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Speaker 1: This is Me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely

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Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You Can't

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Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the

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Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt

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Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor where

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Speaker 1: you stand with on x. Okay, we're joined here by

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Speaker 1: Michael punk, author of the Revenant, who like, Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: bold of you to come, and I'm happy that you're

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Speaker 1: here because we've made such a hobby out of um

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Speaker 1: expressed I have should say we I've made such a

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Speaker 1: hobby out of expressing my dissatisfaction with the movie The Revenant,

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Speaker 1: because of that they put it in coastal rainforest. I've

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Speaker 1: I've heard some rumors about this. Uh so I would

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Speaker 1: have thought you'd never want to come talk to me

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Speaker 1: because you'd be like, uh, insult didn't hurt. Well, you

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Speaker 1: know what, I have pretty thick skin, and I'm happy

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Speaker 1: to talk about the Revenant, and I I'll say good

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Speaker 1: things about it first, because I there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: reasons why I'm happy that movie got made. I can imagine,

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Speaker 1: but you know, uh, but there's I've got my own

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Speaker 1: qualms with as a as a historian, and somebody cares

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Speaker 1: about history, I've got I've got my knits to pick

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Speaker 1: with with the Revenant. But but let me be clear,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to start totally negative. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to start totally negative. I just thought that was a

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Speaker 1: good end because I'm still I'm still like just happy

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Speaker 1: that you're here. Well, I've got a couple of of

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Speaker 1: points to raise about your book to at some point

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Speaker 1: depending on how negative this gets, and you know, you

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Speaker 1: guys really go after me. Got I got a couple

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Speaker 1: of things I want to raise with you, So I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna positive. Um, our producer credit sent me some articles

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Speaker 1: and um, there's a couple of articles pointing out It's

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Speaker 1: like funny that around the time, I guess it was

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Speaker 1: probably around the time the movie The Revenue came out,

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Speaker 1: there are articles being written profiles of you. There were

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Speaker 1: sort of pointing to the fact that you had this

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Speaker 1: other life, that you weren't just a writer. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: uh have had varying interests over the years and have

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Speaker 1: always been passionate about Western history and I love writing,

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Speaker 1: but I also have also been really interested in public

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Speaker 1: policy and uh, global politics and have had a career

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Speaker 1: that is on that thread as well, and so so yeah,

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Speaker 1: it Uh, all these things kind of mixed together and

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Speaker 1: makes sense to me in their own way, but that

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Speaker 1: probably takes a little bit of explaining. You were You

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Speaker 1: were born in mountain Man country. I was born in Wyoming.

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Speaker 1: Born in Uh in Level, Wyoming at the foot of

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Speaker 1: the Big Horn Mountains. Did you have early Did you

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Speaker 1: have an early fascination with the fur trappers? Totally? Totally? Uh,

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Speaker 1: my dad. My parents are both retired school teachers, and

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Speaker 1: I was, uh super lucky because my mom, an elementary

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Speaker 1: school teacher, really kind of instilled a love of history.

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Speaker 1: She likes reading and books and and she loves history.

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Speaker 1: My dad was a biology teacher and a sportsman, and

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Speaker 1: he really they both are from Kansas. They went out

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Speaker 1: to have their first teaching job in lovel Wyoming after

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Speaker 1: going to college in Kansas, and they fell in love

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Speaker 1: with this this little town of Level at the foot

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Speaker 1: of the Big Horns. And my dad in particular, who

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Speaker 1: kind of grew up fishing and small game hunting in Kansas, uh,

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Speaker 1: kind of discovered the potential of fishing and hunting in

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Speaker 1: in the West. In in the in the Rockies, and

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Speaker 1: uh fell in love with that. And then I think

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Speaker 1: especially as a as a bio, I just by training

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Speaker 1: it gave him that extra uh, just a different angle

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Speaker 1: and interest on on being outdoors and so he definitely

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Speaker 1: instilled that in in his kids. Um, and between the

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Speaker 1: two of them, I just ended up. Well, I've ended

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Speaker 1: up where I belong, which is here. It must have

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Speaker 1: been a great advantage to grow up in a place

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Speaker 1: like Wyoming if you wanted to be a mountain man,

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Speaker 1: because I grew up being obsessed with the history of

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Speaker 1: the West, having never been there, right, Uh, and so

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Speaker 1: everything was like, uh, it felt very removed. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: just one of the things I love about Western history

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Speaker 1: is how Western American history is, how recent a lot

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Speaker 1: of it is. And the little street that I grew

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Speaker 1: up on in Level, Wyoming, West Seventh Street, there wasn't

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Speaker 1: There was an old lady who lived next to us, uh,

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Speaker 1: kind of the little old lady in the little white

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Speaker 1: house next hours that gave us the Vanilla Wafers. Was

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Speaker 1: the friendly old lady in the neighborhood, and she had

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Speaker 1: been born in in Level Uh, and she remembered a

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Speaker 1: mountain man named John Blue, who would ride out of

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Speaker 1: the Big Horn Mountains every two months and come down

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Speaker 1: into level to reprovision, and she would tell us this

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Speaker 1: story about John Blue with the Mountain Man and I.

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Speaker 1: Over the years, Uh, driving up into the Big Horns,

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Speaker 1: you could drive past his his old cabin, but literally,

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Speaker 1: in the space of one life, you could touch that

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Speaker 1: earlier era. And I love that about Wyoming and Montana.

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Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the writer Ian Fraser. Yeah, yeah, he.

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Speaker 1: I took him on his first hunting trip and we

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Speaker 1: floated the river here in Montana, and he'd already he

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Speaker 1: had lived here. It's spent quite a bit of time

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Speaker 1: in Montana. But you're saying one of the things he

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Speaker 1: likes ab out it, um is that when you go

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Speaker 1: to a place where something happened, not much happened after that,

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Speaker 1: so you can go there and still kind of be like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, And I thought of that one day.

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Speaker 1: I went to see where Dylan Thomas uh drank himself

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Speaker 1: to death right in Manhattan. He actually died it the hospital,

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Speaker 1: but like kind of where he collapsed, and UM, imagine

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Speaker 1: all the ship that's occurred at that intersection since then.

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Speaker 1: It makes the heart to picture. But then when you

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Speaker 1: go to someplace for like a big fight happened, or

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Speaker 1: some people ran some buffalo over a cliff, you go like,

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Speaker 1: got it, Yeah, totally can picture because exactly I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm a I love Civil War history too, and and

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Speaker 1: have visited a lot of the Civil War battlefields back east,

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Speaker 1: and one of the sad things about a lot of

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Speaker 1: them is they haven't been very well preserved. And you know,

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Speaker 1: there's a there's a McDonald's right in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the place where the you know, the cannons were supposed

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Speaker 1: to be set up, and it's it's harder to imagine.

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Speaker 1: And out here. I was thinking about it today because

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Speaker 1: I drove by the Madison Buffalo Jump, which I always

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Speaker 1: send people to go see, because I say, what I

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Speaker 1: love about the Madison Buffalo Jump is you hike up

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Speaker 1: on that on that cliff, and you stand up out

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Speaker 1: there and you look down on the valley of the

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Speaker 1: Three Forks, and it looks quite pretty close to what

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Speaker 1: it looked like, you know, two years ago. And that's

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Speaker 1: just a really cool thing that we, you know, can't

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Speaker 1: take for granted in this big country that we live in.

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Speaker 1: Out here. I suppose It's worth pointing out that in

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Speaker 1: the case of the Madison Buffalo jump, the animals are gone.

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Speaker 1: The animals noticeable. Yeah, the landscape looks similar. You can

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Speaker 1: talk about what you're just walk everybody through your books.

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Speaker 1: So I want to over focus. I do want to

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Speaker 1: focus a lot on the revenue, because it's not not

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Speaker 1: I want to focus on the revenue. I want to

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Speaker 1: focus on our mutual interests in those people and what

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Speaker 1: they were up to. Yeah. So, Uh, when I'm a

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Speaker 1: lawyer by a training, I went to to college. I

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Speaker 1: grew up in Wyoming, went to college back east and

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Speaker 1: went to law school, and after law school, went to

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Speaker 1: work in in Washington, d c. Uh. I work for

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Speaker 1: Senator Bacchus. It's where I met my wife. She's from

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Speaker 1: she's from Montana. Met her work in Senator Baucus's office. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And I like working in government a lot, I found myself.

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Speaker 1: You don't hear that very often now. I I like uh,

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Speaker 1: public policy and UH and I enjoy especially the most

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Speaker 1: recent job I had being a U S Ambassador. I

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Speaker 1: love representing the United States of America overseas, and I

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Speaker 1: love negotiating on behalf of the country. It was it

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Speaker 1: was a blast. I love that. Um. But I found

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Speaker 1: myself in Washington, d C. For a time, not working

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Speaker 1: in government, instead working in a law firm. And I

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Speaker 1: did not like working in a law firm. And I

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Speaker 1: started trying to plot my way into something different. And

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Speaker 1: I had the idea I'd always been interested in in writing,

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Speaker 1: and I thought, well, if I can be a writer,

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Speaker 1: I can live wherever I want to live. And my

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Speaker 1: wife and I I both wanted to move back to

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Speaker 1: the West. And so I started, uh getting up early

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Speaker 1: in the morning and writing what became The Revenant, and

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Speaker 1: UH and I I always for me, UH really relate

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Speaker 1: when I saw shaw sh ank Redemption. And I always

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Speaker 1: felt like my shosh Ank Redemption moment was kind of

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Speaker 1: chipping through the wall of my cell with those hand tools.

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Speaker 1: Was kind of sitting down at the computer every day

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Speaker 1: and chipping away at at writing The Revenant. And when

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Speaker 1: when I was able to get it published and we

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Speaker 1: sold the film rights, that was our kind of escape moment.

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Speaker 1: Were you surprised to get published? Um? In, I didn't

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Speaker 1: take it for granted, for sure. I as I was

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Speaker 1: going along, I was feeling like I had more and

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Speaker 1: more of a chance. I mean, when when I started

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Speaker 1: writing a book, I didn't really know if I could

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Speaker 1: do it, and then I got about halfway into it

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Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know what, I can definitely finish this,

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Speaker 1: and I felt like it was a great story. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know anything about publishing, but I started getting encouragement

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Speaker 1: from people. Um, I guess I wasn't surprised, but I was.

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Speaker 1: I was. I was thrilled, believe me, because I did.

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Speaker 1: I did feel like that was my opportunity to live

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Speaker 1: where I wanted to live and go do something different.

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Speaker 1: And working as a writer is one of the great

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Speaker 1: luxuries that you can have because you have sound much

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Speaker 1: freedom to kind of follow you the things you're interested in.

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Speaker 1: What year did you come out? It came out in

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Speaker 1: I got the contract to publish it right before nine eleven,

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Speaker 1: uh so two thousand and one, and it was I

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Speaker 1: think published in two thousand and two. And then you

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Speaker 1: you went on and published two more or three more.

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Speaker 1: Moved back to Montana after we sold the book and

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Speaker 1: uh uh published, researched and published two nonfiction books while

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Speaker 1: living in in Montana. The first one is a nonfiction

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Speaker 1: book called Fire and Brimstone about a mining disaster and

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Speaker 1: Beaute in nineteen seventeen. It's a very narrative, nonfiction style book.

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Speaker 1: I hope it's told in a very kind of engaging,

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Speaker 1: almost novelistic type of way. But it's completely uh nonfiction,

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Speaker 1: nothing's made up. Uh. Then after that, I wrote Last Stand,

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Speaker 1: the book about the Buffalo, and uh it was after

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Speaker 1: writing Last Stand that I had the opportunity to to

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Speaker 1: be US ambassador to the World Trade Organization. So we

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Speaker 1: moved over to Geneva, Switzerland. My family and I for

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Speaker 1: for six years were over there, and uh after I

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Speaker 1: came back from that, started to work on the new

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Speaker 1: book which will come out in uh June if next year,

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Speaker 1: which is is called Ridgeline. It's a another novel, Don't

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Speaker 1: go over the Ridge line. Well that that turned out

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Speaker 1: to be, uh in hindsight, what the lesson? What the

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Speaker 1: lesson should have been? Tell? Uh, yeah, it's like an

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Speaker 1: apocalypse now right, Never get out of the boat, Never

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Speaker 1: get off the boat, Never get off the boat, and

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Speaker 1: then never go over You can share because we we've

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Speaker 1: talked about I know, the subject of the book. We

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Speaker 1: talked about it now and then actually one day we're

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Speaker 1: expect trying to guess what year it was, and someone

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Speaker 1: pointed out that we'll tell you what the book is. So.

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Speaker 1: Ridgeline is a novel that is based on the Fetterman Fight,

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Speaker 1: which is a until the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

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Speaker 1: The Fetterman Fight was the worst US military defeat in

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Speaker 1: in U s Military history. Eighty one guys right over

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Speaker 1: a ridgeline in the Powder River Valley of Wyoming in

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, and they ride into a massive trap

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Speaker 1: that has been set by the Lakota and the Cheyenne

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Speaker 1: and the Arapaho, and uh, without revealing too much, it

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Speaker 1: ends badly for for a lot of them, the soldiers,

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Speaker 1: that is. Um, but it's a badly in a real

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Speaker 1: and it ends very badly for a lot of them.

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Speaker 1: Um and uh like even post mortem. Yeah, it's uh

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Speaker 1: this this this was this was this was not pretty,

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Speaker 1: but it's a it's a it's an incredible historical moment

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Speaker 1: and story and it's It takes place in the midst

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Speaker 1: of what is often called Red Clouds War, which was

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Speaker 1: a war that broke out after the after the US

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Speaker 1: foisted broke one treaty and foisted another one on on

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Speaker 1: the tribes. Walk people through that timeline, like yeah, basically

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Speaker 1: was correct me where I'm wrong and pick up you

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Speaker 1: know where it's He's fit. But everybody's through with the

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Speaker 1: Oregon Trail. UM people wanted to spur off the Oregon

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Speaker 1: Trail and get up to the goldfields in the north,

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Speaker 1: and that war was kind of centered around like can

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Speaker 1: we get can whites have safe passage come to Montana

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Speaker 1: to go to the north? Right? So I mean that

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Speaker 1: was that like sort of the bait, that was the

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Speaker 1: defining argument right that Well, the way I would describe

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Speaker 1: it is, ah, before the Civil War, there was a

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Speaker 1: flood of migration from the East UH to to California

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Speaker 1: and Oregon, and tons of people coming across the continent,

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Speaker 1: including coming across UH what's now Wyoming, but they were

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Speaker 1: all headed west. They're all headed the California Oregon and

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Speaker 1: the tribes in that era were not super psyched about

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Speaker 1: that and there was a lot of conflict, but the

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Speaker 1: us UH negotiated a treaty that basically gave access across

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Speaker 1: the Oregon Trail. Is it fair to say like the

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Speaker 1: gripe centered around UM impacts on wildlife movements and our things,

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Speaker 1: like they're they're grazing areas, heavily displacing animals out of

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Speaker 1: areas that once had animals, making hunting hard. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: was that certainly happened along the Oregon Trail. But for

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Speaker 1: a while there was a bit of what the treaty

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Speaker 1: also did is it gave is it gave the tribes

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Speaker 1: most of the land to the north of the Oregon Trail,

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Speaker 1: to the north of the of the North Platte River,

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Speaker 1: and and there was a fair amount of equilibrium there

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Speaker 1: for a while. What happens after the Civil War, during

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Speaker 1: and after the Civil War, and even right before, is

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Speaker 1: they discover golden in Montana, and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: people are not content anymore to sort of go across

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Speaker 1: the Oregon Trail on their way to California and Oregon.

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Speaker 1: As you say, they started spurring off and going up

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Speaker 1: to the gold fields of Montana. Uh. Bozeman Trail, for example,

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Speaker 1: head going to Bozeman, and the quickest way to get

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Speaker 1: there was right through the Powder River Valley. And that

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Speaker 1: was great hunting land and was had absolutely been given

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Speaker 1: to the tribes as part of this this earlier treaty.

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Speaker 1: And so uh the the US as it does multiple

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Speaker 1: times throughout nineteenth century history, when treaties with the tribes

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Speaker 1: become inconvenient, uh, they just either break them or force

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Speaker 1: a renegotiation, and in this case, they essentially did both.

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Speaker 1: They they negotiated a new treaty allowing the US to

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Speaker 1: go through the Powder River Valley, but they negotiated it

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Speaker 1: largely with tribes that didn't live in the Powder River Valley.

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Speaker 1: And as you might imagine, UH, the that that result

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Speaker 1: uh was enraging to the to the tribes that actually

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Speaker 1: lived there. And what came out of that was was

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Speaker 1: war uh, namely Red Clouds War UH. And it's one

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Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting about Red Clouds War is

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Speaker 1: the is the Indians win. Uh. Their victory ends up

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Speaker 1: not lasting very long, but they actually win this war.

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Speaker 1: And as a result of winning the war, the U.

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Speaker 1: S Army UH retreats from the forts that they had

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Speaker 1: set up in the Powder River Valley, and for a

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Speaker 1: period of time, the lands went back to the to

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Speaker 1: the tribes. What happens then is they discovered gold in

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Speaker 1: the Black Hills, and that leads in eighteen seventy six

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Speaker 1: to a new gold rush uh and uh, but actually

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Speaker 1: I think it's eighteen seventy four that was a discovery

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Speaker 1: of gold and within two years, uh, fast forward almost

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Speaker 1: to the to the end of the Indian Wars because

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Speaker 1: at that point there's just not enough space anymore, uh

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Speaker 1: for them to coexist and uh and they the Indian

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Speaker 1: Wars come to a fairly quick end end after that.

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Speaker 1: I think it's interesting and looking at your your collection

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Speaker 1: of work is that you have like a Mountain Man book,

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Speaker 1: The Revenant, which is very early stage exploit to to

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Speaker 1: the West, like very early stage exploration of the West, right,

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Speaker 1: Like people are still just kind of like trying to

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Speaker 1: fill in the map, like making, um, the characters near

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Speaker 1: hue Glass and those are making sort of legitimate discoveries

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Speaker 1: about what river flows in the right. And then you have, uh,

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Speaker 1: this forthcoming work that's kind of you know, at a

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Speaker 1: real hot point, right and then your Buffalo but sort

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Speaker 1: of is almost um, the aftermath dealing with kind of

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Speaker 1: like focused on this, this this other element of the West,

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Speaker 1: of of people getting around to look and be like

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Speaker 1: holy shit, yeah, what did we do well? What's uh?

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Speaker 1: And and we talked about this a little bit just

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Speaker 1: how in many ways, how compact the recent history of

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Speaker 1: the West is that the amount of time that that

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Speaker 1: European Americans have been out here. It all happens in uh,

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Speaker 1: in the span of a a couple of centuries. And UH,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot that goes on in the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: For example, when you think about UH, you know Lewis

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Speaker 1: and Clark coming out here at the beginning of the

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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, and by the ends of the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century, you know, the Buffalo were virtually gone, and

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Speaker 1: and and the whole West is settled by European Americans.

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Speaker 1: And for all of that to happen in a hundred

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Speaker 1: years is is stunning when you think about it, that

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Speaker 1: that's one lifetime. One of the things I love about

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Speaker 1: this this new book is when I was doing the

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Speaker 1: research for for Ridgeline and learning about the Powder River War,

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Speaker 1: I was thrilled to discover that Jim Bridger shows up

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Speaker 1: as an old man scouting for the U. S. Army.

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Speaker 1: And for people who read The Revenant, Uh, Jim Bridger

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Speaker 1: in eighteen three and the Revenant is the boy who's

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Speaker 1: out there. He's the inexperienced boy who is one of

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Speaker 1: the two people who abandoned Hugh Glass. And the fact

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Speaker 1: that in his life. He goes from you know, being

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Speaker 1: part of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and being in

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Speaker 1: this part of the country as one of the first

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Speaker 1: European Americans to come out here and trap and lives

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Speaker 1: through the fur trade era. He establishes a fort. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He first of all, he gets half the state named

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Speaker 1: after him. He gets half state named half him, including

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Speaker 1: a place that's you know, not more than a couple

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Speaker 1: hundred yards from here, UM, but he he it's it's

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Speaker 1: his recommendation that UH that UH determines the path for

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Speaker 1: for the South Pass, which is where the Oregon Trail

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Speaker 1: passes over. He sets up a fort on the Oregon Trail,

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Speaker 1: and UM makes money selling UH goods and supplies to emigrants.

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Speaker 1: So he lives through that whole UH pioneer era. He

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Speaker 1: scouts for pioneers, he ends up scouting for the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Army UH, and he sees the the end of the

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Speaker 1: of the Indian Wars in his life. And that's that's

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Speaker 1: just it's epic. It's it's hard to even imagine that.

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Speaker 1: The thing I think about him is, you know, when

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Speaker 1: everybody UH talks about how everything went the ship in

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Speaker 1: their lifetime, you know it used to be no one

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Speaker 1: was here used to right. Can you imagine Bridger? Well,

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Speaker 1: he had to be like no, no, exactly. Well. And

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Speaker 1: one of the one of the really fascinating anecdotes, uh

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Speaker 1: that I came across and again and doing the research

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Speaker 1: for this new book is not only was Jim Bridger

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Speaker 1: scouting for the U. S. Army in this era, but

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Speaker 1: James Beckworth also was who uh people who know about

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Speaker 1: the former slave and African American uh mountain man, and

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Speaker 1: he had actually come out here as part of that

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Speaker 1: same uh company they're rocking out in for a company

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Speaker 1: that the Jim Bridger had been apart. So both of

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Speaker 1: these guys come out as teenagers, uh, to to the

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Speaker 1: wild wild West of the eighteen twenties, and then both

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Speaker 1: of them end up together as sixty year old men

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Speaker 1: scouting for the U. S. Army in eighteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: and they literally get sent out by the commanding officer

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Speaker 1: of the fort to find to figure out where the

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Speaker 1: Indians are. And I just imagined them and this happened,

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Speaker 1: you know, Jim Bridger and James Beckworth riding their horses

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Speaker 1: up the Powder River Valley as sixty year old men

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Speaker 1: reminiscing on their lives and you know, what conversations were

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Speaker 1: they having. And I try and think about that as

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Speaker 1: part of as part of the book. One of the

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Speaker 1: things I wonder about is, uh, you know, was somebody

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Speaker 1: like Jim Bridger, who was known as a person of

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Speaker 1: of incredible integrity, was he regretting in any way how

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Speaker 1: much he had helped open up the West? And I

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Speaker 1: think it absolutely Boone had that. Boon did. And there's

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Speaker 1: a set of conversations I think about often like that,

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Speaker 1: Like when Boone was very, very old in his seventies,

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Speaker 1: he would go on extended hunting trips with his own

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Speaker 1: slave who became like his hunting buddy, his confidant, and

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Speaker 1: um to imagine, and this is after he had been

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Speaker 1: displaced out of places and displaced out of places. And

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Speaker 1: he definitely, uh, you know, if you look in his biography,

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Speaker 1: had an awareness of what have been lost, and you'd

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Speaker 1: have to think that Bridger had it. I I do

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Speaker 1: think he had that. And he was married, uh into

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Speaker 1: the Shoshonee tribe, so he had lived the Native American

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Speaker 1: culture and he was watching it literally being decimated. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I can't imagine that they were not profound feelings of

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Speaker 1: of misgivings about what was was going on. And so

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Speaker 1: it's always difficult because you don't want to ah, sort

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Speaker 1: of impose twenty one century views of the universe on

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Speaker 1: historical characters and and uh, and so I try not

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Speaker 1: to do that, but I think that somebody like Bridger

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Speaker 1: uh must have had those types of misgivings. Well, the

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Speaker 1: way I think that it's I don't think it's twenty

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Speaker 1: and I don't think it's twenty one century views necessarily

404
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Speaker 1: because here's a person who derived his his income and

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Speaker 1: livelihood from the land's ability to put off resources. So

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Speaker 1: at a time there was at least the hope and

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Speaker 1: and you're you watched it happened to your peers that

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Speaker 1: you could turn great fortune from trapping beaver, right, and

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Speaker 1: it was just there for the taking, and food was

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Speaker 1: readily available. It just like it was not like securing

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Speaker 1: food was not an issue. There was no pressure about.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you had pressure from like indigenous forces who

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Speaker 1: didn't want you on their landscape, but because you regarded

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Speaker 1: that in a sort of like low priority way, it

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Speaker 1: felt like there was like an inexhaustible supply of land

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Speaker 1: out there. So even if you just look at it

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Speaker 1: totally pragmatically and look at it just and very personally.

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Speaker 1: When you get to where the beaver are gone, um,

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Speaker 1: it's much harder to secure food. Huge areas that had

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Speaker 1: buffalo have been depleted of buffalo, and now you need

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Speaker 1: to make your living contracting out to the military. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't think you need to get to nostalgic to

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Speaker 1: be like to realize that you have been, that your

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Speaker 1: fortunes have gone down well, and the they must have

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Speaker 1: had a I mean, at one level they experienced nature

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Speaker 1: as and and you see this throughout the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: You know, people in that era had a view of

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Speaker 1: nature where first and foremost they had to survive, and

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Speaker 1: so they were probably less focused on is it a

430
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:33,919
Speaker 1: pretty vista? Is it a pretty sunset? But by the

431
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: same token, I just can't imagine that they did not

432
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: have an appreciation for the beauty of the place that

433
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: they that they lived in. And I in small ways

434
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: today as uh, when I try and imagine what it

435
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 1: felt like to live in that era, I feel nostalgia

436
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,959
Speaker 1: for parts of Montana that that I knew when they

437
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:04,440
Speaker 1: were wild and they're not wild anymore. And it makes

438
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: me angry sometimes when I when I see that and

439
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:11,640
Speaker 1: to see it on the scale that that they were

440
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: seeing it. Uh. And that's talking about about Jim Bridger.

441
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,439
Speaker 1: We've even got yet to the perspective of of the

442
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: Native Native Americans who see their there not only their land,

443
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: but their their their whole culture and way of living

444
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 1: overturned in a in a space of a few years.

445
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 1: It's it's almost impossible to imagine what that would have

446
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: felt like. What one of the things I try and

447
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: do in the book is to think about what did

448
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: that feel like. That's one of the I think the

449
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: fun things you can do with fiction, as you can imagine,

450
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: not just you don't just talk about what happened, You

451
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: imagine how did it feel and how did it feel

452
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:54,960
Speaker 1: for the people who are living in that era. To

453
00:28:55,280 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: experience change at that scale does given away too much

454
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 1: to tell us whose perspective the book is told, So

455
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 1: it's told from multiple perspectives. Uh. And I think a

456
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: story that rich and complex has to be told from

457
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 1: from multiple perspectives. And one of the things that one

458
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: of the problems I have with a lot of Western

459
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: American history is I think too often it's told only

460
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: from the the European American perspective, and that the Native

461
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: perspective is given short shrift, and so I try and

462
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: tell the story from from multiple perspectives. One of the

463
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:41,960
Speaker 1: experiences that I had, actually one of the one of

464
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:44,720
Speaker 1: the greatest jobs I had ever in my life is

465
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 1: I UH was born and raised in Port and Level, Wyoming,

466
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: and UH I went to junior high and high school

467
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: in Torrington, Wyoming, in the southeastern corner of the state,

468
00:29:56,240 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 1: and UH loved history and did this job where I

469
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: worked in the summers of high school and college doing

470
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 1: working for the National Park Service at Fort Laramie National

471
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 1: Historic Site and dressed up every day literally in a

472
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: eight seventy six cavalry cavalry uniform and shot guns and

473
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 1: cannons and baked bread using the historic bread recipe and

474
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: talked to tourists all day about the history of the West.

475
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 1: That was my job. And I realized even at the

476
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:32,040
Speaker 1: time that the story that we were telling about the

477
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: history of the West, UH was quite one sided. UH,

478
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: and I've always felt like we could do a better

479
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: job of telling that story. And I hope you know,

480
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,200
Speaker 1: in some measure I'm doing that with this this new book.

481
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: It's difficult to pull off though, because, um, you can

482
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:56,200
Speaker 1: give the perspective of your own culture and own people.

483
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: It was a little bit of a trap and trying

484
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 1: to give the perspective of someone else, because even a

485
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 1: well intentioned effort can be met with accusations of colonial appropriation,

486
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:17,239
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation, right, and so it's like I applaud you

487
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: for not just turning around and saying forget it. Well,

488
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: like it will never be rewarded, it will always be criticized.

489
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: The best that I can do is to h from

490
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 1: where I sit, to all the research and all the

491
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: work that I can to learn all aspects of the history,

492
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: and try and write it down in a way that

493
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 1: I hope is accurate, and then subject it, which I've done,

494
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: uh to a lot of two readers with a lot

495
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: of different perspectives, including UH, a lot of different Native

496
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: American readers, and UH, this book has been through a

497
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 1: lot of drafts, and the draft that it's in reflects

498
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: a lot of that input. So I am sure that

499
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 1: I'm not telling the story perfectly. H. I know that's

500
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: not the case. I hope I'm telling it in a

501
00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: in a fair way that that brings some balance to

502
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: the story. And at that point, if I get things wrong, um,

503
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: people can tell me about that and we can have

504
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 1: that conversation and we can continue to have that conversation

505
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 1: and learn all of us. But I think that's a

506
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: more productive way to to two deal with an issue,

507
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: to deal with issues like that, than to ignore them

508
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: or worst, to to write it from only one perspective.

509
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the historian Dan Floores? I know,

510
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 1: not in detail. Um, I know he's written a lot

511
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:01,479
Speaker 1: about the buffalo and it. I don't I'm not an

512
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 1: expert on him at all. Yeah, he's done some pretty

513
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: influential work. And um, he's an environmental historian. When I

514
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: was in graduate school, I took his one of his

515
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: seminar courses. You had like you had to sort of

516
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: take a seminar outside of your discipline, you know. So

517
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 1: it took an environmental history seminar with Dan Flores, and

518
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: he gave a lecture one day about the Battle of

519
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,000
Speaker 1: Adobe Walls. I think it's like the second Battle of

520
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: Adobe Walls. And if you ever heard of this with

521
00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:32,720
Speaker 1: the buffalo hunters and yeah, so they weren't supposed to

522
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: they weren't supposed to hunt south of the state Southern

523
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: Pacific rail line. Right, they weren't supposed to move into

524
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: the southern plains. And these guys paid little, little to

525
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 1: no attention to that kind of like what you're talking

526
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: about with using the bowsman trail. And they were very

527
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: well armed, um buffalo, Yeah, and uh, extraordinarily good shooters.

528
00:33:58,040 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: Had this little fortress called Adobe Walls, and they ran

529
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: hide hunting operations out of there, and it was like

530
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: very defendable, and there were experts, um. And at one

531
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: point in time, the tribes gathered in great number to

532
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: go once and for all eliminate these guys out of

533
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: this area. And and and native tellings of what happened

534
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: on the way to this raid. Uh, young brave kills

535
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: a skunk, which is a thing you do not do

536
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: on the way to a fight. When they get to

537
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: Adobe Walls, the hide hunters managed to kill chief at

538
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: like some pot shot, and they kill a chief. And

539
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: the battle, which was supposed to be this great routing

540
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: of these hide hunters fizzles and the Indians right off.

541
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: And then the telling of the hide hunters at Adobe Walls,

542
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,759
Speaker 1: it was there like superior skill, superior firepower, right, that

543
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: one the day and Flori's explains how and the I

544
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,799
Speaker 1: think it's the Southern Cheyenne telling is that that guy

545
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: killed a skunk on the way to that fight, and

546
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 1: Floris then puts it to you like, um, who's right. Well,

547
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:29,400
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a perfect example of of why we

548
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 1: should be looking at these historical incidents from multiple perspectives.

549
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:39,880
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, we haven't done that in our history.

550
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 1: We haven't done a good job of that at all.

551
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 1: And so again, I I'm sure that there are plenty

552
00:35:47,160 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 1: of mistakes in in my book, but I I do

553
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:52,839
Speaker 1: hope that I've made the effort to tell the best

554
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,439
Speaker 1: story that I possibly can, including making a really big

555
00:35:56,480 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: effort to to to bring multiple perspectives there. You mentioned earlier,

556
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,760
Speaker 1: Um that the Fetterman fight was kind of the biggest

557
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: skirmish in the West prior to Little Big Horn. And

558
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: I've always really liked reading about Little Big Horn. And

559
00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: I think that if you read contemporary works about the

560
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: battle Little Big Horn, it's sort of they present it

561
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: as sort of this great culmination, right that all these

562
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 1: these these like outrageous figures and these like outsized human beings,

563
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 1: right like collided in this this moment, this sort of

564
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: like crescendo of tension in the American West, and it

565
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: lives like that, Like we know that I was reading

566
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:46,800
Speaker 1: this book from the sixties recently that touches briefly on

567
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,319
Speaker 1: a Little Big Horn and his treatment of Little Big Horn.

568
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:52,840
Speaker 1: I think this is before it became popular. His treatment

569
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: a Little Big Horn was basically like if you were

570
00:36:54,960 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: talking about the d D invasions. Okay, so there's this

571
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: massive undertaking that's going on, and meanwhile, off in some corner,

572
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: a officer makes a mistake and gets a couple hundred

573
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 1: people killed on D Day. And then later we talked

574
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 1: about June six. Later we talked about it, and we're like,

575
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 1: D Day huge successful objective, turned the tide. Oh and

576
00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: also this guy kind of screwed up and got everybody killed,

577
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 1: Like that was his like in the nineties sixties, that

578
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:32,399
Speaker 1: was his viewpoint of a little Big Horn didn't even

579
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 1: really warrant. It was just an anomaly, like a guy

580
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: made a stupid mistake. Had no real bearing on how

581
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: the Indian Wars went. Everything kept right on schedule. We

582
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: still like subjugated the Sioux Um. It was just it

583
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: just doesn't really like we focus on it, But why

584
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: are we focused on this? It didn't change the course

585
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 1: of It didn't change. So here's the course of destiny? Right?

586
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 1: I think I disagree with that that theory. I'll tell

587
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:07,800
Speaker 1: you why. Um. Well, first of all, look, these these

588
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:15,800
Speaker 1: battles where uh, where armies get wiped out are intrinsically fascinating,

589
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:18,320
Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, you kind of can't look away.

590
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: And so the Fetterman Fight, the Battle a Little Big Horn,

591
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: they just there there cat nip in terms of our

592
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:34,279
Speaker 1: interest because they're just so graphic. Um. But what I

593
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,799
Speaker 1: think is interesting about the difference between the Fetterman Fight

594
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:43,400
Speaker 1: and the Battle a Little Big Horn is the impact

595
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 1: that the battles had politically. And so I agree a

596
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: little bit with the point that the person was making

597
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:52,800
Speaker 1: that from a military standpoint. Um, you know, we're talking

598
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,439
Speaker 1: about eighty guys who die in the Fetterman fight, and

599
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: I don't remember the precise number with Custer too, U

600
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,480
Speaker 1: twenty or something like that. Um. And if you compare

601
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:09,720
Speaker 1: that to D Day, uh, that is not a massive battle.

602
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 1: But both of those uh fights happened at really interesting

603
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:19,560
Speaker 1: political moments in US history. The Feederman fight happens in

604
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, two years after the end of the

605
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: Civil War, when the US is weary of war. They've

606
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:35,480
Speaker 1: completely uh drawn down the size of the U. S. Army.

607
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: Um they're preoccupied with trying to manage, uh the the

608
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 1: reconstruction of the South, and that required a huge military

609
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: presence in and of itself. And there just was no

610
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:53,160
Speaker 1: interest in the in eighteen sixty six in in having

611
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:58,480
Speaker 1: a big fight out west. And so when Fetterman, when

612
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:02,839
Speaker 1: the Federman defeat happens, the US pulls back and the

613
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 1: Indians win this war for a couple of years. My

614
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 1: favorite anecdote about the Custer Battle is Custer uh fight.

615
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: The battle a little big horn occurs on June eighteen

616
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: seventy six, eighteen seventy six. Takes a long time for

617
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: the news to travel back to Washington, d C. It's

618
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:34,480
Speaker 1: Independence Day. The news of the Custer massacre arrives in Washington,

619
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: d C. On July four, eight seventy six, literally in

620
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: the midst of the celebration of the centennial of the

621
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:47,320
Speaker 1: hundred year anniversary of the country. It's like the biggest

622
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: turd in the punch bowl in American history. To that point,

623
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 1: and and the political reaction to the battle of a

624
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: Little Big Horn is the opposite of the of the

625
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: reaction to the fetterment fight. They decide enough, we're not

626
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:11,360
Speaker 1: gonna lose UH to the Indians in the west. And

627
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: they beginning at that moment, UH, they send out Nelson Miles,

628
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 1: who you know is one of the most kind of

629
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: BADASSUH warriors in the in the U. S. Army, and

630
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: he and and a big army go out west and

631
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:32,280
Speaker 1: they start doing something they hadn't done very much before,

632
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 1: which is attacking UH the Indians in the winter when

633
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:39,919
Speaker 1: they were at least able to fight. And within two

634
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 1: years the Indian Wars are over. Um. Crazy horses is

635
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:50,720
Speaker 1: on the reservation. Uh. He rolled up the nest first

636
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: to the next song the Nez Perce UH surrender and

637
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: UH sitting bowl is in exile in Canada. The Indian

638
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 1: Wars are over. And so the political significance of those battles,

639
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: even though in the if you look at them compared

640
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,399
Speaker 1: to some of the Civil War battles or or other

641
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:14,760
Speaker 1: battles where thousands of people die, Um, the political significance

642
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:30,240
Speaker 1: of those battles I think was huge. In reading Um,

643
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: the revenuet thing I really appreciate. You're gonna come around

644
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 1: to this. We've warmed up a little bit now, so

645
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: so you've you've been warming up. I feel like you've

646
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 1: been like like a wind windmilling for a sucker punch

647
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: to bring it on, bring it on. In reading the Revenue,

648
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: you solved for me. You solved for me a thing

649
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 1: I never understood, and it was a detail that I

650
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:56,760
Speaker 1: really appreciate it because I like, uh details. Um, even

651
00:42:56,800 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 1: with the director Michael Man, like he loved him so

652
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:06,920
Speaker 1: and Ali and lord knows what other movies. Um, the

653
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:13,719
Speaker 1: guy this is no burying anything. But the cinematographer Mo

654
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: Foulon that sort of like gave our show, like made

655
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:18,959
Speaker 1: our show like the way it is, like it looks

656
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: the way it is because this guy Mofoulon, Mofoulin, that

657
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 1: had been Michael Mann's assistant at a time, and Mo

658
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:30,839
Speaker 1: would talk talks about how Michael Mann was very attuned

659
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 1: to details, and you talk about how humans are really

660
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: smart animals, you know, and he viewed audiences that way,

661
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:43,879
Speaker 1: like intelligent animals, and he wanted things to look and

662
00:43:43,960 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: feel right, you know. I think it's one of the

663
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: great strengths like Karen McCarthy's, he really cares like how

664
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 1: things look. But in the book, I've always known that

665
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:57,479
Speaker 1: mountain you'd see mountain men wearing pants that were leather

666
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: to the knee to the knee, and you see depictions

667
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: of them leather to the knee and wool down from them.

668
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 1: They're down helpful. I never ever thought about what that was,

669
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: except for I don't know, so, uh, the state of

670
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: the art pants for a uh, state of the art

671
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: mountain man was was leather to the knee and wool

672
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:28,760
Speaker 1: from the knee down, because, uh, because wool dries quickly

673
00:44:29,160 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 1: and remains warm when it's wet. And of course, what

674
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 1: the fur tuators were doing with the beaver trappers were

675
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: doing was waiting in two cricks to pull out beaver traps.

676
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:44,280
Speaker 1: So they were constantly wading in and out of water.

677
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: And you can imagine wet, wet buckskin, uh is heavy

678
00:44:50,760 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: and uncomfortable and doesn't keep you warm. And so they yeah,

679
00:44:54,239 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: they wore these uh special pants. Uh yeah, knee boots,

680
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:03,319
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. But but the buckskin upper, what was the

681
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:07,879
Speaker 1: what's the advantage of that? Why wasn't it just that's

682
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:12,959
Speaker 1: a good question, Um, durability and availability of resource probably yeah,

683
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 1: And uh so I guess they didn't have enough wool

684
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: to to get the whole pant made out of wall,

685
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 1: so they just they did it from the knee down.

686
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:22,799
Speaker 1: And then I think they're pretty conscious about looks too,

687
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:25,439
Speaker 1: so they I get the sense they liked the look

688
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: of of buckskin and and you know all that and

689
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:33,759
Speaker 1: so a little bit of wall. Maybe what research did

690
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 1: you do that get that sort of brought about ideas

691
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,240
Speaker 1: that they were sort of they had they had ideas

692
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 1: of fashion or look, there was there were hairstyles. Oh

693
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: my god, they were like like in the frontiers, been

694
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:46,239
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier, but they would they had they

695
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 1: would plait their hair, they would braid their hair in

696
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 1: a specific way. Absolutely, And I think they admired the

697
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 1: dress of of a lot of the the native tribes

698
00:45:55,360 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 1: who also had wonderful uh clothing that they that they wore,

699
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: and they copied that. And um, I think there was

700
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 1: a I think they were quite fashion conscious in their

701
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:11,399
Speaker 1: in their own way. A thing that's troubled me, like,

702
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:15,399
Speaker 1: if there's a for any historians out there, for any

703
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 1: PhD candidates out there, there is a thing that has

704
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:23,520
Speaker 1: not been adequately explained about the mountain men. And I'll

705
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:24,719
Speaker 1: put it to you to see if you have any

706
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:26,840
Speaker 1: insights on it. Do you have any exposure to trapping?

707
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:28,839
Speaker 1: Do you have you done at trap? I have not

708
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:33,359
Speaker 1: trapped myself, I know, so I won't overstate my expertise. Here.

709
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: A beaver in a foothold trap is very, very difficult

710
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 1: to hang onto. UM we use today. The it's it's

711
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:55,839
Speaker 1: astounding how little the technology has switched between what they

712
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: were using, which is a double long spring trap. Granted

713
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 1: these are handful words, UM and and we still use

714
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:06,279
Speaker 1: double long spring traps today. Like you catch beavers, you can.

715
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: We've kind of gradually switched to something called coil spring,

716
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:13,520
Speaker 1: but I own some have caught beaver in them, and

717
00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:17,440
Speaker 1: they are like dead ringers for what they're us in

718
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:23,839
Speaker 1: those days. However, UM we use now a one way

719
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,360
Speaker 1: slide and you put it on a wire or a chain,

720
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:29,960
Speaker 1: and it's like when the beaver gets caught in the trap,

721
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:33,839
Speaker 1: he instinctively dives for deep water and there's a one

722
00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:36,879
Speaker 1: way slide wire and he can take the trap down

723
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: in the deep water and it's the slide wire is

724
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: anchored on both ends. It's anchored on the bank and

725
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 1: it's anchored out in three or four ft of water.

726
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: He can't come back up. The trap won't come back up,

727
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 1: and that's how you drown them. Anytime that beaver jack's

728
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: that lower stake out or dicks around too much on

729
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 1: the bank and twist that drowner wire up so that

730
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:07,879
Speaker 1: the slide can't slide, or any time he anyway incapacitates

731
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:12,680
Speaker 1: that slide wire, it's like it's probably a gone beaver.

732
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a toenail. He's gonna be he just

733
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:19,759
Speaker 1: has gone. You can't hang onto him. And when you

734
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 1: read historical accounts of how they made their sets, I

735
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: don't think anyone yet understands how they anchored off their

736
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 1: sets because any explanation I've read, I'm like, no, you

737
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,280
Speaker 1: wouldn't have the success rate. Because these guys are running

738
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: like six sets at a time. Allot of them carried

739
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 1: six traps, you see it all the time, and they're

740
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:42,279
Speaker 1: pulling like four or five beaver a day. No one

741
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 1: knows how they rigged their ship, and that would be

742
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: a great avenue of exploration for someone to find out,

743
00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:50,960
Speaker 1: like how they actually rigged their ship, and then some

744
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:54,359
Speaker 1: historian would go out and catch and have a four

745
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,760
Speaker 1: or five out of six trap success ratio using that equipment.

746
00:48:57,800 --> 00:48:59,680
Speaker 1: I don't think you could do it. People make a

747
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:02,319
Speaker 1: big lot of nap in a arrowhead nowadays and like

748
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:04,879
Speaker 1: killing deer with it. That doesn't impress me at all.

749
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 1: It would impress me to set six traps with those

750
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:10,440
Speaker 1: slide wires and catch five beavers. I don't know the

751
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 1: answer to that. I guess I knew that the way

752
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 1: that the beaver divers by drowning, but I don't know

753
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: how they I don't remember reading how they how they

754
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: rigged it. The people that saw it happen, I didn't

755
00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:29,879
Speaker 1: think too describe it. I have no They obviously had

756
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:31,880
Speaker 1: to figure out yeah, they just did it right, and

757
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 1: they would have been undoubtedly that have been very particular

758
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: about water depth and all kinds of other considerations. But

759
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: instead you just imagine, now it's like these people catching

760
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 1: all these beavers and you overlook like what it actually involved, yea,

761
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 1: and to do it while not getting killed. Well, I

762
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: think about that every time I'm fishing, because they you know,

763
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:57,880
Speaker 1: I'm walking up the same cricks that they were setting

764
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: beaver traps on and you know, they're thickly vegetated and

765
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about somebody hiding in the trees who

766
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 1: wants to kill me, and uh, and they were and

767
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:16,719
Speaker 1: you almost can't see how any of those guys survived. Uh,

768
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: and my god, that they not survived though, I mean,

769
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:23,719
Speaker 1: they died like flies. Well it's one of the reasons why.

770
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:27,359
Speaker 1: The fact that that Jim Bridger and James Beckworth are

771
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:33,000
Speaker 1: sixties sixty something guys in you know, in the eighteen sixties,

772
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 1: and the fact that they've lived through decades of a

773
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 1: pretty vigorous lifestyle is it's stunning. And they did it

774
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:48,239
Speaker 1: with like Bridger, didn't he have the whitman who was

775
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:50,919
Speaker 1: later in the women massacre. Didn't he carve a broad

776
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 1: head out of bridge or shoulder blade? Yea at the

777
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,239
Speaker 1: tearing around for years in the bone of his shoulders

778
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: and there's a there's an etching of that happening. And

779
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 1: Bridger is is leaning across a tree stump. Why this

780
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: while this guy literally I think it's and I think

781
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:12,839
Speaker 1: the arrowhead had been in there for two or three

782
00:51:12,920 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 1: years and and you know, I guess he got super

783
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 1: drunk and and let the guy kind of hack on

784
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:23,760
Speaker 1: him for a while, and he yanks out that arrowhead

785
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: and it was like a doctor doing people point out,

786
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 1: being like the first sort of like the first sort

787
00:51:28,239 --> 00:51:32,399
Speaker 1: of western style official surgery west of some latitude line.

788
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 1: You can you can imagine the reality TV event that

789
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:39,279
Speaker 1: that was at the rendezvous, the number of people that

790
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: stood around to kind of watch that. Um, can he

791
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:45,560
Speaker 1: walk us through the Huge Glass story? So the Huge

792
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 1: ask you a question. Absolutely, I want you to do it,

793
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm too I'm too dying. And all the

794
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 1: answers something, um, do you buy like, I know, you

795
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 1: know how Huge Glass died? You know what? Walk us

796
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:00,919
Speaker 1: through the Huge Glass? And then I want to ask

797
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:02,919
Speaker 1: you if you think that the legend of his death

798
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:04,279
Speaker 1: is true or not. But just walk us through the

799
00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 1: Hugh Glass story, pirates and everything. Okay, So uh, first

800
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:13,640
Speaker 1: of all, I'll tell a bit of an embarrassing side story,

801
00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: which is that The Revenant is not the first book

802
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: that I started to write. Um. I started to write

803
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 1: another book which was going to be loosely based on

804
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:29,360
Speaker 1: me and my experiences as like a young legislative aid

805
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:32,839
Speaker 1: in Washington, D C. And I got about you, you you

806
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't be on this show. Well, I'm getting I'm getting

807
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:40,919
Speaker 1: to that. I got about I got about halfway through

808
00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: that book and started sharing it with a couple of

809
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:47,040
Speaker 1: friends who I could trust, who both told me that

810
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:51,719
Speaker 1: it was it was boring, and that was hurtful. Those

811
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: are good friends. That it's it's they're good friends. But

812
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 1: it was hurtful because that was the fictionalized version of

813
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 1: my life that they were talking about. So uh so

814
00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:02,080
Speaker 1: right about the moment that I is abandoning a novel

815
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:07,240
Speaker 1: based on a fictionalized version of my apparently extremely boring life,

816
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:12,919
Speaker 1: I was. I was reading a book about the Mountain Man,

817
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:16,800
Speaker 1: nonfiction book, and there were two paragraphs in it about

818
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:21,120
Speaker 1: Hugh Glass. And these two paragraphs said, Uh, you know,

819
00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: there's this guy. He's mauled by a grizzly bear, horribly wounded. Uh.

820
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:30,120
Speaker 1: Two of his comrades are left to wait for him

821
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 1: to die and bury him, and instead of doing that,

822
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:39,839
Speaker 1: they rob him and abandoned him. And first of all,

823
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:44,200
Speaker 1: out of h anger, he crawls two hundred miles back

824
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: to the last vestige of civilization and survives and re

825
00:53:48,719 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 1: equips himself and then goes out to seek revenge, and

826
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:54,759
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, that's a pretty good story. That's a

827
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 1: that's a lot more interesting than my life. I'm going

828
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: to write a book about that. So that's where I

829
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:02,759
Speaker 1: got interested in the in the story and started doing

830
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:05,720
Speaker 1: the research on on Hugh Glass to to write the book.

831
00:54:05,719 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: And and for me, even when it's fiction, the research

832
00:54:10,120 --> 00:54:11,879
Speaker 1: that you get to do is is half the fun,

833
00:54:11,960 --> 00:54:14,920
Speaker 1: because I gotta not only read all about the mountain men,

834
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 1: but I gotta read all about wilderness survival and I

835
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:20,520
Speaker 1: gotta try and figure out, you know, what type of

836
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,439
Speaker 1: uh of trap could a guy who can't use one

837
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: arm uh possibly uh build that allow him to get

838
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 1: food if he when he doesn't have a knife or

839
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 1: a rifle or even flint and steel, what what would

840
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 1: he do? And so I gotta just do all sorts

841
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 1: of these fun little uh forays into areas that were

842
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 1: interesting to do research on um. But that is the

843
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,840
Speaker 1: kernel of the story of the part of Hugh glasses

844
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:51,840
Speaker 1: life that he's most famous for, which is being attacked

845
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:55,719
Speaker 1: by mall horribly mall by a grizzly abandoned and robbed

846
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 1: by his comrades, and then going out to seek revenge,

847
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 1: but before were that, uh, he had a remarkable life.

848
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 1: And who knows how much of this is legend and

849
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 1: and how much is is fact. But there's a there's

850
00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:18,719
Speaker 1: a really entertaining and quirky biography a few glass by

851
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: a guy named John Myers Myers. And it was written,

852
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 1: I think, also in the sixties. And it's it's uh,

853
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: it is uh. It feels a little bit like it

854
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:32,319
Speaker 1: was written in the sixties, but according to his biographer,

855
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: he was originally a Can I ask what it means

856
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 1: to feel like it was written in the sixties. It's

857
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:42,880
Speaker 1: it is not politically correct at all, um, And it

858
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:46,239
Speaker 1: has a very one sided view of many aspects of

859
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:50,240
Speaker 1: of of Western history. And he's just John Meyers Myers.

860
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine he's still alive. You can tell

861
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 1: he's he's a got character and is a quirky dude.

862
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:01,439
Speaker 1: And it's this is not like a written like a

863
00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:07,479
Speaker 1: a doctorate thesis. This is a this is freewheeling, which

864
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:08,960
Speaker 1: makes it kind of fun to read, but also makes

865
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 1: you kind of wonder sometimes how much is true and

866
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:13,120
Speaker 1: how much isn't. So I won't vouch for any of

867
00:56:13,120 --> 00:56:17,320
Speaker 1: this being true. The legend, according to his biographer of

868
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:20,240
Speaker 1: of Hugh Glass is that he started off his life

869
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 1: as a sailor and that he was on a ship

870
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:30,920
Speaker 1: that was captured by the pirate UH or or or

871
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:34,400
Speaker 1: not pirate, depending on your version of history. Jean Lafitte

872
00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 1: and uh and imprisoned UH on an island off the

873
00:56:42,120 --> 00:56:49,560
Speaker 1: shore of Texas and escaped from this pirate island to

874
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:53,360
Speaker 1: the mainland of Texas. And this would have been in

875
00:56:53,400 --> 00:57:01,759
Speaker 1: the eighteen teens. And uh proceeds literally to walk from

876
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:06,600
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico to what is now uh well

877
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:10,279
Speaker 1: to St. Louis, Missouri, uh and has all sorts of

878
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:13,759
Speaker 1: adventures along the way. Yeah, well one could imagine. It

879
00:57:13,800 --> 00:57:17,160
Speaker 1: wasn't just a smooth it was not there there there

880
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:22,240
Speaker 1: was no interstate UH. And so that's Hugh glasses life

881
00:57:22,600 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: before in eight three he signs on with the Rocky

882
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:31,840
Speaker 1: Mountain for Company to go out and be part of

883
00:57:31,840 --> 00:57:36,160
Speaker 1: one of these first trapping parties that goes uh up

884
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:39,400
Speaker 1: to Missouri. And when they set out to do this,

885
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:43,440
Speaker 1: were they setting out to trap, were they setting out

886
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 1: to trade? Or they set out to do a combination

887
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:50,280
Speaker 1: of the two. Probably a combination. UM most of the

888
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: earliest trappers both trapped on their own but also traded

889
00:57:55,280 --> 00:57:59,320
Speaker 1: with local tribes who would also bring in uh furs,

890
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 1: and then they would obviously send those send those down river,

891
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:06,360
Speaker 1: and so probably both. Um, I want to jump to

892
00:58:06,360 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: the death part, and then we'll get back to what

893
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 1: happens in the middle of his life. Uh do you

894
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:13,760
Speaker 1: buy that? I don't even know where it comes from.

895
00:58:14,040 --> 00:58:16,560
Speaker 1: Legend has and I learned where it comes from. Oh,

896
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 1: and it's not true. Well I think it was true,

897
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:20,960
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you why. And this is where this

898
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: is all coming together. Do you want to tell the story?

899
00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:24,200
Speaker 1: Should I tell the story? Well, you tell a story,

900
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 1: and then I'll tell the story the version effort that

901
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:32,400
Speaker 1: I know. Uh, they're on the Yellowstone and he's with

902
00:58:32,440 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 1: some other trappers and they get into a skirmish with

903
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:39,160
Speaker 1: Indians and they wind up holding Do we know where

904
00:58:39,160 --> 00:58:42,160
Speaker 1: about the yell Stone? It was going to the mouth

905
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:44,400
Speaker 1: of the Big Horn, wasn't there was a near the

906
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 1: confluence of the Big Horn in the Yellowstone. They get

907
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 1: into a skirmish was some uh erica, I think, And

908
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:57,720
Speaker 1: they want to hold up in a coolie and they can't.

909
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:02,760
Speaker 1: They got a little stronghold was not looking good for him,

910
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: and the Indians decided to set fire to the grass.

911
00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:10,920
Speaker 1: And they set fire to the grass and Huge Glass

912
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: and his compatriots there, No, that just not looking good.

913
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:18,040
Speaker 1: And they touch a match or touch a spark to

914
00:59:18,160 --> 00:59:22,240
Speaker 1: a powder keg and kill themselves. I don't buy it.

915
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: Why not it's wrong that? Well, I'll tell I'll tell you.

916
00:59:26,040 --> 00:59:28,480
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the story that was wrong with that.

917
00:59:28,520 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the story. First of all, what I

918
00:59:30,440 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 1: heard is it happened in December or January, and the

919
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:37,920
Speaker 1: Yellowstone was frozen. So the grass fire bit seems a

920
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 1: little implausible. Um, that's a strike against it. But I

921
00:59:41,840 --> 00:59:43,440
Speaker 1: don't think it puts it to death. But hold on,

922
00:59:43,480 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: I got more details and I'll tell you where they

923
00:59:45,240 --> 00:59:49,720
Speaker 1: came from. Um. So, one of the fun little side

924
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:53,680
Speaker 1: forays in doing research for this new book, Ridgeline, is

925
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 1: I read a biography about James Beckworth the African American

926
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: Mountain and uh Beckworth claims to have found the body

927
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:11,040
Speaker 1: of Hugh Glass when he was killed. And the story

928
01:00:11,080 --> 01:00:15,920
Speaker 1: that Beckworth tells is this, there was a trading post

929
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 1: at the mouth of the of the Big Horn, and

930
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:25,920
Speaker 1: the Yellowstone that's that's a historical fact. Forecast I think

931
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:27,640
Speaker 1: was one of the I think that in that era,

932
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: and it bounced up and down like a couple miles

933
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: this direction, because there's a couple of different sites, so

934
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:38,440
Speaker 1: there's a trading post there Forecast, and I think they

935
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: were primarily trading with the Crow, which were the I

936
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: believe in that era, the dominant tribe in that part

937
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: of the story exactly. And Uh, a group of crow

938
01:00:54,640 --> 01:01:00,400
Speaker 1: comes into Forecast and wants to trade um and there

939
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:05,200
Speaker 1: are not enough goods at Forecast to trade as much

940
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:09,040
Speaker 1: as the as the as the Indians want to and

941
01:01:09,120 --> 01:01:14,240
Speaker 1: so they dispatch two men from Forecast to a fort

942
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: that's thirty miles away that's affiliated to go get more

943
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,400
Speaker 1: trading goods to bring Bratt back and trade with the crow.

944
01:01:23,480 --> 01:01:25,680
Speaker 1: And Hugh Glass is one of the two guys that

945
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 1: is dispatched to this other fort to go get more

946
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:32,680
Speaker 1: trading goods. And the story that Beckworth tells is that

947
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:40,200
Speaker 1: Glass was crossing the frozen uh Yellowstone River uh and

948
01:01:40,440 --> 01:01:44,080
Speaker 1: was caught out on the ice in the open by

949
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:48,400
Speaker 1: a raiding party of Ricara, which was not expected in

950
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:52,840
Speaker 1: that territory in that era. And the Ricara catch him

951
01:01:52,840 --> 01:01:56,440
Speaker 1: out on the glass and kill him. And Beckworth was

952
01:01:56,480 --> 01:01:59,040
Speaker 1: one of the men who went out and found his

953
01:01:59,720 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 1: meat ated body. M that's the story in that Beckworth

954
01:02:03,800 --> 01:02:11,360
Speaker 1: tells who was the politician after they discredited the story

955
01:02:11,400 --> 01:02:15,080
Speaker 1: of Paul Revere? Who is the politician? That said, Uh,

956
01:02:15,160 --> 01:02:21,240
Speaker 1: I love Paul Revere, whether he wrote or not, meaning

957
01:02:21,280 --> 01:02:24,760
Speaker 1: I'm sticking with the powder kick story. Well, look, I

958
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:28,440
Speaker 1: love Hugh Glass. Whichever way he died, that's still that's

959
01:02:28,440 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: still a pretty epic life. And whether or not he

960
01:02:30,320 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 1: was a captive of the pirates or not, look he

961
01:02:34,400 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 1: uh he did. He did a lot of ship um

962
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:42,600
Speaker 1: and so definitely one of those kind of epic uh.

963
01:02:42,840 --> 01:02:46,040
Speaker 1: Nineteenth century lives that I just think are so so

964
01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:53,000
Speaker 1: much fun to study about. How do you pronounce the

965
01:02:52,280 --> 01:03:01,480
Speaker 1: the spy intrigue novelist John law Lakara? I think somebody

966
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:03,800
Speaker 1: will tell us something we're wrong at that. I thought

967
01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:06,160
Speaker 1: it was pronounced la car. It could be maybe it's

968
01:03:06,160 --> 01:03:09,560
Speaker 1: a car. He's got a great quote he said, watching

969
01:03:09,560 --> 01:03:12,920
Speaker 1: your book being made into a movie is like watching

970
01:03:12,920 --> 01:03:18,480
Speaker 1: an ox and turned into a bull. Young cube. Uh.

971
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:22,200
Speaker 1: What was the experience like for you? Um? Well again,

972
01:03:22,280 --> 01:03:24,760
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna wine too much because but we're not

973
01:03:25,240 --> 01:03:27,000
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not. I'm not asked. I'm not inviting

974
01:03:27,040 --> 01:03:33,200
Speaker 1: you to one. I mean, it's like, listen, I probably

975
01:03:33,200 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 1: the greatest thing that ever happened in the whole wide world.

976
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:38,800
Speaker 1: It was a blast. Who wouldn't want You'll notice that

977
01:03:38,920 --> 01:03:43,440
Speaker 1: John Craze books are all movies. They're all movies. And

978
01:03:43,480 --> 01:03:46,280
Speaker 1: I will tell you that before the movie was made.

979
01:03:46,600 --> 01:03:48,919
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of anybody who read The Revenant who

980
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:53,640
Speaker 1: wasn't related to me or my friend, Like, I haven't

981
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:55,960
Speaker 1: read your book that reminds of your great story. Man,

982
01:03:56,520 --> 01:03:57,840
Speaker 1: tell you the story real quick. I went to see

983
01:03:57,840 --> 01:04:02,960
Speaker 1: this this writer one time, and uh, I want to

984
01:04:02,960 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 1: see like a bookstory. Then he did, and he told

985
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:07,000
Speaker 1: a story. I don't know if it's true or not.

986
01:04:07,040 --> 01:04:08,600
Speaker 1: It was a really fine story. He told a story

987
01:04:08,680 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: that he was one time in a used bookstore okay,

988
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:17,080
Speaker 1: and sees his own book and he used bookstore and

989
01:04:17,280 --> 01:04:20,560
Speaker 1: opens it and it's the inscribed copy that he gave

990
01:04:20,600 --> 01:04:28,800
Speaker 1: to his mother. Oh man, that hurts. That hurts. I've

991
01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:32,160
Speaker 1: seen a couple of inscribed copies of mine for sale

992
01:04:32,160 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 1: on eBay, But my mom has never done that to me.

993
01:04:35,360 --> 01:04:38,920
Speaker 1: She's I hope she sold a private song. If you're listening,

994
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:43,080
Speaker 1: don't tell me. I don't want to know. Um, but uh,

995
01:04:43,320 --> 01:04:47,360
Speaker 1: but look, it was a blast to have a movie

996
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:51,480
Speaker 1: made out of my book, and it gave the book

997
01:04:52,800 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 1: a huge life. The revenue means back from the dead,

998
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:00,480
Speaker 1: and you know that's literally what the revenue means. Somehow

999
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:02,640
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, that's what it means, and

1000
01:05:02,920 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 1: it does it. I feel I feel so like lazy

1001
01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 1: now to have not found that out, because I always wondered,

1002
01:05:07,600 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 1: like why, Well, it comes from French. From it it's

1003
01:05:10,560 --> 01:05:12,920
Speaker 1: a it's an English word revenant, but it comes from

1004
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:15,840
Speaker 1: a French word revenue to return to come back really,

1005
01:05:15,920 --> 01:05:18,320
Speaker 1: and so it means literally one who returns from the dead.

1006
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:24,080
Speaker 1: Halfway good at my job. That'll been my first question. Um. So, look,

1007
01:05:24,280 --> 01:05:27,560
Speaker 1: I feel like the movie brought the book back from

1008
01:05:27,600 --> 01:05:30,360
Speaker 1: the dead. And uh, you know, a lot of people

1009
01:05:30,400 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 1: read the book who otherwise wouldn't have. And it's given

1010
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:34,880
Speaker 1: me an opportunity to write more books and I'm excited

1011
01:05:34,920 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 1: about that. Are you're disappointed how the book publishing experience went? Uh? Initially?

1012
01:05:41,160 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 1: You mean when it when it only sold to my

1013
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:50,200
Speaker 1: mom and her friends. Sorry to crawl back, Um, it's

1014
01:05:50,240 --> 01:05:52,760
Speaker 1: your book. Did your booked had done well? My first Well,

1015
01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:55,240
Speaker 1: they've done well over time. My first book didn't do

1016
01:05:55,240 --> 01:05:57,840
Speaker 1: well out of the gate. Well, dude, it was horrible.

1017
01:05:58,400 --> 01:06:00,000
Speaker 1: It's horrible. I didn't think they're gonna let me writ

1018
01:06:00,040 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 1: new more books. Well, I I I'm having a lot

1019
01:06:03,520 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 1: more opportunities to write books after the Revenant. It's it's easier,

1020
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:13,320
Speaker 1: easier now than it was before. But um, the overall experience,

1021
01:06:13,560 --> 01:06:18,080
Speaker 1: I was overseas working for the U. S. Government when uh,

1022
01:06:18,160 --> 01:06:24,280
Speaker 1: when the movie was was being shot, and so I was, um,

1023
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:27,880
Speaker 1: how soon after publication? Right? Well, like when did someone

1024
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:30,720
Speaker 1: come and say, like when they bought the film rights?

1025
01:06:30,760 --> 01:06:32,040
Speaker 1: Was one of those deals that they give you like

1026
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:34,080
Speaker 1: a dollar a year until it goes into production. It

1027
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: was like a real sale. It was a real sale.

1028
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:41,120
Speaker 1: It I still needed to work vigorously, but it was

1029
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:42,880
Speaker 1: you know, it was. It was more than a dollar

1030
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:44,960
Speaker 1: a year for the option. But to tell you how

1031
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:49,000
Speaker 1: long it took, we optioned it actually before we sold

1032
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:52,600
Speaker 1: the book. We sold, we sold, we optioned the film

1033
01:06:52,680 --> 01:06:57,160
Speaker 1: rights before we sold the book itself. Um, but the

1034
01:06:57,280 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: first time when I somebody told me it was going

1035
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:03,280
Speaker 1: to be a movie. Uh, and I got super excited

1036
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:06,120
Speaker 1: about this. Uh. They told me that it was gonna

1037
01:07:06,840 --> 01:07:11,160
Speaker 1: be directed by Michael Man and and star Daniel day

1038
01:07:11,240 --> 01:07:17,080
Speaker 1: Lewis as Hugh Glass and uh and yeah and over

1039
01:07:17,120 --> 01:07:21,960
Speaker 1: the course of the next uh twelve years really, oh

1040
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:24,440
Speaker 1: my god. Yeah. It was first option in two thousand

1041
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:27,000
Speaker 1: and one and it became a movie in two thousand

1042
01:07:27,000 --> 01:07:31,440
Speaker 1: and I'll never say die Man so Revenant Back from

1043
01:07:31,440 --> 01:07:34,920
Speaker 1: the Dead. So that's the funny thing is like, I know,

1044
01:07:35,720 --> 01:07:38,880
Speaker 1: you know some of the writers who haven't been through

1045
01:07:38,920 --> 01:07:44,520
Speaker 1: this many times and they option something yeah, and then

1046
01:07:44,560 --> 01:07:47,960
Speaker 1: they call up like they're gonna yea And I was like, no,

1047
01:07:48,480 --> 01:07:50,920
Speaker 1: well you got probably not what they told me at

1048
01:07:50,960 --> 01:07:53,320
Speaker 1: the beginning. And this just set my expectations is that

1049
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:57,000
Speaker 1: about one out of three things that gets optioned turned

1050
01:07:57,040 --> 01:08:00,840
Speaker 1: into a movie. So my expectations were that the odds

1051
01:08:00,880 --> 01:08:03,560
Speaker 1: were against me. Um. But I just call people telling

1052
01:08:03,600 --> 01:08:05,600
Speaker 1: everybody like, it's gonna be a big, huge body. I

1053
01:08:05,640 --> 01:08:07,600
Speaker 1: didn't tell him it's going to be. I was a

1054
01:08:07,640 --> 01:08:10,080
Speaker 1: little more circumspect than that, and it turned out to

1055
01:08:10,080 --> 01:08:12,440
Speaker 1: be a good thing. For a long time. And then

1056
01:08:12,480 --> 01:08:15,200
Speaker 1: even when it you know, when I heard that, uh

1057
01:08:15,240 --> 01:08:17,599
Speaker 1: you know, DiCaprio is going to star in it, and

1058
01:08:18,360 --> 01:08:21,240
Speaker 1: uh interview two was kind of directed, I still kind

1059
01:08:21,280 --> 01:08:23,840
Speaker 1: of had some scar tissue there that I didn't quite

1060
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:27,639
Speaker 1: believe it. But uh yeah, well more I guess, uh,

1061
01:08:28,040 --> 01:08:32,720
Speaker 1: fourteen it became a movie, and two thousand and one

1062
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:35,680
Speaker 1: when it was first option, so I'd gone on with

1063
01:08:35,720 --> 01:08:38,519
Speaker 1: my life. Believe me, I was. I wouldn't hold of

1064
01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:43,920
Speaker 1: my breath. Um. But but look when they that My

1065
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 1: big thing when I write books is I I love

1066
01:08:47,120 --> 01:08:49,880
Speaker 1: history and I want my books to be as historically

1067
01:08:49,880 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 1: accurate as possible. And to me, that's part of the

1068
01:08:54,040 --> 01:08:57,120
Speaker 1: even when you're writing fiction, you ought to really care

1069
01:08:57,120 --> 01:09:00,000
Speaker 1: about historical accuracy because I don't want to mislead people

1070
01:09:00,000 --> 01:09:02,120
Speaker 1: all and and frankly, history is so great that you

1071
01:09:02,120 --> 01:09:04,160
Speaker 1: don't have to make up tons of shipped for it

1072
01:09:04,200 --> 01:09:07,800
Speaker 1: to be an amazing story. Um. That said, you know,

1073
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:11,040
Speaker 1: the part of the Revenant my book that people don't

1074
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:15,920
Speaker 1: like is uh the ending, and the ending of my

1075
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:19,320
Speaker 1: book without giving it away, is true to history. It

1076
01:09:19,439 --> 01:09:26,519
Speaker 1: is not a Hollywood ending. Uh it is it is Uh,

1077
01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 1: it is not the good guy rolling around on the

1078
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:32,320
Speaker 1: ground with the bad guy. And the movie I think

1079
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:35,960
Speaker 1: was never gonna get made without Hollywood ending of the

1080
01:09:35,960 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 1: good guy rolling around on the ground with a bad guy.

1081
01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:42,160
Speaker 1: And uh, and so where does that pressure come from,

1082
01:09:42,200 --> 01:09:45,960
Speaker 1: do you think? I think that one difference between book

1083
01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:47,920
Speaker 1: world and movie world is just the amount of money

1084
01:09:47,960 --> 01:09:51,360
Speaker 1: that's involved. Um. You know, when somebody publishes a book,

1085
01:09:51,760 --> 01:09:56,400
Speaker 1: they're not uh risking a whole lot of money. And

1086
01:09:56,439 --> 01:10:00,559
Speaker 1: if the book fails, and most books do, um, you know,

1087
01:10:00,600 --> 01:10:05,040
Speaker 1: the publishers not doesn't lose their their fortune. A big

1088
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:08,200
Speaker 1: movie and you know, The Revenant I think was a

1089
01:10:08,320 --> 01:10:11,880
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars to shoot and another hundred

1090
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:16,479
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars to to publicize, So three hundred

1091
01:10:16,520 --> 01:10:21,920
Speaker 1: million dollars. They're not gonna risk too much about people,

1092
01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:25,559
Speaker 1: not like in the ending. And there's a reason there's

1093
01:10:25,600 --> 01:10:29,800
Speaker 1: something called the Hollywood ending. It's because audiences like that.

1094
01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:33,880
Speaker 1: Audiences want the bad guy to get hacked up by

1095
01:10:33,920 --> 01:10:38,000
Speaker 1: the good guy and uh, and so that's what happens

1096
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:40,120
Speaker 1: in the movie. And uh, and it worked because it

1097
01:10:40,160 --> 01:10:44,680
Speaker 1: made a half billion dollars. And so surprising what you're

1098
01:10:44,680 --> 01:10:47,120
Speaker 1: saying about that it's an interesting point about the money

1099
01:10:47,120 --> 01:10:51,120
Speaker 1: because I used to kind of marvel at um. You know,

1100
01:10:51,200 --> 01:10:57,880
Speaker 1: a publisher with a certain amount of power can just

1101
01:10:58,200 --> 01:11:04,080
Speaker 1: on their own buy book, right if they've proven themselves

1102
01:11:04,120 --> 01:11:07,320
Speaker 1: like one individual with only getting like they can just

1103
01:11:07,360 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 1: get a rubber stamp from who'seever above them and they

1104
01:11:11,200 --> 01:11:13,639
Speaker 1: could buy a book. And you can send some writer

1105
01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:19,920
Speaker 1: off into exile, you know, for a year, and they

1106
01:11:19,960 --> 01:11:22,280
Speaker 1: come back and here's this thing. It's like it's it's

1107
01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:25,479
Speaker 1: been impacted by like there's a couple of people, right,

1108
01:11:25,720 --> 01:11:28,480
Speaker 1: but also it becomes this thing that's a globally available

1109
01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:32,640
Speaker 1: um and it's not a lot to like went into it,

1110
01:11:33,600 --> 01:11:35,560
Speaker 1: but here does. But that's a great point with like

1111
01:11:35,560 --> 01:11:39,160
Speaker 1: a movie. It's like man, like, uh, many many careers

1112
01:11:39,640 --> 01:11:42,240
Speaker 1: around the line, huge amounts of money is on the line.

1113
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:43,960
Speaker 1: It's not like this like it just used to start,

1114
01:11:44,080 --> 01:11:45,720
Speaker 1: Like how could it be like that easy to make

1115
01:11:45,760 --> 01:11:50,600
Speaker 1: a book? You know that the financial models are dramatically

1116
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:53,920
Speaker 1: different between between book and film, and there's just uh.

1117
01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:58,559
Speaker 1: The other example I always think is funny is a

1118
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:02,479
Speaker 1: a book contract is about six pages long and basically

1119
01:12:02,560 --> 01:12:04,559
Speaker 1: the whole thing says they can't change a word without

1120
01:12:04,600 --> 01:12:09,880
Speaker 1: your permission. A a movie contract is about sixty pages long,

1121
01:12:10,200 --> 01:12:12,320
Speaker 1: and basically the whole thing says they can change anything

1122
01:12:12,360 --> 01:12:16,599
Speaker 1: they want without your permission. And and so you go

1123
01:12:16,640 --> 01:12:19,760
Speaker 1: into the exercise knowing that that your story is going

1124
01:12:19,800 --> 01:12:21,840
Speaker 1: to get changed and it's going to be a collaborative,

1125
01:12:22,600 --> 01:12:25,280
Speaker 1: uh enterprise. And if if you're not comfortable with that,

1126
01:12:25,520 --> 01:12:28,400
Speaker 1: you shouldn't sign the contract. It's just it's a it's

1127
01:12:28,400 --> 01:12:33,120
Speaker 1: a different exercise. I mean there's writers involved, and directors

1128
01:12:33,160 --> 01:12:37,240
Speaker 1: and actors who interpret and committees who you know, look

1129
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:40,400
Speaker 1: at all that stuff. Um, and so it's just it's

1130
01:12:40,439 --> 01:12:45,160
Speaker 1: just a very different process. And and look, uh, the

1131
01:12:46,840 --> 01:12:50,280
Speaker 1: from a very selfish standpoint, I love The Revenant because

1132
01:12:50,280 --> 01:12:52,880
Speaker 1: it brought the book back to life. But there's there's

1133
01:12:52,880 --> 01:12:54,960
Speaker 1: a lot of things I love about that movie. I

1134
01:12:55,000 --> 01:12:59,840
Speaker 1: think it uh uh. I think it does h a

1135
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:04,479
Speaker 1: a great job of kind of transporting people to kind

1136
01:13:04,479 --> 01:13:07,040
Speaker 1: of a different place and time and giving people a

1137
01:13:07,080 --> 01:13:11,439
Speaker 1: sense of just how hard life was in that era

1138
01:13:12,360 --> 01:13:15,960
Speaker 1: and the you know, the courage that the people who

1139
01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:18,280
Speaker 1: went out there in that in that time frame and

1140
01:13:18,400 --> 01:13:21,960
Speaker 1: we're willing to take that risk. Um. I think it's

1141
01:13:21,960 --> 01:13:25,679
Speaker 1: well acted. I think it's beautifully shot. I'm a little

1142
01:13:25,720 --> 01:13:28,280
Speaker 1: irked that, you know, part of it takes place in

1143
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:31,960
Speaker 1: a rainforest. I've been to South Dakota. It's a beautiful state.

1144
01:13:33,000 --> 01:13:36,080
Speaker 1: I didn't see any rainforest when I was there. Uh,

1145
01:13:36,120 --> 01:13:39,320
Speaker 1: and so that part of it bothered me. We've had

1146
01:13:39,320 --> 01:13:43,800
Speaker 1: a couple of laughs, Like, you know, we've joked about, uh,

1147
01:13:44,479 --> 01:13:49,240
Speaker 1: you know, my dissatisfaction with it, and this is like,

1148
01:13:49,439 --> 01:13:52,320
Speaker 1: you know, to be perfect fright, Like this has absolutely

1149
01:13:52,360 --> 01:13:55,439
Speaker 1: nothing to do with you. Like it. It's a phenomenal book.

1150
01:13:56,479 --> 01:14:01,479
Speaker 1: I had known that story and loved that story my

1151
01:14:01,720 --> 01:14:08,559
Speaker 1: entire life, and I um, in hanging around the West,

1152
01:14:09,240 --> 01:14:11,880
Speaker 1: I had developed that story to be that in my

1153
01:14:12,000 --> 01:14:17,800
Speaker 1: head it like occurred in the like arid grasslands, the

1154
01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:24,240
Speaker 1: willow lined streams, the sage brush. It did, and it

1155
01:14:24,280 --> 01:14:30,840
Speaker 1: would be as though someone told your own story and

1156
01:14:30,880 --> 01:14:34,120
Speaker 1: then your own story of growing up, but then put

1157
01:14:34,160 --> 01:14:39,040
Speaker 1: it in a different house. And so that really, um

1158
01:14:39,479 --> 01:14:44,760
Speaker 1: was a situation where I looked and I couldn't even

1159
01:14:44,800 --> 01:14:47,800
Speaker 1: pay attention to the movie. I was so like, like

1160
01:14:48,040 --> 01:14:53,800
Speaker 1: just a gas right, because um, that's the most I think,

1161
01:14:53,840 --> 01:14:57,880
Speaker 1: that's like the most beautiful landscape on the planet. Right,

1162
01:14:58,080 --> 01:15:01,560
Speaker 1: It's it's just like the it's just ripe enrich. And

1163
01:15:01,920 --> 01:15:05,480
Speaker 1: to have to imagine someone coming and saying, to imagine

1164
01:15:06,120 --> 01:15:11,479
Speaker 1: a director a group of producers looking at that the

1165
01:15:11,560 --> 01:15:15,080
Speaker 1: arid grasslands like the Great Plains, looking and being like,

1166
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:21,160
Speaker 1: oh uh no, not like that. I thought it would

1167
01:15:21,160 --> 01:15:25,080
Speaker 1: be more like right. It's like it's almost like, um,

1168
01:15:26,439 --> 01:15:32,439
Speaker 1: it feels to me like uh them uh disapproving of

1169
01:15:32,680 --> 01:15:36,000
Speaker 1: my like inner self. That's where my great that that's

1170
01:15:36,000 --> 01:15:37,920
Speaker 1: my only great. But it's like we've gotten a little

1171
01:15:37,960 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 1: bit of mileage out of complaining about it. Was just

1172
01:15:40,040 --> 01:15:47,480
Speaker 1: that it was like it was like a condemnation of uh,

1173
01:15:47,479 --> 01:15:50,040
Speaker 1: a landscape that is very dear to me. We were

1174
01:15:50,360 --> 01:15:54,840
Speaker 1: talking earlier. I grew up on the high Plains. I

1175
01:15:54,880 --> 01:15:59,879
Speaker 1: grew up in eastern Wyoming, and uh, you know, eastern Wyoming,

1176
01:16:00,080 --> 01:16:04,320
Speaker 1: like eastern Montana, like a big chunk of of South

1177
01:16:04,360 --> 01:16:08,880
Speaker 1: Dakota is high plains. And I I love it. I

1178
01:16:08,920 --> 01:16:14,160
Speaker 1: think it's epically beautiful. Um, it doesn't look like what

1179
01:16:15,120 --> 01:16:17,920
Speaker 1: people who don't live out here have in their mind's

1180
01:16:17,920 --> 01:16:20,120
Speaker 1: eye a lot of times when they think about Wyoming

1181
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:24,280
Speaker 1: or Montana, when they when people on the coast think

1182
01:16:24,320 --> 01:16:27,720
Speaker 1: about Wyoming and Montana. They think about, uh, you know,

1183
01:16:27,920 --> 01:16:30,640
Speaker 1: the t tons and Glacier National Park and kind of

1184
01:16:30,720 --> 01:16:35,200
Speaker 1: the the epic mountain vistas. And don't get me wrong,

1185
01:16:35,240 --> 01:16:37,679
Speaker 1: I love the mountains too. Those are easy to Uh.

1186
01:16:37,760 --> 01:16:42,520
Speaker 1: I think anybody can appreciate that, the high plains. Uh,

1187
01:16:42,880 --> 01:16:45,920
Speaker 1: they may. I wonder if they don't require most people

1188
01:16:46,040 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 1: to kind of grow up in that environment to be

1189
01:16:48,000 --> 01:16:49,680
Speaker 1: able to appreciate it the way that I think you

1190
01:16:49,720 --> 01:16:52,479
Speaker 1: and I do. Yeah, maybe it takes a little bit

1191
01:16:52,479 --> 01:16:55,200
Speaker 1: of a trained a little bit more of an acquired taste. Uh.

1192
01:16:55,360 --> 01:16:57,080
Speaker 1: I think you you kind of grow up in that

1193
01:16:57,320 --> 01:17:01,280
Speaker 1: and and you uh you know. Just to to give

1194
01:17:01,320 --> 01:17:05,839
Speaker 1: my irk about my least favorite description of the planes

1195
01:17:06,560 --> 01:17:10,040
Speaker 1: is oftentimes writers who don't understand the planes will describe

1196
01:17:10,120 --> 01:17:14,519
Speaker 1: the featureless planes. And it drives me crazy because when

1197
01:17:14,520 --> 01:17:18,559
Speaker 1: you walk across the plains, there is so much feature.

1198
01:17:19,320 --> 01:17:22,599
Speaker 1: Uh it's just that it's a lot more subtle than

1199
01:17:22,960 --> 01:17:28,559
Speaker 1: you know, a mountain jutting up uh to a snow

1200
01:17:28,560 --> 01:17:33,200
Speaker 1: capped peak. But uh, you know, asked the guys who

1201
01:17:33,280 --> 01:17:37,919
Speaker 1: rode over the ridgeline uh in the Fetterman fight. Uh,

1202
01:17:38,320 --> 01:17:41,320
Speaker 1: it was how featureless it was because there were there

1203
01:17:41,320 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: were two thousand Indians hiding in that featureless plane, and

1204
01:17:45,320 --> 01:17:48,080
Speaker 1: so asked them how featureless. It's only featureless if you

1205
01:17:48,120 --> 01:17:51,280
Speaker 1: maybe haven't walked a few miles, and once you have,

1206
01:17:52,080 --> 01:17:54,400
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say that anymore. I say, I pointed out

1207
01:17:54,439 --> 01:17:58,160
Speaker 1: to people about hunting antelope will be like my antalope

1208
01:17:58,200 --> 01:18:03,360
Speaker 1: hunting strategy. This is basically, you find some way off

1209
01:18:04,200 --> 01:18:06,400
Speaker 1: and then the hunt plan is to hunt all the

1210
01:18:06,439 --> 01:18:09,080
Speaker 1: ones that you will encounter on the way over to

1211
01:18:09,120 --> 01:18:11,920
Speaker 1: the ones you see way off, Like there's so let's

1212
01:18:11,920 --> 01:18:14,519
Speaker 1: just go in that direction. Undoubtedly we'll find many more.

1213
01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:18,040
Speaker 1: And all the folds increases that curved between here and there,

1214
01:18:18,120 --> 01:18:20,800
Speaker 1: you can see a long way on the plains. And

1215
01:18:21,200 --> 01:18:24,880
Speaker 1: I love, uh, you know, where I grew up in

1216
01:18:25,320 --> 01:18:29,840
Speaker 1: eastern Wyoming, there were you could see Laramie Peak and

1217
01:18:29,920 --> 01:18:32,799
Speaker 1: that was uh you know, that was seventy miles away

1218
01:18:32,840 --> 01:18:37,000
Speaker 1: from my hometown and you could see that, uh clear

1219
01:18:37,040 --> 01:18:40,880
Speaker 1: as day. I love having a seventy mile horizon. That's

1220
01:18:40,880 --> 01:18:44,679
Speaker 1: a cool thing. But there was a lot between between

1221
01:18:44,680 --> 01:18:48,080
Speaker 1: where you are and the horizon, and it's it ain't

1222
01:18:48,080 --> 01:18:50,800
Speaker 1: feature it ain't featureless. I want to get into the

1223
01:18:50,840 --> 01:18:54,280
Speaker 1: reprint of Last Stand guys, A quick question before we

1224
01:18:54,360 --> 01:18:57,720
Speaker 1: leave the movie? What did UH like daily or was

1225
01:18:57,760 --> 01:19:01,000
Speaker 1: there daily? What did collaboration look like you and the

1226
01:19:01,040 --> 01:19:03,960
Speaker 1: folks that made the movie? So I as I, as

1227
01:19:03,960 --> 01:19:07,400
Speaker 1: I mentioned, I was living overseas at the time, you know,

1228
01:19:07,479 --> 01:19:12,559
Speaker 1: working for the for the government, and and was uh

1229
01:19:12,600 --> 01:19:15,639
Speaker 1: you know, eight time zones away from where they were filming.

1230
01:19:16,080 --> 01:19:21,880
Speaker 1: So honestly, not a ton uh, But that's said the

1231
01:19:22,720 --> 01:19:26,559
Speaker 1: one of my good friends, a guy named Keith Redman,

1232
01:19:26,680 --> 01:19:31,559
Speaker 1: who's had a company called Anonymous Content, produced the movie

1233
01:19:32,360 --> 01:19:36,840
Speaker 1: and he involved me in ways that he could. Also,

1234
01:19:37,040 --> 01:19:40,240
Speaker 1: the screenwriter for the Revenue is a guy named Mark Smith,

1235
01:19:40,240 --> 01:19:45,439
Speaker 1: another great guy who's very collaborative, and both Keith and

1236
01:19:45,520 --> 01:19:50,360
Speaker 1: Mark were very generous in letting me know things that

1237
01:19:50,400 --> 01:19:54,519
Speaker 1: were going on. Uh. Mark Smith shared drafts of the

1238
01:19:54,560 --> 01:19:58,519
Speaker 1: script at a couple of different junctures with me. I

1239
01:19:58,640 --> 01:20:03,479
Speaker 1: made my h historical points which were pretty uniformly ignored.

1240
01:20:04,280 --> 01:20:05,680
Speaker 1: But I had my chance at least to see the

1241
01:20:05,720 --> 01:20:09,840
Speaker 1: script and kind of see it evolve. Um, So I

1242
01:20:10,000 --> 01:20:14,160
Speaker 1: was not uh involved in a detailed way. One of

1243
01:20:14,160 --> 01:20:19,000
Speaker 1: the things I that irked me out of that process

1244
01:20:19,000 --> 01:20:22,400
Speaker 1: of the Revenue is that I couldn't write the screenplay

1245
01:20:22,439 --> 01:20:25,760
Speaker 1: because I've never written a screenplay, and when I moved

1246
01:20:25,800 --> 01:20:28,080
Speaker 1: back to Montana, one of the things I learned how

1247
01:20:28,120 --> 01:20:31,240
Speaker 1: to do was write screenplays because I kind of vowed

1248
01:20:31,280 --> 01:20:34,240
Speaker 1: that I would never have one of my stories turned

1249
01:20:34,240 --> 01:20:38,120
Speaker 1: into uh uh you know, a movie again without me

1250
01:20:38,240 --> 01:20:43,280
Speaker 1: writing it. And so I'm I'm hoping if there is,

1251
01:20:43,439 --> 01:20:45,920
Speaker 1: if there's interest in in this new one Ridge line

1252
01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:59,000
Speaker 1: that that that I'll be the writer for that. Do

1253
01:20:59,040 --> 01:21:02,360
Speaker 1: you think that it's a little bit dishonest? Um? Do

1254
01:21:02,360 --> 01:21:10,120
Speaker 1: you think it's a moral problem with taking history, like

1255
01:21:10,200 --> 01:21:12,800
Speaker 1: in the case of Huge Glass and like what Huge

1256
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:17,679
Speaker 1: Glass actually did, um, and making it be that something

1257
01:21:17,680 --> 01:21:19,120
Speaker 1: different happened. Do you think it's a little bit of

1258
01:21:19,240 --> 01:21:24,360
Speaker 1: moral Um? I guess it depends on how extreme the

1259
01:21:24,439 --> 01:21:29,120
Speaker 1: retelling is and whether it uh distorts his story in

1260
01:21:29,160 --> 01:21:33,720
Speaker 1: a way that that I mean, For example, Uh, I

1261
01:21:34,120 --> 01:21:36,880
Speaker 1: think the way that the Native American story has been

1262
01:21:36,920 --> 01:21:42,760
Speaker 1: told in traditional American westerns uh is uh there is

1263
01:21:42,760 --> 01:21:48,040
Speaker 1: an immoral immorality in that because it doesn't tell very

1264
01:21:48,120 --> 01:21:53,280
Speaker 1: much about about their perspective on things that were happening. UM.

1265
01:21:53,400 --> 01:22:00,240
Speaker 1: I understand that that that people will also always seek

1266
01:22:00,320 --> 01:22:04,200
Speaker 1: to tell stories that are uh interesting and compelling to

1267
01:22:04,240 --> 01:22:08,439
Speaker 1: an audience and entertaining to an audience, and some of

1268
01:22:08,479 --> 01:22:11,320
Speaker 1: that I think is is okay. One of the things

1269
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:14,320
Speaker 1: I did at the end of The Revenant, uh, and

1270
01:22:14,439 --> 01:22:16,120
Speaker 1: that I do at the end of my of my

1271
01:22:16,160 --> 01:22:21,920
Speaker 1: new book is I put I tell the reader where

1272
01:22:22,040 --> 01:22:25,200
Speaker 1: I've veered from the truth, and if I made up

1273
01:22:25,240 --> 01:22:27,400
Speaker 1: a character, I tell him I made this character up.

1274
01:22:27,960 --> 01:22:32,560
Speaker 1: Because you even point out that that you even acknowledge

1275
01:22:32,560 --> 01:22:34,360
Speaker 1: that there's some debate about whether or not it was

1276
01:22:34,400 --> 01:22:39,000
Speaker 1: Bridger um. And I just think when I'm done reading

1277
01:22:39,000 --> 01:22:41,479
Speaker 1: a book, I want to know what what was real

1278
01:22:41,560 --> 01:22:44,519
Speaker 1: and what wasn't. And obviously people can can go to

1279
01:22:44,560 --> 01:22:47,240
Speaker 1: their own research, and I also try and list books

1280
01:22:47,240 --> 01:22:49,800
Speaker 1: that people can go read about nonfiction books to kind

1281
01:22:49,800 --> 01:22:53,120
Speaker 1: of learn from themselves or whatever. But I I do

1282
01:22:53,240 --> 01:22:56,719
Speaker 1: think that we live in an era where we've lost

1283
01:22:57,160 --> 01:23:00,720
Speaker 1: the line between fact and fiction, and so I think

1284
01:23:00,720 --> 01:23:06,360
Speaker 1: there's an additional responsibility on on writers, including writers of fiction,

1285
01:23:06,960 --> 01:23:11,760
Speaker 1: to be honest about where they are veering off what

1286
01:23:11,960 --> 01:23:15,080
Speaker 1: is historical fact. And it doesn't mean that every story

1287
01:23:15,160 --> 01:23:18,360
Speaker 1: has to be a a historical treatise. I think there's

1288
01:23:18,400 --> 01:23:24,599
Speaker 1: plenty of room for uh, fictional historical fiction. Uh, fictional

1289
01:23:24,640 --> 01:23:27,920
Speaker 1: tellings of historical events. But I think we have an

1290
01:23:27,920 --> 01:23:32,960
Speaker 1: extra responsibility to to be accurate and to help the

1291
01:23:32,960 --> 01:23:37,360
Speaker 1: reader know what's true and what's not. It gives you, yeah,

1292
01:23:37,439 --> 01:23:39,719
Speaker 1: because it helps you understand like what can and cannot

1293
01:23:39,800 --> 01:23:44,960
Speaker 1: happen in the world. Yeah, and uh and I I

1294
01:23:45,000 --> 01:23:51,559
Speaker 1: mean I've always been irked by stories that, especially films,

1295
01:23:51,600 --> 01:23:56,679
Speaker 1: because the medium of film is so powerful and uh,

1296
01:23:56,720 --> 01:24:02,200
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's whole generations of people who we'll

1297
01:24:02,200 --> 01:24:05,800
Speaker 1: see a film and that will be the main ah

1298
01:24:06,040 --> 01:24:08,480
Speaker 1: sort of entree point that they have to a particular

1299
01:24:08,880 --> 01:24:17,000
Speaker 1: historical incident. And so you know, uh, stories with extreme

1300
01:24:18,080 --> 01:24:22,920
Speaker 1: uh conspiracies about the assassination of jfk Uh to me

1301
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:27,320
Speaker 1: bother me because I think they they give a distorted

1302
01:24:28,000 --> 01:24:34,160
Speaker 1: perception of history. For example. Uh, I want to touch

1303
01:24:34,200 --> 01:24:36,800
Speaker 1: on the reprint of Last Stand, But first I have

1304
01:24:36,840 --> 01:24:38,799
Speaker 1: a question for you, because you you know your mountain

1305
01:24:38,800 --> 01:24:43,360
Speaker 1: Man stuff. Well, you mentioned Laramie Peak. What's your understanding

1306
01:24:43,400 --> 01:24:48,120
Speaker 1: of deal the story of Laramie, of Jacques Laramie. Yeah,

1307
01:24:48,439 --> 01:24:51,639
Speaker 1: like the sort of absence of a story of Laramie. Uh, Well,

1308
01:24:51,680 --> 01:24:53,600
Speaker 1: you tell me, I'm not I know a little bit

1309
01:24:53,640 --> 01:24:57,160
Speaker 1: about this, but I'm not sure exactly where you're going. Oh, yeah,

1310
01:24:57,240 --> 01:24:59,960
Speaker 1: he's he's he's known for being killed by the Indians.

1311
01:25:00,080 --> 01:25:03,240
Speaker 1: And then and then was there was not stuffed down

1312
01:25:03,439 --> 01:25:06,040
Speaker 1: under the ice and the beaver pond. Yeah, and then

1313
01:25:06,040 --> 01:25:07,920
Speaker 1: the guy went like bridge like, I mean, she's got

1314
01:25:07,920 --> 01:25:10,320
Speaker 1: half the state named after him, this and other states.

1315
01:25:10,920 --> 01:25:13,120
Speaker 1: That dude made off like a bandit, and no one

1316
01:25:13,120 --> 01:25:16,000
Speaker 1: knows what the hell he was, just like shows up

1317
01:25:16,040 --> 01:25:19,240
Speaker 1: and promptly gets killed. And then here's the thing. If

1318
01:25:19,280 --> 01:25:21,880
Speaker 1: you're gonna get killed in that era, try and get

1319
01:25:21,960 --> 01:25:24,400
Speaker 1: killed next to a river, because if it gets killed

1320
01:25:24,439 --> 01:25:26,680
Speaker 1: next to the river, uh, there's a good chance that

1321
01:25:26,720 --> 01:25:28,880
Speaker 1: the river is going to be named after you. And

1322
01:25:28,920 --> 01:25:32,920
Speaker 1: then whatever forts and towns they put on the river

1323
01:25:33,080 --> 01:25:34,720
Speaker 1: might also get named after you. And if there's a

1324
01:25:34,720 --> 01:25:36,840
Speaker 1: mountain of bumps into the river, the mountain might get

1325
01:25:36,920 --> 01:25:39,160
Speaker 1: named after you. And of course that's exactly what what

1326
01:25:39,280 --> 01:25:44,240
Speaker 1: happened with Jacques laurent A. Uh in Lolo, Yeah, Lolo

1327
01:25:44,360 --> 01:25:46,920
Speaker 1: got killed like this dude, Lulu, he spelled his name

1328
01:25:46,960 --> 01:25:50,320
Speaker 1: spelled the hunter way, Lulu, Lolo whatever, gets killed by

1329
01:25:50,320 --> 01:25:51,760
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear and people like, oh, you know the

1330
01:25:51,800 --> 01:25:54,840
Speaker 1: creek worl Lolo got killed Scott's Bluff, and then Priests

1331
01:25:55,040 --> 01:25:58,240
Speaker 1: was like Lolo the town Lolo, the Creek Lolo, the

1332
01:25:58,240 --> 01:26:02,160
Speaker 1: Peak Lolo, the national for Meanwhile, the first thing about

1333
01:26:02,200 --> 01:26:04,759
Speaker 1: this dude, well, I have in in the new book,

1334
01:26:04,880 --> 01:26:09,360
Speaker 1: I have Bridger as an old man, uh, kind of

1335
01:26:09,400 --> 01:26:12,320
Speaker 1: reflecting on the fact that there's a bunch of stuff

1336
01:26:12,400 --> 01:26:17,160
Speaker 1: named after him now and and kind of oh yeah absolutely,

1337
01:26:17,760 --> 01:26:22,679
Speaker 1: um yeah um, and uh being happy that he didn't

1338
01:26:22,680 --> 01:26:24,920
Speaker 1: have to die. I have him standing on top of

1339
01:26:24,920 --> 01:26:29,120
Speaker 1: Scott's Bluff, which was named after Scott, who was the

1340
01:26:29,160 --> 01:26:32,200
Speaker 1: story he was, Uh, nobody does, nobody else does either.

1341
01:26:32,439 --> 01:26:36,600
Speaker 1: Scott was killed by the Indians and died with his

1342
01:26:36,680 --> 01:26:39,000
Speaker 1: back up against Scott's Bluff, and so they named it

1343
01:26:39,160 --> 01:26:44,200
Speaker 1: Scott's Bluff, Scott's Bluff, you know where Scott died. Um,

1344
01:26:44,320 --> 01:26:46,519
Speaker 1: And I have Bridger reflecting on that that that he's

1345
01:26:46,520 --> 01:26:48,360
Speaker 1: happy that he didn't have to get killed to get

1346
01:26:48,400 --> 01:26:52,759
Speaker 1: stuff named after him. So anyway that was hitting during

1347
01:26:52,800 --> 01:26:57,559
Speaker 1: his lifetime. Yeah, oh absolutely, yeah. Um. So he really was,

1348
01:26:57,640 --> 01:27:00,080
Speaker 1: like he's just a well known dude. He's he is

1349
01:27:00,120 --> 01:27:04,280
Speaker 1: a rock star in terms of fame in his uh well,

1350
01:27:04,400 --> 01:27:07,799
Speaker 1: certainly when he's a sixty year old, he's he's famous

1351
01:27:07,880 --> 01:27:12,400
Speaker 1: among the soldiers that he's he's guiding. I mean he's uh,

1352
01:27:12,439 --> 01:27:15,400
Speaker 1: you know, he was already a legend in his own time,

1353
01:27:15,479 --> 01:27:18,080
Speaker 1: and and and it it's been a long time by

1354
01:27:18,120 --> 01:27:20,080
Speaker 1: the way he was. It was he'd been on the

1355
01:27:20,120 --> 01:27:22,639
Speaker 1: planes for forty plus years at the time he's guiding

1356
01:27:22,640 --> 01:27:24,920
Speaker 1: for the army. So he's and this is a place

1357
01:27:24,960 --> 01:27:30,200
Speaker 1: where where they're there. The numbers of people out here

1358
01:27:30,800 --> 01:27:33,960
Speaker 1: we're not large, and the numbers of places where they

1359
01:27:34,000 --> 01:27:36,639
Speaker 1: went were not large. So people bumped into each other.

1360
01:27:36,680 --> 01:27:40,400
Speaker 1: I mean talking about last stand the you know, the

1361
01:27:41,280 --> 01:27:44,680
Speaker 1: person that that books about George burg Grinnell. I was

1362
01:27:44,720 --> 01:27:47,360
Speaker 1: amazed when I was doing the research on him, because

1363
01:27:47,400 --> 01:27:51,160
Speaker 1: he meets, he meets everybody. He meets, uh, he meets

1364
01:27:51,200 --> 01:27:58,439
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill, he meets he goes campaigning, uh with Custer, Uh,

1365
01:27:58,439 --> 01:28:01,599
Speaker 1: he meets Brigham Young. I mean, he just he bumps

1366
01:28:01,640 --> 01:28:04,839
Speaker 1: into everybody. And but it kind of makes sense because

1367
01:28:05,560 --> 01:28:07,360
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like being from a small

1368
01:28:07,400 --> 01:28:11,880
Speaker 1: state from well he was like Forrest gum Um and uh.

1369
01:28:11,920 --> 01:28:13,439
Speaker 1: But you know, if you live in a in a

1370
01:28:13,479 --> 01:28:17,200
Speaker 1: small statement like Montana. It's not crazy that you meet

1371
01:28:17,240 --> 01:28:20,920
Speaker 1: somebody and it doesn't take very long before you both

1372
01:28:21,400 --> 01:28:25,479
Speaker 1: know somebody in common. And it's because it's a big state,

1373
01:28:25,560 --> 01:28:29,839
Speaker 1: but there's you know, there's not that many towns. And Custer, oh,

1374
01:28:30,000 --> 01:28:32,679
Speaker 1: not only did he know Custer, of we're talking about

1375
01:28:32,800 --> 01:28:37,760
Speaker 1: Grenelle now um. And this the Buffalo book, uh that's

1376
01:28:37,760 --> 01:28:40,880
Speaker 1: called Last Stand is about this this nineteenth century hunter

1377
01:28:40,960 --> 01:28:46,000
Speaker 1: conservationist named georgeburg Grannell, and he not only did he

1378
01:28:46,040 --> 01:28:51,160
Speaker 1: know Custer, but he goes on campaign with Custer. In

1379
01:28:51,320 --> 01:28:56,400
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four, when Custer is sent out to survey

1380
01:28:56,560 --> 01:28:59,800
Speaker 1: the Black Hills, Grizzly shoots a huge gride s eight

1381
01:28:59,880 --> 01:29:04,000
Speaker 1: the an amazing foot as an amazing bear. Um. And

1382
01:29:04,400 --> 01:29:07,040
Speaker 1: but it's on that. The other thing Custer takes along

1383
01:29:07,160 --> 01:29:11,040
Speaker 1: on that expedition is he takes miners with him because

1384
01:29:11,280 --> 01:29:14,240
Speaker 1: there's rumors of gold in the Black Hills and Custer

1385
01:29:14,360 --> 01:29:17,639
Speaker 1: wants to be the one to discover it. And they

1386
01:29:17,680 --> 01:29:22,799
Speaker 1: discover gold on this eight seventy four exploration. Custer sends

1387
01:29:23,439 --> 01:29:26,720
Speaker 1: a messenger back to Fort Laramie to tell him that

1388
01:29:26,760 --> 01:29:30,799
Speaker 1: there's gold in the Black Hills and the gold rush

1389
01:29:31,120 --> 01:29:37,200
Speaker 1: is on uh into the heart of the territory that

1390
01:29:37,360 --> 01:29:42,559
Speaker 1: was given back uh to the Uh, to the Lakota

1391
01:29:43,000 --> 01:29:46,519
Speaker 1: and the Cheyenne at the end of the Fetterman massacre.

1392
01:29:47,040 --> 01:29:51,280
Speaker 1: They said, you're right. Uh. So when when when Fetterman

1393
01:29:51,360 --> 01:29:55,639
Speaker 1: is defeated and the U. S. Army retreats, they give

1394
01:29:55,720 --> 01:30:00,040
Speaker 1: back to the to the Lakota and the Cheyenne. The

1395
01:30:01,000 --> 01:30:05,439
Speaker 1: Lakota taken the Black Hills from the Cheyenne from well

1396
01:30:05,479 --> 01:30:08,280
Speaker 1: from It's even more complicated than that. And I they

1397
01:30:08,280 --> 01:30:10,719
Speaker 1: were all sorts, you know, the all sorts of tribes

1398
01:30:10,720 --> 01:30:15,280
Speaker 1: are in there. And that's a complicated prehistory. But just

1399
01:30:15,360 --> 01:30:17,920
Speaker 1: in terms of the US piece of the history, they

1400
01:30:18,080 --> 01:30:22,880
Speaker 1: seed it back uh in eighteen sixty seven, I think,

1401
01:30:22,880 --> 01:30:26,920
Speaker 1: which is when they negotiated the treaty after the after

1402
01:30:26,920 --> 01:30:29,960
Speaker 1: the Fetterment fight, and then they in the eighteen seventy

1403
01:30:29,960 --> 01:30:33,200
Speaker 1: four when they discover gold, they say, changed our minds.

1404
01:30:33,600 --> 01:30:35,800
Speaker 1: You know, we know we have given you two treaties now,

1405
01:30:36,080 --> 01:30:40,960
Speaker 1: but the second second one we want to renegotiate as well. Uh.

1406
01:30:40,960 --> 01:30:46,760
Speaker 1: When when the Lakota won't renegotiate, it's war, and that's

1407
01:30:46,800 --> 01:30:50,120
Speaker 1: when Custer. Then that sets in motion the events that

1408
01:30:50,240 --> 01:30:53,920
Speaker 1: lead to the Battle of a Little Big Horn within

1409
01:30:54,439 --> 01:30:57,760
Speaker 1: a year and a half, two years, we're talking about fame,

1410
01:30:58,040 --> 01:31:02,160
Speaker 1: Bridge are having fame cost She was known to the

1411
01:31:02,200 --> 01:31:05,240
Speaker 1: people that killed him. Yeah, and there I guess there's

1412
01:31:05,280 --> 01:31:07,280
Speaker 1: some debate about whether or not that he had just

1413
01:31:07,320 --> 01:31:10,080
Speaker 1: recently cut his hair. He cut his hair short, his

1414
01:31:10,120 --> 01:31:12,080
Speaker 1: wife took the hair, and then after his death had

1415
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:16,800
Speaker 1: a wig made of her husband's hair. She's a fascinating

1416
01:31:16,840 --> 01:31:21,880
Speaker 1: character herself. And there's like debate about whether or not

1417
01:31:22,200 --> 01:31:28,000
Speaker 1: the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne recognized Custer's body on the

1418
01:31:28,040 --> 01:31:30,400
Speaker 1: battlefield because he didn't have his hair. And it was

1419
01:31:30,439 --> 01:31:33,760
Speaker 1: a woman that pointed out that that we found him

1420
01:31:33,960 --> 01:31:36,599
Speaker 1: and knew who he was, and that she had taken

1421
01:31:36,600 --> 01:31:41,400
Speaker 1: a sewing all and punched a hole through his ear

1422
01:31:41,479 --> 01:31:45,000
Speaker 1: drums so that in the afterlife he would better hear

1423
01:31:45,800 --> 01:31:49,280
Speaker 1: the warnings. And then she used her pony to kick

1424
01:31:49,360 --> 01:31:52,800
Speaker 1: up dirt on him, and she says, she says that

1425
01:31:52,840 --> 01:31:55,840
Speaker 1: she knew him. Yeah, people running around knowing each other.

1426
01:31:56,880 --> 01:32:01,000
Speaker 1: He's coming for you. It's you know, people were they

1427
01:32:01,040 --> 01:32:04,120
Speaker 1: were not huge numbers of people in even it's though

1428
01:32:04,120 --> 01:32:06,240
Speaker 1: it's vast territory. They were not huge numbers of people.

1429
01:32:06,400 --> 01:32:09,120
Speaker 1: So walk us through Grenell real quick, though, do you

1430
01:32:09,200 --> 01:32:11,040
Speaker 1: did you when you resea all the stuff? Did you

1431
01:32:11,120 --> 01:32:13,960
Speaker 1: find that these guys ever reflected because like he's like

1432
01:32:14,000 --> 01:32:16,479
Speaker 1: Steve was saying, they died so much, right, so at

1433
01:32:16,520 --> 01:32:19,680
Speaker 1: age sixty, did you ever find them reflecting on how

1434
01:32:19,760 --> 01:32:25,000
Speaker 1: lucky they must have been? Well? Um, I didn't find there.

1435
01:32:25,040 --> 01:32:30,200
Speaker 1: There's there's some great UH people who write when Bridger

1436
01:32:30,280 --> 01:32:34,280
Speaker 1: was still alive about conversations they had with him, and

1437
01:32:34,320 --> 01:32:38,240
Speaker 1: they'll so they were these nineteenth century people saying I

1438
01:32:38,280 --> 01:32:41,200
Speaker 1: was on a UH, I was on a long ride

1439
01:32:41,320 --> 01:32:44,200
Speaker 1: horseback ride with with Bridger and he told me this story.

1440
01:32:44,360 --> 01:32:46,439
Speaker 1: Or I was at Fort Laramie at the same time

1441
01:32:46,439 --> 01:32:47,840
Speaker 1: the bridge was there, and I heard him tell all

1442
01:32:47,880 --> 01:32:49,680
Speaker 1: these stories and I'm gonna write, I'm gonna write down

1443
01:32:49,720 --> 01:32:53,040
Speaker 1: all these stories he told. So there's there's those types

1444
01:32:53,320 --> 01:32:57,439
Speaker 1: of of stories. Um. I don't remember Bridger ever actually

1445
01:32:57,840 --> 01:33:03,559
Speaker 1: saying or being said to upset that he had been lucky. Um,

1446
01:33:03,600 --> 01:33:08,160
Speaker 1: but I just again, it's hard to imagine that that

1447
01:33:08,280 --> 01:33:11,360
Speaker 1: he didn't recognize that there was some measure of of

1448
01:33:11,479 --> 01:33:14,599
Speaker 1: luck in there. And and look at somebody like Hugh Glass.

1449
01:33:14,640 --> 01:33:19,360
Speaker 1: I mean, Hug Glass was a talented frontiersman and a

1450
01:33:19,400 --> 01:33:23,400
Speaker 1: tough badass who've survived, you know, being mauled by a

1451
01:33:23,439 --> 01:33:27,240
Speaker 1: grizzly bear and crawling two miles by himself with no weapons.

1452
01:33:27,840 --> 01:33:31,800
Speaker 1: Um and he still ends up I think, uh, in

1453
01:33:31,840 --> 01:33:34,360
Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time, you know, walking

1454
01:33:34,400 --> 01:33:40,320
Speaker 1: across the frozen Yellowstone and gets caught and killed. And

1455
01:33:40,880 --> 01:33:46,519
Speaker 1: so he had a day of bad luck. Good you got.

1456
01:33:47,479 --> 01:33:52,080
Speaker 1: It's like a few scraps. The other thing about those

1457
01:33:52,120 --> 01:33:55,599
Speaker 1: guys is, you know, we think about like getting mauled

1458
01:33:55,600 --> 01:33:58,320
Speaker 1: by a grizzly bear or dying in a in a

1459
01:33:58,360 --> 01:34:02,479
Speaker 1: fight with with Indians. But you know, if if you're

1460
01:34:02,479 --> 01:34:05,679
Speaker 1: out on your own in the frontier and you snap

1461
01:34:05,720 --> 01:34:10,320
Speaker 1: your ankle, you're freaking dead. You know, the the odds

1462
01:34:10,320 --> 01:34:13,600
Speaker 1: that you can. Or or you get sick and in

1463
01:34:13,640 --> 01:34:15,840
Speaker 1: the middle of the winter and you're off on your own,

1464
01:34:16,280 --> 01:34:19,439
Speaker 1: the odds that you can, you know, do all the

1465
01:34:19,479 --> 01:34:22,839
Speaker 1: things you need to do to survive with a broken ankle,

1466
01:34:23,080 --> 01:34:25,639
Speaker 1: or if you're laid up with a fever for two weeks.

1467
01:34:26,680 --> 01:34:28,320
Speaker 1: I don't think it took very much for a lot

1468
01:34:28,360 --> 01:34:33,040
Speaker 1: of those guys to die, and Uh, it's just that

1469
01:34:33,080 --> 01:34:37,400
Speaker 1: those aren't as as movie worthy, you know, the guy

1470
01:34:37,439 --> 01:34:40,680
Speaker 1: who died at the flu You know, I want to

1471
01:34:40,680 --> 01:34:44,360
Speaker 1: touch I keep I do want to get to this grenelle, gentleman,

1472
01:34:44,439 --> 01:34:47,400
Speaker 1: but I've to tell you our thing. Have you read

1473
01:34:47,439 --> 01:34:50,519
Speaker 1: the journal I've been talking about a lot lately, Life

1474
01:34:50,520 --> 01:34:52,479
Speaker 1: and Death at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell. Now,

1475
01:34:53,280 --> 01:34:55,720
Speaker 1: it's a guy. He spends a couple of years at

1476
01:34:55,720 --> 01:34:58,120
Speaker 1: the mouth of where the muscle Shell flows into Missouri.

1477
01:34:58,240 --> 01:35:00,360
Speaker 1: Like most the action takes places all in of water

1478
01:35:00,439 --> 01:35:04,559
Speaker 1: now because because the four Peck reservoir. Um, it's just

1479
01:35:04,560 --> 01:35:06,680
Speaker 1: his like daily account. So'll be like Monday, you know,

1480
01:35:06,720 --> 01:35:09,840
Speaker 1: Sonny and warm river came up two inches Tuesday, fight

1481
01:35:09,960 --> 01:35:15,160
Speaker 1: Bob got killed, sixties Yeah, huge fight, Bob got killed.

1482
01:35:15,800 --> 01:35:20,240
Speaker 1: Finally found Dave's body. Like Wednesday, Sonny again turned cold

1483
01:35:20,240 --> 01:35:26,719
Speaker 1: towards evening. Um, the historian that that collected and published

1484
01:35:26,920 --> 01:35:30,200
Speaker 1: this journal and commented on this journal, Uh, took it

1485
01:35:30,280 --> 01:35:34,759
Speaker 1: upon himself to try to corroborate the existence of all

1486
01:35:34,800 --> 01:35:37,280
Speaker 1: of these individuals who are coming and going from this

1487
01:35:37,360 --> 01:35:41,120
Speaker 1: outpost at the mouth of the muscle Shell River. So

1488
01:35:41,200 --> 01:35:43,160
Speaker 1: the guy, I'll be like, you know, old you know,

1489
01:35:43,360 --> 01:35:45,840
Speaker 1: Jed Tompkins came through on the way to check his

1490
01:35:45,880 --> 01:35:50,240
Speaker 1: wolf poison baits right, And then the historian will going,

1491
01:35:51,000 --> 01:35:54,240
Speaker 1: who is Jed Tompkins And he's like, turns out we

1492
01:35:54,320 --> 01:35:59,120
Speaker 1: find record of Jed Tompkins uh taking a line of

1493
01:35:59,240 --> 01:36:02,800
Speaker 1: credit at some store in St. Louis. And he's able

1494
01:36:02,840 --> 01:36:09,240
Speaker 1: to find the people that come and go. Some other

1495
01:36:09,320 --> 01:36:12,080
Speaker 1: mentioned some sometimes like like there's a woman that gets

1496
01:36:12,120 --> 01:36:18,200
Speaker 1: scalped and survived. Um, he later learns that she he

1497
01:36:18,240 --> 01:36:23,960
Speaker 1: writes about how she wore men's clothing. Um, everybody called

1498
01:36:23,960 --> 01:36:26,439
Speaker 1: her names that he said, names that can't be mentioned.

1499
01:36:26,640 --> 01:36:28,599
Speaker 1: And you get this portrait of this woman that there's

1500
01:36:28,640 --> 01:36:32,559
Speaker 1: this woman who's probably gay at a time it was

1501
01:36:32,560 --> 01:36:37,240
Speaker 1: completely unacceptable dressed as a man, was named all these

1502
01:36:37,280 --> 01:36:41,559
Speaker 1: derogatory remarks. She eventually marries a guy. He moves her

1503
01:36:41,560 --> 01:36:44,840
Speaker 1: down to Colorado. She blows her brains out. All you

1504
01:36:44,920 --> 01:36:47,040
Speaker 1: hear about her in the life that of the mouse

1505
01:36:47,080 --> 01:36:49,840
Speaker 1: of the muscle shell. So and so got scalped and

1506
01:36:49,960 --> 01:36:52,080
Speaker 1: looks like she's gonna make it. But he then was

1507
01:36:52,120 --> 01:36:53,960
Speaker 1: able to like like who, Like, who the hell was

1508
01:36:54,040 --> 01:36:57,040
Speaker 1: this right? And it's just just just like heartbreaking story

1509
01:36:57,920 --> 01:37:02,519
Speaker 1: of like someone who eventually, like what ever, resigns, marries

1510
01:37:02,560 --> 01:37:05,960
Speaker 1: a guy and kills herself, Like what the hell happened there?

1511
01:37:06,240 --> 01:37:10,320
Speaker 1: But uh, I was in his other book recently, and

1512
01:37:10,360 --> 01:37:12,720
Speaker 1: there's this like this character that emerges in the late

1513
01:37:12,720 --> 01:37:15,880
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds of Miles City, Montana, and there's no mention

1514
01:37:15,880 --> 01:37:18,080
Speaker 1: of him. But there's this kid whose dad was a

1515
01:37:18,120 --> 01:37:21,320
Speaker 1: doctor in Miles City in late eighteen hundreds, and the

1516
01:37:21,439 --> 01:37:24,120
Speaker 1: kid he's like later on in life, he's describing who

1517
01:37:24,120 --> 01:37:26,960
Speaker 1: comes to his dad who's a doctor. He describes a

1518
01:37:27,000 --> 01:37:30,640
Speaker 1: guy coming in who had been long ago scalped and

1519
01:37:30,680 --> 01:37:32,080
Speaker 1: it was all healed over, but you still see the

1520
01:37:32,120 --> 01:37:34,280
Speaker 1: veins on top of his head and all of his

1521
01:37:34,400 --> 01:37:39,640
Speaker 1: fingers had been removed at them at the middle joint. God, Okay,

1522
01:37:39,920 --> 01:37:42,760
Speaker 1: who the hell was that guy? Like that? There's a

1523
01:37:42,800 --> 01:37:44,960
Speaker 1: story and one hand we're talking about how everybody knows

1524
01:37:44,960 --> 01:37:46,800
Speaker 1: these people and they're always running into each other, but

1525
01:37:46,840 --> 01:37:48,639
Speaker 1: also it's like, how do you get to be that guy?

1526
01:37:48,760 --> 01:37:51,680
Speaker 1: And the only mention is some kid later recollects that

1527
01:37:51,760 --> 01:37:54,559
Speaker 1: this dude paid his dad a visit at a doctor

1528
01:37:54,800 --> 01:37:57,320
Speaker 1: and had been tortured and had all of his fingers

1529
01:37:57,320 --> 01:38:00,280
Speaker 1: removed at the knuckle and his scolts removed, and like

1530
01:38:00,439 --> 01:38:03,080
Speaker 1: no one else wrote this down. If you were running

1531
01:38:03,080 --> 01:38:07,639
Speaker 1: around town now missing your scalp and all your fingers,

1532
01:38:07,680 --> 01:38:10,760
Speaker 1: you wouldn't make your way into lots of materials. The

1533
01:38:10,760 --> 01:38:13,719
Speaker 1: fact that that was not more noteworthy tells you something

1534
01:38:13,760 --> 01:38:16,960
Speaker 1: about the general population reading them, Like, Okay, I understand it.

1535
01:38:17,000 --> 01:38:25,240
Speaker 1: I understand everything now as absolutely uh. But George Burgernell um,

1536
01:38:25,320 --> 01:38:29,559
Speaker 1: so I had never heard I had this. I was

1537
01:38:29,600 --> 01:38:33,360
Speaker 1: interested when I read your uh, when I read American Buffalo,

1538
01:38:33,400 --> 01:38:36,200
Speaker 1: your book at kind of your entree point to the

1539
01:38:36,240 --> 01:38:39,680
Speaker 1: Buffalo story and finding the skull and going on this

1540
01:38:39,880 --> 01:38:42,000
Speaker 1: hunt which sits in my living room today. I gotta

1541
01:38:42,000 --> 01:38:46,320
Speaker 1: see that. Um. But uh, it was interesting to me

1542
01:38:46,360 --> 01:38:48,719
Speaker 1: that that was kind of your entree point. My entree

1543
01:38:48,800 --> 01:38:51,840
Speaker 1: point to the Buffalo story is after I wrote the

1544
01:38:51,840 --> 01:38:56,360
Speaker 1: book about Beaute, I was I had this luxury of

1545
01:38:56,360 --> 01:38:59,000
Speaker 1: of literally a month where my my job was to

1546
01:38:59,040 --> 01:39:02,280
Speaker 1: go find a new story to write about. And I

1547
01:39:02,320 --> 01:39:07,519
Speaker 1: went to the University of Montana library and for a

1548
01:39:07,600 --> 01:39:12,080
Speaker 1: month literally just wandered the stacks, kind of follow my

1549
01:39:12,160 --> 01:39:16,400
Speaker 1: nose from things that interested me to things that interested me.

1550
01:39:17,040 --> 01:39:19,800
Speaker 1: And as I did that, I kind of started getting

1551
01:39:19,800 --> 01:39:23,240
Speaker 1: the idea. I'd always been fascinated with the buffalo, and

1552
01:39:23,320 --> 01:39:25,960
Speaker 1: I thought about doing a book about the buffalo. And

1553
01:39:26,000 --> 01:39:27,400
Speaker 1: then my idea was, I was going to do a

1554
01:39:27,400 --> 01:39:30,679
Speaker 1: book about the history of the West as told true

1555
01:39:31,240 --> 01:39:32,960
Speaker 1: the Buffalo. And I thought it was cool because you

1556
01:39:32,960 --> 01:39:37,040
Speaker 1: could do prehistoric times. You could do Native Americans before

1557
01:39:37,280 --> 01:39:40,200
Speaker 1: the arrival of the whites. You could do uh, you know,

1558
01:39:40,240 --> 01:39:42,760
Speaker 1: the fur trade. You could do the early fur trade era.

1559
01:39:42,920 --> 01:39:45,640
Speaker 1: You could do the buffalo hunting era. You could do

1560
01:39:45,640 --> 01:39:48,280
Speaker 1: the birth of the conservation movement. You could tell that

1561
01:39:48,320 --> 01:39:51,160
Speaker 1: whole story just through the prison of the Buffalo. And

1562
01:39:51,400 --> 01:39:52,800
Speaker 1: that was the book that I was going to write.

1563
01:39:52,800 --> 01:39:55,200
Speaker 1: And then I came across this guy, George burg Grunnell,

1564
01:39:55,280 --> 01:39:57,760
Speaker 1: who I had never heard of, who it turns out,

1565
01:39:58,439 --> 01:40:01,799
Speaker 1: doesn't live through all of that exactly, but he his life,

1566
01:40:02,600 --> 01:40:07,360
Speaker 1: he lives through a significant chunk of it, and uh,

1567
01:40:07,439 --> 01:40:09,599
Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe I've never heard of him before,

1568
01:40:09,640 --> 01:40:14,559
Speaker 1: because he literally is in many ways, the the guy

1569
01:40:14,640 --> 01:40:20,080
Speaker 1: who's most responsible for preserving Yellowstone National Park, for uh,

1570
01:40:20,120 --> 01:40:24,120
Speaker 1: the establishment of Glacier and along the way, he's largely

1571
01:40:24,160 --> 01:40:28,600
Speaker 1: responsible for saving the buffalo from being you know, completely

1572
01:40:28,640 --> 01:40:33,599
Speaker 1: exterminated on the North American continent. And so I decided

1573
01:40:33,640 --> 01:40:37,000
Speaker 1: i'd write use him as kind of the human vehicle

1574
01:40:37,439 --> 01:40:40,559
Speaker 1: to tell the story of the buffalo in a in

1575
01:40:40,560 --> 01:40:42,800
Speaker 1: a somewhat similar way to to which you use your

1576
01:40:42,800 --> 01:40:45,840
Speaker 1: own experience of fine skull and and going on the hunt.

1577
01:40:45,840 --> 01:40:50,639
Speaker 1: And then we've in other parts of the story stuff. Yeah,

1578
01:40:50,760 --> 01:40:54,240
Speaker 1: but speaking of which, and I really appreciate your constructive

1579
01:40:54,240 --> 01:40:56,760
Speaker 1: criticism on the Revenant and uh and I was just

1580
01:40:56,800 --> 01:40:59,880
Speaker 1: gonna ask you about something and I don't talk about now,

1581
01:41:00,080 --> 01:41:02,400
Speaker 1: Well there's that. I mean, how did you miss that?

1582
01:41:02,520 --> 01:41:05,479
Speaker 1: Come on? But I think the reason you didn't talk

1583
01:41:05,479 --> 01:41:08,519
Speaker 1: about Grenell is because you devote so many paragraphs to

1584
01:41:08,520 --> 01:41:12,760
Speaker 1: the buffalo Penis. There is like long, long paragraphs about

1585
01:41:12,760 --> 01:41:17,759
Speaker 1: the buffalo. Penis. Got to cut this really influential figure Grinnell,

1586
01:41:19,240 --> 01:41:23,879
Speaker 1: or you gotta cut some of your penis material. And

1587
01:41:23,920 --> 01:41:26,960
Speaker 1: I slept on it and decided just and the decision

1588
01:41:27,000 --> 01:41:29,760
Speaker 1: you may probably explains why your Buffalo books sold more

1589
01:41:29,800 --> 01:41:33,080
Speaker 1: than mine did so, but as a result, I can't

1590
01:41:33,080 --> 01:41:35,759
Speaker 1: even like, I can't even have my children read this anymore.

1591
01:41:35,840 --> 01:41:39,280
Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, come on, what the hell so anyway, Um,

1592
01:41:39,439 --> 01:41:44,519
Speaker 1: but we digress. Yeah, I think that I uh as

1593
01:41:44,560 --> 01:41:48,080
Speaker 1: being not as historian, I'm able to just focus, Like

1594
01:41:48,120 --> 01:41:49,560
Speaker 1: I said, I made a joke, but I'm able to

1595
01:41:49,600 --> 01:41:52,720
Speaker 1: focus on the weird stuff. Well, that's a great thing

1596
01:41:52,720 --> 01:41:55,800
Speaker 1: about the buffalo, that is. I love a lot of

1597
01:41:55,840 --> 01:42:00,519
Speaker 1: the the factoids about about the buffalo, Like you know,

1598
01:42:01,040 --> 01:42:04,320
Speaker 1: ten times more hair per square inch than a cow,

1599
01:42:04,880 --> 01:42:08,320
Speaker 1: which kind of helps you explain why they do. Okay, Um,

1600
01:42:08,320 --> 01:42:13,519
Speaker 1: you know the frozen prairie and the birth success rate, Yeah,

1601
01:42:13,800 --> 01:42:17,559
Speaker 1: compared to a cow that was aver. And not only that,

1602
01:42:17,840 --> 01:42:21,680
Speaker 1: but it's still it's amazing to me that a buffalo

1603
01:42:21,800 --> 01:42:27,000
Speaker 1: calf stands at two minutes and can run with a

1604
01:42:27,040 --> 01:42:29,880
Speaker 1: herd at the age of one hour. Like I don't

1605
01:42:29,880 --> 01:42:35,360
Speaker 1: I don't even get physiologically how muscles can possibly work

1606
01:42:36,000 --> 01:42:39,400
Speaker 1: to do that. There's there's a there's a recorded incident

1607
01:42:40,120 --> 01:42:43,160
Speaker 1: of I think a three or four day old calf

1608
01:42:44,080 --> 01:42:49,519
Speaker 1: running seventy miles with a herd, and just like, that's

1609
01:42:49,560 --> 01:42:53,640
Speaker 1: an amazing animal. And so it's it's not surprising in

1610
01:42:53,640 --> 01:42:55,120
Speaker 1: a lot of ways that it has this kind of

1611
01:42:55,320 --> 01:42:58,080
Speaker 1: iconic stature that it does. But one of the things

1612
01:42:58,120 --> 01:43:01,960
Speaker 1: I love so much about about the Grenelle story is

1613
01:43:02,880 --> 01:43:07,360
Speaker 1: it really is about the birth of the conservation movement,

1614
01:43:07,840 --> 01:43:10,839
Speaker 1: and the birth of the conservation movement really is about

1615
01:43:11,240 --> 01:43:14,840
Speaker 1: hunters in a really significant way. What do you think,

1616
01:43:15,080 --> 01:43:17,680
Speaker 1: what do you think it was? It was it like

1617
01:43:17,960 --> 01:43:21,479
Speaker 1: was it like like, oh my god, what did we do?

1618
01:43:21,640 --> 01:43:24,760
Speaker 1: Like like what was in these guys heads? Because he

1619
01:43:24,800 --> 01:43:27,879
Speaker 1: was a hunter, right, I mean, he was totally a hunter. Um,

1620
01:43:27,960 --> 01:43:31,439
Speaker 1: well he has I'll talk about Grenelle and then and

1621
01:43:31,479 --> 01:43:33,360
Speaker 1: then the hunter piece of it, because I think he

1622
01:43:33,439 --> 01:43:37,160
Speaker 1: had a couple of incredibly unique experiences that made him,

1623
01:43:37,200 --> 01:43:41,320
Speaker 1: i think, able to understand what was going on better

1624
01:43:41,400 --> 01:43:44,519
Speaker 1: than most other people could have at the time. One

1625
01:43:44,520 --> 01:43:48,639
Speaker 1: thing he understood is when he right, when he got

1626
01:43:48,680 --> 01:43:51,840
Speaker 1: out of college and he this is a guy who's

1627
01:43:51,840 --> 01:43:56,160
Speaker 1: an East Coast elitist and goes to Yale and his

1628
01:43:56,280 --> 01:44:00,320
Speaker 1: father is a rich New York lawyer, but he wants

1629
01:44:00,320 --> 01:44:02,720
Speaker 1: to go west. Grinell wants to go west. And he

1630
01:44:02,840 --> 01:44:08,479
Speaker 1: comes out in I think eighteen seventy with a Yale

1631
01:44:08,840 --> 01:44:14,160
Speaker 1: professor who's doing a dinosaur bone hunt in uh in

1632
01:44:14,240 --> 01:44:18,080
Speaker 1: the West, and so he comes out, you know, and

1633
01:44:18,120 --> 01:44:22,600
Speaker 1: they're all over like Nebraska, Wyoming and it's still a

1634
01:44:22,680 --> 01:44:27,320
Speaker 1: war zone there. The U. S. Cavalry guarded them while

1635
01:44:27,400 --> 01:44:33,439
Speaker 1: they while they dug. But what he's digging out, oh

1636
01:44:33,439 --> 01:44:41,120
Speaker 1: my god. But what Grennelle is doing in eighteen seventy

1637
01:44:41,280 --> 01:44:45,960
Speaker 1: is he's digging up like triceratops bones in Nebraska and

1638
01:44:46,160 --> 01:44:51,680
Speaker 1: camel bones and miniature horses. And so what Grennelle understood

1639
01:44:51,920 --> 01:44:55,479
Speaker 1: from his own kind of uh tangible experience, is that

1640
01:44:55,600 --> 01:44:59,639
Speaker 1: extinction could happen. And this is in an era of

1641
01:44:59,680 --> 01:45:05,759
Speaker 1: the the myth of inexhaustibility where people not for crazy reasons,

1642
01:45:05,800 --> 01:45:09,320
Speaker 1: by the way, I thought we can't kill all the buffalo.

1643
01:45:09,720 --> 01:45:15,160
Speaker 1: There's so many buffalo. The resources out here are are inexhaustible,

1644
01:45:15,640 --> 01:45:18,920
Speaker 1: and and so but grennell had that that experience of

1645
01:45:18,960 --> 01:45:22,720
Speaker 1: seeing that some stuff that used to be living I

1646
01:45:22,840 --> 01:45:25,880
Speaker 1: wasn't here anymore. So that was one of his his experiences,

1647
01:45:26,240 --> 01:45:28,840
Speaker 1: his other experience, and he made that connection. He didn't

1648
01:45:28,840 --> 01:45:33,479
Speaker 1: at the time use what people who are uncomfortable with

1649
01:45:34,760 --> 01:45:38,080
Speaker 1: evolution and extinction on religious grounds today would say, it

1650
01:45:38,240 --> 01:45:41,320
Speaker 1: is like the earth was created old. He was a

1651
01:45:41,320 --> 01:45:45,280
Speaker 1: hardcore scientist um and he didn't have any problem with that.

1652
01:45:45,320 --> 01:45:48,799
Speaker 1: There are animals that that that came and went. Lots

1653
01:45:48,800 --> 01:45:51,439
Speaker 1: of time has passed now I think he was. I

1654
01:45:51,479 --> 01:45:54,360
Speaker 1: think he viewed that from uh in a very for

1655
01:45:54,560 --> 01:45:58,240
Speaker 1: his era, especially uh state of the art scientific way.

1656
01:45:59,040 --> 01:46:02,240
Speaker 1: Um well, it's kind amazing to his age, right because

1657
01:46:02,240 --> 01:46:04,280
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a college kid, and to have

1658
01:46:04,520 --> 01:46:07,200
Speaker 1: sort of those kind of thoughts already, you know, figuring

1659
01:46:07,240 --> 01:46:09,360
Speaker 1: that out from seeing that was pretty bazing. And he

1660
01:46:09,400 --> 01:46:11,960
Speaker 1: would have been, you know, with a you know, he's

1661
01:46:12,000 --> 01:46:14,320
Speaker 1: with a group that was led by uh, the one

1662
01:46:14,360 --> 01:46:19,200
Speaker 1: of the you know foremost UH scientists of his day

1663
01:46:19,439 --> 01:46:21,960
Speaker 1: who would have been they've been would be sitting around

1664
01:46:22,000 --> 01:46:26,439
Speaker 1: the campfire at night, presumably talking about, you know, dinosaur bones.

1665
01:46:26,920 --> 01:46:30,040
Speaker 1: But he did have that very unique experience. The other

1666
01:46:30,120 --> 01:46:33,479
Speaker 1: experience that I think he had that really touches on

1667
01:46:33,520 --> 01:46:39,479
Speaker 1: the hunter piece of it is his boyhood neighbor was

1668
01:46:40,160 --> 01:46:46,040
Speaker 1: the widow of John James Audubon, Lucy Audubon, and she's

1669
01:46:46,240 --> 01:46:50,000
Speaker 1: old lady at this point and John is already dead.

1670
01:46:50,400 --> 01:46:53,519
Speaker 1: But they lived in there were these barns on the

1671
01:46:53,600 --> 01:46:59,439
Speaker 1: property where like all of John James Audubon's old travel

1672
01:46:59,560 --> 01:47:05,080
Speaker 1: stuff was stuffed you know stuff, well, his paintings too,

1673
01:47:05,120 --> 01:47:08,720
Speaker 1: but like all the things he gathered as he as

1674
01:47:08,760 --> 01:47:12,720
Speaker 1: he came back, all the paraphernalia he picked up, and

1675
01:47:12,800 --> 01:47:16,479
Speaker 1: Lucy Autobon becomes his tutor. And so, first of all,

1676
01:47:16,680 --> 01:47:20,040
Speaker 1: he's tutored at a time when people were learning reading, writing,

1677
01:47:20,040 --> 01:47:24,240
Speaker 1: and arithmetic. He's all also learning about natural science. And

1678
01:47:24,320 --> 01:47:27,920
Speaker 1: not only that, but she is instilling in him, uh,

1679
01:47:28,040 --> 01:47:32,240
Speaker 1: this ethic of what she called self restraint, and what

1680
01:47:32,320 --> 01:47:36,640
Speaker 1: self restraint basically meant was that you don't consume everything

1681
01:47:37,040 --> 01:47:40,959
Speaker 1: that you can. And when you think about the contrast

1682
01:47:40,960 --> 01:47:43,920
Speaker 1: of that in kind of the robber Baron era that

1683
01:47:44,040 --> 01:47:47,519
Speaker 1: he lived in and combined with kind of the myth

1684
01:47:47,560 --> 01:47:50,400
Speaker 1: of the inexhaustibility that we could never use everything up,

1685
01:47:50,920 --> 01:47:55,519
Speaker 1: he had this particularly unique perch to kind of view

1686
01:47:55,560 --> 01:47:59,439
Speaker 1: the world and it shaped his view, first of all,

1687
01:47:59,520 --> 01:48:04,920
Speaker 1: of what the responsibility of sportsman was. And you know, uh,

1688
01:48:05,160 --> 01:48:07,800
Speaker 1: this is the era when they're starting to figure out

1689
01:48:07,840 --> 01:48:12,360
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't hunt things, you know, twelve months a year,

1690
01:48:12,560 --> 01:48:16,200
Speaker 1: there should be a season for hunting things. We shouldn't

1691
01:48:16,200 --> 01:48:21,439
Speaker 1: go out and kill every uh animal that pops up

1692
01:48:21,439 --> 01:48:24,080
Speaker 1: in front of us. There should be limits that we

1693
01:48:24,160 --> 01:48:27,640
Speaker 1: put on ourselves. And you ask a question, what is

1694
01:48:27,680 --> 01:48:32,880
Speaker 1: it about hunters, and I think that they were one

1695
01:48:32,920 --> 01:48:36,960
Speaker 1: of the first groups of people to go into wilderness

1696
01:48:37,760 --> 01:48:40,960
Speaker 1: and not and see it as a place to to recreate.

1697
01:48:41,600 --> 01:48:44,000
Speaker 1: And they wanted to preserve that because they wanted to

1698
01:48:44,000 --> 01:48:46,320
Speaker 1: come back the next season and have it not be gone,

1699
01:48:46,760 --> 01:48:49,360
Speaker 1: and they wanted to bring their their their kids back

1700
01:48:49,720 --> 01:48:51,880
Speaker 1: and have them be able to have the same experience

1701
01:48:51,920 --> 01:48:54,920
Speaker 1: the same way that hunters do today. And I think

1702
01:48:55,000 --> 01:48:58,719
Speaker 1: that ethic of the wild being a place that had

1703
01:48:58,880 --> 01:49:03,040
Speaker 1: intrinsic value you that we should preserve. Uh, when you

1704
01:49:03,080 --> 01:49:05,920
Speaker 1: think about it, it makes complete sense that it came

1705
01:49:06,360 --> 01:49:11,680
Speaker 1: in significant part from hunters. That's my explanation. Yeah, a

1706
01:49:11,760 --> 01:49:14,760
Speaker 1: certain type of hunter, because there's an interesting point in

1707
01:49:14,800 --> 01:49:18,040
Speaker 1: American history where these guys coexist with the market hunters.

1708
01:49:18,640 --> 01:49:20,439
Speaker 1: These people we've been talking about and kind of like

1709
01:49:20,520 --> 01:49:26,960
Speaker 1: celebrating throughout this conversation, Um Boon, Bridger Glass, right, frontiers

1710
01:49:26,960 --> 01:49:32,559
Speaker 1: men and later mountain men. Um, we're rapacious like they

1711
01:49:32,920 --> 01:49:37,120
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, uh, you know, they would

1712
01:49:37,160 --> 01:49:40,600
Speaker 1: stack up like astounding numbers of animals. And then it

1713
01:49:40,720 --> 01:49:42,280
Speaker 1: came to be this point in time when all of

1714
01:49:42,320 --> 01:49:48,080
Speaker 1: a sudden you had sport hunters wealthy like generally wealthy

1715
01:49:48,240 --> 01:49:51,559
Speaker 1: from the East sport hunters, and the first thing that

1716
01:49:51,600 --> 01:49:56,880
Speaker 1: these sport hunters needed to do to win was to

1717
01:49:56,920 --> 01:49:59,519
Speaker 1: put these other guys out of business. We generally sit

1718
01:49:59,560 --> 01:50:02,879
Speaker 1: around celebrating the accomplishments of these guys that were regarded

1719
01:50:02,920 --> 01:50:05,760
Speaker 1: by the sport hunters as the enemies, you know, like

1720
01:50:05,880 --> 01:50:08,080
Speaker 1: Roosevelt in the early Boone and Crocker Club and whatever

1721
01:50:08,080 --> 01:50:11,800
Speaker 1: they had, Like these different societies and hunters groups kind

1722
01:50:11,840 --> 01:50:13,800
Speaker 1: of like the first thing they needed to do, was it,

1723
01:50:13,920 --> 01:50:15,680
Speaker 1: like the first thing we're gonna do is try to

1724
01:50:15,720 --> 01:50:19,680
Speaker 1: somehow sabotage commercial wildlife markets past the rule that you

1725
01:50:19,720 --> 01:50:23,439
Speaker 1: can't serve wild game in New York City. Um. And

1726
01:50:23,680 --> 01:50:26,840
Speaker 1: now like hunters today that we kind of like celebrate

1727
01:50:26,880 --> 01:50:32,920
Speaker 1: the accomplishments of these conservations like Roosevelt Grennell, um, but

1728
01:50:33,120 --> 01:50:36,960
Speaker 1: we really want to talk about who we admire, like

1729
01:50:38,360 --> 01:50:42,840
Speaker 1: it's it's Bridger and Glass because like the skill set

1730
01:50:42,880 --> 01:50:48,000
Speaker 1: was amazing well and and look, hopefully we gain knowledge

1731
01:50:48,360 --> 01:50:55,640
Speaker 1: as we progress as individuals and as a people. And uh,

1732
01:50:55,840 --> 01:51:00,320
Speaker 1: the world looked very different in uh the third tis

1733
01:51:00,720 --> 01:51:04,240
Speaker 1: to Jim Bridger than it did even by the eighteen

1734
01:51:04,640 --> 01:51:09,720
Speaker 1: seventies and certainly by the eighties when uh, when the

1735
01:51:09,800 --> 01:51:13,280
Speaker 1: last of the of the of the Montana herd is

1736
01:51:13,280 --> 01:51:18,400
Speaker 1: wiped out. Uh, we knew at that point that the

1737
01:51:18,400 --> 01:51:22,599
Speaker 1: the inexhaustibility of resources was a myth because the buffalo

1738
01:51:22,640 --> 01:51:27,120
Speaker 1: were gone. Um. There there's this uh statistic I came

1739
01:51:27,360 --> 01:51:30,760
Speaker 1: across in reading about because you know you point us

1740
01:51:30,760 --> 01:51:33,920
Speaker 1: out in your book too. The the arrival of the

1741
01:51:34,000 --> 01:51:38,360
Speaker 1: railroad is lights out for the buffalo because it's the

1742
01:51:38,479 --> 01:51:43,639
Speaker 1: infrastructure for commercial hunting. Um. The reason they trapped beaver

1743
01:51:43,720 --> 01:51:47,200
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties instead of buffalo is because buffalo

1744
01:51:47,280 --> 01:51:51,080
Speaker 1: pelts buffalo highs are too damn heavy. You can't move them.

1745
01:51:52,240 --> 01:51:55,559
Speaker 1: A beaver pelt weighed two pounds, and they could stack

1746
01:51:55,640 --> 01:51:58,920
Speaker 1: them up and stick him on a canoe and and

1747
01:51:59,000 --> 01:52:02,360
Speaker 1: send him down river. And that was a viable business

1748
01:52:02,400 --> 01:52:04,559
Speaker 1: that they couldn't exploit the buffalo in the eighteen thirties

1749
01:52:04,600 --> 01:52:08,200
Speaker 1: because they couldn't transport the hides. And what the railroad does,

1750
01:52:08,360 --> 01:52:10,000
Speaker 1: first of all when it rives in Kansas and then

1751
01:52:10,040 --> 01:52:13,080
Speaker 1: when it arrives in Miles City in Montana, is it

1752
01:52:13,120 --> 01:52:17,000
Speaker 1: creates the infrastructure to transport the hides back east. And

1753
01:52:17,000 --> 01:52:20,759
Speaker 1: then it's it's lights out, and so I think you

1754
01:52:20,760 --> 01:52:23,599
Speaker 1: you lived in Miles City, right, I think the railroad

1755
01:52:23,680 --> 01:52:26,639
Speaker 1: arrives in Miles City in eighteen eighty one, I want

1756
01:52:26,640 --> 01:52:32,320
Speaker 1: to say, so the buffalo hunters come in with the

1757
01:52:32,400 --> 01:52:37,280
Speaker 1: railroad in eighteen eighty two. The railroad keeps statistics and

1758
01:52:37,360 --> 01:52:41,360
Speaker 1: there were two hundred thousand hides that were the railroad

1759
01:52:41,400 --> 01:52:46,040
Speaker 1: shipped out of Montana in eighteen eighty two. Uh, it

1760
01:52:46,080 --> 01:52:48,040
Speaker 1: took I think seventy rail it was. That was the

1761
01:52:48,040 --> 01:52:52,160
Speaker 1: equivalent of seventy rail cars. In eighteen eighty three, the

1762
01:52:52,240 --> 01:52:55,519
Speaker 1: railroad shipped out forty thousand hides. So it goes from

1763
01:52:55,560 --> 01:52:59,400
Speaker 1: two hundred hides to forty thousand hides. In eighteen eighty four,

1764
01:53:00,000 --> 01:53:04,360
Speaker 1: there was one box car of buffalo hides that the

1765
01:53:04,439 --> 01:53:08,600
Speaker 1: railroad chips out of the state. And Den's over. That's it.

1766
01:53:09,560 --> 01:53:15,639
Speaker 1: I liked it. Horn Today. Um, you know, he comes

1767
01:53:15,640 --> 01:53:17,880
Speaker 1: out I can't remember what year, but around eight three

1768
01:53:17,920 --> 01:53:20,320
Speaker 1: or ready four from the Smithsonian. Yeah, comes out to

1769
01:53:20,320 --> 01:53:23,439
Speaker 1: collect somebodies, trying to like shoot the last one just

1770
01:53:23,520 --> 01:53:27,439
Speaker 1: to bridger back. And he points out that he points

1771
01:53:27,439 --> 01:53:30,800
Speaker 1: out that those hide hunters you talk about, like the inexhausted,

1772
01:53:30,800 --> 01:53:34,160
Speaker 1: the myth of inexhaustibility. He points out that the hide

1773
01:53:34,200 --> 01:53:39,840
Speaker 1: hunters that were hanging around convinced that more would come

1774
01:53:40,320 --> 01:53:43,519
Speaker 1: from the north, and then it's like just over time

1775
01:53:44,080 --> 01:53:48,799
Speaker 1: they gradually found their way into ranching and various things.

1776
01:53:48,800 --> 01:53:52,960
Speaker 1: In the event you were like, huh, I guess they're

1777
01:53:52,960 --> 01:53:57,439
Speaker 1: not coming. Yeah, well they sort of became the they

1778
01:53:57,479 --> 01:54:00,720
Speaker 1: became the sort of social fabric of the town. UM.

1779
01:54:00,800 --> 01:54:04,080
Speaker 1: And you when you read about uh Montana history in

1780
01:54:04,120 --> 01:54:07,000
Speaker 1: the in the eighteen nineties, and I did a bunch

1781
01:54:07,000 --> 01:54:09,759
Speaker 1: of research on on Butte, there's all sorts of people

1782
01:54:09,760 --> 01:54:13,360
Speaker 1: who are identified as former buffalo hunters for exactly that reason.

1783
01:54:13,439 --> 01:54:16,840
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, nobody in the eighteen nineties is still

1784
01:54:16,840 --> 01:54:18,840
Speaker 1: a buffalo hunter there, but there's a lot of former

1785
01:54:18,880 --> 01:54:23,080
Speaker 1: buffalo hunters. Um. So yeah, it's it's UH and the

1786
01:54:23,160 --> 01:54:26,120
Speaker 1: Hornaday thing. I mean, think about what it means that

1787
01:54:26,160 --> 01:54:32,320
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian Institution UH sends out a crew to find

1788
01:54:32,600 --> 01:54:35,600
Speaker 1: what they hope is kind of the last buffalo so

1789
01:54:35,680 --> 01:54:38,960
Speaker 1: they can kill it, because they view that is the

1790
01:54:39,040 --> 01:54:41,600
Speaker 1: only way that they can you know, quote unquote preserve

1791
01:54:41,680 --> 01:54:45,480
Speaker 1: the buffalo in order to have one in the Smithsonian

1792
01:54:45,640 --> 01:54:48,760
Speaker 1: stuffed so that people can come look at it and

1793
01:54:48,840 --> 01:54:51,760
Speaker 1: see what it was like. Um. I mean, think think

1794
01:54:51,800 --> 01:54:54,800
Speaker 1: about what that that says about, you know, the moment

1795
01:54:54,880 --> 01:54:56,920
Speaker 1: we were at. And frankly, that's one of the things

1796
01:54:56,920 --> 01:55:00,440
Speaker 1: that makes Grenell so amazing is the one in place

1797
01:55:00,440 --> 01:55:05,280
Speaker 1: where there's buffalo while buffalo still living in the lower

1798
01:55:05,360 --> 01:55:12,480
Speaker 1: forty eight is Yellowstone. And Yellowstone in the eighteen eighties

1799
01:55:12,880 --> 01:55:17,320
Speaker 1: has been established as a national park. I think it's

1800
01:55:17,400 --> 01:55:23,360
Speaker 1: established in eighteen seventy two, but it's been completely ignored. Um.

1801
01:55:23,400 --> 01:55:25,280
Speaker 1: You know, it's always ironic to me when I go

1802
01:55:25,360 --> 01:55:28,480
Speaker 1: to Yellowstone because the sweatshirts always have you know, Yellowstone

1803
01:55:28,640 --> 01:55:31,400
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two, because that's the year it was established.

1804
01:55:31,760 --> 01:55:34,520
Speaker 1: But the only reason Yellowstone was established is because they

1805
01:55:34,520 --> 01:55:37,840
Speaker 1: had figured out there was no gold there. And so

1806
01:55:38,000 --> 01:55:40,600
Speaker 1: it wasn't that they wanted to preserve this place. It

1807
01:55:40,760 --> 01:55:44,280
Speaker 1: was that they deemed it as having no economic value

1808
01:55:44,360 --> 01:55:48,680
Speaker 1: and so like whatever, and so they established Yellowstone. Certain

1809
01:55:48,760 --> 01:55:52,640
Speaker 1: no surface gold, no surface gold. Yeah, probably all they

1810
01:55:52,680 --> 01:55:55,120
Speaker 1: knew about, yeah, which is what they were after in

1811
01:55:55,160 --> 01:56:00,920
Speaker 1: that era. Um. And so what's significant about Grennell is

1812
01:56:01,800 --> 01:56:09,000
Speaker 1: he fights to preserve Yellowstone and wild places when it

1813
01:56:09,120 --> 01:56:12,840
Speaker 1: actually when there's a contest with a commercial interest, and

1814
01:56:12,880 --> 01:56:16,040
Speaker 1: the commercial interest at the time was the railroads, which were,

1815
01:56:16,200 --> 01:56:19,200
Speaker 1: of course the big business of the day, and the

1816
01:56:19,280 --> 01:56:23,880
Speaker 1: railroads want to build a spur through Yellowstone National Park.

1817
01:56:24,600 --> 01:56:27,720
Speaker 1: UM and Grennell and the Boone and Crockett Club and

1818
01:56:27,720 --> 01:56:33,960
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt fight that. UM and in they passed the

1819
01:56:34,080 --> 01:56:38,360
Speaker 1: Lacy Act, which basically, for the first time ever established

1820
01:56:38,560 --> 01:56:44,520
Speaker 1: penalties for destroying wildlife and made it have an economic cost,

1821
01:56:45,120 --> 01:56:49,440
Speaker 1: and also took on a vested economic interest, namely the railroads,

1822
01:56:49,480 --> 01:56:52,520
Speaker 1: in order to to establish that and they win. So

1823
01:56:52,640 --> 01:56:56,560
Speaker 1: really it's that year that is that is the to me,

1824
01:56:56,760 --> 01:56:59,680
Speaker 1: the more important year in terms of the history of

1825
01:56:59,760 --> 01:57:02,640
Speaker 1: yellow because that's when that's when we when we decided,

1826
01:57:03,520 --> 01:57:06,960
Speaker 1: even though it's not easy, and even though there's competing interests,

1827
01:57:07,160 --> 01:57:10,320
Speaker 1: we're still going to protect Yellowstone National Park. There's a

1828
01:57:10,360 --> 01:57:12,760
Speaker 1: really boring book, except that it would be interesting to

1829
01:57:12,840 --> 01:57:15,680
Speaker 1: two or three people in the history of the Lazy Act,

1830
01:57:15,880 --> 01:57:20,320
Speaker 1: because it is still a very powerful wildlife tool to

1831
01:57:20,400 --> 01:57:24,600
Speaker 1: this day and the foresight of the people who created that.

1832
01:57:24,640 --> 01:57:28,040
Speaker 1: I mean, how many how many laws from do we

1833
01:57:28,040 --> 01:57:30,480
Speaker 1: still think about today? Yeah, just for for folks are

1834
01:57:30,480 --> 01:57:34,680
Speaker 1: saying like the Lazy Act gives um when you commit

1835
01:57:34,720 --> 01:57:39,839
Speaker 1: wildlife crimes, and those wildlife crimes move across state lines,

1836
01:57:40,560 --> 01:57:43,640
Speaker 1: it gives some real teeth to enforcement. And it made

1837
01:57:43,680 --> 01:57:45,640
Speaker 1: it that at the time states that might have been

1838
01:57:45,720 --> 01:57:50,400
Speaker 1: lack of days ago about wildlife laws. Um, it gave

1839
01:57:50,480 --> 01:57:54,600
Speaker 1: like some it gave some federal oversight on wildlife stuff.

1840
01:57:54,680 --> 01:57:57,560
Speaker 1: So the minute you did some poaching, it's still this

1841
01:57:57,640 --> 01:58:00,240
Speaker 1: outworks today, Like you might do some poaching in one

1842
01:58:00,280 --> 01:58:03,920
Speaker 1: state and drive across. There's even Lazy Act prosecutions where

1843
01:58:03,920 --> 01:58:06,520
Speaker 1: someone poaches something to one state, but they drive the

1844
01:58:06,520 --> 01:58:09,920
Speaker 1: head of their taxidermist twenty miles down the road who

1845
01:58:09,960 --> 01:58:12,120
Speaker 1: happens to be in a different state. That also becomes

1846
01:58:12,120 --> 01:58:16,040
Speaker 1: a federal crime. It's a Lazy Act violation, and they

1847
01:58:16,040 --> 01:58:18,600
Speaker 1: still use it. Imagine because he was on a daily

1848
01:58:18,640 --> 01:58:23,040
Speaker 1: basis today what the The other thing that I love

1849
01:58:23,080 --> 01:58:27,560
Speaker 1: about about Grennell in terms of his vision and foresight,

1850
01:58:28,320 --> 01:58:34,160
Speaker 1: is he was an incredibly canny political operator because he

1851
01:58:34,200 --> 01:58:36,680
Speaker 1: was fighting against the railroads and he knew that the

1852
01:58:36,720 --> 01:58:39,280
Speaker 1: most powerful force of his day was I mean, the

1853
01:58:39,360 --> 01:58:44,560
Speaker 1: railroads invented lobbying literally and uh, and Grennell knew that

1854
01:58:44,640 --> 01:58:49,879
Speaker 1: he needed his own constituency and UH, he needed to

1855
01:58:49,960 --> 01:58:55,040
Speaker 1: change the narrative and so his he also used social

1856
01:58:55,040 --> 01:58:57,600
Speaker 1: media the day, which was magazines. I mean, this was

1857
01:58:57,840 --> 01:59:01,120
Speaker 1: the era after the Civil War. Is the golden age

1858
01:59:01,160 --> 01:59:04,280
Speaker 1: in some ways of of magazines. That there's all these

1859
01:59:04,360 --> 01:59:07,000
Speaker 1: magazines that flourish, including the one that he was the

1860
01:59:07,880 --> 01:59:12,200
Speaker 1: publisher of, UH, which is Forest and Stream. And he

1861
01:59:12,320 --> 01:59:18,120
Speaker 1: used that that magazine to to UH editorialize two Hunters

1862
01:59:18,560 --> 01:59:24,960
Speaker 1: every week. And his theme was public land and totally

1863
01:59:25,160 --> 01:59:29,160
Speaker 1: and because nobody knew what public land meant then, and

1864
01:59:29,240 --> 01:59:32,040
Speaker 1: what he explains to people as public land means you

1865
01:59:32,080 --> 01:59:36,960
Speaker 1: own it. You hunter in UH. You know who doesn't

1866
01:59:37,000 --> 01:59:41,320
Speaker 1: live in UH, in Wyoming or Montana. You own a

1867
01:59:41,360 --> 01:59:49,440
Speaker 1: piece of yellowstone. And when somebody is exploiting resources in Yellowstone,

1868
01:59:49,520 --> 01:59:52,400
Speaker 1: they're stealing from you, and you should be piste off

1869
01:59:52,440 --> 01:59:57,919
Speaker 1: about that. And so Grinnell editorializes on this for years

1870
01:59:58,160 --> 02:00:01,400
Speaker 1: to kind of build this theme in this ethic of

1871
02:00:01,480 --> 02:00:05,080
Speaker 1: public lands. And he's incredibly successful at doing it. But

1872
02:00:05,160 --> 02:00:07,960
Speaker 1: he's a lot of the reason why why we have

1873
02:00:08,200 --> 02:00:12,320
Speaker 1: an ethic today that is, you know, supports public lands.

1874
02:00:12,520 --> 02:00:15,320
Speaker 1: So he's an amazing character. I want hate with one

1875
02:00:15,400 --> 02:00:20,760
Speaker 1: last question if you if someone says you're like, what

1876
02:00:20,800 --> 02:00:24,920
Speaker 1: are your books about? Do you have you ever taken

1877
02:00:24,960 --> 02:00:28,320
Speaker 1: the time or felt the necessity to bundle them in

1878
02:00:28,440 --> 02:00:35,400
Speaker 1: your head as being I right about, And don't tell

1879
02:00:35,440 --> 02:00:40,240
Speaker 1: him the West that that's not gonna suffice well. I

1880
02:00:40,240 --> 02:00:47,680
Speaker 1: I first and foremost love compelling, vivid, action laden stories.

1881
02:00:48,040 --> 02:00:50,320
Speaker 1: That's the type of stuff I like to read. That's

1882
02:00:50,320 --> 02:00:52,240
Speaker 1: the type of movies I like to watch. I love

1883
02:00:52,400 --> 02:00:56,480
Speaker 1: good stories, and to me, it just so happens that

1884
02:00:56,560 --> 02:00:59,800
Speaker 1: The West is full of good stories. And I've loved

1885
02:00:59,840 --> 02:01:03,320
Speaker 1: him since I was a little boy. But to me,

1886
02:01:03,480 --> 02:01:06,440
Speaker 1: what makes a story a story that I really want

1887
02:01:06,440 --> 02:01:11,800
Speaker 1: to marry for a couple of years is that it

1888
02:01:11,920 --> 02:01:18,080
Speaker 1: has lessons for today. And I hope all the stories

1889
02:01:18,080 --> 02:01:22,240
Speaker 1: that I write have interesting lessons for today that can

1890
02:01:22,280 --> 02:01:28,000
Speaker 1: help us to better understand our lives today. And more

1891
02:01:28,040 --> 02:01:31,440
Speaker 1: and more, the more the country becomes politically divided, and

1892
02:01:31,440 --> 02:01:33,880
Speaker 1: the more and more it becomes difficult to have a

1893
02:01:34,000 --> 02:01:37,840
Speaker 1: rational debate between people who disagree, the more and more

1894
02:01:37,880 --> 02:01:40,920
Speaker 1: I think history is important because I think sometimes if

1895
02:01:40,920 --> 02:01:43,920
Speaker 1: you look at something that is historical, people don't have

1896
02:01:44,040 --> 02:01:48,879
Speaker 1: all of the visceral baggage that goes with contemporary debates.

1897
02:01:49,040 --> 02:01:51,600
Speaker 1: That's not always true, obviously, but we can be a

1898
02:01:51,640 --> 02:01:55,720
Speaker 1: little bit more dispassionate today, for example, about the buffalo

1899
02:01:56,400 --> 02:01:59,080
Speaker 1: and the demise of the buffalo and the lessons to

1900
02:01:59,120 --> 02:02:01,560
Speaker 1: be learned from that, And you can sit down in

1901
02:02:01,600 --> 02:02:04,240
Speaker 1: a bar and have a conversation with people about that,

1902
02:02:04,760 --> 02:02:08,080
Speaker 1: and most people would probably agree, you know, it's it's

1903
02:02:08,120 --> 02:02:11,960
Speaker 1: it's uh, we should not have have exterminated them from

1904
02:02:12,000 --> 02:02:14,240
Speaker 1: the planet and the way that we did, in a

1905
02:02:14,280 --> 02:02:16,640
Speaker 1: way that you couldn't have that same conversation sitting down

1906
02:02:16,640 --> 02:02:20,640
Speaker 1: in a bar about global warming. And yet there's a

1907
02:02:20,680 --> 02:02:24,200
Speaker 1: lot of lessons from studying the buffalo that should be

1908
02:02:24,240 --> 02:02:26,800
Speaker 1: relevant to how we look at an issue like global

1909
02:02:26,840 --> 02:02:30,600
Speaker 1: warming or or the environment today. So to me, that

1910
02:02:30,720 --> 02:02:33,080
Speaker 1: was a long winded answer to your question. But I

1911
02:02:33,120 --> 02:02:38,600
Speaker 1: love vivid, compelling adventure stories that have lessons that are

1912
02:02:38,640 --> 02:02:45,360
Speaker 1: relevant to our lives today. That suffices that they all

1913
02:02:45,360 --> 02:02:48,800
Speaker 1: happen to be in the West. But anyway, that's fair, ye,

1914
02:02:48,920 --> 02:02:52,840
Speaker 1: anyway you got you got any uh rapper I can try,

1915
02:02:53,720 --> 02:02:56,120
Speaker 1: so you can always cut it out, like Steve says,

1916
02:02:56,200 --> 02:02:58,640
Speaker 1: So Steve will interrupt me halfway through if it's no good,

1917
02:02:59,040 --> 02:03:00,839
Speaker 1: you know, reading some of that ore nicles that Karine

1918
02:03:00,880 --> 02:03:04,360
Speaker 1: found that were like when Steve started earlier that we're

1919
02:03:04,480 --> 02:03:07,000
Speaker 1: people like sort of talking about you as the author

1920
02:03:07,040 --> 02:03:09,200
Speaker 1: of the Revenant, but you couldn't really comment because of

1921
02:03:09,240 --> 02:03:12,880
Speaker 1: your job. And when I was reading that and simultaneously

1922
02:03:12,920 --> 02:03:15,480
Speaker 1: reading the Last Stand and kind of looking like you

1923
02:03:15,560 --> 02:03:19,240
Speaker 1: just talked about Grannelle being like this great political you

1924
02:03:19,280 --> 02:03:24,480
Speaker 1: know strategists, You've done similar stuff like that in your job, right,

1925
02:03:24,560 --> 02:03:26,840
Speaker 1: having to like step up to the table with I

1926
02:03:26,880 --> 02:03:31,720
Speaker 1: mean working at the World Trade Organization hundred sixties some

1927
02:03:31,880 --> 02:03:35,040
Speaker 1: countries and right, and having to like make big deals happen.

1928
02:03:35,080 --> 02:03:39,040
Speaker 1: Do you ever like find comparisons all the time? And

1929
02:03:39,160 --> 02:03:44,440
Speaker 1: in fact, the most vivid political lessons that I have learned,

1930
02:03:44,880 --> 02:03:48,040
Speaker 1: we're not, you know, living in Washington, d C. For

1931
02:03:48,400 --> 02:03:50,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of years, as I did after I got

1932
02:03:50,640 --> 02:03:53,880
Speaker 1: out of law school. The most vivid political lessons that

1933
02:03:53,920 --> 02:03:59,400
Speaker 1: I've learned were researching George Bird Grinnell and his battle

1934
02:03:59,560 --> 02:04:04,760
Speaker 1: against the railroads to preserve public lands and seeing how

1935
02:04:04,800 --> 02:04:07,200
Speaker 1: he did that at a time when the odds were

1936
02:04:07,240 --> 02:04:09,800
Speaker 1: completely stacked against him. And of course there is no

1937
02:04:09,880 --> 02:04:13,320
Speaker 1: place on the planet that has more political history per

1938
02:04:13,440 --> 02:04:17,840
Speaker 1: square inch than Butte Montana. And Uh, if you want

1939
02:04:17,880 --> 02:04:22,920
Speaker 1: to learn about politics, UH, study the fight between the

1940
02:04:23,080 --> 02:04:26,320
Speaker 1: unions and the Standard Oil Company at the turn of

1941
02:04:26,360 --> 02:04:31,600
Speaker 1: the century and see on both sides the lessons that

1942
02:04:31,640 --> 02:04:37,600
Speaker 1: were applied there. Um. It is a graduate course in politics.

1943
02:04:38,000 --> 02:04:40,840
Speaker 1: So there is no question that the most significant political

1944
02:04:40,920 --> 02:04:44,000
Speaker 1: lessons of my life have been drawn out of nineteenth

1945
02:04:44,040 --> 02:04:50,440
Speaker 1: century Montana history. Good. Yeah, I'm not cutting that ship, don't.

1946
02:04:52,920 --> 02:04:58,200
Speaker 1: Author Michael Punk with the E on the end. That's true.

1947
02:04:58,440 --> 02:05:01,320
Speaker 1: Michael Punks. They can find them. P U n k E.

1948
02:05:02,360 --> 02:05:08,280
Speaker 1: Author of currently Ridgeline. It's not won't be out until June,

1949
02:05:08,520 --> 02:05:13,160
Speaker 1: but look for it. But otherwise, author of The Revenant, Uh,

1950
02:05:13,440 --> 02:05:19,680
Speaker 1: Fire and Brimstone, Last Stand. Okayanne Forthcoming, Thank you for

1951
02:05:19,800 --> 02:05:21,920
Speaker 1: joining us in the Thanks Lone. I trust that a

1952
02:05:21,960 --> 02:05:23,480
Speaker 1: bunch of people will go buy your books and you'll

1953
02:05:23,520 --> 02:05:25,520
Speaker 1: be thinking that it wasn't such a bad idea to

1954
02:05:26,120 --> 02:05:28,520
Speaker 1: come out and defend your come on, defend your movie

1955
02:05:28,760 --> 02:05:31,520
Speaker 1: ahead of last Thanks a lot, Thank you, Take care,