Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 832: Osceola, Native American Slavery, and The Seminole Wars

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Ep. 832: Osceola, Native American Slavery, and The Seminole Wars · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underware listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything brought to you by first Light. When
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  Speaker 1: I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds,
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  Speaker 1: no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer,
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• 0:34
  Speaker 1: first light dot com. That's f I R S T
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: L I t E dot com. Good Lord. Writer Jamie Holmes.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Here his third books out just out. I'm holding my
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: hand here. It's called The Free and the Dead. The
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Untold Story of the Black Seminal Chief, the Indigenous rebel
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: in America's Forgotten War, releases on February third. So we're
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about the Seminal Wars, and we're gonna talk
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: about a fella you have certainly heard about, Asciola. Jamie,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I was gonna tell you all about how I got
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: interested in this. I got interested in this from Clay
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: on Bear Grease did a series on Asciola and thinking
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to myself, well, how would clay get the definitive story.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: There's gotta be more.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: There's no way.
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  Speaker 1: Claydon missed a bit. There's no way Clay didn't miss
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: something that I would need.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: To know about friendly competition.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Jamie Holmes is a writer and the author of the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: books The Free and the Dead of Course what I'm
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: holding right here plus twelve seconds of silence in the
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  Speaker 1: book Nonsense. His work has appeared in print or online
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, Wired,
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  Speaker 1: the Atlantic, and he has slummed it over at USA Today,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: among other publications. He holds a.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Massive words not Jamie's.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. It was just like I was, you know, really,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it was like he was kicking ass there. He's like,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: you know, he's kicking ass. And then it just I'd
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: be thrilled to be in the U in the USA today.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Is that still going? Concern? Remember they used to put
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: it outside the hotel room.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: That was the paper they put outside all the hotel rooms.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: It's gotta be still going.
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  Speaker 1: He holds the Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: School of International Affairs. You know rand Over there holds
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  Speaker 1: a pH d.
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  Speaker 2: And you have a masters.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, butary, okay, but.
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  Speaker 2: It than.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Previously worked at New America as a policy analyst in
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  Speaker 1: international development and served as a Future Tense Fellow. Prior
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  Speaker 1: to that, he was a research coordinator at Harvard University's
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  Speaker 1: Department of Economics, where he focused on behavioral economics. Can
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you very quickly time what that means? Yeah? Sure, behavior Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: behavioral economics.
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  Speaker 3: Behavioral economics tries to take insights from psychology and put
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  Speaker 3: them into policy. So, for example, there's a there's a
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  Speaker 3: psychological phenomenon called.
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  Speaker 2: What's it called, like priming or.
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  Speaker 3: Or like let's say, let's say if you're giving a
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  Speaker 3: tip in a taxi cab, right, and they say your
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  Speaker 3: three options are five dollars, seven dollars, and nine dollars.
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  Speaker 2: This is not called priming. This is called there's another
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  Speaker 2: word for it.
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  Speaker 1: Uh.
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  Speaker 3: And then you say seven dollars, nine dollars, and eleven dollars.
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  Speaker 3: So it's called anchoring. So you're anchoring your expectation of
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  Speaker 3: what the average is based on you know, these three things.
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  Speaker 3: And they show how you can move people to give
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  Speaker 3: more donations based on these these three numbers, and you
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  Speaker 3: move them up and down.
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  Speaker 2: So then they take that and you know, you use
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  Speaker 2: that for fundraising.
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  Speaker 3: So what they really did is there's a book by
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  Speaker 3: this guy CHALDEENI, which was like sort of insights from
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: the business world and how salespeople and people making products
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  Speaker 3: use and discovered these psychological insights and maps them on
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  Speaker 3: and you know, psychologists are discovering similar things. And then
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  Speaker 3: they want to basically turn that around. Instead of manipulating
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  Speaker 3: people to buy things or get them to do, what
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  Speaker 3: you want is get them, you know, whatever it is,
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  Speaker 3: raise money. You want to make positive policy changes.
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  Speaker 2: So that was the idea behind it.
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  Speaker 3: It had and there was a big push in the
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  Speaker 3: Obama government where he hired a lot of those people
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  Speaker 3: cast Sunstein, Richard Taylor, and my boss at at Harvard
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  Speaker 3: Sendel Monathan.
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  Speaker 2: And they tried a bunch of stuff. Some work, some didn't.
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  Speaker 1: I got lost there. Tried a bunch of stuff on
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  Speaker 1: what I don't understand what you mean.
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  Speaker 3: They tried a bunch of interventions based on psychological insights.
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  Speaker 3: So I'll give you another example of what they actually did. So,
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  Speaker 3: what happens if to save energy if you send people
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  Speaker 3: a letter and in the letter you tell them your
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  Speaker 3: neighbors are say a lot of energy, they're not using
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  Speaker 3: a lot of water, they're keeping their electricity building.
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  Speaker 1: This is like social pressure when you see how much
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  Speaker 1: they're water they're using. Yeah, and you're like, you don't
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  Speaker 1: have three kids. Some bitch doesn't have three kids, so
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  Speaker 1: why are you. Yeah, this is a big shot.
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  Speaker 3: So this is social pressure and they're trying to get it.
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  Speaker 3: They're trying to use it to get people to use less.
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  Speaker 4: They also do They did stuff with the size of
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  Speaker 4: soda cups, like if you want people to ingest less sugar,
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  Speaker 4: instead of putting a forty four ounce cup out because
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  Speaker 4: they're gonna drink. They're gonna drink. It's not like they're
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  Speaker 4: going to drink forty four ounces of soda no matter
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  Speaker 4: how big the cup is, or like the size of
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  Speaker 4: a tray and a cafeteria.
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  Speaker 3: Or you go to a store and they put the
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  Speaker 3: you know, the all the high sugar things right near
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  Speaker 3: the cash register because they want you to make an
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  Speaker 3: impulse buy. They said, well, what can we do with that?
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  Speaker 3: You know what if we put something that's good for
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  Speaker 3: you there, which doesn't.
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  Speaker 1: Say broad I don't want to spend too much. Times
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  Speaker 1: they brought in at like on a policy basis, the
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  Speaker 1: administration broadened people who would, for lack of a better word,
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  Speaker 1: be good at like manipulating the public to have behaviors
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  Speaker 1: that they wish they had, absolutely and to counteract what
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  Speaker 1: we have to put the seminary counter.
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  Speaker 4: Corporations are doing this to get you to make certain choices.
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  Speaker 4: Sure was Yeah, of leveling the playing field in.
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  Speaker 1: Terms of coffee shop people are doing it. Yeah, because
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  Speaker 1: when you get the tip functions, they're like, you could
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  Speaker 1: be like the tip would be like seventy percent or
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  Speaker 1: other and you gotta be like, oh, now I'm in
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  Speaker 1: a situation where I got to.
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  Speaker 3: Hit other You know, there are stores in New York
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  Speaker 3: now in New York City where you go and you're buying
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  Speaker 3: something at the counter and they say, dude, what how
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  Speaker 3: much do you want to tip at the counter?
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  Speaker 1: You have not like I'm I'm actually a human.
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  Speaker 2: I am not tipping.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want to get in some counter, but you
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  Speaker 1: want to their day. We were when we were on
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  Speaker 1: We're going to tip our kids to visit their We
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  Speaker 1: were in the restaurant and in the restaurant there's like
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  Speaker 1: the price of the menu and I wish I'd take
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  Speaker 1: a picture of it. A very fine print in the
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  Speaker 1: bottom is that we don't want to because of inflation.
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  Speaker 1: We don't want to change our menus prices. So unless
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: you ask otherwise, all of this is elevated by fourteen percent.
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  Speaker 1: But you can request to have that not happen. That's wild.
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  Speaker 1: I am not kidding you. On the bottom of the
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  Speaker 1: menu and I ate there. We were staying in a hotel.
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  Speaker 1: I ate there probably three times before my father in
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  Speaker 1: law noticed.
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  Speaker 2: That's weird.
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  Speaker 1: That's weird.
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  Speaker 2: So it says eight dollars, but it's really whatever at ninety.
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  Speaker 1: Like you think your omelet is twelve, your omelet is
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: they're saying we're putting a fort unless you ask otherwise.
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  Speaker 1: That's actually fourteen percent more because of inflation. But we
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  Speaker 1: don't want to change the menu prices.
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  Speaker 2: That's too weird.
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  Speaker 1: It's true. Words guys like you, like you man into
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  Speaker 1: the seminal war story. Yea, dude, here's what I here's
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  Speaker 1: what I got. I love your book. It does. The
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  Speaker 1: story does two things. The book does two things. The
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  Speaker 1: book captures all The book validates all of your sort
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  Speaker 1: of pre what not your the book. The book validates
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  Speaker 1: one's all of one's preconceived notions about the brutality and
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: crime of the Indian Wars. But simultaneously. It turns every
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: preconceived notion you have about the Indian Wars on its head.
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  Speaker 1: And then and I'll explain it's like and getting into
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  Speaker 1: the story, you have to come to grip with. Here's
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  Speaker 1: a group of Native Americans that kind of kind of
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  Speaker 1: had slaves. This history involves a Native American that was
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  Speaker 1: a West Point graduate that went to fight against Native Americans.
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  Speaker 1: It involves a person that is able to ally himself
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  Speaker 1: with Native American forces, who is a freed slave fighting
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  Speaker 1: alongside Native Americans who at the same time the same
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  Speaker 1: individuals that at the same time kind of have some slaves.
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  Speaker 1: It involves a Native American war leader who is one
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  Speaker 1: eighth maybe one eighth one eighth Native American that is
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  Speaker 1: mostly genetically not culturally right, not spiritually, but like through
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  Speaker 1: weird circumstances, is like genetically a Western European. It's there
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  Speaker 1: is a lot, a lot to up to like unpack
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  Speaker 1: in this story.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such a it's such a complex story.
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  Speaker 2: How to set the table for it?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I know. If you don't have an idea,
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  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I think you should do.
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  Speaker 4: How did you I mean, I'm curious tell me you
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  Speaker 4: got ahead. Yeah, how we go from behavioral economics to
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  Speaker 4: I wondered.
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  Speaker 1: Why did you write the book? I was wondered about that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well it The Bridge is my second book, which
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: is twelve Seconds of Silence, which is completely within this genre,
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  Speaker 3: which is historical narrative nonfiction with a ton of archive work.
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  Speaker 2: I did a lot of original archive work.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, some of some of the archive work I found
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  Speaker 3: contradicts some of the assumptions that we've had about the story.
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  Speaker 3: And there's there's a lot of things that are that
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  Speaker 3: are set the Yeah, zoom in on this bill. There's
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  Speaker 3: a lot of things that are cential notes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're one of those guys that looks at
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: the book and he's like, I can't read that, it's
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: too long, don't read the note I sat down, but
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  Speaker 1: it makes it like a look at how then how
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  Speaker 1: look attractive it is.
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  Speaker 4: I sat down with it twenty four hours ago and
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  Speaker 4: I thought, there's no way I'm going to get through this,
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  Speaker 4: and then I flipped to the the end of the
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  Speaker 4: actual last chapter and I thought, yeah, it's a pretty
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  Speaker 4: good chance.
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  Speaker 3: I'll tell you why I did that, and then I'll
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: answer your question about how I got to it because
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: of because I think one of the things that Clay
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  Speaker 3: said on his first podcast is like, imagine if somebody
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: from a foreign country came and observed you, and maybe
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: they had a political agenda, and almost all of the
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: documentation about you is from these outside observers.
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  Speaker 2: What kind of an evidence base would you be dealing with.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: That's an interesting point.
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  Speaker 3: So that's the kind of evidence space that's and and
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: the evidence base is messy, and it's full of contradictions,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: and it's full of biases, and it's full of errors.
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  Speaker 3: It's the newspapers at the time are making stuff up.
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  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of mythology.
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  Speaker 3: So as I began to get my way closer to it,
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  Speaker 3: I thought the story was I realized I had to
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  Speaker 3: kind of do a separate book in the back for
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  Speaker 3: the academics and say, Okay, here's where I think this
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  Speaker 3: academic says this. I don't think that's right. Here's my evidence,
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  Speaker 3: and I'm going to lay it all out because I
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  Speaker 3: wanted to keep the front of the book just a story.
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  Speaker 3: I came to it just as a storyteller and just
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: wanting to enjoy the story, explore the archives, myself very quickly,
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  Speaker 3: and then I'll return to your point. There's a great
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: quote that says the past is a foreign country, and
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: it comes from a nineteen fifties Edwardian novel. But there's
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: a scholar named David Lowan Lowenthal who did a famous
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: book with that title, The Past is a Foreign Country,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: and it's really about history and then heritage as mythologized history,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: but the idea of a history book and writing and
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: reading about history as an exploration. I know you've traveled
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: a lot of traveled, some going to a foreign place
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: at first kind of being overwhelmed by the weirdness and
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: the difference of it, and slowly starting to pick up
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: clues as to what these different things mean that are
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: new to you, and then also having that experience reflect
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: back on you. So you're exploring the world, and then
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: it's also reflecting on how you what is normal there?
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  Speaker 2: Do it like this?
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: I thought this was normal, So it's changing your view
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: of yourself as you're exploring.
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  Speaker 2: I think in that way, it's a lot like travel writing.
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  Speaker 3: So I came to it with that with that goal
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  Speaker 3: to just selfishly explore the story that I was interested
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: in and do as much archive work as I could.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: After I did this, this book on science, my first book,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: I kind of got disenamored with it a little bit
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: for various reasons that are not very interesting. But I
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: love writing with the psychological science. Yeah, but I love
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: writing and I love narrative writing. I kind of started
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: off wanting to do fiction before I got into nonfiction,
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: and so I.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Thought, well, this is a genre.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: I really like Eric Larsen's books and David Grant stuff, like,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I love this genre. Maybe this is a place I
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: can reinvent myself a little. So Twelve Seconds of Silence
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: is I'm very proud of that book. It's about World
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: War two and these group of scientists. So science was
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: kind of the bridge from the first book to the
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: second book. And it's about a group of scientists who
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: World War two who invent this new weapon to shoot
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: down airplanes and they take down the Nazi super weapon
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: with it. So I fell in love with archive work
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: during that process. Like you're digging in the crates, you're
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: going to these you're going to the library at Congress,
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: you're going to the NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration.
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  Speaker 2: It's kind of like a treasure hunt.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: And you know, so just a couple things in here
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  Speaker 3: that nobody has. They didn't have Abraham's Indian name, right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: If you look it up online, it's going to be wrong.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, I haven't changed the Wikipedia. I actually think
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: that he was born among the seminoles and not a
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: former slaves from Pensacola, and I have good evidence for
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: that in the back of the book.
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  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of things that I add in,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of things.
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  Speaker 3: That I discovered new archival evidence that historians get to
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: debate and disagree with and move forward in that way.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: But so I fell in love with it with my
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: second book, and then I just found this story and
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: jumped in and it was a different archival challenge because
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: of where the archives are for this story. The last one,
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: it was almost all in DC, so I moved to
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: DC for it this one. All of the archives, the
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: best archives are really written by soldiers, either in the
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: army or they're militia or they're volunteers, and all of
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: those archives are all across America. I mean, there's some
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: military files in DC. There's some important people that have
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: stuff at the Library of Congress Jackson, like the main
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: General Thomas Jessup, But all the soldiers diaries and those
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: are really the best records. It's like state historical societies
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  Speaker 3: and universities. So you know, I went poking around, like
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: main historical says, oh, here's a journal that's not been
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: sight of it for So that was that was fun
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: and I love that part of it. And then you
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: kind of sit with all of these contradictions and you
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: try to distill the story that that you know makes
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: sense as far as you can make sense of it.
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  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Can you start by When I was kicking around how
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to get into this, I thought, let's start with the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: thing that was most confusing to me. Yeah, and then
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to trust that it's going to be
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a thing that's very confusing to other people. I always
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: thought that.
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  Speaker 2: There was a.
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  Speaker 1: Tribe, and I just assumed the tribe had been in
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  Speaker 1: existence for a thousand years, that there was a try
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  Speaker 1: of people that were the Seminole. Uh, can you explain
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: what how like how that group of people came to Coalesce,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: where that name came from, who they were? What you're
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: when you say seminal? What are you saying?
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Sure it's a good question.
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  Speaker 3: So, semino comes from the Spanish cimarron, which is sometimes
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: translated as runaway or untamed. I think it was originally
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: in reference to undomesticated cattle life, you know, horses, I think,
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  Speaker 3: and to some degree, the the Seminole tribe of Florida
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: doesn't like the runaway designation untamed.
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  Speaker 1: But just quickly that that is a thing that that
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  Speaker 1: that is very common in European nomenclature for tribal peoples.
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  Speaker 1: Is we use used, used a lot of words that
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: were not their words. Yeah, but we'd be allied with
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: or make contact with the tribe. Yeah, the tribe would
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: be like, well, I'll tell you what I call them,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: and that would become the name.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: There's a word for that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: It's called an exonym name given by an outside group.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: And then to some degree those names can be reclaimed, Yeah,
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: and they take them back. But to answer your question,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: you know, originally there's an estimate of twenty five thousand
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: indigenous people in Florida. This is at Spanish contact, those
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: including the Timaqwans like some others, those people were wiped out,
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: you know, those people were gone by the time the
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Seminoles come down from disease from military conflicts. The people
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: that became the Seminole and even the Mikazuki tribe which
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: is down there, come from the Creek Confederacy at Creek
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: another exonym the Muskogie people, uh. And these are kind
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: of loose confederations. And what happens with the Seminoles is
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: you have Americans settlers coming down pressuring people in what
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: is now Georgia and Alabama, and you have the elements
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: of the Creek Confederacy starting to acculturate.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Starting you have some intermarrying.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Tell people what that means, the culture.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: A culture meaning they're starting to adopt the customs of
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: the Anglos and then the Americans. And eventually you have
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Creek enslavers running plantations at scale. So they're you know,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: growing crops and they're having slaves at that scale.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the degree of a culturation people of
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Creek descent like, yes, okay, Creek descent have but that,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: but they're the own deeded land.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: A portion of them. No it's not needed, no, okay.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: So they're running they're running plantain operations on open on
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: claimed lands.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Yes, I see, yes, so, but so you have this
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: this split within the Creek Confederacy, this schism, and it's
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: sort of continuing, and then in the seventeen nineties it
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: sort of becomes even.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: More dramatic.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: As to are we going to adopt these new ways,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: which you know, it's like, okay, we've got hunting rifles,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: our clothes are changing, We're buying things at markets. You know,
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: the things that women used to make were now we're
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: now purchasing.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: They.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: You know, are we going to shift fully into agriculture
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: were they were growing things?
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: But you know, also hunting.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: So there are all these pressures that are changing the culture,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: and of course the settlers are pushing them out, and
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: there's military conflicts and all that.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: The Seminoles, the.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Main seminal force, the main body of the people who
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: came to be called Seminoles, came in three phases.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Would you mind tie in this real quick? Yeah, known
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: American history, just just to remind like, where are we
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: in terms of the post revolution?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the first wave of people that became seminoles
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: is seventeen hundred and seventeen fifty, so this is pre
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: revolution and they broke apart from the Creek Confederacy and
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: decided we're going to go with the old ways.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: We're not going to change.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: So they're having this debate about us do we adopt
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: what would become American ways. But they're having this conversation
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: before America exists.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: As America, as America is coming to exist, and then
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: after the revolution as well. So one of the dramatic
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: things that happens. So anyway, quickly, I'll quickly answer the
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: immigration thing, because you brought up an important point, and
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: then I'll get back to this creek split seventeen fifty,
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: another wave around seventeen ninety, another wave around eighteen fourteen.
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: You have a bunch of groups down in Florida at
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: this time that Americans all call seminoles, even though the
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Americans knew they were not all setminals. So you have seminoles.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: The main two to remember are seminoles and mikazuki. You
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: also have some people who still identify as creeks down there.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: You have some tallasses, some yuciese, some Tallahasses, and in
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: American newspapers they're all called seminoles. I think in part
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: because it makes it easier to sell the treaty if it's.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: All one people, all one people agreed to this.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: Treaty to leave, but really it's fragmented and at the
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: time they don't identify as one group. Really, you know,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: I have something that Abraham wrote at the chief Abraham
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: wrote at the time, where he's listing the different groups. Now,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: later after the Seminole Wars, those groups begin to reclaim
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: that term and identify all as seminos. But at the
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: time they were not thinking of themselves that way, even
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: though it appears that way in American newspapers. And of
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: course this causes a lot of confusion because if you
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: have a split between the seminos and Mikazuki's you call
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: them all seminoles, you can't understand what's going on.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: You can't read the situation.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a lot of confusion that comes from,
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: of course, the generals, the people closest to the story.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: They know very well, they're highly aware.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: But in a lot of it, they know they're dealing
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: with different groups, different leaders, with different motivations, with different objectives.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: But the story is we're fighting seminoles.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the greatest schism in one of the great schism
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a war, of course, in thirteen eighteen
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: fourteen called the Creek War.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: In a way, it's a civil war.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: But going back to the seventeen nineties is a very
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: interesting part of this story where the Creeks are allied
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: with the British, the Upper Creeks, i think, and they're
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: attacking against they're fighting the Americans during the Revolution, and
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: they're attacking what's there.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: What's there?
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: It's plantations, and they're taking POW's, which is the old way.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: You would always take POW's.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: You didn't care what's in color they were, and you
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: would either kill them, adopt them into the tribe, or
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: make them servants, not agricultural workers on a farm, but
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: they would be servants and their children would be free.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Their children could be part of the tribe, which is important.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: And the Seminoles still practice that as late as seventeen
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: seventy four. Now the Creeks start to change and in
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: about seventeen ninety Okay, well, if we're going to practice
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: the other way, then enslavement is going to be by
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: skin color, and it's going to be transgenerational. So I'm
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: going to own your children, and we're going to do
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: it by skin color. And that is a radical change.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: In Greek culture, there was a.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Term that had to look up. I've seen it a
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: thousand times. I don't even know how to pronounce it. Yeah,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: chattel chat like chattle slavery. Yeah, and it was like
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: i'd seen that where I never looked at up reading
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: your book, I look it up and it's like this
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: concept that I own you. Yeah, you're my servant and
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: your child is my servant.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: It's dramatic. That's dramatic.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting distinction.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I think a number of the people
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: who became black seminoles were children of POW's who escaped
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: down to the seminoles who had a more open view
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: of this. As Greek culture is changing, that's for sure
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: part of the story. So yeah, it's really the pressure
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: from the north and then these various groups coming down
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: and identifying generally as seminoles, even though they're not exactly
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: that yet.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Where where does as these groups get pushed down? Oh,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: you know, there's nothing I want to top before we
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: get there, because it's part of the pushing down. Can
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: you explain the was it the Red shirts or Red arrows?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Red sticks?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Red stick?
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: I will, but you brought up something and I didn't
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: respond to it. Chattle slavery. So and then I'll get
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: to the red sticks. So chattle slavery. Right, I own,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: you own your children, but it's basically your your piece
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: of property. And what they wanted to do after especially
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: after eighteen thirty one, when you have Nat Turner's rebellion, it.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Was illegal to teach the slave to read.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: So the rules are basically I can tell you I
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: can split apart your family. You're not going to have
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: any knowledge. I don't want you knowing anything. You're not
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: going to be allowed to read. Right, You're not going
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: to be allowed to travel freely. And these rules very
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: very on different plantations. You can't travel without a pass,
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: and you can't accumulate wealth. And then if you look
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: at the rights of the black seminoles, almost all of
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: them worldly, they speak two or three languages, they have
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: vast wealth, they're traveling freely, and there's a rule, according
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: to Wilie Thompson, who's Andrew Jackson's Indian agent, that it
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: is illegal to sell them. And their constant promise is
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: not to split up the families. Now, laws get broken,
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: but that's apparently a law now, when Americans take.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Over Florida, you have this population.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: I would say there's five hundred black seminoles estimated. I
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: would say about one hundred are servants by the old
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: Muskogi way, which is not hard labor, and it's sort
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: of a system of tribute where you get a portion
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: of the corn that you grow, which sounds to me
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: like attacks more than slavery. And then you have about
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: four hundred who are claiming to be slaves who the
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: quote is they all pretended to be free.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: I'm all pretended to be purchased.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: And if they're children of POW's from the revolution, they're
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: not going to have any papers proving that. Of course,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: the Creeks can't claim can't prove that they own them.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: So in a way there they are more free to
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: go down to Florida, but in a way they're vulnerable
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: because there's no paperwork. So you have when America takes
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: over Florida, it becomes the territory of Florida in eighteen
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: twenty one. It's different than the Spanish policy, where you
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: really had three groups of people, and it was pretty
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: easy to free yourself if you're an enslaved person, Florida doesn't.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Want to do that.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: They want to have and in fact, when they write
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: their constitution it becomes a state. In eighteen forty five,
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: they try to ban all African Americans who are free
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: from entering Florida. They're not allowed to do that, but
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: they tried to do.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: That because they wanted to clean it up. They wanted
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: to clean up all the confusion. Well who was who?
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: You don't yeah, you don't want They didn't want free
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: black people there as a bad example to the enslaved population.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: That was their idea.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So the black seminos are claiming to be slaves in
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: an environment where you cannot have a large free black population.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: In a way, they are using it as protection. And
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: I'm sure there was variation.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: So that'd rather be these guys quote slaves than your
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: slave slave.
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: And you don't want to be vulnerable to being enslaved
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: exactly if you're already someone else's property, that the eyes
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: of the outsiders that they can't take you.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: That's the game. So Abraham owns his son Reni as
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: a slave.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought that was the paperwork that when they
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: have a kid, they establish all this paper that their
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: kids are owned by them.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Chief Mikonopee sells the child and you go and you
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: write it down in the record books of the local administrators.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: There's a family that goes and tries to write down
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: the free status of their children in three different record books.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: So they're trying to protect their children. They know a
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: day is going to come that claims are going to
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: be made on them, and they want to be able
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: to say, look at the record books at Palaca, at
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Fort Brook or you know, Tampa Bay. So that's what's
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: happening mostly. And you have historians in the past who
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: have said, oh, they say they're all slaves.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: They are all slaves. It's more complicated.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, uh, I still want to get to the
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: red Sticks, but I want the slavery thing fer me. Yeah, yeah,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: just because this becomes a big part. Yeah, you'd mentioned
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: that there's almost like a reverse there's like a Southern railroad. Yeah,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: where if you in the Deep South, if you're an
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: escaping slave, it's understood among slave communities that an option,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: if you can't get north, an option is to get south.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: It's Yeah, so as early as I want to say
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: something like a sixteen eighty five. It's in it's the
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: late seventeenth century. The Spanish adopt a policy in which
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: an escaped slave can come down, say that they're Catholic,
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: join the army, and they will back up their rights.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: So there's this deal that's going down. If you can
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: get down there, if you're willing to fight, the authorities
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: down there will recognize your status. I mean we do
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: this in the United States military today, right get you
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: can get a fast track to citizenship if you serve
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: in the armed forces, in the American Armed Forces. This
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: is a very old deal, going back to antiquity, soldiery
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: for so rights. And then some people are coming down
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: to Florida and leaving. You know, you can get you
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: can get down to the Caribbean, you can get down
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: to Spanish Cuba.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So that's happening as well.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's you know, the interior of Florida,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: and then we'll give back to the resistics.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: The interior of Florida is not settled.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: It's there's no minerals to extract, and the Spanish don't
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: try to settle it, and neither do the British. I mean,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: there are some Spanish missions, but it's really the coasts.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: It's kind of a strategic buffer, you know. You know,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Spain comes, they settle Saint Augustine.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: I think it's fifteen.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Sixty five or sixty three, something like that, and they
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: lose it to Britain very quickly because they side with
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: the French and the French and Indian War. French lose,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Britain takes over, and the Spanish side with US in
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: the American Revolution. They attack British Florida both from Spanish
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Louisiana and from Cuba. They take it back over, but
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: it's still a strategic buffer. It's like you don't really
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: want to live there. It's like Greenland, you want to
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: It's the Greenland of its day.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: So so to the red Sticks.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I got a comment about, yeah, go ahead, the how
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: in your description of Florida. That is funny because you
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: hear you have these like the e Like if you
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: look at a map now, you'd be like, oh, it's
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the eastern US. Yeah, and you haven't in your head
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: that there's like Boston and Philadelphia and Charleston. You're like,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: that's the whole settled part. Yeah, by these dates. Yeah,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: And it made me think of MacArthur had this approach
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: in World War Two where he would just shoot through
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: areas and just pass everybody up and grab cities, and
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: he'd be like, we'll sort that out later. Yeah, like
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: instead of instead of rolling along on a unified front,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: he would now and then just bust.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Through it sounds like a blitz creek and.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Then yeah, and then be like, well, no, I know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: we drove past tons of people, but we'll just get
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: them later. Yeah, Like I just want to keep moving. Yeah.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: And you think of in a little bit like when
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: you imagine your mind's eye the settlement in United statesification
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: of the continent. You imagine it being this line, yes,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: but it has all these like Missus, yes, missus Florida.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: For a while it misses the Mississippi delta, and then
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: just kind of go like, we'll get to that later.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Then the Great Plains. You know, San Francisco's a big city,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: so like, oh, they're done, they're done conquering the thing. Like,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: oh no, we left off a huge we left off
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the Great Plains. We'll come back and get to that later,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: By by eighteen thirty five, you have everything up to
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: the Mississippi except maybe parts of like what I don't
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: know what the Mississippi does when it gets super far north.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: It may go into Minnesota or something. But basically it's
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: Michigan and Florida are the only places that are not states.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: And Florida is the least settled, and it's the most
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: sparsely populate populated. You have fifteen million people in the
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: US at that time, you have.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Almost all of it is rural, really small cities.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: New York's like two hundred thousand, seventy percent of people
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: are working on farms. It's like most of the country
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: is farming and hunting and fishing, and and Florida is
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: really these cities and you have you know, in twenty
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: we take it over. We take over Florida. It becomes
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: the territory of Florida. In eighteen twenty one. One of
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: the first things they do is they move the tribes
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: into an Indian reservation in the center of Florida.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: But we don't.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: It's unmapped. The middle of Florida is unmapped. We have
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: maps for less than half of it. There's you know,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: there's a quote, we know less about the interior of
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: Florida than the interior of China. At some point in
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: the war, there's a general who has to go to
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: a bookstore to buy a map of Florida. That's the
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: best map he can get of the territory. So Florida
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: is lagging and and you know, the bottom half A
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: lot of it's because it's not good for farming. You know,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: the bottom half of it. You've been to Lake Okachobee,
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: I think below that the natural everglades, Like, you're not
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: farming there. So the Red Sticks is you know, there's
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: this is about the split in the Creek Confederacy and
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Osciola comes from a red comes from the Red Sticks.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: And they fought against Andrew Jackson. They're the upper Creeks.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: The lower Creeks were called the White Sticks. By the way,
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: red sticks. Baton rouge the red Sticks, oh yeah, and
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: they fight and Jackson fights with the White Sticks against
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: the Red Sticks.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: There's there's the are these colors related to skin color?
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Totally coincidental, coincidental.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: It's the Red War Club that they had. I guess
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: it was painted red, got it? Yeah, baton the stick,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: red Stick. And so there's the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: I want to say it's eighteen fourteen where Jackson and
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: the White Sticks have a resounding defeat and they kill
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: eight hundred Red Sticks. There's reportedly twenty or so survivors,
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: and you know, widows and orphans come down in Florida
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: and Oscioli is part of that group, so.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: You know he's in Florida.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Then Jackson, you know, the guy who killed his people,
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: becomes president and he's got to sit in these meetings
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: where Jackson's representative says, you know, please leave, I'm your friend,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to help you.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: And so you know, he.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Comes out of this deep scar of seeing real violence
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: when he's young. He comes down to Florida when he's ten.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: So he's carrying this profound trauma of seeing his people
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: split in two. Yeah, and he starts to see it
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: again happen in Florida, and you know he won't he
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: won't stand for it.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: One thing that Clay got right in his series on
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the Seminal Wars and Asola is Clay starts it out
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: with John Lee Anderson's Seminal Wind, tell Me the famous
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: song Blow Blow Blow Seminal Wind, and Clay's favorite part
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of Seminal Wind is when the guy sits on a
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: cypress stump and he can hear the voice of Osceola
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: cry and this was a huge, like huge country song,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and it would be probably my guess would be that
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: that would be the same way we recently interviewed by
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: individual about uh, the Edmund Fitzgerald and like this, Ah
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Gordon Lightfoot's the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is many
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: people's passageway into knowing that there is a thing, a
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: shipwreck called the Edmund Fitzgerald. I would say seminal wind
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: for many people was probably there introduction to these terms
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: for people that far away from Florida.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Aciola too, you know, he's that he's still
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: the icon of the Florida Seminal football team.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So explain his background, Osiola, because he's gonna as we're
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: gonna get into the wars, he emerges as a primary
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: figure and you focus on you might as well do this.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah you focus on Osciola, Yeah, you focus on Abraham.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: So can you give us some biographical sketch of these
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: two like really different folks?
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Sure?
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, so I broke down a little what he
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: came out of as a as a boy. He's Creek,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: he allies himself with a powerful mikazuki chief named Sam
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Jones or Abyaka. We called him Sam Jones, and he's
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: a military enforcer figure for him.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Uh, he's one.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Of the most famous Native American in American history. I
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: mean he's everywhere in the press, He's in European papers.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: He becomes in his day.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: In his day, in his day, he becomes this mythologized figure.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: His character is how would I describe his character? He's
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: an angry young man.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: When we meet him in the book is when he's
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: in prison for five or six I mean, that's a vivid.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, anecdote, I could start there. It's a memorable introduction day.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: So Andrew Jackson sends down this Indian agent, Wiley Thompson,
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: down to Florida, down to this place called Fort King
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: which is present day Okala, and Thompson's job is really
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: to convince them to leave without.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: A war, because they don't want home, because they don't
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: want to spend the money on a war.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: So it's cheaper to send someone down and kind of
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: try to convince them I'm your friend, and if not,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: we'll fight a war. But we're really friends and I'm
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: a nice federal guy, and these locals. Geez, these locials,
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: they're kind of corrupt.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Actually.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: At one point he says, you've been cheated in the
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: past by these locals. But you know, all bad men
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: are not yet dead, which I wanted for the title
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: all bad Men.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: They wouldn't let me have it. All bad men are
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: not yet dead.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: So anyway, he sends him down here and and Asciola,
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: who knows who Jackson is, who knows American intentions, has
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: to sit in these council meetings and listen to these
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: letters written by Jackson, saying you know, yeah, so it's
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: like I got to sit here and listen to this.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: So he storms into Wilie Thompson's office in I want
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: to say April eighteen thirty five, it's before the war begins,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: by by eight months, and he cusses them out, and
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: he says, you know, you say that we have to leave,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: like you have to leave. You say that it's going
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: to be bad for us, It's gonna be bad for you.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: There's a quote.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it's true because there's so much mythologized,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: but I put it in. But it appears in nineteen
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: a little later after the wordy eighteen fifty three, and
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: he says, I'm gonna I'm gonna kill you, and I'm
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: gonna leave your body out in the rain and the
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: sun is going to turn your skin black and the
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: vultures are going to pick the flesh off of you.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: And yeah, which was as we're getting too, it is oddly.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Prophetic, that's what happens. Not oddly prophetic, it's what happens.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: So this is the second time, or at least in
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: Thompson's records, he says, I had warned him before, you
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: can't talk to me that way. And so I see,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: oh that he doesn't do anything when I.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Saw Thompson says, I've told you before, don't come and
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: say this to me.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: In his records, he when he's explaining this incident, he said,
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: I had warned him before, you can't insult me this way.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: You can't threaten me in this way. And then he
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: said he did it again, So it had that happened before.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: He doesn't do anything.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: When yeah, so on this big well known tirade, Yes,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and Thompson says, this isn't the first time.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: It's not the first time this has happened, and so
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: he locks him up. He doesn't personally do it.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: He waits till Aciola leaves, and two hundred yards outside
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: of the agency house, he has four guards wrestle him
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: to the ground and they struggle, and they lock him
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: up for six days and Asiola is stewing in what
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: passes for a prison, they call it the guardhouse. And
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the next day he says, Okay, I've changed my mind.
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well that's jumping. But yeah, he can't convince
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: him that he's calmed down. So he's like, send this
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: other guy. I'll convince him that I've calmed down, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: then he'll convince you that I've calmed down.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Because this is all just so Yeah, that's a good correction.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: I don't know, because that actually becomes important.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: This was a very memorable story for me.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that becomes important. So there's a there's a there's
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: a Greek cattleman who's a chief, whose name is Charlie Amathla,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: and he's faced with the same decision everyone else is,
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: which is you know, leave or it's war more or less?
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Do you want to put your family through that. He's
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: got two daughters, he's got a seven year old kid.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: He's creak.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: He knows what happened in present day Alabama and Georgia.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: You know, what do you want to risk? Do you
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: want to risk it? Are you gonna put your face?
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: So he decides to leave. Now some literatures call him
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: a friendly chief. It's not the correct word. But but
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: he's decided to leave. And so Aciola says, bring Charlie Amathla.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: You trust him. He's leaving, and I'll talk to him.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: And he does.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: He convinced that there's no record of what they said.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: But but Charlie A Mafler goes to Thompson and he says,
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm sure he gets it. He just had
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: a he just lost his temper. But he understands that
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: he's going to go and you should release him. And
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: he'll come back with eighty of his people and they'll they'll,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: you know, true to their professions. They will pledge that
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: they're going to go west. They're gonna immigrate with the
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: rest of us. And that's what happens. And not to
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: jump not to jump ahead, but Oscila kills Amafla in
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: front of at least one of his daughters as a
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: warning to other leaders, not to break off, not to leave,
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: because he doesn't want to happen what happened in Alabama
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: and Georgia, What happened.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: To the Creek Confederates.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: How does he kill him?
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: There are a few different stories, some of them seem
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: to me to be clearly made up. The famous version,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: so he goes with Abraham, Chief Abraham, who's the chief
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: of the Black Seminoles.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: All the stories put them together. They go to a Mathla.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Either.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: One story is they meet him at a Mathla's house
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: and Abraham says, you really shouldn't go. You want to stay,
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: fight with us, keep your army with us. You can't
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: have the army size cut in half, which is what
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: would have happened. And eight of the thirteen chiefs, you know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: at first, agreed to go. So you're gonna have your
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: fighting force cut in half. So Abraham says to go.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: He's trying to convince him. Acola tries to convince him
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: he's not going to change his mind. By one version,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Aciola raises the rifle to him and Abraham hits the
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: rifle in the air, preventing his murder. I don't know
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: if that's true. Another version is he killed Imathla on
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: the road. So one of the things that they were
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: going to do before the immigration is they agreed to
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: buy all the seminal cattle. So they arranged an auction
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: and I think it was going to be December first,
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: and we're going to have an auction of all your cattle.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: So you because you can't bring that with you. So
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: the story goes, who would be just go ahead, sorry,
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: not at all.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Who's going to buy the candle?
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Locals? White folks?
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, you got You have sixteen thousand
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: white settlers there.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Since we're making you all leave. Yeah, and you can't
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: bring your cattle, give you your new neighbors. Yeah, these
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: white folks buy your cattle, and they're at a reasonable press.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: And these people have been sitting there for you know,
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: a decade or more, kind of rubbing their hands, waiting
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: for the government to do something about the tribes.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, they have that's right.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: They're certainly ready for this, and they're ready to become
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: a state and they want to settle the state. So
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: in their minds, that means the native population has to go.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: So one of the stories is in Mathla was paid
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: for his cattle he's taking gold back away from the auction,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: and Abraham is with and Aciola shoots him and takes
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: the gold and scatters the gold over his body, and
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: he goes to Abraham, who's in danger of being enslaved,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: and he says, see this as the price of your
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: blood in a way, see this as the price of
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: your freedom. The problem with that story is it happens
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: five days before the auction. So yeah, So the story
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: that I believe, and there's a it's a very mundane story,
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: and it circulates, i want to say, in Jacksonville right afterwards,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: primary source, and it says that he shot him while
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: he was gathering his cattle for the auction, in front
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: of one.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: With the calendar.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more plausible. It's not as dramatic, guns him down,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: guns him down.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: And this becomes controversial, and I think it's to some
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: extent controversial to this day in the Semino tribe of Florida,
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: you know, and Mafla has ancestors too as descendants too.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: How are we supposed to look at this? On one hand,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: you understand where Aciola is coming from.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: He's trying, you know, he wants to fight. On the
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: other hand, You're going to kill a guy in front
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: of his daughter who's trying to avoid war. It's tough,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: but that's what happened.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Should we take this up to let's finish up with Thompson? Sure,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: before we tell the story of Abraham.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do you do you want me to kill Thompson?
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah. So we already kind of broke it by
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: saying that. He says, here's what's going to happen. Yeah.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: So so Osciola gets out of jail.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: As soon as Thompson hears a body Mathla's murder, he
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: knows it's game over, and he writes Washington and he
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: says military force is going to be needed more or less.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: I failed, like, these guys aren't going to leave will
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: Ford not happening. And now that now that he did that,
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: it has the result that they know Ostila didn't do
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: this alone. I'm sure that superiors to him told him
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: Killy Mafla. In any case, this wasn't a rogue action.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: I don't think he had complete consensus, but it's not
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: him out on his own. So yeah, And so that
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: you have a number of the of the people who
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: are going to leave, who are going to immigrate.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: They stay.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: So it does it does have the effect that he wants.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: So Thompson says, okay, I failed, and he's kind of
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: waiting around to go back home to Georgia. And that's
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: when you have I have a few of the most
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: dramatic events of the war and in the book happen
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: at the same time, one of which is the assassination
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: of Wiley Thompson by Aciola and forty Mikazuki warriors, or
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: the killing at Fort King. They have a war council
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: and you have troops coming up from Tampa Bay, from
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: Fort Brook. You have one hundred troops that are marching
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: up what's called the Fort King Road. It's right through
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: the heart of the Indian reservation, and they're planning to
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: attack the Seminoles and the Black Seminoles. And they have
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: a date for the attack December thirty first, And so
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: they meet in council.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: They say, okay, we've got two priorities.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: We've got to get Thompson out of the way, and
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: we've got to handle Daid and these one hundred and
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: eight men who are marching up towards our reservation. And
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: Aciola says, I'll take Thompson, he's my friend, and I
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: will see to him.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: And so he goes up to you know, he's ordered
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: to attack.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: The for only has fifty soldiers at the time, but
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: he waits in ambush.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: He waits for over a day.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: He later says he lured Thompson's spirit to him. He
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: waits in the woods near So there's the agency house
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: where Thompson lives and works, and then there's a little
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: Suttler store, which is a civilian like storekeeper guy, and
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: he's got some clerks. And that's some yards maybe eight
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: hundred yards or down away from the fort. So Thompson
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: and the companion, I think an officer, they're having dinner.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: They decide to have a smoke after dinner, Let's have
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: a little stroll with our cigar. And he walks down
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: near the Sutler store near these woods where Aciola and
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: forty warriors are waiting, and Aciola's war cry is heard.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: It's apparently a distinctive shrill war cry. There's two other
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: chiefs there who are denoted by chiefs by their attire,
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: but nobody knows who they are. Aciola has already gotten
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: famous for killing Imatla in the American press. He's also
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: gotten variety for being loud in council, so his fame
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: starts off because he's the most vocal. So we sort of,
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: you know, the records track him because he's put a
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: target on his back and away in his own back.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: And Thompson is shot fourteen times. I believe there's a
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: deep knife wound to his breast, he is scalped. There
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: may be a club musket to his head. It's pretty
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: pretty gruesome. The storekeeper also killed in the same manner.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: And they well, dude, he was having a smoke with.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: That guy dies too, so far, Yeah, whips no surprises
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: in this story. Yeah, that guy dies too, and the
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: troops are I think it's a faint. They think it's
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: a distraction, and they fortify in the fort. They get
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: one of the bodies the next day, and they bury
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: Thompson at the fort temporarily and then and then his
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: wife gets him back and his bones go back to Everton, Georgia,
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: and she keeps his bones under her.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Bed for a year. Yeah, but that's a different time period.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah man.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the start of the war. And simultaneously,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: Abraham and Chief Miconopi who's the head of the us.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: He's the chief, he's a seminal chief, but he's also
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: ostensibly the head of all of the tribes and bands.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Attack.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Daid tell us about before we get into that attack,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: which is fascinating, And what did you pick up with
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Ossiola steaking out to kill this guy and then the
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: I know some people call it the Dade mask or
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: the Dade fight. Whatever you gather. Man, these dudes are
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: like one with the swamp. Yeah, I mean the ability
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: to just vanish into like stake up and hide, yeah,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: and surprise people's astounding.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's like a big parallel here, I think to
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that I've read about slave rebellions
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: in the Caribbean, where it's just the landscape and the
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: ecology of that place is just sort of used almost
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: as a weapon against the whites, you know, whether they're
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: colonists or the army.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: In this case, one in fact Colonel Taylor, who later
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: becomes president, but he later leads the forces in Florida,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: and he says the climate and the terrain are much
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: more lethal than the enemy. One of the things that
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: they say that he also says. He says, we tried
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: to catch them. This is later in the war when
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: they have fled from us. Not once have we been
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: able to overtake them. There's one of your videos where
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: you say, I think maybe you're in South America. We're like,
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: there's no way that I could move through the bush
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: as quickly as some of these indigenous from Yeah. Yeah,
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: And and the soldiers are laden down. You know, they're
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: carrying things. They're carrying they don't know how. You know,
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: they've got rations, they've got they've got heavy ammunition they've
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: got they're carrying. They've got their heavy uniforms. And the
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: seminal forces are living off the land. They know where
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: the food is, they know where the dry places are,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: they know where the crossings of the rivers are, which.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: They vanish into the water. Man they like eat alligators,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: They catch fish, they dig roots, they find oranges.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: They do all of that very successfully.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: And you know it's it's General Jessup who who's the
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: main figure of the book. He says at one point,
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: the nature of the country is such that an army
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: of of you know, five hundred could hold it against
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: an army of ten thousand or something like that.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: You know, if we call it a war.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: But if you're going to use the landscape against the enemy, that's.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: Not normally how we think of a war.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: We think of a war where I meet you on
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: the battlefield, we are agreeing to fight. Well, what if
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: I don't agree to fight, or what if I agree
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: to fight on my terms? That is okay, I'm here
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: in a perfect position for me to ambush.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: You.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Come come over here, come walk into my ambush. And
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: so they selected the battlefields and the army was forced
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: to go into their chosen battlefields.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a comment someone makes in I don't know
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: if you covered in your book or if I heard
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: someone mention it in Clay's piece, but it would be
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: that they would fight as long as it was going
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the way they wanted it to go. Yeah, but they
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: were not beholden to sort of a battle plan. Yes,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: if things look good for an ambush, we'll do the ambush.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: If they don't, we're out of here.
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, And and what have you achieved if they
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: if everyone gets away? You know, it's it's the use
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: of the land and and the slow you know, they
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: hire topographers, like how do we figure out where we're going?
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: Where is everyone? And they disperse intentionally. There's a there's
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: a general named Scott who is briefly uh in the
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: head of the war in Florida, and he has like
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: a Napoleonic handbook for like for you know, fighting in
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: lines and fields and and this is bush fighting. They're
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: not used to this. They're not used to guerrilla warfare.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: That's what this is. There's an early event in the
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: war in which a male a mailman is killed. A
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: messenger is killed, and he's going up the Fort King
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: Road and it's a hit and run. It's boom. They
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: take care of business and they're gone. And there's a
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: moment where the general realizes he says, okay, I have
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: seven hundred troops at max.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: That should be enough. Oh unless they use hit and
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: run tactics.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: And then he sort of writes a panic letter like
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: we might be in trouble here because if they're not
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: going to meet us in a mass, that's a whole
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: different kind of warfare. And one soldier calls it a hunt.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: M this has dissolved. This has devolved into a hunt.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: And and you know a lot of people quit because
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: of that. There's no glory to be had in that
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: kind of fight.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you quote different guys soldiers to get sent down there,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: and after a couple of days you're like, this ain't
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: what I signed up for. You know, there's I signed
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: up for a big gunfight that we win.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: That's right. Now, that's right. Where's my where's my gunfight?
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: There's a sequence in which you know the war has started,
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: and you you have in New Orleans reports in the
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: newspaper of things that are not happening. It's like, oh,
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: the the Indians are killing all of the settlers and
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: they're slaughtering everyone, and it's a it's a war of extermination.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: This is not happening, but they're using it as recruitment.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: And so there's an American flag outside of the customs
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: house and all the soldiers sign up and they take.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Them like social psychology or there you go. There it is, Yeah,
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: well that's what it is.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: So I mean, if somebody said that to me, I
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: would sign up, like, okay, you know, let's go.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Those are my people.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: When the truth is more like they're trying to get
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: a stay away from you out in the swamps living
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: a subsistence lifestyle.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: They just want to but you just go away. Mostly, yes, yeah.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: They you know, Abraham retreats into the COVID with Lakuchi along.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Given, you gotta give Abraham's background. Sorry, yeah, the Daid fight. Yeah, yeah,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: because this is early. We got to back up to
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: early in the war.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: There's yeah, there's a lot of exposition in this story.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of context. So Abraham is a I
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: love it. I love Abraham. He's a diplomat, he's very poised.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: He is nominally Miconope's interpreter, so Miconopee is the seminole chief.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: The Whites think he's just the interpreter. He's more than that.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: He is also Miconope's sense bearer along with his chief
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: named Jumper.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: The conciliers, yes, like the.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: Privy councilor or the Prime minister. He's the advisor. He's
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: the keeper of the king conscience. So he's the interpreter
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: and the advisor, and he is. The traditional story is
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: that he escaped from an owner in Pensacola. I found
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: evidence that from him directly. He can't say where he
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: was born, but he was born among the seminoles in Florida.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: And there's several other pieces of evidence that to me,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: without a doubt say that he was born.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Does his age line up like his age lines up
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: with that potential. Yeah, absolutely, he was Maybe maybe his
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: parents were escaped slaves.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: He would not surprise me.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: If his parents were pow was taken in preak grades
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: during the Revolutionary War, that would not surprise me.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: So his parents are maybe brought into Florida by the Creek,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: and then he because it wasn't chattel slavery, hes to
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: he was born among the seminole rolls to a position
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: of prominence to where he's like a right hand man.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: Achieve he's formally adopted, and he's formally freed in eighteen thirty.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: There's maybe fifteen of this five hundred or maybe twenty
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: who are formally free.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: What else can I say about Abraham.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: He's described by the army as having a continence which
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: none can read. He's described as a real Martin van Buren,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: as a political animal.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: He is.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: He speaks softly with a gentil with a gentile emphasis.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: He is said to have a great deal of fun
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: about him.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: He is said to be artful.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: He is said to have more wit in his left eye,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: because his right eye angles inward than most men.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Do in both.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: He's a real he's a real Ben Franklin.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well he's he's a he's a strange character. Two observers.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: You know, the there's a there's a role going back
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: to at least eighteen oh two where you have black
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: interpreter advisors. So there's the in the core seminal line,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: you basically have Cowkeeper and then you have King Pain
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: and Boleck and then Mikenopie. And there's evidence tying Abraham
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: to Pain. Now Pain was and Pain had a black
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: seminal advisor. I think his name was Harry, and he
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: was involved and in colonial diplomacy. So I think Abraham
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: had black seminal mentors who acted as translators and advisors
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: for the tribe as early as eighteen o two. And
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: he comes into this position. I find him again in
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: eighteen twenty two working as an interpreter. It appears as
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: an apprentice for another black seminal interpreter, and then he
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: becomes the chief interpreter of the tribe. And he has
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: also described in eighteen thirty eight in a New Orleans
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: newspaper as the chief principal interpreter of the tribe and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: the chief of the iste luste, which in the Muskogi
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: language of the creak and Seminole means chief of the
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: dark people, chief of the black people.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: And he's and he dresses according to Seminole custom.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: He dresses in the Seminole way.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: When there's a trip he later takes as a as
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: an older man to New York and they say he
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: looks like othello.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Reborn, you got a kid, That's what they say. He has.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: He has less servility than is usually a parent in
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: African south of the Potomac.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Hum. You know, I want to get into a brief
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: tactical thing. Yeah, we get in the day of the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: day Abraham. Yeah, because you're talking about seminal dress as
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: much as they're slipping up on people and tomahawk and
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: them unawares and everything. What's what the red turbans are
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: running around in?
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Are they wearing red turbans? There are a few of them,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: not all of them.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what like why that like Osciole's always portrayed
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: like that with a red turbine, something like a like
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: a what do you call it? Yeah?
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: They I mean you can look on the cover there
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: that's a little later. That's eighteen fifty two, and you
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: can see Abraham has kind of a different style of
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: turbine and they have this kind of a hard sorry
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: for the mic side of a hard circular thing that
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: they've got there.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, so maybe but I
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: might have picked this up.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know where I picked up. So they didn't
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: wear red.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Headcloth, No, not uniformly.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, No, why do people use the word turban in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: describing them? What are they talking about?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: Headdress?
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: I think it's probably the closest reference that we would
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: have to it.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Headdress is probably more appropriate.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Got it. So someone had his own kind of cloth
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: wrapped around, they might have described it as a turban.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Abraham's got it on right there in the picture
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: at the top there.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: For whatever reason, it strikes me as something that comes
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: from African culture, like it's a blending of traditions.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: So there's one good way to introduce Abraham and kind
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: of give you a picture of the Black seminoles. Is
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: this wonderful folk tale. It's a Black seminal folk tale.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: And so in there's a writer named Zorol Nearhurston. She
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: was part of the Harmon Harlem Renaissance, and she goes
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: down to Florida as part of the Federal Works Project,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: you know where they paid writers part of the New
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: Deal to go and write things. And she goes down
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: to Florida and she hears this story about Uncle Monday,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: which I found. I have her original document, and the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: story of Uncle Monday is, in short, this is a
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: story that locals are telling her one hundred years after
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: it happened. Uncle Monday was a great African metaice man
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: of the crocodile clan that practiced kinship with the fierce reptiles.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Not long after he was stolen from his home and
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: taken to America. He escaped from Georgia or South Carolina
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: and made his way down into the Indian country which
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: is now Florida. He and others settled among the seminoles.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: This is the eighteen thirties, the days of that haughty Asciola,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: that's a quote. And when the white men attacked, he
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: led some of the Indian African forces in battle. They
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: fought as fiercely as they could, but were defeated in
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: the end or succumb by the end by greater forces
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: and weaponry. They met Abraham and the survivors met near
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: the Blue Sink Lake to debate and decide what to do.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: He told the people what the deities had told.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: Him in a vision or dream, that it would no
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: longer it's no longer of any use to keep fighting. Still,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: the medicine man would not yield to death or enslavement
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: at the hands of the invaders. He promised that he
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: would change himself into an alligator and reunite with his
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: reptilian kin in the Blue Sink Lake until the trouble
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: was over. And so there is a ceremony on the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: banks of the Blue Sink, where the people drum African
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: and Indian beats on their instruments. As Uncle Monday danced,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: he began to shift in form. His skin grew rough,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: his face grew long and very terrible, and he cry,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: his voice became like thunder, and in response, a thousand
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: alligators bellow and come out of the Blue Sink. And
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: he is now the largest of the reptiles. And he
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: strodes regally into the Blue Sink, and they disappear altogether,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: bellowing into the lake. It was said that for many years.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: It was said that he remained in the Blue Sink
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: for many years, and that every so often he would
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: transform back into a man and roam the land and cast.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: His spells on the people. So what does this story
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: tell you? What is it preserve?
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: Going back to your point about bringing African traditions in
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: and melding them with indigenous traditions. Yeah, you know in
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: Zambia they still have a crocodile clan in northern Zambia
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: that may be too far east for the transatlantic slave trade,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: but a democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: central West Africa, the Congo River full of crocodiles. You
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: have crocodile veneration. You have societies there that are matrilineal,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: like the seminoles, So the royal line descends from uncle
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: to nephew, not from father to son. You have clans,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: you have a spiritual relationship with the land. And what
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: is this story?
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: Now?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: You liberate yourself and you come down and you find
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: tribes that are matrilineal.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: That have a spiritual relationship with.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: The land, and there are alligators there, and so how
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: do you survive? You trans form yourself. You're from the
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: crocodile clan. You transform yourself into an alligator. I think
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: that's the and it's a magical act. There's something called
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: African semino Ethnogenesis. There's a paper by this guy, Anthony
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: Dixon ethno Ethnic Genesis Birth, and it's about how do
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: you rebuild culture. You're stitching together your culture from various
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: African traditions that are inherited by your parents, grandparents, and
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: you want to meld them with native traditions. And that's
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: what you're doing and and you're it's a profoundly creative.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's a magical thing to do that. That's
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: how you're going to survive. I think that's a beautiful
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: summary of what they did. And and it was all
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: about this cultural melding.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: What a do you to have on the podcast? Mans
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: like I mean, I'm sorry, not me. Yes, you story
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the guy.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the guy, but you too.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: You're here, we invited you on, We came and found you.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: Abrahead would have been better. No, no, no, I'm.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Not talking about even him. I'm talking about the dude.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Uncle Uncle Monday.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: Be like picture, Okay, you're in Africa. You probably get
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: captured by African slave traders, you get sold to whites.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: They send you to North America. They send you to
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: what we become the United States. You get bought by
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: another white guy, you get turned to plantation work. You escape, Yes,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: you go south, you meet up with Indian tribes. Then
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: you turn around and start fighting the army of the people. Yes,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: that's a hell of a journey.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: What a story, What a story.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: And in meanwhile, people are being born in the United
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: States and not going, not strand more than forty miles.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: A lot of people you're born, you know, stry more
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: than forty miles from where you're born, and you die
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: with a hole in your hand.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: There is an oral history that puts one of Abraham's
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: fighters as coming from Africa. The Transatlantic straight Tit is
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: officially banned in eighteen oh eight, but there is a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: record of this guy, and he remembers what it was
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: like to be in Africa.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: Oh man, So we set up the dispersal of people
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: out of Alabama and Georgia, the Creeks people being displaced,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: pushed into Florida. The United States starts eyeballing that landscape.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Settlers are moving in. President Jackson's like, these guys gotta go.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I'll send them out to Oklahoma. They're not cooperating. They
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: send in an army under the command of this dude Dad,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: and Dade's gonna go up there and straighten them all out.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: Him and a hundred guys are going to straighten them
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: all out.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: Nicely, set up, nicely, set up.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: So after Charlie A. Mathla is killed, they send reinforcements.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: We need more troops. The problem is the troops are split.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: So you have Duncan Clinch with the main forest and
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: it's to the north side of the Indian Reservation, and
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: then you have troops gathering on the Gulf coast in
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: what is Tampa Bay, that's Fort Brook and four companies,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: the full companies fifty men. So they send two hundred
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: men down, not all at once, four companies down to
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: back up the troops they have there. And the idea
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: is they're going to march through the Indian Reservation and
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: they're going to meet up with Clinch and they're going
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: to attack. That's the plan. And Date is one of
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: those troops coming over, got it.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: God, So the intention was never that. The intention was
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: never that his one hundred guys are going to pull
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: this off. It's all part of bringing a bunch of
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: guys together.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: It's it's more interesting.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: It's so you're What happens is they're planning for a
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: fight on the on December thirty first. They're waiting for
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: the rest of the two hundred troops. They only have
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: I think two of the four boats, two of the
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: four companies are there, and you don't have many people
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: in that garrison in Tampa Bay. So you're faced with
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: a choice. You can march up the four King Road.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: Now that's right in the middle of the reservation. It's
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: one hundred mile road, and you're going to go right
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: through enemy territory. Do you want to do that with
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: one hundred men? Do you want to wait for the
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: other hundred men to come? But we could miss the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: deadline for the fight December thirty first. So Dade, bravely
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: or foolishly, depending on how you look at it, he said,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: I got this.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: I'll march up, no problem. I'll go right through the reservation.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: All I need is one hundred people, and there are
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: records of there are a few native families. I think
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: there's three hundred people with one hundred warriors are who
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: have chosen to immigrate and haven't changed their mind. Who
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: are at Tampa Bay across the Hillsboro River waiting for
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: ships to take them up to New Orleans and then
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: to Indian Territory what becomes Oklahoma. And they're sure he's
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: going to die, and they say and they say goodbye
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: to him. I think it's December twenty third, and he's
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: sure that they would never see him again.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Huh.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: There's another guy there, Belton, and he says, I think
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: you're crazy. I would rather resign if I were ordered
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: to march up that road. There are people later who said, listen,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: why did you send troops down the Gulf Coast. You
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: should have sent them down the Atlantic and you can
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: go right down into Jacksonville and then they already would
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: have met up.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: So this is a bone of contention.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: Why were troops sent to Tampa Because the only way
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: to get to Clinch is to go right through the reservation.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: So they start this march through the reservation.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: And it's eerie, and their camps are harassed at night
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: by seminoles, by scouts who are following them by gunfire.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think it's the fifth night or
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: the fourth night. Dad has a bad dream he fought
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: in the War of eighteen twelve, and he says, my
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: fallen comrades came to me in my dream. This is
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: apparently from a newspaper several years later, and they said
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: their names. It's the most bizarre dream I've ever had
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: in my life.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: It's strange.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: And they walk. They've gone sixty miles of the one hundred.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: They're nearing a place called the Wahoo Swamp, which is
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: a perfect place to retreat to. And they're in between
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: Abraham's town where he lived with about one hundred, maybe
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: as many as one hundred and sixty black seminoles, and
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: this swamp and his forces and Miconopie's and a chief
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: named Alligator and Jumper is there set up an ambush,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: and there's a lake on the right side of the road,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: and their idea is we're going to pin them against
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: the lake. They form a semicircle and Dad walks into
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: this ambush and Mikonopie calls out his name or yells
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: and shoots him in the.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: Neck like the first guy.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, shoots him in the neck, and apparently he was
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: eating a hard attack biscuit, and he yells, my God,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: and he falls off the horse and he dies, and
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: then the first volley, half of the half of the
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: command is falls to the ground. Half the command dies
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: in the first volley. One hundred and five ultimately are
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: killed that day. It's the largest loss of life on
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: the US side in any fight with Native forces until Custer.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: The fight goes on all day.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: The survivors of the initial volley kind of build a
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: triangular log breastwork, a couple of logs that they cut
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: down and they stack them three logs high or it's
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: two logs high, and they try to hide behind.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: It for some cover.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: The seminal forces are very patient. There is a little
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: hand to hand fighting, but generally they're very patient. They're
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: firing from concealed positions and they're not risking their lives.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: They lose three people, you know, they the one hundred
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: and five US forces are killed.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: They lose three god man, Yeah.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: And you know, uh they finished them off in a
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: sort of a brutal way with a knife work.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: And there's there's some screaming, and.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: Uh it's you know, this is fills the newspaper as
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: a as a massacre. And and that night those forces
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: in Abraham and Assio the meet in the in the
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: Wahu swamp and they drink all night and celebrate and party.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because he's coming back from killing time. Yeah.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: They both missions were successful. Yeah.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: The thing that confused me in your book is what
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: was up with the guys that they when they when
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: they finally come to bury the bodies, they're not even
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: get there for a while.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fifty four days.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: What was up with the guys in the little in
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: the little fort they built, that's the breastwork. Yeah, what
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: was up with the guys in the breastwork? The bodies
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: in the breastwork?
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: Oh goodness. So there's a description. There's a US soldier
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: he says it looked like the bodies looked like they
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: were toy soldiers arranged by a child in his play.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't understand what that meant. And he said
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: like some about right angles.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: So you think, imagine this triangular breastwork of logs, and
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: you've got these bodies that are in various stages of decomposition.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: I think he's referring to the odd ways that the
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: bodies were positioned.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the right angle. He said something like that, they're
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: at right angles. I couldn't tell what the hell he
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: meant by that. I mean it didn't sound it didn't
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: look great.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: I think he's saying it was weird, like it was
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: not natural. Got it, got it, you know.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: And and.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: The jaws have dropped because the muscles are deteriorated and
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: the fingers are kind of clawed up like this.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: And some say they were scalped.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: Some say they weren't the most reliable what I thought
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: that one person says there's too much deterioration to know
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: if they were scalped, which seems probable.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: And they didn't rob them.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: And I think they were sending a message, you know,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: before before day before that ambush, they set out a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: cow in the road, a slaughtered cow in the road,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: and it's split wide open in the middle of the road.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: It's a warning sign, don't come in here. We don't
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: want to do this. And even Mikonopi.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: Before he shoots him, there's there's evidence that he was
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: hesitant and he knows Dade. Dade has been there before.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: Dade has attacked native villages before. Okay, we warned you.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: Now he's the damn county name Dad County. Now we
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: got in Miami, right, that's right, Dade County County. Yeah,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: that's him, that's Day and you got.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: Custer County, is there.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: I heard that that there's new research that says it
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: wasn't exactly a last stand. Do you know anything about that?
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: That the fighting was more spread out, It wasn't in
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: one location.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't say now, but there was a Custer
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: wasn't the last that his little hill area wasn't the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: last holdouts? Okay, yeah, it was, you know, it was
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: earlier in the fight. It wasn't you know, he wasn't
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: the last guy standing. Yeah, in the there was nothing
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: that remarkable about his positioning, and it wasn't It didn't
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: build up to that moment, right, It was just part
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: of a broad part of a broader fight and was
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: rather probably to the participants, was like an unnoteworthy little spectacle.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, okay, that makes sense.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: Now that we're in the fighting. The parallels between this
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: conflict and Vietnam are just almost too much to get into,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: but on a very super official level, between the tactics
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: and the strategy, and then the duration of the conflict
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: and the cost of the conflict.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Like yeah, and a feeling from the soldiers that they
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: were maybe betrayed by Washington or not quite treat you know,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: this is what are we doing here? So if you
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: look at there's some military organizations of veteran organizations in
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: Florida and organizations that study the seminal war. And a
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: lot of the guys that were interested in it before
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: were Vietnam vets and then they were Iraq and Afghanistan vets.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: Wow huh. And I think they they see them, you know,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: they see the story as very similar.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So after this Daid fight, there aren't big there
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: aren't big, definitive battles, to the point where I know
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: that Clay had mentioned this that if you start walking
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: us through the conflict, the conflict never formally ended.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: No, no, the so the survivors as many as six
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: hundred in excuse me, in eighteen forty two, when the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: US sort of unilaterally withdraws.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: They never signed anything.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: The US says, oh, it's kind of over, and you know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: we won mostly and the few survivors it's only three hundred,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: it's probably double that.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: You know, we should be nice to them.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: It's because it's just so few, and it's really a
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: noble gesture of us to be to restrain ourselves and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: unilaterally withdraw. But that's why they call that's why they
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: call them the unconquered people, because there never is a capitulation.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: Sam Jones, who is the Mikazoki chief who really led it,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: and there he's really the big hero of the war,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: for the for the survivors, for those who stayed in Florida,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: and Asciola is kind of his one of his warriors.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: He he outwitted them, he outlasted them, and he did
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: it by setting up these villages on these little islands,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: these hammocks in the Everglades, connected by canoes, and when
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: the army came, he would just go to the next one.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: And so he had this network of refuges and just
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: let the land. Let the land kill them. You know,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: there's a third conflict, there's a third seminal war where
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: they try again and I think fifty five soldiers die
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: and it's a three year war.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: So like you, what is that? How do you describe
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: that you're wandering around and not fighting people? Yeah, yeah,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: there are some bigger battles, but the day the dade
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: mask of the day defeat, that's the largest death count.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Why do they break the wars into the why do
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: they break it into the first Seminal War, the Second
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: Seminal War, which we've been mostly discussing, like this Dade
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: fight kicks off the Second Seminal War, Yes, and then
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: the third Seminole War. Why because they're not as clean
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: as like World War one, World War two?
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Seminar War three, you know, the Seminoal Trap
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: of Florida would agree with you so well.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: They would agree that this whole breaking it up. It's
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: like these aren't different things. It's all the continuation of
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the same thing. They object to it, Okay, I don't know.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: If you go on their website, they'll say we objected this.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: We call it, we call it the Long War. They
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: call it the Long War, and they frame it as
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: a you know, continuing colonial aggression trying to get them
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: off the land, which it was.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but just for people's understanding, Yeah, when they hear
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: this first second third, can you tell can you you explain
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: a little bout what that means? Then I want to
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: get into like Osciola's capture and how that fits into
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: this chronology of these wars. But first of what does
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: it mean when someone says first, second, third, absolutely. So.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: The formal dates are eighteen seventeen, eighteen eighteen, that's the
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: first Seminal War. And that's when you have Andrew Jackson
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: coming down into Spanish Florida. There's a few fights, he
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: burns some villages, it's nothing crazy, and then he retreats,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: and it's really what he's doing there. He's pressuring Spain
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: to relinquish the territory to the United States. It's like, look,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: I had to go and do this police action. You've
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: got trouble in your borders. You can't control it. And
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: then he retreats, claiming victory. The Second Seminal War is
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: most as you say, it's the focus of this. It's
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: eighteen thirty five, eighteen forty two.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: What's what happens in eighteen forty two.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: That's when the US I think it's Tyler President Tyler.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: He declares we're done. He says, the war is over.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: We're not We're not going to fight anymore.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Got it?
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: He claims victory and withdraws the truth.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: This is the Tippy Canoe and Tyler too? Is that
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: the guy?
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: Is that him? I don't know anything about Tyler.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: I just remember his name. You're probably right, Tippy Canoe
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: and Tyler too.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you're right. Yeah, yeah, I'm not kind of
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: addicted Harrison.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: You know it'll be your next book.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, good, I'll look into it.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: And then and then and then the third effort is
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: eighteen fifty five to eighteen fifty eight, so.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: Thirteen years goes by. Yeah, and then someone's like, we're.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: Going to try again, get to root him out. Let's
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: try again. And that's when they're down in the Everglades.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: And that's the long.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: In cat and Mouse.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cat and mouse.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: It's it's navy riverine warfare and uh in the ever Glades,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: in the Everglades, and it's not much action. They find
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: empty villages, they burn the villages because.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: Then know they're common, and they just move out of
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: the way.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: Well they find them, yeah, they exactly, exactly, and they
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: have canoes and they'll just go to there another sanctuary.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. So so that's the third seminar, that's the third
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: summer to the seminal, it's just the long war, yes, yeah,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: do the seminal view. I don't want you to put
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: in your position where you're like, well you don't understand how
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: they view it, yeah, or their officials stand tell you what,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: I know, the seminole do they view that they is there?
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Story that they were stood in one?
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, because they're there. Yeah yeah, and there.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: And if you go to the I went down to
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: Florida to see a lot of the sites that are
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: in there. And if you go to the Asiki Museum,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: which is a seminal museum and what was the natural
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: Everglades but it's been drained as you know, uh, you'll see.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: It's a great museum. You should go.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: And there's actually there's a wonderful kind of cypress swamp
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: cypress dome attached to the back of it, which is
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: sort of fun.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: You can go on a walkway through.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: And but you know, they're very rich. I think they
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: may be the richest or they're one of the riches.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: They own hard Rack Cafe. They made a lot of
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: money from casinos.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I've I've been on the reservation.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: Dog cool yeah yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: So all the cars in that parking lot or like
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: you know, it's the Corvette, Porsche and the jet. The
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: Chief of the Nation has a jet. It's named after
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: Sam Jones, after Abiaka. It's called Arpieca. That's that's his
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: own personal jet. So yeah, I mean they're proud. They
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: should be proud. Yeah, they they stayed and and you
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: know the the six hundred Mi Kazuki's and the eighteen
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: hundred members of the Seminole tribe of Florida, that's that's
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: their heritage.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: Do you remember you say it in your book if
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: you remembered off top of your head, when Jackson was
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: doing what was the name of his what was the
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: name of his.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: Policy, his the Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Can you remind me what they budgeted? They had a
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: budget and it was like, it'll cost us like a
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: buck seventy right or whatever. It was like a buck
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: seventy or twenty seven bucks or something to move every
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Indian to Oklahoma. It'll like it'll be like they had
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: it narrowed down to like a per head cost. Oh,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: it's in your book.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: It's it's Jessup So Thomas Jessop Jessip was he's known
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: as the father of the modern Quartermaster Corps.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a logistics key, he's a budget logistics Yeah.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: It makes sense.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: And he comes in in the end of eighteen thirty six,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: and in his records at the Library of Congress, I
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: found this document in which he's laying out the mathematics
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: of per head cost of removal. And I don't remember
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: what it was. It was something like nine thousand a
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: person that you had. You need this many wagons and
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: this many rations over this many days, and you need
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: these boats and that sort of thing.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: The Indian removal.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: It wasn't nine thousand bucks per person.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: How much was it. It's in the oh, it was like.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: Like twenty bucks or something.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: It may have been less than that. It could have been.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: It was far less than they paid.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: You know. The war effort was ended up being forty
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: million dollars.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: Noh, yeah, hit no, I'm sorry.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: I hate to hit you with like a no, It's
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: all good.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: It was like they had calculated per just when you
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: move for the people you move for the people you
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: were going to move to Oklahoma, it was going to
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: cost you some surprisingly low amount of money, like just
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: the trip.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: You know, I know exactly what page this is on. Okay,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: it's not in the Indian Removal Act. It's it's I
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: found this in Jessp's files let's see what he says here.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: Transporting one even Indian removal to him was a numbers game.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: By his estimate, transporting one thousand Indians to west of
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: the Mississippi necessitated to thirty you're right, I mean, it's
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: not nine thousand, thirteen wagons for one hundred and twenty days,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: eighty thousand rations, two hundred ponies, and three hired hands.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: He calculated the cost to American taxpayers at twenty six
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: dollars per head, a little less than nine thousands.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: Amazing man.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it ends up being however, many multiple you know,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: it's it's the budget of the American government, the outlays
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: of the American government in eighteen thirty five or seventeen
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: point five million, and this war ends up costing thirty
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: to forty million dollars.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: It's the longest part.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: That's part of the debate too, Like it's so similar
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: to the ill defined wars that we've engaged in since
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: then of at some point people are like, this is
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: very costly, it's not working. There are morale issues, there
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: are moral issues. This was supposed to be quick. Yeah,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: you'd all promise us that this is going to be
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: over in a month.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: I mean at one point, Jessep says, the country, the
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: country that we are quote unquote conquering, is not worth
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: a tenth of the cost in lives and treasure m
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: He said, any train.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: It's like, can I quit? This was a bad idea.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: And also after he starts losing sort of or he
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: can't succeed. Can't we just allow them to stay in
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: the south of Florida. We're not going to plant there,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: and they do stay, you know, Abiaca's people and Seminal
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: and the Seminal people who stayed, they do stay in
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: the south. It will cause anybody any problem, jes what
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: I mean kind of right, He's like, do I have
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: to do this?
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: Can't we just let them stay in the south and
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: I can come, I can go home to my farm.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: At what point does Assiola get There's a really gory
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: detail about this whole thing, but like, how does Asiola
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: get caught?
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: Osciola is captured under a white flag? In I want
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: to say, November eighteen thirty seven by Jessop. There's some
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson letters in there that I haven't seen sighted
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: in which he's writing He's out of office. But he's
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: writing the Secretary of War points at and he says,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: Jessup should have captured Aziola, just take him.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: Why didn't he take him?
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: There's six letters in which he mentions this, and I
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: found in Jessop's files in the Library of Congress. Excerpt
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: from Andrew Jackson. Twenty days before he takes Asiola, Jessop
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: should have captured Aciola. Twenty days later, he captures him
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: under a white flag. This is a controversial action. This
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: is a violation of the sacred rules of war.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: And when you say he captured him under a white flag,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: you mean Jessop, Jessop's forces, they're flying the.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: I mean the meeting.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: So there's a meeting outside of I think it's near
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: Saint Augustine. It is near Saint Augustine, and there's Acola,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: and I think there's Cohajo, and there's maybe seventy Mikazuki's there.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: I think it's a group of around seventy people. And
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: Jessop had given them white fabric to be used as
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: a white flag. And he says, anytime you want to
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: talk to us and have a meeting, this flag will
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: protect you.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: We won't capture you and it's your past.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because in this story there are a lot of parlays.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: For sure, and then sometimes they're talking while they're fighting
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: at the same time.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which which you realize, like which now in our
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: own current conflict, which now goes on. I mean, you
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: always be reading news accounts of you know, like one minute,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you're on the well Maduro woman, they're on
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: the phone. The next minute's in jail, like people are.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: There's conversations happening.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: So this was one of the many conversations, and it
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: was protected under a white flag, and Jessop gave the
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: order just to seize them, as Jackson had suggested. And
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: now I don't know if he read that letter before
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: he did it now later.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: To lure him in talk and then just grab them.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: Just grab.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: He gives various justifications afterwards, but those are pretenses. And
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: they put him in the Costello de Saint Marcos, which
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: is the big Spanish fort in Saint Augustine on the
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: north side. Uh, they called it Fort Marion at the time.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: And Asila becomes a prisoner in this old Spanish castle
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: on the Atlantic, and uh, at one point there's a
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: very dramatic.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: He's he's sick.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 3: At this point, it's unclear what he had. Wickman talks
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: about this in the in the in the Bear Greece podcast,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: he probably had malaria. When he's in captivity, he gets
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: he gets head.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: Lies, the measles. I think it's what it is. Breaks out,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: people start to die. It's not a great place to be.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: I visited it, and I saw the room that they
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: were in, uh and it's like, you know, it looks
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: like the set of a Robin Hood movie or something,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: you know, stone and it's damp, and there's a little
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: tiny window called a loophole.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: We go to the room he was in.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: You can go to the room they escape from. Now
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: he didn't escape, so he may have been. And it's
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: called a casement. These are like little rooms that are
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: in kind of inside the walls. And there's a very
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: dramatic escape of twenty including the Black Seminoal John horst
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 3: Afro Indigenous heretics. He had a Semino father and a
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: black Seminal mother.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: He's there.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: The Chief King, Philip, his son Wildcat is there. Two
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: women escape and they escape out of the window, and
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: Wildcat talks about it. You have a first person account
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: from Wildcat. You have the report of the head of
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: the fort the next day he says they went out
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: the window. You have a formal board of inquiry the
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: next day, and they said they went out the window.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: So all of the sources suggest that they took the
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: forage bags that they were sleeping on. They were using
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: them for beds. They stuffed hay in them, and they
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: made ropes out of them, attached them probably to one
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 3: of the bars that were outside of that window. It's
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: the app The loophole is five feet high and at
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: its narrowest it's eight inches. The story is as Wildcat
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: tells it. Because they were sick at the fort, they
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: convinced the guards to let them go out and get
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: these special roots as medicine. What the roots were actually
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: for was for them to lose weight. And so they
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 3: fasted and they took these roots, and they waited for
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: the dark of the moon. I guess the moment in
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: which the moon has the least light. And they got
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 3: it wrong by like one day, but they basically got
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: it right, and they twenty of them escaped out of
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: that window into the ditch. It would be a mope,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: but there was no water in it, and it's forty feet.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: Below the window.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Dropped into that ditch.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: Dropped into that ditch and escaped.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: But not Aciola was sick, he tells.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: He writes jessup Or there's a letter which explains. The
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: next day, he says, hey, by the way, last night
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: they escaped, I could have, but I don't feel like it.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: I think he's ill at this point. And they take
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: him to Fort Moultrie in South Carolina with others and
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: he's sort of a national celebrity and everyone wants to
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: come visit him, and everyone wants to paint pictures of him.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: And there's a description, you know, the crowds outside of
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: the window, young and old and more especially female, come
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: to wave at him, and we had to bring him
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: to the window. So he's, you know, in some kind
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: of a weird way, a star.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: And there's not there aren't equivalents to this today, Like
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: if you go to the fact that the participates at
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: the Battle of the Little Big Horn. So here's here's
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: a group of people that I mean they kill right
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: and in hand to hand combat, they kill US soldiers.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: But there's such a moral element to it. That participants
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: at that fight become celebrities who go on tour with
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: like wild West shows and you can go see and
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: meet the people that killed the US soldiers, Like we
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: don't have there's that that's not around anymore. Like at
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, there weren't famous crowds
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: that shot a bunch of Americans that you'd go and
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: like pay money to shake their hand.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe von Braun.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying that what that went away,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: we don't have like al Qaeda dudes that do like tours.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so so how to explain this in a way
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: Asiolia is a puzzle, you know. He so part of
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: this is just capitalism, right, Newspapers want to sell copies
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: of their newspaper. You know, if you're a painter, you
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: want this is an important person, you want to.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: Go paint him.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: But there's also to a degree, you know, where what
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 3: kind of story about the war do you want to tell?
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: Do you want to tell this story like where there's
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: not there many great engagements and or do you want
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 3: to tell do you want to tell a story where
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: they're being diplomatic? Do you want to tell a story
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: where they're saying they don't want to fight. Do you
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: want to tell a story where they're you know, at
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 3: Fort Iszard. There's a meeting at Fort Izard where they
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: have a siege of a thousand US troops and the
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 3: and the mee Kazuki's and the Seminoles debate should we
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: kill them? And the mee Kazukis say that we should
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 3: and the Seminols say that we shouldn't. And the Seminoles
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 3: win and they spare them. They say, do you want
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: some tobacco? Do you want some? But that story doesn't
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 3: get through. What we get is the warrior. What we
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: get is the fighter. So that fighter is necessary for
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: us to recruit people and to project an idea of
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: the war, which is not exactly what I mean.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: Asiola is a real person.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: I don't want to overstate it, but to some degree
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 3: he's amplifying him. I know that's not exactly what you said.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 3: You said they're selling people, and you can, but there's
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 3: there's a way in which Aciola is amplified. You know,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: I'm in touch with the Seminole tribe of Florida, and
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 3: to some degree they don't like Aciola's elevation over Sam Jones.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 3: You know they want Sam Jones to get more of
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: the credit. Ociola worked for him. He's the one who
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: outwitted him. He's the one who outfoxed him. But we
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 3: get this warrior. Not to take anything away from Aziola,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: but part of the puzzle of his story was me
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: trying to grapple this question. Why is he this famous?
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 3: And even when he's dying, he's confused as to why
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 3: the President doesn't want to wants to paint his picture
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: on his death bet He says, all I did was
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: kill General Thompson. He has a sense of his fame
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: being disproportioned to his actions God, which is interesting in itself.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he just the press grabbed that name and he
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: became a symbol of that conflict. So the people involved
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: in the conflict wouldn't have named him as the primary.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: To take nothing away from him, Yeah, he's one of
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 3: fifteen people who that could have happened to.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: Does he die of his sickness? He dies violently.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: He dies of sickness at Fort Moultrie, I think in
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: January eighteen thirty eight, and he asks the doctor, uh,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: this doctor named Whedon, I would like my bones to
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 3: be buried in Florida, and there's some account that they
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: were friends.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: And he dies, he double crosses, and.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: He cuts his head off and takes his head home
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: to I think Saint Augustine. What a piece of shit, man,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: you know, I agree with that. Yeah, there's a story
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: you can find if you google it. I think it's
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 3: called the Mystery of Osiola's Head or something like that.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: There's a PDF you can find in whish there's a
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: description of how weed.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: And this is even worse. When his kids misbehaved, he
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: would hang Aciola's embalmed head or preserved head on the
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: bedstead of his children to punish them. Imagine that.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: But it was normal for people to take prizes. I
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 3: think Isiola's missing a few fingers. Both sides took kind
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: of you know, that happened.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 4: The past is a foreign country.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: The past is a foreign country.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: But the point is that they had this rapport. Yeah,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: he had a request.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree, it's kind of you know, come on.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: Man, the past is a foreign country. Yeah, is that
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: the quot country.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: The past is a foreign The original is the past
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my new favorite quote. Yeah, that's even better
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: than skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: Oh I like that.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: I'll trade you.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, you can have it. It's a famous line, cow Man.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: And it's never been found.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: It's never been found.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: At some point it's it's and this this document lays
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 3: out it's he sends it maybe to a phrenologist at
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: some point.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: You know where you're measuring, like the divots in the skull.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: You know this person has a very big bravery bump. Okay,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 3: there's actually a great story about Mark Twain visiting a
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 3: phrenologist and he goes once like in disguise, and they
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 3: say he's like the least funny person that they've ever met,
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: like a great humor deficit. And then he goes later
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: as Mark Twain. Oh yes, great sense of humor is
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 3: so great, you can tell.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: Look at this.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: Is what is Abraham's What is Abraham's death?
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 3: Abraham dies as an old man. I found or there
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: are locals in Oklahoma who knew of his grave. It's
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: never been published in a history before I found one
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 3: of them, and I found his grave.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen it. He dies in Oklahoma, dies in Oklahoma.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: Why did he go to Oklahoma when.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 3: Indian Territory where they shipped them west of Arkansas became Oklahoma.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean when did he go eight?
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: He goes most Black Semos go in eighteen thirty eight.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 3: He still has to finish some service with the army.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 3: They let him go in eighteen thirty nine. Yeah, So
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: he's there and then there's a trip the last chapter
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 3: in the book, he kind of comes back to Florida
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: and with the Chief of the or the soon to
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 3: be chief of the Nation in Oklahoma, who's Jumper's son,
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: who's like his friend, and William bow Legs Flato Miko,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: who's one of the most powerful people in Florida, with
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: Sam Jones with the Byaka, and they go up to
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 3: New York and kind of have a junket together and
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 3: see New York. You know, it's sort of how do
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: they see us? But he dies on April tenth, eighteen
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 3: seventy four, as an old man. He's you know, he
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: sees the Emancipation Proclamation. His son fights with the Union.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: Really yeah, and they celebrate a day August fourth, which
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: they call Emancipation Day, which is the day in which
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: their Creek rivals admitted all people of color as full citizenships,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: and their Creek rivals ended slavery in eighteen sixty five,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: and they would celebrate that day and have a barbecue
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: and invite all the white people and invite the Indians,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: and they would ride on horseback down to a flag
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: and a cannon would go off and they would circle
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: the flag and then you know, have a party. So
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: his life is a success.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: He shepherds his people to the west successfully, they build
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: a new life. He's got a big family, you know.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: I think dying as an old man surrounded by loved ones, like,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: that's as good as you can get.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know how old was Asie older when he
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: died young thirties, mid thirties. You know, I think he's.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: Depending on you when you have If you have his
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: birthday at like eighteen oh four, then yeah, he's early.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: Thirties, thirty three, thirty four.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah, dude. It is a great story, man, Thank you. Yeah,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I'm pretty far now. I don't know
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: halfway in.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 3: I had so much fun writing it. It was such
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 3: a journey. It was like traveling. It was like going
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: somewhere else.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: What do you work on next?
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: I'm toying around with a few ideas I'm thinking of doing.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 3: You know, this is cool Bill Bryson book. Maybe I'll
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: stay in this, John, or maybe I won't. This is
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 3: cool Bill Bryceon book called a short history and nearly everything.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: I thought that could be fun to do. If I
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 3: could find a cool twist.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: Short history of everything else, like a big history, but.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 3: Do it differently. If it was a new way to
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 3: do it differently, that could be fun. You know, I'm
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 3: interested in everything, you know, like what were the Neanderthals?
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: Like, what was it like before the before agriculture?
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: You know, Homo sapiens go back to three hundred thousand
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: years up until the Neolithic agricultural revolution twelve thousand years ago.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: They're hunting, they're fishing, and so there's just so many
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: great stories.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: I'm toying around with a few ideas.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: You know. The thing that has evaded us for years
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: is a guest to come on and talk about the Neanderthals.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: You can't find them, dude, Can you not know? I've
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: even gone on other podcasts trying to find them.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a suggestion.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 4: I know of one.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 3: There's a book that's called Kindred. Kindred does that ring about?
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: I didn't read it, but it came across my radar.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: All due respect, Yeah, I'll do a writer. I didn't
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: want a writer. I wanted a researcher.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: But I'll take a writer.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you you made me like writers.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, little research research, you know.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: I was on THEO Von's podcast, and on THEO I
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: was like, he's got a huge audience, and I'll say like, hey,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: just by the way, if you're a great Neanderthal guest,
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: let me know nothing. Yeah nothing, No, We've we've found
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: all the ones and gone to try to get them.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean people want actual Neanderthal guests would be good,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 4: that would be ideal.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, what do you all think about?
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to phrase this ask very precisely.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 5: No, we need to get with the genetic testing companies
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 5: and if anyone has like by outsize proportion, come in
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 5: with I have right, we know that.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 4: But like the I think the red hair is a marker?
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: Do you you have do you have heavy duty?
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 4: No, I've never stuck my I've never I've never dipped
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 4: my toe into the water of genetic.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: It's you know what, there's there's a book about this,
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: and it's a very very sore subject in academia to
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: talk about what parts of the globe have people that
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: have much greater representation of Neanderthal genomics or whatever. Yeah,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: it's just it's like this guy in this book. I
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: think it was in the Seven Daughters of you know,
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: I don't want I don't want to say what book
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: it was that maybe the Seven Daughters of Eve. I
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: can't remember what book. Not forget that, I don't know
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: that that's the book. There's a book about human history
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: that and he talks there. He's like, this is this
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: is a thing you do not discuss.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 4: I think just the implications of certain you know, being underdeveloped,
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: like the commercial.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you don't talk about what parts like when
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: you look at however it worked with the human diaspora.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: As the diaspora is occurring, certain branches and arms carried
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: heavy Neanderthal representation. Yes, and it's just become a taboo subject.
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not normal because there's.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: The old idea that it was bad. But then the
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: reason I'm interested in the subject is everything we find
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: out about them makes them seem smarter.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were advanced they liked art. And then there's
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 3: the Denisovans. It's like, I think I read maybe this
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: two percent what is it neanderthal? Two percent of people
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 3: have Neanderthal DNA?
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: Is it more? Then there's a trace of it.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And then there's like a ghost species that I
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 3: was reading about, where like there's this you know, it's
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: it's not normal to be the only species left in
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 3: your genus for most animals, it wouldn't wrong horns in us, right,
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: So it's so it's weird that we're the only ones
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 3: that made it.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: It's kind of a mystery, a mystery to itself.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: But oh no, there's a point I make. I think
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: it's in our in our Outdoor cookbook. Weird place to
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: make at this point. And then forward the introduction to
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: our Outdoor Cookbook, I talk about there was a time
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: when you could be in Spain, you could be in
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: northern Israel, all kinds of places, and you would see
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: a fire. Yeah okay, yeah, fifty thousand years ago, sixty
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: thousand years ago, you would see a fire burning, and
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: you'd have to ask yourself what kind of people, not
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: what tribe, m h, what what kind of what human species?
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: Might that be up there at that fire.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: The same way like a mule deer can roll up
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: on a white tail and you're like, for too, like
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: an outside either like, oh yeah, they are a little different.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: You there would be dudes running around yeah something like
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: an outsider might be like, oh yeah, they are kind
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: of different. Yeah.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: And there's like you know, and then there's interspecies like
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 3: love affairs, right.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: And they know when that was happening, ad mixing.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: Because mule deer would get it on with white tails,
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: and so I want to get a great knee and
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: a tall person on man. But yeah, I guess the writer.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: I see come back in three four years.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: How long is it taking into the book?
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: I'm game, I don't know.
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: Three years. We didn't get into your personal life. What's
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: going on? Are you married or anything?
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: Like? Single?
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: Sing? Yeah?
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: Old, I'm forty five? All right, ladies, Yeah, tell you
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: got any ideas?
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, you just just bade the trap.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: Cool, yeah, right right on my install which I don't have.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah cool. Well here if someone wanted to meet them,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah, they need to wait, like for his Neanderthal
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: book to come out. And you go to the book
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: event old, No, go to the book.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: End for this, Yeah, February third, The Free and the Dead.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: And then ask him out to dinner. The Freeing the Dead,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: The Untold Story of the Black Seminal Chief, the Indigenous Rebel,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: and America's Forgotten War by Jamie Holmes. Thanks for coming on.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Can't wait to have you back on with your next book.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: That was so much fun. Thanks appreciate it.