motif is something that's at the

908
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 1: core of the American soul, and I think every decade,

909
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:47,279
Speaker 1: every generation uses the Western in part to hold the

910
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: mirror up to the to the era that we live

911
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:52,200
Speaker 1: in that they live in in their time, and so

912
00:53:52,360 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: fifties westerns reflected that kind of fifties mentality about about

913
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 1: good and evil. Seventies western's anti hero. The anti hero

914
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War reflected a much different view of

915
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: what a hero even was in a Western context. Uh,

916
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: something like a movie like Unforgiven to Me is all

917
00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: about the it's all about violence, and it happened to

918
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:23,040
Speaker 1: be at a time a nation in doubt, a nation

919
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: in doubt. You know, what does the what is the

920
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 1: role of violence? What does violence mean? And so I

921
00:54:28,880 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: think every every era kind of sees Western takes different

922
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,880
Speaker 1: lessons from Western history, and I think I do that too.

923
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 1: So you think historical fiction like sort of follows that

924
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: same thing a little bit. It's it's a reflection of

925
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: the era that it comes out, and that I think

926
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 1: that probably ends up being true. Is that, Look, we

927
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 1: all see the path, we all see everything through our

928
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: prism of of our present experience. And I think you

929
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 1: if you're trying to be true to history, you try

930
00:54:57,280 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: and fight against that a little bit because you want

931
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 1: to not be completely uh distorted by your your current vision.

932
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 1: But I think that it's it's tough to get around that.

933
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:15,320
Speaker 1: When you're developing characters, do you kind of envision them

934
00:55:15,719 --> 00:55:19,080
Speaker 1: or like feel them yourself, Like what's your process to

935
00:55:19,200 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 1: pick and choose things that maybe in a historical account

936
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:26,839
Speaker 1: and meshing that with you know, because you get into

937
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:30,719
Speaker 1: kind of like the psychology of who everyone is, how

938
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: do you feel through that? So, first of all, one

939
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: of the things I loved about this story is that

940
00:55:36,080 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 1: there's such an incredibly diverse cast. And I mean, The

941
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:43,399
Speaker 1: Revenant was really about one guy, Malbia Grizzly, and there's

942
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:46,000
Speaker 1: some people who he goes after, but it's really kind

943
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:50,680
Speaker 1: of a one man show, which is an interesting survival story.

944
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:55,480
Speaker 1: This story is has a sprawling cast, and and the West,

945
00:55:55,920 --> 00:55:58,720
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things people don't often realize

946
00:55:58,719 --> 00:56:01,839
Speaker 1: about the West is just how incredibly diverse it was.

947
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, even the diversity within the tribes

948
00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:11,400
Speaker 1: is incredible. Among the Lakota, just in this story, you

949
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:17,600
Speaker 1: have the Menacaoju, you have the Oglala. Among the Cheyenne,

950
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:20,160
Speaker 1: you have the northern and southern Cheyenne, you have the Crow,

951
00:56:20,360 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 1: you have the Arapaho, uh. And so there's a huge

952
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:26,879
Speaker 1: diversity just with language barriers which you get into, which

953
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:29,439
Speaker 1: I had that hadn't occurred to me before. I guess

954
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 1: maybe I had just hadn't thought about it. Difficult to

955
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:35,400
Speaker 1: communicate and and that's just the tribes. And then you

956
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:38,560
Speaker 1: have uh, you know, the role of women in the

957
00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 1: frontier is a lot more pronounced in this era than

958
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:45,040
Speaker 1: than people realize. One of the most important jobs I

959
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,880
Speaker 1: ever had for my writing career was when I was

960
00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 1: in high school and college. I worked summers at Fort

961
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 1: Laramie National Historic Site for the National Park Service and

962
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:56,839
Speaker 1: I dressed up. This was the greatest boy job ever.

963
00:56:56,960 --> 00:56:59,480
Speaker 1: I dressed up every day in eight seventy six cavalry

964
00:56:59,560 --> 00:57:04,239
Speaker 1: uniform and I uh talked to tourists about the history

965
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:08,560
Speaker 1: of the West. Twice a day. We fired in Mountain Howitzer. Um.

966
00:57:08,600 --> 00:57:10,880
Speaker 1: You know, I learned all about the guns. It was.

967
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,520
Speaker 1: It was an incredible job. One of the things I

968
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:17,920
Speaker 1: learned in that job. First of all, the US government

969
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:20,120
Speaker 1: did not do a very good era job in that

970
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: era of talking about the role of Native Americans in

971
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 1: Western history. One thing they did do a fairly decent

972
00:57:27,640 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: job of at that time as they talked about the

973
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: role of women on a fort, and one of the

974
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:37,000
Speaker 1: roles that they talked about in detail was laundresses. Because

975
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:40,920
Speaker 1: each one of these forts had a community of women

976
00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:44,280
Speaker 1: whose job was to do the soldiers laundry, and there

977
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 1: was an incredible culture that built up around those women.

978
00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:52,200
Speaker 1: And so in my book I portray one of the characters,

979
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 1: Janie White, who's a laundress at Fort phil Karney in

980
00:57:56,640 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six. So in your question was how do

981
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: you characters? And this one the hard thing was was

982
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: deciding who not to pick, because there were so many

983
00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 1: compelling characters to me, Um, you know, none more so

984
00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 1: than than Crazy Horse, who for the reasons we talked about,

985
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 1: including the fact that he's such a there's such a

986
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:20,840
Speaker 1: an aspect of mystery around him, made him just fascinating

987
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:26,600
Speaker 1: to me. The soldiers, there's incredible conflict between the officers,

988
00:58:27,280 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 1: between then between the officers and the enlisted men. The

989
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 1: soldiers themselves are largely made up of German and Irish

990
00:58:34,440 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: immigrants who might have signed up for the army because

991
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 1: they want to uh learn how to speak English. For example,

992
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 1: if you're the Germans and all of a sudden they

993
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 1: end up out in this god forsaken Western frontier, surprise, surprise,

994
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 1: there's women at the ft in eighteen sixty six, both

995
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 1: in the form of officers wives because the officers brought

996
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 1: their families with them, which is surprising to a lot

997
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,120
Speaker 1: of people. And Laundre says, I was surprised to read that.

998
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, think about where they're they're sitting

999
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:06,840
Speaker 1: in that day, that it's the most dangerous spot on

1000
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 1: the planet. And these officers are bringing their families with

1001
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:12,520
Speaker 1: him and all your husbands right out one day and yeah,

1002
00:59:12,760 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 1: and all these people are interacting with with each other

1003
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:19,760
Speaker 1: in the midst of this incredibly stressful period in history.

1004
00:59:19,840 --> 00:59:25,600
Speaker 1: And to me, that just was inherently dramatic and interesting. Um,

1005
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 1: have you ever read uh, I can't remember the name,

1006
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:30,680
Speaker 1: but there's a really good book about there's a history

1007
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:38,600
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to September two thousand one? No, okay, uh,

1008
00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:44,080
Speaker 1: this battles what day? December one? December one? Give me

1009
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:47,920
Speaker 1: what was going on up to December sixty six? Little background?

1010
00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 1: So I love this part of the story as well,

1011
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:57,800
Speaker 1: because there's just this incredible perfect storm of events that

1012
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:04,400
Speaker 1: come together to create this moment of conflict. And here's

1013
01:00:04,560 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 1: here you'll be interested in this if you're really setting

1014
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 1: the historical stage. You know, what is what's happening in

1015
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:13,720
Speaker 1: a massive way is the floodgates are kind of opened

1016
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:20,520
Speaker 1: on American immigration west. And and I love this confluence

1017
01:00:20,520 --> 01:00:26,160
Speaker 1: of events. So eighteen forty six, the US and the

1018
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: United Kingdom enter a treaty that gives Oregon, that settles

1019
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:36,080
Speaker 1: that Oregon will be part of the United States. So

1020
01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:41,440
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six Oregon becomes legally American. That was that

1021
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:43,560
Speaker 1: was like the last piece of the puzzle, right, not quite.

1022
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:46,440
Speaker 1: And here's the other the war with Mexico. Not quite.

1023
01:00:46,760 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 1: So eighteen forty six U S gets Oregon from the UK.

1024
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 1: Eighteen forty seven, Brigham young establishes a a settlement in

1025
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:05,720
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City. Eighteen forty eight, the us UH signs

1026
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: the treaty that ends the Mexican American War. So it's

1027
01:01:08,840 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: forty eight when California becomes American. And two weeks after

1028
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: they signed that treaty with the Mexicans, at Sutter's Mill

1029
01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 1: in California, they discovered gold. And then you have the

1030
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:26,200
Speaker 1: forty Niners with the gold Rush. So in that three

1031
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:31,280
Speaker 1: year period you have Oregon, California, and Salt Lake City

1032
01:01:31,640 --> 01:01:37,280
Speaker 1: just sort of saying come west, and people start doing it.

1033
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 1: And then they said he get rich and get rich. Yeah,

1034
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:45,520
Speaker 1: and you know, but what happens for a while basically

1035
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:51,320
Speaker 1: between uh, you know, the late eighteen forties and eighteen

1036
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:54,400
Speaker 1: sixty six, the era that that that I'm writing about

1037
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:59,080
Speaker 1: is most people are going across They're getting across the

1038
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:01,400
Speaker 1: middle part of the country as quickly as they can.

1039
01:02:02,120 --> 01:02:04,600
Speaker 1: They just want to get to California or Oregon or

1040
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:06,840
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City. They were was at the time in

1041
01:02:06,880 --> 01:02:08,720
Speaker 1: which they would refer to it as the Great American

1042
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 1: Desert or something exactly. And so the first thing that

1043
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:15,600
Speaker 1: the government does in eighteen fifty one is they they

1044
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 1: they sign a treaty with the tribes that creates a

1045
01:02:19,560 --> 01:02:24,320
Speaker 1: travel corridor that's basically the Oregon Trail. And they but

1046
01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: the fifty one treaty says to the tribes, you can

1047
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:31,560
Speaker 1: have everything north of of the Platte River, north of

1048
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:33,840
Speaker 1: the Oregon Trail. With a treaty like that, Like, what

1049
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:37,480
Speaker 1: are they specifying the specifying that people can pass through unmolested.

1050
01:02:37,520 --> 01:02:40,160
Speaker 1: Are they actually saying like, here's a little buffer we

1051
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:43,760
Speaker 1: don't want anybody to go into mostly passed through them unmolested.

1052
01:02:44,040 --> 01:02:46,640
Speaker 1: They say, here's the road that you can do that,

1053
01:02:46,720 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: you will allow settlers to use. They allowed him to

1054
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:53,040
Speaker 1: set up forts along the road to defend the trail.

1055
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: But they said to the tribes, everything north of the

1056
01:02:56,120 --> 01:02:58,400
Speaker 1: north Platte is yours. And they tried to kind of

1057
01:02:58,440 --> 01:03:00,600
Speaker 1: divide it up, meaning like we'll never tell yes, no

1058
01:03:00,720 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 1: interest yes. And then what happens is the gold, the

1059
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: plastic gold, the easy gold, runs out in California by

1060
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 1: the late by the early eighteen fifties, and so all

1061
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:12,160
Speaker 1: those guys who went out to California to get rich

1062
01:03:12,160 --> 01:03:15,560
Speaker 1: on gold start coming back to the middle of the continent,

1063
01:03:16,240 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: and there's start to be gold strikes in places like

1064
01:03:19,680 --> 01:03:23,560
Speaker 1: uh like Nevada and Colorado, and then in eighteen sixty

1065
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:27,640
Speaker 1: two in Montana. And what happens when they strike gold

1066
01:03:27,680 --> 01:03:31,240
Speaker 1: in Montana is all these gold miners start peeling off

1067
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:34,680
Speaker 1: of the Oregon Trail and going north up to Montana

1068
01:03:35,080 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: to get the Bannock City in Virginia City and the

1069
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:40,800
Speaker 1: other gold strikes. And when they do that, when those

1070
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:45,760
Speaker 1: when those miners start peeling off the Oregon Trail, they're

1071
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:49,960
Speaker 1: violating the treat the eight fifty one treaty, which has

1072
01:03:50,040 --> 01:03:54,760
Speaker 1: given all of that too. The tribes, and so it

1073
01:03:54,800 --> 01:03:59,400
Speaker 1: creates this conflict. And by eighteen sixty six, and this

1074
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:02,480
Speaker 1: is the this is what sometimes it's called the Bozeman Trail,

1075
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: and I think it was more commonly then called the

1076
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:09,760
Speaker 1: Montana Road. That the Bozeman Trail goes right through the

1077
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:13,840
Speaker 1: middle of the Powder River Valley. And what the U. S.

1078
01:04:13,920 --> 01:04:15,800
Speaker 1: Government does, and this is what the U. S. Government

1079
01:04:15,800 --> 01:04:19,280
Speaker 1: does every single time when there's conflict between a treaty

1080
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:23,560
Speaker 1: and the desire to go get gold is they try

1081
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:27,840
Speaker 1: and in their most benign form, they try and renegotiate

1082
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:31,040
Speaker 1: the treaty with the tribes and say, oh, now we

1083
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:33,840
Speaker 1: want to go up there signed a new treaty. And

1084
01:04:33,880 --> 01:04:36,400
Speaker 1: so in the summer of eighteen sixty six i e.

1085
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:40,480
Speaker 1: Uh six months before the battle that this book is

1086
01:04:40,480 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 1: about at Fort Laramie, they bring the tribes together, some

1087
01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:47,840
Speaker 1: tribes together, because this is a bone of contention as

1088
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:50,640
Speaker 1: to which tribes actually signed the treaty. But in the

1089
01:04:50,640 --> 01:04:53,480
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen sixty six, the US government signs a

1090
01:04:53,520 --> 01:04:57,880
Speaker 1: new treaty that basically says they can travel through the

1091
01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 1: Powder River Valley and build three words between Fort Laramie

1092
01:05:02,640 --> 01:05:05,160
Speaker 1: and the gold fields in Montana. What are they given?

1093
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:09,160
Speaker 1: What do they give us compensation? Uh? For that treaty?

1094
01:05:09,480 --> 01:05:13,840
Speaker 1: I I can't remember if they because what they did

1095
01:05:13,840 --> 01:05:15,360
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one is they said, we'll give you

1096
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:18,840
Speaker 1: fifty dollars worth of annuities every year and they would

1097
01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 1: come out with wagons full of arrowheads and blankets and

1098
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:27,160
Speaker 1: metal pots and some kind of like rolling cattle and

1099
01:05:27,200 --> 01:05:30,040
Speaker 1: stuff into there. Right. Yeah, although I don't think the

1100
01:05:30,040 --> 01:05:33,000
Speaker 1: cattle was as common for those annuities. I don't know

1101
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 1: if if there was an annuity agreement in eighteen sixty

1102
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:39,600
Speaker 1: six or not. But when they do an annuity like that,

1103
01:05:39,640 --> 01:05:44,080
Speaker 1: they would say basically in perpetuity, Yeah, we'll truck out

1104
01:05:44,200 --> 01:05:47,720
Speaker 1: and drop off at some locations goods and the tribes

1105
01:05:47,760 --> 01:05:51,440
Speaker 1: will come in annually and collect their annuities. That was

1106
01:05:52,120 --> 01:05:55,400
Speaker 1: that was meant to be like forever. Uh. But what

1107
01:05:55,440 --> 01:05:58,600
Speaker 1: they do in eighteen sixty six is they they find

1108
01:05:59,440 --> 01:06:01,320
Speaker 1: And this is part of the misconception of the U.

1109
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:05,880
Speaker 1: S Government for a long time, certainly then but even

1110
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 1: even now in terms of wanting to think of of

1111
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:13,560
Speaker 1: the tribes as being monolithic entities. They wanted they wanted

1112
01:06:13,560 --> 01:06:17,800
Speaker 1: the Lakota to be France because they were used to

1113
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: having the negotiations between you know, the United States and France,

1114
01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:24,720
Speaker 1: and you would get each country's diplomats together and you

1115
01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:30,440
Speaker 1: sign a treaty. And the Lakotah, the tribes, the Lakota

1116
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 1: representatives that they signed treaties with, and then the other

1117
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:37,640
Speaker 1: representatives that they signed the treaty with in oftentimes didn't

1118
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 1: even live in the part of the country that was

1119
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:44,080
Speaker 1: being given away in the treaty. So those tribes that

1120
01:06:44,080 --> 01:06:48,240
Speaker 1: would sign the treaty, they they didn't Uh, it was

1121
01:06:48,280 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 1: not an issue for them to sign a treaty saying

1122
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:52,520
Speaker 1: you can have the Powder River Valley because that's not

1123
01:06:52,520 --> 01:06:55,280
Speaker 1: where those tribes lived. But if you're a Red Cloud

1124
01:06:55,480 --> 01:06:58,600
Speaker 1: who lives in the Powder River Valley who didn't sign

1125
01:06:58,640 --> 01:07:02,080
Speaker 1: that treaty then, and you can imagine that that didn't

1126
01:07:02,080 --> 01:07:04,840
Speaker 1: go over well. But here's the thing that confused me

1127
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:09,360
Speaker 1: a little bit though. The Powder River Valley where where

1128
01:07:09,400 --> 01:07:13,880
Speaker 1: the fight takes place. Wasn't that supposedly that wasn't even

1129
01:07:13,920 --> 01:07:16,480
Speaker 1: Lakota ground hadn't then, But hadn't they agreed that that

1130
01:07:16,520 --> 01:07:20,200
Speaker 1: was the crow not It was more ambiguous than that.

1131
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:24,720
Speaker 1: Um and so and and and there certainly was fighting

1132
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:28,720
Speaker 1: between the among many of the tribes, including between the

1133
01:07:28,800 --> 01:07:32,760
Speaker 1: Lakota and the Crow very famously, but also between the

1134
01:07:32,840 --> 01:07:36,400
Speaker 1: Lakota and the Shoshone, for example, who lived predominantly on

1135
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:38,560
Speaker 1: the other side of the of the Big Hornament. But

1136
01:07:38,680 --> 01:07:44,960
Speaker 1: history like, yeah, skirmishing whatever that predates that. And and

1137
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:50,160
Speaker 1: the notion, I mean, the notion that tribes had defined

1138
01:07:52,160 --> 01:07:56,560
Speaker 1: very specifically defined territories is very much and uh something

1139
01:07:56,600 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 1: that I think the US government wanted to believe because

1140
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:02,440
Speaker 1: that made it more convenient to negotiate these treaties. But

1141
01:08:02,520 --> 01:08:04,400
Speaker 1: that's not the way that the tribes thought about it.

1142
01:08:04,800 --> 01:08:07,120
Speaker 1: Not to say that they didn't have hunting territories that

1143
01:08:07,160 --> 01:08:09,280
Speaker 1: they would defend, lands that they would defend from other

1144
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:12,520
Speaker 1: tribes the Lakota versus the Crow, or the Lakota versus

1145
01:08:12,560 --> 01:08:15,360
Speaker 1: the Shoshone. But it was not something that was that

1146
01:08:15,520 --> 01:08:19,040
Speaker 1: was you know, agreed to in the sense that that

1147
01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:21,600
Speaker 1: the U. S Government wanted to think about. And so

1148
01:08:21,640 --> 01:08:23,280
Speaker 1: when they try and when the US government tries to

1149
01:08:23,320 --> 01:08:27,160
Speaker 1: impose this notion of a treaty on the tribes with

1150
01:08:27,600 --> 01:08:32,840
Speaker 1: specifically defined borders, and uh, you know, the notion that

1151
01:08:32,880 --> 01:08:36,960
Speaker 1: one tribe can consign that on behalf of another tribe

1152
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:40,800
Speaker 1: just didn't it didn't like this creek, that river, or

1153
01:08:40,800 --> 01:08:45,200
Speaker 1: that mountain ridge exactly and so and in fact, uh,

1154
01:08:46,120 --> 01:08:48,160
Speaker 1: what happens in the summer of eighteen sixty six is

1155
01:08:48,200 --> 01:08:51,640
Speaker 1: Red Cloud is at Fort Laramie as part of these negotiations.

1156
01:08:51,960 --> 01:08:55,400
Speaker 1: And in the middle of those negotiations, Colonel Carrington, who

1157
01:08:55,479 --> 01:08:58,679
Speaker 1: I read about in the book, marches into Fort Laramie

1158
01:08:58,760 --> 01:09:04,080
Speaker 1: from Nebraska with three hundred troops, and the Lakota find

1159
01:09:04,080 --> 01:09:07,880
Speaker 1: out that his mission is to go build forts in

1160
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:10,720
Speaker 1: the Powder River Valley. This is before the treaty has

1161
01:09:10,760 --> 01:09:12,920
Speaker 1: even been signed, even a treaty that they don't like.

1162
01:09:13,960 --> 01:09:16,639
Speaker 1: And so Red Cloud says, you know, screw this, I'm

1163
01:09:16,680 --> 01:09:18,480
Speaker 1: out of here. Like I thought we were here to negotiate,

1164
01:09:18,560 --> 01:09:22,680
Speaker 1: but you've already decided um. And Red Cloud leaves. And

1165
01:09:22,720 --> 01:09:25,920
Speaker 1: that was because that was an area that he had

1166
01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:28,840
Speaker 1: spent his life in, yes, And so he sees that,

1167
01:09:29,000 --> 01:09:31,960
Speaker 1: you know, the game was fixed and it's not a

1168
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:35,839
Speaker 1: real negotiation, and he leaves. After he leaves, other tribes

1169
01:09:36,160 --> 01:09:39,000
Speaker 1: signed a treaty saying you can go occupy the Powder

1170
01:09:39,080 --> 01:09:42,639
Speaker 1: River Valley tribes that don't live there. And so that's

1171
01:09:42,680 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 1: the setup. When you ask what's the set up for

1172
01:09:45,880 --> 01:09:50,960
Speaker 1: for December twenty one six, that's the setup. Is a

1173
01:09:51,160 --> 01:09:53,679
Speaker 1: couple of decades in which the floodgates have just been

1174
01:09:55,040 --> 01:10:01,080
Speaker 1: opened wide in terms of of Eastern Americans going west. Uh,

1175
01:10:01,600 --> 01:10:05,880
Speaker 1: a history of treaties that have been established and then violated,

1176
01:10:06,840 --> 01:10:11,600
Speaker 1: and a very recent treaty that is agreed to without

1177
01:10:12,200 --> 01:10:16,559
Speaker 1: the participation of the tribes that live in the land

1178
01:10:16,880 --> 01:10:19,320
Speaker 1: that is subject to the treaty. And then this Carrington

1179
01:10:19,400 --> 01:10:23,879
Speaker 1: guy heads north with none other than Jim Bridger, Jim Bridger.

1180
01:10:24,000 --> 01:10:25,680
Speaker 1: And I could not believe this when I started doing

1181
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:27,880
Speaker 1: research on this, because I love Jim Bridger, and you know,

1182
01:10:28,720 --> 01:10:33,439
Speaker 1: and he's a nineteen year old naive greenhorn in The Revenant,

1183
01:10:33,920 --> 01:10:36,960
Speaker 1: and by the time of this book eighteen sixty six,

1184
01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:40,960
Speaker 1: he's a sixty six year old legend of the West,

1185
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,960
Speaker 1: and truly a legend of the West. I mean, he's

1186
01:10:44,120 --> 01:10:47,599
Speaker 1: he is in his own day. The soldiers are in

1187
01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:52,640
Speaker 1: awe of him because he's he's famous as a incredible

1188
01:10:53,520 --> 01:10:58,439
Speaker 1: Western scout. And so yeah, the Army hire Jim Bridger

1189
01:10:58,560 --> 01:11:01,559
Speaker 1: to scout for them in the Powder River Valley in

1190
01:11:01,600 --> 01:11:05,479
Speaker 1: this campaign in eighteen sixty six, and not only Jim Bridger,

1191
01:11:06,040 --> 01:11:10,439
Speaker 1: but for mountain Men aficionados out there. They also hire

1192
01:11:10,880 --> 01:11:16,439
Speaker 1: James Beckworth, who is a incredibly famous mixed race scout

1193
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 1: born a slave with a white father and a black

1194
01:11:20,920 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: slave mother, freed by his white UH father as a boy,

1195
01:11:28,280 --> 01:11:32,280
Speaker 1: and both Bridger and Beckworth and go out and are

1196
01:11:32,360 --> 01:11:35,599
Speaker 1: part of the original eight twenty three Rocky Mountain Fur

1197
01:11:35,720 --> 01:11:39,360
Speaker 1: Company expedition that goes out that I read about in

1198
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:42,760
Speaker 1: the Revenant. And so these two guys, who are both

1199
01:11:42,760 --> 01:11:46,120
Speaker 1: in their sixties at this point, are and legends in

1200
01:11:46,160 --> 01:11:48,800
Speaker 1: their own time, are scouting for the U. S. Army.

1201
01:11:49,200 --> 01:11:52,120
Speaker 1: One of the things talk about UH fiction and why

1202
01:11:52,160 --> 01:11:55,599
Speaker 1: I wrote this as a novel. What happens in real

1203
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:59,519
Speaker 1: life is Colonel Carrington, the commanding officer of the of

1204
01:11:59,560 --> 01:12:05,240
Speaker 1: the this army group, dispatches Bridger and Beckworth to go

1205
01:12:05,360 --> 01:12:08,839
Speaker 1: figure out where the Indians are. And so there's literally

1206
01:12:08,880 --> 01:12:10,719
Speaker 1: a moment that takes place in the fall of eighteen

1207
01:12:10,760 --> 01:12:15,400
Speaker 1: sixty six where Jim freaking Bridger and James freaking Beckworth

1208
01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:20,639
Speaker 1: are riding across the prairie together for for two months

1209
01:12:21,400 --> 01:12:25,400
Speaker 1: UH looking for the tribes and and imagining the conversations

1210
01:12:25,400 --> 01:12:27,280
Speaker 1: that those two guys were having, which I try and

1211
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:31,080
Speaker 1: do in the book that movie Drug Store Cowboys. We've

1212
01:12:31,080 --> 01:12:36,360
Speaker 1: seen Bob well and and imagine what they've seen. I mean,

1213
01:12:36,400 --> 01:12:40,760
Speaker 1: they came. They came West in eighteen twenty three with

1214
01:12:40,840 --> 01:12:44,439
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and are part of literally

1215
01:12:44,520 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 1: one of the very first commercial for operations in the

1216
01:12:47,439 --> 01:12:51,479
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties, and they ride through, uh, they ride out

1217
01:12:51,479 --> 01:12:55,320
Speaker 1: the whole fur trade era until the until eighteen forty.

1218
01:12:55,560 --> 01:12:59,680
Speaker 1: Bridger then reinvents himself and sets up a fort that

1219
01:12:59,800 --> 01:13:05,120
Speaker 1: ends up being right on on the Mormon Trail to

1220
01:13:05,120 --> 01:13:07,960
Speaker 1: to Salt Lake City and makes a ton of money

1221
01:13:08,120 --> 01:13:12,439
Speaker 1: selling provisions to immigrants on the on the Oregon Trail.

1222
01:13:13,240 --> 01:13:15,800
Speaker 1: And then by the eighteen sixties he's scouting for the

1223
01:13:15,880 --> 01:13:18,040
Speaker 1: US or he's making his living as a as a

1224
01:13:18,080 --> 01:13:20,720
Speaker 1: scout for the U. S. Army. But the history that

1225
01:13:20,760 --> 01:13:24,160
Speaker 1: he's seen is phenomenal thinking. And you paint him as

1226
01:13:24,200 --> 01:13:27,719
Speaker 1: being um like, and I buy it. Well, you paint

1227
01:13:27,760 --> 01:13:32,679
Speaker 1: him as as becoming conflicted about the changes in the West. Well,

1228
01:13:33,080 --> 01:13:37,160
Speaker 1: I thought about that a lot, and I think we

1229
01:13:37,360 --> 01:13:39,160
Speaker 1: talked about a little bit about this when I was

1230
01:13:39,200 --> 01:13:41,960
Speaker 1: here before. I think for some of those guys like

1231
01:13:42,000 --> 01:13:46,160
Speaker 1: Bridger and Beckworth, they must have been conflicted because their

1232
01:13:46,240 --> 01:13:49,240
Speaker 1: world was changing so much, and the world that drew

1233
01:13:49,280 --> 01:13:52,479
Speaker 1: them to the west, uh, you know, the truly open

1234
01:13:52,920 --> 01:13:57,240
Speaker 1: frontier was changing, and not only was it changing, but

1235
01:13:57,400 --> 01:14:01,599
Speaker 1: they were helping to facilitate that. And I think there

1236
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:04,320
Speaker 1: must have been a lot of I think they must

1237
01:14:04,320 --> 01:14:06,759
Speaker 1: have questioned themselves about whether that was exactly the world

1238
01:14:06,760 --> 01:14:09,200
Speaker 1: that they wanted the West to be. Did they really

1239
01:14:09,240 --> 01:14:12,880
Speaker 1: want civilization? And if you look at it from a

1240
01:14:12,880 --> 01:14:16,479
Speaker 1: abundance of game, yeah, oh, I mean that they were

1241
01:14:16,479 --> 01:14:19,240
Speaker 1: seeing their witnessing like here there are all these decades

1242
01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:21,800
Speaker 1: they have been living off these like incomprehensible herds of

1243
01:14:21,840 --> 01:14:28,240
Speaker 1: buffalo that's vanishing, like it already along the trail, especially harder, harder,

1244
01:14:28,240 --> 01:14:32,240
Speaker 1: fun decimation of the beaver and then just people man. Yeah,

1245
01:14:32,520 --> 01:14:35,000
Speaker 1: And so I think, and I also just think as

1246
01:14:35,040 --> 01:14:41,080
Speaker 1: you get older, you're more reflective about about things generally

1247
01:14:41,120 --> 01:14:45,599
Speaker 1: and and your life and your role. And it's not

1248
01:14:45,680 --> 01:14:49,600
Speaker 1: that I think that Bridger suddenly had a massive conversion

1249
01:14:49,760 --> 01:14:53,800
Speaker 1: and and you know, uh, turned away from his earlier life.

1250
01:14:53,880 --> 01:14:55,320
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that's I don't think that's

1251
01:14:55,360 --> 01:14:58,479
Speaker 1: what happened, But I think there must have been a lot.

1252
01:14:58,600 --> 01:15:01,200
Speaker 1: There must have been moments where he he asked himself

1253
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,599
Speaker 1: questions and they and I play with that in the book.

1254
01:15:04,280 --> 01:15:06,280
Speaker 1: So what do you think the draw was for Bridger

1255
01:15:06,400 --> 01:15:10,200
Speaker 1: to participate in this, like strictly the money or something else? Um?

1256
01:15:11,360 --> 01:15:14,040
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it was probably making a living.

1257
01:15:14,240 --> 01:15:16,600
Speaker 1: And look, he was his living as he was a

1258
01:15:16,640 --> 01:15:22,559
Speaker 1: scout and uh, I think he must have been proud

1259
01:15:23,040 --> 01:15:27,000
Speaker 1: that they would need to rely on him and want

1260
01:15:27,040 --> 01:15:29,160
Speaker 1: to rely on him as as much as they did.

1261
01:15:30,160 --> 01:15:36,360
Speaker 1: I I think he might have had some some antipathy

1262
01:15:36,400 --> 01:15:40,400
Speaker 1: towards the Lakota, in part because his tribes that he

1263
01:15:40,439 --> 01:15:44,000
Speaker 1: had married into and spent the most time with, where

1264
01:15:44,000 --> 01:15:47,519
Speaker 1: the whether Shoshonee, who were historical enemies of the of

1265
01:15:47,640 --> 01:15:50,880
Speaker 1: the Lakota and the Cheyenne. So I think who shot

1266
01:15:50,920 --> 01:15:52,280
Speaker 1: him in the back with an arrow? That was a

1267
01:15:52,280 --> 01:15:55,560
Speaker 1: black Feet? Right? That was the Blackfeet, I believe, Yeah,

1268
01:15:55,600 --> 01:16:00,720
Speaker 1: back in the twenties. Yeah, Um, And so look, I'm

1269
01:16:00,720 --> 01:16:03,600
Speaker 1: sure it was. I'm sure there were lots of things

1270
01:16:03,640 --> 01:16:07,479
Speaker 1: going on. And I think people sometimes try and oversimplify

1271
01:16:07,600 --> 01:16:09,680
Speaker 1: how people make decisions, and I try not to do

1272
01:16:09,720 --> 01:16:11,360
Speaker 1: that because I think if you think, if we think

1273
01:16:11,360 --> 01:16:13,439
Speaker 1: about our own lives and how we make big decisions,

1274
01:16:13,439 --> 01:16:15,960
Speaker 1: there's usually lots of different things at play, and I

1275
01:16:15,960 --> 01:16:17,599
Speaker 1: don't think there was just one thing that played for

1276
01:16:17,600 --> 01:16:21,800
Speaker 1: for Bridger. So Bridger helps them identify or mare they've

1277
01:16:21,800 --> 01:16:27,679
Speaker 1: already identified a fort site. Yeah, it's not entirely clear

1278
01:16:27,760 --> 01:16:30,360
Speaker 1: how they decide exactly where are going to be, but

1279
01:16:30,479 --> 01:16:33,040
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that spot. Well. One thing I'll say

1280
01:16:33,080 --> 01:16:36,600
Speaker 1: about Bridger and one decision he was involved when is

1281
01:16:36,920 --> 01:16:38,800
Speaker 1: Bridger told the army not to go up to powder

1282
01:16:38,840 --> 01:16:43,280
Speaker 1: Over Valley because he Bridger told them to go up

1283
01:16:43,320 --> 01:16:46,840
Speaker 1: the other side of the Big Horns because that's where

1284
01:16:46,880 --> 01:16:50,679
Speaker 1: the Shoshony were, who were more friendly to the U. S. Government.

1285
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:53,160
Speaker 1: And he said, if you go up to the Shoshony

1286
01:16:53,240 --> 01:16:56,280
Speaker 1: side of the Big Horns, uh, you won't have to fight.

1287
01:16:57,120 --> 01:16:59,559
Speaker 1: But it was longer, and there was such it took

1288
01:16:59,600 --> 01:17:03,320
Speaker 1: like Tanner twenty days longer if you went on the

1289
01:17:03,360 --> 01:17:06,280
Speaker 1: eastern side of the Big Horns. And so they were

1290
01:17:06,320 --> 01:17:09,080
Speaker 1: so eager to get to the gold fields that they

1291
01:17:09,120 --> 01:17:14,000
Speaker 1: just wouldn't except a short a longer route wouldn't that

1292
01:17:14,040 --> 01:17:16,040
Speaker 1: be the western side of the Big Horn. I'm sorry

1293
01:17:16,040 --> 01:17:18,000
Speaker 1: that the longer route was the shy were on the

1294
01:17:18,040 --> 01:17:20,280
Speaker 1: western side side, absolutely on the western side of the

1295
01:17:20,280 --> 01:17:22,280
Speaker 1: Big Horns, and it was the Powder River valleys on

1296
01:17:22,320 --> 01:17:24,360
Speaker 1: the on the eastern side of the Big Horns. And

1297
01:17:24,560 --> 01:17:26,600
Speaker 1: Bridget told him go up the western side, whether the

1298
01:17:26,640 --> 01:17:29,320
Speaker 1: Shoshone are, you won't have to fight. And the army said,

1299
01:17:29,600 --> 01:17:32,000
Speaker 1: we don't want to take the extra time. And so

1300
01:17:32,120 --> 01:17:34,880
Speaker 1: they've foisted a treaty on tribes and went up the

1301
01:17:34,920 --> 01:17:38,479
Speaker 1: Powder River side and that's what led immediately to the conflict.

1302
01:17:38,600 --> 01:17:40,320
Speaker 1: So that was that's the one thing I know about

1303
01:17:40,320 --> 01:17:42,680
Speaker 1: where Bridgers specifically advised them. I don't know about the

1304
01:17:42,680 --> 01:17:44,720
Speaker 1: individual fort sites. Once I got on the on the

1305
01:17:44,760 --> 01:17:49,000
Speaker 1: Powder riverside um and they pick a spot, they pick

1306
01:17:49,040 --> 01:17:52,760
Speaker 1: a spot. Uh. You've guys are probably been in this

1307
01:17:52,840 --> 01:17:56,600
Speaker 1: part of the country. It's it's it's beautiful. These these

1308
01:17:56,800 --> 01:18:01,040
Speaker 1: creeks that run off the Big Horn uh into the

1309
01:18:01,040 --> 01:18:05,679
Speaker 1: Powder River Valley are are just they're timbered and they're green,

1310
01:18:05,840 --> 01:18:09,200
Speaker 1: and there's these crystal clear cricks that run off the

1311
01:18:09,680 --> 01:18:13,040
Speaker 1: Big Horn uh and and you can see why they

1312
01:18:13,080 --> 01:18:15,000
Speaker 1: think that this is a good spot and this, this

1313
01:18:15,080 --> 01:18:19,919
Speaker 1: spot where Fort Philcarney is is beautiful, great water grass

1314
01:18:20,400 --> 01:18:22,920
Speaker 1: for their stock, especially because they were driving a herd

1315
01:18:22,920 --> 01:18:26,200
Speaker 1: of a thousand cattle. Uh, they weren't feeding their their

1316
01:18:26,320 --> 01:18:30,480
Speaker 1: horses on on the army didn't feed their horses on

1317
01:18:30,479 --> 01:18:33,000
Speaker 1: on grass, but they needed grass for for their cattle.

1318
01:18:33,320 --> 01:18:35,639
Speaker 1: There's timber to build a fort with. It's a great

1319
01:18:35,640 --> 01:18:39,640
Speaker 1: fort site. The only problem is it's dead center in

1320
01:18:39,680 --> 01:18:46,959
Speaker 1: the middle of Lakota. Uh, home planned and and hunting territory.

1321
01:18:47,400 --> 01:18:50,000
Speaker 1: When you you mentioned that they're packing with, you gotta

1322
01:18:50,040 --> 01:18:53,040
Speaker 1: kind of get a picture of what this most look

1323
01:18:53,120 --> 01:18:56,639
Speaker 1: like coming across the landscape. Yeah, driving a thousand cattle.

1324
01:18:56,760 --> 01:19:00,719
Speaker 1: They have sawmills, I mean they have. They are coming

1325
01:19:00,760 --> 01:19:04,840
Speaker 1: to stay there, like everything you need to establish a city. Yes,

1326
01:19:05,360 --> 01:19:09,719
Speaker 1: So this is not like a fifties movie where there's

1327
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:14,320
Speaker 1: a hundred cavalrymen out on a on a patrol. This

1328
01:19:14,439 --> 01:19:19,160
Speaker 1: is Uh. This is a massive caravan, a mass of

1329
01:19:19,360 --> 01:19:25,840
Speaker 1: wagon train that includes hundreds of soldiers, both cavalry and infantry.

1330
01:19:25,880 --> 01:19:31,559
Speaker 1: It includes hundreds of Condostoga wagons bringing supplies including as

1331
01:19:31,600 --> 01:19:34,960
Speaker 1: you point out, a sawmill that they construct on the

1332
01:19:35,000 --> 01:19:37,880
Speaker 1: site in order to to mill the logs to to

1333
01:19:38,520 --> 01:19:41,479
Speaker 1: build the buildings that they're putting up. It includes a

1334
01:19:41,520 --> 01:19:45,600
Speaker 1: herd of a thousand cattle which they intend and this

1335
01:19:45,640 --> 01:19:47,679
Speaker 1: doesn't work work out very well for them. They're they're

1336
01:19:47,680 --> 01:19:51,720
Speaker 1: intending to use as their winner food supply and and

1337
01:19:51,800 --> 01:19:53,080
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that must have been

1338
01:19:53,120 --> 01:19:57,080
Speaker 1: most striking to the to the Lakota is they see

1339
01:19:57,120 --> 01:19:59,720
Speaker 1: that there are women and children as part of this

1340
01:20:00,479 --> 01:20:03,920
Speaker 1: as part of this group, which meant that they weren't

1341
01:20:04,080 --> 01:20:05,920
Speaker 1: on a patrol. It meant that they were coming to

1342
01:20:06,120 --> 01:20:10,400
Speaker 1: establish a town or a city, and that's exactly what

1343
01:20:10,439 --> 01:20:13,559
Speaker 1: they did. They built this massive fort and Fort phil

1344
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:16,840
Speaker 1: Kearney is huge. You can visit the site today. There's

1345
01:20:16,840 --> 01:20:20,759
Speaker 1: not the it was burned by the by the tribes

1346
01:20:20,840 --> 01:20:26,240
Speaker 1: after the after the end of this war, but the

1347
01:20:26,240 --> 01:20:31,280
Speaker 1: the area that they enclosed in the stockade enclosed thirteen acres,

1348
01:20:31,720 --> 01:20:34,719
Speaker 1: so it's huge. And then inside of this walled area

1349
01:20:35,320 --> 01:20:39,080
Speaker 1: there they built buildings. But it it didn't look like

1350
01:20:39,120 --> 01:20:42,479
Speaker 1: the the kind of small trading post fort and we

1351
01:20:42,560 --> 01:20:44,880
Speaker 1: kind of sometimes have in our mind's eye. This is

1352
01:20:44,880 --> 01:20:50,120
Speaker 1: a massive fortification. Can you explain what the army would

1353
01:20:50,120 --> 01:20:55,200
Speaker 1: trade is that plays a role in this sure so. Uh.

1354
01:20:55,479 --> 01:20:57,760
Speaker 1: The daily life at Fort phil Karney in this era

1355
01:20:58,520 --> 01:21:02,320
Speaker 1: basically involved the mission of the fort of these of

1356
01:21:02,360 --> 01:21:06,360
Speaker 1: this army and in the early days, is to build

1357
01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:09,040
Speaker 1: the fort. They're not even supposed to really be out

1358
01:21:09,080 --> 01:21:11,920
Speaker 1: looking to to fight the tribes. They're supposed to be

1359
01:21:12,000 --> 01:21:15,479
Speaker 1: building the fort and establishing a base and then they're

1360
01:21:15,520 --> 01:21:18,320
Speaker 1: presumably going to go out in the spring and fight.

1361
01:21:19,120 --> 01:21:22,240
Speaker 1: And so every day what they do is they send

1362
01:21:22,280 --> 01:21:26,120
Speaker 1: out what they called the wood train, which was a

1363
01:21:26,160 --> 01:21:29,960
Speaker 1: caravan of of wagons, and they would they were about

1364
01:21:29,960 --> 01:21:33,960
Speaker 1: three miles away from the good timber, and they wanted

1365
01:21:33,960 --> 01:21:35,880
Speaker 1: the fort not to be right up against the timber,

1366
01:21:35,920 --> 01:21:39,639
Speaker 1: because they wanted it to be more open for defensive purposes. Cannons,

1367
01:21:39,640 --> 01:21:41,240
Speaker 1: they got cannons, and they want to be able to

1368
01:21:41,280 --> 01:21:44,320
Speaker 1: use use the cannons, which they did. So every day

1369
01:21:44,360 --> 01:21:48,040
Speaker 1: a wood train that was manned by soldiers would would

1370
01:21:48,080 --> 01:21:51,080
Speaker 1: go out three miles to where the timber was and

1371
01:21:51,120 --> 01:21:53,519
Speaker 1: they would cut trees down and then they would hold

1372
01:21:53,520 --> 01:21:55,920
Speaker 1: those trees back to the fort and they would mill

1373
01:21:56,000 --> 01:22:00,240
Speaker 1: those into either the logs they used to actually uh,

1374
01:22:00,280 --> 01:22:02,080
Speaker 1: they would stand them up straight side by side to

1375
01:22:02,120 --> 01:22:04,559
Speaker 1: build the perimeter of the fort, but then they had

1376
01:22:04,560 --> 01:22:07,639
Speaker 1: the sawmill that they could mill boards with to build

1377
01:22:07,680 --> 01:22:09,720
Speaker 1: all the buildings. So basically what they're doing all to

1378
01:22:09,840 --> 01:22:12,160
Speaker 1: the fall is they're sending out wood cruise and a

1379
01:22:12,200 --> 01:22:15,280
Speaker 1: wood train to cut wood. And what the what the

1380
01:22:15,320 --> 01:22:20,080
Speaker 1: Lakota do is they are constantly harassing these wood trains,

1381
01:22:20,800 --> 01:22:24,040
Speaker 1: and so they're over the course of the fall, there's

1382
01:22:24,080 --> 01:22:28,640
Speaker 1: this kind of crescendo of violence as they as the

1383
01:22:28,720 --> 01:22:34,400
Speaker 1: Lakota and the Cheyenne, increasingly attack the wood trains uh

1384
01:22:34,600 --> 01:22:39,000
Speaker 1: in ever more uh kind of sophisticated types of attacks,

1385
01:22:39,920 --> 01:22:43,320
Speaker 1: and all of that then leads up to this big

1386
01:22:43,360 --> 01:22:47,200
Speaker 1: battle at the end, which is uh fundamentally different from

1387
01:22:47,200 --> 01:22:49,479
Speaker 1: anything that the army had had ever seen before, which

1388
01:22:49,479 --> 01:22:50,800
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why I think it was

1389
01:22:50,800 --> 01:22:54,040
Speaker 1: so effective. Explain the kind of raids that were taught

1390
01:22:54,040 --> 01:22:55,719
Speaker 1: about when to say, like attack in the wood train.

1391
01:22:55,920 --> 01:23:00,479
Speaker 1: So of what a typical wood crew would be maybe

1392
01:23:01,000 --> 01:23:05,160
Speaker 1: uh twenty soldiers to cut wood and twenty soldiers whose

1393
01:23:05,200 --> 01:23:08,559
Speaker 1: job was to stand guard because they every time they

1394
01:23:08,560 --> 01:23:11,840
Speaker 1: went out virtually there was an attack or certainly the

1395
01:23:11,840 --> 01:23:16,120
Speaker 1: threat of attack. So what an attack would be over

1396
01:23:16,160 --> 01:23:20,639
Speaker 1: the course of the fall, were these very small war

1397
01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:25,519
Speaker 1: parties of you know, ten twelve warriors that would go

1398
01:23:25,560 --> 01:23:31,360
Speaker 1: out and do these guerilla style running attacks against the

1399
01:23:31,400 --> 01:23:36,080
Speaker 1: wood cruise. And a lot of soldiers died over the

1400
01:23:36,120 --> 01:23:39,959
Speaker 1: course of the fall. I mean dozens, they did. They

1401
01:23:40,000 --> 01:23:42,599
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, but none of the of those

1402
01:23:42,640 --> 01:23:47,000
Speaker 1: skirmishes were big. You know, one or two or five

1403
01:23:47,080 --> 01:23:50,080
Speaker 1: soldiers would die. It was not a big battle. It

1404
01:23:50,160 --> 01:23:52,280
Speaker 1: was it was viewed as more of a by the

1405
01:23:52,360 --> 01:23:54,600
Speaker 1: by the army, as more of a of a harassment.

1406
01:23:55,200 --> 01:23:58,959
Speaker 1: They weren't in the mindset that the that the tribes

1407
01:23:59,040 --> 01:24:02,680
Speaker 1: would come together and attack them in a in a

1408
01:24:02,720 --> 01:24:05,360
Speaker 1: big way. And frankly, not only were they not in

1409
01:24:05,360 --> 01:24:09,360
Speaker 1: that mindset, but they disregarded in ways that that proved

1410
01:24:10,120 --> 01:24:13,680
Speaker 1: quite foolish the ability of the of the tribes to

1411
01:24:14,200 --> 01:24:17,719
Speaker 1: kind of come together and have a kind of massive

1412
01:24:18,600 --> 01:24:22,599
Speaker 1: strategy or big trap that would challenge them if they had,

1413
01:24:22,760 --> 01:24:25,439
Speaker 1: if they went out and force. In your book, you

1414
01:24:25,439 --> 01:24:29,559
Speaker 1: get into this um it's like a little side story

1415
01:24:29,720 --> 01:24:33,080
Speaker 1: or inter story of some sort. I can't find the

1416
01:24:33,120 --> 01:24:35,280
Speaker 1: right word for it. With the cattlemen that show up,

1417
01:24:36,439 --> 01:24:38,519
Speaker 1: is that was is that a thing to happen? It happened,

1418
01:24:38,560 --> 01:24:41,960
Speaker 1: and this was complete catnip for me because of what

1419
01:24:42,040 --> 01:24:45,080
Speaker 1: you of what you said, Larry McMurtry. So my favorite,

1420
01:24:45,200 --> 01:24:47,840
Speaker 1: uh novel of all time is is Lonesome by by

1421
01:24:48,000 --> 01:24:50,760
Speaker 1: Larry McMurtry, which people have probably read and people they know,

1422
01:24:50,880 --> 01:24:55,280
Speaker 1: is about the first ever cattle drive from Texas to Montana.

1423
01:24:55,680 --> 01:24:59,040
Speaker 1: And I'm doing the research for can We Hold Their

1424
01:24:59,240 --> 01:25:04,240
Speaker 1: just explains from yeah, um, now like in modern times,

1425
01:25:04,280 --> 01:25:06,639
Speaker 1: you can bring a cow like a cargo from birth

1426
01:25:06,720 --> 01:25:08,960
Speaker 1: to sale quicker than it used to like even today,

1427
01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:11,040
Speaker 1: if you go down to Argentina wherever, like you know,

1428
01:25:11,040 --> 01:25:14,160
Speaker 1: they don't grain cattle down there. Um, they don't hit

1429
01:25:14,240 --> 01:25:16,800
Speaker 1: slaughter weight for a couple of years. It's a longer thing.

1430
01:25:17,160 --> 01:25:19,559
Speaker 1: You could and these cattle. When you hear about these

1431
01:25:19,560 --> 01:25:22,599
Speaker 1: cattle drives, you could get a bunch of calves right

1432
01:25:22,680 --> 01:25:25,280
Speaker 1: or even start with pregnant cows. What you're doing is

1433
01:25:25,280 --> 01:25:26,759
Speaker 1: you're going up to the north where there is grass.

1434
01:25:28,160 --> 01:25:29,960
Speaker 1: You're you're taking them up like you're taking a single

1435
01:25:30,000 --> 01:25:34,240
Speaker 1: generation up to get fattened for free on free grass,

1436
01:25:34,840 --> 01:25:38,160
Speaker 1: and then bring him somewhere to sell them. So it's

1437
01:25:38,160 --> 01:25:39,720
Speaker 1: not like it's not you're bringing them up there to

1438
01:25:39,800 --> 01:25:43,640
Speaker 1: leave them there you're talking about the Montana driver. You know,

1439
01:25:43,760 --> 01:25:46,280
Speaker 1: people would do it's like cattle drives going up a

1440
01:25:46,320 --> 01:25:48,440
Speaker 1: lot of times to be like you're just they're they're

1441
01:25:48,479 --> 01:25:51,160
Speaker 1: just feeding them, you know, it's like it's not you

1442
01:25:51,200 --> 01:25:54,920
Speaker 1: sold them to some guy up there. Well this uh

1443
01:25:55,320 --> 01:25:57,280
Speaker 1: So the guy that we're talking about here in truth

1444
01:25:58,880 --> 01:26:01,760
Speaker 1: is a guy named Nelson Store. And when I was

1445
01:26:01,800 --> 01:26:04,280
Speaker 1: doing the research for the about the you know, this

1446
01:26:04,520 --> 01:26:08,320
Speaker 1: Powder River War in eighteen sixty six, not only does

1447
01:26:08,400 --> 01:26:10,800
Speaker 1: Jim Bridger show up there and James Beckworth in the

1448
01:26:10,800 --> 01:26:12,719
Speaker 1: middle of this and as a writer, I'm like, yeah,

1449
01:26:13,400 --> 01:26:16,559
Speaker 1: but also in the middle of this war that's going on,

1450
01:26:17,240 --> 01:26:21,519
Speaker 1: this Texas cattle herd and it's Texas longhorns that they're

1451
01:26:21,600 --> 01:26:29,000
Speaker 1: driving literally uh with twenty uh cowboys driving it shows

1452
01:26:29,120 --> 01:26:31,960
Speaker 1: up at Fort phil Karney in the fall of eighteen

1453
01:26:32,000 --> 01:26:34,840
Speaker 1: sixty six, in the middle of this war, and the

1454
01:26:34,880 --> 01:26:38,160
Speaker 1: guy that is leading them is a guy named Nelson

1455
01:26:38,280 --> 01:26:43,480
Speaker 1: Story who had been a gold miner in Bannock, Montana

1456
01:26:44,080 --> 01:26:47,240
Speaker 1: and made like a pretty decent chunk. He makes like

1457
01:26:47,320 --> 01:26:51,040
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. Oh yeah, I forgot about this details and

1458
01:26:51,120 --> 01:26:53,639
Speaker 1: so he but he doesn't like mining and he sees

1459
01:26:53,680 --> 01:26:56,439
Speaker 1: that what the miners don't have is food, and so

1460
01:26:56,479 --> 01:26:58,400
Speaker 1: what he figures figures out is he's going to take

1461
01:26:58,439 --> 01:27:03,040
Speaker 1: his thirty dollars from panning golden bannock and he dropped.

1462
01:27:03,040 --> 01:27:06,720
Speaker 1: He rides his horse to Texas and he gathers up

1463
01:27:06,720 --> 01:27:09,800
Speaker 1: a herd of cattle and hires twenty cowboys and they

1464
01:27:09,840 --> 01:27:15,560
Speaker 1: literally drive this cattle herd from Texas to Virginia City, Montana,

1465
01:27:15,800 --> 01:27:19,360
Speaker 1: successfully with the goal of establishing do not what I

1466
01:27:19,479 --> 01:27:23,400
Speaker 1: was saying, And I mean he he sells half of them,

1467
01:27:23,439 --> 01:27:26,200
Speaker 1: but he keeps. He establishes the first cattle ranch in

1468
01:27:26,240 --> 01:27:29,559
Speaker 1: Paradise Valley and may have named it um. And so

1469
01:27:29,600 --> 01:27:32,639
Speaker 1: he establishes a cattle ranch in Paradise Valley, uh near

1470
01:27:32,680 --> 01:27:37,479
Speaker 1: what's now Livingston, and becomes the first Montana millionaire selling

1471
01:27:37,520 --> 01:27:40,240
Speaker 1: cattle to gold miners. And half the ship in Bowsman

1472
01:27:40,280 --> 01:27:43,920
Speaker 1: is named after him. Exactly. Yeah, he's buried here. Yeah yeah, so,

1473
01:27:44,000 --> 01:27:46,040
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, my kid when I had to escort

1474
01:27:46,120 --> 01:27:48,280
Speaker 1: his field his field trip, one day, we went to

1475
01:27:48,280 --> 01:27:50,280
Speaker 1: look at we went to see where they last guy

1476
01:27:50,320 --> 01:27:52,519
Speaker 1: they hung down at the courthouse, and then he went

1477
01:27:52,560 --> 01:27:54,880
Speaker 1: over to see at the gallows, which is still there.

1478
01:27:55,360 --> 01:27:59,160
Speaker 1: And then went over to see, uh stories Tombstone. So

1479
01:27:59,680 --> 01:28:04,719
Speaker 1: this the story of story for me was too enticing

1480
01:28:04,760 --> 01:28:07,240
Speaker 1: not to incorporate into the book because it's just it is.

1481
01:28:07,479 --> 01:28:10,759
Speaker 1: And Larry mcmintry has said that he based in part

1482
01:28:11,120 --> 01:28:14,599
Speaker 1: the story of Lonesome Dove on his research on Nelson's story.

1483
01:28:15,200 --> 01:28:17,320
Speaker 1: You mentioned the book that, um, these guys show up

1484
01:28:17,360 --> 01:28:20,720
Speaker 1: and they're better armed, the soldiers much better armed. The

1485
01:28:20,840 --> 01:28:23,080
Speaker 1: army was incredibly stupid about the weapons that they gave

1486
01:28:23,160 --> 01:28:27,439
Speaker 1: their soldiers for a long time, and in eighteen sixty six,

1487
01:28:27,520 --> 01:28:30,519
Speaker 1: these poor bastards who get sent out to fight on

1488
01:28:30,560 --> 01:28:36,639
Speaker 1: the western frontier are carrying civil war uh springfield muzzle

1489
01:28:36,720 --> 01:28:42,080
Speaker 1: loading obviously single shot rifles. And that's at a time

1490
01:28:42,400 --> 01:28:48,440
Speaker 1: when there were really great repeating rifles that were available

1491
01:28:49,040 --> 01:28:52,240
Speaker 1: and the civilians were smart enough to have them. So

1492
01:28:52,360 --> 01:28:56,439
Speaker 1: for example, uh, you know, there's two civilians that right

1493
01:28:56,520 --> 01:28:59,439
Speaker 1: out on the day of the battle with with with

1494
01:28:59,479 --> 01:29:04,320
Speaker 1: Carrington is man, they're both armed with Henry repeating rifles

1495
01:29:04,720 --> 01:29:07,679
Speaker 1: which held sixteen bullets like a two like a lever

1496
01:29:07,800 --> 01:29:14,439
Speaker 1: action lever action repeating rifle, highly accurate sixteen rounds. They

1497
01:29:14,520 --> 01:29:16,840
Speaker 1: joke at the time, was you load on Sunday and

1498
01:29:16,840 --> 01:29:21,559
Speaker 1: shoot all week. Um, they have at that those guys

1499
01:29:21,600 --> 01:29:24,000
Speaker 1: had been laying waste with those things. Man, they didn't

1500
01:29:24,040 --> 01:29:26,320
Speaker 1: want the details of that battle, Like the way it

1501
01:29:26,400 --> 01:29:28,519
Speaker 1: was laid out, you can imagine just being able to shoot,

1502
01:29:28,680 --> 01:29:31,040
Speaker 1: and they were, and they were good with them, and

1503
01:29:31,080 --> 01:29:33,439
Speaker 1: they were Civil War veterans, so they were you know

1504
01:29:33,520 --> 01:29:36,360
Speaker 1: they were and and yeah, if if the army had

1505
01:29:36,400 --> 01:29:39,160
Speaker 1: had those it would have been a different outcome. Who

1506
01:29:39,240 --> 01:29:42,800
Speaker 1: go back to story one quick step? Um, how did

1507
01:29:42,800 --> 01:29:44,280
Speaker 1: he like? I know he did, but how did he

1508
01:29:44,360 --> 01:29:48,920
Speaker 1: think that he would live? Well, it's crazy and uh uh.

1509
01:29:48,960 --> 01:29:53,400
Speaker 1: He does arm his twenty guys with repeating rifles and

1510
01:29:53,439 --> 01:29:56,120
Speaker 1: so they're well armed. But when you think about they

1511
01:29:56,160 --> 01:29:59,439
Speaker 1: just running a rolling gun battle through the valley, not

1512
01:29:59,600 --> 01:30:02,400
Speaker 1: a roll rolling battle, but they did. They did fight

1513
01:30:02,560 --> 01:30:05,720
Speaker 1: several battles with the tribes on the way up. I mean,

1514
01:30:05,800 --> 01:30:09,920
Speaker 1: these guys were we're flat out badass and the fact

1515
01:30:10,000 --> 01:30:13,480
Speaker 1: that they thought that they could do it is unbelievable.

1516
01:30:13,560 --> 01:30:17,400
Speaker 1: And they but they succeed, and our night's sleep well

1517
01:30:17,439 --> 01:30:21,120
Speaker 1: and they they did have their cattle runoff at one point,

1518
01:30:21,400 --> 01:30:23,320
Speaker 1: they lost like half their heard and they go out

1519
01:30:23,560 --> 01:30:27,080
Speaker 1: with a party and they recapture, they fight the tribe

1520
01:30:27,080 --> 01:30:29,559
Speaker 1: that took him, and they recapture the battle and heard

1521
01:30:29,640 --> 01:30:32,240
Speaker 1: the the strays back into the herd and keep going.

1522
01:30:32,280 --> 01:30:35,600
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an amazing story. The story story is

1523
01:30:35,640 --> 01:30:49,960
Speaker 1: an amazing story. So what's different on December when the

1524
01:30:50,000 --> 01:30:55,360
Speaker 1: wood train sets out? So what is different is uh

1525
01:30:56,240 --> 01:31:00,600
Speaker 1: the what I think is really happening is the Lakota

1526
01:31:00,960 --> 01:31:04,000
Speaker 1: and Crazy Horse and the Red Cloud and their Cheyenne

1527
01:31:04,040 --> 01:31:08,960
Speaker 1: and Arapaho allies have just spent the fall learning about

1528
01:31:09,080 --> 01:31:14,240
Speaker 1: their enemy and taking into consideration everything that they learn.

1529
01:31:15,400 --> 01:31:17,760
Speaker 1: The U. S. Army has been doing exactly the opposite.

1530
01:31:18,439 --> 01:31:23,160
Speaker 1: They've they first of all, underestimate their enemy in terms

1531
01:31:23,240 --> 01:31:28,720
Speaker 1: of that enemy's ability to uh conduct a massive operation.

1532
01:31:29,320 --> 01:31:32,280
Speaker 1: I think there's a good amount of prejudice that goes

1533
01:31:32,280 --> 01:31:34,960
Speaker 1: into that in terms of how they thought that the

1534
01:31:35,000 --> 01:31:40,240
Speaker 1: tribes are even capable of fighting. Um, they they're very

1535
01:31:40,240 --> 01:31:42,880
Speaker 1: focused just on building the fort and not thinking about

1536
01:31:42,960 --> 01:31:47,680
Speaker 1: about fighting. And what Red Cloud does is he he

1537
01:31:47,760 --> 01:31:52,000
Speaker 1: does something that is unprecedented for that time, and it

1538
01:31:52,200 --> 01:31:55,280
Speaker 1: totally takes the army by surprise. The first thing he

1539
01:31:55,360 --> 01:31:58,720
Speaker 1: does is he creates this coalition of tribes and the

1540
01:31:58,760 --> 01:32:02,160
Speaker 1: tribes had not typically fought together in this way before,

1541
01:32:02,400 --> 01:32:07,480
Speaker 1: but Red Cloud does this great diplomacy with the Cheyenne,

1542
01:32:07,680 --> 01:32:11,200
Speaker 1: with the Arapaho. There's evidence that he even tried to

1543
01:32:11,240 --> 01:32:14,280
Speaker 1: reach out to the Crow to be part of that coalition,

1544
01:32:14,320 --> 01:32:18,720
Speaker 1: which shows you how much he was recalculating the position

1545
01:32:19,479 --> 01:32:21,519
Speaker 1: of the of the tribes on the on the plains

1546
01:32:21,640 --> 01:32:23,519
Speaker 1: at that time. The Crow didn't want to be a

1547
01:32:23,560 --> 01:32:26,160
Speaker 1: part of it, but he may have. I've actually reached

1548
01:32:26,160 --> 01:32:30,280
Speaker 1: out to them. So he creates this massive coalition. He

1549
01:32:30,360 --> 01:32:33,519
Speaker 1: also decides that they're going to do something that is

1550
01:32:33,760 --> 01:32:38,720
Speaker 1: legions beyond anything they've ever done before. The biggest war

1551
01:32:38,840 --> 01:32:41,200
Speaker 1: party that they had ever put together over the course

1552
01:32:41,240 --> 01:32:45,760
Speaker 1: of the fall is probably one or two hundred warriors.

1553
01:32:46,720 --> 01:32:50,120
Speaker 1: And the war party that he brings together and and usually,

1554
01:32:50,160 --> 01:32:53,200
Speaker 1: as we talked about before, it was a dozen kind

1555
01:32:53,200 --> 01:32:58,719
Speaker 1: of guerilla style hits. What he does on December twenty

1556
01:32:58,800 --> 01:33:03,720
Speaker 1: one six is he pulls together two thousand warriors, this

1557
01:33:03,840 --> 01:33:10,960
Speaker 1: coalition of Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and he finds this valley

1558
01:33:11,000 --> 01:33:14,160
Speaker 1: three miles away from the fort where if they can

1559
01:33:14,160 --> 01:33:15,840
Speaker 1: get the army there, they won't have any of the

1560
01:33:15,880 --> 01:33:18,440
Speaker 1: advantage that they have at the fort, either the fortification

1561
01:33:18,560 --> 01:33:22,320
Speaker 1: or the cannons or anything else. And he places like

1562
01:33:22,360 --> 01:33:27,040
Speaker 1: a level of secrecy, in complete secrecy because nobody they

1563
01:33:27,040 --> 01:33:29,760
Speaker 1: and they can't see this. You can't if once you

1564
01:33:29,800 --> 01:33:32,520
Speaker 1: go over a lodge trail ridge, which is the ridgeline

1565
01:33:32,600 --> 01:33:34,960
Speaker 1: in the book, you can't see on the other side.

1566
01:33:35,000 --> 01:33:37,320
Speaker 1: You can't see from the from the fort the other side.

1567
01:33:37,960 --> 01:33:40,559
Speaker 1: And then the trick, and this is a huge trick,

1568
01:33:41,240 --> 01:33:43,360
Speaker 1: is somehow they've got to get the army to come

1569
01:33:43,360 --> 01:33:46,640
Speaker 1: out of the fort in numbers and get them to

1570
01:33:46,680 --> 01:33:50,640
Speaker 1: go three miles over the ridgeline into the trap so

1571
01:33:50,680 --> 01:33:52,680
Speaker 1: that it can be sprung. And that's the job of

1572
01:33:52,720 --> 01:33:55,200
Speaker 1: crazy horse. Crazy horse job. I want to put it

1573
01:33:55,200 --> 01:33:56,880
Speaker 1: in Another challenge you spent and maybe you're good to

1574
01:33:57,040 --> 01:33:58,840
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time talking about it, is

1575
01:33:59,640 --> 01:34:02,840
Speaker 1: how far they lured these people in with no one

1576
01:34:02,960 --> 01:34:06,640
Speaker 1: noticing that there's two thousand people hiding under clumps of

1577
01:34:06,640 --> 01:34:12,439
Speaker 1: stage and not just people horses like the subterfuge. Yes,

1578
01:34:12,880 --> 01:34:15,760
Speaker 1: I mean it's and when you walk the people with

1579
01:34:15,800 --> 01:34:19,360
Speaker 1: horses with horses, and and when you walk the battlefield.

1580
01:34:19,760 --> 01:34:21,599
Speaker 1: And we talked about this when I was here before

1581
01:34:21,640 --> 01:34:24,719
Speaker 1: to the notion that you know, people always talk about

1582
01:34:24,760 --> 01:34:28,200
Speaker 1: featureless planes and that's the stupidest description ever, because planes

1583
01:34:28,240 --> 01:34:31,520
Speaker 1: are anything but featureless. There there's all sorts of coolies

1584
01:34:31,560 --> 01:34:34,640
Speaker 1: and draws and creek beds and you name it. And

1585
01:34:34,640 --> 01:34:38,040
Speaker 1: when you walk this battlefield, there's all of that, but

1586
01:34:38,160 --> 01:34:41,400
Speaker 1: there's but it's still pretty open. And it's pretty open,

1587
01:34:41,479 --> 01:34:44,720
Speaker 1: certainly if you're trying to hide two thousand warriors and

1588
01:34:44,840 --> 01:34:47,920
Speaker 1: their horses. And so to me, that's one of the biggest,

1589
01:34:48,439 --> 01:34:51,160
Speaker 1: uh mysteries of the battle and one of the most

1590
01:34:51,160 --> 01:34:54,080
Speaker 1: amazing things that they did is they they hid themselves

1591
01:34:54,120 --> 01:34:59,160
Speaker 1: and their horses such that all of these uh, these

1592
01:34:59,200 --> 01:35:01,720
Speaker 1: cavalrymen and infantrymen get up on this ridge line and

1593
01:35:01,760 --> 01:35:04,680
Speaker 1: look down and don't see anything and write it and

1594
01:35:04,760 --> 01:35:06,280
Speaker 1: maybe want to It makes me want to go back

1595
01:35:06,320 --> 01:35:08,599
Speaker 1: there just to look like, I don't understand how does

1596
01:35:08,640 --> 01:35:10,400
Speaker 1: that like? I want to go look to get a

1597
01:35:10,439 --> 01:35:12,360
Speaker 1: better grip on how you could hide that many people.

1598
01:35:12,600 --> 01:35:16,519
Speaker 1: I've I've I've walked it a lot of it, and uh,

1599
01:35:16,640 --> 01:35:20,280
Speaker 1: and you can you can imagine it, but you also

1600
01:35:20,400 --> 01:35:23,120
Speaker 1: see the skill that it took just to keep the

1601
01:35:23,160 --> 01:35:26,280
Speaker 1: horses quiet and to and to hold their positions, they

1602
01:35:26,320 --> 01:35:30,120
Speaker 1: had to wait because they were they're basically on if

1603
01:35:30,120 --> 01:35:33,160
Speaker 1: it's a if it's a if you think of it

1604
01:35:33,240 --> 01:35:36,600
Speaker 1: of the battlefield as a as a clock, they're basically

1605
01:35:36,840 --> 01:35:39,800
Speaker 1: and and if you imagine that the army riding in

1606
01:35:39,920 --> 01:35:45,479
Speaker 1: at twelve o'clock, they basically have uh warriors deployed between

1607
01:35:45,880 --> 01:35:49,240
Speaker 1: ten o'clock and two o'clock all around the clock. And

1608
01:35:49,320 --> 01:35:51,960
Speaker 1: so between the army has to ride in between ten

1609
01:35:52,000 --> 01:35:54,280
Speaker 1: o'clock and two o'clock and get to the center of

1610
01:35:54,320 --> 01:35:56,320
Speaker 1: the clock and then they close it up. But they

1611
01:35:56,320 --> 01:35:58,000
Speaker 1: have to suck them into the center of that of

1612
01:35:58,040 --> 01:36:00,880
Speaker 1: that clock to do it, and and to do and

1613
01:36:00,880 --> 01:36:04,040
Speaker 1: that's a that's that's not two yards, that's like a mile,

1614
01:36:05,040 --> 01:36:08,080
Speaker 1: and so it's a it's a massive battlefield. And so

1615
01:36:08,680 --> 01:36:10,840
Speaker 1: but that's what they successfully do is they suck them

1616
01:36:10,840 --> 01:36:13,439
Speaker 1: into the center of that of that clock and then

1617
01:36:13,479 --> 01:36:16,839
Speaker 1: they quickly close up between ten o'clock and two o'clock

1618
01:36:17,240 --> 01:36:20,280
Speaker 1: and then it's a masker Is it undis because your

1619
01:36:20,280 --> 01:36:25,280
Speaker 1: book gets into it. Is it undisputed that they were

1620
01:36:25,439 --> 01:36:30,960
Speaker 1: for they were forbidden to the like, sure, go chase them,

1621
01:36:31,080 --> 01:36:34,320
Speaker 1: don't go over the ridge. So I think it's pretty

1622
01:36:34,320 --> 01:36:37,280
Speaker 1: close to undisputed. And I say that with a little

1623
01:36:37,280 --> 01:36:40,840
Speaker 1: bit of hesitation because Colonel Carrington, who is in the

1624
01:36:40,880 --> 01:36:45,679
Speaker 1: fort during the battle, and he's the he's the head cheese,

1625
01:36:45,720 --> 01:36:47,360
Speaker 1: he's the guy who sends these guys out, but he

1626
01:36:47,400 --> 01:36:52,040
Speaker 1: doesn't he doesn't go fight, and therefore he doesn't go die. Ah.

1627
01:36:52,680 --> 01:36:56,879
Speaker 1: He after this, after this massacre happens, it's hugely politically

1628
01:36:56,920 --> 01:36:59,360
Speaker 1: controversial in the US because it's the worst to that time,

1629
01:36:59,400 --> 01:37:02,040
Speaker 1: as I said, the worst defeat in U S military

1630
01:37:02,080 --> 01:37:06,040
Speaker 1: history until Custer. And so there's a huge like investigation

1631
01:37:06,080 --> 01:37:09,160
Speaker 1: of what happened, and Carrington basically spends the rest of

1632
01:37:09,200 --> 01:37:14,760
Speaker 1: his career defending himself that it wasn't his fault. And

1633
01:37:15,320 --> 01:37:17,240
Speaker 1: there does seem to be pretty good evidence that he

1634
01:37:17,280 --> 01:37:21,080
Speaker 1: gave the very explicit order don't go over Lodge Trail Ridge,

1635
01:37:21,439 --> 01:37:23,280
Speaker 1: and if they hadn't gone over Lodge Trail Ridge, they

1636
01:37:23,280 --> 01:37:25,519
Speaker 1: wouldn't have died because the traps on the other side

1637
01:37:25,560 --> 01:37:30,200
Speaker 1: of Lodge Trail Ridge. Um. But uh, But I do

1638
01:37:30,280 --> 01:37:34,720
Speaker 1: say it with a little bit of hesitation because he

1639
01:37:34,720 --> 01:37:36,760
Speaker 1: he does a lot of other things that I think

1640
01:37:36,880 --> 01:37:45,559
Speaker 1: very deliberately distort the record, including blaming Fetterman overwhelmingly as

1641
01:37:45,640 --> 01:37:49,000
Speaker 1: the villain of the of the battle. I think some

1642
01:37:49,080 --> 01:37:52,040
Speaker 1: of the scholarship that has been done more recently rightly

1643
01:37:52,120 --> 01:37:54,840
Speaker 1: puts the blame on another one of the officers, a

1644
01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:57,800
Speaker 1: guy named Grummand who is much more the villain in

1645
01:37:57,800 --> 01:37:59,720
Speaker 1: in my book, you pay him, you pay him out

1646
01:37:59,720 --> 01:38:02,639
Speaker 1: of a whole I think he wasn't a whole. Um

1647
01:38:02,680 --> 01:38:05,120
Speaker 1: And there's uh and there's good evidence of that. Um.

1648
01:38:05,160 --> 01:38:07,000
Speaker 1: And let me compare those two guys in terms of

1649
01:38:07,000 --> 01:38:10,080
Speaker 1: the historical evidence. By the way, so Fetterman and they're

1650
01:38:10,120 --> 01:38:16,360
Speaker 1: both Civil War veterans, and by all accounts, all of

1651
01:38:16,400 --> 01:38:18,519
Speaker 1: the officers, with the exception of Carrington, who was a

1652
01:38:18,520 --> 01:38:20,760
Speaker 1: logistics guy in the in the war, all of the

1653
01:38:20,800 --> 01:38:24,920
Speaker 1: other officers at the fort were had a lot of

1654
01:38:25,040 --> 01:38:29,280
Speaker 1: combat experience in the Civil War and were decorated. But

1655
01:38:29,760 --> 01:38:34,439
Speaker 1: Fetterman had a reputation for not only bravery, but also

1656
01:38:34,560 --> 01:38:38,240
Speaker 1: for being kind of a company man and following orders.

1657
01:38:39,280 --> 01:38:45,640
Speaker 1: Ah ah, the the the reputation of Grummond. By contrast,

1658
01:38:46,280 --> 01:38:51,040
Speaker 1: he was court martialed during the Civil War for for

1659
01:38:51,320 --> 01:38:55,160
Speaker 1: beating one of his noncommissioned officers. He was court martialed

1660
01:38:55,240 --> 01:38:59,439
Speaker 1: for shooting an unarmed civilian, and he was court martialed

1661
01:38:59,600 --> 01:39:03,519
Speaker 1: for disobeying orders and charging head when he wasn't supposed to.

1662
01:39:04,400 --> 01:39:07,320
Speaker 1: So when you weigh there, when you weigh their records,

1663
01:39:07,760 --> 01:39:09,800
Speaker 1: and you think who is more likely to have been

1664
01:39:09,800 --> 01:39:12,640
Speaker 1: the one who disobeyed orders and went over the ridgeline?

1665
01:39:12,880 --> 01:39:15,440
Speaker 1: To me, it comes down on Grumman. And in the aftermath,

1666
01:39:16,000 --> 01:39:18,680
Speaker 1: Carrington's wife sort of like, how are we going to

1667
01:39:18,800 --> 01:39:21,080
Speaker 1: the aftermath? Well, I'm not, but I'm saying Carrington's wife

1668
01:39:21,160 --> 01:39:24,120
Speaker 1: sort of like goes on to her blaming Vetterman. Right,

1669
01:39:24,920 --> 01:39:28,519
Speaker 1: how does that influence things? Well, a lot because and

1670
01:39:28,640 --> 01:39:32,880
Speaker 1: uh and it's crazy because uh uh, just it's a

1671
01:39:32,920 --> 01:39:36,640
Speaker 1: little bit incestuous here because at the time that the

1672
01:39:37,200 --> 01:39:41,320
Speaker 1: book Taste takes place, both Carrington and Grumman's wives are

1673
01:39:41,680 --> 01:39:43,720
Speaker 1: part of the fort. And in fact, I write a

1674
01:39:43,760 --> 01:39:45,880
Speaker 1: lot about Francis Gruman because I think she's a very

1675
01:39:45,920 --> 01:39:51,000
Speaker 1: fascinating character. But you're right, Carrington's wife, his first wife,

1676
01:39:51,040 --> 01:39:55,799
Speaker 1: Margaret Carrington, joins him in making this defense of her husband,

1677
01:39:55,840 --> 01:39:58,920
Speaker 1: and she writes an autobiography in which she basically says

1678
01:39:59,400 --> 01:40:02,360
Speaker 1: she gives Rington's version of the battle, including don't go

1679
01:40:02,360 --> 01:40:05,439
Speaker 1: over Lodge trail Ridge, and she blames Fetterman like Carrington.

1680
01:40:06,080 --> 01:40:13,240
Speaker 1: But uh but uh, Carrington's first wife, Margaret dies and

1681
01:40:13,240 --> 01:40:19,120
Speaker 1: and he ends up marrying Grumman's wife and then he's

1682
01:40:19,120 --> 01:40:22,519
Speaker 1: been died in the fight and uh. And Grumman's wife

1683
01:40:22,520 --> 01:40:26,200
Speaker 1: then writes her own autobiography, and she also repeats, in

1684
01:40:26,240 --> 01:40:29,679
Speaker 1: some cases almost word for word, uh, the the account

1685
01:40:29,720 --> 01:40:33,360
Speaker 1: of the battle that her husband propagated, that he was

1686
01:40:33,520 --> 01:40:35,559
Speaker 1: not at fault, so he put two people up to it.

1687
01:40:35,640 --> 01:40:37,800
Speaker 1: He put two wives up to it. Yeah, to do

1688
01:40:37,840 --> 01:40:41,760
Speaker 1: his dirty work. The ten warriors that sort of acted

1689
01:40:41,760 --> 01:40:45,160
Speaker 1: as the decoys you have, like to Chyenne, to rappero

1690
01:40:45,840 --> 01:40:49,960
Speaker 1: Um two from. Is there any significance to that there was?

1691
01:40:50,280 --> 01:40:53,200
Speaker 1: And I think we don't know exactly who the who

1692
01:40:53,240 --> 01:40:55,639
Speaker 1: the decoys were. There's I think there's pretty good evidence

1693
01:40:55,640 --> 01:40:58,479
Speaker 1: and crazy Horse is one of them. But they My

1694
01:40:58,600 --> 01:41:07,120
Speaker 1: understanding is that the tribes picked honorary decoys that were

1695
01:41:07,200 --> 01:41:11,640
Speaker 1: representative of of their of their people, and so I

1696
01:41:11,640 --> 01:41:14,559
Speaker 1: think it's it's probably pretty accurate that there was the

1697
01:41:14,600 --> 01:41:17,040
Speaker 1: type of mixture that I that I described there, and

1698
01:41:17,080 --> 01:41:18,800
Speaker 1: that comes a lot from a lot of the oral

1699
01:41:19,880 --> 01:41:27,519
Speaker 1: accounts of the battle from from different uh from different tribes, when, um,

1700
01:41:27,680 --> 01:41:31,120
Speaker 1: what's the the you know, for a long time people

1701
01:41:31,240 --> 01:41:34,519
Speaker 1: called the Fetterman Massacre also the Fetterman Fight, but it

1702
01:41:34,560 --> 01:41:38,559
Speaker 1: had the battle of hand? Was that? Was that a

1703
01:41:38,600 --> 01:41:41,439
Speaker 1: sue name? That was what the Lakota call it because

1704
01:41:41,439 --> 01:41:43,639
Speaker 1: they had someone had a problem that there is someone

1705
01:41:43,680 --> 01:41:45,120
Speaker 1: said like if you want to catch a bunch of

1706
01:41:45,120 --> 01:41:48,320
Speaker 1: them a half man. So there is a there's a

1707
01:41:48,400 --> 01:41:53,599
Speaker 1: transgender Lakota and we don't know his name in in

1708
01:41:53,640 --> 01:41:56,400
Speaker 1: my book I give I give the name Moon for

1709
01:41:56,479 --> 01:41:59,880
Speaker 1: this person. But when I when I first read about this,

1710
01:42:00,320 --> 01:42:04,080
Speaker 1: I wondered about it. But there is an account of

1711
01:42:04,120 --> 01:42:08,400
Speaker 1: this from George Bird Grinnell, who's a guy that I

1712
01:42:08,439 --> 01:42:12,559
Speaker 1: wrote a book about who was a conservationist and also

1713
01:42:12,680 --> 01:42:17,360
Speaker 1: in a Native American ethnologist. And in nineteen fifteen he

1714
01:42:17,439 --> 01:42:21,080
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Fighting Cheyenne, and as part

1715
01:42:21,080 --> 01:42:26,040
Speaker 1: of his research in nineteen fifteen, he interviews a Cheyenne

1716
01:42:26,080 --> 01:42:29,840
Speaker 1: warrior named white Elk who had been at the at

1717
01:42:29,880 --> 01:42:32,360
Speaker 1: the Fetterman Fight, who fought at the Fetterman Fight and

1718
01:42:32,439 --> 01:42:36,479
Speaker 1: walks the battlefield with him, and this Cheyenne warrior, white

1719
01:42:36,520 --> 01:42:42,040
Speaker 1: Elk tells the story of a of a transgender Lakota.

1720
01:42:42,160 --> 01:42:45,839
Speaker 1: Their their word for it was winked, a transgender Dakota,

1721
01:42:46,160 --> 01:42:50,400
Speaker 1: and the and the the winkday were revered in Lakota culture,

1722
01:42:50,960 --> 01:42:54,400
Speaker 1: which I think is very interesting as having the wisdom

1723
01:42:54,439 --> 01:42:57,240
Speaker 1: of both men and women. They were revered in the tribe,

1724
01:42:57,479 --> 01:43:00,679
Speaker 1: and they were they were often turned to or advice,

1725
01:43:00,880 --> 01:43:04,160
Speaker 1: whether it was in family matters or in in battle.

1726
01:43:04,920 --> 01:43:08,439
Speaker 1: And so this account that I use as the basis

1727
01:43:08,520 --> 01:43:11,040
Speaker 1: for what I write about in the novel is from

1728
01:43:11,080 --> 01:43:14,240
Speaker 1: this nineteen fifteen account that George Bird Grennell wrote down

1729
01:43:14,720 --> 01:43:16,920
Speaker 1: from the story here he heard from a Cheyenne wear

1730
01:43:16,960 --> 01:43:19,160
Speaker 1: a white elk, which I think is pretty good, pretty

1731
01:43:19,200 --> 01:43:24,479
Speaker 1: good evidence. Um, and it was it wasn't quite a

1732
01:43:24,520 --> 01:43:27,679
Speaker 1: hunter hole was the numbers? Well, to go to your question.

1733
01:43:27,880 --> 01:43:31,519
Speaker 1: So the prophecy what happens is Red Cloud and the

1734
01:43:32,320 --> 01:43:37,040
Speaker 1: other leaders kind of go to the battlefield the day

1735
01:43:37,040 --> 01:43:40,920
Speaker 1: before to survey it and decide where they're gonna they're

1736
01:43:40,920 --> 01:43:45,040
Speaker 1: gonna hide everybody, And in deciding whether or not to

1737
01:43:45,240 --> 01:43:50,320
Speaker 1: use that site as the battlefield, they call upon this

1738
01:43:50,320 --> 01:43:53,439
Speaker 1: this wink to a profit to to tell him what's

1739
01:43:53,439 --> 01:44:00,400
Speaker 1: going to happen, and he prophesieses that uh, he rides.

1740
01:44:00,560 --> 01:44:03,519
Speaker 1: The prophet rides all over the battlefield and comes back

1741
01:44:03,960 --> 01:44:07,240
Speaker 1: three separate times. And on his third time coming back,

1742
01:44:07,720 --> 01:44:13,160
Speaker 1: he is acting out that his arms are full and

1743
01:44:13,160 --> 01:44:17,040
Speaker 1: that his hands are full, and he tells red Cloud

1744
01:44:17,080 --> 01:44:19,479
Speaker 1: in the other chiefs that he has a hundred in

1745
01:44:19,560 --> 01:44:23,840
Speaker 1: his hands, a hundred dead soldiers in his hands, and

1746
01:44:23,880 --> 01:44:27,040
Speaker 1: that's his prophecy for what will happen if they have

1747
01:44:27,200 --> 01:44:30,639
Speaker 1: the battle at this place. And so that's the moment

1748
01:44:30,680 --> 01:44:33,160
Speaker 1: when Red Cloud decides that this is the place and

1749
01:44:33,400 --> 01:44:35,840
Speaker 1: time and place. And so the Dakoda referred to the

1750
01:44:35,840 --> 01:44:37,719
Speaker 1: battle as the battle of the hundred in the hands.

1751
01:44:38,120 --> 01:44:40,360
Speaker 1: Not quite a hundred die, but eighty one die, which

1752
01:44:40,400 --> 01:44:42,519
Speaker 1: is I don't know what the probably we keep track

1753
01:44:42,600 --> 01:44:45,599
Speaker 1: on prophecies, but that was not too far off. Once

1754
01:44:45,640 --> 01:44:48,439
Speaker 1: they spring the trap, so that the ten dco we

1755
01:44:48,479 --> 01:44:52,680
Speaker 1: kind of state was he's ten decoys, rile up skirmish

1756
01:44:52,800 --> 01:44:59,400
Speaker 1: with somehow infuriate um and get these soldiers to just

1757
01:44:59,439 --> 01:45:02,320
Speaker 1: be like, now our chance, We're finally gonna get these suckers. Ye,

1758
01:45:03,400 --> 01:45:06,080
Speaker 1: they ride into the center of the clock. Once they

1759
01:45:06,160 --> 01:45:08,240
Speaker 1: spring the trap, how long does it take them to

1760
01:45:08,320 --> 01:45:14,000
Speaker 1: kill them? All thirty minutes, and there are unbelievable Yeah,

1761
01:45:14,160 --> 01:45:18,200
Speaker 1: and there are unbelievable accounts of thirty minutes thirty minutes,

1762
01:45:18,600 --> 01:45:21,559
Speaker 1: And so what starts happening back at the fort um

1763
01:45:21,600 --> 01:45:24,679
Speaker 1: and there's a good there's good you know, written history

1764
01:45:24,680 --> 01:45:30,200
Speaker 1: of this is all of a sudden they start hearing gunshots, um,

1765
01:45:30,240 --> 01:45:33,000
Speaker 1: and then they start hearing a shipload of gun shots,

1766
01:45:33,520 --> 01:45:38,080
Speaker 1: and then they stop hearing any gunshots, and and and

1767
01:45:38,120 --> 01:45:41,600
Speaker 1: they they know something. And they can't see any of

1768
01:45:41,640 --> 01:45:44,320
Speaker 1: this because they've gone over the ridgeline and they send

1769
01:45:44,360 --> 01:45:46,640
Speaker 1: out what's supposed to be a relief force so that

1770
01:45:46,760 --> 01:45:48,640
Speaker 1: it gets their way too late, and they actually the

1771
01:45:48,960 --> 01:45:51,160
Speaker 1: relief force once they get up on the ridge line

1772
01:45:51,200 --> 01:45:53,040
Speaker 1: and look down there, they can see what's going on.

1773
01:45:53,360 --> 01:45:55,679
Speaker 1: The relief force is smart enough not to write down there.

1774
01:45:56,240 --> 01:45:58,639
Speaker 1: But but thirty minutes is about the amount of time

1775
01:45:58,640 --> 01:46:01,799
Speaker 1: that the battle takes. And what's the amount of friendly

1776
01:46:01,880 --> 01:46:05,800
Speaker 1: fire from both sides that's sort of happening quite a bit,

1777
01:46:06,080 --> 01:46:08,479
Speaker 1: uh including well, I don't I don't know as much

1778
01:46:08,520 --> 01:46:11,519
Speaker 1: on the on the on the U. S. Army side

1779
01:46:11,520 --> 01:46:13,719
Speaker 1: how much friendly fire was because they probably were firing

1780
01:46:13,720 --> 01:46:16,280
Speaker 1: more outward. But there was a lot of friendly fire

1781
01:46:17,600 --> 01:46:21,040
Speaker 1: between the tribes because they're they're in a circle and

1782
01:46:21,040 --> 01:46:24,200
Speaker 1: they're firing towards the center. But there is is quite

1783
01:46:24,200 --> 01:46:28,599
Speaker 1: a bit of of anecdotal evidence about about Native American

1784
01:46:29,200 --> 01:46:33,120
Speaker 1: warriors being killed by arrows because there were so many arrows,

1785
01:46:33,479 --> 01:46:36,760
Speaker 1: and of course it's it's chaotic in the center, must

1786
01:46:36,960 --> 01:46:39,040
Speaker 1: be a buzz with arrows. I mean, you see these

1787
01:46:39,040 --> 01:46:42,880
Speaker 1: movies now where they show these waves of arrows, you know,

1788
01:46:42,960 --> 01:46:47,760
Speaker 1: flying in and it that's it must have been unbelievable.

1789
01:46:48,720 --> 01:46:53,080
Speaker 1: Um you have it that there's some suicide among the soldiers.

1790
01:46:54,040 --> 01:46:57,439
Speaker 1: That is one of the controversies about the battle. And

1791
01:46:57,479 --> 01:46:59,760
Speaker 1: I talk at the end about the fact that we

1792
01:46:59,800 --> 01:47:02,400
Speaker 1: don't I don't know that that happened. I think it's

1793
01:47:02,479 --> 01:47:06,680
Speaker 1: quite plausible that when it got down to the end,

1794
01:47:06,800 --> 01:47:11,240
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a famous trope in Western

1795
01:47:11,479 --> 01:47:14,040
Speaker 1: stories of of you know, save the last bullet for yourself,

1796
01:47:15,160 --> 01:47:18,559
Speaker 1: and I think it it must have at the end

1797
01:47:19,360 --> 01:47:21,760
Speaker 1: to those guys, that handful of guys who were left

1798
01:47:22,120 --> 01:47:25,360
Speaker 1: surrounded on all sides, been obvious that they weren't going

1799
01:47:25,400 --> 01:47:27,519
Speaker 1: to make it. And I think a few of them

1800
01:47:27,560 --> 01:47:29,519
Speaker 1: probably did make this You're not going to become a

1801
01:47:29,560 --> 01:47:32,360
Speaker 1: prisoner a war. You're not going to be a pow. Um.

1802
01:47:32,400 --> 01:47:37,040
Speaker 1: They were watching their uh, their fellow soldiers. You know

1803
01:47:37,120 --> 01:47:39,639
Speaker 1: the way these guys die. If they don't get shot

1804
01:47:39,640 --> 01:47:41,920
Speaker 1: with an arrows, they get hacked to death. Um, you're

1805
01:47:41,920 --> 01:47:46,720
Speaker 1: getting bludgeoned and you're getting killed with with with war

1806
01:47:46,800 --> 01:47:54,000
Speaker 1: clubs and and hatchets. And so it's not at all

1807
01:47:54,040 --> 01:47:57,040
Speaker 1: implausible to me that that some of them at the

1808
01:47:57,160 --> 01:47:59,519
Speaker 1: end chose to to commit suicide instead. And two of

1809
01:47:59,560 --> 01:48:03,200
Speaker 1: those well that the suicide speculation sort of exists around

1810
01:48:03,200 --> 01:48:07,719
Speaker 1: our Fetterman in Brown, right, that's right. And Uh, there

1811
01:48:08,360 --> 01:48:12,360
Speaker 1: there is contrary evidence which all which I also talked

1812
01:48:12,360 --> 01:48:15,080
Speaker 1: about at the end of the book. Uh, there is

1813
01:48:15,200 --> 01:48:19,040
Speaker 1: a a there's a there's a La Coda warrior who

1814
01:48:19,240 --> 01:48:22,120
Speaker 1: claims to have killed Fetterman in a in a within

1815
01:48:22,160 --> 01:48:26,120
Speaker 1: an account that is quite plausible, I think. Um. And

1816
01:48:26,160 --> 01:48:31,479
Speaker 1: there's also some evidence from the post surgeon that Fetterman

1817
01:48:31,560 --> 01:48:36,200
Speaker 1: did not have wounds consistent with suicide. That piece I

1818
01:48:36,240 --> 01:48:39,519
Speaker 1: find a little bit less plausible because it's not like

1819
01:48:39,600 --> 01:48:45,520
Speaker 1: this was Quincy Jones. Uh, you know, autopsy on these soldiers.

1820
01:48:45,560 --> 01:48:48,960
Speaker 1: For one thing, this the post surgeon was not a

1821
01:48:49,000 --> 01:48:51,920
Speaker 1: forensic surgeon. He was a post surgeon, and he had

1822
01:48:51,960 --> 01:48:55,840
Speaker 1: eighty bodies brought in and and all the bodies were

1823
01:48:55,880 --> 01:48:58,920
Speaker 1: were mutilated to with the exception of of of one soldier.

1824
01:48:59,080 --> 01:49:02,760
Speaker 1: So I don't find it particularly plausible that the post

1825
01:49:02,760 --> 01:49:05,800
Speaker 1: surgeon was able to tell how somebody died. I think

1826
01:49:05,800 --> 01:49:09,839
Speaker 1: there is a credible uh potential that that that fetterman

1827
01:49:09,920 --> 01:49:12,880
Speaker 1: was actually killed by by one of the Lakota Wears,

1828
01:49:13,080 --> 01:49:18,440
Speaker 1: as opposed to committing suicide soldiers dead how many warriors

1829
01:49:19,400 --> 01:49:26,439
Speaker 1: different accounts, Probably uh, somewhere around thirty I think is

1830
01:49:26,479 --> 01:49:29,040
Speaker 1: a is a pretty good guess. Maybe maybe more than that,

1831
01:49:29,840 --> 01:49:35,640
Speaker 1: but I mean there. And you talked Stephen about the

1832
01:49:36,360 --> 01:49:39,880
Speaker 1: two civilians who had the Henry rifles. Most of the

1833
01:49:39,920 --> 01:49:45,120
Speaker 1: evidence of of of Native deaths were in a semi

1834
01:49:45,160 --> 01:49:51,440
Speaker 1: circle around the stones the rocks that these two civilians

1835
01:49:52,560 --> 01:49:56,280
Speaker 1: sheltered behind in the early part of the battle where

1836
01:49:56,320 --> 01:49:59,160
Speaker 1: they tried to hold out for a while with those

1837
01:49:59,200 --> 01:50:01,920
Speaker 1: Henry rifles. Some real hard ass too, and they were

1838
01:50:01,960 --> 01:50:05,000
Speaker 1: they were they were civil war veterans. They had good

1839
01:50:05,000 --> 01:50:07,559
Speaker 1: weapons and they knew how to use them. And there's

1840
01:50:07,560 --> 01:50:09,920
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence that they killed quite a few

1841
01:50:10,120 --> 01:50:12,160
Speaker 1: at that part of the battle and the rest of

1842
01:50:12,200 --> 01:50:15,080
Speaker 1: the battle, I don't think that they were nearly as

1843
01:50:15,080 --> 01:50:20,559
Speaker 1: many uh of the Native Americans killed because they you know,

1844
01:50:20,640 --> 01:50:23,559
Speaker 1: they're just they The army just wasn't organized in any

1845
01:50:23,560 --> 01:50:26,559
Speaker 1: way to to mount an effective defense at that point.

1846
01:50:26,560 --> 01:50:30,760
Speaker 1: It was all running, you know, these guys with single shots,

1847
01:50:30,800 --> 01:50:33,120
Speaker 1: like they'd shoot a shot and then people would just

1848
01:50:33,520 --> 01:50:36,320
Speaker 1: swarm them and by hand drag them down off their

1849
01:50:36,360 --> 01:50:39,719
Speaker 1: horse and caught them up. Well, I mean, I've fired

1850
01:50:40,200 --> 01:50:43,280
Speaker 1: these muzzleloading guds before, as I'm I know you guys have,

1851
01:50:43,880 --> 01:50:49,440
Speaker 1: and it's not an easy, fast thing to load a muzzleloader,

1852
01:50:49,560 --> 01:50:52,400
Speaker 1: even if you're good at it, And to to do

1853
01:50:52,479 --> 01:50:59,639
Speaker 1: that with hundreds of warriors running towards you and arrows

1854
01:50:59,680 --> 01:51:03,200
Speaker 1: flying around and people dying all around you, and especially

1855
01:51:03,200 --> 01:51:06,120
Speaker 1: when they they weren't in any kind of an organized

1856
01:51:06,280 --> 01:51:09,719
Speaker 1: line or position. I just don't think those guys fired

1857
01:51:09,760 --> 01:51:12,720
Speaker 1: their guns very many times. I think they probably got

1858
01:51:12,760 --> 01:51:15,559
Speaker 1: a shot or two off and then and then their

1859
01:51:15,600 --> 01:51:20,400
Speaker 1: gun was a was a club. This is an ignorant question,

1860
01:51:20,479 --> 01:51:23,439
Speaker 1: but like in the aftermath this, what happens to the

1861
01:51:23,520 --> 01:51:26,400
Speaker 1: guns that the soldiers had did the warriors swooping and

1862
01:51:26,439 --> 01:51:29,120
Speaker 1: clean some of that stuff up. They did. They gathered

1863
01:51:29,160 --> 01:51:32,640
Speaker 1: all those weapons up, and you know, and that was

1864
01:51:33,280 --> 01:51:35,280
Speaker 1: as you would imagine they would, they would gather everything

1865
01:51:35,280 --> 01:51:37,559
Speaker 1: of use off the battlefield before they before they left.

1866
01:51:38,200 --> 01:51:41,639
Speaker 1: There's a saucy detail from the Little Big Horn battle

1867
01:51:42,320 --> 01:51:45,720
Speaker 1: where the seventh Cavalry was carrying a gun that had

1868
01:51:45,760 --> 01:51:50,960
Speaker 1: a newer gun. They had a distinct sound that set

1869
01:51:51,040 --> 01:51:52,760
Speaker 1: it apart, you know, you know, you tell it like

1870
01:51:52,800 --> 01:51:57,320
Speaker 1: different kind of like bigger guns, smaller guns, right, um.

1871
01:51:57,400 --> 01:51:59,880
Speaker 1: And the people that weren't caught up in that battle,

1872
01:51:59,880 --> 01:52:06,520
Speaker 1: but were we're surrounded on another ridgeline the next day,

1873
01:52:06,840 --> 01:52:09,840
Speaker 1: realized that they were being shot at with their gun,

1874
01:52:10,360 --> 01:52:12,720
Speaker 1: with the gun that they recognized as their own. And

1875
01:52:12,760 --> 01:52:14,919
Speaker 1: that was the early clue of what might have happened,

1876
01:52:15,320 --> 01:52:20,200
Speaker 1: what might have where well, talking about the guns that

1877
01:52:20,240 --> 01:52:23,720
Speaker 1: they had and and ten years, it's interesting because in

1878
01:52:23,800 --> 01:52:28,360
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, in this battle, most of a lot

1879
01:52:28,400 --> 01:52:33,240
Speaker 1: of the of the Native American warriors did not have rifles,

1880
01:52:33,320 --> 01:52:35,080
Speaker 1: or the rifles they had were single shots, and they

1881
01:52:35,080 --> 01:52:38,040
Speaker 1: preferred to use their their bows and arrows because they

1882
01:52:38,040 --> 01:52:42,559
Speaker 1: could fire so much more rapidly. By eighteen seventy six.

1883
01:52:43,160 --> 01:52:46,479
Speaker 1: Ten years later, Battle of a Little Big Horn, A

1884
01:52:46,560 --> 01:52:50,799
Speaker 1: lot of the of the Native American warriors had Henry

1885
01:52:50,840 --> 01:52:56,439
Speaker 1: repeating rifles gunfight, but the U. S. Army still gave

1886
01:52:56,479 --> 01:52:59,920
Speaker 1: their their their Their soldiers at that point had mostly

1887
01:53:00,000 --> 01:53:03,960
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three Springfield either rifles or car beans, which

1888
01:53:03,960 --> 01:53:07,840
Speaker 1: were those stupid trap door single shot They fired a

1889
01:53:07,840 --> 01:53:12,040
Speaker 1: metal cartridge, but they they were single shots and had

1890
01:53:12,040 --> 01:53:13,680
Speaker 1: to be loaded, you know, one shot at a time

1891
01:53:13,720 --> 01:53:15,559
Speaker 1: through a trap door in the in the breach. And

1892
01:53:15,560 --> 01:53:18,599
Speaker 1: they were by all accounts, not great guns. And the

1893
01:53:18,720 --> 01:53:22,120
Speaker 1: army just had a doctrinary belief in that era that

1894
01:53:22,160 --> 01:53:26,080
Speaker 1: if you gave a soldier the ability to fire rapidly,

1895
01:53:26,160 --> 01:53:28,719
Speaker 1: that they would waste their shots. And so this instead

1896
01:53:28,720 --> 01:53:33,559
Speaker 1: of giving him Henry rifles, they gave him eventually guns

1897
01:53:33,600 --> 01:53:36,160
Speaker 1: that fired a metal cartridge, but still single shots. I

1898
01:53:36,160 --> 01:53:38,400
Speaker 1: can't remember what museum I was at, but it had

1899
01:53:38,439 --> 01:53:42,360
Speaker 1: some firearms. I can't remember what tribe it had them,

1900
01:53:42,400 --> 01:53:47,960
Speaker 1: but um there were demonstrations of their gunsmithing where they'd

1901
01:53:47,960 --> 01:53:50,360
Speaker 1: get these and then keeping them going. It stocks put

1902
01:53:50,360 --> 01:53:56,160
Speaker 1: back together with barrels like barrels, fashioned stocks with raw

1903
01:53:56,280 --> 01:54:00,920
Speaker 1: hide wrappings and filed pieces. You'd get these things, maybe

1904
01:54:00,920 --> 01:54:03,080
Speaker 1: even got it broken. Yeah, And in finding a way

1905
01:54:03,120 --> 01:54:06,000
Speaker 1: to just to keep him well, you think about I

1906
01:54:06,439 --> 01:54:10,479
Speaker 1: I portray Jim Bridger. Uh. There. There's a great thing

1907
01:54:10,680 --> 01:54:14,679
Speaker 1: on Instagram yesterday from the Montana State Historical Society which

1908
01:54:14,800 --> 01:54:19,720
Speaker 1: has Jim Bridgers hacking at the Montana State Historical Society

1909
01:54:19,760 --> 01:54:23,360
Speaker 1: in in Helena, and I one of my goals in

1910
01:54:23,400 --> 01:54:25,640
Speaker 1: life is to go there and and have somebody let

1911
01:54:25,680 --> 01:54:27,040
Speaker 1: me hold that, because I just think that would be

1912
01:54:27,040 --> 01:54:30,200
Speaker 1: a really cool thing to hold Jim Bridgers hocking. But

1913
01:54:30,439 --> 01:54:33,240
Speaker 1: he apparently still had a hocking in this era, and

1914
01:54:33,280 --> 01:54:37,480
Speaker 1: I have a fictionalized scene between him and Beckworth where

1915
01:54:37,480 --> 01:54:40,320
Speaker 1: Beckworth is making fun of him for still using an

1916
01:54:40,360 --> 01:54:44,600
Speaker 1: old hawk and rifle. And part of his defense in

1917
01:54:44,640 --> 01:54:47,080
Speaker 1: the book I have is is that he's used to

1918
01:54:47,120 --> 01:54:48,880
Speaker 1: it and he knows how to fix it. He knows

1919
01:54:48,880 --> 01:54:51,640
Speaker 1: how it works. And I would imagine that for somebody

1920
01:54:51,680 --> 01:54:54,200
Speaker 1: like that, and old timer in particular, that having a

1921
01:54:54,240 --> 01:54:57,720
Speaker 1: gun that you knew every bit of it and that

1922
01:54:57,880 --> 01:54:59,680
Speaker 1: you knew that if it broke down, you had some

1923
01:54:59,760 --> 01:55:01,520
Speaker 1: chance to being able to fix it, even on the

1924
01:55:01,520 --> 01:55:07,200
Speaker 1: frontier as opposed to the complexity of a repeating rifle system.

1925
01:55:07,280 --> 01:55:09,080
Speaker 1: For an old timer might be like, I don't I

1926
01:55:09,120 --> 01:55:11,640
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with that. I've like, I've told

1927
01:55:11,640 --> 01:55:15,240
Speaker 1: the story thousand times. But I was with an Amerindian

1928
01:55:15,320 --> 01:55:17,840
Speaker 1: group in South America and they had sixteen They had

1929
01:55:17,840 --> 01:55:21,160
Speaker 1: a sixteen gage shotgun, a break open sixteen gage shotgun,

1930
01:55:21,600 --> 01:55:25,320
Speaker 1: and they only had twelve gage shells. So they wouldn't

1931
01:55:25,320 --> 01:55:27,920
Speaker 1: get ready to go hunt at night. They would take

1932
01:55:27,960 --> 01:55:32,600
Speaker 1: that twelve gage shell, cut it open, take a leaf,

1933
01:55:32,680 --> 01:55:35,240
Speaker 1: and pour the shot into a leaf, make their own,

1934
01:55:35,400 --> 01:55:38,320
Speaker 1: get the wad out, pour the powder into a leaf,

1935
01:55:38,560 --> 01:55:41,840
Speaker 1: knocked the primers with the same The primers are compatible.

1936
01:55:42,200 --> 01:55:45,720
Speaker 1: Knocked the primer out, put the primer into the sixteen gauge,

1937
01:55:45,760 --> 01:55:50,720
Speaker 1: pour the powder in uli. Yeah. Usually this little they'd

1938
01:55:50,720 --> 01:55:52,840
Speaker 1: make this little leaf thing to act as a wadding,

1939
01:55:53,240 --> 01:55:56,360
Speaker 1: put the shot in, melt a candle, steal the holding

1940
01:55:56,400 --> 01:55:58,280
Speaker 1: off of candle. Acts. They do two or three of

1941
01:55:58,280 --> 01:56:01,480
Speaker 1: those and head off into the Jungeral gosh, that's unbelievable.

1942
01:56:01,840 --> 01:56:05,280
Speaker 1: It's like good ingenuity, right, that's very good ingenuity. Speaking

1943
01:56:05,280 --> 01:56:08,880
Speaker 1: of ingenuity, one of the things that is fascinating to

1944
01:56:08,960 --> 01:56:13,960
Speaker 1: me is the cannon technology of that era. And we

1945
01:56:13,960 --> 01:56:18,480
Speaker 1: were talking before about how wars are a great booster

1946
01:56:18,600 --> 01:56:22,400
Speaker 1: of of innovation, especially on weaponry. And one of the

1947
01:56:22,440 --> 01:56:24,720
Speaker 1: things I learned about working at Fort Landarmy National Historic

1948
01:56:24,760 --> 01:56:27,920
Speaker 1: Site as a teenagers, as I said, we fired these

1949
01:56:28,840 --> 01:56:31,560
Speaker 1: mountain howitz or twice a day, and I was amazed

1950
01:56:31,600 --> 01:56:36,720
Speaker 1: to learn at the sophistication of cannon technology in that day.

1951
01:56:36,800 --> 01:56:38,920
Speaker 1: And I had always thought of a cannon is shooting

1952
01:56:38,960 --> 01:56:42,040
Speaker 1: out a solid either a solid cannon ball, you know,

1953
01:56:42,080 --> 01:56:44,600
Speaker 1: to knock down walls, or they would they would use

1954
01:56:45,200 --> 01:56:47,920
Speaker 1: grape shot, which is basically like turning a shotgun into

1955
01:56:48,040 --> 01:56:51,520
Speaker 1: a cannon, into a big, giant shotgun. But one of

1956
01:56:51,520 --> 01:56:54,720
Speaker 1: the the weapons are one of the options they had

1957
01:56:54,760 --> 01:56:57,440
Speaker 1: with cannons even in that era is something called spherical

1958
01:56:57,560 --> 01:57:01,080
Speaker 1: case shot, and that was a it looked like a

1959
01:57:01,080 --> 01:57:04,280
Speaker 1: cannon ball, but it was hollow on the inside and

1960
01:57:04,320 --> 01:57:09,520
Speaker 1: the inside was filled with smaller cannonballs and gunpowder, and

1961
01:57:09,560 --> 01:57:13,280
Speaker 1: there was a fuse that was on the top of

1962
01:57:13,320 --> 01:57:16,640
Speaker 1: the cannon ball that could be cut to blow up

1963
01:57:16,640 --> 01:57:20,240
Speaker 1: at different ranges, and when the cannon would go off,

1964
01:57:20,680 --> 01:57:24,600
Speaker 1: the flame from the ignition with light that fuse in

1965
01:57:24,640 --> 01:57:27,800
Speaker 1: the front the cannon ball, and then it as the

1966
01:57:27,840 --> 01:57:32,960
Speaker 1: cannonball flew down range, the fuse would burn in and

1967
01:57:33,080 --> 01:57:36,760
Speaker 1: at the appointed range you know a thousand yards for example,

1968
01:57:37,240 --> 01:57:42,240
Speaker 1: blow up and and all of those cannonballs, the musket

1969
01:57:42,280 --> 01:57:44,680
Speaker 1: balls inside of the cannonball would then disperse on the battlefield.

1970
01:57:44,920 --> 01:57:49,480
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a that's an incredibly sophisticated weapon. Uh.

1971
01:57:49,520 --> 01:57:53,120
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of mathematics that go behind that.

1972
01:57:53,200 --> 01:57:56,520
Speaker 1: And and in fact, in that era, oftentimes the smartest

1973
01:57:56,520 --> 01:58:00,640
Speaker 1: guys at West Point were made artillery. And because the

1974
01:58:00,680 --> 01:58:04,920
Speaker 1: high technology the day was artillery and mathematics, and so

1975
01:58:04,960 --> 01:58:07,040
Speaker 1: if you were smart and could do math, you were

1976
01:58:07,240 --> 01:58:10,920
Speaker 1: an artilleryman. And then and in the days leading up

1977
01:58:10,920 --> 01:58:13,160
Speaker 1: to this fight, they had the tribes kind of had

1978
01:58:13,320 --> 01:58:16,920
Speaker 1: learned a scout and deal with those guys trying to

1979
01:58:16,920 --> 01:58:19,600
Speaker 1: touch those cannonballs off over their heads all the time. Yeah,

1980
01:58:19,640 --> 01:58:23,440
Speaker 1: because I think it was surprising obviously to the to

1981
01:58:23,640 --> 01:58:27,480
Speaker 1: the tribes that there was the ability to set these

1982
01:58:27,680 --> 01:58:30,560
Speaker 1: charges off with that kind of precision, you know, a

1983
01:58:30,600 --> 01:58:33,640
Speaker 1: thousand yards away from the walls of the fort. It's

1984
01:58:33,640 --> 01:58:35,920
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there are a very few

1985
01:58:36,240 --> 01:58:41,080
Speaker 1: battles in history where Native American tribes attack a fort,

1986
01:58:41,320 --> 01:58:44,400
Speaker 1: and that's the classic kind of John Wayne uh you

1987
01:58:44,440 --> 01:58:47,760
Speaker 1: know movie, But that didn't happen very often because the

1988
01:58:47,840 --> 01:58:50,360
Speaker 1: tribes were smart enough to know that the fort was

1989
01:58:50,400 --> 01:58:53,560
Speaker 1: the place where all the advantages were with the army,

1990
01:58:53,760 --> 01:58:56,720
Speaker 1: whether it was hiding behind walls and shooting out word

1991
01:58:56,760 --> 01:59:00,760
Speaker 1: with long range rifles or or cannon. And what they

1992
01:59:00,760 --> 01:59:03,160
Speaker 1: were smart enough to know is they needed to draw

1993
01:59:03,320 --> 01:59:06,520
Speaker 1: the army out onto their terrain. And that's of course

1994
01:59:06,560 --> 01:59:09,200
Speaker 1: exactly what they do in in this story. And a

1995
01:59:09,360 --> 01:59:12,360
Speaker 1: follow up attack on the fort never happens, like after

1996
01:59:12,400 --> 01:59:14,840
Speaker 1: we have these eighty one dead soldiers thirty dead warriors

1997
01:59:15,000 --> 01:59:17,080
Speaker 1: that they don't then go and try to take over

1998
01:59:17,120 --> 01:59:20,040
Speaker 1: the fort. They didn't because I think they still for

1999
01:59:20,080 --> 01:59:21,960
Speaker 1: one thing, I think they felt like they had fulfilled

2000
01:59:22,000 --> 01:59:24,160
Speaker 1: the prophecy that they were seeking to fulfill, but also

2001
01:59:24,200 --> 01:59:26,800
Speaker 1: because I think they still respected even with the force

2002
01:59:26,880 --> 01:59:29,600
Speaker 1: that they had gathered, the strength of the of the

2003
01:59:29,680 --> 01:59:33,040
Speaker 1: cannon at the fort and the soldiers that remained there.

2004
01:59:33,560 --> 01:59:37,800
Speaker 1: But they do end up winning that war. Yeah, Like yeah,

2005
01:59:37,800 --> 01:59:39,840
Speaker 1: we keep comparing a little big Horm. A little Big

2006
01:59:39,840 --> 01:59:44,520
Speaker 1: Horm was like a very pirate victory, very they even

2007
01:59:44,520 --> 01:59:47,920
Speaker 1: in winningly knew they had lost. They dispersed and went

2008
01:59:47,960 --> 01:59:51,440
Speaker 1: into hiding. When this like for a while, so kind

2009
01:59:51,440 --> 01:59:57,520
Speaker 1: of one, including getting a new treaty, uh where the U. S.

2010
01:59:57,640 --> 02:00:00,160
Speaker 1: Army agrees. And this is the only time I ever

2011
02:00:00,240 --> 02:00:02,560
Speaker 1: know of this happening, And it didn't last very long,

2012
02:00:02,600 --> 02:00:06,080
Speaker 1: but it happened lasted for a while because of the

2013
02:00:06,080 --> 02:00:10,120
Speaker 1: Fetterman fight. And it's interesting actually, because the politics of

2014
02:00:10,120 --> 02:00:12,960
Speaker 1: the United States in eighteen seventy six are very different

2015
02:00:12,960 --> 02:00:15,280
Speaker 1: from the politics of the United States in eighteen sixty six.

2016
02:00:15,600 --> 02:00:18,560
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty six, after the Fetterman Fight, keep in mind,

2017
02:00:18,600 --> 02:00:21,200
Speaker 1: it's only a year after the basically a year after

2018
02:00:21,200 --> 02:00:23,920
Speaker 1: the end of the Civil War, and the politics of

2019
02:00:23,960 --> 02:00:26,400
Speaker 1: the of the US at that point are like, we

2020
02:00:26,400 --> 02:00:29,000
Speaker 1: don't want to go fight a war out on the frontier.

2021
02:00:29,440 --> 02:00:36,160
Speaker 1: And so this Fetterman battle happens, and Red Cloud, I

2022
02:00:36,160 --> 02:00:40,919
Speaker 1: think rightly predicts that if he can inflict a massive defeat,

2023
02:00:41,360 --> 02:00:44,280
Speaker 1: that maybe he can scare scare the Whites off for

2024
02:00:44,320 --> 02:00:47,960
Speaker 1: a while. And that's exactly they signed a new treaty.

2025
02:00:48,000 --> 02:00:51,720
Speaker 1: They abandoned the Montana Road, they abandoned the three forts.

2026
02:00:51,760 --> 02:00:54,560
Speaker 1: The tribes come in and burn those three forts, including

2027
02:00:54,600 --> 02:00:58,600
Speaker 1: Fort Fetterman, to the ground, and really for a period

2028
02:00:58,600 --> 02:01:01,000
Speaker 1: of years at least relative to what's going to happen later,

2029
02:01:01,680 --> 02:01:06,240
Speaker 1: the tribes win back the Powder River Valley and other places,

2030
02:01:06,280 --> 02:01:11,200
Speaker 1: including including the Black Hills. In eighteen seventy six, the

2031
02:01:11,280 --> 02:01:14,600
Speaker 1: politics of the country have changed. And or if they

2032
02:01:14,600 --> 02:01:17,160
Speaker 1: had the foresight to be like, yeah, we want it,

2033
02:01:17,200 --> 02:01:19,680
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna last, I think they must have

2034
02:01:19,680 --> 02:01:24,720
Speaker 1: been worried. Um, but I don't know. It's a really

2035
02:01:24,760 --> 02:01:29,320
Speaker 1: interesting question. But by eighteen seventy six, when the Little

2036
02:01:29,360 --> 02:01:32,720
Speaker 1: Big Horn defeat happens, and this I love this fact

2037
02:01:32,760 --> 02:01:36,280
Speaker 1: of history. The news of a little Big Horn, A

2038
02:01:36,360 --> 02:01:39,920
Speaker 1: little big Horn is June eighteen seventy six. The news

2039
02:01:39,920 --> 02:01:42,400
Speaker 1: of the Little Big Horn reaches Washington, d c. On

2040
02:01:42,520 --> 02:01:47,640
Speaker 1: July four, eighteen seventy six, the exact one years centennial

2041
02:01:47,720 --> 02:01:50,440
Speaker 1: of the country, and it is a turd in the

2042
02:01:50,440 --> 02:01:53,560
Speaker 1: punch bowl of that celebration. And the reaction to the

2043
02:01:53,560 --> 02:01:56,000
Speaker 1: country at that point is we're not going to let

2044
02:01:56,040 --> 02:01:59,960
Speaker 1: this stand. And at from that point on it's total

2045
02:02:00,040 --> 02:02:04,080
Speaker 1: war against the tribes, and in in a year and

2046
02:02:04,080 --> 02:02:08,160
Speaker 1: a half, the war against the Northern Plains Indians is

2047
02:02:08,200 --> 02:02:13,720
Speaker 1: over and Crazy Horse has been forced to uh surrender

2048
02:02:13,920 --> 02:02:19,440
Speaker 1: on a reservation. Sitting Bowl has fled into Canada. Eighteen

2049
02:02:19,480 --> 02:02:24,160
Speaker 1: seventy seven is the year of the They're defeated. It's over,

2050
02:02:24,960 --> 02:02:29,320
Speaker 1: and so once the US really turned its full military

2051
02:02:29,360 --> 02:02:33,800
Speaker 1: force on the war, it was pretty inevitable. I came

2052
02:02:33,840 --> 02:02:38,680
Speaker 1: across something really interesting in the research for this. There's

2053
02:02:39,000 --> 02:02:43,000
Speaker 1: I read that the total population of all the Plains

2054
02:02:43,040 --> 02:02:47,600
Speaker 1: tribes in the eighteen sixties was probably about seventy six thousand.

2055
02:02:48,920 --> 02:02:53,879
Speaker 1: Of the Lakota of the they were probably about sixteen thousand,

2056
02:02:54,320 --> 02:02:57,800
Speaker 1: of which there were about four thousand Lakota fighting men.

2057
02:02:59,080 --> 02:03:02,200
Speaker 1: So think about that. The US at that time had

2058
02:03:02,240 --> 02:03:06,160
Speaker 1: thirty one million people. During the Civil War, the US

2059
02:03:06,560 --> 02:03:08,720
Speaker 1: had there was a standing army of two point one

2060
02:03:08,760 --> 02:03:11,240
Speaker 1: million people on the on the north and one million

2061
02:03:11,240 --> 02:03:15,000
Speaker 1: people in the South. So when you think about those numbers,

2062
02:03:15,840 --> 02:03:19,760
Speaker 1: once the US kind of decided we're not gonna let

2063
02:03:19,800 --> 02:03:23,640
Speaker 1: the stand anymore, it wasn't going to and that's exactly

2064
02:03:23,640 --> 02:03:28,120
Speaker 1: what happens after eighteen seventy six. The fot like, following

2065
02:03:28,160 --> 02:03:29,400
Speaker 1: the days of the battle, they have to be on

2066
02:03:29,440 --> 02:03:31,720
Speaker 1: the edge, right because they don't they don't evacuate immediately.

2067
02:03:31,720 --> 02:03:35,240
Speaker 1: They're not gone the next day. It's there's an amazing

2068
02:03:35,280 --> 02:03:36,920
Speaker 1: story that I don't talk about in the book, but

2069
02:03:37,000 --> 02:03:39,920
Speaker 1: we talked about all the time at Fort Laramie UH

2070
02:03:40,080 --> 02:03:43,080
Speaker 1: after the after the battle, they are afraid that they're

2071
02:03:43,120 --> 02:03:45,200
Speaker 1: going to be attacked, and of course they've just lost,

2072
02:03:45,520 --> 02:03:48,560
Speaker 1: you know, half their fighting force, and so there they

2073
02:03:48,880 --> 02:03:50,880
Speaker 1: maybe Red Cloud could have overtaken that for it if

2074
02:03:50,920 --> 02:03:53,080
Speaker 1: you've been willing to kind of, you know, do a

2075
02:03:53,120 --> 02:03:57,000
Speaker 1: World War One style fight against UH an entrenched position.

2076
02:03:57,040 --> 02:03:59,480
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they're worried about that, and so

2077
02:03:59,560 --> 02:04:05,520
Speaker 1: Colonel Arrington sends a rider out from Fort phil Karney

2078
02:04:05,960 --> 02:04:09,000
Speaker 1: to Fort Laramie. It's in the middle of a blizzard.

2079
02:04:09,840 --> 02:04:15,120
Speaker 1: And this guy over his name is Portuguese Phillips. That's

2080
02:04:15,240 --> 02:04:19,240
Speaker 1: Phil's great grandfather. His name is Portuguese Phillips. And he

2081
02:04:19,600 --> 02:04:23,000
Speaker 1: rides through a blizzard. I can't remember the exact number

2082
02:04:23,000 --> 02:04:26,040
Speaker 1: of miles, but it's hundreds of miles in a blizzard.

2083
02:04:26,120 --> 02:04:29,919
Speaker 1: It takes him like forty eight hours and he literally

2084
02:04:30,520 --> 02:04:34,040
Speaker 1: arrives at Fort Laramie on in the middle of a

2085
02:04:34,120 --> 02:04:36,600
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve party. So I guess it took him that

2086
02:04:36,720 --> 02:04:40,400
Speaker 1: long between the twenty one and three days. His horse

2087
02:04:40,720 --> 02:04:47,000
Speaker 1: dies in front of the unmarried officers quarters building where

2088
02:04:47,000 --> 02:04:49,680
Speaker 1: they're having a Christmas party, and he staggers into this

2089
02:04:49,760 --> 02:04:53,160
Speaker 1: Christmas party with the news of the of the Fetterman,

2090
02:04:53,400 --> 02:04:56,720
Speaker 1: of the Fetterman fight, and then Fort Laramie sends out

2091
02:04:56,800 --> 02:05:01,280
Speaker 1: troops to to to reinforce the fort. Horse dies front.

2092
02:05:01,400 --> 02:05:06,160
Speaker 1: Horse dies in front, easier to dismount. The poor horse

2093
02:05:07,320 --> 02:05:09,960
Speaker 1: dies in front. The name of the building is his

2094
02:05:10,080 --> 02:05:13,120
Speaker 1: old Bedlam. It's a fort at it's a it's a

2095
02:05:13,160 --> 02:05:15,840
Speaker 1: building at Fort Laramie that was the enlisted or the

2096
02:05:15,960 --> 02:05:20,880
Speaker 1: unmarried Officers corp Portuguese Phillips want to end up having

2097
02:05:20,880 --> 02:05:23,240
Speaker 1: to him, I don't know, but there's a monument to

2098
02:05:23,320 --> 02:05:27,040
Speaker 1: him at Fort Laramie for making that ride. And the

2099
02:05:27,080 --> 02:05:30,480
Speaker 1: fort meanwhile is prepped for like a worst case scenario,

2100
02:05:30,760 --> 02:05:34,480
Speaker 1: and they have explosives rigged up and breaking emergency thing.

2101
02:05:35,040 --> 02:05:39,160
Speaker 1: So Carrington is so worried about them being overrun that

2102
02:05:39,280 --> 02:05:43,320
Speaker 1: he uh he comes up with a plan and the

2103
02:05:43,920 --> 02:05:48,680
Speaker 1: they stored the powder. The armory at the in the

2104
02:05:48,720 --> 02:05:51,120
Speaker 1: middle of Fort Fille was in the middle of Fort

2105
02:05:51,120 --> 02:05:54,560
Speaker 1: Field Carney and like a dugout kind of building where

2106
02:05:54,600 --> 02:05:57,480
Speaker 1: they stored all the powder, and the plan was that

2107
02:05:57,560 --> 02:06:01,360
Speaker 1: if the walls were breached, all of the women and

2108
02:06:01,440 --> 02:06:04,720
Speaker 1: children would go into the go down where the gunpowder

2109
02:06:04,880 --> 02:06:09,560
Speaker 1: was and they would set the powder off and blow

2110
02:06:09,600 --> 02:06:13,880
Speaker 1: it up so that they would not suffer the the

2111
02:06:13,920 --> 02:06:15,960
Speaker 1: death that they would otherwise suffer if the if the

2112
02:06:16,040 --> 02:06:18,880
Speaker 1: fort were overrun. But they were so worried about that today.

2113
02:06:18,920 --> 02:06:23,600
Speaker 1: Actually that was they had a plan for that tough

2114
02:06:23,720 --> 02:06:27,520
Speaker 1: use the light man used to light. That's not to

2115
02:06:27,600 --> 02:06:32,240
Speaker 1: call this podcast episode. Make a note of that. Ar

2116
02:06:36,640 --> 02:06:40,520
Speaker 1: all right. The book is like you can buy the

2117
02:06:40,520 --> 02:06:43,120
Speaker 1: book right now, right now, just buy it'll shift you

2118
02:06:43,160 --> 02:06:45,520
Speaker 1: the next day or everywhere books are sold. Everywhere books

2119
02:06:45,560 --> 02:06:47,160
Speaker 1: are sold. Tell people how to find you? Are you

2120
02:06:47,200 --> 02:06:50,520
Speaker 1: do you do social media? Yeah? I do? Uh my

2121
02:06:50,600 --> 02:06:53,320
Speaker 1: kids think I'm not very good at it. But I'm

2122
02:06:53,360 --> 02:06:57,520
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I'm on because of Karan. I'm on Instagram.

2123
02:06:57,600 --> 02:07:02,640
Speaker 1: Uh so on Instagram, I'm m w punk that's pun

2124
02:07:02,760 --> 02:07:06,160
Speaker 1: k E. And on Twitter I'm m punk p U

2125
02:07:06,240 --> 02:07:09,440
Speaker 1: and K. And the book is called the book is

2126
02:07:09,480 --> 02:07:13,520
Speaker 1: called Ridgeline. And you can go ask your local bookstore,

2127
02:07:14,200 --> 02:07:19,919
Speaker 1: Amazon and Barnes. My mom's husband, Um calls Books and Nobles,

2128
02:07:20,480 --> 02:07:23,040
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble. What if you want to listen to it?

2129
02:07:23,160 --> 02:07:28,120
Speaker 1: There is a great audio version. I did not. I

2130
02:07:28,160 --> 02:07:31,520
Speaker 1: read a little. I read the historical notes at the end.

2131
02:07:31,560 --> 02:07:33,520
Speaker 1: Who they hire to read a soap opera actor, A

2132
02:07:33,600 --> 02:07:37,040
Speaker 1: great guy. I love this. I love this. Uh that

2133
02:07:37,120 --> 02:07:39,360
Speaker 1: this person does it. That the person who reads this

2134
02:07:39,400 --> 02:07:45,080
Speaker 1: book is is a Lakota named Tatanka Means. He's the

2135
02:07:45,080 --> 02:07:48,839
Speaker 1: son of Russell Means, and he's from American Indian Movement,

2136
02:07:50,800 --> 02:07:53,320
Speaker 1: and he is a he is a Native American actor

2137
02:07:53,600 --> 02:07:57,200
Speaker 1: and uh and does a great job reading it. And

2138
02:07:57,280 --> 02:07:59,600
Speaker 1: so yeah, there's the audiobook version that did you try

2139
02:07:59,640 --> 02:08:01,240
Speaker 1: to read it? The wouldn't let you. I did not.

2140
02:08:01,680 --> 02:08:04,600
Speaker 1: I didn't think I would be very good at at

2141
02:08:04,680 --> 02:08:07,120
Speaker 1: reading the dialogue and things like that. I mean to

2142
02:08:07,240 --> 02:08:08,720
Speaker 1: be one thing, to read a nonfiction book. And I

2143
02:08:09,040 --> 02:08:10,880
Speaker 1: read the historical notes at the end, like I said,

2144
02:08:10,880 --> 02:08:12,800
Speaker 1: And I can do that, but I don't think i'd

2145
02:08:12,800 --> 02:08:15,760
Speaker 1: be very good at at like giving the right intonation

2146
02:08:15,800 --> 02:08:18,400
Speaker 1: to the arguments. They also and this is kind of

2147
02:08:18,440 --> 02:08:23,240
Speaker 1: interesting the parts of the book that are with the

2148
02:08:23,320 --> 02:08:26,160
Speaker 1: character of Francis Grammont, which are in the book written

2149
02:08:26,200 --> 02:08:31,320
Speaker 1: as journal entries. They hired a a a woman actor

2150
02:08:31,360 --> 02:08:35,080
Speaker 1: to read those parts, so it actually works out. I think.

2151
02:08:35,240 --> 02:08:38,280
Speaker 1: I think it's a good audio book. Um, I didn't

2152
02:08:38,280 --> 02:08:41,520
Speaker 1: get to read my first books. And then they sold

2153
02:08:41,560 --> 02:08:46,160
Speaker 1: my they sold my audio rights. Random House sold from

2154
02:08:46,160 --> 02:08:48,320
Speaker 1: my Buffalo book. They sold my audio rights. This thing

2155
02:08:48,400 --> 02:08:53,440
Speaker 1: I think it's called Brilliance Audio, which weirdly was, um

2156
02:08:53,440 --> 02:08:55,160
Speaker 1: not far from where I grew up. I think whatever

2157
02:08:55,200 --> 02:08:56,960
Speaker 1: the hell they were called. They did a lot of audio.

2158
02:08:57,520 --> 02:09:00,320
Speaker 1: They hired some soul popera guy to do it. I

2159
02:09:00,400 --> 02:09:04,680
Speaker 1: got those I remember getting that thing in the mail

2160
02:09:04,880 --> 02:09:08,400
Speaker 1: and putting it in and the second the second that

2161
02:09:08,440 --> 02:09:11,680
Speaker 1: guy opened his mouth, I couldn't get across the room.

2162
02:09:11,840 --> 02:09:14,000
Speaker 1: I couldn't get across the living room. Past turned off.

2163
02:09:14,400 --> 02:09:16,960
Speaker 1: I was like, that's not how it sounds. That's stuff

2164
02:09:16,960 --> 02:09:20,920
Speaker 1: that's personal. They had that they had ten years, They

2165
02:09:20,920 --> 02:09:24,520
Speaker 1: had the audio rights for ten years. Oh man. So

2166
02:09:24,800 --> 02:09:29,520
Speaker 1: at the end of that ten years, Um, my publisher

2167
02:09:29,640 --> 02:09:31,200
Speaker 1: got back my audio rights and I got to go

2168
02:09:31,240 --> 02:09:33,320
Speaker 1: down and read my own damn book. That's that's a

2169
02:09:33,360 --> 02:09:36,400
Speaker 1: good thing for that for for your books, in particular,

2170
02:09:36,600 --> 02:09:39,120
Speaker 1: it's so much your voice that I think it'd be

2171
02:09:39,120 --> 02:09:41,920
Speaker 1: really hard to have somebody else do it. Yeah, it

2172
02:09:42,000 --> 02:09:45,440
Speaker 1: was real, real painful. But I'm glad you're happy with it. Yeah. No,

2173
02:09:45,520 --> 02:09:47,040
Speaker 1: it's a good it's a good audio book. I mean,

2174
02:09:47,080 --> 02:09:51,160
Speaker 1: I uh, people have the choice if they prefer their

2175
02:09:51,160 --> 02:09:54,560
Speaker 1: books in audio form. It's it's there, okay, the ridge

2176
02:09:54,560 --> 02:10:00,560
Speaker 1: Line saying no article Ridge Line, the novel Michael Punk

2177
02:10:00,640 --> 02:10:03,880
Speaker 1: and again Punk with the E on the end. Yes, right,

2178
02:10:03,920 --> 02:10:05,760
Speaker 1: thank you. Can I tell you one final story? Yes.

2179
02:10:06,960 --> 02:10:09,640
Speaker 1: I grew up in South Dakota, and I took great

2180
02:10:09,640 --> 02:10:12,560
Speaker 1: pride in like the history of Deadwood and the western

2181
02:10:12,640 --> 02:10:14,120
Speaker 1: part of the state. When I was a kid, read

2182
02:10:14,160 --> 02:10:16,280
Speaker 1: all the books. I knew all the figures. And when

2183
02:10:16,280 --> 02:10:20,080
Speaker 1: it's college, whenever we would like take a shot at

2184
02:10:20,080 --> 02:10:21,960
Speaker 1: a bar or something, you gotta say it cheers, right,

2185
02:10:22,640 --> 02:10:25,720
Speaker 1: i'dowas cheers to Hugh Glass, because then it allowed me,

2186
02:10:25,960 --> 02:10:27,920
Speaker 1: like a couple of minutes to tell the story of

2187
02:10:28,000 --> 02:10:30,240
Speaker 1: Hugh Glass, which is just one of my favorite story.

2188
02:10:30,280 --> 02:10:34,880
Speaker 1: A lot of girls like that. I already had my wife, no,

2189
02:10:35,240 --> 02:10:38,200
Speaker 1: but I'd get you entertained with this cool story that

2190
02:10:38,280 --> 02:10:40,800
Speaker 1: was like my story. It was like my story, right,

2191
02:10:41,280 --> 02:10:45,680
Speaker 1: And then the movie came out and no, longer. Can

2192
02:10:45,760 --> 02:10:48,480
Speaker 1: I give that toast to be so you robbed it

2193
02:10:48,520 --> 02:10:55,560
Speaker 1: from I'll buy you a beer to western give me

2194
02:10:55,680 --> 02:10:59,680
Speaker 1: something new stories entertained folks will come up with some

2195
02:11:00,160 --> 02:11:03,120
Speaker 1: maybe into Portuguese philips or something else. Yeah, like here's

2196
02:11:03,160 --> 02:11:08,120
Speaker 1: the Portuguese film. Well his grandson. Who knows how many

2197
02:11:08,520 --> 02:11:11,960
Speaker 1: locals in what northern Wyoming you robbed of the ridge

2198
02:11:11,960 --> 02:11:14,600
Speaker 1: Line story? Now when they're taking a shot at a bar,

2199
02:11:14,880 --> 02:11:18,000
Speaker 1: they have this couple of minutes to sort of tell

2200
02:11:18,360 --> 02:11:20,920
Speaker 1: the Fetterman battle. Here's the apologies to any of those

2201
02:11:20,920 --> 02:11:22,720
Speaker 1: people I have. I have a feeling though that the

2202
02:11:23,600 --> 02:11:26,880
Speaker 1: most Wyomings will like this story being told. I'm going

2203
02:11:26,920 --> 02:11:29,600
Speaker 1: to start a new segment called Spencer's pick Up on

2204
02:11:30,920 --> 02:11:36,919
Speaker 1: pickup Advice, which do you see? Um? Quickly, speaking of movies,

2205
02:11:37,320 --> 02:11:40,800
Speaker 1: is this going to be turned into a cinematic I

2206
02:11:40,840 --> 02:11:44,480
Speaker 1: hope so. We have optioned it to the same company,

2207
02:11:44,520 --> 02:11:48,960
Speaker 1: Anonymous Content that optioned and produced The Revenant. Uh so

2208
02:11:49,080 --> 02:11:54,120
Speaker 1: they are great filmmaking company. They have optioned it. We're

2209
02:11:54,160 --> 02:11:59,720
Speaker 1: looking at it initially more as a scripted series. I

2210
02:11:59,760 --> 02:12:03,480
Speaker 1: think story this story is is too big, or you

2211
02:12:03,520 --> 02:12:05,120
Speaker 1: could do it as as a feature film, and I

2212
02:12:05,120 --> 02:12:07,480
Speaker 1: can imagine a good one, but I would love to

2213
02:12:07,480 --> 02:12:09,600
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to tell it in an even longer

2214
02:12:09,640 --> 02:12:12,200
Speaker 1: form of a scripted series. I'll tell you, John Lockery

2215
02:12:12,280 --> 02:12:15,040
Speaker 1: is quote last time you were here, I know I didn't. Well,

2216
02:12:15,080 --> 02:12:17,760
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think it is. Remind me, um,

2217
02:12:18,000 --> 02:12:20,200
Speaker 1: having your book made into a movie is like watching

2218
02:12:20,240 --> 02:12:27,600
Speaker 1: the ox and turned into a bullion cube. It is

2219
02:12:27,640 --> 02:12:30,240
Speaker 1: a It is a collaborative process, and you better be

2220
02:12:30,320 --> 02:12:33,400
Speaker 1: ready for that when you signed the option check. Like

2221
02:12:33,800 --> 02:12:41,240
Speaker 1: that a little square. I have hired higher hopes than

2222
02:12:41,320 --> 02:12:44,520
Speaker 1: that you can do a lot with a series. That's true.

2223
02:12:44,520 --> 02:12:46,960
Speaker 1: I think you can well. And there's so many great

2224
02:12:47,160 --> 02:12:50,520
Speaker 1: there's so much great storytelling being done through scripted series today.

2225
02:12:50,600 --> 02:12:53,400
Speaker 1: That jealous. I just said that because I'm jealous. I'm

2226
02:12:53,400 --> 02:12:55,440
Speaker 1: trying to make myself filled. I want to have some

2227
02:12:55,520 --> 02:12:57,960
Speaker 1: wild West movies. Maybe I got to read a wild West,

2228
02:12:58,000 --> 02:13:00,960
Speaker 1: but you gotta write that. Um. All right, Michael Punk,

2229
02:13:00,960 --> 02:13:02,880
Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on. Everybody, go get

2230
02:13:02,880 --> 02:13:04,720
Speaker 1: a ridge line. I know we talked, we told the

2231
02:13:04,720 --> 02:13:07,960
Speaker 1: whole story. We didn't even we didn't because it takes

2232
02:13:07,960 --> 02:13:11,080
Speaker 1: twenty hours to read a book, right it does? Yeah? Me,

2233
02:13:11,280 --> 02:13:13,760
Speaker 1: So you don't know. Crap. Yeah, I'm listening to this

2234
02:13:14,080 --> 02:13:18,720
Speaker 1: at twenty two later hours ahead, folks. All Right, so

2235
02:13:18,960 --> 02:13:20,720
Speaker 1: you'll write another book and come back and I don't know,

2236
02:13:21,000 --> 02:13:24,600
Speaker 1: two years, I would love to, Okay, standing standing invite,

2237
02:13:24,640 --> 02:13:26,960
Speaker 1: all right, thank you for that, so that that'll motivate you.

2238
02:13:27,080 --> 02:13:29,600
Speaker 1: I will. That is a big motivator. Thanks, thank you,

2239
02:13:29,880 --> 02:13:30,560
Speaker 1: all right, thank you,