Speaker 1: Everybody's Season two have Pardoned My Plate, which is probably
Speaker 1: one of the better things on the internet, is live
Speaker 1: on YouTube now hosted by our very own special and
Speaker 1: lovely and beautiful and who I like to argue with
Speaker 1: a lot Spencer new Heart. Last year you'll remember I'm
Speaker 1: pardon my Plate. We tried Carp, Kyle and Coope this
Speaker 1: season getting ready for Muskrat which as a kid we
Speaker 1: called scrats, crows, bobcats, goldfish and prepare for this skunk.
Speaker 1: Yeah you heard that right, eating skunk. So go to
Speaker 1: our channel on YouTube, subscribe and watch this is Me
Speaker 1: Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and
Speaker 1: in my case, underwear. Listening uncast, you can't predict anything
Speaker 1: presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from
Speaker 1: Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt, first Light,
Speaker 1: go farther, stay longer, All right, everybody? Uh? First off?
Speaker 1: Brad Tennant is here history professor at Presentation College in Aberdeen,
Speaker 1: South Dakota, and is described as a Lewis and Clark NERD.
Speaker 1: Do you prefer expert? I prefer expert? Yeah? What did
Speaker 1: you did you? Uh? Did you? Are you formally educated
Speaker 1: in Lewis and Clark. Um. It's just been something that
Speaker 1: I've grown up with. I grew up about fifteen miles
Speaker 1: from Missouri River, so very historic area, and Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark was always part of the history of the area
Speaker 1: and also state history. And then as I went into teaching,
Speaker 1: it was an area that I talked quite a bit about.
Speaker 1: Did you study up on it in school? Like, did
Speaker 1: you pursue it for any of your degrees? Not so
Speaker 1: much in school, But it's when I started teaching that
Speaker 1: I really started delving into a lot more in detail. Uh, Spencer,
Speaker 1: you found him right, Yes, he came on a YouTube
Speaker 1: show that we made um looking at Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: catching catfish. And I consider having Brad on this podcast
Speaker 1: is like one of my greatest career achievements so far.
Speaker 1: Because you don't think Lewis and Clark are all that cool, No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I think it's a big government. That's why
Speaker 1: I like. That's why I like free Trappers. Man was so,
Speaker 1: what what is it you don't love about Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark's big government? Like, now a couple of dudes wander
Speaker 1: around out there trapping beavers is cool. You already messed
Speaker 1: it up, Steve, when you say big government, you have
Speaker 1: to follow it up with I'm not gonna say anything.
Speaker 1: Just do the research, Okay, exactly. Uh, that's a good point. No,
Speaker 1: I'm mostly joking. But it's like it's just two or
Speaker 1: it was. I thought it was too organized. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: with a lot of people too organized. I like the
Speaker 1: stories about just a couple of dudes, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with the fellow named
Speaker 1: John Coulter Brad, I am uh um. Now his first
Speaker 1: trip out with Louis Clark whatever, but before he gets back,
Speaker 1: he joins up with some trappers and turns around and
Speaker 1: goes back. That's interesting. But I got a question for you.
Speaker 1: Weren't some of those mountain men involved in some very
Speaker 1: very like organized, heavily manned expeditions too. Well, that's why
Speaker 1: Yanni will now educate you on what a free trapper is. Oh,
Speaker 1: I will. Well, because you know that guy that you
Speaker 1: used to tell you I saw I like to walk around, yeah,
Speaker 1: saying that we're all free trappers. We do whatever we
Speaker 1: want to do. But I don't know if I know
Speaker 1: the definition you had company. In the Mountain Man area,
Speaker 1: you had company trappers or brigade trappers, and you had
Speaker 1: free trappers. And a lot of those famous dudes were
Speaker 1: both both but linked up with usually started as a
Speaker 1: company trapper and he became a free trapper, or he
Speaker 1: could be just a free trapper. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so when you say, like, if if you're going out fishing,
Speaker 1: you know, and your spouse is like, you're what, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, I'm free trapper, bro walk out. I'll keep
Speaker 1: that next time I go fishing. Now, Brad, we got
Speaker 1: some other stuff to cover before we get to Louis
Speaker 1: and Clark, like introduced we gotta introduce Tommy, sure, but
Speaker 1: to titilate Steve for now, what would be like your
Speaker 1: elevator pitch on why Lewis and Clark are so damn
Speaker 1: cool now that I dogged on him so much? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's a part of the story that still
Speaker 1: residents today that you know, here we are coming up
Speaker 1: on Twitter in twenty years and we're still talking about
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark on a podcast. I think that tells
Speaker 1: you a lot. Uh, that's something that has grown because
Speaker 1: it used to be that you talked about Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark expedition, leaving the St. Louis area in May of
Speaker 1: eighteen o four and coming back in September eighteen o six.
Speaker 1: Now they've extended the Lewis and Clark Trail all the
Speaker 1: way back to the east, so it covers a lot
Speaker 1: more states. Uh goes back to the Ohio Falls when
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark first actually joined together as part of
Speaker 1: this expedition. After all the planning. Uh, there's there's just
Speaker 1: I always say it's it's a lot of stories. That's
Speaker 1: not really just one big story. It's a lot of stories,
Speaker 1: involves a lot of different people, a lot of different places,
Speaker 1: a lot of different events. Perfect, And we're gonna cover
Speaker 1: Um in particular. We're gonna I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the mystery of Um Lewis's death. Yes can I can?
Speaker 1: I So before we get into storey, I just want
Speaker 1: to ask you this. Then we're gonna move on to
Speaker 1: smart stuff for a minute. Are you, uhum and on
Speaker 1: his death without telling any of the circumstances. Are you
Speaker 1: leaning suicide? Are you lean in murder? I leaned suicide, Okay,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there will be a lot of things
Speaker 1: that will be discussed today. A lot of things that
Speaker 1: I'll say that are very controversial. I always tell people
Speaker 1: that when you go to a Lewis and Clark conference,
Speaker 1: the nice thing is that everybody's an expert on Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark. The bad thing is that everybody's an expert
Speaker 1: on Lewis and Clark and they never agree. That's what
Speaker 1: I say. That's one of the things I say about
Speaker 1: Montana is you have an entire state where everyone's a
Speaker 1: grizzly expert. Uh. Next to you, Brad is Tommy Edson,
Speaker 1: who's here for no purpose right now, Nonever. Tommy, tell
Speaker 1: me what you do for a living. I moved cardboard boxes,
Speaker 1: work in a big industrial food where Tommy get closer
Speaker 1: that Mike as though laughing in ice cream cone. I
Speaker 1: work in a big industrial food grocery warehouse. And on
Speaker 1: lunch break, what do you do once a week? Well
Speaker 1: you originally it started on lunch break, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: played We played Mediator trivia and and Tommy, Me and Tommy,
Speaker 1: your old fishing buddies from from the Pacific Northwest. Tommy's
Speaker 1: an excellent fisherman. I've said this in the past. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just to help tea up Tommy's presence here. I've
Speaker 1: pointed out multiple times that everywhere you go in this country,
Speaker 1: everywhere you go, you will find a person who can't
Speaker 1: who's frustrated because they can't get to it all. There's
Speaker 1: too much to do outdoorsman, there's too much to do.
Speaker 1: You can't do it all, can't scratch the surface. And
Speaker 1: then next door to him is the guy who everything's ruined,
Speaker 1: the blank are gone, fishing games screwed it up, the
Speaker 1: wolves got them all, whatever. Tommy's the one that can't
Speaker 1: scratch the surface. No, too much to do. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this time of year especially, it's like I'm frozen within decision.
Speaker 1: I'll get up in the morning planning to go do
Speaker 1: one thing, man, and I'll be thinking about doing something
Speaker 1: else the whole way there, you know, because there's just
Speaker 1: so much to do. And Tommy's always sending me his
Speaker 1: scores from me either tribute. He's here because we're gonna
Speaker 1: play triving a little bit, and like last week he
Speaker 1: beat me, but Yanni beat him. You know, I had
Speaker 1: seven correct last week. Yeah, Steve's over here spreading all
Speaker 1: sorts of misinformation that I'd whipped you all every week.
Speaker 1: That's not true record straight, but he's been posting some
Speaker 1: strong scores, strong scores, so we had to have him
Speaker 1: out just to play in person twice now strangers, well,
Speaker 1: I have walked up to me. It used to be
Speaker 1: just hey, y'alls, you're honest. Yeah, yeah, I love the
Speaker 1: saying great. Now that's changed to hey, you're honest. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: yesterday I would have beat you, like really, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: what the world is these days. Tommy educated me on
Speaker 1: how to catch surf perch love fishing surf perch man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: talking to speaking about Lewis and Clark, even though where
Speaker 1: the trail ends in seaside Oregon, isn't that correct? Yeah,
Speaker 1: fish surf perch man, a pistol shop from that from
Speaker 1: that monument. There you go. That's why he is here.
Speaker 1: See there, Broti's here. And that's like a segue. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, I tied that all in for you.
Speaker 1: Filled the engineer. Phil looking tight on the haircut, buddy,
Speaker 1: thanks man, that's great callan same haircut is normal, it's
Speaker 1: still growing. Spencer, he's he's already perched up for his
Speaker 1: trivia show later on, but he's here because he found
Speaker 1: our guest and lobby Bradley. He lobbied heavily on your
Speaker 1: behalf for years, even before we found the official Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark historian. I just wanted a Lewis and Clark historian.
Speaker 1: Now you're the one, and he's like, now I found him,
Speaker 1: and I think we were talking about sex on the
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark trail. Okay uh. And then of course
Speaker 1: your honest is here a couple of things Dustin recap.
Speaker 1: We had Dustin Huff on who just killed the biggest
Speaker 1: typical not just recently killed the biggest typical white tail
Speaker 1: ever killed in America. Um, and he was being pretty
Speaker 1: fast and loose with like landowner names and locations, and
Speaker 1: we teased them about this, and then he thought better
Speaker 1: of it, and so we ended up bleeping out the
Speaker 1: landowner names and locations. Then Dustin huff goes home and
Speaker 1: posts a screenshot of on X showing exactly where he killed.
Speaker 1: So it's out. It was an Instagram story. It was
Speaker 1: available for twenty four hours, so you gotta do some sleuth.
Speaker 1: And I have a screenshot of it where it's like,
Speaker 1: here it is, here's the spot, Here's where the tree
Speaker 1: stand was so he God bless him. I think what
Speaker 1: Doug during said got into his head dogs, like you
Speaker 1: know what that buck's gone? Was it ever really a
Speaker 1: secret though? Any? I mean, come on, probably not. I
Speaker 1: don't know the buck's gone. Spencer already angled for permission
Speaker 1: at the guy's sending letters as that trampoline constead Damn
Speaker 1: called yet man, I was just texting about something different
Speaker 1: about my summer breaks, like kids taking care of his
Speaker 1: real intense right now because the summer was staring at
Speaker 1: my buddy's backyard in Missoula the other day, and big
Speaker 1: old trampoline out there, every little kid's dream. It's just
Speaker 1: like covering three inches of old fall foliage. So lets
Speaker 1: you know how long it's been sitting there unused. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can tell you something. Um, I didn't want trampoline,
Speaker 1: not for the normal reasons. I think people don't want
Speaker 1: them because their kids are gonna break their arms on them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually wanted one without the net. Yeah it's hard
Speaker 1: to find, but I have, but my wife's like it
Speaker 1: has to have the net. The only reason I didn't
Speaker 1: want it is because I feel like my kids can
Speaker 1: have a hard time mowing underneath it, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: obstruct my archery lane. And the whole point of having
Speaker 1: a trampoline is so you can like jump off of
Speaker 1: stuff onto the trampoline or jump off the trampoline onto stuff,
Speaker 1: and you can't do that with the net. So but
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this, listeners are probably confused. Steve is
Speaker 1: getting a trampoline for his kids. That's that's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. But here's the thing. I guarantee, because there's
Speaker 1: trampolines and two directions, two different neighbors have them. Our
Speaker 1: kids live on those trampolines. This trampoline will get heavy use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our neighbors got one, which is the perfect place for it,
Speaker 1: and then our kids can use it and I don't
Speaker 1: have to have one in my yard. I was like,
Speaker 1: point out, though, my wife always thinks that what I
Speaker 1: take the kids to do, she thinks that stuffs dangerous. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: every emergency room visit I've gone on, she got him
Speaker 1: a swing set, is like two days later, broken arm
Speaker 1: down the emergency room. Uh, scooters, stitches, legos, stitches every
Speaker 1: explaining that one the couch, I don't know he fell.
Speaker 1: He had a lego on a chair and tripped the
Speaker 1: landing on the gouge a hole in his head. Cal
Speaker 1: looked at the picture of his head, which had a
Speaker 1: square hole in it. Cols like, looks like if you
Speaker 1: pull Lego out of there. And that's before I knew
Speaker 1: that it was a lego. We're in Mexico. But uh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: nothing I do ever get them in trouble. Everything like
Speaker 1: they get injured by I guarantee they'll get injured on
Speaker 1: the trampoline. It's one child out of three though, is
Speaker 1: particularly prone to all that. I think everything you mentioned.
Speaker 1: Jimmy broke his arm on his Matthew gets cuts his
Speaker 1: head open all the time. He's had three rounds of
Speaker 1: stitches in his head. Speaking of stitches in the head,
Speaker 1: four hundred stitches that that little girl got in her
Speaker 1: head and body after she got attacked by that mountain
Speaker 1: lion at Washington and the crazy Washington didn't have a
Speaker 1: lion fatality for ninety eight years and then had their
Speaker 1: first fatality. Now, that little girl got scratched so, m yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd call that getting scratched up, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: more than scratched up. But what was cool? The reason
Speaker 1: I'm bringing this up is that Bart George, our buddy.
Speaker 1: It's doing the research on the mountain lions over there
Speaker 1: in Washington. He invited the nine year old girl that
Speaker 1: got attacked by the line out on a uh cat
Speaker 1: part of the study where they captured the lion and
Speaker 1: then tranquilize it and then take off the collar. The
Speaker 1: cat was done with. It's part of the study. And
Speaker 1: she agreed and she went along. There's a picture of
Speaker 1: her and she gotta kick it. She gotta what kick it?
Speaker 1: Kick the cat? Well, it was no, she looked like
Speaker 1: she was just just happy to be there. But pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: That's that had to have been like somewhat therapeutic exactly
Speaker 1: work through the trauma. Yeah, you hope. It was interesting.
Speaker 1: As I was telling my daughter was about the same
Speaker 1: age about that, and she's like, wow, that's like a lot.
Speaker 1: That's pretty crazio felt a little girl. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I could do that after being attacked by that
Speaker 1: same animal. The pictures that went along with that article
Speaker 1: when it first came out, when that whole thing broke, man,
Speaker 1: they were hard to look at. Yeah, did they catch
Speaker 1: that line and kill it? They got They got it
Speaker 1: on site right then before DFW even showed up her family.
Speaker 1: I think just some people that were there. It was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was at a I believe Russian Bible camp. And
Speaker 1: Is my buddy that was one of the first guys
Speaker 1: on scene there said He's like, it was the most
Speaker 1: well armed Bible camp I've ever been to. And uh
Speaker 1: yeah that cat Uh he went to the wrong camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: this kind of interesting. So we've covered on the show
Speaker 1: a fair bit like like both sides of picking up arrowheads,
Speaker 1: Indian arrowheads. Man Felt can make a health segue out
Speaker 1: of this into into Lewis and Clark. Oh that's up
Speaker 1: next to you, keep that mine, Johnny. This story has
Speaker 1: many layers. The Missouri guy. So we've covered the impulse,
Speaker 1: which is I'm no stranger too, is it You're out
Speaker 1: winding around there's an arrowhead sitting there and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not like anything. Put in your pocket, bring it home,
Speaker 1: put it on a shelf, then it winds up in
Speaker 1: whatever box. Um. We've talked about why that. We've acknowledged
Speaker 1: the enormous sort of like psychological I don't know, gravity right,
Speaker 1: the pullsy net direction, and then we talked about the
Speaker 1: reasons one might not do that, and this fellow named
Speaker 1: Johnny Lee Brown of Clinton, Missouri just got a little
Speaker 1: carried away with his arrowhead hunting and is in big trouble.
Speaker 1: So they were going into prehistoric, prehistoric Native American archaeological sites.
Speaker 1: I think these are all from the Archaic period, so
Speaker 1: three thousand and five thousand year old sites using shovel
Speaker 1: rakes other tools, digging up artifacts. The name of the
Speaker 1: site is fantastic as well. Hit us with that, the
Speaker 1: tight Wad site. But it's not because of the site itself.
Speaker 1: It's because of the name of the town, which is
Speaker 1: also tight Wad, Missouri. Right. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: never heard of tight Wad, Missouri neither. I'd love to know.
Speaker 1: The should have Wikipedia at that for the background. So
Speaker 1: this guy, Johnny Lee Brown, who's seventy years old, he's
Speaker 1: still getting out there for seven You think like a
Speaker 1: seven year old just kind of calming down on crime,
Speaker 1: you know, don't you know? I think his age is
Speaker 1: important to point out because like, what's he got left
Speaker 1: to lose? If you want to go destroy an archaeological site.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of I'm not I'm not making an
Speaker 1: excuse for him. But it's seventy what's the three fine?
Speaker 1: I think there's still seventy year olds running running Outlook,
Speaker 1: it's seven is still getting out, still getting at it,
Speaker 1: seven years old to co conspirators, and they start going
Speaker 1: down to this site from June. They're just getting in
Speaker 1: trouble or just getting you know, it's finalized, getting finalized now.
Speaker 1: But they were active from June September um looting these sites. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they believe this is a campsite where they're camping
Speaker 1: processing stone. They were using handheld trial shovels, rakes, hose, buckets,
Speaker 1: and backpacks to take items away from the site. The
Speaker 1: indictment doesn't say what exactly they did with the stuff,
Speaker 1: but what they are saying is that this illegal excavation
Speaker 1: caused three hundred thousand dollars in damage, and the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney's office in Kansas City is after the guy. There's
Speaker 1: there's a a bunch of like interesting tidbits in that
Speaker 1: story where they're like sometimes they'd be at the site
Speaker 1: for ten minutes, other times, you know, like many hours,
Speaker 1: which but at the same time they don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what they got away with. And I'm like, well, how
Speaker 1: do you know the timelines and and not know what
Speaker 1: they got? They don't know where a lot of what
Speaker 1: they got ended up. How about was fenced or moved,
Speaker 1: or how they got nabbed, how they got caught? Someone
Speaker 1: turn them in or I think that must be it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a lot of some there's some
Speaker 1: sort of fuzzy documentation there that is probably gonna come
Speaker 1: out once the case is fully prosecuted, I would imagine,
Speaker 1: because like reading through the story, you're like, how like
Speaker 1: how how do you know? And not know? Is what
Speaker 1: kind of the story reads. But it does overlap with
Speaker 1: UM a lot of interesting pending legislation that's coming down
Speaker 1: the pipe right now as far as UM you know,
Speaker 1: better protections for cultural sites on public ground, on on
Speaker 1: federally managed ground and state managed ground. I'm reading Carl
Speaker 1: Malcolm's favorite book. He always he always likes to cringe
Speaker 1: when I stay it's his favorite book. But he turned
Speaker 1: thes a book called Black Range Tales. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's mostly like the memoirs and recollections of a minor,
Speaker 1: a prospector and miner who is active in the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties down in New Mexico in the Black Range, but
Speaker 1: all around that area. What's funny about is the first pay.
Speaker 1: I can't say this, never mind, never mind um. He
Speaker 1: talks about paying turkeys in that book. I almost just
Speaker 1: gave away a sweet turkey hunting spot. So in there
Speaker 1: he talks about going in too. We were hunting not
Speaker 1: far from within the heat, within the heel of wilderness.
Speaker 1: There's a Pueblo site and we never made it over there.
Speaker 1: But we're hunting not far from a Pueblo site in
Speaker 1: the heel of wilderness, and this guy talks about going
Speaker 1: in there. And so he's talking in the eighties, looting
Speaker 1: a Pueblo site and him saying how in the eighties,
Speaker 1: he's saying, how it's picked over and most of the
Speaker 1: good stuff is gone. But they walk away with a
Speaker 1: mummified body, but most of the good stuff is picked over.
Speaker 1: How old was the body? Does it? Say? Just as
Speaker 1: they had? And he talks about its history. It was
Speaker 1: sitting in some window. It was sitting in some window
Speaker 1: at a curio shop in some town in Arizona or
Speaker 1: New Mexico, can't remember where, And now that no one's
Speaker 1: almost happened to it. But he was talking about in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties Ransack and Pueblo sites and he talks
Speaker 1: about they're still corn and jars and they didn't even
Speaker 1: know who the hell right in that year they had
Speaker 1: lost track like who the people were? People are so
Speaker 1: like the fact that in that year it was sort
Speaker 1: of like a like the looting antiquities, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean those people who built that fathers and grandfathers were
Speaker 1: probably engaging with EU Americans the to kind of like
Speaker 1: jump back to like how you come up with that
Speaker 1: figure of three dollars when you don't really know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't get that, Yeah, I mean it. It has
Speaker 1: to be like we always talked about, like why you
Speaker 1: don't move artifacts because you you're destroying the story that
Speaker 1: is that the ground holds around the placement of that artifact.
Speaker 1: And I imagine that has to be part of it. Right,
Speaker 1: you're digging through all these soil layers, get rid of
Speaker 1: all the fossilized pollens and things like that, they could
Speaker 1: also tell a lot more about whatever they're pulling out
Speaker 1: of the ground. Yeah, it's hard to sign a dollar
Speaker 1: alley to it, right, And that's a huge question mark
Speaker 1: of mine for this thing. I wonder if it had
Speaker 1: to reach a certain threshold to make it a certain
Speaker 1: level crime. That's a good thinking too. Do you have
Speaker 1: any artifacts related to the Lewis and Clark expedition. I
Speaker 1: do not, but at the Cultural Hair Descent and Pure
Speaker 1: they do have one of the peace medals and it
Speaker 1: was found and somebody turned it in and offered it
Speaker 1: to the museum, so they have that there. Um, can
Speaker 1: you can you explain what that is? I'm not ready.
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to get this. Yeah, one last thing
Speaker 1: to say, and we'll talk about a rick Raw sites
Speaker 1: along the Missouri River though, because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of fishermen over the years and just other people who
Speaker 1: went out along along Lakewaukee the Missouri River, and when
Speaker 1: the river is down, a lot of those rick Raw
Speaker 1: village sites are are exposed. And it's easy, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just it's not a matter of really going out
Speaker 1: and excavating full scale, but it's easy to walk along
Speaker 1: and find a lot of different artifacts and a lot
Speaker 1: of buriable remains too. So I remember being a child
Speaker 1: and my mother and father invited out to a farmer's
Speaker 1: place for for dinner, and my younger brother and I
Speaker 1: went along and down in the den. There were six
Speaker 1: human skulls that this man had in his den. Now,
Speaker 1: of course it's perfect completely illegal today, but those are
Speaker 1: the things that are readily available on the Missouri River.
Speaker 1: But it is of course illegal, you know, well illegal.
Speaker 1: And there is a case in Washington where a skull
Speaker 1: had eroded out of the out of a bank. Kennewick Man.
Speaker 1: Is that the ken wick Man story? It sounds like it.
Speaker 1: But you know, obviously trying to go to ah they
Speaker 1: were trying to get illegal access to watch a riverboat race.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say they were trying to sneak
Speaker 1: in to watch a race and found the kennewick Man.
Speaker 1: So a skull run eroding out. But then you know
Speaker 1: the cultural significance of these remains. The tribes are like, well,
Speaker 1: somebody buried this person that is most probably really aided
Speaker 1: to us. It's more than just a crime. It's a
Speaker 1: sacrilegious act. Yeah, well, that's I talked about stories that
Speaker 1: make their own gravy. That story makes his own gravy.
Speaker 1: They find the skull, okay, and they think they're looking
Speaker 1: at like a murder victim. They don't know it's old.
Speaker 1: Someone comes out and realizes it's very old roading out
Speaker 1: of the river winds up. It's like a nine thousand
Speaker 1: it's a very old school. It's like a nine thousand
Speaker 1: year old skull. There's this thing called I can't remember
Speaker 1: what the hell it is, Like, what's that discipline. It's
Speaker 1: a much discredited discipline, forensic or not forensic craniology. Craniology.
Speaker 1: People said, you can look at a school and like
Speaker 1: make all these deductions about intelligence and all that. So anyways,
Speaker 1: the guy takes a gander at it, A semi qualified
Speaker 1: individual takes a gander at it and says, hey, man,
Speaker 1: that's a caucasion male skull. That's nine thousand years old.
Speaker 1: So then it introduces this whole crisis about like someone
Speaker 1: trying to say that this thing like that Native Americans
Speaker 1: weren't the origin, like right, that somehow there had been
Speaker 1: Europeans had made it here and pre dated whatever it
Speaker 1: brought into Like, it brought into open up question like
Speaker 1: who are the real Native Americans? How could this Caucasian
Speaker 1: person be there? It was so offensive what he was
Speaker 1: saying was so offensive to a tribe that was there.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what tribe it was that occupied that
Speaker 1: land at the time of European contact. That they said,
Speaker 1: no one will ever look at this school again and
Speaker 1: put it away. Later it was allowed to be looked at,
Speaker 1: they put it away and they didn't want to view
Speaker 1: because they didn't want this conversation to take hold. Um
Speaker 1: in interesting wrinkle in this that people pointed out, but
Speaker 1: it never got taken seriously, it's nine thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: No one know, like whatever tribe is there now surely
Speaker 1: hadn't even taken form. Like people moved so much yep,
Speaker 1: and every square inch of the country was one and
Speaker 1: fought over by Native American tribes. It wasn't like this,
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like this monolithic group was like people
Speaker 1: that moved around and waged war with one another and
Speaker 1: conquered lands. But when they went through and did the
Speaker 1: DNA analysis to what they could, right, that's that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it showed. Like several different tribes are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the this person is a part of now a much
Speaker 1: broader community because the genetic uh traits that this person
Speaker 1: has are distributed through this this much wider group. And
Speaker 1: uh the idea that it was a cock like the
Speaker 1: the idea that it was a European or Caucasian thing
Speaker 1: was put to rest. Yeah, so the trip over a
Speaker 1: school when you're trying to sneak into a boat race, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you may not mean knowing what you're tripping over exactly,
Speaker 1: but this does have some good bearing on what we
Speaker 1: hopefully get into later with um. The question of whether
Speaker 1: or not to exhume Merryweather lewis right. Oh, I would
Speaker 1: dig him up right now. But I got one last
Speaker 1: thing to add that we're gonna get into. That one
Speaker 1: last thing to add. I was telling you how it's
Speaker 1: gonna become a metal detecting enthusiast because my kids really
Speaker 1: interested metal detectors. We got a melo detector, and we're
Speaker 1: up at the little property where we camp all out
Speaker 1: um and metal detecting round. The kids are hoping to
Speaker 1: find a I don't gonna lie a horse shoe, which
Speaker 1: they found buried quite a bit quite a way is down,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. No, my daughter Rosemary gets a hit
Speaker 1: on the metal detector, and I started digging, and I
Speaker 1: get down about a spade height down and turn the
Speaker 1: ground up and turn up a beautiful half kind of
Speaker 1: a broken but very worked piece of gorgeous black obsidian
Speaker 1: ten inches underground makes you wonder what's high? You know,
Speaker 1: what it was that she hit with the metal detector
Speaker 1: struck off of was an old can lid, but like
Speaker 1: just like you're just like never ending right and you
Speaker 1: take a shovel and stick it down to ground and
Speaker 1: turned it over, like oh, there's a part of a
Speaker 1: projectile point and how many like chunks and nail and
Speaker 1: screw and stuff to do. I feel like we found
Speaker 1: a penny that's not that old. But I'm like, that
Speaker 1: penny is forty two years old. They're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I feel like the next time we go up there,
Speaker 1: there's just gonna be holes. I started freaking out after
Speaker 1: a while, like, man, you guys gotta fill these holes.
Speaker 1: And they had holes everywhere, and then someone literally tripped
Speaker 1: in the hole. Yeah, yeah, they gotta go back and
Speaker 1: fill damn holes in man. They yeah, they had just
Speaker 1: played pocked with holes. It was funny as there's like
Speaker 1: an old piece of fencing that they must found that
Speaker 1: same string of fencing. Like I'm like, if you notice
Speaker 1: everywhere you're digging is in a line, like you keep
Speaker 1: digging the same hunk of fence out, move right or
Speaker 1: left or whatever to get away from that fence. I
Speaker 1: had I had lost two arrows the year before and
Speaker 1: they found both. Sorry, I had lost three and they
Speaker 1: found two. So far, Yeah, totally fine. All right, right, Brad,
Speaker 1: Already we've been digging a Louis Clark hit me with
Speaker 1: hit me with a brief summation of what it was.
Speaker 1: But here's the trick. You have to include with it,
Speaker 1: how Thomas Jefferson was saying, and if you run into
Speaker 1: a Willie mammoth, let me know, like what set up?
Speaker 1: Like why why do we what was Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing? You know? For Thomas Jefferson, first
Speaker 1: of all, just prefaces with the comment that you know
Speaker 1: he'd been playing on this for twenty years. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't in a situation where a lot of times
Speaker 1: people think, okay, well, Louisiana purchase eighteen o three and
Speaker 1: then sent Lewis and Clark out eighteen o four to
Speaker 1: to investigate this new territory at the United States had
Speaker 1: just acquired. Jefferson had been thinking about this um he
Speaker 1: talked to George Rogers Clark back in seventeen eighty three.
Speaker 1: William Clark's older brother about doing an expedition across the
Speaker 1: American West. George Rogers clark Um decline for personal reasons
Speaker 1: more than anything else. Sighties six, Jefferson is over in Paris.
Speaker 1: He meets a man from Connecticut by the name of
Speaker 1: John Ledyard. Ledyard says, I'll do this. I'll go from
Speaker 1: France and western Europe. I'll go across eastern Europe and
Speaker 1: go across Asia, come up on the western side of
Speaker 1: North America and then go back to the United States.
Speaker 1: And I'm losing. So he's going all the way around
Speaker 1: by himself. Where was he going to cross the Pacific?
Speaker 1: He was gonna across the Bearing Strait area and then
Speaker 1: land on the west side of North America and then
Speaker 1: coming into the United States from the west, come down
Speaker 1: to Alaska, b c. And he made it as far
Speaker 1: as Russia and the Azarina. At that time Catherine said no, no,
Speaker 1: you're not going to go through. So that was ind
Speaker 1: of that expedition. Did he did part of it? He
Speaker 1: made it into Russia? Are you kidding me? Russia? Who's
Speaker 1: this game? John Ledyard is his name, A guy from
Speaker 1: as Man himself by himself. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: that the story is that he was going to take
Speaker 1: his dog and him and then us. He was going
Speaker 1: to cross the Barring Sea, laying in Alaska and then
Speaker 1: and then work his way back to the United States.
Speaker 1: Right and what stopped him again of the Zarina at
Speaker 1: that time of Catherine. She refused to give him permission
Speaker 1: to Zarina Zariena instead of Bazar. We have the Empress Catherine.
Speaker 1: So she was the one who said no, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to grant your permission to come through Russia.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like in that time he could
Speaker 1: have said like okay and then just left and kept going.
Speaker 1: One day, I'm coming down between I'm coming, I'm traveling
Speaker 1: south into Missoula. What's that? I pick up a hitchhiker. Okay,
Speaker 1: And he gets in the car and he said, man,
Speaker 1: it's got out of jail. And that made me nervous.
Speaker 1: I said, what were you in jail for it? He
Speaker 1: goes hitchhiking. They let him out of jail. He walked
Speaker 1: out on his hitch like again, so you think he
Speaker 1: would have been like, okay, I understand, but then his
Speaker 1: win about his because like, Russia's a big place, I know,
Speaker 1: it's like what like who would know, right wandering through
Speaker 1: I do. It just also sounds exactly like, um, they're
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, so this is what we want and
Speaker 1: here's the path. And this guy was thinking about doing
Speaker 1: this other trip the entire other time, and he was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do that, but this is the way I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna work out the bass the trip that I
Speaker 1: already had planned. What was he gonna do if he
Speaker 1: got to I just don't think you should have asked
Speaker 1: permission some other time. It just seems like the weirdest
Speaker 1: move on his part. And part of the funding, of course,
Speaker 1: it is coming from Jefferson in the American Philosophical Society
Speaker 1: to help fund his his trip. But um, you know
Speaker 1: you talked about big government and Lewis and Clark earlier,
Speaker 1: and I'll go along with that too here in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But um, in but one minute, I got
Speaker 1: one more question. Sure, if Jefferson is thinking about this,
Speaker 1: then I mean he just outright defying whoever owned it, right,
Speaker 1: So that's what That's why the permission thing with the
Speaker 1: Russian seems a little funny to me, because it's not
Speaker 1: like the um Spanish, right, the Spanish and California. Was
Speaker 1: that was that who it was at that time. He
Speaker 1: had to get permission from the Spanish, he had to
Speaker 1: get permission from the British. And and actually when Jefferson
Speaker 1: started planning all this, he started pursuing getting visas permission.
Speaker 1: So he was gonna do it like formally, he was
Speaker 1: gonna do it the right way. But he knew that
Speaker 1: there would be resistance from not only people here in
Speaker 1: the United States wondering about the cost of this, and
Speaker 1: then the whole purpose behind it, because it was not
Speaker 1: the United States territory? Why why was this so necessary? Um?
Speaker 1: The other thing is again the question of who controls
Speaker 1: what territory? So that area the Pacific Northwest, he had Russia,
Speaker 1: you had Britain, you had a Spanish, and then of
Speaker 1: course the United States comes along and we're gonna claim
Speaker 1: it for ourselves eventually too. If Jefferson was already planning that,
Speaker 1: was he also already thinking about how to get his
Speaker 1: hands on it, right? I mean was that not at
Speaker 1: that point? I mean this is seventeen eighty six was
Speaker 1: the second time where he talked to John Ledyard. He
Speaker 1: just thought that this was something that was important for
Speaker 1: the sake of discovery. You know, he was such a
Speaker 1: inquisitive person. He was so knowledgeable about so many different things.
Speaker 1: He was interested in botany and zoology, he was interested
Speaker 1: in American Indians. He you know, he just had such
Speaker 1: a wide range of interest, and he thought this was
Speaker 1: something that was very significant. Seen eight six, we're still
Speaker 1: a very young country. In seventeen ninety three, he contacted
Speaker 1: through the American Philosophical Society with a French naturalist by
Speaker 1: the name of Andre Mischou, and he made it as
Speaker 1: far as the Ohio River Valley, and they found out
Speaker 1: that he was actually going to be spying against Spanish
Speaker 1: post and so the United STATESID, no, we're not going
Speaker 1: to get involved with that. Everything you're saying so far
Speaker 1: two is decades before Jefferson even becomes president. So what
Speaker 1: were his credentials at this point to like send people
Speaker 1: out on these adventures, his his interests. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind that he was a person
Speaker 1: who was a product of the Age of Enlightenment. He
Speaker 1: was just interested in learning as much as he possibly could,
Speaker 1: whether it was about religion or plant life or animal life,
Speaker 1: or or native cultures or whatever it might have been. Geography, geology.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was just such a well rounded person
Speaker 1: from that product of the Age of Enlightenment, that president
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, he just thought that this was
Speaker 1: very important to do, and so when he became the
Speaker 1: third president I had says he was actually in that
Speaker 1: position to do something about it. And that's when we
Speaker 1: started seeing the everything falling in the place might say,
Speaker 1: was there every scenario where he's like, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: do it myself, or did he not think he was
Speaker 1: like qualified or had the time, or why why wasn't
Speaker 1: he the one doing it? You know, Jefferson never ever
Speaker 1: considered himself being a position or a person who would
Speaker 1: undertake such a thing. He that was always something that
Speaker 1: he would find. Tobacco he had. He's a francophile, I
Speaker 1: had book story right, all right, he was. He was
Speaker 1: a person that well read, but not not the adventuresome
Speaker 1: type that was going to go out and undertake an
Speaker 1: expedition like this. There's no way, you said, John Ledyards. Uh.
Speaker 1: He just took off with his dog, which really really
Speaker 1: interests me because I think people love the story of
Speaker 1: dogs and they don't get told very well. So I
Speaker 1: was gonna tell Spencer we got to write this down
Speaker 1: for a future series. And uh, one of the first
Speaker 1: hits on the on the Google machine here is the
Speaker 1: making of John Ledyard Time to Eat the Dogs, which
Speaker 1: you can kind of infer as to what happened on
Speaker 1: that trip. But of course Lewis ended up taking his
Speaker 1: dog with him Newfoundland Seamen was the dog's name, and
Speaker 1: made it all the way out to the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: and back, you know. And at the same time, I
Speaker 1: think one historian figured out that they probably ate over
Speaker 1: two hundred dogs during the expedition. Mm hmm. I have
Speaker 1: all these pictures of eating dogs in Vietnam, and I'm
Speaker 1: alway afraid to put him on social media, but maybe
Speaker 1: that'd be my in as I can mention that in
Speaker 1: honor Lewis and Clark. Uh. Okay, what's next? Well, I
Speaker 1: think we're up to the point now where like Louis
Speaker 1: gets tapped for this adventure right right, he he was
Speaker 1: appointed by Jefferson to be his personal secretary with the
Speaker 1: intent that he was going to start learning uh whatever
Speaker 1: he might need to know as far as plant life, medicine, zoology,
Speaker 1: uh and and prepare for this expedition. What did that
Speaker 1: role mean then being a personal secretary, being a right
Speaker 1: hand person, a record like a record keeper, and not
Speaker 1: so much and as far as being a secretary as
Speaker 1: we think maybe in today's context, but a person who
Speaker 1: was an assistant, who would help Jefferson with other plans,
Speaker 1: help him prepare for this expedition. And when the whole
Speaker 1: idea of Louisiana purchase came about later that year, everything
Speaker 1: just fell into place very perfectly. You know, it was
Speaker 1: just you couldn't ask for a better situation. And so
Speaker 1: but the interesting thing is that it was on January
Speaker 1: three that Jefferson delivers his confidential message to Congress asking
Speaker 1: for an appropriation of two thousand, five hundred dollars confidential
Speaker 1: because he knew that there would be a lot of
Speaker 1: people here in the United States. They would also, says,
Speaker 1: to explore some unknown territory at what a government waste, right,
Speaker 1: And of course that was an initial appropriation of the amount.
Speaker 1: When you look at it overall, by the time they
Speaker 1: came back, and how the men were paid per month,
Speaker 1: and how they received land allotments, you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: looking at this exhibition costing maybe closer to forty year
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars back at that time, you know, so
Speaker 1: it would be quite a bit more substantial today. So
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't a situation really for two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars they funded this entire expedition. That was just
Speaker 1: simply an initial appropriation they spent. The government has been
Speaker 1: a lot more money. And then with the with the
Speaker 1: Louisiana purchase, there's the thing that they've been totally around
Speaker 1: is they ended up selling it to us as sort
Speaker 1: of um like as air strategic move right around. It
Speaker 1: was around like that they were going to lose it anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea of the Louisiana Territory. It
Speaker 1: became known as Louisiana territory all the way back to
Speaker 1: two with a Roberto Lacel who claimed that area for
Speaker 1: King Louis the four of France. And then after the
Speaker 1: French and Indian War ended in seventeen sixty three, the
Speaker 1: western part, that area west of the of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River that became Spanish controlled, and then it went from
Speaker 1: Spain back to France right around eighteen hundred with a
Speaker 1: Treaty of Sandolfonso, and that's that's when the United States
Speaker 1: really started becoming war concerned more about having access to
Speaker 1: the river and getting through the area of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: And so Jefferson sent Robert Livingston and James Monroe, two
Speaker 1: very notable figures in American history, of course, and to
Speaker 1: negotiate with Napoleon representatives. And so they went over to
Speaker 1: Paris and negotiated. Napoleon had other issues, I mean, he
Speaker 1: was he was thinking about Europe. His his project in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean had fallen flat because of disease, and he
Speaker 1: really didn't want that area Louisiana anymore. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: the whole idea was that Jefferson told Monroe and Livingston
Speaker 1: offer go up as high as ten million dollars for
Speaker 1: New Orleans, just for New Orleans. And it was Napoleon
Speaker 1: representatives who came back and said, what about Louisiana territory
Speaker 1: for what turned out to be about fifteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: Now Here, here are two individuals who can't just get
Speaker 1: on the phone and contact Jefferson, say hey, what are
Speaker 1: we supposed to do? You know? So they they went
Speaker 1: ahead and they signed the Louisiana Agreement on April eighteen
Speaker 1: o three, and keep in mind that Jefferson had had
Speaker 1: delivered that confidential message to Congress in January of eighteen
Speaker 1: o three, you know, so he was already planning this.
Speaker 1: But the fact that the Louisiana purchase was signed in April,
Speaker 1: and then you have Jefferson's really well known instructions to
Speaker 1: Jefferson on June eighteen o three and say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is what I want you to do. I want you
Speaker 1: to study this and this and this and this, all
Speaker 1: these very specific directions. It wasn't until around the fourth
Speaker 1: of July eighteen o three when news of Louisiana purchase
Speaker 1: arrived in Washington, d C. And even at that Jefferson
Speaker 1: can't make that kind of agreement. He's the president. Treaties
Speaker 1: have to be ratified by the Senate, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: until October of eighteen o three that the Senate finally
Speaker 1: ratified the Louisiana treaty. Well, now it all makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense, you know, we have you know, we
Speaker 1: double the size the United States, and so it makes
Speaker 1: more sense to go out and explore it, certainly. But
Speaker 1: it's just the idea that so many people think that
Speaker 1: we bought it and then we decided that He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I bought it now put together by October. By the
Speaker 1: time the treaty was ratified, uh Lewis and Clark were
Speaker 1: already making all kinds of of plans and and uh
Speaker 1: they were, you know, like I said, they met at
Speaker 1: the Ohio Falls and and I went down to the
Speaker 1: Wood River area, and they're going to spend the winter
Speaker 1: of eighteen o three to eighteen o four recruiting soldiers
Speaker 1: to go along with him. You know, when when uh
Speaker 1: Lewis was first thinking about this, Jefferson that well, and
Speaker 1: you know, if you take a take ten or twelve
Speaker 1: men with you. You know, from the time they left
Speaker 1: the Missouri up until the the Hadats and the Mandan
Speaker 1: and the rick Raw villages in North Dakota, it was
Speaker 1: closer to four dozen. Because you had the two captains,
Speaker 1: actually Captain merrywether Lewis Lieutenant William Clark, although they both
Speaker 1: went by captains. You had three sergeants. Initially, the one sergeant,
Speaker 1: Charles Floyd, was the only member the expedition to to
Speaker 1: die along the way. He was replaced by a vote
Speaker 1: of the men. Uh and he was replaced by Patrick Gass.
Speaker 1: You had about two dozen privates and they Wasn't Prior
Speaker 1: was prior officer. He was one of the sergeants, Nathaniel Prior. Right,
Speaker 1: you had initially John Wardway who was really the third
Speaker 1: in command. Or you want to look at Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark as being the co commanders, certainly John Ord where
Speaker 1: Sergeant John Order would have been the next in command.
Speaker 1: And then you have um Charles Floyd, the one who
Speaker 1: died of a penacitis attack is what they believed by
Speaker 1: Sioux City. And then you had Nathaniel Prior, and then
Speaker 1: Patrick ass was one who replaced Charles Floyd later by
Speaker 1: vote of the of the men. And when they were
Speaker 1: doing this recruiting, they were strategically trying to get unmarried
Speaker 1: men with no families, right, that was that was a
Speaker 1: big part of it. And these are people from you know,
Speaker 1: they look at a UM George Shannon, for example, he
Speaker 1: was in his late teens. You know, he was very young. Uh.
Speaker 1: He has the notorious reputation of being the guy who
Speaker 1: got lost more often than anybody else. Uh. But you
Speaker 1: have George Shannon, then you have Lewis and Clark who
Speaker 1: are in their late twenties early thirties. Uh, you have
Speaker 1: Louis celebrating his thirty first birthday in August of eighteen
Speaker 1: o five. You know, like Seth and Chester, they're young,
Speaker 1: they're young Halliday Spencer, It's like you, now, what what
Speaker 1: did uh fifteen million dollar transaction look like then? Were
Speaker 1: we like shipping them a literal boatload of money or
Speaker 1: was there some assets? How does that happen? No, it's
Speaker 1: it's just basically through the funding over a period of time,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't one big lump sum or anything like that.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I think is really important to
Speaker 1: point out for fifteen million dollars, what did the United
Speaker 1: States actually acquire political authority? We did not buy any land.
Speaker 1: A lot of times people think about fifteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: We we double the size physically double the size the
Speaker 1: United States. If that had been the case, then there
Speaker 1: would never have been a need for any other treaties
Speaker 1: with Indian nations to acquire land, like the the Laramie
Speaker 1: Treaty of eighteen sixty eight or anything like that. But
Speaker 1: we spent way more than fifteen million dollars. When you
Speaker 1: look at the nineteenth century and all the different treaties
Speaker 1: for land that the United States entered into with different
Speaker 1: Indian nations. It's so funny. We were told, you know,
Speaker 1: every year by a new teacher in Montana growing up,
Speaker 1: that we were acquired the Louisiana purchase for a penny
Speaker 1: and acre. Anytime you can get land for a penny
Speaker 1: and acre, it doesn't matter if it's pick it up
Speaker 1: when you know, when you look at it. Overall, it
Speaker 1: was the political authority because it had gone from the
Speaker 1: French to the Spanish back to the French, and now
Speaker 1: the United States had the political authority. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that Lewis and Clark were supposed
Speaker 1: to do when they engage with these different Indian nations,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to say, you are now under American authority.
Speaker 1: Don't don't trade with the British, don't trade with the Spanish,
Speaker 1: don't trade with anybody else. You trade only with American
Speaker 1: traders from now on. You are now under the United
Speaker 1: States authority. They're like, you guys all look the same guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine if someone sold you uh political authority
Speaker 1: over the northwest region of of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Okay,
Speaker 1: so someone sells you the political authority over it there's
Speaker 1: still a bit of work to be done there. I mean,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of you were gonna be like
Speaker 1: what or what now? You know, this is going like
Speaker 1: way beyond the expedition now, But did we ever consider
Speaker 1: selling it back or selling it to someone else? No,
Speaker 1: it was ours and we were keeping it right absolutely,
Speaker 1: and in fact now the incentive was to keep going,
Speaker 1: you know, to claim that territory of the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: and eventually look at the the American Southwest and acquiring
Speaker 1: that too, which which we did. Uh by the eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: you know, the late eighteen forties, there was just one
Speaker 1: big step as far as American expansion westwards. Certainly, so
Speaker 1: when Louis was tapped to do this, he had to
Speaker 1: like be a botanist and an archaeologist and a hunter
Speaker 1: and a politician and a fisherman, an artist and a doctor.
Speaker 1: Did he have those skills before he was chosen for
Speaker 1: this job or did he like gain those qualifications after
Speaker 1: it was decided he gained those because a lot of
Speaker 1: people were very critical of why Lewis, and Lewis is
Speaker 1: not a trained naturalist. He doesn't know anything about plants
Speaker 1: or animals, you know, why why why choose him to
Speaker 1: leave the Sex But edition. But when he was chosen
Speaker 1: and the expedition started to be planned, one of the
Speaker 1: things that Jefferson did is arranged for him to go
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia and to be basically tutored with a number
Speaker 1: of individuals to learn about. For example, Benjamin Smith Barton.
Speaker 1: He was the one who who tutored Jefferson on how
Speaker 1: to preserve different specimens where there's plants specimens or animal
Speaker 1: specimens anything like that. So he was very important about it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have Casper Wistar, who was very interested in paleontology,
Speaker 1: you know, so to bring out questions like okay, now
Speaker 1: if you find animals that we think are extinct back here,
Speaker 1: you know, we want you to be especially on the
Speaker 1: lookout for those, you know, are there still mammoths or
Speaker 1: masodon's out there or anything like that. Not that he
Speaker 1: knew or or fully expected that there was, but that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that you know, if you're
Speaker 1: out there, this is what we also want you to
Speaker 1: to look for any signs of of of animals that
Speaker 1: might be extinct. By now you have Dr Benjamin Rush,
Speaker 1: who again a very well known in person from the
Speaker 1: American Revolutionary period, and he was considered to be the
Speaker 1: pre eminent physician at the time. Uh. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that, of course you think of with with
Speaker 1: Rush and the Lewis and Clark expedition is that Lewis
Speaker 1: arranged to take fifty dozen of Russia's pills with them. Now,
Speaker 1: these Russia's pills, these were these were kind of Lewis's
Speaker 1: cure all. You know, he did learn some medical things
Speaker 1: from from Russia, certainly, but the whole idea is that, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not feeling well, Um, you have loose bowel movements. Here,
Speaker 1: take Russia's pills. What were the pills. They were loaded
Speaker 1: with a lot of mercury. They were super powerful laxatives. Uh.
Speaker 1: They called them Russia's thunderbolts. And in many cases, if
Speaker 1: you're dealing with stuff like dysentery, absolutely the last the
Speaker 1: worst thing that you should possibly be taking is Russia's thunderbowls.
Speaker 1: You know, the thunderbowls, thunderclappers. They were there, these really
Speaker 1: powerful laxatives. But that's what Lewis did. You're not feeling well,
Speaker 1: here to take take these, take some of these, and
Speaker 1: that they think it would clear out that and blood letting,
Speaker 1: where two of his main medical practices. What was that
Speaker 1: with leeches or just with cutting you um, the cutting
Speaker 1: that they had, the actual basins that you would rest
Speaker 1: your arm on and they would cut your wrist and
Speaker 1: let it bleed out and try to get some of
Speaker 1: that bad blood out of your system. And and again
Speaker 1: to medical practices that were probably the most common, and
Speaker 1: yet they were they were probably medical practice that you
Speaker 1: probably surprised, Wow, we didn't kill some of our own men.
Speaker 1: I had often read that. Uh, you'll see where they
Speaker 1: say the only physical evidence left of the expedition is
Speaker 1: where Clark carved his name into Pompey's pillar. Okay, east
Speaker 1: of Billings, Montana. Right then, someone said no, because at
Speaker 1: the at the camp site, at the where Lolo Creek
Speaker 1: flows into the Bitter Root Traveler's Rest, they found traces
Speaker 1: of that mercury. Is that true? That's that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that archaeologists look for, you know, depending where
Speaker 1: you are on the Lewis and Clark Trail, I mean
Speaker 1: through South Dakota. We know that they went to Spirit
Speaker 1: Mound now in the very southeastern part of the state.
Speaker 1: But other than that, we have four dams along the
Speaker 1: Missouri River in South Dakota now that have created these
Speaker 1: huge lakes, and so things like a Rick Rick Aros
Speaker 1: villages are now inundated by by Lake Hawaii, for example.
Speaker 1: But when archaeologists looked to find a possible camp site,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind this is a military expedition, and
Speaker 1: so even when they set up camp, it had to
Speaker 1: be set up a certain way, which meant that even
Speaker 1: the latrine area was a certain distance from the main camp.
Speaker 1: And because they took so many of these russiest pills
Speaker 1: and and even the sad that they used for treating
Speaker 1: the men who had syphilis had so much mercury in
Speaker 1: at that when archaeologists start looking into the ground, if
Speaker 1: they can find a heavy concentration of mercury, they oh,
Speaker 1: this might be one of the latrine areas of the
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark expedition. So that that use of mercury
Speaker 1: back then was was very common and they used it
Speaker 1: a lot. Okay, uh all right, back when they picked
Speaker 1: their guys, they went up with some some some rascals,
Speaker 1: they did, uh uh. They they had some really good
Speaker 1: qualified individuals, certainly, but there were there were because it
Speaker 1: was a military expedition. They had at least at least
Speaker 1: seven different court martials along the way, and you know,
Speaker 1: some of it varied from sleeping on duty, which was
Speaker 1: a serious offense. Some of it was just a few
Speaker 1: days after the expedition began. Two the men went back
Speaker 1: and and got drunk, and so they had to pay
Speaker 1: the price. Uh. You have Moses Reed, who was a
Speaker 1: deserter who was finally caught and he was punished accordingly.
Speaker 1: He had to run the gauntlet four times with a
Speaker 1: cat of nine tails. Every man had one of those,
Speaker 1: and he had to run that gauntlet four times. That
Speaker 1: means getting lashed. Getting lashed, Yeah, here ran right through
Speaker 1: them and they every person had to strike him and
Speaker 1: they did that four times to him. And the thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: cat of nine tales the whips with the nine different
Speaker 1: strings on the end, and so it's not being struck
Speaker 1: just by one whip, it's really being struck by nine
Speaker 1: at the same time. And he had to do that.
Speaker 1: Every item used for other than this gauntlet. It was
Speaker 1: a military expedition that was that was absolutely such a
Speaker 1: bizarre thing. A trip like that, Why would you want
Speaker 1: somebody there who doesn't want to be there? I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, see you and uh, you know. The last
Speaker 1: one was John Newman, who was accused of mutinous expressions
Speaker 1: when they reached when they reached the rick Raw villages
Speaker 1: in October. They spent October eight through the twelfth with
Speaker 1: the rick Raw north central part of South Dakota, and
Speaker 1: John Newman was at any time they had these court martials.
Speaker 1: It was a trial of your peers. Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: were not involved. The sergeants. One of the sergeants presided,
Speaker 1: you had the men, some of the men who served
Speaker 1: as a jury, and they determined if a person was
Speaker 1: guilty or not. And John Newman was found guilty and
Speaker 1: he was given seventy five lashes on the bare back.
Speaker 1: And the thing that the nine tails, cat of nine
Speaker 1: tails exactly, and there was a them no, I mean,
Speaker 1: just just have one just for you. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: there was one in in a shop down here on
Speaker 1: Main Street were Adam and Eves store, a little through
Speaker 1: store down there on Main Street yesterday a cat of
Speaker 1: nine tails. I'm pretty sure that's what that was down
Speaker 1: there in the bottom of the case. I didn't inspect
Speaker 1: it through, I don't think that and hanging on the wall.
Speaker 1: But the books. Yeah, they had these uh these the
Speaker 1: leather swimsuits with the little studs and stuff right next
Speaker 1: the magic right next to that. Well that even even
Speaker 1: at that when they were punished, you know, the one
Speaker 1: a rick Row leader, eagle Feather, he started wailing because
Speaker 1: he could't imagine, why are you punishing one of your
Speaker 1: own people like this. It's one thing when you punish
Speaker 1: the enemy because they're the enemy, But to punish one
Speaker 1: of your own people like that, he just couldn't understand
Speaker 1: why they would even do such a thing. And the
Speaker 1: thing of it is that when whenever these men received
Speaker 1: you know, twenty five lashes, fifty lashes, one hundred lashes,
Speaker 1: a newman received seventy five lashes, It's not like, okay,
Speaker 1: well you have a couple of days to recover. No,
Speaker 1: you're back to work. You know you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: a few days off from manual labor because you did
Speaker 1: something wrong. What was his mutinous expression? It doesn't really
Speaker 1: say you. And the journalist says that he was mutinous expressions,
Speaker 1: and so he said, so I'm like, you know, what
Speaker 1: we ought to do? Is his head back on, you know,
Speaker 1: something that he was told to do something he'd he disobeyed,
Speaker 1: and he was he was very for Newman. He was
Speaker 1: very apologetic. He because he was dismissed from the expedition.
Speaker 1: He was sent back in April of eighteen oh five,
Speaker 1: and he really did work extra hard to try to
Speaker 1: make amends and everything. But they said, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: too late, you know. So whatever he said, whatever he did,
Speaker 1: that qualified as mutinous expressions. It was enough for them
Speaker 1: to say. And maybe it was just the fact that
Speaker 1: they're setting an example that no, when you're told to
Speaker 1: do something, you have you have to do something. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a military expedition. I don't flogg this to
Speaker 1: continue flogging about the flogging, but like, do they are
Speaker 1: there reports of like how bad the uh, the wounds
Speaker 1: were from getting something like seventy five they would have
Speaker 1: to be pretty severe, yeah, I mean, and like open
Speaker 1: wounds and something that we might even stitch up today.
Speaker 1: And then of course having somebody like Lewis Prood provides
Speaker 1: have to try to speed the healing and everything. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of the stabb said Mercury. Like I said,
Speaker 1: for when they treated them in with syphilis, A lot
Speaker 1: of that sabb had had a lot of mercury in
Speaker 1: it as well. But yeah, they it was a military
Speaker 1: expedition first and foremost. How many of the guys that went,
Speaker 1: we're in the military prior to getting enlisted, Like Coulter
Speaker 1: wasn't a military guy. No, Um, most of them were.
Speaker 1: Like I said, there were at least two and privates
Speaker 1: that were already in the middle recruiting from the military.
Speaker 1: But then you have other people like George drewry Or,
Speaker 1: who was noted for being the best hunter of the group,
Speaker 1: and he he was. He was brought along for not
Speaker 1: only for his hunting proficiency, but also the fact that
Speaker 1: he he could do sign language, and so knowing that
Speaker 1: they would meet dozens of different groups of people, having
Speaker 1: that ability to have sign language was considered to be
Speaker 1: very important. Drewyer was was French Canadian on his father's
Speaker 1: side and Shawnee on his mother's side. There was a
Speaker 1: universal sign language. It was very common. Yeah, actually a
Speaker 1: lot of the mountain men had this universal sign language.
Speaker 1: But at the same time you have to think how
Speaker 1: well did this really convey what they were saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: you start talking about the white father in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's all foreign and how do you
Speaker 1: how do you actually put that into a sign language.
Speaker 1: So the whole idea of using gestures was used, but
Speaker 1: there was there was a lot of confusion with it,
Speaker 1: and they were fortunate they did have interpreters along the way,
Speaker 1: people whom they met along the way who served as interpreters,
Speaker 1: and so in some cases that proved to be very important.
Speaker 1: In other cases, when you talk about to San Charboneau
Speaker 1: and Chicago, wea, and I'll say Chicago, we have because
Speaker 1: there will be other people who will say Sacajawea. But
Speaker 1: in the case of to San Charboneau and Chicago, wea,
Speaker 1: you have it going from English to French to Hadotza
Speaker 1: eventually to Shoshone. And then if you're gonna have a reply, now,
Speaker 1: I asked, go from Shoshone to Hadotza to French to English.
Speaker 1: And you have to wonder how much is lost in
Speaker 1: that communication when you're trying to translate it. That many
Speaker 1: times there were new things at it in absolutely can
Speaker 1: we narrow win on Chicago and her husband for a minute? Uh,
Speaker 1: my kids brought home from the library. They brought home
Speaker 1: a book. Um, it was kind of like highlighting different
Speaker 1: Western figures. I came right at the hell of the book.
Speaker 1: But I remember this chapter and it talked about not
Speaker 1: only how little is known about her, but it talked
Speaker 1: about how she became like the individuals throughout American history
Speaker 1: who elevated her to the position that she is. And
Speaker 1: it laid out in very simple short form like here
Speaker 1: is what is actually known about this person. I was
Speaker 1: shocked how little is known about her. Absolutely, they don't
Speaker 1: know she lived to be old age. It's like she
Speaker 1: was a teen, right, she's a teen bride right? Well,
Speaker 1: like what is like? I couldn't believe how little is
Speaker 1: known about her? And then what people have extrapolated from
Speaker 1: that exactly there there's a lot of controversy when I
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, it was sacka Jewiah with
Speaker 1: a J And now most historians will say, psychago wea
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna stick with Sacha out of this area
Speaker 1: whole day lifetime that now in this area is gonna
Speaker 1: sacka Jerwia. I mean she she was born in the
Speaker 1: area of sam And, Idaho. And and you know, so
Speaker 1: I just uh twice I've been to the Wind River
Speaker 1: Indian Reservation where they have the Saka Juwia Cemetery, and
Speaker 1: they talked about how she was very significant to the
Speaker 1: Lews and Clark expedition. Um, she was a guide, she
Speaker 1: was interpreter, her presence was important, all these different things.
Speaker 1: Most historians again will say that it was probably Psychagowa,
Speaker 1: which means something completely different. Saka Juwia is a Shoshone word,
Speaker 1: which she was Shoshoni. She was probably eleven or twelve
Speaker 1: years old when she was taken by by the Haddatzas.
Speaker 1: But like she was kidnapped in the act of war right, right,
Speaker 1: she was sold to The story is at Toussaint won
Speaker 1: her in gaming, like one of the one or whatever,
Speaker 1: and well, yeah, they had a different uh different games
Speaker 1: of gambling of a risk, you know, like which hand
Speaker 1: is it in and you know things like that, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's very simple. It's not like he fell in love
Speaker 1: with her. He won her through gambling. Well, let's back
Speaker 1: up it. We now know that she was born in
Speaker 1: Salmon around Salmon, right, a rating party of Hadazza right
Speaker 1: kidnapped her whenever, and she ended up eventually with the
Speaker 1: Mandan and the Hadatsa villages. When Lewis and Clark came
Speaker 1: across her actually through through to San Charboneau. Again she
Speaker 1: was probably he had one her gambling right, and he
Speaker 1: had had two eyes with her at one at that time.
Speaker 1: And that was the thing. You know, which one is
Speaker 1: buried in in on the Wind River Indian Reservation and
Speaker 1: which one died in north central South Dakota at Fort Manuel. Lisa.
Speaker 1: Uh was not get ahead of ourselves, okay. So it
Speaker 1: was she's pregnant when they encounter her, right, Uh, she
Speaker 1: was pregnant. She was probably seventeen or eighteen years old
Speaker 1: at that time, and on she was having a very
Speaker 1: difficult time with the delivery of the child. And one
Speaker 1: of the interpreters are one of the Frenchmen who were
Speaker 1: at the camp of the time in ata Psalm. He said, well,
Speaker 1: he's seen it happen where you take the addle of
Speaker 1: a snake and you grind it up to powder and
Speaker 1: you diluted with water and have the woman drink that.
Speaker 1: They did that and shortly thereafter she gave birth. About
Speaker 1: so whether it whether it worked or not, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's sad to say, but that was February eleven,
Speaker 1: eighteen o five that Jean Baptiste Sharbonneau was born then.
Speaker 1: But but they wanted Louis and Clark wanted Charbonnet to
Speaker 1: accompany them because he was fluent in a couple of languages. Correct,
Speaker 1: he was fluent in a couple of languages. But the
Speaker 1: fact that his his wife's Chicago Wea was was sho Shone,
Speaker 1: they knew that that was probably gonna be the next
Speaker 1: nation whom they would meet. And they knew that the
Speaker 1: farther west they would go, the more likely they were
Speaker 1: to come into contact with the Indians who had horses.
Speaker 1: And so they realized that it's nice to have Charbonne along,
Speaker 1: but it's really nice to have his wife come along too,
Speaker 1: to have Icago wig along. And then they knew this.
Speaker 1: They knew about the shi because of just the knowledge
Speaker 1: of trade networks, especially with those Uh village cultures, the
Speaker 1: rick around the hadants Uh in the Man then those
Speaker 1: were those were centers, trade centers, and they would be
Speaker 1: groups from a wide area that would eventually come in
Speaker 1: and they would trade in those areas and then they'd
Speaker 1: go back to their their locations. And so, yeah, they
Speaker 1: knew about the Shoshony, they knew about the Cheyenne, they
Speaker 1: knew about uh, all the other different groups that they
Speaker 1: traded extensively, and so they knew that, yeah, here's here's
Speaker 1: uh their bit of advice. You know, the farther north
Speaker 1: or farther west you go, you were come in contact
Speaker 1: with tribes that will have horses, and the Shoshoni will
Speaker 1: be one of those. And that that proved to be
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating stories, I guess is when
Speaker 1: the Lewis and Clark expedition met with the Shoshony after
Speaker 1: they left April seventh, they went April, May, June, July.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until August before they finally saw another human
Speaker 1: being and that was the Shoshoni nation. And that's when
Speaker 1: that's not another human being, right, nobody. There was one
Speaker 1: story where they said that Lewis and three of the
Speaker 1: men were going in advance and they saw a person
Speaker 1: on horseback, and so Lewis was pretty excited and he
Speaker 1: had asked Chicago, wea before, how do you say white
Speaker 1: man in Shoshone? And of course through the translations, that
Speaker 1: came out taba bone. And so as Lewis is approaching
Speaker 1: this person on horseback, he rolls up his shirt sleeve
Speaker 1: and he yells out taba bone, taba bone, trying to
Speaker 1: indicate that he's a white person. Well, the person takes
Speaker 1: off and run, takes off and on his horse on
Speaker 1: in a different direction. And I've come to find out
Speaker 1: that you know what, if you've never seen a white man,
Speaker 1: there probably isn't a word for white man. Taba bone
Speaker 1: was a Shoshony word meaning stranger. So here he is
Speaker 1: approaching this person yelling I'm a stranger, I'm a stranger,
Speaker 1: and the person takes off, which which makes sense. Later
Speaker 1: others joined came in and confronted a lois what area
Speaker 1: were they passing through? They went that many months, don't
Speaker 1: conjuring anyone all on the Missouri at this point. I
Speaker 1: mean they left like a April seven and there was
Speaker 1: months going up the Missouri River, and and uh, that's
Speaker 1: like my dream hunting or fishing trip. Like you when
Speaker 1: you leave and you're like, god, there's still nobody here.
Speaker 1: Smallpox was ripping out ahead of them. Back in the
Speaker 1: seventy nineties there was a huge smallpox epidemic and that
Speaker 1: had really decimated the Areca people quite a bit. I
Speaker 1: mean that at one point there were probably thirty two
Speaker 1: Aricaw villages when luc and Clark meet them. There's three
Speaker 1: you know, so a lot of those populations that had
Speaker 1: died because of the small box. The next big small
Speaker 1: pox up it could be in the eighteen thirties. I
Speaker 1: just want to finish up on Zach. Did you were
Speaker 1: real quick? Sure? Uh? In your mind? No one really
Speaker 1: knows the answered this. But she's kidnapped as a child,
Speaker 1: which was common practice, and then get some semblance of
Speaker 1: freedom when she gets won by Charbonneau. What would have
Speaker 1: prevent to someone from saying I am gonna go back home?
Speaker 1: Is it just it's so far. I think part of
Speaker 1: it being so young when she captive in this guy.
Speaker 1: And I think part of it too, is that this
Speaker 1: is the social expectations that she is now property of
Speaker 1: this particular person. I hate to use the term married,
Speaker 1: because she was really more more of the property than
Speaker 1: anything else. So when they when they take off and
Speaker 1: they eventually get to the Shoshonee, Lewis and has been
Speaker 1: are there first. A day or two later, Clark shows
Speaker 1: up and Skaga we as with them, and they're they're
Speaker 1: excited because you know she's going to be able to
Speaker 1: speak language. And as they sit down to negotiating, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna, you know, go through their whole spield as
Speaker 1: far as you're now un American authority and everything, but
Speaker 1: they're also interested in acquiring horses to get over the mountains.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, Chicago Wea leaps up and
Speaker 1: she gives out this this exclamation, and she goes over
Speaker 1: and she realized that the shohon A leader is her brother,
Speaker 1: whom she has not seen since she's kidnapped at the
Speaker 1: age eleven or twelve, So that her brother come Await
Speaker 1: was the leader of the showny. And again, you could
Speaker 1: write a novel better for that, the fact that now
Speaker 1: they know, okay, we're gonna get her horses, We're we're
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, we'll get people to guide us over
Speaker 1: the mountains, and everything else. Because of this connection between
Speaker 1: Chicago Weea and come Await, this thing I read about
Speaker 1: what's actually known about her, it got into that, and
Speaker 1: it got into this other very telling This very telling
Speaker 1: thing about her that's sort of like helped form the
Speaker 1: mythology around her is that when they get close to
Speaker 1: the Pacific, there's some reason why they're gonna go look
Speaker 1: at it. But she's not invited to go look at it.
Speaker 1: But he even points out in his journal she wanted
Speaker 1: so badly to see the ocean, and he's like, she
Speaker 1: came all this way, how could we deny her? And
Speaker 1: so that is where stem this like explorer curiosity, right
Speaker 1: that he like, because they're so sparse with what they
Speaker 1: talk about with personnel, the fact that he like took
Speaker 1: note of it suggests that there was this, right, this
Speaker 1: intense curiosity in her. Right, Yeah, you're right that there
Speaker 1: there's actually when you read through the journals, there's very
Speaker 1: few references to her, or they might just refer to
Speaker 1: charbonas a woman. They might refer to the snake woman,
Speaker 1: the Shoshone woman. Um. At one point they did call
Speaker 1: the river bird woman's river, which in the Hadatsa language
Speaker 1: that would be ssicago wea. And that's the only time
Speaker 1: in the journals that I know of where they actually
Speaker 1: tried to spell it phonetically with a hard G sound,
Speaker 1: cicago weia, you know. And then of course in North
Speaker 1: Dakota they use the case ocakawa, you know. So, but
Speaker 1: with what you're talking about, you know, as far as
Speaker 1: a guide, which is what they started getting into her
Speaker 1: homeland area, she they started, she started to recognize certain
Speaker 1: places like Beaverhead Rock for example. Um, and it's one
Speaker 1: of those that when you come around the curve, you're think, oh,
Speaker 1: that must be beaver Rock because it looks just like
Speaker 1: a beaver said. You know, So she you some of
Speaker 1: those places where she grew up. Has you ever been
Speaker 1: to the Pacific? No, she had never been to Pacific before,
Speaker 1: and so when she gets out the Pacific, there's there's
Speaker 1: a couple of very notable things. One that you're talking
Speaker 1: about is that there is a whale that's washed up
Speaker 1: on the on the shore. She wants to see this,
Speaker 1: you know. She she's heard them talking about this, and
Speaker 1: so she wants to go and actually look at this
Speaker 1: huge fish. This the whale that had had washed up
Speaker 1: on the shoreline. And she was pretty demanding that this
Speaker 1: is what she wanted to do, and so they allowed
Speaker 1: you to go and see it. Um. The other thing
Speaker 1: that was very interesting, and this is where she really
Speaker 1: develops her legacy, is that there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: about her in the journals per se, but it's in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century when she really becomes kind of
Speaker 1: the heroine of the women's suffrage movement, because in November
Speaker 1: of eighteen o five, when they get out to the
Speaker 1: Pacific northwest, of trying to decide, okay, we're gonna put
Speaker 1: our winter quarters and Lewis and Clark, even though it's
Speaker 1: a military expedition, they could have just simply said, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the way it's going to be. They went around,
Speaker 1: and some people call it a vote. Some people say no,
Speaker 1: they just took a poll, semantics. But they went around.
Speaker 1: They asked all the members of the exhibition, except for
Speaker 1: the child, of course, where they thought the winter quarters
Speaker 1: should be, which meant that they asked Chicago Wea, a
Speaker 1: young teenage American Indian woman, what she thought, not even married.
Speaker 1: But it's point but it's it's pointed out that they
Speaker 1: did ask her, or they that that they conducted a
Speaker 1: poll that or vote, however you want to say it.
Speaker 1: And UH asked all the members and the two most
Speaker 1: notable was Chicago Wea because American Indians, of course, weren't
Speaker 1: collectively considered American citizens until until ninety four, so this
Speaker 1: is long before that, this is eighteen o five. And
Speaker 1: the other one is that, of course, UH women not
Speaker 1: having the right to vote until the ninethe of Mement
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty. You know, so this is years and
Speaker 1: years beyond the opportunity for women to actually vote. But
Speaker 1: I gotta re ask my question. Sure do they say
Speaker 1: that they specifically included her in the voting? Okay, that's
Speaker 1: what I was curious, because they might have said we
Speaker 1: asked everybody, but then in fact didn't even ask her.
Speaker 1: Christian was a woman. Because it's also noted that York
Speaker 1: gets input as well, which ends up being like the
Speaker 1: first time a black person got to vote in America
Speaker 1: exactly eighteen o five. And again you look at it.
Speaker 1: Slavery wasn't abolished until the Thirteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: So this is sixty years before slavery is abolished. And
Speaker 1: then you look at the fifteenth AMENDMA, the granted African
Speaker 1: American men the right to vote. Well, that was until
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, so this is sixty five years before um,
Speaker 1: black men could vote. We better hit on this real
Speaker 1: quick now that we're put in sacke we behind us
Speaker 1: in the story for a minute. They had a slave.
Speaker 1: Was his workload different than everybody else's workload? No? Um,
Speaker 1: he he was actually a childhood friend of Clark's. They
Speaker 1: grew up together. When Clark was asked to go along
Speaker 1: with this expedition, it's just the only the same natural
Speaker 1: that his servant, York would would come with him. But
Speaker 1: he's not on payroll. He's not on payroll. But in
Speaker 1: a in a way, he becomes is one of the guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's allowed to go hunting. Slaves aren't allowed
Speaker 1: to carry weapons, you know, but he's allowed to go hunting.
Speaker 1: He becomes one of the guys. He he becomes a
Speaker 1: very notable member of the of the expedition, and at
Speaker 1: the same time, when they return, he goes back to
Speaker 1: being part of slave life. You know that Clark even
Speaker 1: at one point said that he had to uh punished
Speaker 1: York to keep him, keep him the same reference, that
Speaker 1: he was nothing but a slave. But was I thought
Speaker 1: he uh he didn't free him freedom after the expedition. No, uh,
Speaker 1: there there are several different stories. One is that he
Speaker 1: York married and that he actually moved out west settled
Speaker 1: down with American Indian tribe. Others that he uh he
Speaker 1: stayed with with Clark for a period of time and
Speaker 1: then eventually left. But there really is not a whole
Speaker 1: lot known about what happens to York afterwards. I mean,
Speaker 1: we know that he returns with with Clark Uh in
Speaker 1: eighteen o six and he reverts to the slave life again.
Speaker 1: It he didn't free him, No, that was in fact
Speaker 1: a lot of people want to Yeah, they really wanted
Speaker 1: to be freed. I feel like a lot of the
Speaker 1: like middle school history books, the story of York ends
Speaker 1: after the expedition, that you don't realize that, like York
Speaker 1: asked for his freedom even and like I think, didn't
Speaker 1: he have a wife in Tennessee, maybe that he has
Speaker 1: to go live with and and he was still telled though, right,
Speaker 1: And I think one one version of it is that
Speaker 1: he became a um a wagon master. You know, he
Speaker 1: would hull freight with wagons. So there's several different stories
Speaker 1: as far as what happened to York, but there's really
Speaker 1: nothing definitive. Now you asked about his workload. One place
Speaker 1: I think his workload was different was having sex with
Speaker 1: Uh tribeswomen feel like that was part of the workload. Well,
Speaker 1: the references they were impressed by him. They had never
Speaker 1: seen a person with black skin before um and they
Speaker 1: would do this practice of like spiritual power passing, and
Speaker 1: York was unique in that sense, right, right, No, it was,
Speaker 1: it was and and and not just York. I mean
Speaker 1: even even the members of other members of the expedition
Speaker 1: because they were white. You know, that was something that
Speaker 1: was part of this this mystique. Uh. It sounds pretty risky,
Speaker 1: sounds you know, like it was just uh, inappropriate behavior,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was a culturally accepted situation where
Speaker 1: when Lewis and Clark met with the Teeth and One Lakota, uh,
Speaker 1: they were offered women, but apparently nobody, according to the journals,
Speaker 1: nobody accepted those offers. When they get to the Ricara,
Speaker 1: that's when they does he specifically say no, one accepted. Yes.
Speaker 1: Clark had a quote he said something that he uh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. He waved or he wavered. I think
Speaker 1: he said he wavered. Now people wandered down, you know,
Speaker 1: like you wavered, you hessitated, then you accepted or do
Speaker 1: you wave it and just say no, no, thank you.
Speaker 1: And so there's nothing in the journals that that indicate
Speaker 1: at any time that Lewis or Clark engaged in these
Speaker 1: these kind of relaytionships. But when they get to the Ricara. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're fascinated with york In. In the recall language,
Speaker 1: he was referred to as as big medicine, big medicine
Speaker 1: in the sense that what you're talking about, Spencer, is
Speaker 1: that there was a belief among some of these different
Speaker 1: tribes that certain medicine, certain spiritual powers could be transferred
Speaker 1: from one person to the next. For example, when they
Speaker 1: were with the the winner that they're with the Mandan Indians.
Speaker 1: The Mandan had what was called a medicine dance or
Speaker 1: a buffalo calling dance, and the way it works, and
Speaker 1: they're very explicit that that they go into a lot
Speaker 1: of details far as what men were engaging these relations,
Speaker 1: who was suffering from from venereal disease, who was being
Speaker 1: treated for what. Nothing again about Lewis or Clark specifically,
Speaker 1: but in the case of the journals. On January five,
Speaker 1: eighteen o five, we sent one of our men to
Speaker 1: the medicine dance last night. They offered him for women.
Speaker 1: The way it was supposed to work is that you
Speaker 1: would have a group of elders in who would be
Speaker 1: in the lodge, and then younger men with their wives
Speaker 1: would come in and the younger men would offer their
Speaker 1: wives to the elders. And they described it as the
Speaker 1: elders would go off and do their business, and then
Speaker 1: the woman would return and then she would have relations
Speaker 1: with her husband. It was more of a generational type
Speaker 1: of transfer of power, if you will, our spiritual power medicine.
Speaker 1: But now that you have whites, it's also the same
Speaker 1: thing to transfer power from a white man to one
Speaker 1: of the one of the members of the tribe. Or
Speaker 1: in the case of your special fascination, the fact that
Speaker 1: he was was dark skinned, and uh, you know that
Speaker 1: there's a very well known painting by Charles Russell where
Speaker 1: they're in a lodge and and you see these people
Speaker 1: coming up and touching his skin and the texture of
Speaker 1: his hair, and because they're just completely mystified. They they've
Speaker 1: never seen a person of this kind of statue. And
Speaker 1: and uh, like I said, the color of his skin
Speaker 1: and and everything about him, it was something that they
Speaker 1: considered to be very spiritual. Are much big medicine, And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was offered a lot of women. Yeah, the Ricara specifically,
Speaker 1: there was a warrior that was so set on York
Speaker 1: having sex with his wife or whatever that the warrior
Speaker 1: offered a stand guard outside the lodge while York was inside,
Speaker 1: just to give him privacy, right, and it was a commonplace. Now.
Speaker 1: I think a big part of that is too about um,
Speaker 1: the knowing, you know, the fact that this arrangement has
Speaker 1: been made. Uh. There were other situations in which some
Speaker 1: of the Mountain men, especially when you think of the
Speaker 1: Ashley Party in three, where they two of the men
Speaker 1: sneaked into the Ricara villages to have these relationships and
Speaker 1: they were caught. And that's what rigored, really triggers the
Speaker 1: the whole situation between the Ricara attacking the Ashley Party,
Speaker 1: because that was something that was not arranged, you know.
Speaker 1: But in this case, the arranged situations between the members
Speaker 1: of the Lewis and Clark expedition and the various tribes
Speaker 1: that was that was just that it was arranged. You know.
Speaker 1: There's a fun anecdote about the vulnerabilities of of sort
Speaker 1: of the the hazards of journal reading in in Evan
Speaker 1: s Connell's book Son of the Morning Star, where he
Speaker 1: describes there's this doctor who is among the party that
Speaker 1: finds Costers command after it slaughtered, and he describes in
Speaker 1: great detail everything he saw, everything he did, right, everything
Speaker 1: everybody did. But the doctor makes a debut in someone
Speaker 1: else's journal where someone else describes how the doctor tried
Speaker 1: to pull had found a body of an Indian, had
Speaker 1: tried to pull it is very hot, the carcasses were
Speaker 1: starting to rot. Had tried to pull the shoes off
Speaker 1: of Indian and his skin slipped, and the doctor vomited.
Speaker 1: And has pointed out that that's the one thing that
Speaker 1: doctor seemed to omit from his own journal that day. Right,
Speaker 1: So like there's like a little bit of right no
Speaker 1: one's been especially when you're commanders. I mean, it's easy
Speaker 1: to talk about, you know, this person and this person
Speaker 1: and how they engaged the relations on how they're suffering
Speaker 1: from fineerial disease, But when you're the commanders, do you
Speaker 1: put that in there? Nobody did, and they and there
Speaker 1: were at least eight individuals who kept journals, but nobody
Speaker 1: in any of the journals recorded anything about Louis or
Speaker 1: Clark specifically engaging in these relations. But there were individuals
Speaker 1: later on in the nineteenth century who who claimed that, uh,
Speaker 1: they were fathered by either Mary whether Lewis or by
Speaker 1: William Clark. Yeah, that was gonna be my next question
Speaker 1: is gott there's got to be descendants from these relations
Speaker 1: from multiple tribes too. Yeah, And they talked about individuals
Speaker 1: who would have a certain African American characteristics, you know,
Speaker 1: the broad nose, the texture of the hair and things
Speaker 1: like that, and they think, well, that's that's york Um.
Speaker 1: In the case of the nez Pers, there was one
Speaker 1: by the name of Daytime Smoker who had a reddish
Speaker 1: tint to his hair, and according to their family's tradition,
Speaker 1: William Clark was a father. Well then he had. There
Speaker 1: might have been other red haired, red haired individuals on
Speaker 1: the expedition, but we do know that Clark had red hair,
Speaker 1: but that was always their tradition. In South Dakota, there
Speaker 1: is a family who for over two hundred years, I
Speaker 1: mean going back to when the Lewis and Clark expedition
Speaker 1: met the Titouana Lakota in the pier Fort Peer area.
Speaker 1: Their claim is that Lewis fathered a child there. Now,
Speaker 1: Lewis probably had no idea that that might have been
Speaker 1: the case if he didn't. Lewis never married, he never
Speaker 1: had any children that we know of, but this family's
Speaker 1: oral tradition is that he fathered a child, and that
Speaker 1: when that person became in his late sixties, he was
Speaker 1: actually baptized and his he took the name Joseph de
Speaker 1: Smit Lewis. His grave site is on the St. Alban
Speaker 1: Cemetery and a lower rural reservation in South Dakota, and
Speaker 1: when you go there you see the huge grave marker
Speaker 1: and then it says uh son of Ry Whether Lewis
Speaker 1: of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition. His baptismal records
Speaker 1: are at the Center for Western Studies at Augustana University
Speaker 1: in Swoux Falls. But that's the question. So what it
Speaker 1: says on the certificate that the father was Mary whether Lewis,
Speaker 1: How are you going to prove that? And this has
Speaker 1: been part of the family's oral history for for well
Speaker 1: ever since you know back he would have been born
Speaker 1: in eighteen o five. But the thing of it is
Speaker 1: this family has tried and spent a fair amount of
Speaker 1: money trying to make the d n A connections. Now
Speaker 1: because Lewis did not have any known children, but there
Speaker 1: are other Lewis members of the family that are out there,
Speaker 1: and so they have tried extensively to try to say,
Speaker 1: let's let's find out. You know, if if our oral
Speaker 1: history is right, well, then we should we should be
Speaker 1: noted for that that Marywether Lewis was the father of
Speaker 1: such and such person way back on, a great great
Speaker 1: great great grandfather and song if if not, well, then
Speaker 1: and then we know, you know. So the family just
Speaker 1: really wants to know. And uh that's trying to make
Speaker 1: that connection to do the DNA studies. So they've they've
Speaker 1: spent a fair amount of money investing into this, uh,
Speaker 1: going through a different DNA groups and and uh, they
Speaker 1: really just want to know. And this is it is
Speaker 1: kind of why I brought up the Kennewick man, uh
Speaker 1: and the controversies around that, right and in that word,
Speaker 1: to sacrilege. Right, So Merryweather Lewis is is is buried,
Speaker 1: and we can't exume him just for the sake of science.
Speaker 1: We need a living relative to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's okay with us if you exume him. And and
Speaker 1: they've actually taken this to court, and uh it's just
Speaker 1: the policy of the National Park Service that when those
Speaker 1: requests were made denied and said no, we the National
Speaker 1: Park Services not allow anybody to be exhumed and to
Speaker 1: be studied, of course with a Lewis situation. Wasn't murder?
Speaker 1: Was a suicide. People who knew him best at that time,
Speaker 1: they thought suicide. They could see that, you know, he
Speaker 1: had these bouts of what Steven Ambrose referred to as
Speaker 1: melancholy and depression. He had other health problems. He was
Speaker 1: dealing with some very serious political issues at the time.
Speaker 1: That's why he was heading back to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: But the super large doses of mercury can mess with
Speaker 1: the person's absolutely brain and are one of my nervous
Speaker 1: system right right, So so what might have you know
Speaker 1: if it was something physical, was it something psychological? Was
Speaker 1: that a combination? But even a couple of weeks before
Speaker 1: his death, they said that he had to be restrained
Speaker 1: because he was threatening to injure himself, you know. So
Speaker 1: the timeline leads a lot of people to say that
Speaker 1: he was having issues and that he took his own life.
Speaker 1: The other thing is he was shot twice. Once was
Speaker 1: he grazed, his head grazed, and then he had one
Speaker 1: in the in the in the stomach area, in the
Speaker 1: abdomen and he did not die immediately. He did live
Speaker 1: until the morning the next morning and that's when he died.
Speaker 1: So what what other people say that Lewis no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not married with us. He would never take his own life,
Speaker 1: never do that, you know, he was too great of
Speaker 1: a person and so on, and so they want to
Speaker 1: they want to exhume the body, do the forensics and
Speaker 1: determine at what angles were these shots made. You know,
Speaker 1: was this something that he could have inflicted himself, or
Speaker 1: was this situation where it's more like somebody shot at him,
Speaker 1: you know so, but at this point, the National Park
Speaker 1: Service has no no indication that that they're willing to
Speaker 1: allow for an exhimation of the body. If he was assassinated,
Speaker 1: walk us through like the potential killers. There are some
Speaker 1: who say that it might have been politically motivated. There
Speaker 1: are others who simply say that he was he was robbed,
Speaker 1: you know, so if it was the situation where somebody
Speaker 1: did shoot him. Again, it depends on which story you
Speaker 1: want to go with, because there are those who say
Speaker 1: that that people back in the in the territory that
Speaker 1: they wanted Louis gone. There were people that felt that
Speaker 1: he was not doing a very good job as as
Speaker 1: the governor of the territory. Um, then there were other
Speaker 1: people who just simply said that he was probably just robbed.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a not just trace in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and it was a place that was known for people
Speaker 1: to rob others along the way, and that might have
Speaker 1: been the case as well. So it's hard to say
Speaker 1: who might have And there's a lot of different theories.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different books that are out there
Speaker 1: as far as who might have done it and the
Speaker 1: motives motives behind it. And this took place like a
Speaker 1: bed in breakfast that he like a roadhouse, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he like randomly stopped at. But one of one
Speaker 1: of the suspects that people throw out there is like
Speaker 1: the the woman who ran the place, because he had
Speaker 1: some conflicting stories about she heard the first gun shot.
Speaker 1: She saw him kind of crawling around or something, right,
Speaker 1: and so there's there's suspicion around her. And yeah, she
Speaker 1: was saying that he was tripping out so bad and
Speaker 1: making so much racket that didn't even go in there
Speaker 1: when they heard the gun shot. A grinder stand is
Speaker 1: what it was called. And you'll see grinder either grinder
Speaker 1: or just d R I N e R. But the
Speaker 1: story that she heard him pacing and mumbling to himself
Speaker 1: and throughout the night, and then she heard the gunshot.
Speaker 1: And so it's one of those stories again where um,
Speaker 1: what what she had to say about the incident was
Speaker 1: was pretty brief and not all. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like she was taken in and given a full interview
Speaker 1: or anything like that. She just basically simply stated that
Speaker 1: he was he was up all night and he was
Speaker 1: talking and mumbling to himself, and and then she heard
Speaker 1: the gunshot. And then it goes from there. Are there
Speaker 1: his storians you really respect that believe that he was
Speaker 1: assassinated or most of the folks that, um, like, No,
Speaker 1: Lewis and clark Well convinced you with suicide. Most most
Speaker 1: historians will go with the suicide. Um. But there are
Speaker 1: others who are are adamant that no, no, he just
Speaker 1: would not have done that. And they're the ones who
Speaker 1: have really pushed for the exhuming of the body. And
Speaker 1: a lot of them are just people who want to
Speaker 1: be supportive of the Lewis story. Others are people who
Speaker 1: want to make sure that we're telling that the right
Speaker 1: side of history, that his reputation as as far as
Speaker 1: committing suicide versus being assassinated that that gets recorded in
Speaker 1: the history books. I can't believe he's buried on Park
Speaker 1: Service land, right? But does that? How does that give
Speaker 1: the Park Service sort of like domain over the body?
Speaker 1: Their their policy overall, from what I gather, is that
Speaker 1: they just simply do not allow the eximation of any bodies.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about archaeological sites earlier. What happens when?
Speaker 1: But hear me out, Let's let's say I get buried, okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: my body gets buried on Park Service land, right, and
Speaker 1: then later a family that's not gonna happen, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Later, Like my family is like I
Speaker 1: want the body back. Is it really the Park Services
Speaker 1: place to say no? Well, at this point, there's really
Speaker 1: no family that is that insistent that they want to
Speaker 1: have the body exhumed and reburied. Because he didn't have
Speaker 1: his own kids, right, there's no person with a real,
Speaker 1: no direct not his parents, not his kids. One part
Speaker 1: of this calculus is that where he's buried, there's like
Speaker 1: twenty other people buried as well, right, that they could
Speaker 1: potentially not even hit Lewis if if they were to
Speaker 1: go in and his his remainders. I think we're reburied once,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's just I can't remember in the
Speaker 1: situation as far as why they were being exposed, but
Speaker 1: a reburial, and then of course he had the more
Speaker 1: notable marker identifying Lewis. But uh, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of crapshoot anyway, man, I think they ought to dig
Speaker 1: it up anyway. Man, I don't really see what the
Speaker 1: big deal about it is. Yeah, i'd dig it up
Speaker 1: and have a look. I think we got to get
Speaker 1: to crash. I'm just saying I don't always see the
Speaker 1: big deal about It's like, the guy's dead, who cares?
Speaker 1: Then there's people say, well, the band's dead, let him rest. Listen, man,
Speaker 1: he can go back to rest. He's been resting all
Speaker 1: the time. It's just a brief interruption in his rest.
Speaker 1: He'd go back and rest some more. I think after
Speaker 1: they take a look Clark Jefferson, those who really knew
Speaker 1: him well, they didn't question it. They thought, yeah, they
Speaker 1: could see him doing something like that, that he would
Speaker 1: be that drastic. Jefferson knew his family well and said
Speaker 1: that his father and I think his mother and like
Speaker 1: aunts and uncles had depression and like had manic episodes
Speaker 1: as well. You'd also be to assume he was assassinated
Speaker 1: ignore the evidence of like you said, he tried to
Speaker 1: commit suicide like a month earlier at for something and
Speaker 1: I don't remember where. And then he'd even written in
Speaker 1: his journal when he turned thirty one, like a tremendously
Speaker 1: sad entry that was like, I reflected that I had
Speaker 1: yet done but little, very little, indeed to further the
Speaker 1: happiness of the human race or to advance the information
Speaker 1: of the succeeding generation. And from there he goes on
Speaker 1: he's like, uh, talks about a lazies band in like uh,
Speaker 1: just a waste of space. Sounds like a guy was syphilist.
Speaker 1: He was real excited about he's gonna stay out a
Speaker 1: cute little bed and breakfast this weekend. Though Grinders Station
Speaker 1: specier that that particular journal entry is one that's noted
Speaker 1: quite often. It's it's it's in his journal, it's his
Speaker 1: writing and everything, But it was the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: he at this point, he's thirty one years old. They've
Speaker 1: they've finally met the people whom they've been looking for
Speaker 1: for the last four months or whatever. During the summer.
Speaker 1: You know, it was really a situation where things should
Speaker 1: have been more much more upbeat in the stead he
Speaker 1: say it, Man, I haven't done anything. I'm such a loser,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's like you get that impression from
Speaker 1: what he what he writes, and and people see that
Speaker 1: that's that's again we're stee an Ambrose and undaunted courage
Speaker 1: keeps talking about this these bouts of melancholy, that he
Speaker 1: just simply went through these periods where he just really
Speaker 1: seems depressed, and I think a lot of people just
Speaker 1: get aside with that story. Then. Yeah, it was also
Speaker 1: likely that most of those fellas ended the expedition with malaria,
Speaker 1: which can cause dementia um which would also like add
Speaker 1: to the case that this was suicide. I didn't know
Speaker 1: they're soffering from malaria. Yeah, and I never heard malaria.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I think they just assume that most of
Speaker 1: those folks like got it at some point anyway, right right,
Speaker 1: I mean the variety of different diseases that that they
Speaker 1: suffered from. But the interesting thing is that Clark in
Speaker 1: the middle part maybe eight somewhere in there, he he
Speaker 1: made a list of all the members of the expedition
Speaker 1: that the Permanent Expedition expedition members that headed from from
Speaker 1: the Mandan village out the Pacific coast, and out of
Speaker 1: those thirty three, sixteen of them were dead by five
Speaker 1: or so, he noted include in Psychoga. You know, he said,
Speaker 1: no Chicago, we had died December eighteen twelve. She probably
Speaker 1: would have been in her mid twenties. So again in
Speaker 1: the controversy as far as how long did she live
Speaker 1: where she buried, I mean, there's a lot of controversies
Speaker 1: running that. But a lot of the members of the exhibition.
Speaker 1: You talked about John Colter turning around going right back. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were probably ten members of the expedition who did
Speaker 1: just that. They had They went went right back. You know,
Speaker 1: they come back after over two years and four months
Speaker 1: and they turned around, they go right back, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna look into a either trading and then later trapping.
Speaker 1: You know what, why why trade when you can cut
Speaker 1: out the middle person and then go ahead just trapped yourself.
Speaker 1: And you know you get into that whole period of
Speaker 1: time between John Potts and George Drewyer and and John Coulter.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were they were probably probably ten of them.
Speaker 1: I think Potts, the guy that got killed at three Forks,
Speaker 1: got all got his genitals cut off and everything he
Speaker 1: was he had to know he's an expedition member. Was
Speaker 1: John Potts was an expedition member. So they knew each other. Well,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, a lot of these. In fact, there was
Speaker 1: one time we got to know him and Coulter had
Speaker 1: that much history. John Coulter. He goes, he joins the
Speaker 1: two trappers or traders that are heading up the river.
Speaker 1: He's the only member to be dismissed early from the expedition.
Speaker 1: And then uh, he goes on his ventures. And then
Speaker 1: he goes back and and uh he meets up with
Speaker 1: a couple of the other former members of the expedition.
Speaker 1: He joins them, He turns around, he goes right back
Speaker 1: to the to the west. You know, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of there's kind of interesting bit of deal making
Speaker 1: that shows you the leadership style of Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: around when Coulter wants to go back with the trappers
Speaker 1: and traders, and everybody's supportive and and something whoever Lewis
Speaker 1: or Clark, whoever, says we'll let him go if everyone
Speaker 1: promises that, no one else will ask. Right, it's like
Speaker 1: an interesting deal, right, It's like that we're not home yet,
Speaker 1: you know, so we can't have everybody just disbanding and
Speaker 1: and I don't know how many other members would have
Speaker 1: been interested in leaving, but I always think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that really, after all that period of time, John Coulter
Speaker 1: was ready to go right back. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in because these like the Mandan
Speaker 1: village again, is is like this social hub, right, lots
Speaker 1: of trading coming in, and with that trading comes news.
Speaker 1: Do we know what was said about the expedition? Uh,
Speaker 1: in other parts of the other world, like folks who
Speaker 1: didn't come in direct contact with the expedition, like what
Speaker 1: it was regarded as from a native perspective or a
Speaker 1: trapping perspective out there. Um, there was a book I
Speaker 1: can't remember the author, but it's called Through Indian Eyes.
Speaker 1: And then even during the Bison tendering, the Losing Clark expedition,
Speaker 1: the National Park Service really had a had a strong
Speaker 1: emphasis on on the date of perspective, because you're talking
Speaker 1: about a situation where Lewis and Clark come along and
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have been able to survive
Speaker 1: had it not been for the different Indian nations with
Speaker 1: whom they encountered. But at the same time, things are
Speaker 1: never going to be the same, you know. By the
Speaker 1: time they're coming back down the Missouri River, they said
Speaker 1: that they met probably a hundred and fifty different traders
Speaker 1: and trappers going up the river, and had it not
Speaker 1: been Lewis and Clark, but it would have been somebody else.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of time. They're already I mean
Speaker 1: when they came to the different villages um that they
Speaker 1: they were already a lot of Frenchmen who were among
Speaker 1: these these populations. There were people coming from a British
Speaker 1: Canada coming down. So for a large part of it,
Speaker 1: it's not like they were the first non Indians to
Speaker 1: visit that area. But when they head west and go
Speaker 1: across the mountains to the Pacific northwest, that's that's really
Speaker 1: the area that nobody else had really ventured in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think it's port like Elliott West writes about
Speaker 1: the historian Elliott West writes about this, like at the
Speaker 1: time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, there were Native
Speaker 1: Americans living on the Great Plains who had been to Europe,
Speaker 1: met the King of France and came back to the
Speaker 1: Great Plains. Yeah, right, like well that's the Southern Plains.
Speaker 1: But it was like it wasn't like a lot had
Speaker 1: been going on out there for a long time. And
Speaker 1: then you get into they get into areas where they
Speaker 1: were making first contact, but it was like there was
Speaker 1: deep European history. Absolutely what your was, what your did
Speaker 1: Cambysi dave Oka go like across the south coast of
Speaker 1: Texas like two years earlier, and then the I always
Speaker 1: say the Rondres, but the Veronry brothers and the family
Speaker 1: who came down, uh seventeen thirties, eight, seventeen forty two,
Speaker 1: seventeen forty three. We know that they were at least
Speaker 1: as far as the Pier Fort Pier area. They left
Speaker 1: a marker, they're a lead plate with their their names
Speaker 1: on it in the date. So that's that's back in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, a fair amount of time before Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark came along. And then, like I said, you
Speaker 1: across the the man Dan and they have Rene jos
Speaker 1: Holme who serves as a translator when they were there. Rekora,
Speaker 1: it's Joseph Gravelyn when they were with the antin Sioux,
Speaker 1: it's it's pere Dorian, you know. So like guys that
Speaker 1: have been there long enough to know the language, know
Speaker 1: the language. They had families, they had lived among these
Speaker 1: people for for a number of number of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that case, it wasn't all known unknown. I
Speaker 1: should say, in fact, that they did have journals that
Speaker 1: they could look at, and anticipation of who they were
Speaker 1: going to meet and where they might meet them, all
Speaker 1: those different aspects of it. But uh, with the man
Speaker 1: Dan and some of the other tribes, the Mandan chief
Speaker 1: Shaheka White Coyote, he actually on the way down the river,
Speaker 1: he actually went with them to St. Louis and eventually
Speaker 1: went out to the east and met with Jefferson Um
Speaker 1: Eagle Feather. I mentioned him earlier, the one who was
Speaker 1: wailing when he couldn't understand why they were punishing John
Speaker 1: Newman like that. He goes all the way out to Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Become sick and and he dies, and that
Speaker 1: does not go over well with the Aricara. From that
Speaker 1: point on, the Aricara become very anti American, and it
Speaker 1: really affects the fur trade, certainly, because that's one instead
Speaker 1: of fur traders going up the Missouri River Nowlison, they
Speaker 1: started looking more at the south Pass me thinking that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this would be a better way to go, you avoiding
Speaker 1: both the the Arikara and the and the and the Blackfeet.
Speaker 1: Not that all the tribes were pro loose and clark
Speaker 1: and friendly, but they they did provide a great deal
Speaker 1: of assistance for him, certainly, And and I really don't
Speaker 1: think that they would have survived that had not been
Speaker 1: for the different nations with whom they came in contact. Yanni,
Speaker 1: what what do you think we never got into oh,
Speaker 1: just hunting and fishing and eating on the expedition. I
Speaker 1: got one more question and we'll talk about that because
Speaker 1: you just mentioned the black Feet. They only killed one guy, right,
Speaker 1: They lost one guy from what do you call when
Speaker 1: you're appendix ruptures? And they killed a guy, right, I
Speaker 1: mean they killed a black Feet when when Louis Louis
Speaker 1: didn't lose the expedition members, didn't they kill a black
Speaker 1: Feet man? Right? There were two that were killed. The
Speaker 1: K and H when like forever earned the enmity of
Speaker 1: exactly black Feet nation when they were returning Louis and
Speaker 1: three of the other men had broken off. Clark was
Speaker 1: taken the Yellowstone, the main part of the of the
Speaker 1: expedition and U when Louis and and these three other
Speaker 1: men met the group about ten or so blackfoot, UM,
Speaker 1: they ended up spending the evening with them. The next morning,
Speaker 1: they awake and appears that they're stealing their horses, loose
Speaker 1: Loos's horses and his men, and they pointed out that UM,
Speaker 1: one person stabbed and killed one of the Blackfoot, and
Speaker 1: Louis shot and killed another one. And to add insult
Speaker 1: to injury, when they left, UH, they placed Jefferson Peace
Speaker 1: medals around them, So there was no question as to
Speaker 1: who did this. You know that this was these were
Speaker 1: Americans who did this. And so from that point on,
Speaker 1: they placed Jefferson peace medals around the around their neck
Speaker 1: from the dead guys, around the two men whom they
Speaker 1: just killed right your ship. So from that point on,
Speaker 1: I said, the rick Raw and the and the Blackfoot,
Speaker 1: they were the two groups that really did not support Americans.
Speaker 1: That's what's crazy about it, is like, is there any
Speaker 1: chance that the Blackfeet who caught Coulter and Pots in
Speaker 1: the upper three Forks region, or you know, the Three
Speaker 1: Forks in Missouri. Is there any chance those dudes knew
Speaker 1: who those dudes were. I don't know. There was so
Speaker 1: much they knew that they were members of the Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark expedition from before. It's just that they were Americans,
Speaker 1: and that if you were making a movie about it, Dude,
Speaker 1: if I made a movie about it, I'd have it
Speaker 1: be that whoever I was standing next to the guy
Speaker 1: that they killed would be like, oh, I remember you boys,
Speaker 1: fancy seeing you here. And then the other like close
Speaker 1: brush to death. With that that that the crew had
Speaker 1: was Louis got shot by one of his own men
Speaker 1: in the butt in like a very national lampoon way,
Speaker 1: by somebody who thought they spotted an elk walking through
Speaker 1: the ways. Pure Kruzatte. He was one of the more
Speaker 1: notable members. He was not a military person, but he
Speaker 1: was known as a as a good boatsman. He was
Speaker 1: the one who would often play the fiddle whenever they
Speaker 1: were celebrating the Fourth of July or Christmas or something
Speaker 1: like that, so he's noted quite often. But he also
Speaker 1: was said to have had poor eyesight and so on.
Speaker 1: This situation when they're coming back, Uh, Cruzatte shoots what
Speaker 1: he thinks as an elk and it turns out to
Speaker 1: be Louis And it's just one of those situations where again,
Speaker 1: he could have gone this whole way and then been
Speaker 1: shot by one of his own men. But uh, it
Speaker 1: was a flesh wound in the in the upper thigh,
Speaker 1: in the buttock area, and uh so he stayed in
Speaker 1: the boat for the next several days. When they reached
Speaker 1: back to the Erica villages, Clark goes in and meets
Speaker 1: with the new Arica leader, Gray Eyes. There's nothing about Louis. Well,
Speaker 1: because Louis Is is on the boat, you know, he's
Speaker 1: not going to get up and walk around. And even
Speaker 1: even at that, towards the end of August, they point
Speaker 1: out that Louis finally got up and walked along the
Speaker 1: shoreline a little bit. Well it was nodal, won't nodal
Speaker 1: because he had been shot and he was recovering from
Speaker 1: that injury. But yeah, I was insuring that he ends
Speaker 1: up suffering an injury that could have been a very
Speaker 1: fatal injury, certainly by one of his own men. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when it was all said and done, he's been
Speaker 1: shot three times when it was all said done, yes,
Speaker 1: twice by himself. Coulter killed the first mule deer. Was
Speaker 1: the first American to killer mulder Right'm not sure if
Speaker 1: he was the first one, but oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he killed the first mule deer that was scientifically described.
Speaker 1: Of course, he wasn't the first American killing. That's the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, Louis. He was the one who was responsible
Speaker 1: for identifying the different animals and giving the detailed description.
Speaker 1: So uh, and when and when when Lewis wrote, and
Speaker 1: they were certainly big gaps in his journals, but when
Speaker 1: he wrote, he wrote with such such detail. And we
Speaker 1: talked about this before last last October, but you know, uh,
Speaker 1: when he described a plant he would draw the leaves
Speaker 1: of the roots that he would he would go into
Speaker 1: all the details. When he described an animal, he would
Speaker 1: go into incredible amount of detail. And so yeah, in
Speaker 1: that area of well, uh. Paul Russell cut right, who
Speaker 1: wrote Lewis and Clark Pioneering Naturalists, uh for for outdoors,
Speaker 1: people for hunters. So that's probably a book that I
Speaker 1: would really recommend because he talks about, you know, by
Speaker 1: today's standards of different counties and what plants, what animals
Speaker 1: were identified by Lewis and Clark, especially Lewis in that
Speaker 1: particular area, you know, so it puts things in perspective.
Speaker 1: But but uh, Lewis goes into so much detail. And
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say, is Paul Russell cut right.
Speaker 1: He said they are between the Nya Barrera River and
Speaker 1: the Bad River, or that that was probably one of
Speaker 1: the most significant areas in terms of plants and animals
Speaker 1: for the native populations. They knew all about these plans
Speaker 1: and animals, but for science to record them, that was
Speaker 1: that was something different, you know. So they said a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy eight plants, hundred twenty two different species
Speaker 1: and subspecies of animals that Lewis identified. That number has
Speaker 1: changed over the years because people started looking at said,
Speaker 1: oh no, actually that was already recorded, you know. But
Speaker 1: it was a situation where he had so much detail
Speaker 1: when he talked about I always think of the jack rabbit,
Speaker 1: for example, because when they killed their first jack rabbit,
Speaker 1: Uh Lewis had been watching this and and and uh
Speaker 1: he goes out and he says, such, ok, the jack
Speaker 1: rabbit about two and a half feet long, six and
Speaker 1: a half pounds of the ears are about six inches
Speaker 1: long three inches wide. And then he goes out and
Speaker 1: he measures because I've been watching this leaping from place
Speaker 1: to place, and especially when it was fleeing, and he
Speaker 1: said that from the point where it took off and
Speaker 1: where it landed was approximately twenty one ft. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's those kind of details that used when he talked
Speaker 1: about different different plants and animals. It's it's like astonishing
Speaker 1: how much they got right without prior knowledge. But talk
Speaker 1: about some of the things that they got wrong, because
Speaker 1: it's like pretty comical some of the stuff like calling
Speaker 1: a big horn sheep and ibex or uh. You mentioned
Speaker 1: to me last October something about they thought they saw
Speaker 1: a tiger, but we don't know what that was, right right, Um.
Speaker 1: You know there was a lot of times where because
Speaker 1: they I mean, Lewis did go through his tutoring and
Speaker 1: so he worked with people like Benjamin um Smith Barton
Speaker 1: and how to do uh, preserving the specimens of plants
Speaker 1: and animals and and looking at books, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times I think it was based on the fact
Speaker 1: that they knew that this type of animal existed, and
Speaker 1: so when they see something similar out here. They kind
Speaker 1: of go by the by my name. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so much getting it wrong. It's just basing what they're
Speaker 1: seeing on what someone else on something similar to so
Speaker 1: what they're seeing. What was the tiger story though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the tie your Cat. It goes back to the point
Speaker 1: where I think it was in July of eighteen oh five,
Speaker 1: and Lewis would do this quite often, where he'd go
Speaker 1: off by himself and he was out exploring. He uh,
Speaker 1: he shoots out of Buffalo and uh, he does not
Speaker 1: reload right away, and all of a sudden he realized
Speaker 1: that there's a grizzly bear very close to him. So
Speaker 1: his action, Um, it was somewhere here in Montana. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exact point it would win in July, so
Speaker 1: I'd have to look at the journals and see exactly
Speaker 1: where they were at that particular point, but it was
Speaker 1: it was here in Montana. And uh, he ends up
Speaker 1: going into a nearby river, getting in deep enough so
Speaker 1: that if the grizzly bear follows him that he'd have
Speaker 1: to start paddling, he wouldn't be able to actually attack him.
Speaker 1: And Lewis and Clark, they both had called spontoons basically lances.
Speaker 1: They used him for walking sticks. It was really kind
Speaker 1: of a symbol of officers. And they had a point
Speaker 1: on the end. And so he figured if he'd get
Speaker 1: into this river deep enough that if this grizzly bear
Speaker 1: did come in after him, he'd able to defend himself,
Speaker 1: defend himself a little bit better. Well, eventually the grizzly
Speaker 1: bear takes off and as he's heading back towards the
Speaker 1: main camp, uh, three buffalo start to chase him. And
Speaker 1: then he gets another point where he sees an animal
Speaker 1: that he describes as a tiger cat. And uh, what
Speaker 1: he actually meant by a tiger cat. It's hard to say. Uh,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say. Most but it's been kind of divided
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the Northwest, they said, well,
Speaker 1: tiger cat, they're talking about a lynx or bobcast something
Speaker 1: like that. Uh. For others they said, no, tiger cat
Speaker 1: was a reference to a wolverine. And so there was
Speaker 1: this wolverine that was looked looked like it was ready
Speaker 1: to pounce, and then he shot at it and then
Speaker 1: it went into its burrow. When he went and he looked,
Speaker 1: and he saw that the marks that were left looked
Speaker 1: like the tracks of a tiger, you know. So he
Speaker 1: gets that idea of the tiger cat, but what exactly
Speaker 1: was that he like the wolverine idea man, And that's
Speaker 1: now that seems like the most popular story is that
Speaker 1: it's probably a probably wolverine. Also, when they were in Montana,
Speaker 1: I think it was in the Great Falls area. They
Speaker 1: multiple men talk about this in the journals where they
Speaker 1: hear some mysterious booms that sound like cannons, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense that it would be cannons, And I've
Speaker 1: heard people speculate that it was like an earthquake or
Speaker 1: a glacier. So tell us about that story, like what
Speaker 1: they heard and what people think it might have been.
Speaker 1: And of course things echo so much, you know, and
Speaker 1: that was part of it. I think that the sounds
Speaker 1: that they were hearing were something that that surprised them,
Speaker 1: something that that they really were kind of wondering, what
Speaker 1: is that, where is it coming from? But even to
Speaker 1: try to try to narrow down they had such a
Speaker 1: difficult time even doing so, you know, because again it's
Speaker 1: just the loud sounds crashes that make that are are
Speaker 1: made so big horn she I can't tell you how many,
Speaker 1: and then like, son of a bitch, somebody else up
Speaker 1: there shooting at so yeah, so I I honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot more to add to that,
Speaker 1: because it was such a mystery to them, they really
Speaker 1: didn't have a whole lot of explanation. You also talked
Speaker 1: about how when the tiger cat was spotted, he was
Speaker 1: off by himself, right, And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people who aren't very familiar with the Lewis and Clark story,
Speaker 1: I don't realize how often these guys were splitting up.
Speaker 1: I think in your head it's like, Okay, forty five
Speaker 1: people left, and they were forty five people together the
Speaker 1: whole time or whatever. But in reality, they often split
Speaker 1: up with like, you know, groups of twenty five or
Speaker 1: or ten and thirty and fifteen or something like that.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times when they came to different
Speaker 1: rivers the Mariahs River, for example, which way to go?
Speaker 1: You know, all the men of the expedition except for
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark, said this is the way we need
Speaker 1: to go. Lewis and Clark said no, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: this way. But they took a lot of time going up,
Speaker 1: they split the group up and some went this direction,
Speaker 1: so and went that direction. They came back, they reported,
Speaker 1: and then the captains had to make that final decision,
Speaker 1: which where we're going to go. But there were there
Speaker 1: are a lot of times like that. On the way back.
Speaker 1: When I said that Lewis and three men went to
Speaker 1: uh explorer more in the northern part of Montana, and
Speaker 1: h Clark and the rest. They went down the Yellowstone. Uh,
Speaker 1: that happened quite often. And a lot of times even
Speaker 1: when they met the Shoshone. He was Lewis and that
Speaker 1: that front party and Clark and the rest coming up behind.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times they would just simply leave
Speaker 1: a note on a on a tree limb, you know,
Speaker 1: and you think, well, how in the world has somebody
Speaker 1: catch that? Oh, they left us to know, you know,
Speaker 1: but they did. It was just remarkable that they could
Speaker 1: go in so many different directions and yet they would
Speaker 1: still meet up. You know. It's just it's just it's
Speaker 1: fascinated that they could do so and do it over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. I mentioned George Shannon, he
Speaker 1: was the youngster of the group. Uh. He was the
Speaker 1: one who's often mentioned a lot in Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: circles for being lost the most often. Um, there was
Speaker 1: one situation early in the expedition, uh back in August
Speaker 1: and September, and he went out hunting and he thought
Speaker 1: that the expedition had passed him. So he's pushing forward,
Speaker 1: trying to catch up to the expedition. For sixteen days
Speaker 1: he's pushing forward, he runs out of ammunition, he shoots
Speaker 1: a stick and kills a rabbit. He eats some some
Speaker 1: berries along the way, and after sixteen days he's he's starving,
Speaker 1: he's tired. He sits down, and here comes the exhibedition
Speaker 1: expedition behind him. The whole time they were trying to
Speaker 1: catch up to him, and he kept thinking that he
Speaker 1: had to catch up to them. So I always tell you, know,
Speaker 1: the parents, when you tell your children you get lost,
Speaker 1: stay in one place, don't wander around. Well, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what George Shannon was doing. He was wandering. He was
Speaker 1: trying to catch up to AH to the expedition. They
Speaker 1: were actually behind him. We said he shot a stick.
Speaker 1: I mean he crammed a stick down the muzzle right,
Speaker 1: WHOA shout it out. That's that's all he had I
Speaker 1: mean he was the last resort, so sixteen days he
Speaker 1: was he was lost. To me, being lost just means
Speaker 1: you're finding stuff, you know. I mean, that's that's the
Speaker 1: good part about being lost. You can discover all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff. He probably just didn't get credit because he
Speaker 1: was falling out of military whatever structure there, you know.
Speaker 1: And and and people often again jokingly say that, you know,
Speaker 1: he died in the land of plenty because you have
Speaker 1: all this wildlife, you have all this surround you, but
Speaker 1: you can't kill anything, you know, So for sixteen days
Speaker 1: you're eating a few berries here and there, in a
Speaker 1: in a rabbit. That was it. That's all you come
Speaker 1: up with. Talk about how the whole time Louis and
Speaker 1: Clarker doing this expedition, I think they don't even realize
Speaker 1: that they're also being hunted by like some Spanish mercenaries.
Speaker 1: How close did the Spanish mercenaries like come to getting
Speaker 1: them or not come close to finding them? Um, not
Speaker 1: very close. The Spaniard you're talking about as a man
Speaker 1: by the name of Pedro Val and he was commissioned
Speaker 1: by the Spanish. The Spanish had a lot of resentment
Speaker 1: when the French sold the Louisiana territory to the United States.
Speaker 1: And it was a situation that once Lewis and Clark,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can say, well, yeah, but the United
Speaker 1: States bought Louisiana territory, that's only goes up to the
Speaker 1: Continental Divine. Uh, anything west of the Rockies, that's that's
Speaker 1: claimed by again the Spanish, by the British, by the Russians,
Speaker 1: and so once they get beyond that area, they're kind
Speaker 1: of fair game, if we will. And so the Spanish
Speaker 1: sent out pedro Vial at least three times, and there
Speaker 1: were probably four different expeditions by the Spanish themselves to
Speaker 1: try to intercept Lewis and Clark. Each time they sent
Speaker 1: them out, they were they were way off. They were
Speaker 1: hoping to have a gunfight with them. They were hoping
Speaker 1: to intercept them, take their records. Uh certainly probably not
Speaker 1: just imprisoned them, but probably yeah, do do away with them,
Speaker 1: because they saw them as a threat to the Spanish territory.
Speaker 1: How many guys that they have with them, it varied
Speaker 1: um that there were some situations where they had as
Speaker 1: many as fifty or sixty men with so they're more
Speaker 1: down you know, when Zebulin Pike. He was also in
Speaker 1: a situation similar to Lewis and Clark. Course he's going
Speaker 1: to the southwest when they're going to the northwest. And
Speaker 1: Pike was was captured by the Spanish, and so whether
Speaker 1: you know, eventually they released him. But would they have
Speaker 1: done the same thing with Clark maybe a bigger question.
Speaker 1: Would Lewis and Clark allowed themselves to be caught or
Speaker 1: would they put up a fight to the end. And
Speaker 1: I think they probably would have put up a fight
Speaker 1: to the end. Jed Smith got caught and detained by
Speaker 1: the Spanish when you crossed the Mohabbean to California right now,
Speaker 1: So that I mean the Spanish were very concerned about
Speaker 1: what was going on. Did Lewis and Clark know that
Speaker 1: they were being hunted? No? No, Now, they had no
Speaker 1: idea because they were so far removed from what the
Speaker 1: Spanish were doing that there was no communication, no indication that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Spanish are are trying to intercept you or anything
Speaker 1: like that. No, And and you're you're looking at for
Speaker 1: you know, two years and four months plus that they're
Speaker 1: off the face of the earth. Nobody knows where they are,
Speaker 1: what they're doing. If they're still alive, anything like that.
Speaker 1: And so it's not until they start coming back that
Speaker 1: they start running into a lot of these people who
Speaker 1: are heading out west for the trade and for the trapping,
Speaker 1: and uh then of course people realize, oh, they're still here,
Speaker 1: they're still alive. They made it. And even at that
Speaker 1: you talk about Lewis and his depression. When he gets back,
Speaker 1: he starts writing a letter to Jefferson, and he goes
Speaker 1: on to say that we accomplished all these great things,
Speaker 1: we identified this and that and uh. But then he
Speaker 1: goes on and say, however, we we failed to find
Speaker 1: a good water route to the Pacific northwest, which was
Speaker 1: really their big objective to explore the waters of the
Speaker 1: Missouri River across the continent and and try to use
Speaker 1: that for trade purposes. And it just didn't exist, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh So in that case, all these great things, but sorry,
Speaker 1: we we failed. We we missed the number one objective
Speaker 1: that you had for us. When I read Undaunted Courage,
Speaker 1: I was I was very frustrated, as an armchair quarterback
Speaker 1: two hundred years later about how it seemed every interaction
Speaker 1: with a tribe that went poorly could have been diffused
Speaker 1: by giving them what they wanted, which was usually like
Speaker 1: ammo or guns, and so was was it like a
Speaker 1: strategic choice that we don't they could be our enemy,
Speaker 1: so we don't want to give them animal guns or
Speaker 1: were they like really limited supplies that that stuff was
Speaker 1: still valuable, Like why weren't they more willing to part
Speaker 1: with those things instead of always trying to negotiate with
Speaker 1: like beads and medals that the tribes didn't care about.
Speaker 1: I think I think it depended out on the tribe
Speaker 1: because they had when they met with the Yankton Sue
Speaker 1: August thirties and thirty one, things went really well. They
Speaker 1: were very agreeable to trading with American traders in the future.
Speaker 1: But there was a Yankton sioue elder by the name
Speaker 1: of half Man, and he said, now, the next group
Speaker 1: you meet, the Titon or the tita One Siue, their
Speaker 1: their ears will not be as open as ours. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna be as receptive. So and of course they
Speaker 1: knew they heard about the reputational Dakota even even back east,
Speaker 1: you know, even before all this began. And when they're
Speaker 1: in St. Louis, certainly there's more people saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: watch out for the for the Tita one. And so
Speaker 1: they they get there and those four days September, up
Speaker 1: and down. It's a roller coaster ride. Uh. They talked
Speaker 1: about how they they invited the three UH leaders Black Buffalo, Buffalo, Medicine,
Speaker 1: and the one who was referred to as a partisan
Speaker 1: out to the keel boat offered them alcohol, and that
Speaker 1: when they went to return them to the shoreline that
Speaker 1: the one who was referred to as a partisan, he
Speaker 1: started to feign drunkenness and he kind of brushed up
Speaker 1: against Clark. It gets to the point where Clark draws
Speaker 1: his sword and the men on on board the boats
Speaker 1: they start getting their their weapons ready. The Lakota they
Speaker 1: start getting their bow and arrows ready, and there's a
Speaker 1: very tense moment that if anybody would have fired a
Speaker 1: shot on either side, it probably would have been the
Speaker 1: end of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Fortunately, Black Buffalo
Speaker 1: he was the one who stepped in and calmed things down.
Speaker 1: And and but when they stayed on an island that night,
Speaker 1: they called it bad humored Island because it was not
Speaker 1: a good day. The next day they talked about feasting.
Speaker 1: They talked about how Lewis and Clark were individually carried
Speaker 1: in on buffalo robes, that there was a night of
Speaker 1: dancing and you know, pletely different scenario than the day before.
Speaker 1: But it goes back and forth like that. And then
Speaker 1: then they find out that, uh, through a couple of
Speaker 1: the menu Purezat whom I had mentioned before, the person
Speaker 1: who accidentally shot Louis, he was a French and Omaha background.
Speaker 1: There was another person my name of Francois la Beche
Speaker 1: who was also French and Omaha. And because of the
Speaker 1: Omaha side of their family, they knew a little bit
Speaker 1: about the the Lakota language. And from what they could
Speaker 1: gather that they thought that they're not gonna let us leave.
Speaker 1: They're gonna they're gonna prevent us from going up the
Speaker 1: Missouri River. So eventually, on that that fourth day, when
Speaker 1: they're ready to take off again, you have the partisans say,
Speaker 1: come on, just give me some more tobacco, you know,
Speaker 1: just give us some more gifts. We know you have
Speaker 1: a whole boatload of all these things. But it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that one they didn't want to be
Speaker 1: bullied into doing something like that, and too they certainly
Speaker 1: did not want to give them any any weapons that
Speaker 1: they could use because they just had that reputation when
Speaker 1: they meet with the arec Ra You know that that
Speaker 1: was quite well with the man dance. You know that
Speaker 1: they spent the whole winter working with the man dance. Uh.
Speaker 1: When they crossed the the Lolo past took much longer
Speaker 1: than they anticipated. But when they met with the Nez Purse,
Speaker 1: they were so hungry that they gorged themselves on on
Speaker 1: dried fish and camus roots, and they became very ill.
Speaker 1: I mean they're lying around, moaning and groaning. They're completely incapacitated.
Speaker 1: And the Nez Purse thought about what it would be
Speaker 1: so easy to go around and just kill all these
Speaker 1: guys and take their weapons. They'd be the most powerful
Speaker 1: nation and in that area. And there was a Nez
Speaker 1: person woman the name of Watt Kueis, who, similar to Scakawee,
Speaker 1: she had been taken by the black Feet, ended up
Speaker 1: being sold up in Canada, living with with white men,
Speaker 1: and then eventually returned to her people. And she said
Speaker 1: that when she lived with the with the white men
Speaker 1: that they treated her very well. And so she was
Speaker 1: the one who acted on behalf of the Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark exhibitions that don't do them any harm. You know
Speaker 1: that they're they're not bad people. But again, it would
Speaker 1: have been one of the situations where it could have
Speaker 1: gone either way. So it really depended on what she
Speaker 1: could have been saying, they're obviously gonna die out here anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of the things where so so many
Speaker 1: things are just so pivotal, like it could have gone
Speaker 1: one way or the or the other. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to think about. Man, if they had all got
Speaker 1: dusted off, like everything, you know, you get into like
Speaker 1: this like the butterfly and what's that thing called the
Speaker 1: butterfly effects? So who knows, but like it probably would
Speaker 1: have been inevitable, Like what happened would have been inevitable.
Speaker 1: If they had all gotten killed, right manifest destiny, you
Speaker 1: probably would have marched on man. Oh yeah, absolutely. And
Speaker 1: that's like saying, you know, well, can you imagine if
Speaker 1: Coleumbus and not discovered the America as well? It would
Speaker 1: have been somebody else, And and had it not been
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark, it would have been somebody else. But
Speaker 1: you know, how much of a role did they play
Speaker 1: in history? Like I said, it's not just a story,
Speaker 1: it's it's a bunch of stories. You have all these
Speaker 1: different individuals who involved in different different tribal nations. You
Speaker 1: have all the accomplishments that they had with with the
Speaker 1: plant life and animal life and geography and geology and
Speaker 1: and just just all the things that they did over
Speaker 1: that period of time. And to think that only one
Speaker 1: person died, you know that that's the fascinating part. And
Speaker 1: they always say that Charlie Fluke, Charles Floyd, if he
Speaker 1: could have been in Philadelphia and he would have died
Speaker 1: of a pennicitis, you know. So the fact that he
Speaker 1: was out here in the wilderness, well that was really
Speaker 1: not a not a big point, pivotal point, because it
Speaker 1: was it was something that was not treatable back then.
Speaker 1: Oh one last thing, I wish I'd ask you this earlier.
Speaker 1: They had different taste and fish than we have now.
Speaker 1: Like they liked the stuff now, Like did they like uh,
Speaker 1: gold night, gold eyes, moon eyes a lot. Well, they
Speaker 1: called them salmon. I think they called him like prairie
Speaker 1: salmon says. It's just another like funny spot to to
Speaker 1: think of um gold eye now being a salmon. But
Speaker 1: they liked them, and that's not regarded as like a
Speaker 1: bony ass trash fish, right, and I was like their
Speaker 1: favorite fish. They're tried to eat one. Oh yeah, smoke
Speaker 1: the great because you could peel the meat off the
Speaker 1: bones and there were very good smoke fish. Cutthroats were
Speaker 1: named after Clark, right, yeah, yeah, how you had like
Speaker 1: Lewis's woodpecker, Clark's I'm trying to think about a bird
Speaker 1: named after him? Is the Clark's not hatch that Clark? Yes?
Speaker 1: And then the cutthroat trout it's not different name, yeah,
Speaker 1: is nut cracker. I feel like most people that are
Speaker 1: interested in Lewis and Clark pick up undaunted courage. But
Speaker 1: if you were going to suggest another book or another author,
Speaker 1: what would that be. Depends on your interests In my case,
Speaker 1: because a lot of my researches with the Northern Plains,
Speaker 1: and so I always like looking at James Ronda's Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark among the Ins because it deals with each
Speaker 1: of the different tribal groups that they came in contact with. Overall,
Speaker 1: they would meet with nearly fifty different nations. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of people point out that, oh, Yeah, but they
Speaker 1: learned about a lot more, you know, so some people
Speaker 1: say as many as one hundred that they were became
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about. And James rond It does a really good
Speaker 1: job approaching it from that perspective. Uh, as far as
Speaker 1: the connection between Lewis and Clark and the different groups
Speaker 1: with whom they came in contact. So if that's your interests,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at at wildlife, there's several that are
Speaker 1: out there. But I mentioned that what that I like,
Speaker 1: not very politically correct by today's standards, but uh, Paul
Speaker 1: Russell Cut rights Lewis and Clark pioneering naturalists. I like
Speaker 1: that one because it does break it down what they
Speaker 1: were seeing in terms of plant life and animal life
Speaker 1: throughout the expedition. And of course Gary Moulton's thirteen volumes
Speaker 1: of the Lewis and Clark Journals with all the notations.
Speaker 1: That's that's always uh something that you have to look at,
Speaker 1: I guess, just because it doesn't have the maps that include,
Speaker 1: you know, where they were and how how things have changed,
Speaker 1: like the Missouri River, how the course has changed so much.
Speaker 1: But he puts it into perspective again as far as
Speaker 1: where was where, where did this actually take place, you know,
Speaker 1: so that that's important. Undaunted courage. Uh. I heard Steven
Speaker 1: Ambrose speaks several times before he passed away, and and
Speaker 1: he always talked about how when he first went to
Speaker 1: his publisher and said, well, I'd like to do something
Speaker 1: on Lewis and Clark. This is back in and so
Speaker 1: people were beginning to think of the bicentennial coming up
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, two thousand and six, and his
Speaker 1: publisher said, well, you know, very reluctantly, said well how
Speaker 1: about it. We start with five thousand copies and uh,
Speaker 1: Ambrose said, five hundred thousand copies I hope before gets
Speaker 1: sold than that. By two thousand one, three million copies
Speaker 1: have been sold. Uh. It still is one that that
Speaker 1: people know Stephen Ambrose and an undaunted courage. Um. It
Speaker 1: does have its critics as well, because he makes a
Speaker 1: lot of assumptions. You know. It's like, well, in the
Speaker 1: case of the of the Titouan situation, he talks about
Speaker 1: it spends a whole page talking about, well, what if
Speaker 1: somebody would have fired a shot? You know, uh, they
Speaker 1: probably would have you know, focused on on Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark first, and you know, I went out through this
Speaker 1: whole scenario, and then then the others would have drifted
Speaker 1: back down the river to escape, and it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: you know, Black Buffalo intervened and things calmed down and
Speaker 1: they made it through that that whole situation. But he says,
Speaker 1: what if you know, what if he stepped he stepped
Speaker 1: out of his role as a historian, right right. And
Speaker 1: then then there's a lot of other times too where
Speaker 1: he'll he'll spend you know, half a page, three fourth
Speaker 1: of page, and he'll say, well, according to James Ronda. Well,
Speaker 1: then he'll quote James Ronda for a half a page
Speaker 1: or three fourths of page, and then people start thinking,
Speaker 1: maybe I should just read James Ronda, you know, because
Speaker 1: that's what, you know, what made him, I think a
Speaker 1: prolific writer is that he used other people's works extensively.
Speaker 1: And he did get into a little trouble and with
Speaker 1: that and plagiarism issues towards the very end. But I
Speaker 1: think it's just the fact that, you know, he did
Speaker 1: rely on a lot of sources, and he was putting
Speaker 1: out books after books after books, and he's on top.
Speaker 1: People want to knock him down, yeah, and other people
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of the research for him, and
Speaker 1: he's putting it all together. But when you read Steven
Speaker 1: Ambrose is undone and courage, I mean, having listened to
Speaker 1: the person speak in person, or if you watch him
Speaker 1: in some documentary, you can just hear his voice when
Speaker 1: you're reading his work. You know that, Well, it just
Speaker 1: sounds like Steven Ambrose, you can just hear it so well. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've read references here and there that you know, it's
Speaker 1: acknowledged that no one has gotten the movie right, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And it's like it's like this
Speaker 1: thing you just can't it's too big to get a
Speaker 1: grip on. But it haunts various filmmakers, and I wonder what,
Speaker 1: like you know, like SE's like like c G I
Speaker 1: would help, right, it would be like an epic thing.
Speaker 1: I just wonder if someone's ever gonna be able to
Speaker 1: really take it on. I know that HBO was working
Speaker 1: on it for a long time. They were going to
Speaker 1: do a kind of a mini series, and that that
Speaker 1: fell by the wayside. I mean that was that was
Speaker 1: probably it's fifteen years ago. You're thinking c G I
Speaker 1: for the Tiger Cat, but just making the Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean just but think about you gotta deal with your
Speaker 1: dealing with upstream and you're dealing with like character whatever,
Speaker 1: what number forty eight characters encountering fifty groups, like fifty
Speaker 1: indigenous groups. I mean it's huge and like it haunts
Speaker 1: people that you could ever really do good for. I'd
Speaker 1: end with that, like you know, big budget, big budget,
Speaker 1: multi season. See, the thing is that you're always gonna
Speaker 1: have the the drama part that's added to make it
Speaker 1: a good movie, you know. And and there has been
Speaker 1: a couple of love story about York and oh uh
Speaker 1: and and there is that movie that came out back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. I think it was h Donna
Speaker 1: Reid played the part of of of Chicago wea Zaca
Speaker 1: Juwia back then. Uh. He had Fred McMurray from My
Speaker 1: Three Sons. He he was playing Lewis. Charlton Heston played Clark. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's there's a knife fight where Clark and Toussaint Charboneau
Speaker 1: or going around the campfire fighting over Chicago wea know,
Speaker 1: which was not not the case or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But and then there's one part where they can help them.
Speaker 1: They're going over the portage of the great falls and
Speaker 1: and you know they're they're pulling this keel boat with them,
Speaker 1: which the keel boat had gone down ruver. There's no
Speaker 1: way you're gonna pull that great, big boat over the
Speaker 1: mountains or anything like that. But it's in there, and
Speaker 1: it's just ridiculous. Um. There's also one called I can't
Speaker 1: think of the case right now, but Matthew Perry and
Speaker 1: h oh um, Chris Farley and and that's where you
Speaker 1: see the Spanish chasing them, you know, Paydrovale, Well Farley
Speaker 1: and and Matthew Perry there there there leading expedition at
Speaker 1: the same time of Lewis and Clark, so kind of
Speaker 1: racing Lewis and Clark. You know, I get it. It
Speaker 1: makes for a funny movie and everything, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of yeah, right, uh, but anytime you have a
Speaker 1: situation like this, uh, you're you're gonna have something thrown
Speaker 1: in there for special effects. In South Dakota, quite honestly,
Speaker 1: we all laugh at at the Revenant the movie. Okay, thing, dude,
Speaker 1: it was the greatest crime, greatest crime against America that
Speaker 1: happens in August up in the northwestern part of South Dakota.
Speaker 1: And you see the mountains that okay, we don't have mountains.
Speaker 1: There should be like a Nuremberg trial for there was.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things in there that's thought, no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: shooting that ship in British Columbia, give me up, right.
Speaker 1: But man, if if you like hours of grunting, that's
Speaker 1: a huge attack grunting and crawl, and I think that's
Speaker 1: the Tappico would happen if they did something with Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark. There'd be so many things added to it,
Speaker 1: just live in up So yeah, it would be bad. Man.
Speaker 1: I would like one of the many things I want
Speaker 1: to do when I retire is take on Boone in film.
Speaker 1: You know, I would be great to write, to write
Speaker 1: a script that would be uh man. I would never
Speaker 1: want to take this on because it's like, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like Boone spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: with a couple other people, and then, as I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: I mentioned today, they're very controversial. I mean they're gonna
Speaker 1: be people cringe at some of the things I said,
Speaker 1: and they were people say yeah, yeah, that's tell me.
Speaker 1: The most controversial thing you said Chicago were sasakais Lewis
Speaker 1: murder or suicide, those issues, the role of Chicago wea,
Speaker 1: um Lewis paternity, you know, did he actually father a child?
Speaker 1: I mean, those are all those people that really emotionally
Speaker 1: care about those answers. Yes, Yes, they emotionally care. Yes.
Speaker 1: They get tied into so much. And when I give
Speaker 1: talks as a teacher, a lot of times I'll point out, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there are people who believe this, and there
Speaker 1: are people who believe that. And I don't always say, well,
Speaker 1: I think that this is what happened to Lewis, or
Speaker 1: I think that this is you know, what happened. I
Speaker 1: have my my personal leanings. But at the same time
Speaker 1: I realized that there are people who are very adamant
Speaker 1: one way or the other. Yeah, like I said, to
Speaker 1: go to Lewis and Clark conference. Nice thing is that
Speaker 1: they're all experts. The bad thing is they're all experts
Speaker 1: and they never agree. Do you got a lot of
Speaker 1: those conferences? UM I used to. In the last few
Speaker 1: years with COVID and everything, I haven't attended anything, but
Speaker 1: um I still do a lot. With Lewis and Clark.
Speaker 1: I've worked with this family whose oral tradition is that
Speaker 1: uh lewis father to a child Joseph to spent Lewis.
Speaker 1: So I've been working with them. I actually submitted an
Speaker 1: article uh for pure review. It was turned down because
Speaker 1: he said, no, it's too controversial. They they they didn't
Speaker 1: want to go into that. And all this published it
Speaker 1: on our website. All this family wants to know is
Speaker 1: you know what is it? Is it true or not?
Speaker 1: The recalled um the it was Merrywether Lewis uh Winona
Speaker 1: and the story of Joseph de smitt Lewis. So Lewis
Speaker 1: being the father, Wona being the mother, and Joseph de
Speaker 1: smitt Lewis being the child. Have you put it out anywhere? No,
Speaker 1: just to wait and try to get into academic journey.
Speaker 1: I might, I might, man, I'll have to make some
Speaker 1: revisions with it, but I want just tease it with us.
Speaker 1: And then in fact, even before I came out here,
Speaker 1: I checked with the person with in the family and
Speaker 1: I said, I just want to know is there any
Speaker 1: new advances or anything like that, And he said no,
Speaker 1: he said, we're we're just trying to find somebody with
Speaker 1: the Lewis connection. And and I said there's no known
Speaker 1: Lewis descendants, so it would have to be some other
Speaker 1: type of relation. But with the DNA, if they could
Speaker 1: just do the d NA work, they gotta just go
Speaker 1: dig that bottle. Man, Come, someone needs just going there
Speaker 1: and do like an act of civil obedience, do little
Speaker 1: night breath. This fella from Misery seventy years old, card
Speaker 1: and dispenser. He's got nothing to lose. Yeah, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I want you get that show and get that trowel
Speaker 1: in your bucket, in your backpack, get us some skulls. Man.
Speaker 1: I like them better now, I like them better. No,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating, man, it's good stuff. It's a good time
Speaker 1: in history. I would like to be with those guys.
Speaker 1: I would have been the guy that got lost or
Speaker 1: eaten by a grizzly bear. I would not have made it.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, I have so much anxiety when I'm
Speaker 1: out on big trips of like, God, this is so
Speaker 1: awesome right now, but I know tomorrow or tonight I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bump into another person. And just being in that
Speaker 1: zone of like I haven't seen anybody for a month
Speaker 1: and we're still on the river. All right, Come on,
Speaker 1: I'd give a lot for that. I gotta hit you
Speaker 1: with one more thing that we're gonna quit. Sure. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm friends with the historian Dan Flores, you know him.
Speaker 1: He's not a Loosing Clark guy. But he had a
Speaker 1: graduate student who did this work on UM. I believe
Speaker 1: it was graduate to do this work on the places
Speaker 1: where they encountered most wildlife, particularly like the big congregations
Speaker 1: of of Buffalo, were contested areas like inter like contested
Speaker 1: by various tribes and where these sort of like no
Speaker 1: man's lands. Um. And he was kind of like overlying
Speaker 1: territories with places where they'd be like, Holy ship, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of buffalo around here. It would turn out
Speaker 1: that those weren't places where large groups of people would
Speaker 1: be safe and comfortable to camp and hunt. And there
Speaker 1: was like sort of like back country, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like like the equivalent of like back country spots.
Speaker 1: The people were getting to them right in because of warfare.
Speaker 1: You've learned that idea. Well, you know, for the Cheyenne
Speaker 1: and the Lakota, they they had their rivalry, you know,
Speaker 1: and so and both of them had very similar lifestyles
Speaker 1: in terms of their culture. A lot of it depending
Speaker 1: on on the bis and certainly, but uh, both of
Speaker 1: them also traded with the Erica. Now is one of
Speaker 1: those things where the Arika and the Lakota, I mean,
Speaker 1: I get along very well most of the year, but
Speaker 1: then certain times the year they would trade and the
Speaker 1: Lakota would bring in buffalo meat and uh the Ricara
Speaker 1: would have corn and beans and squash and they would
Speaker 1: do that trade. Cheyenne and the Rica, they were much
Speaker 1: more friendly towards one another. But there's that animasi exists
Speaker 1: between the the Cheyenne and the Lakota as far as territory,
Speaker 1: so that might be something along with what you're looking
Speaker 1: as far as the Cheyenne area and then the Lakota area.
Speaker 1: How much of it overlapped, How much did it affect
Speaker 1: the numbers that were out there in terms of elk
Speaker 1: and bison. You know, it's always kind of amazing when
Speaker 1: when people start thinking of of South Dakota and they
Speaker 1: started talking about in places like Elk Point where they
Speaker 1: recorded seeing hundreds and hundreds of elk, because you think
Speaker 1: of that maybe in the Black Hills, but not down
Speaker 1: the southeastern part of South Dakota, where when you start
Speaker 1: thinking of the massive herds of bison, and at one
Speaker 1: point Louis said something to the fact that from his
Speaker 1: vantage point you could see maybe three thousand head of
Speaker 1: bison or points where they'd be crossing over the river
Speaker 1: and they just have to wait because there's so many
Speaker 1: of them, and they couldn't do anything about it until
Speaker 1: they were all done. Those things are are always interesting
Speaker 1: because people don't see that, you know. Now they see
Speaker 1: flat farm land and and and uh more of the
Speaker 1: lakes along the Missouri River. Um. But it's changed so much.
Speaker 1: I heard a biologist speak several years ago and the
Speaker 1: question of grizzly bears in South Dakota, how could that
Speaker 1: possibly Well, there's a well known photo of Lieutenant Colonel
Speaker 1: George Arnold back in the seventy four and then of
Speaker 1: course you have the story a few glass being attacked
Speaker 1: in eight uh and surviving that grizzly bear attack. But
Speaker 1: the thing is that's so different is that back then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of grizzlies that were out on
Speaker 1: the plains because that's where the food was. That's where
Speaker 1: you had thousands and thousands of bis, and that's where
Speaker 1: you had the elk. And it's only when those started
Speaker 1: getting killed off that you start seeing a change as
Speaker 1: far as thinking of grizzlies, you think of more of
Speaker 1: the more of the mountainous areas. Perhaps, So there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of changes that have taken place over a
Speaker 1: period time that affected a lot of different groups. And
Speaker 1: I said, for Lewis and Clark, there's no way they
Speaker 1: would have survived. I don't think that they would have
Speaker 1: survived without the assistance of the of the native populations.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it really marks the beginning
Speaker 1: of the end for native cultures. Things will never ever
Speaker 1: be the same after Lewis and Clark. Yeah, well it's
Speaker 1: for coming on man. Thank you for having me satisfied, Spencer,
Speaker 1: very satisfied. And and I want to thank Brad and
Speaker 1: thank you other guys in the room because that was
Speaker 1: a real ball hog this podcast because I wanted to
Speaker 1: bug him about all the questions I've had. I'm turning
Speaker 1: it up. We got her, We got her done. Tommy,
Speaker 1: you feel prime for the trivia showdown. I didn't call
Speaker 1: him to take part. I came to take over. There
Speaker 1: you going, you might need to make up a little
Speaker 1: Tommy token. Maybe he's two wins. And then we'll first
Speaker 1: all right, Brad, thanks man, you can stick around of
Speaker 1: the trivia. I mean, I think you might be a
Speaker 1: formidable player, because here's the other. You and Spencer got
Speaker 1: the whole South Dakota thing going. And then Spencer throws
Speaker 1: a bone to Gas. I don't know if he's gonna
Speaker 1: throw a bone to Tommy. Well, I bet he's gonna
Speaker 1: throw a bone to you. I'll tell you, but I'll
Speaker 1: tell you narthing to keep track of their day. Spencer
Speaker 1: was golfing with which is like the stupidest thing the
Speaker 1: world too. I got two problems with it. We're golfing
Speaker 1: on passes that you gave us. Oh that you still
Speaker 1: have those? Not anymore. Don't tell why I got him
Speaker 1: in a secret now listen, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: give away my situation where that's coming. So, but let
Speaker 1: me tell you the problem I have. I have a
Speaker 1: problem where I feel like you guys are sharing information.
Speaker 1: We're in coots, and it makes it that if Yanni
Speaker 1: beats me, then I have to have the shame of
Speaker 1: being beat by golfer, which is which is you'll never
Speaker 1: live it down. You'll never live it. Do you guys
Speaker 1: run through a bunch of beers drinking Golfield or playing Golfield.
Speaker 1: Not Yanni, did you guys? Corey and I were on
Speaker 1: team Correy and I were on Team straight Edge, and
Speaker 1: Spencer and Ghen were on Team Tallboy and I guess
Speaker 1: who won Straight Edge? Really clear and focused. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we had way more beers in Nicotine than you guys,
Speaker 1: so we win. Stay tun of Tribune