Latest / Ridiculous History / Badass of the Week Returns, Part One: George Rogers Clark

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Badass of the Week Returns, Part One: George Rogers Clark · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max
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  Speaker 1: Chesapeake Cape Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Which will make sense later, will it?
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  Speaker 3: It?
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  Speaker 4: Will?
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  Speaker 5: It?
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  Speaker 6: Will?
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  Speaker 1: It'll make I will Will.
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  Speaker 6: It make sense as it pertains to Max's personality as
• 0:47
  Speaker 6: a human?
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  Speaker 1: Oh, that remains to be seen. That's uh, that's mister
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  Speaker 1: Noel Brown. They called me, uh, they call me Ben
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  Speaker 1: Bollen here for tax purposes. Uh, we won't look into that.
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  Speaker 3: Guys.
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  Speaker 1: This is very exciting. This week is huge for us
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  Speaker 1: because we are joined with a mythological phenomenal duo, the
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  Speaker 1: co host of bad Ass of the Week. So let
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  Speaker 1: us welcome none other than doctor Pat Larish and the
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  Speaker 1: returning guest Ben Thompson.
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  Speaker 4: Hi, guys, thanks for having us back on. We are
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  Speaker 4: excited to be here and tell some fun and bad
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  Speaker 4: stories from history.
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  Speaker 6: Matt Max, I got to take issue if you're referring
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  Speaker 6: to Ben as second chair. Ben. That is unacceptable. But
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  Speaker 6: we have to Ben.
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  Speaker 3: But Ben's first chair of his bendom.
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  Speaker 6: You know they can each be that we can have
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  Speaker 6: co first chairs where they're co chairs.
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  Speaker 4: I'm Ben three and Ben three in my wife's phone
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  Speaker 4: because she numbered them in the order that she met them.
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  Speaker 4: One was a coworker, ben to was her volleyball partner.
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  Speaker 4: I'm Ben three. I was like, I keep we're married.
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  Speaker 4: You gotta change it, just Ben, No, don't, don't.
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  Speaker 3: I disagree. I think historical.
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  Speaker 6: Naming conventions in uh in in contacts is delightful. I
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  Speaker 6: think it should always stay the same, never change a thing.
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  Speaker 5: Are you sure it's a three and not like a
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  Speaker 5: phonetic representation of some sort of guttural sound or something.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, covered in hot pap. We love it because uh.
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  Speaker 1: We were also talking off air. First off, huge fans
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  Speaker 1: of Badass of the Week, We were talking off air
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about your, uh, your earlier work on
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  Speaker 1: the one of the most prominent authors in all of
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the English canon, James Joyce, and we kind of warned
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  Speaker 1: you about our our earlier episode regarding his quite explicit
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  Speaker 1: love letters.
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  Speaker 6: Warrene Slash enticed, we'll see, we'll see how that shakes out. Yeah,
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  Speaker 6: I think I described that as our only NSFW episode
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  Speaker 6: to which I was told that's not quite the case.
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  Speaker 6: But it's definitely our most in s f W episode.
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  Speaker 6: This being a family show, we had to cat. We
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  Speaker 6: had to uh, what's the word, trigger warning the hell
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  Speaker 6: out of that one.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, our we trigger warning the heck out of that.
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  Speaker 1: Our beat button was working over time accounting did right back.
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  Speaker 4: H James Joyce.
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  Speaker 2: Sarcastic.
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  Speaker 6: He was into butt stuff. That's all I'm gonna say.
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  Speaker 5: I'm gonna leave it.
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  Speaker 1: That's a poetic language about farts. So uh before, so,
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  Speaker 1: Pat and Ben, before you all listen to that episode
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  Speaker 1: and completely lose all academic respect for us.
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  Speaker 2: Uh, James Joyce, we would.
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  Speaker 5: James Joyce, He's he's serious, He's a classic.
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  Speaker 6: No, I just mean you should lose some academic respect
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  Speaker 6: for him as well, once you. We didn't write the less,
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  Speaker 6: We just discussed them at length.
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  Speaker 5: No, I mean, the thing about being an academic is
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  Speaker 5: that you study. What is there?
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  Speaker 6: You do? It thought up to you.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, Pat, we don't have time for it, but gosh,
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  Speaker 1: we want to know your opinions about Finnegan's week in.
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  Speaker 2: A future conversation.
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  Speaker 1: For now, we are launching into two different tales this week,
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  Speaker 1: which are entirely about people who are bad asses. So ridiculous, Historians.
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  Speaker 1: As you're tuning in, please do check out our friend's show,
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  Speaker 1: Badass of the Week. There's something that was new, I
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  Speaker 1: think to Max Noell and myself. Here a guy named
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  Speaker 1: George Rogers Clark. How does this one start and what
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  Speaker 1: makes them a badass?
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  Speaker 6: And also I just want to point out this. This
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  Speaker 6: is Badass of the Week week here on Ridiculous History.
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  Speaker 4: Badass of the Week week. It's like the Los Angeles
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  Speaker 4: Angels of Anaheim.
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  Speaker 6: It's sort of a who's on third kind of situation.
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  Speaker 6: But yes, please do tell let's get right into it.
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  Speaker 6: When I read George Rogers Clark captures five future US States,
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  Speaker 6: I think of like the Dave Clark five. Like this
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  Speaker 6: is like describing some sort of jazz band. That is
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  Speaker 6: not the case.
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  Speaker 4: He's doing some jazz with He's doing some jazz with the.
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  Speaker 3: Military Day and Improvisation War, got it.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, we are doing some of that. So, yes,
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  Speaker 4: it is Badass of the Week week here, and we're
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  Speaker 4: gonna talk about some cool stuff. Now we've got you know,
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  Speaker 4: we've got America two fifty this year. So at Badass,
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  Speaker 4: we've been doing a lot of We've been doing a
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  Speaker 4: lot of stuff for US history, American Revolution, that sort
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  Speaker 4: of thing. And you know, I was trying to think
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  Speaker 4: of an interesting angle to bring to you, guys, and
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  Speaker 4: one thing that I think doesn't come up as much
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  Speaker 4: as it should is that America two fifty doesn't happen
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  Speaker 4: without France being involved. So we're gonna have kind of
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  Speaker 4: a French flavor to these next two episodes.
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  Speaker 3: Sottle a little herbs to Provence. Perhaps that's right.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, So that is the plan, and we're going to
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  Speaker 4: talk about some French involvement in American Revolution in some
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  Speaker 4: ways that don't normally get recognized. I feel like, but
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  Speaker 4: that are cool and badass and should we talked about.
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  Speaker 4: So I guess it's best Seal day. Now. By the
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  Speaker 4: time we're recording this, we're both like, we're both having
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  Speaker 4: like collective national sadness, probably more them than us over
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  Speaker 4: the World Cup stuff.
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  Speaker 3: But you know, were they ever really in the running though?
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  Speaker 6: Guys?
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  Speaker 3: Are the French really known for their football skills?
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  Speaker 6: I don't know, I'm asking, Yeah, they.
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  Speaker 3: Wanted two World Cups ago and they were running up
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  Speaker 3: the one before, had no idea good Clearly they.
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  Speaker 4: Were like the number one team in the world before
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  Speaker 4: the law.
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  Speaker 3: I'm poopooing now that I just died just asking.
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  Speaker 6: I just didn't know, and I think of the French,
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  Speaker 6: I guess I don't think of a football skills.
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  Speaker 4: And just to just to you know, just because bears mentioning, we,
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  Speaker 4: you know, as much as we are going to say,
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  Speaker 4: like the French legitimately have a lot of involvement in
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  Speaker 4: America gaining its independence, we're gonna make a bunch of
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  Speaker 4: jokes about the French too. I mean, we gotta keep
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  Speaker 4: that theme.
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  Speaker 3: Goal hanging fruits.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the whole thing.
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  Speaker 1: And one interesting aspect here is despite a lot of
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  Speaker 1: the stereotypes about French culture in the United States, which
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  Speaker 1: are kind of inherited from World War Two at least,
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  Speaker 1: despite those stereotypes and those you know, kind of fun
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  Speaker 1: ribbing at your buddies things that we have in this culture.
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  Speaker 1: You raise an excellent point, Ben that America reaching dour
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  Speaker 1: in fifty years, as he said, it wouldn't have happened
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  Speaker 1: without French intervention.
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  Speaker 2: Is that correct?
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  Speaker 4: That's correct? Yeah, I don't think that's like, I don't
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  Speaker 4: think that's even up for debates. So even before they
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  Speaker 4: became involved on an open military perspective. They were sending
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  Speaker 4: weapons and money and equipment and uniforms. All the rifles
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  Speaker 4: that we were using were made in France, legally and illegally.
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  Speaker 4: There were there were guys who were like smuggling weapons
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  Speaker 4: out of France to help help us fight the English.
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  Speaker 4: You've got Lafayette, You've got you've got a lot of French,
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  Speaker 4: French influence even before they joined the war officially, and
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  Speaker 4: then when France and Spain joined the war, things get
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  Speaker 4: really wild. And that's what we're going to talk about
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  Speaker 4: in the next uh, in the next part of this,
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  Speaker 4: in the next episode. So for today, we're gonna be
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  Speaker 4: kind of in We're gonna kind of be in the
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  Speaker 4: Continental US current Continental US. I do have my co
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  Speaker 4: host on with me, doctor Pat Larish and.
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  Speaker 6: Away.
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  Speaker 4: And one thing that will come up occasionally as well
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  Speaker 4: as I as much as I as much respect as
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  Speaker 4: I have for the French and their ability to help
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  Speaker 4: us when the American Revolution, Uh, my pronunciation of French
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  Speaker 4: words is absolutely unacceptable.
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  Speaker 3: I would argue you should lean into it, just really
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  Speaker 3: make a meal.
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  Speaker 1: Of it right there with you, Ben, Because Pat, do
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  Speaker 1: you speak French French? Ah?
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  Speaker 4: Okay, yes, yes, So anytime there's a French word in
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  Speaker 4: our podcast, I usually just stop talking and then she
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  Speaker 4: just says the word, or we just record her saying
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  Speaker 4: it so we can just clip it in there.
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  Speaker 6: So in earlier days of this podcast, we had a
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  Speaker 6: producer named Casey Pegrim, who we still love so well,
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  Speaker 6: who we always described as a Francophile and a Francophone,
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  Speaker 6: and he was our our entry point into the world
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  Speaker 6: of French pronunciations.
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  Speaker 4: President of my French club in high school. And I
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  Speaker 4: cannot make that our.
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  Speaker 6: Sound be a headshake and a lowering of the eyes
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  Speaker 6: anytime we say a French word. And then.
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  Speaker 1: I'll still text Casey on the case to say, hey man,
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  Speaker 1: how do you pronounce this? And he'll say you should
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  Speaker 1: get someone else.
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  Speaker 6: To do it. He's a very busy man.
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  Speaker 1: So Ben, take us take us back here.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: So we know that there is a character named George
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  Speaker 1: Rogers Clark. We know that there is a huge diplomatically
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  Speaker 1: put kerfuffle between various forces as the United States becomes
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  Speaker 1: an emergent nation.
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  Speaker 6: Ben, can I just say you pronounced the French word
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  Speaker 6: kerfuffle beautifully.
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  Speaker 5: You want to roll a little this.
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  Speaker 1: We we obviously know that the the horrors of the
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  Speaker 1: creation of the United States still reverberate today in various iterations.
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  Speaker 1: Uh these you know, you talk in some of your
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  Speaker 1: some of your earlier work, Ben about uh, how American
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  Speaker 1: culture for quite some time sanitized the story right of
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  Speaker 1: the European arrivals. So really paint the picture for us here,
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  Speaker 1: take us through revolution, tell us a little bit about
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  Speaker 1: France's actual involvement, and then you know, can can Pat
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  Speaker 1: can you and Ben introduce us to this Georgia guy.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, so we are gonna do that. So we are
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  Speaker 4: not just gonna kind of deal with We'll deal with
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  Speaker 4: some stuff that's a little sticky, but I think you know,
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  Speaker 4: we're gonna we're gonna try to find a good way
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  Speaker 4: to approach it. Mostly we're gonna tell a badass wilderness
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  Speaker 4: survival story, deception, adventure, grizzly bears, diplomacy, Bowie knives, a
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  Speaker 4: guy that you've never heard of before, territory in the
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  Speaker 4: American Revolution that ended up being five US states almost
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  Speaker 4: without Frank a shot.
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  Speaker 6: Fantastic. All right, I'm excited, I'm the story. I'm primed
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  Speaker 6: as in our audience. Yeah, I mean you kind of
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  Speaker 6: describe in the badness of the weak piece that you
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  Speaker 6: sent us about this topic, or maybe this is some
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  Speaker 6: of your notes, this notion of that sanitization that Ben
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  Speaker 6: was that Ben Prime, No.
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  Speaker 3: That's not fair, that ridiculous history.
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  Speaker 6: Ben was describing of this sort of Kumbaya moment of
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  Speaker 6: like we met the Native Americans, we presented them with
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  Speaker 6: marshmallow peeps, and then.
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  Speaker 3: We all held hands in a ring in san Kumbaya.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little more complicated and tricky than that.
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  Speaker 3: No, you say it wasn't entirely above board.
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  Speaker 6: Are you saying that maybe there was some Yeah, Okay,
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  Speaker 6: let's hear it.
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  Speaker 4: So, yeah, let's kind of set the scene of where
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  Speaker 4: we are here. So we are talking American revolution. We're
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  Speaker 4: talking seventeen seventies. And when people think revolution, they're picturing Boston, Philadelphia,
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  Speaker 4: New York City, this stamp Act and throwing throw a
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  Speaker 4: tea into the harbor. But you know, the colonies extend
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  Speaker 4: out to the Appalachian Mountains. So you have this whole
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  Speaker 4: western section out here. Kentucky is there, right, Virginia extends
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  Speaker 4: out to the Appalachians. There's people living on the frontier
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  Speaker 4: here and they've got problems that are not associated with
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  Speaker 4: the harboring and quartering of soldiers or whatever, dealing with
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  Speaker 4: grizzly bears. They're dealing with starvation, cold, they're living in
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  Speaker 4: the mountains. They're being attacked by tribes from the Native nations.
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  Speaker 4: There is some crazy stuff happening out here, and it's
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  Speaker 4: a very hard place to live. Now. George Rogers Clark
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  Speaker 4: enters into this area. He's born seventeen fifty two outside Charlottesville, Virginia,
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  Speaker 4: but he ends up moving out to the west, which
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  Speaker 4: at this point is the Appalachian Mountains, is kind of
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  Speaker 4: the border. He is a land surveyor, which sounds like
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  Speaker 4: a pretty chill job. We picture the guys with the
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  Speaker 4: yellow tripods in the in the high vis vests, standing
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  Speaker 4: at the middle of the road with.
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  Speaker 6: The lora tiny like a tiny telescope or something, right
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  Speaker 6: they're looking through.
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  Speaker 5: My dad worked as an assistant to a land surveyor
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  Speaker 5: some summers when my sister and I were growing up.
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  Speaker 2: And these guys are very chill.
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  Speaker 6: By the way.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know what your experience was, pat but usually
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  Speaker 1: they're they're kind of a cool head.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, that's there the diplomatically, but I have not had
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  Speaker 7: the pleasure, but I am fascinated by their vests and
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  Speaker 7: their gear, and I'm always kind of wondering, what are
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  Speaker 7: they doing?
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  Speaker 6: Is it like in the modern version of the land survey?
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  Speaker 6: I guess it's about uh, property bare boundaries and you
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  Speaker 6: know every line. In the past it would have been
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  Speaker 6: literally like you know, identifying tracts of land that could
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  Speaker 6: then be you know, sold way of war.
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  Speaker 1: Or in the past because there's a there's a note
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  Speaker 1: that you said here Ben that we cannot lose, which
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  Speaker 1: was you said, our guy George Rogers Clark is out
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  Speaker 1: in the west. And everybody needs to keep in mind
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  Speaker 1: that at this point in history, this is pre Lewis
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  Speaker 1: and Clark. Right, we haven't had any uh we haven't
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  Speaker 1: had any official comprehensive exploration by the Europeans over to
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  Speaker 1: the Pacific, for.
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  Speaker 4: We don't know what's there. Right, You're mapping uncharted mountains,
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  Speaker 4: You're being attacked by wild animals, mountain lions, bears, wolves,
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  Speaker 4: You're fording rivers that you don't know where they go.
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  Speaker 4: You're making homemade rafts, you're sleeping in the trees to
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  Speaker 4: stay dry. It's seventeen seventies, right, You're carrying heavy ass
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  Speaker 4: equipment over mountains and across rivers. You're camping out. You
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  Speaker 4: don't have like gortech, you don't have like a nice tent.
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  Speaker 4: You're you know, and you're dragging this heavy gear. You're
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  Speaker 4: charting uncharted land. You don't know what's there. You're trying
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  Speaker 4: to track out stuff for you know, maybe people could
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  Speaker 4: settle here, maybe we can move in here, maybe we
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  Speaker 4: can turns out people already live there and don't want
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  Speaker 4: you to live there, well, don't want you to take
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  Speaker 4: their land. That's a problem for you. If you're land
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  Speaker 4: survey at this time period. It's physically exhausting, it's dangerous,
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  Speaker 4: and it requires you to kind of be a navigator,
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  Speaker 4: a survivalist, our cartographer. You know, it's math and survival
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  Speaker 4: at the same time.
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  Speaker 6: So just to clarify at the end of the day,
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  Speaker 6: these efforts would have been to map these areas. Like
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  Speaker 6: what who is he working for? And what would this
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  Speaker 6: data have have been intended for? Like is he just
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  Speaker 6: laying out like what's available kind of like getting a
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  Speaker 6: literal lay of the land. I'm curious.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's kind of making maps for Virginia. He's hired
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  Speaker 4: by Virginia, the state of Virginia or the colony of
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  Speaker 4: Virginia at this time. And yeah, it's like potential settlements,
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  Speaker 4: potential you know, we still know what's out there. Right,
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  Speaker 4: it's here, there'll be monsters, and we've got to figure
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  Speaker 4: out what's there. And he's he's you know, it's it's
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  Speaker 4: Star Trek Enterprise right right to the world.
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  Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, to boldly go where no European has gone before.
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  Speaker 5: And yeah, So he's got all these skills and he's
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  Speaker 5: using them and this is his background. This is why
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  Speaker 5: he succeeds.
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  Speaker 6: Later.
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  Speaker 5: He doesn't need a map. He made the maps. He understands.
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  Speaker 5: Clark understands the geography of the frontier better than any
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  Speaker 5: random British soldier or bureaucrat sitting behind a desk in Detroit.
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  Speaker 6: Well, I mean it's sort of like you don't really
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  Speaker 6: you can't really understand the land from a map alone.
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  Speaker 6: Like I'm horrible at directions and a map is honestly
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  Speaker 6: the only thing in mapping on my phone to get
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  Speaker 6: me places. But when I ride my bike and actually
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  Speaker 6: like I'm in the streets, it just commits more to
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  Speaker 6: my mind and I can like actually kind of understand
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  Speaker 6: the geography a little bitter when I've actually experienced it
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  Speaker 6: actively as opposed it is like as a passive you know,
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  Speaker 6: map follower.
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  Speaker 2: And I love the Detroit shout out by the way that.
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  Speaker 4: Detroit is going to feature prominently. Detroit is the It's
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  Speaker 4: where the bad guys are.
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  Speaker 1: So also to level set here, how old is our
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  Speaker 1: man George.
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  Speaker 4: So when the war begins, he's twenty five, He's got
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  Speaker 4: this curly red hair. He's a big, strong, Virginia dude,
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  Speaker 4: farm boy kind of thing. He goes through when he's
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  Speaker 4: in his early twenties. He goes through the Cumberland Gap
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  Speaker 4: into Kentucky to stake his claim on some lands there,
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  Speaker 4: starts building a life for himself, kind of frontier picture,
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  Speaker 4: like the log cabin kind of lifestyle. Right, old school
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  Speaker 4: American Revolution kicks off, and now you know, things are
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  Speaker 4: even more destabilized they were already. He was already in
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  Speaker 4: the middle of nowhere. Now he's in the middle of
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: nowhere and in a war. And this kind of comes
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: home to him because speaking of Detroit, Detroit is a
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: major British fort at this time, and there is a
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: guy in chart When the war begins, the guy in
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: charge of Detroit is a dude named Henry Hamilton. He's
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: the Lieutenant governor of the area. Hamilton is kind of
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: your classic British you would be the classic bad guy
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: in the movie.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: You can picture him right already with the don say
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: anything else about him. Picture what this guy looks like.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are picturing the red Coats from
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the film The Patriot, right exactly, who were just cartoonishly
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: bad for some reason.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: And these guys are cartoonishly bad, yeah right.
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: Picture him wound a little tight, yes, yeah, So picture
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: a cartoonishly villainous British Redcoat official officer. And then also
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: he's got this right hand man who is a chief
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: justice named Philippe de Jon. And we've got the you know.
• 19:20
  Speaker 6: For a stereotypical French name than Philippe.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: It's a mustard.
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: So there we call them the dynamic duo of Tyranny,
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: if we want to continue the cartoon theme. And Hamilton
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: he was the mastermind and Dejon was the guy who
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: was able to manipulate the law to work in their favor.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: He was a gallows judge sidebar. He once sentenced a
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: local woman named Anne Wiley to death for the horrendous
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: crime of petty.
• 19:57
  Speaker 6: Theft, oh boy and a real grand standing type fellow
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: using okay, okay, okay.
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: So he he sentenced her and her accomplice to death
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: by hanging, but he couldn't find a hangman. So Justice
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: de Jan offered to spare Anne Wiley's life if she
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: would act as the executioner for her accomplice. She agreed,
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: and she now keep in mind she is a petty thief,
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: not a career, you know, professionally traded. So she did
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: a horrible job. You know, she did a horrible job. Yeah,
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: and the crowd was absolutely horrified and okay, and she thought, well,
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: at least I got through that. But once she was
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: done with that, the judge had her hanged.
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: Anyway, can we also just put out now that like,
• 21:00
  Speaker 6: what is the alternative to the crowd watching an execution
• 21:03
  Speaker 6: being horrified, like when it goes over, when it goes
• 21:06
  Speaker 6: off with a we're like, yeah.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well also I don't think they sold tickets.
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: Also fair at this case.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But but how just absolutely malevolent is that? How Colonel
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Kurtz is that to uh say, we'll give you a
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: chance to live if you kill someone who is probably
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: your friend in addition to your being your accomplice. And
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: now whoopsie rug pull or, I guess you know, drop
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the trap door on you.
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, but where who who executed her? The hang person
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: kind of popped up all of a sudden.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: That's a good question.
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: That's so good. I don't know, but listeners may be
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: pleased to know that later on, and this is well
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: after the events of our main story today. Later he
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: was actually indicted by his own superiors in Montreal for
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: illegal acts. But before that happened, he and Hamilton ran
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: Detroit like their own little fiefdom.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, I do love to hear that the come up
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: and is coming.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Sort of, it will sort of come. It's it's history,
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: so it's never as clean as it is in the movies.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: But but yes, so you've got Dijon and you've got Hamilton.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: And Hamilton has a nickname. When the war begins, they
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: call him hair buyer Hamilton because he the war begins,
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: he doesn't have a lot of soldiers. He's got maybe
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: five six hundred guys British soldiers with him. He's managing
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: five states worth of territory. Ill like the entire basically
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: the entire Midwest. He's operating out of Detroit here, and
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: so he sends out a call that says, uh, you know,
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: any any warrior that brings me a scalp, I'll pay
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: money for it regard and like no questions asked, right,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: So any scout which.
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: Is up to a lot of not that the goods
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: the normal version of that is good. But like I
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: guess he could just be scalping taking scalps from anybody
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: on the ball.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: He's bring me some hair and I'll give you money
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: for it.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and Hamilton hair buyer. Hamilton, on the one hand,
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: he's actually, as we know, a talented amateur sketch artist
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: who has drawn some nice, realistic looking, respectful sketches of
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: a lot of the leaders of the local Native American nations,
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: the local Shawnee, Miami, and Wyandotte leaders. Some of these
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: are still preserved at Harvard today. On the one hand,
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: we've got that. And on the other hand, while Hamilton
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: is drawing these nice portraits for his sketch book, he's
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: also taking their very real existential struggle against colonial expansionism
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: as a cheap proxy weapon. And Hamilton, I imagine him
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: sitting safely by d Strong Wooden Walls sipping his tea,
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: offering cash and supplies to tribes to fight a war
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: that he didn't want to risk his own regular British
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: troops on. So the Shawnee, the Miami, the Delaware are
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: sovereign nations. They're fighting a desperate war to keep aggressive
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: American settlers off of their ancestral lands. And you know,
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: life is complicated, history is complicated. So even while this
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: is going on, and even while hairbyer Hamilton is buying
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: hair as we're calling it, we do know that some
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: of the tribal elders were actually speaking against the practice
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: of selling scalps to Hamilton because they thought it was
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: on many levels a bad idea, including politically it was
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: actually probably not a good plan in addition to other considerations.
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: But even with a shared distrust of the Americans, you know,
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: Hamilton is, when you get down to it, he's a
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: wealthy imperial bureaucrat who's exploiting their aspiration for the purposes
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: of the British crown.
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: Now that's fascinating because I'm picturing when I'm picturing people
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: buying scalps, I'm picturing them paying for Native American scalps,
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: you know, from from troops, Like that's sort of the
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: version of that that I'm used to hearing about. So
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: this is the opposite. He's paying Native Americans for.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Scalps, scalp American settlers, settlers.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Got it diabolical.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Add to that the the inter scene or intercommunity violence
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: between some indigenous groups.
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: Oh, no question. And just just that influence and that
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: monetary component potentially throwing their civilization or their society and rules.
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: It's a really interesting thing to keep in mind, and
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: it's going to come up a lot once we start
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: getting into the French involvement here, because these are not
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: you know a lot of times when you read about
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: this in history, get it gets kind of limped in
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: as like the British allies. Right, you have, right, it's
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: the the Native American tribes. But you're looking at several
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: tribes here, right. We've got the Shawnee, We've got the Miami,
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: the yan Dot, we've got the Delaware. These are different
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: tribes that are their own political units, and they're trying
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: to figure out what do I need to do, who
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: do I need to side with to not have to
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: not lose my lands, to the colonial invaders. But also
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: I don't want these guys have complex relationships with each other, right,
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: I don't want if the Delaware is going to take
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: this guy up on all this money, that suddenly they're
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: going to become way more powerful because they're gonna get
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: all this money, right, And so how do we negotiate
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: this thing?
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: So there's a whole Game of Thrones thing happening here
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: that is much more complicated than just like the British
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Allies were attacking settlers. And it's worth mentioning when we
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: talk about this stuff. So for Clark, he's living in
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Kentucky with his friends. They're being raided. Things go nuts
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: once the war starts and there are a lot more
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: attacks than normal. His already difficult life is getting more difficult.
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: So he goes to the governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry,
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: who was his boss, the surveyor, and he says, look,
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: I want to go get this hair buyer guy. I
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: want to go take care of him. And Patrick Henry says, yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: go for it, man, have fun.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: That's also, by the way, fellow ridiculous historians, Ben just
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: gave us a verbatim quote in Patrick Henry's actual accent.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Yes, good luck, go in the war. Can you give
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: me some men or some some gears, some money? No, no,
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: I don't have any of that.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Oh no, he just co signed it and didn't help.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, go for it. Just give me a piece of
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: paper that says good luck, please go in the war.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: We believe in you, Yes, yeah, right, we believe in you.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: So we know that, we know that he was a
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: voice of relative authority right in his stomping grounds. So
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: he was able to gather some resources of his own
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: or some people.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, So he's basically an unpaid intern task with
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: conquering a continent. And he goes out to his buddies
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: at his neighborhood and he's like, hey, like neighborhood, watch guys,
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: Like I'm gonna raise with militia. I need some people.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: He gets one hundred and fifty guys. Remember the Hair
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: Buyers is in a fort with British trained, British soldiers
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: and cannons and five hundred guys. Clark's like, all right,
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: I got these hundred fifty guys. So in June seventeen
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: seventy eight, he just kind of walks into Illinois Country
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: a crosses the Ohio River into a big forest, and
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: these guys go on. They're they're bringing clothes from home
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: and rifles that they used to like hunt animals and stuff. Like,
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: they're leaving their families and stuff behind. They're just these
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: are just dudes that live in the woods, right. They
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: have a bowie knife and and a rifle and whatever
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: ammo then get their hands on and.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: A drone song in their heart potentially.
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: So they head out. They hunt for their dinner, They
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: sleep under the stars, they survive the elements, and they
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: go out towards Their first target is a town called
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: Caskia in Illinois Country.
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and Kaskaskia it was, in a sense the crown
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: jewel of Illinois Country. It was a thriving French town.
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: It was heavily fortified. And if Clark and his one
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: hundred and fifty guys had been walking into a standard
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: British fort, they would have been toast. But instead they
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: find themselves in this weird liminal space. Technically it's British
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: controlled territory, but in practice it's a French speaking Catholic enclave.
• 29:33
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: So, after the French and Indian War, right, the Seven
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Years War ends, the Treaty of Paris in seventeen sixty three.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: All of this stuff we think like Louisiana purchase and stuff,
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: but everything west of the Appalachians was French and then
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: the British, and there the French and Indian War and
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: the Seven Years War, and part of that treaty the
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: French have to seed all those territories between the Appalachians
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: and the Mississippi River to England. So you have these
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: French settlers who were some of them born in France
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: and have been French, you know, for generations. They live
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: in this little area and suddenly the French flags come
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: down and the British flags go up. The British don't
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: have the troops, and man, they're not flooding this area
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: with people. They just run up a new flag and
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: put a couple hundred soldiers in town to take over
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: the forts. So they're kind of trying to leverage these
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: trade networks. They're trying to These guys have to pay
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: their taxes to the British now, but at the end
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: of the day, these are Frenchmen and they don't like
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: the British. You have one hundreds of frenchmen here who
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: were at war with the British like fifteen years ago,
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: like in their lifetimes, they fought the British in a war.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and culturally it's a very different place. So we're
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: not talking about like Philadelphia here, We're not talking about London.
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: We've got French culture, Jesuit missions for trading posts, independent
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: mind and frontiersmen, a lot of mutually beneficial trade relationships,
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: even some inner marriages. The French have been building up
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: their network with the Native American nations over maybe a century.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: Is this in the era of like kind of getting
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: the fur trade going?
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: And yes.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: So that's the main difference here is that when when
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: the British and later the Americans are coming through, they
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: are trying to take this land and settle it right.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: They want to settle this land for people and develop it.
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: And the tribes that are living here, the Shawnee, the Miami,
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: the Piacashaw, they don't they don't want people to move
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: in there and build houses. But the French have been
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: in there and they don't really care as much about that.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: They're interested in the fur trade, right. They're making a
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: lot of money off this fur trade. They're working together
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: with the.
• 31:39
  Speaker 6: Tribes agreeable situation, right, there's a mutual agree that makes sense.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: Everybody is getting, everybody's benefiting from this. It's a healthy trade.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: The French people, the French fur traders are living with
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: these tribes, right, They're not setting up their own little communities.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: They're they're integrating in a way that we haven't seen.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: And so there is a lot of opportunity here for
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: George Rogers Clark to find some force multipliers for his
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty guys, because he's now in this
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: area that the tribes that live here don't love the
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: idea of They don't really love the idea of the
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: Americans coming in here and doing this either, But they
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: also don't love the idea of the British doing what
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: they've been doing, which is more exploitative and less collaborative.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's like, Hey, don't worry, I'm America. We're
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: like diet British. So were fewer calories, I guess. But
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: as you all point out then and Pat, he also
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: had the advantage, our buddy George. He had the advantage
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of not going in with some crazy hardline ideology for
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the people, like he was not a missionary. He was
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: not religiously extremist, at least in the way he talked
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: about stuff. He instead just sort of have told people
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: do what you're doing, you know, go about your day
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: to day life. Also, just me, George being honest here,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I kind of think the British are a bunch of pills.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Do you want to help me fight them?
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: Right? Right exactly? And the French, to be fair, the
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: French don't love the Americans either because they're worried. The
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: French are Catholic and the Americans are Protestant and they're
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: worried about this when we come in there, right, so,
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: you know, but so were the British. And that's been
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: a war that's been going off for we know, we
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: don't like the British, you guys, let's wait and see.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: And so when Clark shows up, he's like, Hey, we're
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: doing this new thing. We're going to be our own country.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: We're trying to figure out our own stuff. He shows
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: up with these one hundred and fifty guys. There by
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: the time they get here, like Kaskaski is not close
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: to Kentucky. They've been hiking, their boots are falling apart.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: They look like they look like wild men. They look
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: like mountain men when they show up, huge beards and stuff.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: And Koski has a British fort and he shows up
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: and he kind of like lines up outside the fort.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: He's like, I think, if I can win this town
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: over and this region over, we can force these guys
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: out of the fort without having to actually fight them,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: because I don't have My men are too tired, and
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: I don't have the guns or the experience or the
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: training or any of the things I need to storm
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: this fort. But if I could take this town, that
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: would be like a big step.
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: And it's a big risk too, because if even one
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: of the Kaskaskian inhabitants decides to alert the British at
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: the fort, whoops, there goes.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: The plan, right right, there's one hundred and fifty just like
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: mostly unarmed guys out here trying to like overthrow the government.
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: That's a problem. So Clark needs help, and that is
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: where we meet a guy named I guess pat. I'm
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: just going to hand it off to you without setting
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: you up with the guy's name.
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: Peerre Pierre Gibol.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Fabulous, yes, Fatherbo.
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: Not quite as devaults as I like to call him
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: as Pierre Dijon, but still equally flourishy and French.
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: You'd buy a bottle of Merlau from him.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: The so is pair is actual, like his Christian first
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: name or is it his title?
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: It's his title. It's like father or padre. Yeah.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a Jesuit priest.
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he's a Jesuit priest. And as is sometimes the
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: case in these Smallish frontier towns, he's got a lot
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: of roles. He's also in effect the mayor, the judge,
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: the information broker of Illinois country. He's like the guy
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: everyone goes to and kind of expects he's the grown
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: up in the room. So he Yeah, he serves the
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: parishes in both Kaskaskia and val Sen. He knows all
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: the families, he knows their secrets. And also he hates
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: the British. He does not like the British occupation. He
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: sees the British as an occupying force that doesn't really
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: understand the French French Catholic culture of the region. And
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: in addition, Pelgibol he's the British paying for scalps and
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: he's absolutely appalled by that. So he wants stability. He
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: also maybe wants that whole buying scalp thing to end,
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: and he sees that the Americans say, okay, they're Protestant,
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: but they're Protestants who are more likely to actually respect
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: the way of life that we have here than the
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: British are.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Right, Okay, there guy, Protestants, but they're not imperious about
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: their beliefs, right, They're not like, well that's that's.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: That's kind of you can see on this right. And
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: so that's kind of why the French are kind of
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: hanging out here. They're British citizens at this point. They
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: don't really think of themselves as such. They think of
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: themselves as French. They think of theselves as French Catholics.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: And so the way they know what they're going to
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: get with the British. And when Clark shows up, he
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: does a very wise thing and he's like, who's the
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: guy I need to talk to? Okay, Gjubau, Okay, let's
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: get him. And so they have dinner together and he's like, look, man,
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: like I'm not going to change. Nothing's going to change here, Like,
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: I'm here to get this guy out of here. I'm
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: here to get the British out and if you that
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: sounds good to you, Let's let's work together. And Clark
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: is persuasive enough in this meeting that Gebaut is like
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: all the way all in, and Jebau starts going around
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: Kaskaskia and he's like, hey, guys, like, let's help these
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: let's help these guys out. Let's make sure that they're
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: not going to raise arms against them. They're not gonna
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: like join the army or anything, but they are not
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: They're going to like, there's a lot of things that
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the civilian population of this town can do that will
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: destabilize British rule here. And they start doing that.
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is not just in Kaskaskia. Father people
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: rides all the way to Valcen, which was one hundred
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: miles away, hundreds of miles away in Indiana, and he
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: does the same thing with his parish, his parishioners there.
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: He basically neutralizes the entire territory through winning over hearts
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: and minds. It's this huge diplomatic whisper campaign. Yeah.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then the and then Clark goes one step
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: further than that. He go he and Gibou together they're like, well,
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: we need to get the support of the local tribes
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: as well, and so he goes and meets with the
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: chief of the Piankesha tribe, a guy whose name is
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: Tobacco's Son, which is a complicated it's a mixed things
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: complicated when you're reading about it. But his name is
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: Tobacco's son, and he's called the Grand Door to the Wabash,
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: which means he's like, hits the Wabash is the river
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: system there, and he's kind of the guy who's he's
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: the diplomatic person you need to talk to for the
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: tribes in this region.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: He's their version of the French priest.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: Right, yes, so he's their chief I think so he Yeah, exactly,
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: he's an important person to get to know. Clark hits
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: hidden down and has dinner with him and they're talking about, uh,
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: you know, what they're going to do and what the
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: American civilization is going to look like when it shows up.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: And he's able to convert Tobacco's son to his cause
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: as well. So this ends up being a big wind
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: for him to where at some point it becomes clear
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: to the British in Kaskaskia that like, they don't have
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: a lot of guys at the fort. Here it becomes
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: clear that like the town is against them, and the
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: Piakasha and the French are bringing food and guns and
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: AMMO and supplies and information to Clark and his guys,
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: and so the ford in Kaskaskia, those guys leave, They
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: leave the town to Clark without him having a fire shot.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: They leave in the night, and they go and they
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: go to Vincennes, which is the next biggest towns. You've
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: got Casciar, You've got Vincenza, that you've got Detroit. Those
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: are the three main settlements for our story here. Clark
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: ends up in Kaskaskia in February seventeen seventy nine. Winter
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: is here. It's a brutal Midwestern winter. He's got one
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: hundred and seventy two guys. He's actually been able to
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: recruit a few from the locals, and the British troops
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: at Kaskaskia have gone to Vincennes. Now, while Clark is
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: hold up here in Kaskaskia waiting out the winter, he
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: gets news that Hairbier Hamilton is not just sitting around,
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: He's on the move. So Hamilton has taken five hundred
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: guys from Detroit and marched them down to Vincenes as well.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: So now we got trouble. They're coming for me. Like,
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: my thing works. I've got this town, but I actually
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: do have to fight this guy, and he's got five
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: times the number of people I do, and cannons and
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: weapons and food and all the things that I don't have. Okay,
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: So he's looking at his guys and he's like, what
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: are we gonna do here? It's the dead of winner.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: He's like, we got to go. I think we got
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: to go now. We've got to go to Vincennes now,
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: because the longer they sit there, the more they're going
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: to fortify it. So we've got to go. He's got
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: one hundred and seventy two just regular dudes. These are
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: not trained soldiers, and he's like, we have to march
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty miles to Vincenne's in the dead
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: of winter to ambush these guys when they're not expecting it.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Just imagine the pitch. Hey, guys, you know how we
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: all like hiking right.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: Sitting by a nice campfire indoors. We got to go
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: out there. The door opens, the whipping wind.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: But it's a great point too as well, given the
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: brutality of the season, and given the the importance of
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: not letting these British forces really entrench themselves, right, because
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things where if you don't solve
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the problem as soon as you can, the problem will
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: only exacerbate over time.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: Right, yes, yes, and so we've got to do it.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: But if you've ever been to Chicago in February.
• 41:56
  Speaker 6: Are thrilled there when the summer hits, it's like it's
• 42:00
  Speaker 6: a new least life. Yeah, brutal.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: So this hike, when we say hike, we usually picture,
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: you know, maybe you're having fun, maybe you're not, but
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: we usually picture a hiking on dry land. So this, however,
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: this territory is known as the drowned Lands, and the
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: Illinois river systems have flooded over, so the entire march
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: they have to deal with freezing shoulder deep ice water.
• 42:25
  Speaker 6: The drowned Lands should be a region on the Elden
• 42:27
  Speaker 6: Ring map, just putting that out there, right.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Definitely, it's like that, right, it's survival horror. Seventeen days,
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: these guys hike one hundred and eighty miles, which is like,
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: I don't know, Seattle to Portland. It's like, yeah, this
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: is a this is a long this is a long hike.
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: That's so great pace.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, seventeen days. Yeah, through the through the water, right
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: through the mud and the water and the snow. At
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: one point, the water gets so deep. They have this
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: drummer boy with them, this kid, and he has to
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: ride on his snare drum like a life raft because
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: he can't it's what water is too deeper, so over
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: his head before before.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: We chuckle at this because you just it's such a
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: vivid image.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: It's adorable. Can you tell us he survived?
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: I cannot confirm that, but he probably did otherwise, Yeah, hardly.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Like spoiler alert, very few members of most of Clark's
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: group is going to make it back. There's not a
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: he's a so I will say yes. I will say
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: yes with a certain degree of confidence.
• 43:24
  Speaker 6: I will give him the benefit of the doubt. There
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: definitely wasn't room for Jack on the snare drum. Okay,
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: as the large floating door in the Titanic universe. Just
• 43:35
  Speaker 6: putting it out there.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there, this is a miserable thing. This is Yes,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: they're getting sick. It's so cold. Guys are hallucinating at night.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: They have to sleep in trees because the mud freezes
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: and if you sleep on the ground, even with like
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: like you know, pads and stuff like, the mud will
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: freeze your stuff to the ground.
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: How do you sleep in a tree? I mean, wild
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: turkeys sleep in trees, But do you have to build
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: a little.
• 43:58
  Speaker 6: Well, turkeys are also udents and abominations, just putting that
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: out there.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Pat, no offense. I know, I know both you
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and Ben are in the Boston area, but we're fairly
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: anti turkey on this show.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: They'll come at you, man, come at you.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: They'll go at you. They're mad at They're mad at us.
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: Oh oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I am neither pro nor
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: anti wild turkey. I just accept them as a force
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: of nature.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: Don't they well said, don't they roam Harvard campus? They
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: really do.
• 44:26
  Speaker 6: I saw them in the in the wild, literally and
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: I was like, is this acceptable?
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Who?
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: Who green with these turkeys?
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: The turkeys act like they're on the place, because actually
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: they kind of do.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: They're a gang.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I remember, I've spent a lot of time in Boston,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: and no offense you all, but it can be an opinionated,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: somewhat divisive place. And the one thing that I see
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: all Bostonians agree on is that wild turkeys are kind
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: of a gang.
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, do not mess with wild tur turkeys.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: So despite the fact that these guys are not actively
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: actively in life or death battles with wild turkeys, they
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: are running into a lot of dangerous wildlife. The environment
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: is inhospitable. Sleeping in trees if you've ever done it before, folks,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: just a regular tree, not a fancy tree house, not
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: a chiropractor. But your back's gonna hurt. It kind of sucks. Yep.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: You gotta tie yourself in so you don't fall out
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: when you're sleeping, or you got to build a little
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: stand there. And yeah, I mean seventeen days these guys
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: do this. They have them by the time they arrive
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: and Clark it bears mentioning that this is not Clark
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: is not wearing an officer's uniform here and carrying a
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: sword and sleeping in a tent like he's walking at
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: the front of the line, right, He's just walking with
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: these guys. He's twenty five. Guys are all about his age.
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: They're they're not trained soldiers. They don't really know what
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: they're doing. They got no food, their clothes are falling apart.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: They don't have the cold way their gear. They need
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: for this to like not be absolutely miserable. By the
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: time they get there, they lose two guys on the hike,
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: and by the time they get there, they're basically like skeletal.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: They have eaten the last of their food. They're out
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: of food entirely. They they're so tired they can barely
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: hold their rifles. And then they get there and they
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: get to Vincense, which nobody has ever been to before.
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: And they take one look at it and it's like
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: an uphill approach into a wooden fort with cannons and
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: like garden positions and like portholes to like stick your
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: gun out. There's five hundred Red coats sitting there by
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: their campfires inside, eating food with their with their and yeah,
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: and they have AMMO for their rifles and for their cannons. Okay,
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: what do we do here?
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Tire ourselves to a tree and hope there aren't any
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: turkeys around.
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: I don't know, Oh that's always a good move, but yeah, yeah,
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: so so Clark Clark sends the letter.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: He sends a messenger into the town of Vincennes, and Vincenzees,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: you know, it's a frontier town, but it's it's French, right,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: And he sends the town, he sends me messengers into
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: the town and he says, I'm going to take the
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: town tomorrow. If you're with us, stay in the town,
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: don't leave your houses. If you're with the British, go
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: to the fort now, so that we know who's on
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: our side and who's not.
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: And this could be a huge gamble because again, you
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: just need one person to tip off the British. But
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: he knows that the French settlers in Valsennese trust the
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: word of Father Gibo. They don't run to the fort.
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: They stay inside. And not only do they stay inside,
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: they also sneak food and ammo and supplies to Clark
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: and his men.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: Yes, so the people of the town so word, you know,
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: they don't they don't rat on him. They bring stuff
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: out to him. And then eventually Hamilton does find out.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: Hamilton's there, he's in Vincennes. He's there, and he gets
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: word that's like, okay, there's something weird going on here.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: These guys are moving around and then he starts asking
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: people and they're like, yeah, what somebody says it right,
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: And he's like oh, shoot, there's like an American army
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: out there, and like they're gonna take the town. He
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: say they're going to take the fort tomorrow. Is that right? Then,
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: Like he starts hearing the drums, that drummer boy, he
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: starts hearing the drums. He starts seeing guys, he starts
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: seeing flags, and there's just so they start marching around.
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: So we're in the forest, right, there's a clearing between
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: the forest wall and the and the fort where the
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: you know, like at area so you could shoot people
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: when they're trying to attack the fort. But he starts
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: walking around that tree line in a circle, over and
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: over and over again with his dudes waving little banners,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: changing the little banners around. He's got snipers up in
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: the trees, like he's got these guys are marksmen right there, hunters.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: He's got guys up in the trees shooting rounds into
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: the He's trying to tell him to shoot it through
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: the portholes of the of the of the fort, not
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: necessarily to like kill a guy standing on the other side,
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: but just to like freak them out that like we
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: can shoot through the whole of we could shoot through
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: this target here and uh, don't stick your head out
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: the window, because you know we might be able, we
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: might shoot you.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: So this is like a Pioyeah.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, he's got one hundred and seventy two guys with frostbite,
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: and and he's shooting basically every bullet he has as
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: like a warning shot to scare these guys. He's just
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: just ping, ping around off the cannon so that they
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: know we could hit the cannon if we wanted to.
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: They can't see where the Americans are shooting from. They
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: can't see how many of them there are. They're hearing
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: word that like the town is against them. They're hearing
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: word that there was this big force in uh In
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: Kaskaskia that was on the move. Here. They're hearing word
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: that the Native American tribes in the area have joined up.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: They're hearing word that the frendship joined up. Suddenly, that
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: five hundred guys in the wooden fort with eleven foot
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: walls and cannons doesn't seem quite so stable. This is
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: like you said, it's a siop. He's he's tricking, tricking
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: these guys. Hamilton panics and he's like, I've got to
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: meet with I've got to meet their commander. This is
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: like the old days, right, we just did this. This
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: is like a very American revolution thing where he's like,
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: I would like to meet were I shall meet your
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: commanding on.
• 50:07
  Speaker 6: In a little FaceTime. Yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: I know we've had our differences, but let's grab dinner.
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they do. They go to a church in town
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: and they meet.
• 50:16
  Speaker 6: Oh well, that's fun because the church being sort of
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: a neutral location where you're not supposed to do acts
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: of violence, right.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: Right, right, And so he meets Clark and Hamilton I
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: imagine with the powdered wig and the red coat and everything.
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: Clark is just a mess, right. This guy's like he's
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: wearing a buckskin shirt that's like covered in mud from
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty mile hike, and he just looks
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: like a wild man. He looks like, I don't know,
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: something out of a something of a movie from the seventies,
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: you know. And Hamilton's like, all right, I'm lieutenant governor
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: of Detroit. We can talk. Let's talk like gentlemen. He's
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: expecting a very revolutionary war parlay here. And Clark is like, look, man,
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: if you don't surrender right now, I'm going to storm
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: the place, and once I storm the place, I won't
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: be My men are just wild men. They're all insane
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: maniacs with bowie knives. I can't promise, I can't promise
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: I can control them once we get into the walls.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Oh that's classic diplomacy too, because people in those parlays,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: people always or typically will assume that kind of that
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: kind of moral stance where they'll go, look, I'm the
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: guy you can talk to. Okay, you and me, man,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: we're just hanging at the church. We can reason this through.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: But my boys, those folks, man, you thought you bought hair.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's a good cop, bad cop. Right. He's
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: got three, like, he's got his three craziest look of
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: dudes standing around him just being like like frothing at
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: the mouth. And it's like, look, I mean, I don't
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: know about Big Jim here. He doesn't really do what
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: I tell him to.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: You, No, does it work?
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: It works? Yeah, Hamilton's threnders. Hamilton signs the surrender that night,
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: surrenders the fort, and as the last moment of like,
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: you know, he doesn't raise there's a there's a very
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: which I'm sure he thought was like a big disc
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: but like he doesn't the morning he's supposed to hand
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: the ford over, he doesn't raise the flag that morning
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: because he doesn't want to run it down so that
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: they can run up the American flag. You would normally
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: run a flag up the at morning roll call or whatever,
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: but he doesn't run it up because he doesn't want
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: the disgrace of running it down. And so that was
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: kind of his I don't know, I feel like that
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: probably carried a lot more weight in seventeen seventy eight
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: than it does now. It just kind of seems repeated. Yeah, yeah,
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: but it's mentioned. It's mentioned in multiple places when you
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: read about this, so I feel like Bear's mentioning here.
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: But anyway, he's the renders and then he's got to
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: hand his guys over, He hands his weapon's over and
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: pat it's a he's a.
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: It's a wo wof moment, a kick in the teeth moment.
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: Hamilton looks at the massive army that beat him, and now.
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: He's got a mars. Five hundred guys out of that court. Yeah,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: five hundred unarmed men marching out through one hundred and
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: fifty guys that look like they haven't slept in a month.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Or carrying like weapons. That would be a joke, right.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: That's crazy because you know there was at least of
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: the one hundred and fifty American dudes, there was at
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: least one who didn't have any kind of firearm, just
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: had a big stick.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: It was like haha, right, exactly. Yeah, it's like surrendering
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: guantanamotive guys with like bolt action rifles. Right, it's just
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: like you're like, what is what the what the hell?
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: And so it's you know, the hair buyer is taken prisoner,
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: he's put in a cell and and he hates it.
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: He writes, he writes so much. You were talking about
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: the Joys letters. He writes so much like poetic, like
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: complaining about how he has to go into the guess
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: to sit there with the quote felons and malefactors. They
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: don't put him in a special cell for like the gentleman.
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: Put him in just a regular cell. There's a there's
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: a toilet bucket in there. He calls it a kind
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: of throne that is truly methitic, which means foul smelling.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Great words. I'm writing all of these down.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Have you no separate prison for an officer?
• 54:14
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: I wish I could do the accident. It would be
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: so funny if I just.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Like what he thought he was going to be pooping
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: in first class.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: No he is not. He is he is pooping in
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: a wilderness prison.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: C that's terrible.
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: And yeah, so basically with al Fryon shot, you know,
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: the British lose some guys to those snipers, but mostly
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: that was that was a sigh op. But they do
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: take out a couple of his guys. So Hamilton loses
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: a few guys to gunfire and Clark loses a couple
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: of guys to the extreme temperatures. But at the end
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: of the day, Clark writes home to Patrick Henry, who
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: kind of gave him a pat on the back and
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: sent him off. He says, great things have been affected
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: by a few men well conducted.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed well said.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, I imagine Clark got uh got a promotion from
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: this right?
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Maybe?
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean he gets promoted, he gets militarily promoted.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: In the end, well, yeah, I mean to put it
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: in perspective, this guy, with one hundred and fifty men
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: and no funding from the government, using entirely diplomacy and
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: psychological warfare. He captures when the British, because the British
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: have now surrendered and they surrendered torqu Detroit, because this
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: is the extent of their forces. Hamilton is has the
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: extent of their forces in the region. So when the
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: war ends, Britain has to sign all this stuff over
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: because possessions nine tenths of the law and the colonials
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: have it. The region that George Rogers Clark has just
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: captured through this operation will become the states of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin,
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: and Indiana.
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: Can you imagine how many pages in your atlas that
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: would take up. That's that is a not small portion
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: of land. And to do all this, Clark was okay,
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: he got a pat on the back from Patrick Henry,
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: but he did not get any support from the Virginia
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: government for expenses. So Clark was paying out a pocket
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: to feed his men and get supplies and he went
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: into a lot of debt for this, and his creditors
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: they just kept going after him and hounding him. So yeah, yeah,
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: So in exchange for you know, saving the securing the
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: future of the Midwest, he just gets a stack of
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: bills and honestly, he can't he really can't dig himself
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: out of it. And yeah, poor guy dies in poverty.
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm an alcoholic. He dies in poverty. Just really
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: tragic end of this guy. He's Yeah, the later years
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: are like pretty rough for him. And she's not penniless. Yeah, yeah,
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: here's the kicker. Hamilton gets out of prison after the war,
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: He gets paroled, he gets promoted. He becomes the governor
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: of Bermuda and Dominica.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: So how do you get a promotion after that?
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: I don't know. But he lives out the rest of
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: his days sitting on a beach in the Dominican sipping
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: rum cocktails and just complaining about.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: What went down earlier.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: I just said, hey, you guys have to understand, the
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: forest was pretty dense. We thought there were a lot
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: more of them than there were.
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know the you know.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: Desjawn ends up getting arrested and running away, so at
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: least he gets what's coming to him. He gets indicted
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: and spends most of his life on the run. Clark
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: is interesting because yeah he does. He struggles later in life.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: But one interesting way to kind of end this story
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: is when Napoleon sells the eighteen O one when Napoleon
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: does Louis Louisiana purchase and Thomas Jefferson sends the Lewis
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: and Clark Expedition out to explore the new territories that
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: have been discovered. That Clark is George Rogers Clark's little brother,
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: so William Clark is the younger brother of George Rogers Clark.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: So it's kind of like a relay race where where
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: George Rogers Clark expands west and then and then his
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: brother William picks it up and goes on the Lewis
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: and Clark expedition all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: So I think that's kind of a fun way to
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: wrap that or to tie that off.
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: George walked so William could run, or George.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Trusge William could trug.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there we go.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: And we had a we hadd an episode, uh not
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: too long ago, Noel, Max and I about how scientists
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: were able to track the passage of the Lewis and
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Clark expedition, uh.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Through there through through their poop.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Sorry to make this so poop centric, guys, but but
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: that's part of it. I think we can all unanimously
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: agree the award for badass does rightly go to George
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Rogers Clark, and I'm so mad to hear that. Ol
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Hamilton just got to spend time on the beach.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: Is the governor of Bermuda.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, during a very difficult time for Bermuda. By the way,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I think it was probably still kind of a chump
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: during his governorship.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: It's possible, that's possible, he said. He just becomes a
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: colonial administrator, which doesn't selling a terrible.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Life, right, what they call a cushy government job.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, just so, and we are we are going to
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: wrap this exploration here. Thank you so much, Ben, Thank
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: you so much Pat for joining us. I don't know.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say neither of us knew
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: George Rogers Clark.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 6: Absolutely not. I mean for the longest time, I was like,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 6: where's the where's the Lewis and Clark connection? These seem related,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 6: these seem adjacent, And we got there.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: Finally we got there. Yeah. Yeah, it's a huge expansion
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: of the American colonies. Big it became became five states,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: and we couldn't have done it without this one guy
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: and the aid of the French people who lived in
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: the region and the Piankashaw Nations and the other nations
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: that helped out in the in the process. So this
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: is kind of the French connection. Next time we're going
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: to talk about a little bit more of a direct
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: action that the French took, which is also badass, but
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: in a very different way.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: And congratulations by the way to all of us, including
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: you Max for not making references to the musical Hamilton.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't know if we would get through it, but guys,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: we did it. We did it as a crew, We
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: did it as a team. Where can people go to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: learn more about.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: You all's work, Well, we are at Badass of the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: Week basically everywhere anywhere you find podcasts, you can search
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: for bad and you'll see my face a kidding.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: You could also check out the Wikipedia disambiguation page for
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Ben Thompson, which is one of my favorite parts of
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: your bio. Pat. We can't wait to uh, we can't
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: wait to hear what you think of our Notorious James
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Joyce episode. Uh.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're gonna live stream, are listening to it on
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: our twitch. We're gonna create a twitch.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: We can record it like a commentary track. Yeah, like
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: a rip rip It's worthy of that, it's pretty crunch.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Big big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Will allid the credits a little bit for now, but uh, folks,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: please do tune in very soon when we get to
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: the next Badass of the Week.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: We've got double Badasses.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 6: Of the Week week.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: That's the one.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 6: You're ridiculous history. Thanks you all so much for joining
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: us again and we'll see you next time, folks. For
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 6: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 6: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.