Speaker 1: This is the me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. Don't podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther,
Speaker 1: stay longer. Alright, I want to. I want everybody to listen,
Speaker 1: really like, what's this noise that's satisfying? Don't think I'm
Speaker 1: actually holding the firearms. I don't think the federal government
Speaker 1: regards these his firearms different. I think it's like a
Speaker 1: different set of rules. It's a it's a repple covered.
Speaker 1: We're visiting with Michael Pump, who wrote The Revenant um
Speaker 1: and as a forthcoming book. No, it's now, yes. Now.
Speaker 1: The last time Michael punk was on, he teased his
Speaker 1: next book, which is called Ridgeline, and he was being uh,
Speaker 1: he was being diplomatic but also a good salesman and
Speaker 1: didn't like lay the whole thing out, save something for
Speaker 1: later about Ridgeline. UM. And so he's here to talk
Speaker 1: with us about Ridgeline. And he brought a couple of
Speaker 1: show and tell pieces and arrow uh circa. I don't know,
Speaker 1: is it can you get specific? Uh? Not too specific.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's designed to look like the arrows
Speaker 1: that they would have had in the eighteen sixties, for example.
Speaker 1: And I think it's probably pretty accurate. It's got a
Speaker 1: a manufactured metal arrowhead, which would be accurate for that
Speaker 1: era steel trade point I was here and referred to exactly,
Speaker 1: but otherwise I think it was there was an attempt
Speaker 1: made to use the traditional style of building the arrow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and this year pistol, that pistol which would
Speaker 1: have been comfortable to the ones used by the officers
Speaker 1: and non commissioned officers and non commission officers in the
Speaker 1: in the infantry or in the caffree especially, And it's
Speaker 1: a it's a replica of an eighteen fifty one thirty
Speaker 1: six caliber Colt. Shall shoots thirty six caliber lead ball
Speaker 1: out of it. That's right. If I was gonna like
Speaker 1: line up guns that I if I had to get
Speaker 1: hit by one, I don't know, I wouldn't be like,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't relish getting hit by this one. But there's
Speaker 1: worst things to get hit by. Well, they by the
Speaker 1: time they got around to the to the Colt forty five,
Speaker 1: they had decided that they should up the caliber of
Speaker 1: the caliber and they went from thirty powder charge. I
Speaker 1: would guess, but there's something, Um, yeah, there's something about
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it is, but there's something about
Speaker 1: these where they're not quite firearms that's interesting. And I
Speaker 1: think you can order them the mail. It doesn't need
Speaker 1: to go through Uh, don't take my word for it,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm like. I think you can order
Speaker 1: one of the he's in the mail and just shows
Speaker 1: up at your house, doesn't need to go through an FFL.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer. I'm not gonna argue with you.
Speaker 1: We'll look it up till else you're doing. I believe
Speaker 1: that's the pistol carried by wild Bill Hiccock and in
Speaker 1: his hand. I think he was definitely a firearm and
Speaker 1: I would not have wanted to be on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of of him. No, did you notice? And um,
Speaker 1: did you watch the ball? The buster scrugs? You don't
Speaker 1: watch that, No, dude, it's never check it out. It's
Speaker 1: funny's he's Buster scrug sits down to a card game
Speaker 1: and there's a guy that he sits down to a
Speaker 1: card game and he wants to get dealt in, but
Speaker 1: some guy has just left and they're like, no, you
Speaker 1: gotta play that hand, and he's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to play that hand, and he takes a look and
Speaker 1: it's aces and eights dead man's hand. And then later
Speaker 1: that day yeah yeah, but it wasn't even dealt to him.
Speaker 1: He just sat down at the table and peaked at
Speaker 1: aces and eights and that's all. It's all rushing a
Speaker 1: lot more than the writer. This gentleman here, Um, how
Speaker 1: much this stuff is still active? So you're a writer?
Speaker 1: Are you still you're still a lawyer? Do you keep
Speaker 1: like up on lawyer business? Are you supposed to send
Speaker 1: in a check or anything? Every day? I sent in
Speaker 1: a check in order to keep up my inactive bar
Speaker 1: status mostly, so that's what you maintain. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not a practicing lawyer. But it's like, it's not
Speaker 1: once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's not once a member of the bar, always a
Speaker 1: member of the bar. You've got to keep up your
Speaker 1: bar membership mostly by paying dues and not taking additional testing.
Speaker 1: Thank god no, because I wouldn't do that again. So
Speaker 1: but you do keep it, You do keep going. You
Speaker 1: can't fall off for twenty years and decided to send
Speaker 1: in a check and resume or can you. I don't.
Speaker 1: It's a different state by state. Every state regulates their lawyers,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I haven't kept track of it because I
Speaker 1: hope not to ever be a practicing lawyer again. Do
Speaker 1: you do your own contracts stupidly because you'll you'll review
Speaker 1: of your own book contract. Yeah, but I've stopped doing
Speaker 1: that more and more because I am I'm both uh
Speaker 1: dumb and thinking I know enough to to look at
Speaker 1: him and cheap enough that I don't want to pay
Speaker 1: a lawyer. And I've gotten a little bit smart about
Speaker 1: that over the years and started paying somebody to look
Speaker 1: at him, which has worked out well for me. Um,
Speaker 1: I was gonna tell your story was just too complicated
Speaker 1: in her mind. Used to being an ambassador, former US
Speaker 1: Trade rep and then former ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 1: It was I was the deputy U. S. Trade Representative,
Speaker 1: part of an agency called the US on the opposite
Speaker 1: of the U. S Trade Representative, and at that same
Speaker 1: job involved being the US Ambassador to the World Trade
Speaker 1: Organization in Geneva. So that was kind of a two
Speaker 1: fer when you did that that you have to live
Speaker 1: in Geneva. I did for six years. Oh here we
Speaker 1: talking about that? Yea, so it was we We moved
Speaker 1: to Montana in two thousand and three. I was born
Speaker 1: and raised in Wyoming and then lived out east for
Speaker 1: a while. I went to school out there, came back
Speaker 1: to Montana after I wrote The Revenant. That's when I
Speaker 1: quit my law firm job. Is after we sold The Revenant,
Speaker 1: I decided to come out live in the West and
Speaker 1: be a writer back home. Yeah, and uh, my wife
Speaker 1: is my wife, Tracy is from Livingston, Montana. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Wyoming. We decided for a number of years
Speaker 1: between Wyoming and Montana and ended up in Missoula. When
Speaker 1: you were in Wyoming, you were still in the yellow
Speaker 1: Stone Basin, right, Well, I was born in the Big
Speaker 1: Horn Basin in Lovell, Wyoming and lived there. Tell about
Speaker 1: third grade, and that still counsels the Elstone Basin. True,
Speaker 1: true enough, I think if it is as Big Horn Basin. Um.
Speaker 1: But I want to say you you because you were.
Speaker 1: You were in the sort of broader drainage of where
Speaker 1: your book takes place, for sure, the other side of
Speaker 1: the Big Horns, because the powder rivers on the eastern
Speaker 1: side of the Big Horns but uh, levels on the
Speaker 1: western side. But I looked up as a boy at
Speaker 1: the Big Horn Mountains and those were kind of the
Speaker 1: the mountains that uh sparked my initial imagination about all
Speaker 1: things Western Mountain related. Uh, we're gonna get into Ridgeline
Speaker 1: real deep. But it uh takes place at the what's
Speaker 1: the closest town, the Fort Fetterman. Yeah, today it's uh,
Speaker 1: the site of Fort Fetterman and the battlefield are between
Speaker 1: Sheridan and Buffalo. Was I telling you the story about
Speaker 1: something I knew from that area? Who? When I mentioned
Speaker 1: the Fetterman massacre fight? I don't think you told me
Speaker 1: that he's like oh brother. Every year in school? Yeah that.
Speaker 1: Now for the field trip, well, in Level we would
Speaker 1: go over to the Cody Museum Cody. Our field trip
Speaker 1: every year was to Cody. But of course that museum
Speaker 1: if you people haven't been there, is one of the
Speaker 1: there's three museums and Cody and they're some of the
Speaker 1: Their really kind of Smithsonian quality museums are unbelievable. And
Speaker 1: that was another thing that really sparked my imagination as
Speaker 1: a boy, including the original painting of Custer's Last Stand
Speaker 1: that they have there by the German duter by the No,
Speaker 1: it's by well, it's by Paxson. He's uh, the artist's
Speaker 1: name is Paxson. I don't know about his background. He
Speaker 1: was like the guy that you know, the famous like
Speaker 1: anheuser Busch representatives. It's a different one that was German.
Speaker 1: Well wait, no it's not. Um, I think it may
Speaker 1: be a slightly different one. It looks it's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of similar layout. And you know the one called
Speaker 1: after the fight? Um, is that the one that's in
Speaker 1: on the battlefield side. Yeah, it's in the Olive. There's
Speaker 1: the one in the Olive and Miles City where GOLs
Speaker 1: mccraid eyes I think, and um and people like right
Speaker 1: on it, gff. I've thought many times about going in
Speaker 1: there and just trying to strike a deal with them
Speaker 1: and get that Damn. I want the whole wall. I like,
Speaker 1: I'll cut the wall out, put a new wall in.
Speaker 1: But it's it's their massacrerent Is, they're mutilating the it's
Speaker 1: the it's a painting of of them ransacking the battle
Speaker 1: site right right. It's a phenomenal painting there looking it's
Speaker 1: like you know, like people have written on there, like
Speaker 1: for a good time called Jesse. You know the one
Speaker 1: that was in Uh. I think you're right. It's the
Speaker 1: packs and one that was a Budweiser commercial in bars
Speaker 1: for decades at the in the last quarter of the
Speaker 1: of the century, along along with the buffalo. Look that
Speaker 1: up a mounted buffalo head. I can answer the other
Speaker 1: thing we're talking about. So, antique firearms and replicas of
Speaker 1: antique firearms do not fall under the National Firearms Act,
Speaker 1: even if manufactured after Some Modern versions of flint locks, matchlocks,
Speaker 1: and percussion fired guns do not require the involvement of
Speaker 1: an FFL. Told you Bush like Ann Heuser Busch bought
Speaker 1: Custers last fight. The packing win are in different one
Speaker 1: trying to find out they hung it all over bars
Speaker 1: and everything. No, Cassily Adams. Okay, so I'm looking at
Speaker 1: right now. You know a guy named Curly that fought
Speaker 1: in the fight, Uh, one of the Scouts of Custer. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the I know we're not here to talk about
Speaker 1: Custer battlefield, but there's an interesting story about this dude.
Speaker 1: Is that Curly was a crow. Curly was a crow scout.
Speaker 1: Is he in the photo with the Grizzly? No, that
Speaker 1: was Dull knife. That was a guy that was killed.
Speaker 1: I think I think that guy was killed and it
Speaker 1: rattled not Custer, but rattled one of Custer's guys. I
Speaker 1: think he got shot in the head very early on
Speaker 1: as they were writing into the camp. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: his some of his according to Son of the Morning Star,
Speaker 1: I think some of his brain matters splattered on an
Speaker 1: officer and the officer never quite got back to where
Speaker 1: he needed to get mentally. Curly either. Here's why there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of questions about so the Anheuser Busch
Speaker 1: buys his painting called Custer's Last Fight, and it was
Speaker 1: based on a crow scout named Curly's description of the battle.
Speaker 1: I gathered there's like a little uh debate about whether
Speaker 1: Curly was there or not. Some people say that see
Speaker 1: some of his re scouts and stuff, like did they
Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen the next day and
Speaker 1: he did like a like a death ceremony. They knew
Speaker 1: what was coming and Custer got pished off. They were uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not all in or yeah, they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this isn't right. And some people are reportedly skinnied out
Speaker 1: the night before. Curly claims to have survived that he
Speaker 1: was at the battle and got away and he led him.
Speaker 1: He later met that guy gaul Um, a Sue warrior
Speaker 1: named gaul and gall said to him, Um, you must
Speaker 1: have turned into a bird that day, because that's the
Speaker 1: only way you got out of there. Like, wasn't buying
Speaker 1: it that he had escaped. But um, don't we talking
Speaker 1: about though? Uh? We were talking about the painting, the
Speaker 1: paction painting, and yeah, go ahead, Well I was just
Speaker 1: what I was asking about it. I think I was
Speaker 1: saying that we were talking about field trips as as
Speaker 1: a kid, and that paction painting at the of the
Speaker 1: Custom Battle just really fueled my boyhood imagination of that
Speaker 1: whole era. And yeah, and that museum, those museums are
Speaker 1: in Cody or unbelievable. It's kind of a little envious
Speaker 1: that of being able to, you know, to grow up
Speaker 1: like really amused or you know, enthralled by Mountain men
Speaker 1: and the Indian Wars and to actually live there, because
Speaker 1: you know, if you're living in West Michigan and that's
Speaker 1: all you can think about, it's just all is very drafts.
Speaker 1: Well there was that was a cool thing growing up
Speaker 1: in Wyoming, and in fact, There was an old lady
Speaker 1: that lived next door to me when I was a
Speaker 1: boy in Level. Her name was Mrs Weathersby, and she
Speaker 1: was ninety years old, so this was in you know,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and she was the lady in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood who handed out vanilla way for cookies to the
Speaker 1: kids and told stories about you know, her life, and
Speaker 1: she remembered as a as a little girl. In Level, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: a mountain man named John Blue riding out of the
Speaker 1: Big Horn Mountains twice a year into Level, Wyoming to
Speaker 1: to do his twice a year shopping before he you know, requisitor,
Speaker 1: you know, stocked up and went back out to his
Speaker 1: cabin in the Big Horns. So I love that, even
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, I can almost touch some of those
Speaker 1: people who lived that. And that's an amazing thing about
Speaker 1: that history is it's it's not that long ago, for sure,
Speaker 1: if you if it was fresher one year in some
Speaker 1: of these areas that haven't been they haven't had all
Speaker 1: the subsequent stories overlaid the landscape too, you know, And
Speaker 1: the landscape in some of these places hasn't changed that much.
Speaker 1: And I mean that's one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about the Fetterman Fight is compared to the Custer Battlefield.
Speaker 1: And I love the Custer Battlefield. It's it's haunting and
Speaker 1: amazing and a cool place to visit. But that valley
Speaker 1: has changed a lot more than the valley where the
Speaker 1: Fetterman Fight took place, and there's just a lot more
Speaker 1: people that visited. One of the things I love about
Speaker 1: the Fetterman Battlefield is a lot of days you can
Speaker 1: go out there and wander the battlefield miles of it
Speaker 1: and not see any other people, and so it's really
Speaker 1: it's not hard to imagine at all, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a cool place I went to some of the
Speaker 1: I've ever told you. But for a while I was
Speaker 1: going to do a book about the Nez Perce War
Speaker 1: me too. Yeah, I did a lot of traveling for
Speaker 1: I blew a whole summer on the man. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was already to write that book when I got the
Speaker 1: assettership and had to abandon the book because I knew
Speaker 1: that I was not gonna be able to finish it.
Speaker 1: So that was And then you know, when when he surrendered,
Speaker 1: you know his famous I will fight no more forever,
Speaker 1: which may or may not have what he said I was.
Speaker 1: I was good. I was walking the whole damn thing.
Speaker 1: I was gonna walk that wholes and I in my
Speaker 1: path with a I had a backpack and a pack
Speaker 1: raft when I started out and did quite a bit
Speaker 1: of it, I was gonna call my book I will
Speaker 1: walk no More forever. But well, that'd be the way
Speaker 1: to do. But I eventually just lost the thread and
Speaker 1: gave up on it. But either way, I want a
Speaker 1: lot of those battle sites, and they're not even like
Speaker 1: very effect. They're not even really interpreted. So you gotta
Speaker 1: kind of look at you gotta sort of play historian
Speaker 1: at the sites and be like, if that's the mile
Speaker 1: they're talking about, or if that's the bridge they're talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone knows, But but a little big horn
Speaker 1: is so well interpreted. Yeah, And actually the Feederman Battlefield
Speaker 1: is a is a nice combination of being the way
Speaker 1: that it was but having some interpretive guides. And I
Speaker 1: think the State away Aming has done a pretty good
Speaker 1: job on those guides, including by the way, giving both
Speaker 1: a this the U. S. Soldier perspective and also the
Speaker 1: native perspective in terms of how they were looking at it,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's it's pretty cool that they've managed
Speaker 1: to mix it in, but still there's a lot of
Speaker 1: area for speculation about where specific things might have happened,
Speaker 1: and there's just a lot that is not really known
Speaker 1: at the end of the day about the battle itself.
Speaker 1: Once they rode over that ridgeline, none of the none
Speaker 1: of the whites survived, and uh, there are lots of
Speaker 1: interesting accounts, uh from from Native participants, but they're they're
Speaker 1: not all consistent, and so there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: room for speculation. We know how it ended, but in
Speaker 1: terms of what it was, I thought it was perfect
Speaker 1: for for a novel because there there is a lot
Speaker 1: we don't know, and so you've kind of got the
Speaker 1: major mile posts there, but there's it was there was
Speaker 1: plenty of space to kind of fill in what people
Speaker 1: were thinking, you know, what specific things were happening in
Speaker 1: over the course of the battle, and it it just
Speaker 1: made it perfect I thought for fiction. Okay, let's let
Speaker 1: it hang there for a minute, because I gotta we
Speaker 1: gotta cover a couple of things. But well, nor thing,
Speaker 1: are you do you still do the public policy for Amazon?
Speaker 1: I do? How did you do do that? Plus all this well,
Speaker 1: uh in part because I've got kids in college, you know,
Speaker 1: about making a living as a as a writer, which
Speaker 1: is uh up and down. Um, but uh yeah it
Speaker 1: was really good every couple of years. The publishing industry
Speaker 1: is not the fastest industry in in America, and so
Speaker 1: things things that wind slowly, even if you've got a
Speaker 1: bit of a tail wind. But so yeah, I still
Speaker 1: have a day day job for Amazon Web Services. Michael,
Speaker 1: I hope you don't take offense this and it's a compliment.
Speaker 1: Really get I get worried about the interest me where
Speaker 1: my interest style. You know, I know how this show works.
Speaker 1: There's usually an ambush your two so so here here
Speaker 1: it comes. I mean, I mean this is for your
Speaker 1: title writer, lawyer, policy analyst, US Trade rip. You look
Speaker 1: exactly like how I would imagine someone with those titles
Speaker 1: to look. It's perfect, absolutely perfect, no idea what them
Speaker 1: for the ace don't like glass? Yeah, like Phil looks
Speaker 1: like an audio engineer, but I think Michael looks even
Speaker 1: more like a writer, lawyer, policy analyst in US trade REP.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to take that,
Speaker 1: but I thank you. It's a comp you could picture
Speaker 1: him like a menal guy yelling at to get out
Speaker 1: of his yard. It's really it's really satisfying with those titles.
Speaker 1: How old are you? We're probably the same. I'm fifty six.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you got a lot of yours. But I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you saw were the same? You tell are
Speaker 1: you for seven? Man? I'm a decade older than you? Really,
Speaker 1: spri Man, I'm ship man. I can see him fronting
Speaker 1: like like an indie folk band, too ye, or yelling
Speaker 1: at kids a good obviously, Okay, check this out. We
Speaker 1: got couple we're gonna get back into. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: back into ridgeline hardcore. We've got a couple of things
Speaker 1: we gotta go over. Um. I always here about this
Speaker 1: every now and then, but this is the explain this
Speaker 1: Spencer Brewed X. Yeah, it's the seventeen year hatch and
Speaker 1: it's coming this year. This has been covered a lot,
Speaker 1: like by every big news source there is, CNN, Fox
Speaker 1: and we better, we better getting out of it. We
Speaker 1: have covered it, we covered about two weeks ago. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: play it out. The Brewed X hatches coming and it's
Speaker 1: all these cicadas now, I think, but why is it
Speaker 1: brewed X. I think I think there's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's like brewed x I, brewed X, brewed x I.
Speaker 1: I like this is the numerals, So I got you.
Speaker 1: So this is like a generation whatever. This is like
Speaker 1: a generation of them that they've been hanging out in
Speaker 1: the ground as little eggs for seventeen years. And I
Speaker 1: think something that other outlets have done a poor job
Speaker 1: of describing is where exactly it takes place at When
Speaker 1: national news sources are covering, it's like, oh man, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be the whole country. You're like the whole continent.
Speaker 1: That's not really the reality, though. It's basically, like my understanding,
Speaker 1: pretty much every state that touches Kentucky and Tennessee, which
Speaker 1: is a lot of them, but that that region has
Speaker 1: the brewed X hatch coming um and this is really
Speaker 1: good for fish and really good for turkeys. Millions per
Speaker 1: acre from New York to Georgia and west of the Mississippi,
Speaker 1: the epicenter of our nation's capital, Washington, d c. Cicadas
Speaker 1: per square foot here, it's just expresses what it means
Speaker 1: for turkeys. Turkeys like to eat them so they don't
Speaker 1: have to hunt around for food. And then raccoons like
Speaker 1: to eat them, so they get all gorged up on
Speaker 1: Cicadas don't eat turkey eggs. So if you like to
Speaker 1: hunt Jake's next year is your year you like to
Speaker 1: hunt long beards. Three. I think for most folks it
Speaker 1: was just gonna be really annoying, like trying to drive
Speaker 1: across a bridge that has a lot of lights on it,
Speaker 1: or trying to play a softball game in June. They're
Speaker 1: incredibly loud. I like that noise though, Man's it's it's
Speaker 1: a cool sound, you know, the thing that you um.
Speaker 1: You know, earlier I was talking about how your childhood
Speaker 1: is better mine. One thing that uh that now like
Speaker 1: living in the in the arid West. You know, ah,
Speaker 1: when I go back home to Michigan on a summer night,
Speaker 1: the cophony of sound at night, tree frogs. But it's
Speaker 1: just like you go out into a swamp at night
Speaker 1: and like a canoe and it's it's almost disorienting how
Speaker 1: loud it is at night there. You just don't have
Speaker 1: that air and air landing once the once the crickets
Speaker 1: quiet down, you know, it's pretty quiet. It's just like
Speaker 1: then the jungle, like you know, the Amazon and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's even more. It's it's almost like you want like
Speaker 1: shut up, shut up, shut up. Associate for a minute.
Speaker 1: I associate cicadas with anxiety. When I was ar cicada
Speaker 1: showed up in late summer. UM, so like a mid
Speaker 1: August you'd start hearing cicadia's at night and it's like,
Speaker 1: damn it, school starting against you. I was going to
Speaker 1: take a shopping for clo two days they're coming. Uh
Speaker 1: like nothing good came as you know, uh here at
Speaker 1: meat eat or we have a very modest vaccination incentive
Speaker 1: program um hunter Bucks. I was insistent that we have
Speaker 1: a vaccination incentive program, but it wasn't able to get
Speaker 1: people rallied and eventually somehow settled at a hunter Bucks.
Speaker 1: Did you did you claim your hunter bus? Yeah, Phil,
Speaker 1: Yeah that's probable. But you send your you send it
Speaker 1: and get your hunter Bucks. Good good, good, good good.
Speaker 1: It's a good program. Uh this but not as good
Speaker 1: as this one? Well no, you know, maybe dollar for dollar.
Speaker 1: It is like so different people are doing all these
Speaker 1: different things that get people to get vaccinated. Free donuts,
Speaker 1: free milk shakes, free beer, free lamination of your vaccination card,
Speaker 1: a free ride to get vaccinated. Ohio's launching a million
Speaker 1: dollar lotto. Oh yeah, they're vaccine there. People are lying
Speaker 1: and curve is just like a straight line million bucks man.
Speaker 1: But to enter, you gotta get vaccinated. Uh, Maine, this
Speaker 1: is great. Maine does fish. You get a fishing license,
Speaker 1: if you get vaccinated, you get a hunting license. If
Speaker 1: you get vaccinated, you can get a park pass. If
Speaker 1: you get vaccinated, you get a main state park day pass.
Speaker 1: Who the hell get the day pass? And you can
Speaker 1: just get the pass well once a wildlife park pass.
Speaker 1: The other one is a state park day pass. Get
Speaker 1: an ll being gift card, and then uh some other
Speaker 1: things that really care about baseball tickets in a race
Speaker 1: car ticket. Here's what this again is a little bit
Speaker 1: blown out of proportion. There's about a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: thousand licensed hunters in Maine and they are paying for
Speaker 1: up to five thousands of these, so that doesn't go
Speaker 1: very far. So is it kind of like a hurry
Speaker 1: up and get years now kind of thing or hoping
Speaker 1: you don't look in at the fine print? Right? I
Speaker 1: saw you know listeners sent this in was talking about
Speaker 1: you're you're you said you're gonna deprive Maine of You're
Speaker 1: gonna deprive Mains Fish and Game Agency of three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in license sales. But I don't really understand
Speaker 1: that because they're buying the licenses. It's I mean, it
Speaker 1: says the main Department of Health and Human Services will
Speaker 1: purchase up to five thousand hunting passes license, So I
Speaker 1: don't think they're depriving the state agency of all that revenue.
Speaker 1: So I think that his the listeners great, But then
Speaker 1: he he also points out it's not a great because
Speaker 1: he points out this COVID was so overwhelmingly positive for
Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson funding because early on everyone was getting armed
Speaker 1: up two get their neighbors whatever they were gonna do
Speaker 1: early in the pandemic. And then everybody started going out
Speaker 1: hunting and shooting all the time, and buying all kinds
Speaker 1: of fishing equipment and hunting equipment and taking up sports
Speaker 1: shooting because you can just go off by yourself and
Speaker 1: didn't need to try to go to the whatever hordfest.
Speaker 1: Monsters are rock whatever people used to go to. They
Speaker 1: play outside now and so it's flooded. The Pittman Robertson
Speaker 1: fun with conservation money. So it's like a you know,
Speaker 1: if they missed out on a few bucks here, it's
Speaker 1: still unbelievable amounts of firearm industry money that has gone
Speaker 1: into um, you know from a Pittman Robertson funding standpoint,
Speaker 1: is the good old days of wild byfe funding right
Speaker 1: now and probably will continue to run that way for
Speaker 1: a number of years here with a lot of threats
Speaker 1: against gun ownership, it's not that's not gonna slow down. UM.
Speaker 1: Interested paper came out about mountain lions. Explain this one spencer,
Speaker 1: you're gonna explain stuff. We covered this on our website,
Speaker 1: the media dot Com. You can go there and type
Speaker 1: in study fines Mountain lions have an unexpected predator. To
Speaker 1: read the whole thing, well, we'll touch you on some
Speaker 1: of the main points. He wasn't unexpected to me, though
Speaker 1: the headline didn't ring true to me. I think it's
Speaker 1: unexpected m especially in like the the abundance of it
Speaker 1: once once you get into it. That was unexpected. So
Speaker 1: this study took place in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem in
Speaker 1: northwestern wyom and about nine square mile area. They generally
Speaker 1: like when you see the g y e. It's about
Speaker 1: the size of Indiana what they kind of lump in.
Speaker 1: You know, this specific location was selected because the researchers
Speaker 1: and studying the line population wanted there to both be
Speaker 1: wolves on the landscape and hunting aloud. Some of the
Speaker 1: studies in the past didn't have both of those factors
Speaker 1: when they were looking at mountain lion populations, but this
Speaker 1: had both those criteria. I mean, they wanted to have
Speaker 1: wolves and human mountain lion hunting in the same area.
Speaker 1: So that's how this area got selected. They noticed between
Speaker 1: the year two thousand and eight percent decrease in cougar populations.
Speaker 1: To determine this, they use an integrated population model, lion
Speaker 1: Den's abundance estimates for different animals, GPS, and VHF color data.
Speaker 1: So you should take solace like this was very thorough
Speaker 1: in doing this, and they termed there were three factors
Speaker 1: that caused the Kouger decline human hunting, wolves, kill and kittens,
Speaker 1: and starvation. Now, the lead researcher, Mark L. Brock, said,
Speaker 1: the big take home on these papers that wolves had
Speaker 1: the strongest effect on the survival and the abundance of
Speaker 1: mountain lions in the system. It's dramatic. Wolves are power
Speaker 1: on the landscape. We saw cats respond, but we thought
Speaker 1: it was anecdotal. The strength of the wolves effects surprise
Speaker 1: every one of us. I've heard a couple of things
Speaker 1: related to this. Um Remy Warren one time was looking
Speaker 1: at a lion on a kill and a group of
Speaker 1: wolves came in and the lions ran up a tree
Speaker 1: and they ate his thing. That was exactly something that
Speaker 1: they had observed on the starvation fronto. It was a
Speaker 1: number of factors. One was the wolves had just knocked
Speaker 1: back elk populations in general during this period, there was
Speaker 1: a thirty percent decline in elk population, so that caused
Speaker 1: some of the starvation. The thing you just mentioned where
Speaker 1: they had literally run him off kills, um. And then
Speaker 1: the other one, the big one, was they valued the
Speaker 1: elk population ship lift and where they were hanging out
Speaker 1: as a seventy shift in the location of the elk herd.
Speaker 1: So the wolves were blocking out from mountain lions in
Speaker 1: two ways. This is a quote from Mark L. Brock, again,
Speaker 1: the lead researcher. One by moving them into places where
Speaker 1: mountain lions were uncomfortable, like the wide open and too
Speaker 1: by literally chasing them off their kills. So now instead
Speaker 1: of the elk hanging out in the mountains and dark
Speaker 1: timber wolves pushed them out of there into wide open spaces,
Speaker 1: which was a problem for mountain lions. I read a paper.
Speaker 1: I think she's gonna be on soon. One of the
Speaker 1: people that was involved in this, a carbon Carmen van Biancy.
Speaker 1: She's coming on right, She's she researches predators, and we
Speaker 1: had her arm. We're talking about this thing where um,
Speaker 1: the presence of wolves on the landscape, how it shifts
Speaker 1: the prey base, you know, saying that it moves like
Speaker 1: the how how white tails and mule deer. It moves
Speaker 1: white tails out into more white tailey stuff. They head
Speaker 1: out in the open, you know, out in the flats
Speaker 1: more and it moves mule deer into more mule deally stuff.
Speaker 1: They tend to go up, try to go up into
Speaker 1: the more craggy gordy country, and white tails go out
Speaker 1: and it kind of emptied out more of the mid
Speaker 1: range habitat. They were linking this. Two hunters reporting seeing
Speaker 1: like so much fewer game. They were trying to so
Speaker 1: much fewer game in the presence of wolves and they're
Speaker 1: talking about that there the hunter. Human hunters haven't adjusted
Speaker 1: yet to the shift, and they're going where they've always
Speaker 1: gone to find deer, right, but the deer aren't there anymore.
Speaker 1: The deer moved into new kinds of country. Another thing
Speaker 1: I remember reading about this though, is I can't here
Speaker 1: and feel speculation or not. But someone was saying, with
Speaker 1: lions losing their kills all the time, they kill more
Speaker 1: stuff because they can't camp out on and need it
Speaker 1: for three or four days. It's like they get it,
Speaker 1: it's gone. They gotta get something that's gone. They gotta
Speaker 1: get something that's gone. And that when people look at
Speaker 1: the decline of big game populations in the presence of wolves,
Speaker 1: that's like another factor is that that they're not able
Speaker 1: to They don't they're not able to kill something and
Speaker 1: need it like they normally would, they lose it to quickly.
Speaker 1: So on on the unexpected front here, when we talk
Speaker 1: about the predation, only about a third of kitten survived
Speaker 1: until they were six months old, and then only a
Speaker 1: quarter ever made it to their first birthday. Wolf predation
Speaker 1: was the primary cause of their death. Now, the lead
Speaker 1: researcher again said this is the lowest survival rate ever
Speaker 1: reported for kittens anywhere. Mm hmm uh. And then then
Speaker 1: he went on to say that the researchers would often
Speaker 1: find kitten parts strown strown across the ground after wolf
Speaker 1: care after a wolf kill, which he interpreted as the
Speaker 1: wolves treating cats as competition, So they weren't just going
Speaker 1: in there like kill the cats, neath the cats, They're
Speaker 1: just eliminating them off the landscape. Jordan Stiller is the
Speaker 1: writer of this article, being a good journalist, reach out
Speaker 1: to an independent third party, our buddy Jim Haffelfinger, And
Speaker 1: so what do you think of this study that was
Speaker 1: done because the study was funded I believe by Panthera,
Speaker 1: which is like the heavy metal band. Yeah, exactly, like
Speaker 1: a kind of like a cougar conservation group. So Jordan's Jim,
Speaker 1: he said, what do you think of the study? Like,
Speaker 1: did did they get it right? Was this? Uh? Did
Speaker 1: they have some bias? And Jim said it was interesting
Speaker 1: and it was solid from a scientific standpoint, and he
Speaker 1: really appreciated the discussion portion of the paper and how
Speaker 1: it remained reasonable without speculation. But he said, it's it's
Speaker 1: really important to um not ignore the thirty percent elk
Speaker 1: population decrease. That's like the most important part of this
Speaker 1: whole thing. I don't I don't follow. Jim was saying that, oh,
Speaker 1: that that can't be like emphasized enough. That the wolves
Speaker 1: knocked back elk herds by and that's food by right,
Speaker 1: the starvation element. So what's next? Now? This is maybe
Speaker 1: just like the new reality for that area wherever wolves
Speaker 1: and mountain lions exist, and this is probably what it
Speaker 1: looked like pre European contact, or closer to it than
Speaker 1: it was before. Overall, this probably is gonna be less
Speaker 1: cats in the area, but more cats hanging out in
Speaker 1: open spaces where else where elk currently are um In
Speaker 1: Osborne Russell's journal in the end, he has these little
Speaker 1: summations of wildlife. He I think. He says that wolverines
Speaker 1: are common, tells all that about probably pretty effective predators, right,
Speaker 1: and uh, but what happened to them? They like wolves
Speaker 1: eating all that eating, all all those carcasses, all those
Speaker 1: just you know, carcasses on the landscape. I don't know
Speaker 1: send that I did over the half a finger CEO
Speaker 1: thinks about that. Uh. Spencer keeps reporting on people rescuing
Speaker 1: birds that die and it's always so sad. So there's
Speaker 1: always a dark twist ending which like someone rescues a bird,
Speaker 1: brings it to the rescue place, and they were like
Speaker 1: the bird died. So our friend Greg Lemon from Montana
Speaker 1: Fish Walting Parks wanted to point out an actual raptor
Speaker 1: that was saved, happy ending, it's very cute. A rough
Speaker 1: legged hawk got hit by a car, had blood in
Speaker 1: both eyes, went to this raptor facility Spencers always talking about,
Speaker 1: and it's fine. And then you'd like to add Spencer
Speaker 1: and stead of your rafter Dian stories. All the time.
Speaker 1: He was also sharing that that FWP rehabilitates raptors. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry they did that. I thought they
Speaker 1: did that in conjunction with the Oh this is their
Speaker 1: own rehabilitation center, but they rehabilitate is wide. He said, uh,
Speaker 1: like all the way up to bear cubs. And then
Speaker 1: in this last week they had a house sparrow come
Speaker 1: in as well. Mm hmm. Really I didn't have beb
Speaker 1: and it did it? How sparrow died before moment talking
Speaker 1: boy about that, I don't know. Um, okay, good, Sorry
Speaker 1: about that. Greg. I didn't mean to take credit away
Speaker 1: from your outfit. Now this fascinating, Michael, get anything to
Speaker 1: add by any of this stuff? Are you cool? Cool?
Speaker 1: These guys did a survey this last thing we're talking about. Uh.
Speaker 1: British international market research and data analytics company did a
Speaker 1: survey of people, like asking people of like, what wild
Speaker 1: animals they feel like they could whoop in a fight?
Speaker 1: Just Americans? Just at pent of Americans feel that they'd
Speaker 1: be bested by a goose in a fight. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: so more most Americans and overwhelming hum. A number of
Speaker 1: Americans things that they would best a rat, slightly fewer
Speaker 1: people who could best a house cat, slightly fewer could
Speaker 1: best a dog or goose. Um. More people felt that
Speaker 1: they could whoop a dog than the eagle. Depends it
Speaker 1: was a large dog or a medium dog. People are like,
Speaker 1: it goes like I'd be able to whoop a medium dog. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd be a little less likely to whoop an eagle,
Speaker 1: but I'd be a lot less likely to whoop a
Speaker 1: big dog. Yeah, that's a respectively think that they can
Speaker 1: beat a medium sized dog. This is like without and
Speaker 1: this is like you know, hand to hand hand. I
Speaker 1: forgot to say it's hand to hand hand to hand combat.
Speaker 1: A weird one is that people think they could whoop
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee. And you're not gonna whoop a chimpanzee. Percent
Speaker 1: of Americans think they could whoop a chimpanzee. Am I
Speaker 1: reading that right? I need to put my cheats on. Sorry,
Speaker 1: the woman's jumping out of elephant enhand sick? Say? That's
Speaker 1: six eight percent of Americans they think they could defeat
Speaker 1: an elephant in handdand grabam by that big snout and
Speaker 1: pitch that snout. Offer of Americans know they could whoop
Speaker 1: a wolf. Nine more Americans think they could whoop a
Speaker 1: crocodile than an elephant. Hmmm. Somehow Americans think they are
Speaker 1: better off whooping a polar bear than a grizzly and
Speaker 1: someone that he the person that shared us with his
Speaker 1: blames the Coca Cola commercials for que defying polar bears.
Speaker 1: Ron McGill is that leads you Wild leads zoologists from
Speaker 1: Zoom Miami and he does this weekly hit on a
Speaker 1: sports show that into and listeners can call in and
Speaker 1: asking questions, And for the last five years, the most
Speaker 1: common question he gets is like, what would win and
Speaker 1: fight between crocodile and polar bear? What would win a
Speaker 1: fight between a gorilla uh and an elephant? Stuff like
Speaker 1: that his last hit, which was a few days ago.
Speaker 1: On the episode, they had basically like ran him through
Speaker 1: this whole list, like what did people get right? What
Speaker 1: they get wrong? Like what's the best fight from this list?
Speaker 1: And he had said the thing people got wrong the
Speaker 1: most be what you said, Steve chimpanzee. He's like you, you
Speaker 1: you would not stand at change against chimpanzee. They didn't
Speaker 1: see Planet of the Apes apparently, Yeah, they're like those
Speaker 1: things play for keeps? Ron, could you like put it
Speaker 1: in context? Like why couldn't we be the chimpanzee. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well a chimpanzee like with with no effort at all,
Speaker 1: can just like rip apart of coconut. He's like, that
Speaker 1: would be your skull, Like no problem there. They just
Speaker 1: have like unbelievable strength. You ever see those chimpanzees. This
Speaker 1: is disgusted. This made me not like chimpanzees. I used
Speaker 1: to be pro chimpanzee. You ever see that footage them
Speaker 1: ripping apart that poor little monkey and eating it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they catch a little monkey and tear them limb from
Speaker 1: limb and eat them alive. That might have been a
Speaker 1: Nature's Metal. No, it was on something different. I wanted.
Speaker 1: I feel like they've shown some grouco chimpanzee eyes and
Speaker 1: genitals immediately, like you're done, and just think about this picture.
Speaker 1: There's a chimpanzee and you clock back and punch him
Speaker 1: as hard as you can possibly punch them. There's no
Speaker 1: way you can knock out a chimpanzee. They also asked around,
Speaker 1: They're like, what would what would genuinely be the best
Speaker 1: fight on the list, Like, what's what's like a fifty
Speaker 1: fifty fight between the human and one of the animals.
Speaker 1: The only guess what it was? Well, this would be
Speaker 1: the whooping a medium sized dog. People think they're in
Speaker 1: he said. Kangaroo, He said, a kangaroo would genuinely be
Speaker 1: like a good tear down, knockout fight. That's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite videos of all time. You ever see that
Speaker 1: Australian guy that that cold cock that kangaroo the greatest
Speaker 1: video ever because he's got his dog's got his dog
Speaker 1: and they getting they the kangaroo like looks like it's
Speaker 1: square and off. He squares off in a boxer stands
Speaker 1: and hits it so hard that it turns its face
Speaker 1: by degrees. The man hits the kangaroo. What what is
Speaker 1: the situation that they're even like fighting in there? And
Speaker 1: he comes in a kangaroo. It's the weirdest thing I got.
Speaker 1: So if you go to YouTube or whatever, look up
Speaker 1: like man punching kangaroo. My kids watch this five thousand times.
Speaker 1: When we got onto it. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: guy bails out of his truck and runs up and
Speaker 1: there's a kangaroo with its arm around a dog's neck
Speaker 1: holding the dog standing there holding it under in a headlock.
Speaker 1: A kangaroo or a dog and a headlock. That's pretty sophistically.
Speaker 1: The guy runs up to it, and the kangaroo drops
Speaker 1: the dog and puts up his dukes. I'm not kidding you,
Speaker 1: puts up his dukes. The guy reflexively goes into a
Speaker 1: boxer stance they do, like a little pirouette or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he hauls back and hits that kangaroo so hard
Speaker 1: it turns the gives the kangaroo pretty much whiplash, and
Speaker 1: then the guy squares off like it's gonna be another punch,
Speaker 1: and then him and his dog walk Away. It's great
Speaker 1: video's greatest video ever. Rod said, that would be a
Speaker 1: genuinely good fight and it could go either way. You
Speaker 1: want to see me watch this transition. Did you know
Speaker 1: about this transition? It's in here. I may have written
Speaker 1: it because it's in the graphic. You know what they
Speaker 1: use the image for the fighting for the six percent
Speaker 1: of people that think they could whoop a grizzly is
Speaker 1: a scene from the Revenant, and that was based off
Speaker 1: Michael Punk's pook The Revenant, and he's sitting right here
Speaker 1: to my left top that huge glass. Was not unarmed though,
Speaker 1: that was one thing. So you had a knife, he
Speaker 1: had a knife, had a knife. Okay, why here, let's
Speaker 1: start with this question about No, I can't decide where
Speaker 1: to start with Ridgeline. I got two you decide, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's guest choice. Give us a quick overview of
Speaker 1: what happened. Oh can I can I read this? Yes?
Speaker 1: I think well, I want I want to read that.
Speaker 1: What do you call the quote in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book here it is, it's it's a beauty, It's
Speaker 1: a real beauty. The full story of what happened in
Speaker 1: that brief hour of bloody carnage at high noon under
Speaker 1: the wintry sky of December one, eighteen sixty six will
Speaker 1: never be known. It's pretty good leading and as I said,
Speaker 1: kind of opens a door for fiction. Yeah, so tell
Speaker 1: us what happened that day, and just like roughly, they're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the lead up, like why that happened,
Speaker 1: but just give a brief overview and then my next
Speaker 1: question you can decide which you want to tackle first.
Speaker 1: How do you decide on historical fiction versus nonfiction? So
Speaker 1: I'll answer I'll answer them in order. Um, briefly, what
Speaker 1: happened at high noon on that wintry day, wintry day,
Speaker 1: December one, in the Powder River Valley of Wyoming is
Speaker 1: ten decoys, ten Native American decoys, a mixture of Lakota,
Speaker 1: Cheyenne and Arapaho decoyed a group of cavalry and infantryman
Speaker 1: out of Fort phil Karney away from the safety of
Speaker 1: the fort. And we're skillful enough as decoys to lead
Speaker 1: them over a ridgeline ah about two and a half
Speaker 1: miles away from the They were not supposed to go.
Speaker 1: They were not supposed to go over that, And it
Speaker 1: turns out for good reason, because on the other side
Speaker 1: of that ridgeline, very much to their surprise, were is
Speaker 1: a force probably numbered around two thousand combined Cheyenne, Lakota,
Speaker 1: Arapaho warriors led by Red Cloud, and into that trapped.
Speaker 1: These calvarymen and infantrymen fell and were wiped out to
Speaker 1: the man men killed. It was the worst, most mostly
Speaker 1: by earrows. It was the worst defeat in US military
Speaker 1: history for a decade until the the Battle of the
Speaker 1: Little Big Horn. Mhmm. I don't remember if he mentioned
Speaker 1: the book, but I've seen elsewhere that the decoys, as
Speaker 1: part of their strategy, were mooning the U. S soldiers.
Speaker 1: That's something you found to be true. I've read that before. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what I think about that, whether that
Speaker 1: actually happened. I uh, I mean, who knows. They probably
Speaker 1: were doing a lot of things because they kind of
Speaker 1: lead the cavalry that was out in front along for
Speaker 1: quite a distance. You. UM, I'm not sure that that
Speaker 1: was the it's a good story. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: that piece of it actually happened or not. Uh. They
Speaker 1: certainly were successful in making them angry and getting them
Speaker 1: to chase uh, and in defiance of direct orders that
Speaker 1: they had not to go over this particular origin line.
Speaker 1: So whatever they did, it worked, and I kind of
Speaker 1: play with that in the book. But to your question
Speaker 1: of why fiction versus nonfiction, UM, I've written both. The
Speaker 1: This is my second novel. The first novel was The Revenant,
Speaker 1: and Origin Line is the second. And I've written two
Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction books. And for me, one of the things
Speaker 1: that made me decide to do a novel versus nonfiction
Speaker 1: is that I think this is a story where there's
Speaker 1: so much that is unknown that it really we know
Speaker 1: a lot about the context, all the things that happened
Speaker 1: before and after, but when it comes to the battle itself,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a fair amount of mystery there.
Speaker 1: And it just made it perfect to me for a
Speaker 1: a a fictionalized version, as opposed to something like the
Speaker 1: story of the mining disaster and Butte that I wrote about,
Speaker 1: where there were seven daily newspapers in Butte, Montana at
Speaker 1: the time of the disaster, all of which we're covering
Speaker 1: this incident and government reports about it, etcetera, etcetera. You
Speaker 1: just had all sorts of of of historical material to
Speaker 1: work with, where you didn't need as much of the
Speaker 1: of the fictionalized piece. So that was that was kind
Speaker 1: of one thing that played into it. I could see
Speaker 1: that being warranted in this case. I hadn't thought about
Speaker 1: it that way. Um, particularly if you look at at
Speaker 1: Crazy Horses involvement. I don't know if you've ever read LARRYM. Merchery,
Speaker 1: there was a series where like novelists would write these
Speaker 1: I was famous Americans and Larry McMurtry, um, you know,
Speaker 1: most famous. He wrote Lonesome Dove h He wrote the
Speaker 1: Crazy Horse one, which is very short, very short, and
Speaker 1: it begins with Larry E. Merchany basis staying I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: it was like basically it was like I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what we don't know, and that's kind of what the
Speaker 1: book called goes like. And there's not even a photograph
Speaker 1: of Crazy Horse because he never allowed himself to be photographed,
Speaker 1: so unlike a lot of the most famous Native American leaders.
Speaker 1: There are photographs who Red Cloud, for example, there are
Speaker 1: lots of photographs Crazy Uh sitting bowl. Crazy Horse. There's
Speaker 1: no there's no photograph. He never allowed himself to be photograph.
Speaker 1: He's so mysterious, very mysterious. They don't they took his body.
Speaker 1: His people took his body. No one knows where they
Speaker 1: put the body. It's not even clear who stabbed him.
Speaker 1: I think that there's like a lot of what what
Speaker 1: happened at the time of his death. He was in
Speaker 1: Nebraska correct, yes, and he was in he was in
Speaker 1: UH military. He was like under some kind of house arrest.
Speaker 1: He's being returned to UH to confinement reservation and run
Speaker 1: off to another one in order to take care of
Speaker 1: his of his wife. He was captured, brought back. He
Speaker 1: saw that he was going to be imprisoned, and he resisted.
Speaker 1: And the story that ah to me makes I think
Speaker 1: there's the most support for is that he was grabbed
Speaker 1: by two Native policemen and then stabbed with a bayonet
Speaker 1: by a US soldier. I know there was when I've
Speaker 1: read about it, it was that there is like some
Speaker 1: historical disagreement about who gave the death blow. But but
Speaker 1: I remember Ian Frasier writing that um, his disdain for
Speaker 1: the white man was still strong that even after he
Speaker 1: was stabbed and he was dying, he refused to be
Speaker 1: laid in the bed exactly. UH. He wanted to lay
Speaker 1: on the ground and died in the company of his
Speaker 1: of his father, that that evening after being stabbed, and
Speaker 1: then presumably somewhere within there his body is hidden. You
Speaker 1: would you would think that, I mean, I guess, we
Speaker 1: don't know, but that's what you would think. M hm.
Speaker 1: So the point being about that is it allows I
Speaker 1: can see that there's reward and risk and taking the
Speaker 1: approach to take sure because you're taking a stab at
Speaker 1: it right and perform stab but it's it's I shouldn't
Speaker 1: use the word STABBU you stabbed death. You're taking a
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess, yeah, yeah, for sure. And
Speaker 1: uh and I actually the book doesn't cover that part
Speaker 1: of Crazy Horses life. It pretty much stops with with
Speaker 1: the fetterment fight. That doesn't go forward the ten years
Speaker 1: that personality that you established personality, But for sure, and
Speaker 1: and and I grapple with that a lot as a
Speaker 1: as a writer, and I think there's even writing fiction
Speaker 1: that there's a huge responsibility to get the history right.
Speaker 1: And I take that super seriously. And I think it's
Speaker 1: especially important today when frankly, I feel like as a
Speaker 1: as a nation, we're losing our grip on fact versus
Speaker 1: fiction and veracities. Yeah maybe, um, but I think that
Speaker 1: as I for the books that I write, I want
Speaker 1: to not do anything that would lead a reader to
Speaker 1: a a conclusion that I think is not accurate about
Speaker 1: what happened historically or about what people were like. And
Speaker 1: so in writing about Crazy Horse I and all the
Speaker 1: other characters good and bad, I've had a real sense
Speaker 1: of responsibility to kind of do the research on the
Speaker 1: characters in order to kind of have the best sense
Speaker 1: that I could about what they were like as people,
Speaker 1: and then to write a story. It is consistent with that,
Speaker 1: even recognizing that you're making up lots of stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: in a novel, you write about what people are thinking,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know. You're writing about conversations that
Speaker 1: they had, we don't know. But I hope that I've
Speaker 1: done this book in a way that that is true
Speaker 1: to history and to the characters. In the end, in
Speaker 1: a secondary I want to get to the sort of
Speaker 1: the lead up to this fight. But in the end,
Speaker 1: you do like you have some people that you paint
Speaker 1: as a napped and ye, yes, like I guess not
Speaker 1: villain isn't the right word, but some of them, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would call him villains. Some real questionable characters in
Speaker 1: the book, and then in the end you have some
Speaker 1: notes well that that lay out off the case I
Speaker 1: lay out your case. I've take an additional step at
Speaker 1: the end of Ridgeline, and I did the same thing
Speaker 1: at the end of The Revenant, where I have a
Speaker 1: section that is historical notes and basically any place where
Speaker 1: I explicitly wrote something that I knew was not correct,
Speaker 1: I tell the reader about that, and then I give
Speaker 1: sources that the reader can can use to go do
Speaker 1: additional nonfiction reading. And again, I feel like when I
Speaker 1: read a book or see a movie, I always wonder
Speaker 1: did that really happen or not? And so at the
Speaker 1: end of my book, I have a section that kind
Speaker 1: of attempts to answer that question. Sorry. On the media
Speaker 1: dot Com, we read an article last year called the
Speaker 1: Genre Revived the New Age of Westerns, and we sort
Speaker 1: of talked about how there's been a shift like since
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, when Westerns had a lot of clean violence,
Speaker 1: bright colors, gunshots that never bled, and then you get
Speaker 1: into the nineties and there's like sort of it becomes
Speaker 1: very action here we and then in like the two thousands,
Speaker 1: and now it's like sort of dark. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of character development, um, and there's not years much violence,
Speaker 1: and if you are like a violent person, they're like
Speaker 1: kind of the dumb person when they're loose with gunfire.
Speaker 1: And it's just been like this huge shift over less
Speaker 1: seventy years and the whole genre of Westerns. Has there
Speaker 1: been any kind of similar shift with like historical fiction
Speaker 1: or not. Um, that's a great question. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that I can answer it in a very generalized way
Speaker 1: because I think people write so many different kinds of
Speaker 1: historical fiction, ranging from stuff that's just barely influenced by history. Too.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm at the other end of the spectrum
Speaker 1: in terms of wanting to tell a very entertaining story
Speaker 1: but having it be as true to history as possible.
Speaker 1: So I do think it's interesting how I would say
Speaker 1: slightly differently in terms of how I would characterize Westerns.
Speaker 1: I think the Western motif is something that's at the
Speaker 1: core of the American soul, and I think every decade,
Speaker 1: every generation uses the Western in part to hold the
Speaker 1: mirror up to the to the era that we live
Speaker 1: in that they live in in their time, and so
Speaker 1: fifties westerns reflected that kind of fifties mentality about about
Speaker 1: good and evil. Seventies western's anti hero. The anti hero
Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War reflected a much different view of
Speaker 1: what a hero even was in a Western context. Uh,
Speaker 1: something like a movie like Unforgiven to Me is all
Speaker 1: about the it's all about violence, and it happened to
Speaker 1: be at a time a nation in doubt, a nation
Speaker 1: in doubt. You know, what does the what is the
Speaker 1: role of violence? What does violence mean? And so I
Speaker 1: think every every era kind of sees Western takes different
Speaker 1: lessons from Western history, and I think I do that too.
Speaker 1: So you think historical fiction like sort of follows that
Speaker 1: same thing a little bit. It's it's a reflection of
Speaker 1: the era that it comes out, and that I think
Speaker 1: that probably ends up being true. Is that, Look, we
Speaker 1: all see the path, we all see everything through our
Speaker 1: prism of of our present experience. And I think you
Speaker 1: if you're trying to be true to history, you try
Speaker 1: and fight against that a little bit because you want
Speaker 1: to not be completely uh distorted by your your current vision.
Speaker 1: But I think that it's it's tough to get around that.
Speaker 1: When you're developing characters, do you kind of envision them
Speaker 1: or like feel them yourself, Like what's your process to
Speaker 1: pick and choose things that maybe in a historical account
Speaker 1: and meshing that with you know, because you get into
Speaker 1: kind of like the psychology of who everyone is, how
Speaker 1: do you feel through that? So, first of all, one
Speaker 1: of the things I loved about this story is that
Speaker 1: there's such an incredibly diverse cast. And I mean, The
Speaker 1: Revenant was really about one guy, Malbia Grizzly, and there's
Speaker 1: some people who he goes after, but it's really kind
Speaker 1: of a one man show, which is an interesting survival story.
Speaker 1: This story is has a sprawling cast, and and the West,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things people don't often realize
Speaker 1: about the West is just how incredibly diverse it was.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, even the diversity within the tribes
Speaker 1: is incredible. Among the Lakota, just in this story, you
Speaker 1: have the Menacaoju, you have the Oglala. Among the Cheyenne,
Speaker 1: you have the northern and southern Cheyenne, you have the Crow,
Speaker 1: you have the Arapaho, uh. And so there's a huge
Speaker 1: diversity just with language barriers which you get into, which
Speaker 1: I had that hadn't occurred to me before. I guess
Speaker 1: maybe I had just hadn't thought about it. Difficult to
Speaker 1: communicate and and that's just the tribes. And then you
Speaker 1: have uh, you know, the role of women in the
Speaker 1: frontier is a lot more pronounced in this era than
Speaker 1: than people realize. One of the most important jobs I
Speaker 1: ever had for my writing career was when I was
Speaker 1: in high school and college. I worked summers at Fort
Speaker 1: Laramie National Historic Site for the National Park Service and
Speaker 1: I dressed up. This was the greatest boy job ever.
Speaker 1: I dressed up every day in eight seventy six cavalry
Speaker 1: uniform and I uh talked to tourists about the history
Speaker 1: of the West. Twice a day. We fired in Mountain Howitzer. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I learned all about the guns. It was.
Speaker 1: It was an incredible job. One of the things I
Speaker 1: learned in that job. First of all, the US government
Speaker 1: did not do a very good era job in that
Speaker 1: era of talking about the role of Native Americans in
Speaker 1: Western history. One thing they did do a fairly decent
Speaker 1: job of at that time as they talked about the
Speaker 1: role of women on a fort, and one of the
Speaker 1: roles that they talked about in detail was laundresses. Because
Speaker 1: each one of these forts had a community of women
Speaker 1: whose job was to do the soldiers laundry, and there
Speaker 1: was an incredible culture that built up around those women.
Speaker 1: And so in my book I portray one of the characters,
Speaker 1: Janie White, who's a laundress at Fort phil Karney in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six. So in your question was how do
Speaker 1: you characters? And this one the hard thing was was
Speaker 1: deciding who not to pick, because there were so many
Speaker 1: compelling characters to me, Um, you know, none more so
Speaker 1: than than Crazy Horse, who for the reasons we talked about,
Speaker 1: including the fact that he's such a there's such a
Speaker 1: an aspect of mystery around him, made him just fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. The soldiers, there's incredible conflict between the officers,
Speaker 1: between then between the officers and the enlisted men. The
Speaker 1: soldiers themselves are largely made up of German and Irish
Speaker 1: immigrants who might have signed up for the army because
Speaker 1: they want to uh learn how to speak English. For example,
Speaker 1: if you're the Germans and all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: end up out in this god forsaken Western frontier, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: there's women at the ft in eighteen sixty six, both
Speaker 1: in the form of officers wives because the officers brought
Speaker 1: their families with them, which is surprising to a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And Laundre says, I was surprised to read that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, think about where they're they're sitting
Speaker 1: in that day, that it's the most dangerous spot on
Speaker 1: the planet. And these officers are bringing their families with
Speaker 1: him and all your husbands right out one day and yeah,
Speaker 1: and all these people are interacting with with each other
Speaker 1: in the midst of this incredibly stressful period in history.
Speaker 1: And to me, that just was inherently dramatic and interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: have you ever read uh, I can't remember the name,
Speaker 1: but there's a really good book about there's a history
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to September two thousand one? No, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: this battles what day? December one? December one? Give me
Speaker 1: what was going on up to December sixty six? Little background?
Speaker 1: So I love this part of the story as well,
Speaker 1: because there's just this incredible perfect storm of events that
Speaker 1: come together to create this moment of conflict. And here's
Speaker 1: here you'll be interested in this if you're really setting
Speaker 1: the historical stage. You know, what is what's happening in
Speaker 1: a massive way is the floodgates are kind of opened
Speaker 1: on American immigration west. And and I love this confluence
Speaker 1: of events. So eighteen forty six, the US and the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom enter a treaty that gives Oregon, that settles
Speaker 1: that Oregon will be part of the United States. So
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six Oregon becomes legally American. That was that
Speaker 1: was like the last piece of the puzzle, right, not quite.
Speaker 1: And here's the other the war with Mexico. Not quite.
Speaker 1: So eighteen forty six U S gets Oregon from the UK.
Speaker 1: Eighteen forty seven, Brigham young establishes a a settlement in
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City. Eighteen forty eight, the us UH signs
Speaker 1: the treaty that ends the Mexican American War. So it's
Speaker 1: forty eight when California becomes American. And two weeks after
Speaker 1: they signed that treaty with the Mexicans, at Sutter's Mill
Speaker 1: in California, they discovered gold. And then you have the
Speaker 1: forty Niners with the gold Rush. So in that three
Speaker 1: year period you have Oregon, California, and Salt Lake City
Speaker 1: just sort of saying come west, and people start doing it.
Speaker 1: And then they said he get rich and get rich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, but what happens for a while basically
Speaker 1: between uh, you know, the late eighteen forties and eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, the era that that that I'm writing about
Speaker 1: is most people are going across They're getting across the
Speaker 1: middle part of the country as quickly as they can.
Speaker 1: They just want to get to California or Oregon or
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City. They were was at the time in
Speaker 1: which they would refer to it as the Great American
Speaker 1: Desert or something exactly. And so the first thing that
Speaker 1: the government does in eighteen fifty one is they they
Speaker 1: they sign a treaty with the tribes that creates a
Speaker 1: travel corridor that's basically the Oregon Trail. And they but
Speaker 1: the fifty one treaty says to the tribes, you can
Speaker 1: have everything north of of the Platte River, north of
Speaker 1: the Oregon Trail. With a treaty like that, Like, what
Speaker 1: are they specifying the specifying that people can pass through unmolested.
Speaker 1: Are they actually saying like, here's a little buffer we
Speaker 1: don't want anybody to go into mostly passed through them unmolested.
Speaker 1: They say, here's the road that you can do that,
Speaker 1: you will allow settlers to use. They allowed him to
Speaker 1: set up forts along the road to defend the trail.
Speaker 1: But they said to the tribes, everything north of the
Speaker 1: north Platte is yours. And they tried to kind of
Speaker 1: divide it up, meaning like we'll never tell yes, no
Speaker 1: interest yes. And then what happens is the gold, the
Speaker 1: plastic gold, the easy gold, runs out in California by
Speaker 1: the late by the early eighteen fifties, and so all
Speaker 1: those guys who went out to California to get rich
Speaker 1: on gold start coming back to the middle of the continent,
Speaker 1: and there's start to be gold strikes in places like
Speaker 1: uh like Nevada and Colorado, and then in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: two in Montana. And what happens when they strike gold
Speaker 1: in Montana is all these gold miners start peeling off
Speaker 1: of the Oregon Trail and going north up to Montana
Speaker 1: to get the Bannock City in Virginia City and the
Speaker 1: other gold strikes. And when they do that, when those
Speaker 1: when those miners start peeling off the Oregon Trail, they're
Speaker 1: violating the treat the eight fifty one treaty, which has
Speaker 1: given all of that too. The tribes, and so it
Speaker 1: creates this conflict. And by eighteen sixty six, and this
Speaker 1: is the this is what sometimes it's called the Bozeman Trail,
Speaker 1: and I think it was more commonly then called the
Speaker 1: Montana Road. That the Bozeman Trail goes right through the
Speaker 1: middle of the Powder River Valley. And what the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government does, and this is what the U. S. Government
Speaker 1: does every single time when there's conflict between a treaty
Speaker 1: and the desire to go get gold is they try
Speaker 1: and in their most benign form, they try and renegotiate
Speaker 1: the treaty with the tribes and say, oh, now we
Speaker 1: want to go up there signed a new treaty. And
Speaker 1: so in the summer of eighteen sixty six i e.
Speaker 1: Uh six months before the battle that this book is
Speaker 1: about at Fort Laramie, they bring the tribes together, some
Speaker 1: tribes together, because this is a bone of contention as
Speaker 1: to which tribes actually signed the treaty. But in the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen sixty six, the US government signs a
Speaker 1: new treaty that basically says they can travel through the
Speaker 1: Powder River Valley and build three words between Fort Laramie
Speaker 1: and the gold fields in Montana. What are they given?
Speaker 1: What do they give us compensation? Uh? For that treaty?
Speaker 1: I I can't remember if they because what they did
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one is they said, we'll give you
Speaker 1: fifty dollars worth of annuities every year and they would
Speaker 1: come out with wagons full of arrowheads and blankets and
Speaker 1: metal pots and some kind of like rolling cattle and
Speaker 1: stuff into there. Right. Yeah, although I don't think the
Speaker 1: cattle was as common for those annuities. I don't know
Speaker 1: if if there was an annuity agreement in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: six or not. But when they do an annuity like that,
Speaker 1: they would say basically in perpetuity, Yeah, we'll truck out
Speaker 1: and drop off at some locations goods and the tribes
Speaker 1: will come in annually and collect their annuities. That was
Speaker 1: that was meant to be like forever. Uh. But what
Speaker 1: they do in eighteen sixty six is they they find
Speaker 1: And this is part of the misconception of the U.
Speaker 1: S Government for a long time, certainly then but even
Speaker 1: even now in terms of wanting to think of of
Speaker 1: the tribes as being monolithic entities. They wanted they wanted
Speaker 1: the Lakota to be France because they were used to
Speaker 1: having the negotiations between you know, the United States and France,
Speaker 1: and you would get each country's diplomats together and you
Speaker 1: sign a treaty. And the Lakotah, the tribes, the Lakota
Speaker 1: representatives that they signed treaties with, and then the other
Speaker 1: representatives that they signed the treaty with in oftentimes didn't
Speaker 1: even live in the part of the country that was
Speaker 1: being given away in the treaty. So those tribes that
Speaker 1: would sign the treaty, they they didn't Uh, it was
Speaker 1: not an issue for them to sign a treaty saying
Speaker 1: you can have the Powder River Valley because that's not
Speaker 1: where those tribes lived. But if you're a Red Cloud
Speaker 1: who lives in the Powder River Valley who didn't sign
Speaker 1: that treaty then, and you can imagine that that didn't
Speaker 1: go over well. But here's the thing that confused me
Speaker 1: a little bit though. The Powder River Valley where where
Speaker 1: the fight takes place. Wasn't that supposedly that wasn't even
Speaker 1: Lakota ground hadn't then, But hadn't they agreed that that
Speaker 1: was the crow not It was more ambiguous than that.
Speaker 1: Um and so and and and there certainly was fighting
Speaker 1: between the among many of the tribes, including between the
Speaker 1: Lakota and the Crow very famously, but also between the
Speaker 1: Lakota and the Shoshone, for example, who lived predominantly on
Speaker 1: the other side of the of the Big Hornament. But
Speaker 1: history like, yeah, skirmishing whatever that predates that. And and
Speaker 1: the notion, I mean, the notion that tribes had defined
Speaker 1: very specifically defined territories is very much and uh something
Speaker 1: that I think the US government wanted to believe because
Speaker 1: that made it more convenient to negotiate these treaties. But
Speaker 1: that's not the way that the tribes thought about it.
Speaker 1: Not to say that they didn't have hunting territories that
Speaker 1: they would defend, lands that they would defend from other
Speaker 1: tribes the Lakota versus the Crow, or the Lakota versus
Speaker 1: the Shoshone. But it was not something that was that
Speaker 1: was you know, agreed to in the sense that that
Speaker 1: the U. S Government wanted to think about. And so
Speaker 1: when they try and when the US government tries to
Speaker 1: impose this notion of a treaty on the tribes with
Speaker 1: specifically defined borders, and uh, you know, the notion that
Speaker 1: one tribe can consign that on behalf of another tribe
Speaker 1: just didn't it didn't like this creek, that river, or
Speaker 1: that mountain ridge exactly and so and in fact, uh,
Speaker 1: what happens in the summer of eighteen sixty six is
Speaker 1: Red Cloud is at Fort Laramie as part of these negotiations.
Speaker 1: And in the middle of those negotiations, Colonel Carrington, who
Speaker 1: I read about in the book, marches into Fort Laramie
Speaker 1: from Nebraska with three hundred troops, and the Lakota find
Speaker 1: out that his mission is to go build forts in
Speaker 1: the Powder River Valley. This is before the treaty has
Speaker 1: even been signed, even a treaty that they don't like.
Speaker 1: And so Red Cloud says, you know, screw this, I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. Like I thought we were here to negotiate,
Speaker 1: but you've already decided um. And Red Cloud leaves. And
Speaker 1: that was because that was an area that he had
Speaker 1: spent his life in, yes, And so he sees that,
Speaker 1: you know, the game was fixed and it's not a
Speaker 1: real negotiation, and he leaves. After he leaves, other tribes
Speaker 1: signed a treaty saying you can go occupy the Powder
Speaker 1: River Valley tribes that don't live there. And so that's
Speaker 1: the setup. When you ask what's the set up for
Speaker 1: for December twenty one six, that's the setup. Is a
Speaker 1: couple of decades in which the floodgates have just been
Speaker 1: opened wide in terms of of Eastern Americans going west. Uh,
Speaker 1: a history of treaties that have been established and then violated,
Speaker 1: and a very recent treaty that is agreed to without
Speaker 1: the participation of the tribes that live in the land
Speaker 1: that is subject to the treaty. And then this Carrington
Speaker 1: guy heads north with none other than Jim Bridger, Jim Bridger.
Speaker 1: And I could not believe this when I started doing
Speaker 1: research on this, because I love Jim Bridger, and you know,
Speaker 1: and he's a nineteen year old naive greenhorn in The Revenant,
Speaker 1: and by the time of this book eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: he's a sixty six year old legend of the West,
Speaker 1: and truly a legend of the West. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: he is in his own day. The soldiers are in
Speaker 1: awe of him because he's he's famous as a incredible
Speaker 1: Western scout. And so yeah, the Army hire Jim Bridger
Speaker 1: to scout for them in the Powder River Valley in
Speaker 1: this campaign in eighteen sixty six, and not only Jim Bridger,
Speaker 1: but for mountain Men aficionados out there. They also hire
Speaker 1: James Beckworth, who is a incredibly famous mixed race scout
Speaker 1: born a slave with a white father and a black
Speaker 1: slave mother, freed by his white UH father as a boy,
Speaker 1: and both Bridger and Beckworth and go out and are
Speaker 1: part of the original eight twenty three Rocky Mountain Fur
Speaker 1: Company expedition that goes out that I read about in
Speaker 1: the Revenant. And so these two guys, who are both
Speaker 1: in their sixties at this point, are and legends in
Speaker 1: their own time, are scouting for the U. S. Army.
Speaker 1: One of the things talk about UH fiction and why
Speaker 1: I wrote this as a novel. What happens in real
Speaker 1: life is Colonel Carrington, the commanding officer of the of
Speaker 1: the this army group, dispatches Bridger and Beckworth to go
Speaker 1: figure out where the Indians are. And so there's literally
Speaker 1: a moment that takes place in the fall of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty six where Jim freaking Bridger and James freaking Beckworth
Speaker 1: are riding across the prairie together for for two months
Speaker 1: UH looking for the tribes and and imagining the conversations
Speaker 1: that those two guys were having, which I try and
Speaker 1: do in the book that movie Drug Store Cowboys. We've
Speaker 1: seen Bob well and and imagine what they've seen. I mean,
Speaker 1: they came. They came West in eighteen twenty three with
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and are part of literally
Speaker 1: one of the very first commercial for operations in the
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties, and they ride through, uh, they ride out
Speaker 1: the whole fur trade era until the until eighteen forty.
Speaker 1: Bridger then reinvents himself and sets up a fort that
Speaker 1: ends up being right on on the Mormon Trail to
Speaker 1: to Salt Lake City and makes a ton of money
Speaker 1: selling provisions to immigrants on the on the Oregon Trail.
Speaker 1: And then by the eighteen sixties he's scouting for the
Speaker 1: US or he's making his living as a as a
Speaker 1: scout for the U. S. Army. But the history that
Speaker 1: he's seen is phenomenal thinking. And you paint him as
Speaker 1: being um like, and I buy it. Well, you paint
Speaker 1: him as as becoming conflicted about the changes in the West. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought about that a lot, and I think we
Speaker 1: talked about a little bit about this when I was
Speaker 1: here before. I think for some of those guys like
Speaker 1: Bridger and Beckworth, they must have been conflicted because their
Speaker 1: world was changing so much, and the world that drew
Speaker 1: them to the west, uh, you know, the truly open
Speaker 1: frontier was changing, and not only was it changing, but
Speaker 1: they were helping to facilitate that. And I think there
Speaker 1: must have been a lot of I think they must
Speaker 1: have questioned themselves about whether that was exactly the world
Speaker 1: that they wanted the West to be. Did they really
Speaker 1: want civilization? And if you look at it from a
Speaker 1: abundance of game, yeah, oh, I mean that they were
Speaker 1: seeing their witnessing like here there are all these decades
Speaker 1: they have been living off these like incomprehensible herds of
Speaker 1: buffalo that's vanishing, like it already along the trail, especially harder, harder,
Speaker 1: fun decimation of the beaver and then just people man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I think, and I also just think as
Speaker 1: you get older, you're more reflective about about things generally
Speaker 1: and and your life and your role. And it's not
Speaker 1: that I think that Bridger suddenly had a massive conversion
Speaker 1: and and you know, uh, turned away from his earlier life.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that's I don't think that's
Speaker 1: what happened, But I think there must have been a lot.
Speaker 1: There must have been moments where he he asked himself
Speaker 1: questions and they and I play with that in the book.
Speaker 1: So what do you think the draw was for Bridger
Speaker 1: to participate in this, like strictly the money or something else? Um?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it was probably making a living.
Speaker 1: And look, he was his living as he was a
Speaker 1: scout and uh, I think he must have been proud
Speaker 1: that they would need to rely on him and want
Speaker 1: to rely on him as as much as they did.
Speaker 1: I I think he might have had some some antipathy
Speaker 1: towards the Lakota, in part because his tribes that he
Speaker 1: had married into and spent the most time with, where
Speaker 1: the whether Shoshonee, who were historical enemies of the of
Speaker 1: the Lakota and the Cheyenne. So I think who shot
Speaker 1: him in the back with an arrow? That was a
Speaker 1: black Feet? Right? That was the Blackfeet, I believe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: back in the twenties. Yeah, Um, And so look, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was. I'm sure there were lots of things
Speaker 1: going on. And I think people sometimes try and oversimplify
Speaker 1: how people make decisions, and I try not to do
Speaker 1: that because I think if you think, if we think
Speaker 1: about our own lives and how we make big decisions,
Speaker 1: there's usually lots of different things at play, and I
Speaker 1: don't think there was just one thing that played for
Speaker 1: for Bridger. So Bridger helps them identify or mare they've
Speaker 1: already identified a fort site. Yeah, it's not entirely clear
Speaker 1: how they decide exactly where are going to be, but
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that spot. Well. One thing I'll say
Speaker 1: about Bridger and one decision he was involved when is
Speaker 1: Bridger told the army not to go up to powder
Speaker 1: Over Valley because he Bridger told them to go up
Speaker 1: the other side of the Big Horns because that's where
Speaker 1: the Shoshony were, who were more friendly to the U. S. Government.
Speaker 1: And he said, if you go up to the Shoshony
Speaker 1: side of the Big Horns, uh, you won't have to fight.
Speaker 1: But it was longer, and there was such it took
Speaker 1: like Tanner twenty days longer if you went on the
Speaker 1: eastern side of the Big Horns. And so they were
Speaker 1: so eager to get to the gold fields that they
Speaker 1: just wouldn't except a short a longer route wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be the western side of the Big Horn. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that the longer route was the shy were on the
Speaker 1: western side side, absolutely on the western side of the
Speaker 1: Big Horns, and it was the Powder River valleys on
Speaker 1: the on the eastern side of the Big Horns. And
Speaker 1: Bridget told him go up the western side, whether the
Speaker 1: Shoshone are, you won't have to fight. And the army said,
Speaker 1: we don't want to take the extra time. And so
Speaker 1: they've foisted a treaty on tribes and went up the
Speaker 1: Powder River side and that's what led immediately to the conflict.
Speaker 1: So that was that's the one thing I know about
Speaker 1: where Bridgers specifically advised them. I don't know about the
Speaker 1: individual fort sites. Once I got on the on the
Speaker 1: Powder riverside um and they pick a spot, they pick
Speaker 1: a spot. Uh. You've guys are probably been in this
Speaker 1: part of the country. It's it's it's beautiful. These these
Speaker 1: creeks that run off the Big Horn uh into the
Speaker 1: Powder River Valley are are just they're timbered and they're green,
Speaker 1: and there's these crystal clear cricks that run off the
Speaker 1: Big Horn uh and and you can see why they
Speaker 1: think that this is a good spot and this, this
Speaker 1: spot where Fort Philcarney is is beautiful, great water grass
Speaker 1: for their stock, especially because they were driving a herd
Speaker 1: of a thousand cattle. Uh, they weren't feeding their their
Speaker 1: horses on on the army didn't feed their horses on
Speaker 1: on grass, but they needed grass for for their cattle.
Speaker 1: There's timber to build a fort with. It's a great
Speaker 1: fort site. The only problem is it's dead center in
Speaker 1: the middle of Lakota. Uh, home planned and and hunting territory.
Speaker 1: When you you mentioned that they're packing with, you gotta
Speaker 1: kind of get a picture of what this most look
Speaker 1: like coming across the landscape. Yeah, driving a thousand cattle.
Speaker 1: They have sawmills, I mean they have. They are coming
Speaker 1: to stay there, like everything you need to establish a city. Yes,
Speaker 1: So this is not like a fifties movie where there's
Speaker 1: a hundred cavalrymen out on a on a patrol. This
Speaker 1: is Uh. This is a massive caravan, a mass of
Speaker 1: wagon train that includes hundreds of soldiers, both cavalry and infantry.
Speaker 1: It includes hundreds of Condostoga wagons bringing supplies including as
Speaker 1: you point out, a sawmill that they construct on the
Speaker 1: site in order to to mill the logs to to
Speaker 1: build the buildings that they're putting up. It includes a
Speaker 1: herd of a thousand cattle which they intend and this
Speaker 1: doesn't work work out very well for them. They're they're
Speaker 1: intending to use as their winner food supply and and
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that must have been
Speaker 1: most striking to the to the Lakota is they see
Speaker 1: that there are women and children as part of this
Speaker 1: as part of this group, which meant that they weren't
Speaker 1: on a patrol. It meant that they were coming to
Speaker 1: establish a town or a city, and that's exactly what
Speaker 1: they did. They built this massive fort and Fort phil
Speaker 1: Kearney is huge. You can visit the site today. There's
Speaker 1: not the it was burned by the by the tribes
Speaker 1: after the after the end of this war, but the
Speaker 1: the area that they enclosed in the stockade enclosed thirteen acres,
Speaker 1: so it's huge. And then inside of this walled area
Speaker 1: there they built buildings. But it it didn't look like
Speaker 1: the the kind of small trading post fort and we
Speaker 1: kind of sometimes have in our mind's eye. This is
Speaker 1: a massive fortification. Can you explain what the army would
Speaker 1: trade is that plays a role in this sure so. Uh.
Speaker 1: The daily life at Fort phil Karney in this era
Speaker 1: basically involved the mission of the fort of these of
Speaker 1: this army and in the early days, is to build
Speaker 1: the fort. They're not even supposed to really be out
Speaker 1: looking to to fight the tribes. They're supposed to be
Speaker 1: building the fort and establishing a base and then they're
Speaker 1: presumably going to go out in the spring and fight.
Speaker 1: And so every day what they do is they send
Speaker 1: out what they called the wood train, which was a
Speaker 1: caravan of of wagons, and they would they were about
Speaker 1: three miles away from the good timber, and they wanted
Speaker 1: the fort not to be right up against the timber,
Speaker 1: because they wanted it to be more open for defensive purposes. Cannons,
Speaker 1: they got cannons, and they want to be able to
Speaker 1: use use the cannons, which they did. So every day
Speaker 1: a wood train that was manned by soldiers would would
Speaker 1: go out three miles to where the timber was and
Speaker 1: they would cut trees down and then they would hold
Speaker 1: those trees back to the fort and they would mill
Speaker 1: those into either the logs they used to actually uh,
Speaker 1: they would stand them up straight side by side to
Speaker 1: build the perimeter of the fort, but then they had
Speaker 1: the sawmill that they could mill boards with to build
Speaker 1: all the buildings. So basically what they're doing all to
Speaker 1: the fall is they're sending out wood cruise and a
Speaker 1: wood train to cut wood. And what the what the
Speaker 1: Lakota do is they are constantly harassing these wood trains,
Speaker 1: and so they're over the course of the fall, there's
Speaker 1: this kind of crescendo of violence as they as the
Speaker 1: Lakota and the Cheyenne, increasingly attack the wood trains uh
Speaker 1: in ever more uh kind of sophisticated types of attacks,
Speaker 1: and all of that then leads up to this big
Speaker 1: battle at the end, which is uh fundamentally different from
Speaker 1: anything that the army had had ever seen before, which
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why I think it was
Speaker 1: so effective. Explain the kind of raids that were taught
Speaker 1: about when to say, like attack in the wood train.
Speaker 1: So of what a typical wood crew would be maybe
Speaker 1: uh twenty soldiers to cut wood and twenty soldiers whose
Speaker 1: job was to stand guard because they every time they
Speaker 1: went out virtually there was an attack or certainly the
Speaker 1: threat of attack. So what an attack would be over
Speaker 1: the course of the fall, were these very small war
Speaker 1: parties of you know, ten twelve warriors that would go
Speaker 1: out and do these guerilla style running attacks against the
Speaker 1: wood cruise. And a lot of soldiers died over the
Speaker 1: course of the fall. I mean dozens, they did. They
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, but none of the of those
Speaker 1: skirmishes were big. You know, one or two or five
Speaker 1: soldiers would die. It was not a big battle. It
Speaker 1: was it was viewed as more of a by the
Speaker 1: by the army, as more of a of a harassment.
Speaker 1: They weren't in the mindset that the that the tribes
Speaker 1: would come together and attack them in a in a
Speaker 1: big way. And frankly, not only were they not in
Speaker 1: that mindset, but they disregarded in ways that that proved
Speaker 1: quite foolish the ability of the of the tribes to
Speaker 1: kind of come together and have a kind of massive
Speaker 1: strategy or big trap that would challenge them if they had,
Speaker 1: if they went out and force. In your book, you
Speaker 1: get into this um it's like a little side story
Speaker 1: or inter story of some sort. I can't find the
Speaker 1: right word for it. With the cattlemen that show up,
Speaker 1: is that was is that a thing to happen? It happened,
Speaker 1: and this was complete catnip for me because of what
Speaker 1: you of what you said, Larry McMurtry. So my favorite,
Speaker 1: uh novel of all time is is Lonesome by by
Speaker 1: Larry McMurtry, which people have probably read and people they know,
Speaker 1: is about the first ever cattle drive from Texas to Montana.
Speaker 1: And I'm doing the research for can We Hold Their
Speaker 1: just explains from yeah, um, now like in modern times,
Speaker 1: you can bring a cow like a cargo from birth
Speaker 1: to sale quicker than it used to like even today,
Speaker 1: if you go down to Argentina wherever, like you know,
Speaker 1: they don't grain cattle down there. Um, they don't hit
Speaker 1: slaughter weight for a couple of years. It's a longer thing.
Speaker 1: You could and these cattle. When you hear about these
Speaker 1: cattle drives, you could get a bunch of calves right
Speaker 1: or even start with pregnant cows. What you're doing is
Speaker 1: you're going up to the north where there is grass.
Speaker 1: You're you're taking them up like you're taking a single
Speaker 1: generation up to get fattened for free on free grass,
Speaker 1: and then bring him somewhere to sell them. So it's
Speaker 1: not like it's not you're bringing them up there to
Speaker 1: leave them there you're talking about the Montana driver. You know,
Speaker 1: people would do it's like cattle drives going up a
Speaker 1: lot of times to be like you're just they're they're
Speaker 1: just feeding them, you know, it's like it's not you
Speaker 1: sold them to some guy up there. Well this uh
Speaker 1: So the guy that we're talking about here in truth
Speaker 1: is a guy named Nelson Store. And when I was
Speaker 1: doing the research for the about the you know, this
Speaker 1: Powder River War in eighteen sixty six, not only does
Speaker 1: Jim Bridger show up there and James Beckworth in the
Speaker 1: middle of this and as a writer, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but also in the middle of this war that's going on,
Speaker 1: this Texas cattle herd and it's Texas longhorns that they're
Speaker 1: driving literally uh with twenty uh cowboys driving it shows
Speaker 1: up at Fort phil Karney in the fall of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, in the middle of this war, and the
Speaker 1: guy that is leading them is a guy named Nelson
Speaker 1: Story who had been a gold miner in Bannock, Montana
Speaker 1: and made like a pretty decent chunk. He makes like
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. Oh yeah, I forgot about this details and
Speaker 1: so he but he doesn't like mining and he sees
Speaker 1: that what the miners don't have is food, and so
Speaker 1: what he figures figures out is he's going to take
Speaker 1: his thirty dollars from panning golden bannock and he dropped.
Speaker 1: He rides his horse to Texas and he gathers up
Speaker 1: a herd of cattle and hires twenty cowboys and they
Speaker 1: literally drive this cattle herd from Texas to Virginia City, Montana,
Speaker 1: successfully with the goal of establishing do not what I
Speaker 1: was saying, And I mean he he sells half of them,
Speaker 1: but he keeps. He establishes the first cattle ranch in
Speaker 1: Paradise Valley and may have named it um. And so
Speaker 1: he establishes a cattle ranch in Paradise Valley, uh near
Speaker 1: what's now Livingston, and becomes the first Montana millionaire selling
Speaker 1: cattle to gold miners. And half the ship in Bowsman
Speaker 1: is named after him. Exactly. Yeah, he's buried here. Yeah yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, my kid when I had to escort
Speaker 1: his field his field trip, one day, we went to
Speaker 1: look at we went to see where they last guy
Speaker 1: they hung down at the courthouse, and then he went
Speaker 1: over to see at the gallows, which is still there.
Speaker 1: And then went over to see, uh stories Tombstone. So
Speaker 1: this the story of story for me was too enticing
Speaker 1: not to incorporate into the book because it's just it is.
Speaker 1: And Larry mcmintry has said that he based in part
Speaker 1: the story of Lonesome Dove on his research on Nelson's story.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the book that, um, these guys show up
Speaker 1: and they're better armed, the soldiers much better armed. The
Speaker 1: army was incredibly stupid about the weapons that they gave
Speaker 1: their soldiers for a long time, and in eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: these poor bastards who get sent out to fight on
Speaker 1: the western frontier are carrying civil war uh springfield muzzle
Speaker 1: loading obviously single shot rifles. And that's at a time
Speaker 1: when there were really great repeating rifles that were available
Speaker 1: and the civilians were smart enough to have them. So
Speaker 1: for example, uh, you know, there's two civilians that right
Speaker 1: out on the day of the battle with with with
Speaker 1: Carrington is man, they're both armed with Henry repeating rifles
Speaker 1: which held sixteen bullets like a two like a lever
Speaker 1: action lever action repeating rifle, highly accurate sixteen rounds. They
Speaker 1: joke at the time, was you load on Sunday and
Speaker 1: shoot all week. Um, they have at that those guys
Speaker 1: had been laying waste with those things. Man, they didn't
Speaker 1: want the details of that battle, Like the way it
Speaker 1: was laid out, you can imagine just being able to shoot,
Speaker 1: and they were, and they were good with them, and
Speaker 1: they were Civil War veterans, so they were you know
Speaker 1: they were and and yeah, if if the army had
Speaker 1: had those it would have been a different outcome. Who
Speaker 1: go back to story one quick step? Um, how did
Speaker 1: he like? I know he did, but how did he
Speaker 1: think that he would live? Well, it's crazy and uh uh.
Speaker 1: He does arm his twenty guys with repeating rifles and
Speaker 1: so they're well armed. But when you think about they
Speaker 1: just running a rolling gun battle through the valley, not
Speaker 1: a roll rolling battle, but they did. They did fight
Speaker 1: several battles with the tribes on the way up. I mean,
Speaker 1: these guys were we're flat out badass and the fact
Speaker 1: that they thought that they could do it is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And they but they succeed, and our night's sleep well
Speaker 1: and they they did have their cattle runoff at one point,
Speaker 1: they lost like half their heard and they go out
Speaker 1: with a party and they recapture, they fight the tribe
Speaker 1: that took him, and they recapture the battle and heard
Speaker 1: the the strays back into the herd and keep going.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an amazing story. The story story is
Speaker 1: an amazing story. So what's different on December when the
Speaker 1: wood train sets out? So what is different is uh
Speaker 1: the what I think is really happening is the Lakota
Speaker 1: and Crazy Horse and the Red Cloud and their Cheyenne
Speaker 1: and Arapaho allies have just spent the fall learning about
Speaker 1: their enemy and taking into consideration everything that they learn.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Army has been doing exactly the opposite.
Speaker 1: They've they first of all, underestimate their enemy in terms
Speaker 1: of that enemy's ability to uh conduct a massive operation.
Speaker 1: I think there's a good amount of prejudice that goes
Speaker 1: into that in terms of how they thought that the
Speaker 1: tribes are even capable of fighting. Um, they they're very
Speaker 1: focused just on building the fort and not thinking about
Speaker 1: about fighting. And what Red Cloud does is he he
Speaker 1: does something that is unprecedented for that time, and it
Speaker 1: totally takes the army by surprise. The first thing he
Speaker 1: does is he creates this coalition of tribes and the
Speaker 1: tribes had not typically fought together in this way before,
Speaker 1: but Red Cloud does this great diplomacy with the Cheyenne,
Speaker 1: with the Arapaho. There's evidence that he even tried to
Speaker 1: reach out to the Crow to be part of that coalition,
Speaker 1: which shows you how much he was recalculating the position
Speaker 1: of the of the tribes on the on the plains
Speaker 1: at that time. The Crow didn't want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it, but he may have. I've actually reached
Speaker 1: out to them. So he creates this massive coalition. He
Speaker 1: also decides that they're going to do something that is
Speaker 1: legions beyond anything they've ever done before. The biggest war
Speaker 1: party that they had ever put together over the course
Speaker 1: of the fall is probably one or two hundred warriors.
Speaker 1: And the war party that he brings together and and usually,
Speaker 1: as we talked about before, it was a dozen kind
Speaker 1: of guerilla style hits. What he does on December twenty
Speaker 1: one six is he pulls together two thousand warriors, this
Speaker 1: coalition of Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and he finds this valley
Speaker 1: three miles away from the fort where if they can
Speaker 1: get the army there, they won't have any of the
Speaker 1: advantage that they have at the fort, either the fortification
Speaker 1: or the cannons or anything else. And he places like
Speaker 1: a level of secrecy, in complete secrecy because nobody they
Speaker 1: and they can't see this. You can't if once you
Speaker 1: go over a lodge trail ridge, which is the ridgeline
Speaker 1: in the book, you can't see on the other side.
Speaker 1: You can't see from the from the fort the other side.
Speaker 1: And then the trick, and this is a huge trick,
Speaker 1: is somehow they've got to get the army to come
Speaker 1: out of the fort in numbers and get them to
Speaker 1: go three miles over the ridgeline into the trap so
Speaker 1: that it can be sprung. And that's the job of
Speaker 1: crazy horse. Crazy horse job. I want to put it
Speaker 1: in Another challenge you spent and maybe you're good to
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time talking about it, is
Speaker 1: how far they lured these people in with no one
Speaker 1: noticing that there's two thousand people hiding under clumps of
Speaker 1: stage and not just people horses like the subterfuge. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean it's and when you walk the people with
Speaker 1: horses with horses, and and when you walk the battlefield.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this when I was here before
Speaker 1: to the notion that you know, people always talk about
Speaker 1: featureless planes and that's the stupidest description ever, because planes
Speaker 1: are anything but featureless. There there's all sorts of coolies
Speaker 1: and draws and creek beds and you name it. And
Speaker 1: when you walk this battlefield, there's all of that, but
Speaker 1: there's but it's still pretty open. And it's pretty open,
Speaker 1: certainly if you're trying to hide two thousand warriors and
Speaker 1: their horses. And so to me, that's one of the biggest,
Speaker 1: uh mysteries of the battle and one of the most
Speaker 1: amazing things that they did is they they hid themselves
Speaker 1: and their horses such that all of these uh, these
Speaker 1: cavalrymen and infantrymen get up on this ridge line and
Speaker 1: look down and don't see anything and write it and
Speaker 1: maybe want to It makes me want to go back
Speaker 1: there just to look like, I don't understand how does
Speaker 1: that like? I want to go look to get a
Speaker 1: better grip on how you could hide that many people.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've walked it a lot of it, and uh,
Speaker 1: and you can you can imagine it, but you also
Speaker 1: see the skill that it took just to keep the
Speaker 1: horses quiet and to and to hold their positions, they
Speaker 1: had to wait because they were they're basically on if
Speaker 1: it's a if it's a if you think of it
Speaker 1: of the battlefield as a as a clock, they're basically
Speaker 1: and and if you imagine that the army riding in
Speaker 1: at twelve o'clock, they basically have uh warriors deployed between
Speaker 1: ten o'clock and two o'clock all around the clock. And
Speaker 1: so between the army has to ride in between ten
Speaker 1: o'clock and two o'clock and get to the center of
Speaker 1: the clock and then they close it up. But they
Speaker 1: have to suck them into the center of that of
Speaker 1: that clock to do it, and and to do and
Speaker 1: that's a that's that's not two yards, that's like a mile,
Speaker 1: and so it's a it's a massive battlefield. And so
Speaker 1: but that's what they successfully do is they suck them
Speaker 1: into the center of that of that clock and then
Speaker 1: they quickly close up between ten o'clock and two o'clock
Speaker 1: and then it's a masker Is it undis because your
Speaker 1: book gets into it. Is it undisputed that they were
Speaker 1: for they were forbidden to the like, sure, go chase them,
Speaker 1: don't go over the ridge. So I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: close to undisputed. And I say that with a little
Speaker 1: bit of hesitation because Colonel Carrington, who is in the
Speaker 1: fort during the battle, and he's the he's the head cheese,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who sends these guys out, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't he doesn't go fight, and therefore he doesn't go die. Ah.
Speaker 1: He after this, after this massacre happens, it's hugely politically
Speaker 1: controversial in the US because it's the worst to that time,
Speaker 1: as I said, the worst defeat in U S military
Speaker 1: history until Custer. And so there's a huge like investigation
Speaker 1: of what happened, and Carrington basically spends the rest of
Speaker 1: his career defending himself that it wasn't his fault. And
Speaker 1: there does seem to be pretty good evidence that he
Speaker 1: gave the very explicit order don't go over Lodge Trail Ridge,
Speaker 1: and if they hadn't gone over Lodge Trail Ridge, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have died because the traps on the other side
Speaker 1: of Lodge Trail Ridge. Um. But uh, But I do
Speaker 1: say it with a little bit of hesitation because he
Speaker 1: he does a lot of other things that I think
Speaker 1: very deliberately distort the record, including blaming Fetterman overwhelmingly as
Speaker 1: the villain of the of the battle. I think some
Speaker 1: of the scholarship that has been done more recently rightly
Speaker 1: puts the blame on another one of the officers, a
Speaker 1: guy named Grummand who is much more the villain in
Speaker 1: in my book, you pay him, you pay him out
Speaker 1: of a whole I think he wasn't a whole. Um
Speaker 1: And there's uh and there's good evidence of that. Um.
Speaker 1: And let me compare those two guys in terms of
Speaker 1: the historical evidence. By the way, so Fetterman and they're
Speaker 1: both Civil War veterans, and by all accounts, all of
Speaker 1: the officers, with the exception of Carrington, who was a
Speaker 1: logistics guy in the in the war, all of the
Speaker 1: other officers at the fort were had a lot of
Speaker 1: combat experience in the Civil War and were decorated. But
Speaker 1: Fetterman had a reputation for not only bravery, but also
Speaker 1: for being kind of a company man and following orders.
Speaker 1: Ah ah, the the the reputation of Grummond. By contrast,
Speaker 1: he was court martialed during the Civil War for for
Speaker 1: beating one of his noncommissioned officers. He was court martialed
Speaker 1: for shooting an unarmed civilian, and he was court martialed
Speaker 1: for disobeying orders and charging head when he wasn't supposed to.
Speaker 1: So when you weigh there, when you weigh their records,
Speaker 1: and you think who is more likely to have been
Speaker 1: the one who disobeyed orders and went over the ridgeline?
Speaker 1: To me, it comes down on Grumman. And in the aftermath,
Speaker 1: Carrington's wife sort of like, how are we going to
Speaker 1: the aftermath? Well, I'm not, but I'm saying Carrington's wife
Speaker 1: sort of like goes on to her blaming Vetterman. Right,
Speaker 1: how does that influence things? Well, a lot because and
Speaker 1: uh and it's crazy because uh uh, just it's a
Speaker 1: little bit incestuous here because at the time that the
Speaker 1: book Taste takes place, both Carrington and Grumman's wives are
Speaker 1: part of the fort. And in fact, I write a
Speaker 1: lot about Francis Gruman because I think she's a very
Speaker 1: fascinating character. But you're right, Carrington's wife, his first wife,
Speaker 1: Margaret Carrington, joins him in making this defense of her husband,
Speaker 1: and she writes an autobiography in which she basically says
Speaker 1: she gives Rington's version of the battle, including don't go
Speaker 1: over Lodge trail Ridge, and she blames Fetterman like Carrington.
Speaker 1: But uh but uh, Carrington's first wife, Margaret dies and
Speaker 1: and he ends up marrying Grumman's wife and then he's
Speaker 1: been died in the fight and uh. And Grumman's wife
Speaker 1: then writes her own autobiography, and she also repeats, in
Speaker 1: some cases almost word for word, uh, the the account
Speaker 1: of the battle that her husband propagated, that he was
Speaker 1: not at fault, so he put two people up to it.
Speaker 1: He put two wives up to it. Yeah, to do
Speaker 1: his dirty work. The ten warriors that sort of acted
Speaker 1: as the decoys you have, like to Chyenne, to rappero
Speaker 1: Um two from. Is there any significance to that there was?
Speaker 1: And I think we don't know exactly who the who
Speaker 1: the decoys were. There's I think there's pretty good evidence
Speaker 1: and crazy Horse is one of them. But they My
Speaker 1: understanding is that the tribes picked honorary decoys that were
Speaker 1: representative of of their of their people, and so I
Speaker 1: think it's it's probably pretty accurate that there was the
Speaker 1: type of mixture that I that I described there, and
Speaker 1: that comes a lot from a lot of the oral
Speaker 1: accounts of the battle from from different uh from different tribes, when, um,
Speaker 1: what's the the you know, for a long time people
Speaker 1: called the Fetterman Massacre also the Fetterman Fight, but it
Speaker 1: had the battle of hand? Was that? Was that a
Speaker 1: sue name? That was what the Lakota call it because
Speaker 1: they had someone had a problem that there is someone
Speaker 1: said like if you want to catch a bunch of
Speaker 1: them a half man. So there is a there's a
Speaker 1: transgender Lakota and we don't know his name in in
Speaker 1: my book I give I give the name Moon for
Speaker 1: this person. But when I when I first read about this,
Speaker 1: I wondered about it. But there is an account of
Speaker 1: this from George Bird Grinnell, who's a guy that I
Speaker 1: wrote a book about who was a conservationist and also
Speaker 1: in a Native American ethnologist. And in nineteen fifteen he
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Fighting Cheyenne, and as part
Speaker 1: of his research in nineteen fifteen, he interviews a Cheyenne
Speaker 1: warrior named white Elk who had been at the at
Speaker 1: the Fetterman Fight, who fought at the Fetterman Fight and
Speaker 1: walks the battlefield with him, and this Cheyenne warrior, white
Speaker 1: Elk tells the story of a of a transgender Lakota.
Speaker 1: Their their word for it was winked, a transgender Dakota,
Speaker 1: and the and the the winkday were revered in Lakota culture,
Speaker 1: which I think is very interesting as having the wisdom
Speaker 1: of both men and women. They were revered in the tribe,
Speaker 1: and they were they were often turned to or advice,
Speaker 1: whether it was in family matters or in in battle.
Speaker 1: And so this account that I use as the basis
Speaker 1: for what I write about in the novel is from
Speaker 1: this nineteen fifteen account that George Bird Grennell wrote down
Speaker 1: from the story here he heard from a Cheyenne wear
Speaker 1: a white elk, which I think is pretty good, pretty
Speaker 1: good evidence. Um, and it was it wasn't quite a
Speaker 1: hunter hole was the numbers? Well, to go to your question.
Speaker 1: So the prophecy what happens is Red Cloud and the
Speaker 1: other leaders kind of go to the battlefield the day
Speaker 1: before to survey it and decide where they're gonna they're
Speaker 1: gonna hide everybody, And in deciding whether or not to
Speaker 1: use that site as the battlefield, they call upon this
Speaker 1: this wink to a profit to to tell him what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, and he prophesieses that uh, he rides.
Speaker 1: The prophet rides all over the battlefield and comes back
Speaker 1: three separate times. And on his third time coming back,
Speaker 1: he is acting out that his arms are full and
Speaker 1: that his hands are full, and he tells red Cloud
Speaker 1: in the other chiefs that he has a hundred in
Speaker 1: his hands, a hundred dead soldiers in his hands, and
Speaker 1: that's his prophecy for what will happen if they have
Speaker 1: the battle at this place. And so that's the moment
Speaker 1: when Red Cloud decides that this is the place and
Speaker 1: time and place. And so the Dakoda referred to the
Speaker 1: battle as the battle of the hundred in the hands.
Speaker 1: Not quite a hundred die, but eighty one die, which
Speaker 1: is I don't know what the probably we keep track
Speaker 1: on prophecies, but that was not too far off. Once
Speaker 1: they spring the trap, so that the ten dco we
Speaker 1: kind of state was he's ten decoys, rile up skirmish
Speaker 1: with somehow infuriate um and get these soldiers to just
Speaker 1: be like, now our chance, We're finally gonna get these suckers. Ye,
Speaker 1: they ride into the center of the clock. Once they
Speaker 1: spring the trap, how long does it take them to
Speaker 1: kill them? All thirty minutes, and there are unbelievable Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there are unbelievable accounts of thirty minutes thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: And so what starts happening back at the fort um
Speaker 1: and there's a good there's good you know, written history
Speaker 1: of this is all of a sudden they start hearing gunshots, um,
Speaker 1: and then they start hearing a shipload of gun shots,
Speaker 1: and then they stop hearing any gunshots, and and and
Speaker 1: they they know something. And they can't see any of
Speaker 1: this because they've gone over the ridgeline and they send
Speaker 1: out what's supposed to be a relief force so that
Speaker 1: it gets their way too late, and they actually the
Speaker 1: relief force once they get up on the ridge line
Speaker 1: and look down there, they can see what's going on.
Speaker 1: The relief force is smart enough not to write down there.
Speaker 1: But but thirty minutes is about the amount of time
Speaker 1: that the battle takes. And what's the amount of friendly
Speaker 1: fire from both sides that's sort of happening quite a bit,
Speaker 1: uh including well, I don't I don't know as much
Speaker 1: on the on the on the U. S. Army side
Speaker 1: how much friendly fire was because they probably were firing
Speaker 1: more outward. But there was a lot of friendly fire
Speaker 1: between the tribes because they're they're in a circle and
Speaker 1: they're firing towards the center. But there is is quite
Speaker 1: a bit of of anecdotal evidence about about Native American
Speaker 1: warriors being killed by arrows because there were so many arrows,
Speaker 1: and of course it's it's chaotic in the center, must
Speaker 1: be a buzz with arrows. I mean, you see these
Speaker 1: movies now where they show these waves of arrows, you know,
Speaker 1: flying in and it that's it must have been unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Um you have it that there's some suicide among the soldiers.
Speaker 1: That is one of the controversies about the battle. And
Speaker 1: I talk at the end about the fact that we
Speaker 1: don't I don't know that that happened. I think it's
Speaker 1: quite plausible that when it got down to the end,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a famous trope in Western
Speaker 1: stories of of you know, save the last bullet for yourself,
Speaker 1: and I think it it must have at the end
Speaker 1: to those guys, that handful of guys who were left
Speaker 1: surrounded on all sides, been obvious that they weren't going
Speaker 1: to make it. And I think a few of them
Speaker 1: probably did make this You're not going to become a
Speaker 1: prisoner a war. You're not going to be a pow. Um.
Speaker 1: They were watching their uh, their fellow soldiers. You know
Speaker 1: the way these guys die. If they don't get shot
Speaker 1: with an arrows, they get hacked to death. Um, you're
Speaker 1: getting bludgeoned and you're getting killed with with with war
Speaker 1: clubs and and hatchets. And so it's not at all
Speaker 1: implausible to me that that some of them at the
Speaker 1: end chose to to commit suicide instead. And two of
Speaker 1: those well that the suicide speculation sort of exists around
Speaker 1: our Fetterman in Brown, right, that's right. And Uh, there
Speaker 1: there is contrary evidence which all which I also talked
Speaker 1: about at the end of the book. Uh, there is
Speaker 1: a a there's a there's a La Coda warrior who
Speaker 1: claims to have killed Fetterman in a in a within
Speaker 1: an account that is quite plausible, I think. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's also some evidence from the post surgeon that Fetterman
Speaker 1: did not have wounds consistent with suicide. That piece I
Speaker 1: find a little bit less plausible because it's not like
Speaker 1: this was Quincy Jones. Uh, you know, autopsy on these soldiers.
Speaker 1: For one thing, this the post surgeon was not a
Speaker 1: forensic surgeon. He was a post surgeon, and he had
Speaker 1: eighty bodies brought in and and all the bodies were
Speaker 1: were mutilated to with the exception of of of one soldier.
Speaker 1: So I don't find it particularly plausible that the post
Speaker 1: surgeon was able to tell how somebody died. I think
Speaker 1: there is a credible uh potential that that that fetterman
Speaker 1: was actually killed by by one of the Lakota Wears,
Speaker 1: as opposed to committing suicide soldiers dead how many warriors
Speaker 1: different accounts, Probably uh, somewhere around thirty I think is
Speaker 1: a is a pretty good guess. Maybe maybe more than that,
Speaker 1: but I mean there. And you talked Stephen about the
Speaker 1: two civilians who had the Henry rifles. Most of the
Speaker 1: evidence of of of Native deaths were in a semi
Speaker 1: circle around the stones the rocks that these two civilians
Speaker 1: sheltered behind in the early part of the battle where
Speaker 1: they tried to hold out for a while with those
Speaker 1: Henry rifles. Some real hard ass too, and they were
Speaker 1: they were they were civil war veterans. They had good
Speaker 1: weapons and they knew how to use them. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence that they killed quite a few
Speaker 1: at that part of the battle and the rest of
Speaker 1: the battle, I don't think that they were nearly as
Speaker 1: many uh of the Native Americans killed because they you know,
Speaker 1: they're just they The army just wasn't organized in any
Speaker 1: way to to mount an effective defense at that point.
Speaker 1: It was all running, you know, these guys with single shots,
Speaker 1: like they'd shoot a shot and then people would just
Speaker 1: swarm them and by hand drag them down off their
Speaker 1: horse and caught them up. Well, I mean, I've fired
Speaker 1: these muzzleloading guds before, as I'm I know you guys have,
Speaker 1: and it's not an easy, fast thing to load a muzzleloader,
Speaker 1: even if you're good at it, And to to do
Speaker 1: that with hundreds of warriors running towards you and arrows
Speaker 1: flying around and people dying all around you, and especially
Speaker 1: when they they weren't in any kind of an organized
Speaker 1: line or position. I just don't think those guys fired
Speaker 1: their guns very many times. I think they probably got
Speaker 1: a shot or two off and then and then their
Speaker 1: gun was a was a club. This is an ignorant question,
Speaker 1: but like in the aftermath this, what happens to the
Speaker 1: guns that the soldiers had did the warriors swooping and
Speaker 1: clean some of that stuff up. They did. They gathered
Speaker 1: all those weapons up, and you know, and that was
Speaker 1: as you would imagine they would, they would gather everything
Speaker 1: of use off the battlefield before they before they left.
Speaker 1: There's a saucy detail from the Little Big Horn battle
Speaker 1: where the seventh Cavalry was carrying a gun that had
Speaker 1: a newer gun. They had a distinct sound that set
Speaker 1: it apart, you know, you know, you tell it like
Speaker 1: different kind of like bigger guns, smaller guns, right, um.
Speaker 1: And the people that weren't caught up in that battle,
Speaker 1: but were we're surrounded on another ridgeline the next day,
Speaker 1: realized that they were being shot at with their gun,
Speaker 1: with the gun that they recognized as their own. And
Speaker 1: that was the early clue of what might have happened,
Speaker 1: what might have where well, talking about the guns that
Speaker 1: they had and and ten years, it's interesting because in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, in this battle, most of a lot
Speaker 1: of the of the Native American warriors did not have rifles,
Speaker 1: or the rifles they had were single shots, and they
Speaker 1: preferred to use their their bows and arrows because they
Speaker 1: could fire so much more rapidly. By eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Ten years later, Battle of a Little Big Horn, A
Speaker 1: lot of the of the Native American warriors had Henry
Speaker 1: repeating rifles gunfight, but the U. S. Army still gave
Speaker 1: their their their Their soldiers at that point had mostly
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three Springfield either rifles or car beans, which
Speaker 1: were those stupid trap door single shot They fired a
Speaker 1: metal cartridge, but they they were single shots and had
Speaker 1: to be loaded, you know, one shot at a time
Speaker 1: through a trap door in the in the breach. And
Speaker 1: they were by all accounts, not great guns. And the
Speaker 1: army just had a doctrinary belief in that era that
Speaker 1: if you gave a soldier the ability to fire rapidly,
Speaker 1: that they would waste their shots. And so this instead
Speaker 1: of giving him Henry rifles, they gave him eventually guns
Speaker 1: that fired a metal cartridge, but still single shots. I
Speaker 1: can't remember what museum I was at, but it had
Speaker 1: some firearms. I can't remember what tribe it had them,
Speaker 1: but um there were demonstrations of their gunsmithing where they'd
Speaker 1: get these and then keeping them going. It stocks put
Speaker 1: back together with barrels like barrels, fashioned stocks with raw
Speaker 1: hide wrappings and filed pieces. You'd get these things, maybe
Speaker 1: even got it broken. Yeah, And in finding a way
Speaker 1: to just to keep him well, you think about I
Speaker 1: I portray Jim Bridger. Uh. There. There's a great thing
Speaker 1: on Instagram yesterday from the Montana State Historical Society which
Speaker 1: has Jim Bridgers hacking at the Montana State Historical Society
Speaker 1: in in Helena, and I one of my goals in
Speaker 1: life is to go there and and have somebody let
Speaker 1: me hold that, because I just think that would be
Speaker 1: a really cool thing to hold Jim Bridgers hocking. But
Speaker 1: he apparently still had a hocking in this era, and
Speaker 1: I have a fictionalized scene between him and Beckworth where
Speaker 1: Beckworth is making fun of him for still using an
Speaker 1: old hawk and rifle. And part of his defense in
Speaker 1: the book I have is is that he's used to
Speaker 1: it and he knows how to fix it. He knows
Speaker 1: how it works. And I would imagine that for somebody
Speaker 1: like that, and old timer in particular, that having a
Speaker 1: gun that you knew every bit of it and that
Speaker 1: you knew that if it broke down, you had some
Speaker 1: chance to being able to fix it, even on the
Speaker 1: frontier as opposed to the complexity of a repeating rifle system.
Speaker 1: For an old timer might be like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with that. I've like, I've told
Speaker 1: the story thousand times. But I was with an Amerindian
Speaker 1: group in South America and they had sixteen They had
Speaker 1: a sixteen gage shotgun, a break open sixteen gage shotgun,
Speaker 1: and they only had twelve gage shells. So they wouldn't
Speaker 1: get ready to go hunt at night. They would take
Speaker 1: that twelve gage shell, cut it open, take a leaf,
Speaker 1: and pour the shot into a leaf, make their own,
Speaker 1: get the wad out, pour the powder into a leaf,
Speaker 1: knocked the primers with the same The primers are compatible.
Speaker 1: Knocked the primer out, put the primer into the sixteen gauge,
Speaker 1: pour the powder in uli. Yeah. Usually this little they'd
Speaker 1: make this little leaf thing to act as a wadding,
Speaker 1: put the shot in, melt a candle, steal the holding
Speaker 1: off of candle. Acts. They do two or three of
Speaker 1: those and head off into the Jungeral gosh, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It's like good ingenuity, right, that's very good ingenuity. Speaking
Speaker 1: of ingenuity, one of the things that is fascinating to
Speaker 1: me is the cannon technology of that era. And we
Speaker 1: were talking before about how wars are a great booster
Speaker 1: of of innovation, especially on weaponry. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I learned about working at Fort Landarmy National Historic
Speaker 1: Site as a teenagers, as I said, we fired these
Speaker 1: mountain howitz or twice a day, and I was amazed
Speaker 1: to learn at the sophistication of cannon technology in that day.
Speaker 1: And I had always thought of a cannon is shooting
Speaker 1: out a solid either a solid cannon ball, you know,
Speaker 1: to knock down walls, or they would they would use
Speaker 1: grape shot, which is basically like turning a shotgun into
Speaker 1: a cannon, into a big, giant shotgun. But one of
Speaker 1: the the weapons are one of the options they had
Speaker 1: with cannons even in that era is something called spherical
Speaker 1: case shot, and that was a it looked like a
Speaker 1: cannon ball, but it was hollow on the inside and
Speaker 1: the inside was filled with smaller cannonballs and gunpowder, and
Speaker 1: there was a fuse that was on the top of
Speaker 1: the cannon ball that could be cut to blow up
Speaker 1: at different ranges, and when the cannon would go off,
Speaker 1: the flame from the ignition with light that fuse in
Speaker 1: the front the cannon ball, and then it as the
Speaker 1: cannonball flew down range, the fuse would burn in and
Speaker 1: at the appointed range you know a thousand yards for example,
Speaker 1: blow up and and all of those cannonballs, the musket
Speaker 1: balls inside of the cannonball would then disperse on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a that's an incredibly sophisticated weapon. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of mathematics that go behind that.
Speaker 1: And and in fact, in that era, oftentimes the smartest
Speaker 1: guys at West Point were made artillery. And because the
Speaker 1: high technology the day was artillery and mathematics, and so
Speaker 1: if you were smart and could do math, you were
Speaker 1: an artilleryman. And then and in the days leading up
Speaker 1: to this fight, they had the tribes kind of had
Speaker 1: learned a scout and deal with those guys trying to
Speaker 1: touch those cannonballs off over their heads all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think it was surprising obviously to the to
Speaker 1: the tribes that there was the ability to set these
Speaker 1: charges off with that kind of precision, you know, a
Speaker 1: thousand yards away from the walls of the fort. It's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there are a very few
Speaker 1: battles in history where Native American tribes attack a fort,
Speaker 1: and that's the classic kind of John Wayne uh you
Speaker 1: know movie, But that didn't happen very often because the
Speaker 1: tribes were smart enough to know that the fort was
Speaker 1: the place where all the advantages were with the army,
Speaker 1: whether it was hiding behind walls and shooting out word
Speaker 1: with long range rifles or or cannon. And what they
Speaker 1: were smart enough to know is they needed to draw
Speaker 1: the army out onto their terrain. And that's of course
Speaker 1: exactly what they do in in this story. And a
Speaker 1: follow up attack on the fort never happens, like after
Speaker 1: we have these eighty one dead soldiers thirty dead warriors
Speaker 1: that they don't then go and try to take over
Speaker 1: the fort. They didn't because I think they still for
Speaker 1: one thing, I think they felt like they had fulfilled
Speaker 1: the prophecy that they were seeking to fulfill, but also
Speaker 1: because I think they still respected even with the force
Speaker 1: that they had gathered, the strength of the of the
Speaker 1: cannon at the fort and the soldiers that remained there.
Speaker 1: But they do end up winning that war. Yeah, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: we keep comparing a little big Horm. A little Big
Speaker 1: Horm was like a very pirate victory, very they even
Speaker 1: in winningly knew they had lost. They dispersed and went
Speaker 1: into hiding. When this like for a while, so kind
Speaker 1: of one, including getting a new treaty, uh where the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army agrees. And this is the only time I ever
Speaker 1: know of this happening, And it didn't last very long,
Speaker 1: but it happened lasted for a while because of the
Speaker 1: Fetterman fight. And it's interesting actually, because the politics of
Speaker 1: the United States in eighteen seventy six are very different
Speaker 1: from the politics of the United States in eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty six, after the Fetterman Fight, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: it's only a year after the basically a year after
Speaker 1: the end of the Civil War, and the politics of
Speaker 1: the of the US at that point are like, we
Speaker 1: don't want to go fight a war out on the frontier.
Speaker 1: And so this Fetterman battle happens, and Red Cloud, I
Speaker 1: think rightly predicts that if he can inflict a massive defeat,
Speaker 1: that maybe he can scare scare the Whites off for
Speaker 1: a while. And that's exactly they signed a new treaty.
Speaker 1: They abandoned the Montana Road, they abandoned the three forts.
Speaker 1: The tribes come in and burn those three forts, including
Speaker 1: Fort Fetterman, to the ground, and really for a period
Speaker 1: of years at least relative to what's going to happen later,
Speaker 1: the tribes win back the Powder River Valley and other places,
Speaker 1: including including the Black Hills. In eighteen seventy six, the
Speaker 1: politics of the country have changed. And or if they
Speaker 1: had the foresight to be like, yeah, we want it,
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna last, I think they must have
Speaker 1: been worried. Um, but I don't know. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting question. But by eighteen seventy six, when the Little
Speaker 1: Big Horn defeat happens, and this I love this fact
Speaker 1: of history. The news of a little Big Horn, A
Speaker 1: little big Horn is June eighteen seventy six. The news
Speaker 1: of the Little Big Horn reaches Washington, d c. On
Speaker 1: July four, eighteen seventy six, the exact one years centennial
Speaker 1: of the country, and it is a turd in the
Speaker 1: punch bowl of that celebration. And the reaction to the
Speaker 1: country at that point is we're not going to let
Speaker 1: this stand. And at from that point on it's total
Speaker 1: war against the tribes, and in in a year and
Speaker 1: a half, the war against the Northern Plains Indians is
Speaker 1: over and Crazy Horse has been forced to uh surrender
Speaker 1: on a reservation. Sitting Bowl has fled into Canada. Eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven is the year of the They're defeated. It's over,
Speaker 1: and so once the US really turned its full military
Speaker 1: force on the war, it was pretty inevitable. I came
Speaker 1: across something really interesting in the research for this. There's
Speaker 1: I read that the total population of all the Plains
Speaker 1: tribes in the eighteen sixties was probably about seventy six thousand.
Speaker 1: Of the Lakota of the they were probably about sixteen thousand,
Speaker 1: of which there were about four thousand Lakota fighting men.
Speaker 1: So think about that. The US at that time had
Speaker 1: thirty one million people. During the Civil War, the US
Speaker 1: had there was a standing army of two point one
Speaker 1: million people on the on the north and one million
Speaker 1: people in the South. So when you think about those numbers,
Speaker 1: once the US kind of decided we're not gonna let
Speaker 1: the stand anymore, it wasn't going to and that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happens after eighteen seventy six. The fot like, following
Speaker 1: the days of the battle, they have to be on
Speaker 1: the edge, right because they don't they don't evacuate immediately.
Speaker 1: They're not gone the next day. It's there's an amazing
Speaker 1: story that I don't talk about in the book, but
Speaker 1: we talked about all the time at Fort Laramie UH
Speaker 1: after the after the battle, they are afraid that they're
Speaker 1: going to be attacked, and of course they've just lost,
Speaker 1: you know, half their fighting force, and so there they
Speaker 1: maybe Red Cloud could have overtaken that for it if
Speaker 1: you've been willing to kind of, you know, do a
Speaker 1: World War One style fight against UH an entrenched position.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they're worried about that, and so
Speaker 1: Colonel Arrington sends a rider out from Fort phil Karney
Speaker 1: to Fort Laramie. It's in the middle of a blizzard.
Speaker 1: And this guy over his name is Portuguese Phillips. That's
Speaker 1: Phil's great grandfather. His name is Portuguese Phillips. And he
Speaker 1: rides through a blizzard. I can't remember the exact number
Speaker 1: of miles, but it's hundreds of miles in a blizzard.
Speaker 1: It takes him like forty eight hours and he literally
Speaker 1: arrives at Fort Laramie on in the middle of a
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve party. So I guess it took him that
Speaker 1: long between the twenty one and three days. His horse
Speaker 1: dies in front of the unmarried officers quarters building where
Speaker 1: they're having a Christmas party, and he staggers into this
Speaker 1: Christmas party with the news of the of the Fetterman,
Speaker 1: of the Fetterman fight, and then Fort Laramie sends out
Speaker 1: troops to to to reinforce the fort. Horse dies front.
Speaker 1: Horse dies in front, easier to dismount. The poor horse
Speaker 1: dies in front. The name of the building is his
Speaker 1: old Bedlam. It's a fort at it's a it's a
Speaker 1: building at Fort Laramie that was the enlisted or the
Speaker 1: unmarried Officers corp Portuguese Phillips want to end up having
Speaker 1: to him, I don't know, but there's a monument to
Speaker 1: him at Fort Laramie for making that ride. And the
Speaker 1: fort meanwhile is prepped for like a worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: and they have explosives rigged up and breaking emergency thing.
Speaker 1: So Carrington is so worried about them being overrun that
Speaker 1: he uh he comes up with a plan and the
Speaker 1: they stored the powder. The armory at the in the
Speaker 1: middle of Fort Fille was in the middle of Fort
Speaker 1: Field Carney and like a dugout kind of building where
Speaker 1: they stored all the powder, and the plan was that
Speaker 1: if the walls were breached, all of the women and
Speaker 1: children would go into the go down where the gunpowder
Speaker 1: was and they would set the powder off and blow
Speaker 1: it up so that they would not suffer the the
Speaker 1: death that they would otherwise suffer if the if the
Speaker 1: fort were overrun. But they were so worried about that today.
Speaker 1: Actually that was they had a plan for that tough
Speaker 1: use the light man used to light. That's not to
Speaker 1: call this podcast episode. Make a note of that. Ar
Speaker 1: all right. The book is like you can buy the
Speaker 1: book right now, right now, just buy it'll shift you
Speaker 1: the next day or everywhere books are sold. Everywhere books
Speaker 1: are sold. Tell people how to find you? Are you
Speaker 1: do you do social media? Yeah? I do? Uh my
Speaker 1: kids think I'm not very good at it. But I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I'm on because of Karan. I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Uh so on Instagram, I'm m w punk that's pun
Speaker 1: k E. And on Twitter I'm m punk p U
Speaker 1: and K. And the book is called the book is
Speaker 1: called Ridgeline. And you can go ask your local bookstore,
Speaker 1: Amazon and Barnes. My mom's husband, Um calls Books and Nobles,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble. What if you want to listen to it?
Speaker 1: There is a great audio version. I did not. I
Speaker 1: read a little. I read the historical notes at the end.
Speaker 1: Who they hire to read a soap opera actor, A
Speaker 1: great guy. I love this. I love this. Uh that
Speaker 1: this person does it. That the person who reads this
Speaker 1: book is is a Lakota named Tatanka Means. He's the
Speaker 1: son of Russell Means, and he's from American Indian Movement,
Speaker 1: and he is a he is a Native American actor
Speaker 1: and uh and does a great job reading it. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, there's the audiobook version that did you try
Speaker 1: to read it? The wouldn't let you. I did not.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I would be very good at at
Speaker 1: reading the dialogue and things like that. I mean to
Speaker 1: be one thing, to read a nonfiction book. And I
Speaker 1: read the historical notes at the end, like I said,
Speaker 1: And I can do that, but I don't think i'd
Speaker 1: be very good at at like giving the right intonation
Speaker 1: to the arguments. They also and this is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting the parts of the book that are with the
Speaker 1: character of Francis Grammont, which are in the book written
Speaker 1: as journal entries. They hired a a a woman actor
Speaker 1: to read those parts, so it actually works out. I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good audio book. Um, I didn't
Speaker 1: get to read my first books. And then they sold
Speaker 1: my they sold my audio rights. Random House sold from
Speaker 1: my Buffalo book. They sold my audio rights. This thing
Speaker 1: I think it's called Brilliance Audio, which weirdly was, um
Speaker 1: not far from where I grew up. I think whatever
Speaker 1: the hell they were called. They did a lot of audio.
Speaker 1: They hired some soul popera guy to do it. I
Speaker 1: got those I remember getting that thing in the mail
Speaker 1: and putting it in and the second the second that
Speaker 1: guy opened his mouth, I couldn't get across the room.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get across the living room. Past turned off.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's not how it sounds. That's stuff
Speaker 1: that's personal. They had that they had ten years, They
Speaker 1: had the audio rights for ten years. Oh man. So
Speaker 1: at the end of that ten years, Um, my publisher
Speaker 1: got back my audio rights and I got to go
Speaker 1: down and read my own damn book. That's that's a
Speaker 1: good thing for that for for your books, in particular,
Speaker 1: it's so much your voice that I think it'd be
Speaker 1: really hard to have somebody else do it. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was real, real painful. But I'm glad you're happy with it. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's a good it's a good audio book. I mean,
Speaker 1: I uh, people have the choice if they prefer their
Speaker 1: books in audio form. It's it's there, okay, the ridge
Speaker 1: Line saying no article Ridge Line, the novel Michael Punk
Speaker 1: and again Punk with the E on the end. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: thank you. Can I tell you one final story? Yes.
Speaker 1: I grew up in South Dakota, and I took great
Speaker 1: pride in like the history of Deadwood and the western
Speaker 1: part of the state. When I was a kid, read
Speaker 1: all the books. I knew all the figures. And when
Speaker 1: it's college, whenever we would like take a shot at
Speaker 1: a bar or something, you gotta say it cheers, right,
Speaker 1: i'dowas cheers to Hugh Glass, because then it allowed me,
Speaker 1: like a couple of minutes to tell the story of
Speaker 1: Hugh Glass, which is just one of my favorite story.
Speaker 1: A lot of girls like that. I already had my wife, no,
Speaker 1: but I'd get you entertained with this cool story that
Speaker 1: was like my story. It was like my story, right,
Speaker 1: And then the movie came out and no, longer. Can
Speaker 1: I give that toast to be so you robbed it
Speaker 1: from I'll buy you a beer to western give me
Speaker 1: something new stories entertained folks will come up with some
Speaker 1: maybe into Portuguese philips or something else. Yeah, like here's
Speaker 1: the Portuguese film. Well his grandson. Who knows how many
Speaker 1: locals in what northern Wyoming you robbed of the ridge
Speaker 1: Line story? Now when they're taking a shot at a bar,
Speaker 1: they have this couple of minutes to sort of tell
Speaker 1: the Fetterman battle. Here's the apologies to any of those
Speaker 1: people I have. I have a feeling though that the
Speaker 1: most Wyomings will like this story being told. I'm going
Speaker 1: to start a new segment called Spencer's pick Up on
Speaker 1: pickup Advice, which do you see? Um? Quickly, speaking of movies,
Speaker 1: is this going to be turned into a cinematic I
Speaker 1: hope so. We have optioned it to the same company,
Speaker 1: Anonymous Content that optioned and produced The Revenant. Uh so
Speaker 1: they are great filmmaking company. They have optioned it. We're
Speaker 1: looking at it initially more as a scripted series. I
Speaker 1: think story this story is is too big, or you
Speaker 1: could do it as as a feature film, and I
Speaker 1: can imagine a good one, but I would love to
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to tell it in an even longer
Speaker 1: form of a scripted series. I'll tell you, John Lockery
Speaker 1: is quote last time you were here, I know I didn't. Well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think it is. Remind me, um,
Speaker 1: having your book made into a movie is like watching
Speaker 1: the ox and turned into a bullion cube. It is
Speaker 1: a It is a collaborative process, and you better be
Speaker 1: ready for that when you signed the option check. Like
Speaker 1: that a little square. I have hired higher hopes than
Speaker 1: that you can do a lot with a series. That's true.
Speaker 1: I think you can well. And there's so many great
Speaker 1: there's so much great storytelling being done through scripted series today.
Speaker 1: That jealous. I just said that because I'm jealous. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make myself filled. I want to have some
Speaker 1: wild West movies. Maybe I got to read a wild West,
Speaker 1: but you gotta write that. Um. All right, Michael Punk,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on. Everybody, go get
Speaker 1: a ridge line. I know we talked, we told the
Speaker 1: whole story. We didn't even we didn't because it takes
Speaker 1: twenty hours to read a book, right it does? Yeah? Me,
Speaker 1: So you don't know. Crap. Yeah, I'm listening to this
Speaker 1: at twenty two later hours ahead, folks. All Right, so
Speaker 1: you'll write another book and come back and I don't know,
Speaker 1: two years, I would love to, Okay, standing standing invite,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you for that, so that that'll motivate you.
Speaker 1: I will. That is a big motivator. Thanks, thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you,