Cool Zone Media.

Hello, and welcome to Cool People who Did Cool Stuff.

You're a weekly reminder that when people are trying to do bad things, there's people trying to do good things.

And this week and next week it's the holidays and all the editors and people get vacations, and I guess I do too because of that, and so I'm running reruns.

But don't worry, you'll enjoy it anyway.

I believe in you.

I believe in your ability to enjoy this even though it's run before.

Because this week and next week we're going to be talking about well, I've been talking so much about resistance to empire, and I've been focusing on resistance to the Roman Empire, but obviously I'm pretty interested in resistance to the American Empire.

And so this week and next week we're going to be rerunning episodes about Lakota resistance to the American Empire in two different centuries.

And this is part one.

Hello and welcome to It could happen like bastards are dying?

Is cool doing cool stuff?

Wow?

Eh, that's my that's my cool Zone Media mixed with a show that isn't Cool Zone Media Introduction or well you all know the title of it.

You clicked on it in the thing.

Everyone else is holding up dogs and or dog pillows.

But my dog is out saving the world from airplanes by running around my yard barking at them, and not a single airplane has come into my yard since my dog has started keeping watch.

So I will just say earlier.

Yeah, good job Renshaw.

Okay, shout out to someone sent me a message where someone was like, oh, I really liked that podcast Cool People Did Cool Stuff.

I can't remember the name of the host.

You know that lady who like lives alone with her dog, And I'm like.

Is that who you are?

Now?

You're the lady who lives alone with her dog?

Yeah, I'm doing it.

Yeah.

So the podcast that you're all listening to is Cool People Did Cool Stuff.

The voices you are hearing is our producer, Sophie Hi, Sophie, I Mirgaret, I missed you.

I missed you too.

And what is the name of your dog?

Slash dog pillow?

Oh, I'm holding an exact replica pillow of my dog Anderson that my best friend Robin gave us.

It's pretty amazing, is amazing, and Anderson sleeps on her Anderson Pillow.

So that's that's pretty great, so beautifully narcissistic.

I love that she's alive.

Yeah, the other voice you are hearing is my guest, Miriam.

I'm hi, I'm Miriam.

I'm also holding up a dog.

This is a real dog and not a cushion, although you could.

Convince me, yeah, this is a cushion shaped dog, a furry cushion.

Yeah, this is a cushion that eats a surprising amount of dog food.

There are dogs in today's episode, not a lot of them.

Well, actually there are a lot of them, but they're not a major part of the story.

I don't know what today's episode is about, because all the only hint you would text me was that it was suggested to you by my girlfriend.

And when I asked my girlfriend, they didn't remember.

So I guessed the two most likely people that they would have suggested to you.

They were wrong, wrong on both couns.

No, Bo didn't tell you to do Fred Hampton.

I most told me to do a lot of people, but the particular person we're doing today, this week and next week.

It was going to be a one two parter, but immediately got carried away because there's so much cool shit that's going to happen.

I'm also a lot of heartbreaking shit because today we are going to talk about Lakota resistance to the American Empire.

Fantastic.

Mo is bouncing up and down next to me because I'm wearing headphones.

We are talking about Lakota resistance to the American Empire.

Yeah, most really happy about that.

Eventually, it's going to culminate into something that is happening now, which is that there is a campaign that has been going on longer than I've been alive to get a man named Leonard Peltier free.

That's where we're going to talk about next week.

First, we're going to talk about the nineteenth century shit this week, which is also cool and also unfortunately heartbreaking.

But next week we'll talk about the twentieth century and how it continues into the twenty first century and hopefully not into the centuries after that.

Instead, people will be like, man, remember when there used to be a United States of America instead of a confederation of Indigenous lands.

And people will be like, that's wacky, and that's and then someone will get mad because we'll have figured out something about the word whacky not having never mind anyway.

So you're I like, how you're imagining future people to get mad at you.

Yeah, yeah, kind of the opposite of imagining a guy to get.

Mad at Yeah.

It's probably because I joined back on Twitter.

I was free for months, Margaret.

Why did you do this?

Because I wanted more up to date news about the genocide that my tax dollars are funding.

Because the New York Times will look at things like hundreds of thousands of people marching in DC and say thousands of people gather and then say even in the article, it was like, we don't know how many people.

And I'm like, crowd estimates are as old as journalism, Like I can do crowd estimates.

By the time you've been to your like fifth massive demonstration, you can do crowd estimates.

Oh crap, our audio engineers, Ian, this would have been a cursed episode, Hi, ian Ian.

So we're going to start with an awful lot of context.

Because oh man, context I know from me on Cool People.

I know cool context that happened the cool terrible context that happened to cool people.

That's I will say.

For once, I'm pretty sure the cool context is not going to take us to medieval Ireland, so or pre Roman Ireland.

Even I wonder if I can get that in here, unfortunately in a very bad way, because we are going to talk at some point about how settlers, often coming from colonize in the pressed situations, become bad once they enter a settler position, which of course there's no modern context anyway, think of any No, certainly not nothing that got me back on Twitter.

Okay, So I would argue that the biggest lie I got told by my American education was that the Revolutionary War was a good thing.

This is like my least popular opinion if you ask the broad population.

The Revolutionary War was not a was a lateral move at best.

And I'm going to explain why I believe that this is the case.

I mean, you should make that point and make it hard.

But spoiler alert, I already agree with you.

Yeah no, yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

The most important thing is that I got kind of told, it was certainly heavily implied, that this is the end of colonization.

Right, We're no longer colony.

We are now a nation, and so colonization has ended.

This is an absolute lie.

The American Revolution was the unleashing of unfettered colonization that continues to this day.

An anti colonial independence movement is when the indigenous people and cultures of an area retained control over their terrain.

This is not what happened in the American Revolutionary War, because in like the seventeen fifty or so, for anyone, the American Revolution was seventeen seventy six to seventeen eighty three.

In the In the seventeen fifties, Britain controlled only the east coast of the United States the Midwest.

Basically everything past the Appalachian Mountains was claimed by France, who generally had friendlier relationships with various indigenous nations.

Not because they were like, we're so good, French government is nicer, but basically like they just they weren't as interested in settling.

They were much more interested in the fur trade.

They already had a good way of extracting money from that area basically.

And they were they were doing more of their atrocities elsewhere in the Americas.

Yeah, that makes sense.

The French kept also then they were still fucking up these areas too, to be clear, They kept trying to make people have like a clear cut authoritarian hierarchy and use capitalism and all that shit, and all these various nations are like, why the fuck would we do that?

We already have our own cool, complicated systems already, right that baffle the mind of the you know, Western European hierarchical thinking, not because you know.

You're not You're not dealing with people who are like, who are going to be good to deal with when they demand that you restructure your entire society in order to have a fucking conversation?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so the British were like, well, we want to go west of the Appalachians especially, we want that.

Actually this is more of the British colonists, the Americans as they call themselves, and they're like, we especially want that, sweet sense.

I like that you just dead named the American colonists.

Yeah, that's right, fucking Brits.

George Washington, who calls himself a American.

Now, yeah, so they want Ohio.

And so then we get do you know that we had a world war in the eighteenth century?

I do know that I didn't really I like vaguely, vaguely new I'm going to call this World War zero or that's very cool to it.

Yeah, and it probably didn't deserve it.

But and this is called the Seven Years War, or if you grew up in the United States, it's called the French and Indian War, which is not France and indigenous folks fighting against each other.

It's US fighting against the French and indigenous people.

It's basically a pissing match.

The World War zero is a pissing match between France and England that dragged half the world into it because of colonization, and it obviously involved North America as well.

The English colonists fought the French, and some indigenous nations fought on each side of that war, basically whatever suited their specific interests.

England wins that war.

By seventeen sixty three, France and England signed the Tree of Paris.

Spain gets Louisiana.

England gets the rest of the territory of New France, basically the Midwest.

Shit well, and Louisiana went up a lot further on that map than it does now.

Yeah, that makes sense, Okay, England gets Florida from Spain.

Plus there's a bunch of shit that England steals from the French, who had already stolen it in Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

And this is always really funny to me when you imagine the people like dividing up this territory, because imagine like me and my neighbors like go break into someone's house and then while the people who are living there are like screaming at me and shit, we just start to start fighting over like who gets what bedroom?

You know, That's what this war was.

Yes, that is funny and not at all horrifying.

No, oh my god, there's so much horror movie like, oh, American history is hard.

This is going to be a rough one.

Yeah, I mean yeah, but there'll be really beautiful moment.

I mean most of the ones that you've had me on for have involved genocide.

I think the Pirate one was genocide free mostly, but you know.

It's yeah, that was just instead of a different kind of moral complexity, like the immoral dis choice that I made to make my sailor friend come on and talk about pirates, that was great.

Mariam had like one rule, just never have me on about pirates, and I was like, let's talk about pirates anyway.

Yall should go back and listen to that one.

So so the colonists are like, fuck, yeah, we won this war.

We're gonna go rob that fucking land a sweet Ohio it's waiting for us, you know.

But they didn't actually get to go there right away.

First, you get, well, two things gonna happen roughly at the same time.

You get Pontiac's War, where a ton of Indigenous people got together and are like, fuck you Brits, get the fuck out.

We were okay with the French kind of you all are way worse.

This ended up in pretty much a stalemate, and this is when genocidal fervor by the colonists reaches an all time high, because they're like, but we just won this war.

Can't we have all your stuff now, you know?

And so all the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi were a great, big old Indian reserve and the king was like, don't go west, young man.

That's my that's my best joke of the week.

Unfortune, No, it's great.

Yeah, no, it's it's always important to point out when you make a joke, that's how people know it's funny.

So the colonists are like, what do you fucking mean you can't just give all this fucking land to them, Like we just want.

You can't just give all this land to people who are already on it and have been on it since time immemorial.

Yeah, like, what are you doing?

We are British, I mean we're Americans and so.

And to be clear, the Crown wasn't doing this because they're like anti racist or some shit.

They wanted that fur trade that's already very lucrative and brings a bunch of money, and they didn't want to like specifically help the settlers who are starting to get kind of kind of antsy.

Anyway.

You know what I learned in my like late in life American history class is that they didn't want to send troops to deal with defending American settlers.

Oh that makes lushing into this area that they were told not to go to.

They were like, no, we like made a whole piece and part of that piece involves you not going there.

And if you go there, then we're going to have to protect you because you're our guys.

And that's that's like a whole use of resources that we the British Empire don't feel like doing right now.

Yeah, and there's a lot of I'm learning more and more about this pattern in history where settlers want to go steal more territory in their settled colonial state, and the like state itself is a little bit like really right now, like you can do it later, and the settlers like, oh, we're doing it, and then the state's like, all right, fine, I guess we're doing it.

Not because the state is the good guy, but like it's just a weird dynamic anyway.

Right, or like you tacitly allow settlers to go someplace where they're officially not allowed to be, and then when harm comes to them in the place that they are not supposed to be, you're like, we must go and defend them at all costs.

And again, no parallels to anything.

No, it's a nineteenth century, exclusively.

Eighteenth and nineteenth century phenomenon.

Yeah, history doesn't repeat itself.

Absolutely not.

So the white Americans they throw a little war you might have heard of.

It's called the settlers want to keep going west to steal more ship but the King won't let them war, also sometimes called the Revolutionary War by certain like war hipsters, but mostly it's known as the settlers want to keep going west to steal moreship, but the king won't let them war.

I always thought, though it was the Revolutionary War was over selling it because like in a revolution you have to overthrow a government and like, I'm sorry, but like the government of England was still very much the government of England after the Revolutionary War.

Yeah, and there were other reasons too.

The main thing I got taught in school, which is true, is this like big tax thing, But the landgrab was actually a huge part of it.

And also as soon as the patriots won the war, they said higher taxes than the crowd ever did.

Yeah, what was the Second War America did?

So speaking of that far whiskey rebellion joke, Oh wait, I didn't get that.

No, I didn't.

I don't know as much about the whisky rebellion.

I'm like vaguely aware of it, but not.

Oh okay, Well, now I'm slightly on the spot because I like pulled out a reference to something that I only half remember.

But my memory of this is that very soon after the War of Independence, a bunch of rural guys like farmers, most of whom were veterans of the war, were brewing whiskey.

Because why wouldn't you right, and the government wanted to tax it and they didn't want to let them, and so George Washington himself, I think, and the US Army such as it was at the time, like went and put down the rebellion of these guys who didn't want the government to tax their whiskey.

Because the unless I'm like completely getting this wrong, and like, I'm sure nobody will tweet at you if I'm wrong, Yeah, you shouldn't have gotten back on Twitter.

But that basically as soon as the like you can't tax us war was completed, that same government turned around and were like, we're going to tax you and fought a war for that purpose.

Okay, no, yeah, that makes sense.

And yeah, I was a The little I knew about whiskey rebellion is the like the actual like sort of oral working class was like, wait, the aristocracy won again.

That sucks.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't entirely know.

During the Revolutionary War, one thing I do know, because I did research on it for this episode.

I sort of knew this anyway, because I love talking shit on the Revolutionary War.

It's like, my I totally earned the name Kiljoy.

Far more black and Indigenous people fought against the Patriots than alongside them.

About five thousand to nine thousand black men became Black Patriots, whereas about twenty thousand black men escaped their Patriots slavers to join the British army because they were promised freedom by the king.

And this is the first deal that only one side offered in that war.

The Americans did not offer an equivalent deal.

Yeah, I think some of the Black patriots were free, but I think mostly they were free in the first place or were enslaved the whole time.

Yeah, no, I think it was only like because Britain offered like a blanket deal of if you come fight for us, then you can be free.

And they like I used to lead tours about there were history tours, walking tours, and I once referenced this fact in a tour to a group of school children and like the mom who is like I'm contributing, like popped up and went But the British lied because like the British are the bad guys, And I was like, no, they didn't, like, oh yeah, black people went to Canada right after the evolution, Like that's I don't know why you think the British had to be like cartoon villains, Like they were not lying about that one.

They lied a lot, but yeah, no, yeah, And then there was a whole thing where like, I mean, the ones who moved to England weren't necessarily treated super great, but they weren't enslaved.

So that's fucking sound.

I don't know about a lot of I don't know what happened in terms of moving to England, but they were like really thriving communities of what were called like black loyalists in Canada.

Cool the US Declaration of Independence, like subtweets this this emancipation gotta get you back off Twitter when it says that the king had quote excited domestic insurrections among us and there was actually an earlier draft of the Declaration of Independence that's more explicit, like these motherfuckers tried to steal our property or whatever.

You know.

So and this isn't because the king was good, to be clear, England just wasn't nearly concerned as concerned about slavery and sure didn't mind fucking up the economy of the colonies have kept them in line.

One of the other impacts of the Revolutionary War that's really tragic from my point of view, is that there's this mighty and really neat Iroquois confederacy, the hode Ashone, And this is a confederation of six nations whose democracy influenced everything from the American Constitution to Karl Marx to modern radicals of all stripes.

And this confederation was hundreds of years old at the time of the Revolutionary War, and it was split by the war.

Four of the nations sided with the crown because the king didn't want to steal their land as bad.

Two of the nations sided with the colonists because they were like closer with the colonists.

Basically, all of the indigenous nations that fought in the Revolutionary War, they weren't doing it because they're like we love the king or like we're patriots, right.

They were just fighting for their own interests in their own independence as best they saw fit.

But in seventeen eighty three, the patriots win the war and colonists are like free land and it was bad and it was a land crab And you know what else is run on stuff.

To the Homestead Act.

Yes, but uh, sponsor of this show, the Homestead Act, go get yourself.

That's a bad sponsorship.

Oh interesting, Well I already got paid by them to do.

The homestead strike.

Okay, we are brought to you by strikes and not stealing land.

Is that better?

I liked it?

Yeah, okay, all right, well here's the ads only for those things, and Rebecca, we're not actually going to talk.

So this is when they all rush into Ohio where many of you are probably listening, but we're not going to talk about Ohio today.

Congratulations on the abortion and weed by the.

Way, Oh yeah, fuck yeah, yeah do at the same time.

Well, no, absolutely, abortion while you smoke a joint.

I know, may smoke the joint after that, Yeah, after smoke the joint, and only after December seventh, because otherwise we'll be a crime.

Why do I know that data goes I don't live in Ohio and I don't smoke weed.

Whatever.

I still think it's fucking cool.

That did make that line cooler knowing what day goes into effect.

Thanks.

Yeah.

I one of my friends lives in Ohio and smokes weed, and I was like, holy shit, are you excited?

And then I was like, wait, don't get excited yet, because obviously they don't smoke weed.

Now, but they will, of course December seventh, they will smoke their first.

Weed because we all totally believe in the system of law and no one understands that it's just a cudgel to be used against their enemies.

Everyone believes in law.

But today, instead of talking about Ohio, we're going to focus on the Black Hills.

Is the area around an area around Wyoming and the Dakotas which only took like a generation or two for the white people to get to from Ohio.

And that the Black Hills here.

Been to the Black Hills, I have not, No, they're really pretty.

I understand why everyone fought over them.

I mean, you don't think that that had more to do with extractive resources.

You think it was this It was at the scenery.

It can't have been the scenery.

Now it's about gold.

I'll talk about that later.

Yeah.

Look, I haven't been, but I did watch Deadwood.

So although there's a lot of fighting before white people get there about who gets to live there?

So fair so the black people people.

Yeah, The Black Hills are an isolated mountain range where Wyoming in South Dakota meet.

It got its name from the Lakota people who called it Hissapa or Black Mountains, because the pines grow so dense that they appear to be black from a distance.

It has always been a sacred place for the Lakota and for the groups that came before them.

Lots of folks hung out there in various pre colonial history and they often fought over it.

The Arakari were there as well as the Cheyenne and the Crow and some other folks.

And then in seventeen seventy six, while well, everyone's paying atention to something else, it actually is completely unrelated to thousands of miles away.

In seventeen seventy six, the Lakota basically kick everyone out and take the Black Hills, which sets up an animosity that is going to come up a lot later and broadly, the various groups that are living there are what are called the Great Plains tribes.

Some of them are semi nomadic, some are fully nomadic, and they rely heavily on hunting.

The vast herds of buffalo or the introduction of the horse.

They relied on dogs with sledges to whole stuff around, like an Arikara family would have thirty to forty dogs per family, which is just imagine being that.

Rich, that's such a wonderful number of dogs.

I know you did promise me dogs in this episode.

This is the dogs.

Yeah, and I said there was gonna be a lot of them, but they weren't gonna be very important to the story because I was like, there's not that many dogs.

There's sometimes vital to the story.

Well, if you have a nomadic society and dogs are your primary pack animal, that's a those are very important dogs.

I will not let you dismiss these dogs.

It's true, but there are hundreds of years ago by the time that we're stuffing.

Talking about their context it is, you're all about the contexts.

Are contextual dogs.

Right, contextual dogs.

Later they are master horsemen and great planes.

Tribes are used as the archetypical Indian in White American culture, partly because they were really fucking good at fighting the US military and so they were like around to be at war longer, Like I mean, not everyone's been around, right, Like one of the other greatest lies that we hear is like that it's done.

Everyone's subjugated, it's over two lay for decolonization, all that bullshit, right, But these folks, it's part of why they live on in the white American imagination and become this like stereotypical reflection of all indigenous people in North America.

So if there's like a thing that you think of, this probably comes from the Great Plain stripes.

Most of who we're going to talk about today are generally called the Sioux, including by a lot of them, but more historically than presently.

It's an outside name for them and is less in use today.

There are three branches or subculture of what gets called the Sioux.

There's the Lakota, the San Tea or the Eastern Dakota, and the Yankton or the Western Dakota.

And each of these groups is further divide into various bands.

The name Sioux is an exonym that from Najibwe word for little snakes, because it was meant to be mean.

I believe mostly will be talking about the Lakota this week, and so I point that out because like, if you google a lot of this, you'll have to look for like Sioux stuff.

You know.

White people didn't really start showing up in the Black Hills until the early eighteen hundreds.

At first, relationships were complicated, but not necessarily super bad.

When there's just like a couple of white people around.

Right, by the eighteen twenties, the US is setting one group against the other and hiring folks to help them with various raids.

And it's not hard to get some of these groups to fight each other because they their issues with each other are like all pretty legit, you know.

Of course.

Yeah, And by the eighteen when like a super powerful, you know, outside entity comes in and is like making use of that, of course there's going to be you know, that's going to be a terrible situation.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And it like and people are just doing what they think is best with the information that they have available to them, right, They're like, oh, well, this other group is my main enemy, these fucking white people.

Help me fight them or like vice, you know.

Like by the eighteen forties, folks are like, wait, what the fuck, We're all like dying of disease.

These motherfuckers keep slaughtering the ever loving shit out of the buffalo.

This sucks, and resistance.

Start allying with them never actually works out.

Great, No, it really really doesn't, especially making treaties with them not a historically honoring treaty.

Bunch.

White Americans really really love to make treaties, love to break treaties, does the United States?

Yeah, it's like a serial monogamoust who loves to cheat.

Never mind, is it like that, It's like a serial monogamous who is also a serial killer.

Yes much, yes, better, better better.

Yeah.

I never thought it'd be like, oh, serial killer, better better better.

Yeah.

So the Gold Russian Oregon Trail bullshit in eighteen forties, saw so many settlers headling west is really fucking things up, and folks are moving right through their territory.

There's this eighteen fifty one treaty that, of course the US immediately broke, and the Oglala band of the Lakota people was particularly not fucking having it.

There's one war leader, his name's Red Cloud, and in eighteen sixty six he said, quote the White Chief comes as soldiers to steal the land that they were like considering selling.

Comes to steal before the Indian says yes or no.

I will talk with you no more.

I will go now, and I will fight you as long as I live.

I will fight you for the last hunting grounds of my people.

Red Cloud, Yeah, he's not fucking around.

He killed the head chief of the Oglala bulbar for being too friendly with the white invaders.

Gotta do what you gotta.

Do, yep.

So let's talk about how bad the invaders were.

This is gonna be my favorite part.

Uh, they're really invading.

Heck, for example, you ever heard of a guy named Kit Carson?

Has yes, heard of that guy.

So he's not involved here.

But I'm gonna tell you why.

I'm gonna I need you to understand him, to understand the relative morality of some of these invaders.

He's more involved in the Southwest.

Uh, particularly, I believe he's involved in murdering and sexually assaulting to nay people.

Yey.

Carson was a Union officer who immediately after the Civil War went to go join the Indian Wars and got the nickname Indian Killer, which is a bad name and if you have it, you should die.

He went around the Southwest and destroyed everyone's food supplies.

That was like how he won his quote unquote war as he was really into destroying people's food supplies.

He was famous as shit as like a dime store novel hero, like the face of like America, fighting in the Indian Wars or whatever.

The DNAY called him.

Long Knives which is another bad nickname to have, and he used to play catch with the sever breast of Indigenous women that he's slaughtered.

Jesus Christ, because American history is a fucking horror movie, you know what.

Like, I fancy myself a fairly educated person, And as soon as you started talking about this about Kit Carson specifically, I was like, well, I don't know a lot about Kit Carson specifically, but I bet nothing she's gonna tell me is going to shock me.

I know about the American genocide of and god fucking damn it.

No, that is actually I mean, yes.

Christ, Yeah, And any listener knows that I hate being really explicit about some of this kind of stuff.

I take it very carefully.

I think it's worth understanding who these motherfuckers are.

There's I mean there there is like a a level of disregard for human life that needs to be understood in this situation exact because you can have you know, but because body counts don't tell the full story.

But something like that is pretty pretty like demonstrative of the mindset at work and the just sheer like genocidal fervor at work.

Yeah, absolutely and absolutely does not see people as human.

There's a park named after him in California.

You can go to Kit Carson Park.

Okay, the reason I'm telling you about Kit.

Carson Jesus, Okay, put that on the on the list.

After all the Confederate well not after all the Confederate monuments are aide.

While the Confederate monuments are being melt down, Maybe there's any they're human that things to be named after a Kit.

Kit sounds like a bullshit fucking nickname for like a nineteen fifties girl detective, and like he's I don't know, it's so likely he's trying to be so non threatening and chill, Like I hate that.

Non threatening chill.

Yeah, okay, Kit isn't fuck that guy.

So some of the shit that was happening in the Black Hills by the settlers in the army that's supporting them, all the murder and rape and murder rape, including an entire campus Chyenne people, Kit Carson, Kit fucking Carson looked at that and said that the settlers who did that were cowards and dogs because of how evil the settlers and the Black Hills are.

I mean, are we sure he wasn't just jealous?

It's completely possible.

But it's like, that's how fucking that's if this is the moral compass, Like, this is why I had to explain Kit Carson.

It's also worth understanding Kit Carson because it's worth understanding that the villain from the Saw movies is the archetypical hero of the Indian Wars from the American side.

I have still not seen the Saw movies.

It's not my style of thing.

I'm not gonna watch though, And I know you love context, but I'm not gonna watch the Saw movies for context for your explanation of Kit Carson no murder.

I mean, yeah, I'm generally given to understand that people don't come out of those movies and you know, with all their parts.

Yeah, so Red Cloud and a bunch of other folks are like, fuck this, We're gonna do a fucking war, and it gets called Red Cloud's war.

It's not really his war.

You can't own a war.

Also, it's like that's like a basically a white imposition to call him the leader of the war.

There's a lot of leaders.

Also, it would also be a lie to claim it was all equals right, But it's like a lot of complicated, different groups working together and fighting a very righteous and beautiful war.

I mean, well beautiful whatever.

It's fucking whatever they do what they were, yeah, doing something that needed to be done.

And like, I think there's also something where you like name a by like naming a war after the one guy, where the US can kind of pretend that it's smaller than it is, like, oh, it's just this guy who has a problem with US.

I don't know what his deal is.

And it's like, no, it's all of these people who you have screwed over in this just in you know, in this sort of language defying way that are now fighting back and you're just like, oh, well, it's you're trying to like put it on one person, right.

Red Cloud got a little upset one day after, you know.

Right, like if people had called the War of Independence like and I can't name a single founding war right like Ben Franklin's war, it would have sounded trivial and silly, right, And you know.

And so they are Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe folks fighting alongside one another, and they're just like fucking the Americans up in Red Clouds War.

But if you want to go to war.

We yeah, do we sell Nope, Nope, nope, none of that happened.

Here's ads and we're back.

So the US Army was protecting something called the Bozeman Trail, which connected up to the Oregon Trail, and they've just built a bunch of forts on Crow Territory, and the Crow are generally allied with the US throughout most of this because they're sick of the Lakota trying to put their territory.

Captain William J.

Fetterman is in charge of my to these guys, I try really hard not to be mad at people for their last names.

But Fetterman is the name of a person who puts people in chains, and he's a bad guy.

Oh yeah, that's that's what that means, I guess, yeah, or it means Featherman.

Maybe I'm pretty.

Sure it's jail guy.

I don't know, whatever, I don't know.

You're not actually responsible for your last name.

And like me, killjoy, I mean, who would have picked a name anyway.

So.

Unlike you, I didn't pick his name, but it sounds like he earth.

Yeah, so he has no experience in the Indian Wars.

This guy Fetterman and he's entirely contemptious of the quote unquote savages.

At one point, he says, give me eighty men and I can ride through the whole sue nation.

I am so excited for this man to get killed so hard?

Is that?

Am I going to get to see this man killed so hard?

Well, I'll tell you that he gets exactly eighty or eighty one men, and then he tries to ride through the whole Suon nation.

I'll tell you that much.

Does that work out?

So about a thousand warriors laid in ambush in the hills, four miles away from the enemy.

Fort ten folks volunteer to serve as bait, evenly split from the various groups involved, including and introducing one of the coolest motherfuckers in history, Crazy Horse.

Yes.

And meanwhile, there's a wink To, which is a two spirit person who gives advice to Red Cloud about the battle, saying that in their vision they saw a hundred Blue Coat soldiers in their hands, and this prophecy gives the upcoming battle the name the Battle of the Hundred in the Hands.

US sources call it the Fetterman Fight, which is boring.

Yeah much much less good name.

Yeah, although it was a little bit like kind of what we were saying that people say about like Red Cloud's war, Well, he got kind of upset and he went to or that's kind of what happens with Fetterman.

He's like a little upset, you know.

And so the ten decoys harassed the detachment of eighty one soldiers, which I believe is his eighty guys.

Had ass ten people Like that is an incredible thing to volunteer for.

They are literally mooning soldiers who are shooting grape shot from cannons at them.

Fucking legend.

That is so cool.

Good for them, and oh my god.

And it's like it's so funny too, right, because it's like, when I first read this, I thought it was like, oh, no, we set up as if we're easy to attack, don't attack us.

You know.

That's because that's what I would assume would write.

I was picturing somebody like running through like, oh no, I've twisted my ankle, don't chase me.

But yeah, yeah, no, they were literally mooning them.

Yeah, they were like, hey, we're harassing you and try to get you to follow us so we can kill you.

And they're like, okay, we're not gonna follow and kill you.

You know, this couldn't possibly be a trap.

Yeah, every and so the decoys led the soldiers further away from any support.

Every one of the eighty one soldiers died in the ambush.

Cool.

The indigenous folks had like very few guns at this point.

They are mostly fighting with bows and arrows, spears and clubs against muskets.

Fetterman himself died when someone slashed his throat.

For years they were like, no, he shot himself in suicide because he couldn't be killed, but he had to, you know, he knew he was gonna die, And like the forensics are just like his fucking throat was slashed.

Like, he's not a hero, He's just a fucking piece of shit who wasn't very smart, who got himself fucking murdered.

He really got mad when he saw some butts.

Yeah, and did not at all think perhaps I am being manipulated.

Yeah, totally.

When in doubt, if a stranger is showing you their butt, they're manipulating you.

They're trying to get some kind of reaction from you, think hard about what that kind of reaction might be.

Yeah.

Also, if you ever want to read a what modern bias looks like.

Read the Wikipedia account about the Fetterman Fight, because it was clearly written by someone who sees the US Army as heroes.

And it blows my mind that in the year of Our Lord twenty twenty three, there are people who think that the white Americans were justified in like fucking anything they did during the founding of this nation.

Yeah, that's a I I guess I always like think that I'm like walking around surrounded by people who don't think like the directors of nineteen fifties Westerns.

Yeah, but I guess I guess that's who's around me, or at least that's who's editing Wikipedia.

Well.

And the justification is that a lot of this is happening on Crow Territory where the rather than Lakota Territory.

But I'm like, people are resisting colonization.

A bunch of different indigenous nations are coming together resist colonization and destroy people who are don't see them as human.

Yeah, And if the justification involves the fact that this is on Crow Territory, I'm going to need that justification to be supported by a detailed account of how the US Army treated the Crow.

Yeah, and I'm gonna guess that that doesn't support that justification.

Well, during a lot of this the Crow are the allies of the US government, Okay, but because of But I actually I only know about specific Crow scouts.

I actually don't know larger and I'm really not trying to paint you know, entire groups of people with brushes.

In this sure, And I mean I'm just saying, like, yeah, in the long term, painting the United States is just at with thet the best interests of the Crow at heart.

Sounds pretty suspect to me.

Absolutely.

Anyhow, Red Clouds War, which Red Cloud wasn't in charge of, just was one of the people in charge of.

A ton of badass motherfuckers are up in this, like Crazy Horse, a guy named Spotted Tail American Horse.

But several of these badass motherfuckers later become sellout motherfuckers by most accounts.

Unfortunately, it's complicated everywhere, always shortly thereafter during the midst of this war.

That the Feederman fight doesn't end that war, right, but it is the greatest loss in the Indian Wars in US history up to that point.

But don't worry.

Rarely can you end a war by killing eighty one extremely dumb motherfuckers.

Yeah, even as as satisfying as it may be.

Well, one, don't worry, Lakota warriors and some other folks are going to kill an even greater number of US soldiers.

Fantastic the reasonably near future.

But also they're gonna win this war spoiler.

Shortly thereafter, the soldiers get given breech loaders instead of muzzle loaders, and this does fuck up the tactics of the indigenous folks because one of their main tactics is to run before they can reload, so you only have to suffer one volley, right, And with breech loaders, they're shooting too fast, and so there are two different attacks on forts and both these attacks fail.

So the indigenous nations go back to doing what they're best at, which is guerrilla attacks.

And the US realized they calculated it would take them twenty thousand soldiers to put down this group of indigenous more than eighty yeah, a little bit more in eighty.

So the US sued for peace.

They were like, we can't do that, we give up, and Red Cloud was like, I'm not going to fucking meet you unless you give up all unless you abandon these three forts.

So the US abandoned those forts.

Nice, that's like the concession before he'll even come to the table.

Yep, before all you come to the table.

So then again before they come to the table, the warriors went and burned those forts to the fucking ground.

Fuck yeah h And this part is important to our story.

The US government sued for peace in eighteen sixty eight in the Treaty of eighteen sixty eight.

They're really original namers, the kind of people come up with Fetterman Fight and Red Cloud War.

Are going to call it the Treaty of eighteen sixty eight.

Sometimes this is called the Treaty of Fort Laramie because it was signed at Fort Laramie.

That's what they called it on the TV show Deadwood, where it which is okay, where most of what I know about the Black Hills unfortunately comes.

From I didn't watch that, and sometimes I actually try to watch this stuff.

That's like, here's what mostly people say about the following thing.

You know.

On November sixth, eighteen sixty eight, Red Cloud signed this treaty, and it guaranteed indigenous groups quote, absolute and undisputed use of the Great Sioux Reservation.

No persons shall ever be permitted to pass, over, settle, upon, or reside in territory described in this article or without consent of the inn passed through the same.

No treaty for the secession of any portion or part of the reservation herein described shall be of any validity or force unless executed and signed by at least three fourths of the adult male Indians occupying or interested in the same.

So it's a very clear treaty.

It is a this is yours, it's yours now.

Yeah, that's unambiguous, really specific and clear.

It would be very obvious if somebody were to break the terms of that treaty.

Well, unfortunately it's stayed intact ever since.

And that's the four parter good thing.

The US keeps its promises.

Huh, which actually gets into some of this interesting I'll probably end up talking about more this more next week.

But obviously I'm buying large using you know, I'm referring to people as indigenous people rather than like Indians for example, right obviously, except when I'm quoting things, there are arguments.

It's the American Indian movement aim which will be a major subject of next week.

There are arguments that people made at various points where they're like, you know what, I actually prefer that word.

And one of the reasons that sometimes people preferred that word again, I'm talking about the nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies, I'm not trying to make an argument for it now, was specifically around a lot of their fights were around the legal ees of these various documents, and they were like, we need to make it clear that we are the group of people who sign this document, right.

Are we are who were supposedly granted these right, these concessions and these rights.

Right?

But that is you know, I don't have a I have no interest in having an opinion on that.

It does not matter.

You know.

Whatever folks decide to go with, that's what I'm going with, and buy and large and you know, in the United States, I tend to use indigenous peoples and then like a lot of people in Canada use First Nations peoples and you know whatever.

So the indigenous people who sign this this treaty all supposed to be given clothes, food, education, a sawmill and a gristmill, a warehouse, a doctor, an instruction in white man's agriculture, and technology.

His last part is a is part of the US policy to like civilize the indigenous people, right, right, but the forest assimilation right.

In exchange, the Lakota agree to withdraw opposition to the construction of the railroad and other roads elsewhere, you know, and wouldn't lead raids out from their territories against settlers.

And this treaty snuck in just under the wire.

By eighteen seventy one, the US passed a rider to a bill that said, quote hereafter, no Indian nation or tribe within the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.

This was when they were like, no, you are all fucking ours, right, you know, we do not respect anyone else to have any I don't like government very.

Much, so well, yeah, it's bad.

I mean, just I think based on the conversation we've been having for the last hour, so I think I'm ready to say the government is bad.

Yeah, the America government is not actually overall a force for good.

I hate to you know, people don't get real mad about that now whatever.

So Red Cloud he signs this, but he and some of the other folks.

They're kind of defeated after this.

They like he goes east in eighteen seventy and he just sees how many fucking white people there are and he's like, oh, fuck, we're fucked, Like we can't And he never again goes back to war, and he mostly starts playing ball with the invaders, although he's still got some good moments of resistance in him.

And it's complicated.

I'm not trying to be like, well, whatever, I can't sit my fucking answers.

Is just did this shit.

They were the other side of this, so whatever, you know.

Meanwhile, the guy in charge of the reservation system, as best as I can tell, this guy named Francis Walker, and he said that the goal of the reservation system was to reduce quote the wild beasts to the condition of supplicants for charity Jesus.

Not even about assimilation.

It is about making them no longer have agency.

Yeah, so the Lakota and other flow, I just.

I don't know.

I again, I really thought that, like, oh, well, I know this stuff.

I know how horrible this was.

But like occasionally somebody will just like say something not even occasionally seems like constantly.

You know, people will just fucking say things like.

That, yeah yeah, and people in power will say things like that.

Yeah right.

That's the thing.

This wasn't like some crank who's like, I don't think that we should treat people well, this is like the guy who's in charge of the reservation system, Jesus.

As best as I can tell, I like spent a while trying to figure out I read the quote and then try to infer from context and then try to like google around it a lot because the quote is so affecting, but it wasn't entirely clear.

That was my best guess as the person's job who said it.

But still they've got this treaty of eighteen sixty eight, and the Lakota and other folks are like sort of sat for you know, they're like, Okay, we have the reservation, we have sovereignty, and we've got the Black Hills.

You know, this is very important to us.

But Miriam, do you ever think about, like what if white people wanted the hills?

Yeah?

I mean white people usually get what they want, right, that's how that goes.

Huh.

Yeah, They're like, well, why can't we have the hills?

Even though we just signed this treaty because we lost a war.

Even though, yeah, even though we literally just said you can have that and we won't try to take it.

Right.

So, six years later, like not a generation later, not half a generation later, six years later, enter onto stage Colonel George Custer.

Well, I am excited for how this ends, but I'm not excited for what's gonna happen.

First, Oh, yeah, he's a dick.

In eighteen seventy four, he leads an expedition into the sovereign territory of the Lakota to confirm rumors that there's gold, and he's like, Yep, there's gold.

George Custer is such a piece of shit that a superior officer once said about him.

The year prior, eighteen seventy three, a superior officer said about him that he was quote a cold blooded, untruthful, and unprincipled man, universally despised by all the officers of his regiment.

Okay, so why is he, like, why is he allowed to be in.

Charge of anything?

I argue, baby, I just I mean, I I that.

Like ninety percent of the people that you've like, of like the genocidal white people, you've talked about so far, there's like somebody standing right behind them going like, we all hate this piece of shit, and it's like the stop giving him guns and people.

To command, totally, totally, and we're going to talk about Oh, we'll get to it.

Uh.

George Custer, you will be shocked to know is a huge proponent of the indigenous people aren't human theory, and he was the He was the kind of guy who would say shit like I don't know what the Prime Minister of Israel says about Palestinian people in the Lard twenty twenty three, not that anyone would draw historical parallels.

I thought we agreed that history doesn't repeat or rhyme or or do any of those things that it does.

No, totally not.

So miners everywhere are like, we need to get the fuck into those hills, like there's gold there.

I have a god given right to steal all of the gold and kill everyone who's between me and it, you know, and only logical.

Yeah, and this is actually one of the's only interesting to me.

I don't know.

It's like the first time that settlement happened in the eastern direction, like because it was like people who had gone gold rushing out west, were like, oh, there's gold in the middle of the country too.

They like swung back into the middle of the country.

Ah, that is interesting, Yeah, that is interesting.

Don't undersell your interesting facts.

Yeah.

So miners started gathering in towns like wagons or getting people are like lining up right and ready to pillage.

But the US had at the moment, the US had troops stationed to keep them out of the hills in order to keep them honoring the treaty.

And the US was like, well, we should settle this properly.

We should buy all the land.

And so they offered five million dollars, which is one hundred and forty million dollars in today's money, and the indigenous folk were like fuck no.

Sitting bowl of the hunk, Papa Lakota said, quote, we want to know white men here.

The Black hills belong to me.

If the whites tried to take them, I will fight.

And he said he would not sell even a pinch of dust to the Americans.

Good call.

Yeah, crazy horse who if I ever like go revisit this, I'm just going to a solid crazy horse thing, because he seems really interesting as a person.

He was a really quiet reserved guy.

Yeah, totally, and so so Crazy Horse was just a quiet reserved guy who like wouldn't sing and dance, like wouldn't participate in all the stuff.

He was always really nice to everyone, but it was just a little bit withdrawn, you know.

It's fucking cool.

I really like him.

He and so he's generally pretty quiet.

But he said about this quote, one does not sell the land on which the people walk, and the resistant chiefs promised that any chief who sold the Black Hills would be killed.

So Red Red Cloud and Spotted Tail are like they're thinking about it.

They're like, oh, no, maybe you know.

And then they were like, oh, we don't want to sell it.

We've just been given a pressing counteroffer.

Yeah, wherein we don't get murdered.

Yeah, And it's like hard to say exactly my money based on everything else I read is that like Red Cloud was a little bit more on the level and Spotted Tail was a little bit less on the level at this point, but well, we'll get more into their stuff.

So Red Cloud and Spotted Tail are like, now we're not fucking signing.

And Crazy Horse had another really good quote.

I'm just going to stick in here because I like it.

Quote, we did not ask you white men to come here.

The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home you had yours.

We did not interfere with you.

The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on the and buffalo deer and antelope and other game.

But you have come here.

You are taking my land from me.

You are killing off our game.

So it is hard for us to live.

Now.

You tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting.

You white men can work if you want to.

We do not interfere with you.

And again you say, why do you not become civilized?

We do not want your civilization.

We would live as our fathers did and their fathers before them.

Fuck yeah, yeah, no fucking notes.

So the indigenous people wouldn't sell.

President Grant was like, fine, I'll withdraw all my troops that are protecting you from settlers and I'll let the settlers do the work.

And then he got ready to wage a war because he had to go protect those settlers too.

You know.

As for how that went, we'll talk about it on Wednesday.

Spoiler alert, it does not go well for Custer personally.

That was such a cool quote you read a second ago, though, like I want to go Yeah, I want to go back to it because it was really fucking cool.

Will you read it again, like it just resonates.

Yeah, it's a crazy horse quote.

We did not I'd ask you white men to come here.

The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home.

You had yours.

We did not interfere with you.

The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on in buffalo, deer, antelope, and other game.

But you have come here.

You are taking my land from me.

You are killing off our game.

So it is hard for us to live now.

You tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting.

You white men can work if you want to.

We do not interfere with you.

And again you say, why do you not become civilized?

We do not want your civilization.

We would live as our fathers did and their fathers before them.

Ouck.

Yeah, yeah, that's really powerful.

Thanks for reading it again.

Yeah, can't wait for Wednesday, can't wait for Custard to die.

Yeah, he's gonna die so dead, he's.

Gonna be super dead.

There's three wounds and they're not sure which one killed him.

Not to call back to the Pirate episode, but like whimp.

Blackfagard had like twenty yeah, totally.

Oh it's so funny.

Well that's then the part one of a four parter because we have so much more to talk about.

But first, Miriam, I think you want to talk.

About Yeah, if I said anything that was incorrect or you'd disagree with I'm not on Twitter, so talk to Margaret about it.

So ha ha ha ha.

But maybe if you are a person who has some money of any amount, you could go to Medical Aid for Palestinians at m AP dot org dot uk and give them some money.

Maybe you did that already at the beginning of the bombing of Gaza, and maybe you should do it again.

If you did it already, and if you haven't done it at all, maybe you should do it.

I think that's what I would plug to.

And then also to say that just read more about how colonization happens here in the US and how it's an ongoing project and how it's not over.

And then like the thing that I keep pointing out because it sits in my head.

It's my Roman Empire.

It's the thing I think of every once so fucking week, is that, in the grand scheme of things, the United States has not actually been a colonized territory for all of that long.

It's been a very long time, and it's been a very horrible time, full of awful atrocities.

But it's not over.

Like there are many places where colonization lasted longer and then ended.

You know.

Yeah, to to paraphrase Ursula Legwyn, we live under settler colonialism.

Its power seems inescapable.

So did the divine right of kings.

All human power can be undone by human hands.

Yeah, so have you guy, anything you want plug just it could happen here?

Yeah, oh, specifically on it could happen here.

There's a really good episode that Mia did about settler colonialism and what it looks like that I actually listened to while writing this episode, and I think it's it's worth going back.

Oh, I don't remember the title.

It'll be from right around the week of November, like third or fourth or something like that, and it's really worth listening to.

It talks a lot about is.

It the cheapest land is bought?

In Blood.

Yeah, go listen to up.

It's a two part to listen to that.

Yeah.

I highly recommend that too.

Murder as well from Martin all Right, see you all Wednesday.

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