Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 478: The American West

Transcript

Ep. 478: The American West · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: or scouting for ELK, First Light has performance apparel to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: first light dot com. F I R S T L
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I T E dot com. All right, joined today by
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: esteemed historian American historian Elliott West. Welcome on the show.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Thank you, it's good to be here.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I've had two I've had two, well, a lot of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: run ins with you work, but I've had two main
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: run ins I want to tell you about. I'll tell
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: you about. We got to cover some stuff that I'm
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: gonna tell you about the runnings. Sure, and then I'm
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: gonna tell you that doctor Randall here. Do you guys
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: know each other? Just be just He has a genuine
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: PhD in history. I heard he told me about he
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: told how did he bring it up? Okay, so he
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: didn't be like a little thing he might not know
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: about me.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: No, No, he.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Was quite modest.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I heard there are I was reading today that there's
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: this article in the Free Pressay now that brought up
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I'll tell the article. The article was a guy, a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: climatologist that just got there's a climatologist to row to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: op ed in Free Press about publishing in the journal Nature,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: m okay, and was saying that it was talking about
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: how biased Nature is toward what they want to publish,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and they were publishing about wildfires in California and how
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: you need to de emphasize issues not fitting with climate
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: change to get published in Nature, like they know what
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: they want, right, So like this climatellogy is like absolutely,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: climate change is a big issue with wildfires in California,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: but there's all these other underlying things. Eighty percent of
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: California wildfires are human caused. Okay, where is that. You're
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: not going to write an article about changing human behaviors
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: leading to wildfires, or electrical transmission leading to wildfires, or
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the need to bury electrical lines and not have overhead
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: electrical lines due to wildfires and that's not gonna be
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of interest, right, climate change boom you're in. So they
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: wrote this article in Free Press about what they had
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to leave out, like what you need to leave out
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to catch the eye of nature to fit what they want.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: You know, what they've decided is scientific. And if it's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it's scientific, is you know, like of whale, a whale
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: takes a wrong turn and goes up a river and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: dies in a river, you better say the climate change
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: led to that whale going up that river, and then
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: it'll be in the paper. Right. But anyways, they're saying,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: they're talking about there are like sixty times more PhDs.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: The hell is here? Pull this up CRN sixty times
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: more PhDs now than in nineteen sixty No kidding, that's
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: not right.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: May I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Meaning they just hand those things out like candy, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that was my experience.
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: And there's no there's a lot more people and there's
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: a lot more people going to higher education than like
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: here hold back in the World War two.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: And a lot of fewer tenure track jobs.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Well you know how they were Here's what they were blaming.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So the point being, where is this dance? I can't
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: can you find it?
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: I mean, I don't I don't know if this is reputable.
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: This is Historynewsnetwork dot org. I have no idea who's
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: behind this organization? Are you familiar?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Sure?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, so this is it about how many PhDs are
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: running around?
• 4:16
  Speaker 6: Yeah? History? Oh well, you know what, Actually this is
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: specifically about history. History. Bachelor's degrees are falling sharply while
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: doctoral degrees in the discipline continue to rise.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: We don't really think about a guy like Randall.
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: He's not as he's not as unique as he as
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: he thought he was.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: He's got to see his new bumper stick or asked
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: me about my pH d, and then he's got that,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: he's got that plate mt pH D. Yeah, it's a joke.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: It's a joke.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: I made a terrible mistakes.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: It's a tough gig.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: It's like a big target on your back.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: A couple of things. So, oh, you know, darn thing
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: about the Darth thing. I've been thinking about the news.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I got a couple of notes I made in my
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: little note thing about that. Someday historians should write an
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: article about how much people love to talk about if
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you get, if something bad happens, you're in Yellstone National Park,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: how much people love talking about how dumb you are.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: It doesn't like I was on the plane ther day
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and so you know whatever, Like someone gets someone gets
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: run over by a buffalo in the park, What is
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the story going to be? How how dumb they were?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? People on the plane
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: behind me are like those people. You know. It's like
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, you know, I can see know
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute, animal, dude.
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: How many times of all people, I'm surprised you're walking
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: into like a thin layer of like hot spring crust
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: and falling through.
• 6:15
  Speaker 7: I just especially to walk through like three dozen signs
• 6:19
  Speaker 7: saying stop, don't you idiot?
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Don't I like my instinct is to my instinct is
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to be like, yeah, I can see that happening. The
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: guy that cooked the chicken in the hot spring, you
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: were supposed to get him on the show. Yeah, some
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: guys tie a chicken on a rope and lower it
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: in there and boil it, and everybody talks about all
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: those they should know better. I'm like, that's it. It's
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: like a totally interesting idea. Because Osborne Russell Journal of
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a Trapper, don't they talk about doing that? They do.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put this, but I want to ask you thing.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Because I endorse Born, I always endorsed Journal of Trapper
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and the thing I'll say about it is that historians
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: like it, right, Oh yes, yeah, it's regarded he was
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: regarded as spot on.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah yeah.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: And you know what surprised me. You know another book
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I read, uh that I heard that historians are a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: little incredulous. Is Tough Trip through Paradise?
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Have you heard that he played a little fast
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and loose with.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: The I've never heard that. It's been years since I
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: read it, but I loved doing I read it. In fact,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: I was overthrown through a Paradise valley the other day,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: just again, is that right? Beautiful country?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So you can cite uh, Tough Trip through Paradise and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: it's like like historians will cite Tough Trip through Paradise
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and it's regarded as okay, sure, yeah, yeah. But historians
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: love Journal of a Trapper.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: They do it really readings true a lot of a
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: lot of the things that he says in there, and
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you know, jobs with the other material that we have
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: on fur Trader and trappers and so forth. So I
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: think it's sure good.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep endorse that was I getting that. Oh
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: A lot of PhDs running around, uh, A lot.
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: Of smart people and that's somehow Buffalo brilliant.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: A lot of brilliant people get goured by Buffalo and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: get blamed for being stupid when I think that they
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: might have just been kind of.
• 8:17
  Speaker 6: Like backing up into the like.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, I'm gonna go over there
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and get close.
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: To it, backing up into Buffalo with like selfie sticks.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, Brody, hear me out, Brody. We just worked on Okay,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: catch crayfish, count stars, and we encourage And what do
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: we tell kids? What do we give tips kids? Tips
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: on hot what to do getting close to critters, how
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to sneak up on stuff, but you don't got to
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: sneak up on them.
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: It's like you get out of the car and there's
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: one stand in the park.
• 8:48
  Speaker 8: I think the I think the problem that that's underlying
• 8:51
  Speaker 8: all those stories is just that you somehow expect that
• 8:54
  Speaker 8: people go into Yellowstone and not be stupid.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 8:58
  Speaker 8: It's like it's like that's the one place where people
• 9:00
  Speaker 8: aren't supposed to break rules and just behave in all
• 9:03
  Speaker 8: you know, and all types of I feel like you
• 9:06
  Speaker 8: go anywhere in the world, people are doing stupid stuff.
• 9:08
  Speaker 8: It's just that the stakes are higher when you have
• 9:09
  Speaker 8: large animals around.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: But if here's the deal, if someone can to you,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: like like someone came to be someone here at work
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: comes and that wouldn't be surprised if this happened. I
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: come into work and someone's like, oh, you here, Chili
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: got Gord by a mule deer, right, he got God
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: by a meal deer. I wouldn't be like that, idiot.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I'd just be like what, Yeah. I would automatically impulsively
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: blame the person who got mauled by something for stupidity,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the way they do if it's in the park.
• 9:41
  Speaker 7: M hm.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Well. The story I remember, though, was the woman who
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: went up to buy some gup right in front of
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: it with a flash camera, you know, took a close
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: up of the of hiss head from the front. Sure,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: and she got Gord. What do you expect that she.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Expected?
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I can't go.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I think pictures blurred.
• 10:06
  Speaker 9: Uh.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: The third thing I wanted to talk about, but I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: can't give too many details. I got a friend who's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a prosecutor in this state. He's a county prosecutor, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: he was telling me the other day about he had
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a thing he's working on where these guys in a
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: trailer park, gotten to fight like this want being like
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: a prosecuted issue. They got to fight over a last
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: piece of fried chicken that someone then impregnated the chicken
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: with glass shards of glass, and a fight broke out
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: so bad the fight broke out, went over the fence
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: and into I ninety and shut the highway down. No,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: no another for common. Here's the everything, this super important
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: that I keep wanting to get to my body. One
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: of my main best friends from growing up and we're
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: still friends today. He comes up to our fishsheck every year.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: He has a new he's a teacher. Okay, he has
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: a business, a summertime business of he's got a roving bar.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain this, damn it. Okay, if you live
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: around Traverse City, Michigan, here's what you need to who
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you need to hire for your events. This is the
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: this is so. This is a good, very good buddy,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: My Matt DROs from growing up, we still hang out.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Was just with him and because he's a teacher, he
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: has a summertime business he created called roaming Roaming Northern
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Michigan dot com. But it's not it's roaming. No. My
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: so roaming Andi dot com. I'll revisit this in a minute.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: He has a camp or trailer that he rigged up
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: as a bar. But when you have an event, you
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: get married whatever, twenty fifth wedding anniversary bar mitzvah, I
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: don't know. Uh. You call him, you place your liquor order,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: he picks it up. Okay, so he's not selling booze.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: You buy your booze for your event like you normally would.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: He then shows up with his motor home with all
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the mixers and specialty drinks that he crafts for your thing,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: pulls his camper in and then your guests go to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the bar window to get cocktails.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: And there's no money change.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: In hands, No money changes hands. Fantastic, no money changes hands.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: He operates out of Traverse City, Michigan. Packages prices everything
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: at the website Roaming nom Roaming n m I dot com.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Matt Drose plan an event just to call him. I
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: like it, Like if you're getting married somewhere else, get
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: married there and call it roaming and go to Roamingnomi
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: dot com and patronize my good friend's business. He likes
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to hunt and fish.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: He should start a franchise take over the country.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Another thing I've been wanting to talk about. I invented
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: an old saying. I'm the only guy I know that
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: ever invented an old saying meaning, you know, like stitching
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: time saves nine.
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: Like you said you invented it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. I thought of one that you'd think
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: was old. And it has to do with like if
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: you send your kids out to pick pole beans and
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: he'd be like, pick every pole bean, and then you
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: go out and look and there's pol beans they didn't
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: pick because it's hard to find them. Or like you
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: send your wife's friend out to pick pole beans and
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: she's like, I got them all, and you go on looking.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: They didn't get them all. They didn't look carefully enough.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: The old saying I invented is is I could see
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: applications and finance and other things. A fresh a fresh
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: set of eyes will always find more beans.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Hm hm.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So right. So, like let's say someone's like whatever, I
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: don't know. You know, you can see implications and finance whatever,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: fresh set eye, Yeah exactly, but your body's like, no,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I glass that hillside good and you sit down and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you're like, you know what, buddy, fresh set eyes always
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: find more beans.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: It doesn't.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: There's a buck right over there. You don't think so
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Katie thinks is like useless. He knows my wife doesn't
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: think it's a good saying, good old saying at all.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: A couple more dress you sounds like a real dor
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: when you say you do, sound like a total dork
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: when you say it. First set eyes always find more beans, Randall, I've.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Never really thought about finding beans.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna work on it. Think about it, Phil.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Maybe Phil can workshop that that's different. I got a
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: lot more stuff written out here, but we got to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: get down to what we're talking about. Oh, so here's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the deal.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: This is.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Our esteem. Guests probably wondering why it is here, but
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have a lot of time. We're gonna get
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: to something from your state. Elliott. Were you born in Arkansas? No?
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: I was born in Texas, in Dallas.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Oh you're born in Dallas, Texas. But you're at University
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: of Arkansas.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I've been there for well, retired a couple of years ago.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: At been I've been there for forty three, forty four years.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Did they give you that? What's that good title you
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: get when you retire? But you remain in good standing Americas?
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Are you emeretis?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: I'm emeritus?
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: That's sweet man? Uh Randall have you heard of doubt?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: The best thing Randallsville tell me about his PhD is
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: when he checks a book out from the library, he
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: gets as long as he wants. That makes all while
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: those librarians chasing after all the time, and you get that, Yeah,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: librarians aren't always after him for the seventy.
• 16:20
  Speaker 8: Eight small, very very small privileges in life to make
• 16:24
  Speaker 8: it all worth it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: This is from Springdale, Arkansas. So September twenty third. We've
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: talked about this the whole bunch. We actually for a
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: while talked about that we were going to like start
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: our own, which you never got around to. But this
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: one's back on the World Champion Squirrel Cookoff, Springdale, Arkansas,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: September twenty third, in partnership with Arizona Fish and Game
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Free of vatkans Arkansas. What did I say, Arizona? I did,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: we probably can Arkansas. I feel, yeah, this is a
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: lot of work. One state is not going to have
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: a squirrel cookoff and be Arizona.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Springdale, Arkansas, September twenty third, in partnership with Oh, that's
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: why I screwed up in partnership with Arkansas Fishing Game
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: free event. It's a creative event and competitive cooking and
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: squirrel dishes must contain eighty percent squirrel and be prepared
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: on site. That's a good TIB because I've judged wild
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: game cookoffs before where it's like the game part becomes
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: an afterthought.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you could put like one squirrel in a pot
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: of chili and be.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Like that squirrel chili eighty percent squirrel, So you are
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: showcasing squirrel. They have a Facebook deal. So when you're
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: describing where to find something on Facebook, do you include
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: like Facebook dot com? Or what do you write? How
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: do you say?
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: I guess, yeah, because I guess If you don't have Facebook,
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: you can still type in this your URL and get there.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Squirrel Cookoff. We'll take you there.
• 17:57
  Speaker 6: And it's organized by Clay's good friend. Clay's going to
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: be there this year. I think he is. Yeah, I think.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: So Here's what I don't like. They're billing it. They're
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: making it like a war on squirrels.
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this squirrel has.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Caused millions of dollars of damage. Listen, don't I still
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: want people to go, But this is not about squirrels
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: being bad.
• 18:23
  Speaker 6: Come on, I don't know.
• 18:26
  Speaker 8: Typically I think of these things as a celebration of
• 18:28
  Speaker 8: the animal right.
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like house fires are caused by squirrels, They got
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: all kinds of screams things.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Listen, listen. I still want you to go to the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: squirrel Cookoff, but you need to go from a place
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of love, not from a place of go from a
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: position of love for squirrels, not from a position of
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: squirrel hatred. No.
• 18:49
  Speaker 6: I think it's also that for anyone who needs like
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: extra justification to, you know, push them over the edge
• 18:57
  Speaker 6: if they might not otherwise attend they're being reminded did.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: But the last thing you want to create is like
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: another a squirrel. There's a lot of things to love,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: like about hunting, but people like, well if I didn't hunt,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: it's kind of you.
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: And they're like going after him the way people go
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: after coyote.
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exact things like that. It's strange.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know to do about all rearing endorsement. No, listen,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I am all four. Do you see me pounding this table.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I'm all for the squirrel Cookoff. I just think that
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: it has been. It's from a place. I love that
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: it approach the right. Never in my life seeing a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: squirrel and been like, dah, damn it a squirrel. Do
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean?
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: You need to go down there and enter a pine
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: squirrel recipe with Jimmy.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: That'd be great idea. No one else pine squirrel carried away.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I still like, I'm still mad at my mother for
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: cutting some of the oak trees down in her yard
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: because of squirrels, squirrel damage, the squirrel habitat uh. We
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: recently had an episode where we were with the founder,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the creator of the Merlin app at Cornell. Someone had
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: a hot tip about the Merlin app. Get a bluetooth
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: speaker and play back bird songs. This is very effective.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I wish would have brought it up. I don't know
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: if they do. They frown on it. Maybe they frown
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: on it at Merlin. We'll have to see if they
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: write in meaning it works. It's very effective to call
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in birds. In fact, we would so the over day.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I'll sitting there with my boy in a little pop
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: up blind. I'm gonna pull this up. I got a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: gripe with the Merlin app too, Just and I know
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: they listened to the show it. This is the only
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: bird I never they It does not pick up a
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: It won't pick up a grade. JA listen to this.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: So here's from my Merlin app. I'm gonna turn it up.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: This is a recording I made this weekend. So that's
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a pine squirrel. Okay, but listen to them again. I
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: hit him again and again and again with Merlin. Listen,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: care for the that's a great jay. Listen. It doesn't
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: get it. It registers it. You see it show up. Obviously,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: it will not identify that thing. It's the only failure
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I've ever seen Merlin.
• 21:23
  Speaker 7: I wonder if it's too short of no.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: He was going boom boom boom, and there's probably other vocalizations,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: but it will not detect that vocalization.
• 21:33
  Speaker 7: That squirrel is really really upfront and loud.
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: I wonder if it's like yeah that and it's audio.
• 21:41
  Speaker 7: Clashing with a lot of the frequencies.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Is my guest, you think so?
• 21:45
  Speaker 7: I think so.
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: It comes from an audio engineers.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Here's my kids. Here's what you want to hear my
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: kid criticizing.
• 21:50
  Speaker 7: Me ursus, you're so what.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: You're so slow. He didn't like when we go to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: pick off a bird. He didn't like how long it'd
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: take me to activate the app. It was frustrating. He
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: thought you would just like let it run for hours
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: on end, and I didn't like that approach.
• 22:13
  Speaker 8: I mean, it seems like if you're playing on a
• 22:16
  Speaker 8: bluetooth speaker, if there's someone else in the area using
• 22:19
  Speaker 8: the Merlin app, that it could cause a feedback loop
• 22:21
  Speaker 8: where all of a sudden there's a.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Merlin's too smart. I've played bird, I've played recordings, and
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I haven't done it much. I've played recordings and something
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: g's lost interesting. So if you play, we can do
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know, try it right now, But if you
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: play Merlin a recording of a bird, it won't flag
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the bird. I don't know if it's just because things
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: are too compressed. If something's like too compressed, Phil probably
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: answer that, what do you think of that is? Phil?
• 22:53
  Speaker 7: Honestly, that kind of baffles me. I feel like it
• 22:56
  Speaker 7: should be able to pick it out.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: However, we have a called the Bird Song Bible, and
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: you type in bird calls and it's going through like
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a little chintzy little there's like a speaker baked into
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: the book and it might be that that speaker just sucks.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but Merlin won't identify those birds. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I could run around with this. I could go into
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: any area with pine squirrels. And we did it for
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: we were just messing around this weekend. We would just
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: walk into a spot and play that squirrel and just
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: no sooner he shut up alst in the woods just
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: come alive with like squirrels replying to it. Years ago,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I was reading a thing where they they're working on
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: his study with vervet monkeys who they have these different
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: warning calls. These researchers realizing that they had that they
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: have a warning call for a threat on the ground,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and then they have a warning call for a threat
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: from an avian predator, and they seem to have a
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: different noise they make on the ground in the air.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: And they would record the calls and play it and
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: monitor what evasive actions they took. If it's a thread
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: on the ground, they would do one thing like bust
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: into the tree. If it's an overhead threat, they would
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: respond differently to it to like reduce their risk from
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: a harpy eagle or the hell praise on them. I
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: don't remember what it was the praise on them. It
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a harpy because that's South America, but these
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I think are Africa. Anyways, you could burn out. You
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: could burn them out on a monkey. If you record
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a monkey doing a warning call and then start playing
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that monkey to his buddies all the time. After a
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: while his buddies, he loses credibility with his buddies.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: The monkey he had cried eagle.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the monkey that cried and he's the monkey
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: that cried wolf, and you could play it where everybody's like, oh, Bob,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: he always is doing that. An insurance so I was
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: using the term inherent vice, which is one of my
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: favorite movies. I like it. It's one of those rare
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: instances where a movie is so much better than a book.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Thomas Pinsion's Inherent Vice was made into a film, which
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: was a wonderful movie. And we were talking about when
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: we had David grant On. I think that's when we
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: had David grant On. We're talking about the concept of
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: inherent vice, which is a nautical term. Someone wrote in.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: A guy named Thomas wrote in from He's from an insurance.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: He's a marine insurance specialist got to say his name. Sure,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: he's the president of Alan Armott Agency, Inc. Marine Insurance Specialists.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: He says, Steve refers to inherent vice as things you
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: can't control, like getting wet. Inherent vice is the ability
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of a thing to destroy itself health, fruit can rot,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: marijuana can actually light itself on fire, metal can rust.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Getting wet would not be under inherent vice. Getting wet
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: is an external.
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: Factor caused by an external factor.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Caused by an external factor. So like the idea of
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: inherent vice and shipping, if the load gets wet, it's
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: not like, Ah, that just happens. Someone screwed up when
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: he gets wet. Then he goes on to say, never
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: thought I would be the type to email a correction.
• 26:36
  Speaker 9: Uh.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Someone else rode in with another one. When we had
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the writer David Grant on about the wager, we talked
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: about sayings that come from naval, the naval world. He says,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you guys fell down a rabbit hole on ship terms
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and sayings on the podcast with David Grant. Here's another.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Do you believe this?
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: I'm wondering, I'm looking it up.
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: I didn't look it up.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: He's saying that the word ship comes from the old days.
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: I think he's off. You look it up origin Old English.
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: I don't know how to how to pronounce it. S
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: c I T t E of Germanic origin.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe bags of manure. Maybe maybe our maybe our steam
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: guests has heard of this, bags of manure.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I'm dealing it a lot, Okay.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: If you stored bags of manure within the depths of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: a ship, they could get seawater on makes them unusable.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: They would write s h I T on bags of
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: nerve store high in transit.
• 27:49
  Speaker 7: I don't know that sounds fake. Do you think it
• 27:52
  Speaker 7: sounds fake?
• 27:52
  Speaker 8: I've heard that before, but I don't. I mean the
• 27:55
  Speaker 8: the etymology.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah it doesn't. It doesn't match up with but the
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: google because.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: The German is shi.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Germans were using that word for us words.
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: Ship first originally appeared around one thousand years ago and
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: can be traced back to the old Norse origin skit
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: skeeta skeeters.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: I'm just saying, there's like this gate.
• 28:22
  Speaker 6: This guy might be wrong, but I kinda like this
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: should feel.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Pull it out of the show, leave it. Someone wrote
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: in out that Krin likes this one. I don't know.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Well, if you.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Were tasked with the decision of picking four American authors
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: to be etched into the side of a mountain. Who
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: would they be. I'll just leave that one hanging for
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: for listeners.
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: Elliott West and rand.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I was gonna tell you, yeah, uh, did you know
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: that Randall reviewed your work? Hemagined they I.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Did tell him that.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Let's start with that. Randal set the scene for us. Well.
• 29:06
  Speaker 8: I was in a graduate seminar taught by Dan and
• 29:13
  Speaker 8: each week, each week you had to review a book
• 29:16
  Speaker 8: and from a different period of time or I think
• 29:20
  Speaker 8: some of them were probably thematic.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Each week, yep, you read.
• 29:24
  Speaker 8: So everybody in the seminar reads a book and reviews it,
• 29:27
  Speaker 8: and then you get together on Monday or Tuesday or
• 29:30
  Speaker 8: whenever the classes and you just explain your book and
• 29:34
  Speaker 8: Dan kind of pieces them all together and explains how
• 29:37
  Speaker 8: they're in conversation with one another. And that was kind
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: of the structure of those seminars. But one week I
• 29:43
  Speaker 8: had the pleasure of reviewing The Last Indian War, probably
• 29:48
  Speaker 8: two years after it came out, and stuck with me.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: So, I would you like to share a passage with us?
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Mm?
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, you proposed this to me didn't you that
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: you'd share as.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: The passage.
• 30:01
  Speaker 8: There's just there are a lot of things that are
• 30:03
  Speaker 8: attributed to me in the course of a conversation having
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: to do with my educational background that really have never
• 30:09
  Speaker 8: once escaped my mouth.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: So but yeah, Crin, if you'd like to know, I'm
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: gonna deny his Montana PhD license plate.
• 30:18
  Speaker 9: Now.
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a memorable book. I think there are a couple. Uh,
• 30:26
  Speaker 8: I just I appreciated. I always appreciate books that make
• 30:30
  Speaker 8: a story that you think is a story about one
• 30:33
  Speaker 8: thing speak to bigger stories and bigger narratives. And so
• 30:37
  Speaker 8: that was one of those books that kind of opened
• 30:39
  Speaker 8: my eyes to how the past is all and you know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 8: different parts of the past during conversation with one another.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you?
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have it pulled up?
• 30:50
  Speaker 7: No?
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Don't?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Should should read it? How long is the passage?
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: It's I just shared. I don't need to read any
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: of this.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: No, no, you don't. You know what you don't need
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: to Randall? Was it a negative review, No, No, it
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: was quite complimentary.
• 31:06
  Speaker 8: I actually I only sent along the the excerpt excerpts
• 31:11
  Speaker 8: from it because I I thought you might find them
• 31:13
  Speaker 8: useful in preparation for our conversations.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Why you shared them?
• 31:16
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, No, it wasn't a show and tell. If
• 31:20
  Speaker 8: it was, I would have had a I would have
• 31:22
  Speaker 8: had a photo of the original with the sticker at
• 31:24
  Speaker 8: the top.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I thought you might find it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Oh you're trying to help me out as a host. Yeah, yeah,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
• 31:31
  Speaker 8: Instead, I just put another great, big target on my back.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: I guess. So, elios, let's start out, how many when
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: you look at your career as a historian and you've
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: been in you've been in the biz, how long fifty
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: years do you do you measure it? Do you measure
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: your career as a historian in terms of how many
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: books you've written?
• 32:04
  Speaker 6: Like?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like, how do you how
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: do you sum it up? Right?
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Well, that would be one way I think. I think
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: I think more in terms of teaching. Okay, how many
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: teaching the public University of State university, so you have
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: big classes. I tried to figure out. In fact, I
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: dedicated a book of a few books ago to my students,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: and I said, I and figured out it's probably had
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: somewhere between ten and twelve thousand students. Really, in terms
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: of I've also worked.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of influence, that's a lot of you
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: have them for a lot of hours.
• 32:38
  Speaker 6: I do.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Indeed, they would confirm that yes, captive, Oh my god,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: it's like I ever shut up, you know. But he
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: also I try to work. I've tried to work a
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: lot with public school teachers to encourage, you know, better
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: teaching of American history.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I've had one hundred of them over the years, and
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: they've had, of course, each one of them has said,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of students.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: How do you think, how do you interact with public
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: school teachers in what capacity?
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Well, there are different programs. One that I continue to
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: work with the Guilder Laherman Institute in New York. It's
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: a wonderful institute to encourage a good teaching of American history.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: And they sponsor seminars over the years, and I've done,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: oh gosh, probably ten or fifteen of those. And you
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: meet with a week for a week with school teachers
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: from all around the country, since some from abroad, and
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: you choose a topic. I taught one I was mentioning
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: a moment ago. Taught one in Missoula for four years
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: on Lewis and Clark. So you have teachers come from
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: all over the country, all over the world, and you
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: try to have the seminars and in the place that
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: you're teaching about, you know. So we would talk about
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark and sort of pick that expedition apart,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: and then on a Wednesday, we'd go up a little
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: low pass to the uh you know, to travelers Rest,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: and then up to the old Pass and then back
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: and sort of around the country. So it's a it's
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: a great way to encourage students to identify, not just
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: in terms of new material, but you know the place itself,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: because you really can't, especially Western history, you can't understand
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: the story if you don't don't know the place. You know,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: if you can't go there.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: What do you what do you think is wrong with
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: how American? You know? If you said to be to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: do better at teaching American history, where do people fall
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: short in teaching American history in your in your view.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Well, until fairly recently, of course, you leave out a
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: lot that's pertinent. Uh. I think we need to bring
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: in more areas like environmental history, the kind of thing
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: that your podcast deals with a great deal beyond that,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I think you need to the you need to talk
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: about the larger contexts, you know, to take something to
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark. It's a fascinating story. It's an American epic,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like an American creation story. Almost You're
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: caught up in this sort of a mythic pattern where
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: you think this is an absolutely unique event, but in fact,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: you know, this is part of global exploration, you know,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and something that was happening all over all over the
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: planet Earth. And these were just two guys among many
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: who we're doing this. You didn't understand in terms of
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: what what does the expedition teach us about Indian peoples
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: at that time? What does it teach us about science
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: of that time?
• 35:28
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: So it's a big story. It's a big story. It's
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: a distinctly American story. And the journals, of course are
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: a masterpiece of American literature. So it's our story, but
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: it's also the world's story, and I think it helps
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: to put all of American history in that larger context
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: if you can.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: You know, earlier I mentioned there's two areas where I
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: had kind of the main two areas where I brushed
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: up against your work over the years. Is years ago,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I was going to write a book. I wanted to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: write a book about the nets Person War. Oh really yeah,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Well I started working on it, my little what I
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: was doing, and I got going on it. I was
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: just going to walk that whole well, I use my packcraft.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I just had a backpack with packraft in and I
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: got started on it. I was going to walk and
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: pack raft that whole route, and I got going on it,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: but just the the time, commitment and other things prevented me.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: So I read your book at the time, your book
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: on the nets Pers War the other area, and this
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: is kind of where one of the areas where I
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: want to jump in talking to you. I talked about
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: it on the show. Even you had an essay. It
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: was collecting one of your books. It was one of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: your books that had like there was a collection of
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: four or five bigger pieces. You had an essay about
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: how old European involvement and influence on the Great Plains,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: how far back that went right? And in it you
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: make the point and this kid just kind of I
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: guess maybe I was aware of it but hadn't thought
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: about it just blew my mind you're like when Lewis
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and Clark stepped down into the Great Plains, there were
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Native Americans on the Great Plains at that time who
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: had been to Europe and met the King of France
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and came back home again on the Great Plains at
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: the time Lewis and Clark, and in the American imagination,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: it's like that they it was just that they went
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: into this place, this untouched, unhistoried. Yeah, and then you
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: got into just the I think it was hundreds of
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: years if you go back to people like these kind
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: of like offshoots of the Coronado Expedition, that they were
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: coming into an area that had been deeply influenced.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they what you were talking about, these Indians
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: from the Kansas area. Actually Kansas in Missouri had been
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: to the court, the Court of France course of the
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: fifteenth Now that was a but that was in seventeen twenty,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: seventeen twenty five, seventeen twenty six. This is a long
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: time before Willison Clark. So the image I love to
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: imagine might have happened was that at the time that
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: we the American you know, the East West Frontier was
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: edging its way into the interior. That's what Lewis and
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Clark would you'll be part of if you go back
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: to when that when this was seventeen twenties. Yeah, there
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: was a governor, territorial governor of coinial governor of Virginia,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: you know, who had a group of people he called
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: a the the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, and they
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: would they loved to go explored the far west, right
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: and they and he would come back with this reports
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: of this this magnificent river they had found in this
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: beautiful valley that was the it was a shin of door,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: you know. And these are people who were you know,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: they were just south of Washington, d C. And they
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: were talking about, you know, penetrating deep into the American interior.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: At the very time that they would be doing that
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: and talking about going back home, you know, I'm sitting
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: around drinking, drinking port smoking cigars at the very times
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: that they're talking about going to the far West, there
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: might well have been Indians in central Kansas reminiscing about Paris.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: The Women's So it's so that's that's the kind of
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: thing that I'm talking about. The larger the larger context
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark were not entering this plate of Lewis's
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: famous quote, you know when they set off, and that's
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: from the Mandan villages, you know, the and where the
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: foot of civilized man has never trodden. No, there's been
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of trotting going on before that.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: What do you think was the biggest at the time
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark were encountering on the northern plains, tribes
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: and and you know, in all fairness, they encountered people.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: They encountered people who hadn't directly interacted with euro Americans
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: or Europeans.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Person example, and this person listen, Clark with the first
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: white people the this person had.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Met yet they had horses. So what what do you
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: think was the biggest prior to the actual arrival of
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: what was use Europeans. I guess, prior to the rival
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: of Europeans, this thingy iwa think about we had these
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: there's these three huge impacts that that that preceded the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: actual presence of Europeans would be horses, metal and disease, right,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, would you is that a fair statement? And
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of those which do you think when when Lewis and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Clark was a contact people. Which of those influences was
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: most was probably most impactful in shaping what they experienced
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: as you.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Know Native America at that time.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at that horses horses, like they were seeing something
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: different than what had been.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: That's right, well, and disease, you know, Lewis and Clark
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: arrived when they when they go up through North Dakota
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: what's today North Dakota, they talked about coming across these
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: abandoned villages, a place called Double Ditch today. Well, those
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: were abandoned because of smallpox that had appeared seventeen eighty,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: you know, twenty years more than twenty years before they
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: were there devastated. There is, twenty thousand Indians in the
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest died of smallpox because of it. That epidemic
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: this started in the east, highly influential with the of
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: the revolution. One of the reasons that we were able
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: to hold off against the English is the English troops
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: are devastated, you know, by malaria and by smallpox. So
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: that was a great influence that preceded that preceded them.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: But so of course is maybe at least as much.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: In fact, there's a connection there. Smallpox, of course have
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: been in the western hemisphere for a long form, the
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: very early period, from the period of period of Cortez,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: and it made its way all the way under the
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: American Southwest quite early. And so the sept peoples of
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the Southwest, Comanches and Apaches and Navajoes and others, have
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: been devastated by smallpox for decades, decades before Lewis and Clark.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: But in seventeen eighty it swept up from the south
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: out of Mexico and went from the east coast down
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: to Mexico and then up into up into the Americas,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: and it hit the southwest again. But then then it
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: goes all the way up the Missouri Valley, it goes
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: all the way in the Pacific northwest, devastating, devastating the
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Indians there. Why why then, and not before horses courses smallpox.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: When you catch smallpox, we have about ten days to
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: transmit it to another person. So when it arrived first
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: in the Southwest early on, people's natural response was to panic,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: run away, run away, right, But it's literally running. They're
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: on foot, and they by the time they reach these
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: you know, virgin soil. By the time they reach people
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: who have never been infected by this they're dead or
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: they can no longer pass it along. So it was
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: the slow movement of these people out of the southwest
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: that that allowed the people farther north to be free
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: of it. Then they came than the horses. Yeah, horses
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: spreading first, that are around sixteen eighty, But by seventeen eighty,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: seventeen eighty, the horse cultures had flourished all the way
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: had developed and flourished all the way across what's today,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: you know, the far away with the great planes in
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: the Pacific Northwest. And so people now when they panic
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: and they flee, they're doing it on horseback. And the
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: horses allowed the transmission of smallpox and other diseases in
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: ways that had never been before. So the horse, in
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: that sense, you know, one on the one had a
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: great benefit to these people, allowed them to revolutionize their life,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: you know, to this huge burst of power and creativity
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: and expansion. But it also killed them.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm thinking about as you talked about
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: that is the COVID exactly, COVID in the airplane.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right, you know, exactly right.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: You could have an epidemic go from isolated to global,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: and I don't know month.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Weeks really in thinckt I've I've written a recent article
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: on that, comparing uh the covid epidemic today to the
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: cholera epidemics in the in the nineteenth century and making
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: exactly that exactly that point. So this is really what
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: I was talking about a moment ago about the horses
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: in smallpox. That's really one step in what has of
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: course become increasingly a fact of life. We're talking about
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: the shrinkage, the effective shrinkage of the world through transportation.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Horses were an important part of that. But that shrinkage
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: of course continues. So these poor folks in Wuhan, China
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: catch this disease, however they got it, uh three weeks
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: later it's in uh it's in the seattle. Yes, it's
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: just really quite astonishing, and you see it, of course
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: over and over over West Nile virus just you know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: name a disease that just hit this country in the
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: last one hundred and fifty years, and that's how it
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: got here.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's an interesting point. The way the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: horses did that. Do you think that we've talked about
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: this in the past, that the way so horses being
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: introduced by the Spanish. Was in your view, was that
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: incident the Pueblo Revolt? Was that really in your mind?
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Was that really sort of the beginning of the spread
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: of horses to all the nomadic what would become the
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: nomadic bison, you know, the equestrian buffalo hunting tribes of
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the of the Great Plains. Like do you think if
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the Pueblo Revolt hadn't happened, would that have been delayed
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: significantly by one hundred years? Or it seems like a.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Very tidy, Yeah, neat and tidy explanation.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It isn't it isn't It clearly had
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: a very important impact that there had been the spread
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: the horse. Horses had spread before sixteen eighty, but it
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: was very localized command you said, Nava holes had them
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: and used them very effectively, rating on the web levels
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and in the in the Spanish, So there it had
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: sort of I think it was sort of a leakage.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: You know, the Spanish worked really hard to try to
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: control those horses because they knew what they were. The
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: horses allowed people kind of mobility and the power to
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: maneuvering that they had never had before, and they could
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: be used very effectively against the Spanish, and so they
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: were you know, it was it was a capital offense,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: the capital offense to sell a horse to an Indian.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, i'd read that. But ever i'd read that
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: they had tried that they really wanted to control information
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: about horses and control dissemination of horses.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's absolutely true. But they you can, of course,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: by the time possible, But go ahead sixteen eighty. It's
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: very clear. You know, the record shows very clear, very
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: clearly that after sixteen eighty, horses spread very rapidly to
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: the north, and they follow exactly those trading routes that
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: the preseed Columbus. It's just just traditional trading routes that
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: go up to first up through the Rockies incidentally interestingly,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: then into the Pacific Northwest. Nes Purse, you know, the
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Shoshotes and nis Purse had horses within thirty years of
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: the Weber revolt. Thirty years, that's incredible. And then they
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: spread from there out onto the plains. So so within
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: one hundred years you go forward from sixteen eighty to
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: seventy and eighty, horse cultures have developed everywhere in the
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: West that they eventually would. It's done. It's a done
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: deal in one hundred.
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: Years by the time for that they made the horses
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: made it up here to say Montana, what like, how
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: did the tribes here? What was their understanding of where
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: they came from? Like what was like they had to
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: have some story or history about where these things that
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: had never been there before.
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're also the traditionals develop of course about where
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: they are and quite often not universal, but quite often
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: it's sort of a gift from God. And they're described
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: as things like uh uh, like elk dogs, elk dogs
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: because like an elk, they're big and powerful, right like
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: a dog. They're domesticated. That's so I say, elk dog.
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but there was there is no knowledge of them
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: coming into some other culture, some other place.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Just eventually there were It's quite clear where they're coming from.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: You once once it develops Lewis and Clark when they
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: meet the Shoshone, that famous meeting, you know, where Chicagoya
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: meets her brother and they're starving for horses. They have
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: to have horses. They gone with canoes up the Missouri,
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: you know, and to the to the to the what
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: to get down the other side. They've got to have horses,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: and so the Shoshones were obvious sources and once they
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: met them. But if you read those journals, during their
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: meeting with the Shoshonees, they report seeing Spanish brands on
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: some of the world. These are horses that notre live
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: from the They weren't simply descendants of horses that have
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: been spread northward. They had they had those particular horses
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: had come from New Mexico. Seriously, Yeah, so this is
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: a you know, it's a very vigorous vigorous Uh.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: That's so weird. I've never I feel like that'd be
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: like am that'd be like a real talked about aspect
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: of Lewis and Clark. I never heard that.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: It's true. Just read read the journalis Yeah.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Spanish brands horses, horses up there.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Ye huh in this case Montana.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to stay on a little bit
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: of this. I want to talk to you. You've written
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: a lot about mining. I want to talk about gold
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: rushes and mining too, but I want to stay on
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: this theme for a minute here. And you have a
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: new book out which I have where is it sitting
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: right in front of me? Continental Reckoning, huge book. It
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: is yeah, the American West and the age of expansion.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I make a habit, unlike most hosts. I make a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: habit of saying I read it, or I didn't read
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I haven't read it. However, I read the index and
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: then use that to go in and check little certain
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: things out. And I got to last that I was
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: land never reading some passages you had about the Indian
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Wars in the West, and you kinda you treat it
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: as victory there for the victory there for America was
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: just a certainty. And not only that, but we talked
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: about what we spent on the Indian Wars relative to
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: other military endeavors. The human cost of the Indian Wars
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: relative to other military endeavors really puts into perspective, meaning
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: we you know, the Union, I can't remember what you had.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: I should find I should have taken a better note.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: But I mean the Union in a day in the
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Civil War, would I think that maybe this is how
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: this support whatever you use. There were certain days during
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the Civil War the Union lost more soldiers and they
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: were going to use than they were going to lose
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: in the Indian Wars of the West.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: That's right, and Tetam of course which is the bloodiest
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: battle of the Civil War, the bloodiest battle in American
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: history in terms of losses. Now, this is strict, this
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: is just on the Union side. Just didn't We're not
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: talking about the Confederates. The Union lost more men in
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: in this two square mile area over about nine hours.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: Then they lost over thirty years and two million acres
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: square miles in the far West.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: That it just blows mica the amount of mental energy
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I have spent on the amount of mental energy I've
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: spent on how Coster managed to get a couple couple
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: hundred guys killed one day, and then you go and
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: look at the Antietam like that'd be like a better
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: place to spend your time. It's like, not how did
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: a guy lose a couple hundred, but how do you
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: lose thousands of people?
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right in a blink of an eye.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but really it does it occupies this like I
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I know they're big Civil War buffs,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: but just it's see, I guess because it went on
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: so long. But you tell me, you kind of painted
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: like it was sort of a light lift and ere
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: that you get into. No, I mean just because the
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: numbers like I didn't realize you were saying. You had
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: to think that by the time some of the I
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: think it was by the time a little Big Horn
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: or by the time of the Nez Perce War in
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest, whites outnumbered Indians sixty to one. I mean,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: it was just I guess some of these statistics put
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: in the perspective that it was probably not a thing
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: like will we win. It's just like how quickly will
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: we do this? Like how quickly will we perform this
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: thing where we've set out to do? Yeah, you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't a when you just look at the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: numbers of people moving into the west, it was just overwhelming.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: That's that's the point of course that I was trying
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: to make there. Indians in the Far West were defeated.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: The military came in, you know, when things got really
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: nasty and they had to step in. There was any
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: other way to avoid it, to control this particular group
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: of Indians. Most of of course didn't resist, like the
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Lakotas or commanities, realtives. Most just sort of, you know,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: saw riding on the walls. Okay, you know, we'll deal
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: with it. But if you look at in those terms.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: Indian wars are just I like I use a metaphor
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: of an Indian war. Indian wars were like a period
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: at the end of a long paragraph. Wasn't the paragraph?
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: The paragraph was this this juggernaut of settlement that comes.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: In, Yeah, and then like like you mentioned the disease issue,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: and then I was just like depopulating people and taking
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: and eliminating cultural structure, eliminating cultural memory, and then you
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: have this fragment that just gets overwhelmed by immigration.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Right, that's right. And I think I mentioned before the
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: need to put this in the larger context of environmental history,
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: because what this was in these years, the period that
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: I cover here, which is about eighteen forty eight or
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: fifty two, about eighteen eighty was the greatest environmental transportation transformation,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: uh convulsion by far in American history. And I would
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: argue that there are very few times in world history,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: you know, when an area that large have been so
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: completely transformed, so so massively trans environmentally transformed. And that
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: means of course that the whole, the whole way of
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: living that Indians had had before that, you know, was uh,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the legs were cut out from it.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: Root.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: You can't if you're if you're a hooting gathering people
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: in California, just.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: The environmental destruction.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure, we just remake it. And you know we uh,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: the elimination of the bison and replacement of the replacement
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: by by cattle, by ranching. You know, that's that's an obvious,
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: dramatic example of it. But that could be that story
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: could be told over and over and over and over
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: throughout the throughout the far West. We simply transformed. We
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: we remake the world environmentally when they come in, not
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: just a number of people, it's this you make a
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: new world. And this world is not the world that
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Indian people's had had been living in for generations, uh
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: and knew how to deal with and how to support themselves.
• 57:14
  Speaker 7: It's over.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: You know, what are you going to do? There's there's
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: nothing you can do.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I see your point, even outside of the US
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: military involving themselves in certain issues like what really can
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: be done?
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Nothing? Yeah, we've had to be overwhelmed.
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: You.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: We've had Dan Florees on the show a couple of times,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: and he made a point about wildlife. Wildlife in the
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: West specifically, which he spends a lot of his energy
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: on and career, on and and telling the story about
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the destruction, He'll say, I've looked for it globally and
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and globally, I can find nothing that compares to the
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: destruction of wildlife. That's right, and that occurred in the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: American wise.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this wonderful new book of dance, of course, wild
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: New World. He makes that point over and over and over.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've looked.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: It's not there, not there, It's just And that's that's
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: an aspect of what I what I was just talking about.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what, uh is it fair to say that you're
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: that's first book the last? The Last Indian War? Is
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: that the name of the book?
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: I remember that, right, I read it years ago. Uh,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: lay that out for us. Why why do you feel that,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: you know, why that name? What's the significance of that
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: as the last one?
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: I should start by saying that I am terrible coming
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: up with titles, absolute absolute worst.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: You know, so I make titles for things don't even exist.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: I bet they're better than my uh my editor at
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: the Oxford guar To Press came up with that. I thought, oh, yeah,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: that's a good I called it. First of all, because
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: I think it was. If you think of a war,
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: you know, as a as an ongoing conflict between massed forces,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: it was, but there was no other Indian war in
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: the far West like that that fits said definition, because.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: The feeding eighteen seventy seven, is that right.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: Eighteen seventy seven. Yeah, it fighting goes on, of course,
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: like in the southwest of the Apaches. You know, they're
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: not defeated until eighteen eighties. But is that a war?
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: You know, it's more like a police action. You know,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: they're they're like gangs, right, They fight for a while
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: and they come back into the reservation, rest up, You'll
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: get some food, fathen their horses, and they go.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Back out just small groups.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, the next Perst War, you know, if
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: you if you've forget about it, h you know, it
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: was this ongoing, concerted effort over many months included sort
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: of that also both sides, you know, engaging each other
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: like in.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: Any seasoned civil war generals. That's right. Yeah, getting defeated.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: This purse just given I just kicked his rear. He
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: was he was wounded severely wooted twice in his career.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Once was at Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg. He was up
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: there at that angle. You know, he was with the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: group you know that met the Confederates coming up and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: pick his charge, shot on the shoulder, and then he
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: was severely wounded at the Battle of the Big Hole
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: against the against the purse.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Can you lay out how that? Can you lay out
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: what that war was, how it started? I mean, you
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: could do the big version of how it started. But
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: then also it kind of had they had a beginning
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: one day, right.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the first thing to say about it
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: is that, as I mentioned a moment ago, Lewis and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Clark were the first white people, the first your your
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Americans for them ever to meet, and in their own minds,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: they they formed a treaty with the Americans, and they
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: promised to keep the peace with them. They promised to
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: fight on our side against any any common enemies, and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: in their own minds they kept that treaty from that
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: on that point will be eighteen o six.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: I mean they they came to an agreement with Lewis
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: and Clark, like there was an exchange of gifts, and
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: they came to be like, Okay, we're good.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 7: We got a deal.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, of course, Lewis and Clark had set
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: out there. One of the things they were told to
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: do is to make these sorts of arrangements to them
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: to open up trade and to sort of pacify the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: pacify the Pacific Northwest, which will allow the flow of
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: trade up there. So they approached it with this and
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: they said, this is what we'd like to do, you know,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: and the new persaid, great, that's great. Well, they don't
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: have exchange gifts. The news person to this day are
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: will tell you that there was a child produced out
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: of that treaty arrangement from William Clark, a man who
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: grew up named Daytime Smoke, who ended up fleeing with
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Chief Joseph h and dying in Oklahoma. William Clark's son,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: did he Yeah, yeah, I didn't know.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: So Clark's son was in Clark's son was present for
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the Nesberust War.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: They just per se that that that's right, and they
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: argue that, you know it's part.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Of it, you know, that would put him in that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: will put him in the seventies.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, old man. And as was true
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: of virtually what was that old man's name, Daytime Smoke.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, and he had light colored hair.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, he said he had light light colored hair.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: I'm a little doobie about that because, uh you know, well,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: you know Clark had red hair, and so the point
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: was that this was and theer make a big point
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: of that, Well, this guy had hair just like well,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: red hair of course is a recessive gene. So you
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: only get red hair if both of your parents have
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: that in their genes. Right, how in the world did
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: this this woman have red hair?
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 6: God?
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: So anyway, it's.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're questioning in questioning the hair color, are you
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: questioning the whole premise?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: No, I think there's something to it. This is a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: standard arrangement, you know, when you make a deal like that.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: Uh you it's like it's like royal houses in Europe.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: You know, the prince prince from this house marries a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: princess in that house because you're sealing this deal between them.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: And this is the standard standard procedure among Indian peoples.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: And we know, you know, in terms of producing children.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Wellim Clark really got down to business once he got back.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: I had a bunch of kids, so he was he
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: was right. But anyway, so I think the point to
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: make here is that in the nest perseise, they kept
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: this friendship, this treat all the way, all the way
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: from eighteen o six up until eighteen seventy six and
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: seventy seven.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Never waged war against the US.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: Never did, never did. There is no record that I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: could find any of a ness person killing a killing
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: a white person. There are plenty of records of White's
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: murdering nes Purse. Didn't do it, didn't do it. And
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: yet they were the other side of the Last Indian War.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: The Last Indian War was against those people who had
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: the longest friendly kept their word longer than any other
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: Indian group in the entire or west. That's what makes
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: this to me a very compelling and a very heartbreaking story.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: The reason they did it, the reason happened, was that
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: they were forced by Oliver Howard Uh to leave there.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: He's a civil war guy, right, He's a civil war
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: he was.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Was he to doe with one arm, He was the
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: one of one arm metrized. He was well. He was
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: a Uh. He was a dedicated abolitionist. He resigned his
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: position teaching up in Buden College to a fight for
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: the war to end a slavery Oliver Howard was the
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: head of the Freedman's Bureau.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: After the war, he founded what is today Howard University,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: you know, the leading African American university.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: That's that's that's him, yeah, huh.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: And so after the Civil War Howard went out went
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: out to the west. The next person were divided, of course,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: into various bands.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: Some of those bands, two of them, I think, in
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: eighteen sixty three, had made a treaty with the US,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: agreeing to a much smaller reservation using the tribal holdings
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: by ninety percent. But this is only one one or
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: two bands. One band really. The other bands had never
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: agreed to it. They had left the treaty negotiations, and
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: you had the government said everybody, all of these bands
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: were bound by this treaty. They let it go. In fact,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: Howard at some point said, leave alone. You're not bothered anybody.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: They're living in this country, the Wallava. You know where
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: the Walala is. Yeah, they were living in the Walla,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: which is a beautiful, beautiful country, but very isolated. So
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: there was no pressure to open this up to settlement.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: So Howard says, you know, let it go. And then
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy six seventy seven, the government said, no, No,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: that's it. This treaty holds. You've all got to come in.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: You've got to give up your home within within six weeks.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: You've got to get rid of all your cattle. You've
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: got to leave your homeland. You've got to get all
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: your people together, everybody, and you've got to come into
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: this come into this reservation. This Why they did that
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: is an interesting question.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: You another passage I read in your new book, Continental Reckoning,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: you talk about this, You explore this theme you're getting
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: to right now, which is an inability or a lack
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: of willingness on the part of US negotiators to understand
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: the structures of tribal peoples and trying to impose on
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: them this order of that you have a that you
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: have this sort of like this president like figure that
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I will talk to and they'll agree, and then that
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: that sort of covers me on all of these peoples
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: that we imagine being under this leadership structure, to the
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: point where I know that in the Ohio River country,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: the US government once bought a chunk of ground from
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: a tribe that didn't occupy the chunk of ground oh, yeah,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I'll sell you.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, and then try to hold them to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: it and they're like, well, hold it, but we didn't
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: the people that were there right, well we didn't agree
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: to that. Well no, but we bought it from these
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: other people. They said, they knew you.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: Exactly right.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: But again and again like that that failure, you know,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: I'd say, like a lack of It's probably not that
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: they didn't understand it. It's probably they just didn't care.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: I think it was a bit of both. Uh. You
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: gotta think from the from Washington's point of view, are
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: we really these are treating You know, a treaty with
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: an Indian tribe is like a treaty with France, a
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: treaty with Germany or whatever, and it has to go
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: through the same procedure. You have to get negotiate, it's
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: got to be examined. But the Senate desk to approve it.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: Of course, are we really going to go through that
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: whole procedure with every band in the Far West? That
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: will work? And so I think in a very practical way,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: very cynical way, they said, okay, we'll just we'll just
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: say that you have a governmental and a structure of
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: collective authority like ours. We got a president. You got
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: a president. We'll call him the head chief.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: And if you don't, if you don't find one, will
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: find one.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: Will and will appoint one. And that happened over and
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: over and over and over against and that's that is
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: what that's what's going on within this perse Joseph uh
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: used an argument exactly like you were just saying. He
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: uses horse. He says. It's like coming in and you're
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: saying saying to me, we just bought your horse. No
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: we didn't. You didn't give me way. We paid that
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: guy over there. Well it's not his horse.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, the way it goes, right, Yeah, So.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: At any point in eighteen seventy seven, then they forced
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: them to move into this small reservation, to give up
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: their homes, be crowded into this this small space, and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: then we're going to do it. They did it, and
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: they came across the salmon. There's a rough this is
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: late spring. Salmon was up and running, you know. But
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: they got all the people across, they got what cattle
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: they could across there, and they were camped near the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: reservation on the edge of the reservation. Literally the day
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: before they were required to come onto the reservation. At
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: that point, it finally snapped and a few young men
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: wore who had grudges against a merchant and a couple
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: of other whites would settle there in the in the valley,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: took off killed him. And that then was that just
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: sort of like a you know, the match to tinder,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: But it was.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say what's interesting about it, but
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: it's it's noteworthy that it was people that knew each other. Yep,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: like you're saying, I went to those sites, you know,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: but uh, it was, uh, they set out to get
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: It was sort of like riding to this strange land
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: and like invading strangers because they they settled grudges with
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: people they had interacted with, of course, and in one
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: case had some physical disputes with I think. But the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: fact that that would trigger not a police action, right,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: not like arrest warrants, Well, I guess they tried to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: do something like that, didn't they They tried to like
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: arrest the people.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: And well, you know, like I say, when these young
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: guys came back and it was clear what they had done,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: they were boasting about it, you know. Uh. At that point.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Then a lot more men took off and it was nasty.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: It was a nasty bit of business. They killed a
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: lot of folks, that raped a lot of women. It
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: was an ugly, ugly thing.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: And at that point the leadership the the council, these
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: leaders who had argued for peace, said look, we're not
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: gonna win.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 7: We got to go in.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: At that point they said, well that's it. It will
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: have to be war. Name of one of my chapters.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: It was a quote from one of these councils. They
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: will have to be war.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: This is it.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: And then they went all after it. And as you said,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: they just kicked their ear. And in several places.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: It seems so so when you're looking at the country,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: it correct me if I'm messing this up. When you're
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: looking at the country, like you imagine settlement starting in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: the east and sort of going like a wall to
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: the west coast to the Pacific. But it actually did
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that to a sense. But it also skipped this chunk,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: you know, skip the great planes to some measure. So
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: when the nets person get in this fight with the
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: US army, they had east. They're going east to escape
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: the army because they feel if they get out on
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: the Great Plains.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: They're home free.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: No one's gonna care about them anymore. Because they used
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: to go out there. They had for quite some time
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: gone out there to hunt buffalo, and so they were
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: sort of going what you'd imagine as going east. You'd
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: imagine them sort of going into the eye of the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: storm of the US. But in their mind they would
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: move east to get away from the US.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: That's right. And they were long time allies with the
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: crows Absorba people, and they what they thought was, if
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: we can get to the crows, if we can get
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: out of here, they'll leave us alone. We'll get over
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: the crow with our friends, and the crows will take
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: us in and we'll let things settle down, and then
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: we'll go back home. One of the fascinating aspects of
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: his story is how the nest pers, on the one hand,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: were so beautifully adapted to the white presence there. This
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: is in contradiction to what I said a moment ago.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: Their their environment was just fine for them, and they
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: adapted to it beautifully. They were They were very prosperous,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: successful ranchers. Uh they were, you know, when they took
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: off in this cattle cattle ranchers on this long retreat,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: they cashed a lot of their their their valuables, including
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: silver tea sets. Yeah they were, yeah, they were. They
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: were wealthier than the whites in the area. You know,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: they had lots of resources, had lots of money, and
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: they have become very savvy in dealing with the whites
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: in terms of economically economically, So the 's you've got
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: that on the one hand, and yet on the other hand,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: in this larger perspective, they had this astonishingly naive view
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: of larger white society, what of what they were really
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: up against. Mmmm, there's this uh.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: You mean, it's just a naive view that you would
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: somehow get out of this a lot or.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: Even beyond that, you know, uh, what are we dealing
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: with here? One of the one of the counts, their transcripts,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: of course, of all of these negotiations with Howard and
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: these others, and one of the uh Nesbur's banned leaders
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: nat Ju. At one point you first read it, you
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: think he's he's being facetious, he's being he's being uh,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: you know, he's being sarcastic. But I don't think so.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: He said, what is this? Who is who is this? Washington,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: you keep talking about. You keep saying. Washington says that
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: you have this treaty, you got to do. Washington says,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: you go to who is that? Is it a person?
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: Is it a house? He said, is it a house?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: So they, you know, on the one hand, they're so
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: beautifully adapted to their aion environment. In the larger U,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: they've never the first time they become aware of the
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: telegraph that existed was during the retreat over Lolo Pass.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: Was it really? Yeah, they had. The first time they
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: ever saw or got onto a train was after the
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: surrendery when they were taken they were taken over to
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: the Fort Leavenworth.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: That was their first contact with the Yeah, experience, they
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: know what they were. And so when they split, they
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: had what about twelve hundred people about that and then
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: five six thousand horses a.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: Bunch of horses.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they run this rolling gunfight and keep whipping,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: repeatedly whipping Civil War generals in like battles. And then
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: one of the craziest things about sort of the one
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: of the craziest collisions that you have this this semi
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: nomadic tribe of hunter gatherers moving across the landscape and
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: the lateness is they get to Yellowstone National Park, which
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: is a park, try and get into a shootout at
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Mammoth Hot Springs with tourists.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: It's just like it blows your mind. It's they're just
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: such a bizarre story. It's like it reminds me. You
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: don't reminds me of Uh did you ever see the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: movie Blazing Saddles.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 9: Oh?
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kidding the very.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: The very end of it, when there's a big fight
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: uh in the in the town and somebody pumps up
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: against this you know what turns out to be.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Uh scenery, Yeah, and then falls over.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: Well no, no, and then they break through and it's
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: another movie going on next door, dom Delui know.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know something about that fighting over Intohigh ninety.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: And that's what this feels like. You know. It's like
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: it's like these two stories that come together in this
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: strange ways. One of the things there, you know William Sherman,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: who was head of the army in the West at
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: that time. Uh, and of course the man who arguably
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: was most influentially ending the Civil War, he ends up
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: in charge of Indian policy out in the West. He's general,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: He's the general of the Army. He is the highest
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: ranking military officer in the United States at that time.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: He's on a vacation in the Yellowstone Park. So William
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Sherman was at the time at the time that the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: nest person came in. So and somebody, you know, said,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: oh my god, you've got these Indians coming in here
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: who had just been, you know, just been killing our
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: soldiers over there, and all of a sudden, they're going
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: in here. So they rushed to tell him, and he
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: gets out just a day ors before they come right
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: through there. So what if that hadn't happened. No, you know,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: Billy Sherman, you Winnam Sherman sitting around a you know,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: sipping whiskey and frowed trout. You know, some chief also
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: shows up.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: You know, soaking his feet some hot.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: So it's you know, it's just a it's such a
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: wonderful story on so many levels, the macro level, you
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: know what I'll tell you about what's going on in
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: the United States at that time, and then the even know,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: the mini level, you know, the micro level where you
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: get these astonishing little stories and quirks. You know that
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: things come together like that.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Have you read have you read. Sorry, I was just
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: going to say.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 8: I think one of the more striking things about it
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 8: is just how sprawling geographically.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 8: Like I can't think of very many sort of episodic
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 8: stories that start where they do and and cross over
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: and then they're you know, through the breaks and headed
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 8: up to Canada.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: It's like there aren't very many.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 8: I mean, there's Lewis and Clark, sure, but that's like
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 8: years and years, you know, But like in terms of
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 8: miles covered, this story.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I try to figure out a way
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: to illustrate that and think of it this way. At
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: the end of the Civil War, there's this community in Virginia,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: central Virginia, and they decide, I don't want to live
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: out of Union. Let's get out of here. So the
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: whole town gets together and they head west, leaving the
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: middle of Virginia. Right. Uh, like the s verse, this
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: this was these were just warriors, of course. These are
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: the entire men, women and children, old old folks, you know. Uh,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: pick up and move, pick up and go.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: And the army says, no, you got to you gotta
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: stay here. So the army's chasing them, this this small
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: southern town, right and they're leaving. They're hidden west from
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: from central Virginia. If those if if that town had
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: had had gone as far as this these as person
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: did before they were caught up near the Canadian border,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: they would have gone from the middle of Virginia to Denver.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Are you serious? Because they did? They did thirteen hundred
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: miles or something, didn't they.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: Thirteen to fifteen hundred depending on how you measure it.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think just engagement after engagement after engagement.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that parallel is almost too good to be true.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: It is true. Unlike many things that I've written, it
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: is in fact true.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 8: I think one of the things that I remember from
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 8: your from this book is you make the point that
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 8: ex Confederates and Native people are the only Americans that
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 8: have had citizenship forced on them at gunpoint.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: Oh right, Like there's so many.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 8: I mean, one of the main points in the book
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 8: is just to understand the Indian Wars as part of
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 8: this bigger project of nation making. And you know, you
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 8: talk about greater reconstruction as eighteen forty five to eighteen
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 8: eighty or so. Could you talk a little bit about that,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 8: like the the parallels that you see in the Indian
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 8: Wars in the Civil War, because there are a lot
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 8: of interrelated questions.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: And yeah, that was the larger theme of the last
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: Indian Wars. It's a great story about it. It's an
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: amazing story itself, the whole nes person stories. It is fascinating.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: What I tried to argue in this book because in
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of books written on the war.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: In the person, what I try to one lesson there would.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: Have been it is a long walk. I got tired.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 7: I just drolled it, you know.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: But the larger point was that this is really a
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: very revealing part of what I call the greater reconstruction.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: What I what I argue here is that something really
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: important happens in the middle of the nineteenth century. We
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: all agree on that in the middle of the nineteenth century,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: the national narrative shifts fundamentally onto a new track that
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: will carry us into what we know as modern America. Right,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: we go up before eighteen fifty and look at America
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: and look at in America in nineteen hundred. It's like
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: it's like a different world. We've become a fundamentally different nation, society, people, culture, whatever.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: Why does that happen? What explains this traumatic shift. Well,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: the usual suspect, of course, and it's absolutely true, of course,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: is the Civil War itself. Civil war typically seen as
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: this event, you know, that moves the United States in
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: this dramatically, in this new direction. That's obviously, of course true.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: What I argue here is that expansion, the acquisition of
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: one point two million square miles in three years eighteen
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: forty five to eighteen forty eight.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, you open your book by saying, this spasm of
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: expansion would be like if we right now, within a
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: couple of years, the US annexed Mexico, Central America, portions
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: of Brazil.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: From Columbia, about half of cour Yeah.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: Right, you're like, okay, so let's talk about how much
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: how quickly the US grew. It has to be that
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: if between now and three years from now we bought
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: one basically everything south of US halfway down into South America,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: halfway halfway through, now we're going to incorporate that.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: Good luck with that, right It's uh and I think
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: it's a pretty good I think it's a revealing parallel
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: because you know, justice, if you if you drive south
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: from mel Paso to the middle of globe, you're going
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: to see a lot of people. You're going to see
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: different culture, different languages, different traditions, different economies and so forth,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: and somehow we're going to bring all of that together
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: into this this one thing the United States. Furthermore, uh,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: within two hundred hours of the signing of the Treaty
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: of Wadeloupia Dolgo, which gave us, you know, the Mexico Session,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: two hundred hours before that goal was discovered in northern California,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: which turned out to be the by far, the greatest
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: gold strike, most productive goal strike in human history up
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: until that time.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: Is that coincidence?
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: I think it is. You know, it's it's it's a
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: kind of fact that that is born to create conspiracy theories, right,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: Oh really yeah, sure, But I don't see any evidence
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: whatsoever that there was anything anything like. It was just pure,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: pure affected. The first chapter of the book I call
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: the Great Coincidence. This is the greatest and most influential
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: coincidence in American history by far, hands down.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: And they restate that to so people get this.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: I call the first chapter book the Great Coincidence, because
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: I would I think it's incontestable that this coincidence of
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: nine days within nine days, the United States acquiring California,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: acquiring the Pacific.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: This is part of the end of this three year expansion.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: Of course, within nine days we begin to this area
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: begins to be revealed as the richest place on earth.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: It starts at the Gold Rush, but then from then
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: all of course we discovered time after time after time
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: after time. You know, it's like, you know, gods have
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: said you need something, It's there. Yeah, it's there. The
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: West is the great treasure house of the Western hemisphere.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 5: So think of it.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: Then think of the consequences it would follow expansion up
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: until let's say eighteen eighty, And you can't tell me
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: that those were not as important, is not as consequential
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: as the changes it came because of the Civil War.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: So what I'm arguing is that we need to think
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: of this great, this shift of the American narrative as
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: a result of two things. The Civil War absolutely expansion,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: and what follows from expansion is number two. And those
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: two things are their own stories, but they're also interacting.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: They're also interacting, and that's the point I think that
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: I try to make. And the Last Newian War, what
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: you can see in this story is this effort by
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: the government Washington, where there's a person or a house
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: or whatever, Washington trying to bring into into coherence, bring
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: into a singularity this extraordinary continental nation.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: There.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: They do it beforece if they have to. They do
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: it by expanding the role of the federal government. Uh
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: and they uh and they do it as well by
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: imposing a kind of order on it. Not just physical order,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: but an order of who is an American? Right, what
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: do we mean by Americans? Well, in the East, it's emancipation.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: We free one million, four million persons from bondage, and
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: we say you're going to be citizens now. Out west,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: it's Indians, right, it's Hispanics, it's it's others out there.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: We're telling them who they are. Yeah, right now in
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: the East, Uh, the freed people wanted citizenship. Out west
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: not so much. Right. But the government says, Okay, now
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: we're going to uh same thing you did with the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: reconstruction of the South. We're going to give you land.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: That is, they're going to make you farmers, right, We're
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: going to make you freeholders, independent family freeholders. We're going
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: to uh teach your children, We're gonna we're gonna bring
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: your children in our schools, and we're going to teach
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: them the basics. Uh, starting with the English language. Everybody's
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: gonna speak English, teaching the basics, including cultural basics. What
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: an American is, right, and this is an important part
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: of it. Uh, Christianity. We're going to make you Christians.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: America will be this Christian nation, right, Oliver Howard, you
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: know this uh, devoted evangelical Christian. He was doing that
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: in the south of the Freeman's Bureau, and when he
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: went out west, he did it with Indias. Well you
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: say that to the you know, to former slaves, and
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: they say, great, we wanty citizens, We want land. We've
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: been working your land for a long time. Give us
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: a farm, give us forty acres and a mule.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: We want you to educate our children. We want to
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: send our children at Hampton, you know, and to others.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: And we are we are Christians, of course, you know
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: there's you know, Christianity was a fundamental part of slave culture.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: So they said, terrific. You go to the miss person,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: we want to make you farmers. I don't think so.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: Or you go to uh, you know, La Cotas and comanches. Uh,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: we get a farm in West Texas could no, we
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: want to educate your children. We're already educating our children, right.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: We want you to be Christians? No, I don't think so. Yeah,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: we've got our own religions right. And the government says,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: you don't understand. This is not an offer, this is
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: an order. You will become farmers, and we will take
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: your children and teach them and you will become Christians.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: That's then the basis of what happens at West when
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: the war, when when the military does step in, it's
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: it's because the consequences of that, and that's what's going
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: on with the with the Ness Purse. It's that final
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: moment when Oliver Howard steps up and says, Okay, we've
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: been overlooking all of us for a long time, you know,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: no longer. We got to do it. And that's what
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: that's the trigger.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 5: It sets it off with the NETS person was there,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 5: like we talked about Washington and General Sherman was there,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 5: like finally a and of urgency to like this, this
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 5: is it, We're done with this, like we need to
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: establish control after decades of fighting these wars, it seems
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 5: like it was like well established some stability here and
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 5: then here and then like was it do you call
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 5: it the last war? Because they finally decided like this
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 5: is it, We're done Washington.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. And that's to me, that is
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: a really interesting question. Why these people were no trouble
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: to them, They were living in an area that very
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: few whites wanted. Why why would you force it in?
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: The reason, I think an important reason was the little
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: big worn.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: You know, Brody lost some relatives that a little big one.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 5: Is that right, there's a yeah, there's a couple like distant, distant, Yeah.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: Brody's brother, my older.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh yeah. I think that that of course, was
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: this this terrific humiliation for the government. You know, uh,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: the boy general, you know, this the darling of the
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: uh uh not only gets killed, but it's it's this defeat,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: this this moment that uh. I think that was the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: that was the key to the government saying Okay, that's it.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: Everybody everywhere, it's gotta get under our knee. You know,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: you've got to You've got to play by the rules. Now,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: these are the new rules. That's the only only way
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: I can I can think of because you look at
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: the at the record, you know, the government suddenly just pivots.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: Before that, before this, they were saying, oh, well, you know,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: what's the problem. It'll it'll happen eventually. We'll just sort
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: of kick the can down the.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 9: Road and uh.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: But all of a sudden, they all of a sudden
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: they send word to Howard, Nope, you gotta do it.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 9: That was.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: I was sorry about all the mental energy I've spent
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: on my life on the players who convened that fateful
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: you know, June twenty fifth. And I think that a
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: lot of historians have are argue now it's it's inescapable.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: It's like it's almost the definition of a pirate victory,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: to the point where after the great victory at Little Bighorn,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: rather than being emboldened and taking the fight to the
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: next army, they disband like some people say, the probably
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: the greatest gathering of planes tribes it was to ever occur,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: the numerically the greatest gathering to ever occur. The next
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: day they disbanded, and they're like, man, it's hell to
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: pay now. They disbanded and tried to melt into the landscape.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Rather than being like, let's take Washington. You know, it
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: was just oh, this is not gonna go over well,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: it's not good.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: It's not going to go well. I agree with that absolutely,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: and I think that again comes back to the larger
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: point that I was making, that odds against them were
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: so overwhelming. If you fight, you're gonna lose. It's gonna happen.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: We caught him at this point just by luck by
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: This guy's a regrettable decision by and like you say, this,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: this huge gathering, maybe the Fort Laramie conference, a conference
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: at eighteen fifty might have been, might have been larger
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: than that. But but that was of course peaceful. As
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: far as in the wartime, there's nothing nothing to match this. Okay,
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: that's today, right, what now? Well, you know they're going
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: to come after you.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: I want to I want to hate you. With a
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: couple of details that came out of these is one
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: of my favorite things of the perspective of the Native
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: American fighters at Little Big Horn. A man named I
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: can't remember feels gall one of them said in trying
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: to explain the actions of the army, he said, we
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: just thought they were all drunk. And the.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: Two men.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: Were asked how long it took? How long that battle
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: took that that day, and one of them said, gall
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: unk Papa Sue had said it lasted as long as
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: it takes a hungry man to eat his dinner.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: Another said, I'm paraphrasing. He said, you know when you're
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: laying in your teepee and you're looking out the chimney
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: hole and the sun hits one of the poles at
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: the top, It took about as long as it takes
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: the sun to move past that pole. That was all
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: on that fight was And both uh and the later
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: people both said, oh yeah, they're both saying it was
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: about twenty minutes. Yeah, and probably longer than that, but
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: not just they're talking about the hill. The hill hill
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: were costers like there were his little gang water. Was
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: that that that that portion yellow Wolf the Nez Perse
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: He later met that guy. I can't remember who the
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: hell he was. Yellow Wolf met some guy that then
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: sat like yellow Wolf was one of the participants in
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: the Nez Person War. He actually scaped. He's one of
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: the very few that escaped into Canada. When they caught
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: Chief Joseph near the border. He gave his famous from
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: where the sun now stands, I will fight no more
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: forever this dude named yellow Wolf had actually slipped out
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: of there, made it to Canada, later came back down
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: into the US.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a few hundred who made it.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: And he later met some guy that not only took
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: down his life history, but they went and visited a
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: bunch of places, and yellow Wolf takes this guy. He
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: might have been German, I can't remember. Anyways, he takes
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: this guy to the Little Big Horn battle site, not
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: the Little Big Horn, the Big Horn, Big Hole, Big Hole,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: in the sight of the Big Hole battle and tells
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: him and even shows him where it happened that a guy,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: a US soldier got shot through the forehead and was
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: dead standing on his feet, and they challenged him on it,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: and he's like, no, he was at the end of
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: the battle. He was standing dead, locked knees, standing dead.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: And I can never tell if that's true.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: It's it's funny. When I was writing the book, I
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: have several stories like that in there in that book,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: and I wrestled with that. In the end, I just
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: told it straight on, like what yellow Wolf, yellow Wolf
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: and others there were. There were others like that at
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: the Big Hole another one earlier on. Well, they were
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: maneuvering within their home country. There in Idaho. Uh, they
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: came upon a small patrol army patrol. Uh killed them all,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: but they said there was one guy in there who
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: they kept shooting, kept shooting, shooting, shooting, but he wouldn't
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: die cleaning the head. Instead, what he did was, uh
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: sit on the ground and clucked like a chicken.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, Yeah, I don't know, is that true.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know whom I say. I wasn't there, right, Yeah,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: it's certainly part of their tradition.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Yellow Wolf was such an interesting dude.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 7: He had.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: He explains that he had kind of a personal obligation.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: If he encountered a grizzly, he had a personal obligation
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: to mix it up with that bear and kill that bear.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: He was a fascinating guy.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again he'd be like, oh, brother, here we go.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: He found one he had he had to.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: Go not again. Yeah, he's a fascinating guy. I begin
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: and in the book with yellow Wolf, h end with
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: his deaths. Yeah, when he tells his family, I'm dying
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: tomorrow morning when the sun rises on the horizon, and
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: he did, and the last thing he said is, my
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: friends have come for me. Oh you see them right?
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: Oh he did. I don't know.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the failure you're talking about. The name Laculis Quarter, Yeah,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: not a journalist Scotland and he was a He was
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: a rancher out there and one day this Indian came
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: up and his horse had been injured or pumping into
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: a fence. I guess a barberar fence cut it badly,
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: and so he asked mc quarter, will you take care
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: of my horse? But you know, an Indian terms of
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: course he will. You know, this is what you do
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: if somebody it's not your enemy, says you got an
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: injured horse, will you watch after him? And he said, uh,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: he said sure, And he came back the next year
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: to claim his horse, and it's just fine. And they
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: struck up a friendship and those two men spent the
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: rest of their lives reconstructing that story. Oh yellow Wolf
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: telling this to back quarter. Mcquarter's papers are at Washington
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: State Archives, and I spent a long time in that
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: archive going through these papers and it's uh there they're
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: just a a treasure because it's the only case I
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: know of where you have such a concentrated body of
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: native testimony because illowilf of taking these others. Tell him
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: your story, tell him your story. So you got all
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: of these voices.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: And I think, if I remember right, it's people feel
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: like that that there was enough of a friendship in
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: the mcwarder, who I couldn't remember his name, mcward was reliable.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely, it became his lifelong passion that he.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Wasn't distorting, I don't think trying to capture well, obviously
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: obviously it was very sympathetic.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: I suppose you take that. But most of what he
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: has in there is not his words at all. It's
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: the words of the nest perse of his uh uh,
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: the people who's interviewing. In fact, one of the things
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: I ran across, uh stuff is really the collector is
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: really kind of a mess.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 9: You know.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: They worked a long time trying to organize it. He
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: just sort of threw stuff in boxes. But I did
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: run across this small slip of paper that had a
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: thought about something about the war, you know, something just
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: sort of came to him and he wrote this thought
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: on this little slip of paper, and that was the
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: last thing he ever did in his life. He was
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: in the hospital dying and this came to him, and
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: he wrote this on this slip of paper and then died.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: What was what did he write?
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: I don't remember dying thought sorry, but as I remember,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: it wasn't truly consequent. It was just something popping too
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: his head. It wasn't any great breakthrough or anything.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: You uh, you spent a lot of your career and
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of your writing about mining, mining town's influence
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: of mining. And I'm really paraphrasing, but in your book,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it kind of more or less says, you know,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: in terms of Native people's if when they find gold it's.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: Old that's right, or silver that's right. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, lay that out a little bit like just like
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: we're like that, that thirst for gold. Yeah yeah, why
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: is that? You know, you hear about gold in the
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: Black Hills, California gold Rush, you Alaska gold Rush. Just
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: really transformative, really transformative events. Yeah.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: Uh well, a couple of uh, you know, a couple
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: of reasons are I think are sourve event when you
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: think about it. First of all, there's no greater motivation
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: motivator in American history than in a gold discovery. Nothing
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: like that can can put people to the action. So
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: quickly on such a scale. So for the one thing,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: what you get is thousands of people, you know, racing
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: to this this particular place over a very very short
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: span of time. Uh. Now, I mentioned before, you know,
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: talk about what really defeated the Indians was the transform
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: environmental transformation of their homelands. Nothing did that more dramatically
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: faster on a greater scale than a gold or a
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: silver strike. Thousands of people come into an area that
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: has had a fairly small these one hundred gathering people,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: so we're real to be small, uh population up until
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: that time that are always on the move. You know,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: they're semi nomadic, and they're on the move because they're
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: they've choreographed their their life to be at the right
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: place at the right time. You know, we've got to gather,
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: got to fish the salmon at this particular month. You know,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: we've got to gather the camas bulbs at this particular
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: this particular point we've got this is when the elkmar grat.
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: We got to be there, and all of a sudden,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: that world is transformed. Right while the game is hunted out,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: the streams are polluted, the trees are cut, all the
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: migration patterns are are totally disrupted. It's devastate, its convulsive.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to interrupt you make to clarify another
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: point you had said about even these huge areas, the
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: specificity of some things that you would need. Meaning here
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: you you're you're nomadic people with horses, and you live
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: in the northern climates. What do you need in the
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: winter right, access to timber, access to water grazing lands,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: which is going to be like big riparian bottoms. And
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: you said, if there's a spot like that, everybody knows
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: It's a real vulnerability, you know. And that's the places
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: that other people want.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: If you look at the history of Indian wars, when
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: when those conflicts did occur, when the well, those campaigns
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: did happen, and those battles did happen, Look at how
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: many of them.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: Take place in the winter, right, because I know where
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: they'll be.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: And of course turn that around, when when is the
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: worst possible time to go up against the Indians. June
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: twenty fifth, eighteen seventy six, they attack attract They attacked
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: the Indians.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: All these winter massacres that they would the army would conduct.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: But then in the summertime. It's this different games.
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: Summertime, they choose, you know, let's let's attack them within
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: two days of the summer solstice. Brilliant. It doesn't work.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's right. It's the environmental angle of that,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: you know that you have to you have to take
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: into account. But the other thing about mining rushes is
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: most by far. Of course, strikes occur in mountains and
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: in very isolated areas, but it's a long way from
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: any white settlement. What that does, you know, once you
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: let's strike occurs, and if it, if it proves to
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: be worth it, what you do is immediately get this
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: great movement into those places, which in turn is key
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: to opening up the interior west UH to transportation, to
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: access of others. So it creates these it's in other words,
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: it's not a you mentioned before. The frontier is like
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: a moving wall, right, that's the agricultural frontier. It's not
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: the way, not the way the mining frontier works. It's
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: it's the image I have is artillery shells you and
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: then they I think it's a good image because the
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: sort of the concussive is the concussive rings move outward
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: from that you know, that's what kills them. That's what
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: kills them. And what what it starts with with this
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: is this, you know, ancient fascination with gold. It's goes
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: back a long way. You know the Egyptians, you know,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: Egyptians called the breath of God gold. You know, there's
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: something about gold that that that moves people into action,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: in the movement into nothing else, nothing else can. And
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: it turns out that we have more of it than anybody.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 5: Else towards gold.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 6: You know that.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: What you hear, of course is they didn't care much
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: about it. That's not true.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: In fact, there's a one very good a book that's
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: being worked all the time. I've been madly uh in California.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: He wrote a book, American Genocide. You know that book.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: I haven't read it, but yeah, about California. And Ben
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: is writing now on Indians and the gold rush. Once
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: the strikes occur, they jump into it with both feet.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: Before that, I don't know, you know, I think they're
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: just sort of sort of curiosity. They knew it was there,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: but they didn't, you know.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: And and Ian Frasier's Great Planes, he tells the story,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: maybe it's an apocryphal story.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: He tells a story about I think it was the
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: Blackfeet finding bags of gold on a keel boat or
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: some boat that they catch, they capture it, and they
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: like the bags and leave the gold dust laying on
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: the gravel.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: Bara, I've read heard that story. Well, I've read the
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: book that I don't remember that story anything.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: I'd love to know if that's true. Man, he's pretty
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: careful generally, you know. But that's what he said. But
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: I got I got a practical gold rush question. I mean,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: I kind of know the answer, but be interested to
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: see if you could explore it for a minute. Is
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: if you tell me right now that oh so and
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: so just found a ton of gold in Nebraska, Okay,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: I would think, oh, well, that's a guy's land. Good
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: for him. I wouldn't think I'm gonna run over and
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: get a bunch of it. What are the factors that
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: it would be that that you could hear about.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: This in wherever the hell you're at, Philadelphia, wherever.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: And and have some plausible idea, like some rational idea
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: that you would go there and then that you would
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: get to pick some of it up.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: Like, how is this in terms of just the land
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: ownership and the claiming it, and that the government, you know,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: whether or not they occupy it, the US has a
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: sort of claim on it. How is it that you're
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: gonna go and get some for yourself advertising? How do
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: you get like where does that idea enter your head?
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: I would never think if someone said, oh, so and
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: so found a bunch of whatever, I would never be
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go and take some.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll think, first of all, again with a spansion,
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: the idea is, it's not Nebraska, it's not a farm.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: It's this place that we just got, I mean, half
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: an hour ago, right, brand new, right, and it's could
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: not be farther away from me than and still still
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: be the jay in the United States. So I can
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: imagine anything whatever I want to happen, that's gonna happen. Right.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: It's just like such a strange understanding of how you'd
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: even get a sense of the spatial characteristics of where
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: the stuff is. But to like bet your.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: Life on it, A lot of them did, and some
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: of them lost the.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 5: Was there any government guidance like if you're going this
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 5: is how you.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: Want to do it? Or was it us word of mouth,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: and well you you got to remember it now, Uh,
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: the gold rush of eighteen forty eight forty nine. There
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: have been over a migration before that at the Oregon
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: and to California after the Oregon country out to the
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: you know, central Valley, Sutter and so they knew the way, uh,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: and the way it was was well marked. By this
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: time they were starting to have the stores along along
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: the overland route. So how to get there was not
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: it was not really much of a mystery. The mystery
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: was once you get there, how do you deal with that?
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: How do you how do you mind? Yeah, it's ever
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: ever occurred to you? I think is part of the question. Oh, yes,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: you're asking. You know, you're a you know, you're a
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: you're a clerk in in Cleveland, Ohio, and you're gonna
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: go to California. You're gonna mind gold? Really?
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna be You're gonna be a placid miner.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 3: Or yeah, you're a tender.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: Reminds me of a Jethro Bodine in the Beverly hillbillage,
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: I mean an atomic brain surgeon. He said, you know.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 7: What you know?
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: Well, the people who taught them, of course, were the
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: Mexicans in the South Americans. There have been gold gold
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: mining in Peru and in Chile, in Mexico. So one
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: of the things that I right about in the book,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: I think that most people don't think about are the
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: forty eight Know, the discovery was made in late January
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: eighteen forty eight. That discovery was not confirmed in the
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: East until the following December.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Got it forty eight.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: So consequently the Great Russias in forty nine. But by
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: that time, of course, there were people mining gold out
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: there from Mexico, from Chile, from Peru. Yeah, sure, from Australia.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: There were Australians there. There were Tasmanians before the fort
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: and so these guys forty nine ers come out there
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: and they say, one of the people, you know minding
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: our gold, right, you're good. But they learned from him
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: and from all the all the evidence of the South
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: Americans who were there were very generous showing him how
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: to do it, you know. So they learned from the
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: forty eight ers, and then they kicked him out. Of
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: course they're expelled.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: You know, we had you and I both have some
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: lines and safd for interviews and ken Burns's uh, his
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: his forthcoming The American Buffalo documentary, and uh, following that
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: we had, I had occasion to interview him on this
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: podcast along with his colleague Dayton Duncan, who your personal
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: friends with. Yeah, And in talking to Dayton Duncan, it
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: occurred to me that even though I thought I had,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: I had not watched The dust Bowl. I thought I did,
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: but I was like, you know what, I actually didn't.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: So I just recently went and watched The dust Bowl.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: And speaking of human migrations the as much as we
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: you know, earlier I kind of talked about there's these
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: things in American history that absorble out of mental energy,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: and sometimes our fascination with them makes them seem overplayed
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: in terms of actual impact. Perhaps far more people fled
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: the dust Bowl, okay, which they in that documentary that
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: described as the greatest human cause environmental tragedy in US history.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: Far more people fled the dust Bowl and went to
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: California than ever went over the Oregon Trail. But we
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: just don't when looking at how the country took shape, right,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: you don't go and look at that. No, No, like
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: for that episode of people leaving Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: southern Colorado.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: Who got all got billed as Oaki's right, all got
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: lomped into?
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a real canard.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: And and it was it dwarfed the Oregon Trail traffic.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: I hadn't heard that. I did watch that. I don't
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: I don't remember that quote, that statistic, but it makes sense.
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 7: Of course.
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: The population is a lot of parts about. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: it was. They're all you know, American history has all
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: kinds of stories like that that we don't. We don't
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: pay enough attention to the great migration out to California
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: in World War two.
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've paid zero attention to that.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, including among blacks. You know, when you say the
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: great migration among afric In Americans, you're.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: You're usually crucially to the industrial north.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: That's right leaving you know, as as cotton cultivation was
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: was mechanized, this flight up to the Chicago into the
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: area there. But then there was a second one that
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: was in the twenties World War two, you know, with
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: the uh boom of a defense industries and so forth
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: on the on the Pacific coast. You know, jobs are
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: waiting and a lot of poor black folks in the
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 2: South you know, and they came out there. So the
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: you know, the origins of the black presence presence on
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: the Pacific coast. You know, it goes back to World
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: War Two. Well, we don't, we don't think about.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: It because I brought that up. Let's close on if
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: you don't mind, give me some of your thoughts on uh,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: give me some of your thoughts on on bison and
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: the broader story of of you know, the near extermination
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: of the bison just like whatever. You know, I know
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: it's a huge question. But but areas of that saga,
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: meaning the destruction, the recovery, what areas within that long
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: story have caught your attention or you know, yeah, where
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: have you spent your time in thinking about that animal?
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I think I've written a fair amount on that.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: What really interested me was, once again, the larger context
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: of it and the complexity complexity of it. I think
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: we are mesmerized by this image of the buffalo hunters,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: of the white you know, high hunters, the buffalo runners.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: Of What we tend to forget was that the bison
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: population was to had probably declined something like half from
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: the eighteen twenties until eighteen seventy two. Or so when
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: that starts and the decline comes partly from an environmental change,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: as I said before, the overland trails which destroyed these
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: habitats that the bison had to have in the winter,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: just as just as the Indians did. Part of it
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: from Indian people's who eagerly jump into this this global
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: market economy selling robes and tongues.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: Me and Randall had an hour long fight about this day.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, who won. But but the lesson there is
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: once again, how the globe is shrinking. These Indian people
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: suddenly find, you know, great a lot of money and
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: things and stuff because they were able to use this
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: skill that they along had in a new way to
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: sell these robes to people in uh in the East,
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: in London, you know, in Paris there there we're seeing
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: there really is this the shrinkage of the globe. The
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: shrinkage of the globe and the expansion of modern capitalist
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 2: market economy. You know, that is what that is what
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: kills a buffalo, It starts to kill them. With the Indians, with.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 5: The white hide hunters, was there like a comparable rush
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 5: like you like with the mining towns, like a burst
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 5: of people had a west to.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: Go do this, sure, Uh, not on the numbers or
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: the same scale. Yeah, sure, exactly. You know, I think
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: Steve was saying before we talk about this, Uh, these
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: were not were not you know, uh fly bonn uh
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: fly blown Uh monsters. These are just young men on
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: the move trying to make a buck, right, and this
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: is a great way to do it.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: So sure, sure, yeah. Just like we had talked about
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: with the impacts of the Civil War, like a good
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: many of the people that got involved in that trade
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: were I don't want to call them, maybe not literal
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: refugees of the Civil War, but definitely people spun off,
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: people spun off by the Civil War.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean this country, this country was chaos at
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: the end of that war. And if you're a young man,
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 2: you know, living in the South especially or or the
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: north and subwly, this opportunity showed itself. Sure he did it,
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: and they went on to become one of my early
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: m A students wrote a book called thesis called Reconsidered.
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: And what he did, Dave Dawson, what he did was
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: follow these guys' lives to the extens that you can.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: These buffalo hunters, Oh really, what did they become? Bank presidents,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: the Kansas Historical Society, uh, sheriffs, candy salesman.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 6: Just.
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: Winding up on the end of a rope.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, no, that these are perfectly perfectly responsible.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: It which makes.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Candy businessman. No, it's it's well enough.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it makes it makes perfect sense. What do
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: you think about it? You know they were just they're
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: just jumping into something, makes some money and they turn
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: around and use the money to do something.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 3: Else and chasing opportunity.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: One of the man who claims to have killed more
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: bias than anybody else went on to become a cheap
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: of police in Oklahoma City.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: And then to an early filmmaker.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: That Jay Wright Moore who was who knows.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: There's another fellow and he and he also raised race
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: horses and his favorite name Chance won the Kentucky Derby
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: eighteen ninety two.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 5: Seriously, that's sorry, project, it is I feel like you're disappointed.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: With this, Steve, like you just like.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 6: It was.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: It was just and I brought it up and I
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: do not mean this as well. I think I I
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: don't want to put any shade on the Dayton and
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: ken Burns, the guys that worked on the Vice documentary.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: But when I was given my chance to comment on it,
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: I had a couple factual minor, very minor minor factual thoughts,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: and I hadn't a thing I presented to him as
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: I thought that totally respectfully, I expressed that I thought
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: that they were really that they dehumanized the hide hunters,
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: and that person who was not watching carefully might get
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: the sense that they were motivated out, that they were sadists.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that they were doing it purely for the joy
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 5: of killing.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like I know, I'm going to dedicate
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: my life to is making sure there's no buffalo in
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: the future. When it was a job again and again
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: you see that that you know, like the the you know,
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: you know how you know, like that saying freshet eyes
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: always heard that was quite There was another say there's
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: another saying. There's another saying that goes, uh, I hate
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: the game, not the player.
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 4: That's right, they happen to be I came.
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: I came up that too, and and I feel that
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: there's in in looking at what we just spent a
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: lot of time on the hide, the deer hide, the
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: deer skin, you know, the earlier version of the hide
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: hunners was the white tailed deer runners of a century earlier.
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: That you can look and say, like, man, what those
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: guys did was rapacious and wanting. Yeah, But on an end,
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: when you get down to the individual level, you know,
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of them have demonstrated a yeah I knew,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: I knew, I knew, but if I didn't But to
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: say that, there's this one guy, maybe it was more
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: one of these guys that said I woke up in
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: the morning now and then and thought, am I really
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: going to go do this again today? And he says,
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: but I would hear the shooting, right, and if I
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: didn't do it, it was getting done.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 5: And it's easy to point a finger at them as
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 5: a group because they were the last one standing when
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 5: the bus buffalo disappeared, right, Yeah, So it's like those
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 5: guys they put a real puctuation mark.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: But I do think that that that, yeah, hating the
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: game and not the player, because I think a lot
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: of these people were just they were just poor, desperate
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: people who had no thing. They had no thing, And
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: if you look at.
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 8: If you look at miners, yes, you know, miners don't
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 8: get the same judgment, right, And they're also yeah, you know,
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 8: it's more indirect, it's not quite as dramatic. I think
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 8: that's part of it is that like the near extermination of.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 3: The bison is just such a.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 8: It's such it's such right material for like a moral story,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 8: whereas like we don't say, you know, these coal miners
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 8: were just doing it because they loved air pollution.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, this is this is a great and
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: there's evil people that hated clean air.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 3: They could have done they could why didn't they stop?
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: That's that's absolutely all. That's absolutely true. Your quote that
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: you often here and there was used in the documentary
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: of Frank Meyer.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: Meyer.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I said, I can figure that.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 7: I figured.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 2: A bullllet you know, one shell. It costs me twenty
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: five cents. But there's one shell I could I could
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 2: kill this animal and I can get back, you know,
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: three to five dollars, he said. So I figured it out.
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: I don't figured it out and says I figured that
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: I could make more money in a year than the
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 2: president of the United States. That's what did it. It
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: was the market that did it, both for the Indians
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: and then then for these guys. That's what killed the bison.
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: So what are you are you writing right now. This
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: is a huge But dude, this is not big, This
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: is not generous font I will say this is probably well,
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, what a massive amount of work.
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 3: This is probably.
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I don't I'll write quite slowly. I mean,
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: this took me. That took me twenty twenty five years
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: to research and.
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: Ow and I feel better. Well, you've done a lot
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: of books.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: I've done a lot of books.
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 8: Yeah, this is probably the only podcast in the world
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 8: that has an inside source at the ms u R Hives.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 7: And so I have word.
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 8: I have a word on good authority that you're still
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 8: I was there, still digging, you're stiffing.
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: Around the archives.
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 7: I was there. I was there the other day.
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: What are you working on now?
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure I'm gonna I know, I
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: don't have another book me, at least not right now.
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: But I like I like to write short articlests. Right now,
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 2: I'm fascinating with Arctic exploration.
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was hoping it's gonna be more ic.
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 7: Anyway.
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 2: This is just a I've just started reading up on
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: it a lot. And uh, there was a fellow you
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: probably know that was Dome. You know that name he
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: was at Fort Ellis UH. He was early with the
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 2: first expedition of Yellowstone, and he was in the Person
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: War and Yellowstone, but he also signed on to UH
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: as a as a part of a scheme to develop
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: a colony up in the Arctic, up into the far
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: northern UH near northern Greenland. And so this is his
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: handwritten account of this expedition.
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 4: Man, that sounds like a.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 8: Well, it's all it always seems like it's a coincidence
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 8: that these guys are doing. You know, they have a
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 8: foot in each one of these. But as you're pointing out,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 8: it's all part of the same project.
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: It's all part of the same thing. Yeah. Anyway, I was,
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 2: I was looking at the looking at that very funny,
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: really interesting detailed description of that voyage. But the real
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 2: gem of it is is introduction when he says this
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: is a total disaster of failure, complete failure. It says, uh,
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 2: we did not convert or kill any Indians in any
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: any natives. Uh we We did not challenge the authenticity
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: of any findings of anybody else. It's this literable sort
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: of tongue in cheek jam the other guys who are
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: going up. It's very funny.
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: Well, stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, Continental
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: Reckon if you want to be the guy in your
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: social circle who knows the most about the American West,
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: Continental Reckoning, the American West and the age of expansion,
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: lifetime work, yep, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's fast moving.
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. Yeah, I try to cover a lot
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 2: of ground. Yeah, well, you know, it was a journalism undergraduate.
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: I came out of a journalist newspaper family, and I
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 2: was drilled into My father was a very good editor,
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 2: and he was you try to teach us as well
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: as he could my brother's and me. You know, right, right,
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: like a talk, right, it's a if you can't, if
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: people can't, if you're not drawn to it, if I'm
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: willing to read it, then what's the point. Yeah, So
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: I try. I try to do that.
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: I'd like to see you sit down and do the
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: audiobook on that thing.
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 2: It's a been contractor for that, and I thought, god,
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 2: poor guys.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be man, that would be a it's
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: a it's it's a healthy book. Like I said, as
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: I you know, I can't I do it. I'm seriously
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: gonna read the book and I'm just in preparation for today.
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: Like I skimmed around and by doing that approach of
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: looking in the index and finding things and you know,
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: bouncing back and forth, uh, and went to a couple
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: of areas in Western history that that I know well
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: and like to read about. And your ability to what
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: I thought was great about is your ability to not
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: get bogged down into you know, at eight am at
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: nine am, but just to sort of be like, at
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: a large scale, where did like, where did this lead?
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: What was this coming from? What does this really mean?
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 9: You know?
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: And then someone reading it could very easily use it
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: as a jump off point to go find a lot
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: of areas that they might want to explore, but just
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: to get in the idea of how the country acquired
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: and acquired and homogenized, maybe like how the country gobbled
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: up so much stuff and sort of made it into
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: this recognizable idea of America so fast.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, that's that is really kind of breathtaking when
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 2: you when you think of it in that larger perspective,
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 2: how much happened so fast and with so many consequences.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 2: And that's what I'm You can say the same thing,
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 2: of course about the Civil War. I'm saying you can
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: say that about both of them together. Together, those events
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: remade this country.
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: So Elliott West again in the latest book, and he
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: has many continental reckoning the American West and the age
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: of expansion. Thank you very much for joining us.
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you. It's great, great pleasure. Thank you.
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 9: Oh right on a seal, great shine like silver in
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 9: the sun. Right right on alone, sweetheart. We're done beat
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 9: this damn course today, taking a new one. Ride. We're
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 9: done beat this day, am coarse today, So take a
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 9: new one and ride on.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 8: Mm hmm.