Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 110 - Joseph Medicine Crow

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

Joseph Medicine Crow became the last War Chief of the Crow Tribe. He did this by counting coup, stealing an enemy's weapon, and stealing their horses....in World War II. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Joseph Medicine Crow, Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/joseph-medicine-crow-last-crow-tribe-war-chief-dies-at-102

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and spitting into an empty seltzer can is Nick. It's me, doing that, now, live. Spitting cans and taking names. I want to get one of the ones where you're sitting there and you go like an actual spittoon.

But I want to do like distance spitting. There's worse Olympic sports. I imagine there is. Like curling. That imagine there is. I like curling. That one. Running. I mean, sprinting is pretty interesting. And they're like, obviously like,

not for me. This story of the marathon is interesting. Like, I hate running. I fucking hate it. I don't think I've ran more than a mile since I've been in the army. I wish I could say cumulatively, but like,

that's not true. Like I've definitely ran more than a mile at a time, but like watching someone like break a land speed record on their Chevrolet eggs is pretty fucking cool. It doesn't mean I want to do it. Like I'm not like, I'm going to be, my son's going to be next to Usain Bolt.

It's not going to happen. Like if your son says, race me dad in the parking lot i'm like you got it kid pull i'm gonna pull the car around yeah better fucking run um so today's episode is uh requires a bit of an intro and uh we're i'm gonna give that intro okay how do you how much do you know about the Crow tribe of the Native America, the Crow tribe of America? None at all. First Nations, Native Americans, whichever you want to. None. And here I thought you were the premier Crow scholar. Actually, we're going to talk about... Actually, that'd be nice. Actually, this guy is also the premier Crow scholar. So his name is Joseph Madison Crow, and it takes a little bit of intro to get to him.

And you have to kind of understand the unique place that the Crow tribe exists in in American history. Like when you think of like the Plains Wars, the genocide of the Native American people, you think of like multiple tribal wars against the United States. Right. The Crows really weren't involved in most of that in the way that you would think.

So to understand today's episode, you have to dive into the history of one of America's Native tribes. That is the Crow, also known as the Absaroka. Today, the Crow, like a lot of Plains Indians, are based around the Montana area. But it was not always the case also there's like some reservations in oklahoma i believe um and like most reservations that is not their ancestral land they're just kind of shoved there uh i'm not gonna really get into that in this episode uh because that is an episode unto itself or a series probably a series yeah

uh the crow like most native tribes have a long and unfortunate history of being pushed off of their land. Their first homeland was around Lake Erie, which is today like Ohio. But they did the right thing by leaving there as soon as they could. Because it's Ohio. But no, really, they were forced off of the land by better armed and more aggressive neighboring tribes, which is pretty common for them. They moved westwards and ran into conflict with other tribes over the fur trade. land by better armed and more aggressive neighboring tribes, which is pretty common for them. They moved westwards and ran into conflict with other tribes over the fur trade, and things didn't always go their way. Other tribes got access to more and more guns via that same fur trade, and the Crow began

to clash with them as well. As the 1800s came around, the natives in the area were banding together to expel Europeans from their land, but the Crow kind of stayed out of it they're like we hate the other tribes too much to ally with wow which like is interesting because like there's all these confederacies popping up like tribal confederacies not the shitty slave one yeah uh like like the iron confederacy is one like we talked about the iroquois confederacy in a different like the crow's like nah you guys suck you guys suck so much we don't want to fight white people with you like that's like a completely different level of burn i can't imagine hating someone that much to go you know what i wouldn't even set aside my

difference yeah that for once the greater unifying theory of fuck those guys did not work out uh that's they they mostly hated the sioux and the cheyenne tribes which were dominant in the area they're like nah you guys have fun i think what they were hoping is that the sioux and the cheyenne would get their asses handed to them by the white people and then the crow be able to come in and take advantage of it nice which i i'm only guessing that but that would be the smart thing to do that would be uh as i were to call it any survival game that i play rat gameplay the the tribal of rat fucking uh and actually through a lot of these planes wars the crow allied themselves with the united states and enlisted in the army wow uh to include most famously at the battle of little bighorn um and also like during red

clouds war but most people remember the Crow Scouts of Custer. Crow soldiers enlist in the US Army to fight their enemies. The bad blood running far enough back that they're able to forget about how shitty the white people were and the Crow did not like Americans like it was

it was like the Finns allying with the Nazis like we need you for now. Like most tribes at the point uh at one point or another conflict between them and the u.s military would eventually come uh and this time it was known as the crow war which is actually a pretty bold name to put on what is more of like the crow skirmish um it started uh it's also like the crow agency war of 1887 it is not a war uh it is quite literally a firefight between the united states army the crow and then some crow assholes who disregarded their own uh tribal government um oh wow in the late 1800s when the u.s had all

but stamped out the rebellions of the natives the natives still raided and fought one another uh like they'd leave reservations and raid other people for horses and stuff. It was attempted for the most part. I'm not speaking for all tribes here. I'm speaking for the Crow that their chiefs would tell their kids

because there's normally older men, teenagers, young 20s, that were doing it to prove themselves. They're like, cut that shit out. Really? They're trying to get them to stop, but they're like, to, like, prove themselves. Right. And they're like, cut that shit out. Really? Yeah. They were trying to get them to stop, but, like, they're like, nope, fuck you, grandpa. Yeah.

Because, like, it's something of a rite of passage to, like, go steal somebody's horse, get some of that sweet war booty. You know how it is. You know how we do. During one of those occasions, the Crow and the Blackfoot tribes began raiding one another's reservations. Also, it should be pointed out, leaving your reservation was absolutely against the law in accordance with the u.s government so like if uh like that's one of the things that led towards red clouds warp i believe is like he left his reservation because he's like yo reservations fucking suck and like they dispatched the army to go force him back on his reservation which

happened a lot. So the Crow raiding from their reservation to the Blackfeet is not great, but also it was a small enough scale where the army wouldn't have known if no one would have told them. It turns out there were some snitches in their midst. Bastards. The Crow chief told his young warriors to cut that shit out and hopefully they could squash this intertribal beef.

Like in the tribe and like the chiefs could talk it out because their warriors are being assholes. Mostly, they were both worried about the U.S. government getting involved in fucking all of them up again. Because, you know, like the U.S. is bad. We're bad. A lot of the time. We did a genocide. us is bad we're bad a lot of the time we did a genocide yeah and then put them into oklahoma sized concentration camps with no food uh so yeah but a young warrior named swordbearer grabbed some men and went off and raided the black feet again and you can't have a name like swordbearer and not

do that yeah like you can't like man who a gun. Like, how dare you become a gorilla? That's kind of your fault at that point. He's going to live up to that fucking name. 100%. So he went out and stole some horses. He brought the horses back to the reserve. Yours would be, I can see your veins. Good with needle. Not a great name.

Why do you keep giving IVs to people? I'm sorry. It's all I'm good at quick with narcan um now he brought those horses back to his reservation agent uh the reservation agent was a government representative on the reservation who was a white guy uh it wasn't always a white guy but this one was uh because he he had to register the horses with the agent to be like yo these are mine now but like the agent's like you stole those how do you register a horse i don't know license plate here's your vin number excuse me mr sword bear do you have insurance on this horse

yeah um the agent had a problem with this because they were very clearly stolen how because one guy showed up with four horses so what did you do buy them they purposely made the natives poor as shit he can't afford a horse i just want to know how this guy like had records of all this stuff brands probably i don't know is that the vin number you gotta lift up the tail and look for the the the vin number on the undercarriage. Yeah, he said the agent didn't like this. And he's like, yo, I'm not gonna let you register these horses as yours.

So Swordbearer solved this problem the only way that a guy named Swordbearer knew how. Just pulling out his gun and shooting at his feet. Literally making him dance. Dance, the final dance of death. Dance, motherfucker. You pale-faced bitch. So this got blown out of proportion in some news. Do you think he tried being cool with the tribe like how older people do? Hello, fellow natives.

Yeah. He's like, it's like the guy who goes to vacation in Hawaii for like a week. Aloha, my Ohana. Yeah. Like, shut up. Shut up, Pete. Eat shit, Pete. Eat shit, Pete.

That's gonna be me in like three weeks. They're just gonna throw rotten food at you all the time. I deserve it. The newspapers of the time were like Sword Bear and his war band opened fire on the agency office and blew the house apart, though there's no evidence of that ever happening.

Yeah, that didn't happen. Twin towers were taken down. He flew a horse into it. Goddammit, you made me do a 9-11 joke, you fucking asshole. I think that might be a first. Poison trails. We're cancelled. Now, Swordbearer and his

band after opening fire on the agent now depending on the story that you believe i believe the the crow version which is he shot at the guy's feet yeah not the us it's a humble version yeah uh because like if i was sword and swordbearer does survive uh and if i was telling this we're like fuck yeah we opened fire on the agency building but he doesn't say that so like i'm willing to believe the guy who shot at the guy uh in you know he and his guys realized they probably screwed up uh because they shot at a government uh employee so they ran off into the mountains oh off the reservation so the u.s army was dispatched to force them back onto the reservation. I would hate that, too.

Go into the mountains. Find this one guy. Like, imagine, and it's almost always cavalry units. I believe this one was, like, the 7th. And I do not have a Stetson sitting at my desk with a 7th Cavalry Flash on it. Because that's not me. That's not who I am. That exists.

because i was that's not me that's not who i am uh that exists uh but uh yeah most cavalry guys um in these regiments like weren't what you think of when you think of cavalry of like not christian bale no uh most of them were like hardly trained small guys who could fit on a horse and like they're all enlistees like back then you could like enlist at their frontier posts oh so like a lot of these guys are just like poor and don't want to starve to death or whatever. And disease is rampant in these garrisons and stuff. And they're like, wait, we have to go out into the mountains and find some crows who know that we're coming for them. And this is their yard. This seems bad.

I've never seen a mountain yeah what's a mountain i'm from oklahoma um yeah and like this is despite the fact that the chief of the crow told the u.s army like don't worry we got this they sent their own armed warriors and police after these guys it's like you're making us look bad, you fucking asshole. What's going on? Yeah. But like, the army isn't gonna like, ah, yes,

the natives are gonna handle this because it would require looking at the Crow tribe, like, tribal government as the equals that they were supposed to. Because like, remember,

like, the tribes are supposed to be sovereigns. Right. Yeah, obviously. Can't have that. That's an inside joke

of the federal government, but it just exists to make sure they can be like well they could take control of themselves we can't possibly stop them from not having food uh but yeah uh so now you have a crow uh an armed force of crow indians following an armed force of u.s cavalry people both of them going at another armed force of Crow Indians. It's not great. No, it's not. It's not a good sandwich. Also, both sides of this had veterans of

Custer's last stand in it. Oh. Yeah. Jesus. Like, Steve, is that you? Bam! I remember those eyes! God damn it. Yeah, so like, I mean, because a lot of crows fought alongside

Custer, and a lot of the cav guys who were part of the other units that did not get surrounded and destroyed were also there. Yeah, it's not great. I'd rather be one of those guys. Sword Bear attempted to fight them off with his men, who, I use the term men pretty loosely.

Most of them were like 15 to 17 years old, trying to prove themselves. So when the soldiers brought a Hotchkiss gun onto them, which is like a small piece of artillery, they're like, fuck this, we quit! I would too. And Sword Bear is riding around on his horse trying to rally them,

and they all just abandon his ass. But Crow Police captured Sword Bear, and thus the only Crow U.S. war ended after only nine killed. on his horse trying to rally them and they all just abandoned his ass uh but crow police captured swordbearer and thus the only crow u.s war ended after only nine killed total on both sides in about a day yeah so it's not really a war no so with that intro we come to today's topic the last war chief of the crow so far we'll get to that part okay the last war chief of the Crow Tribe. So far. We'll get to that part. Okay. The last Warchief of the Crow Tribe. Now, if you were to guess when that last Warchief was crowned, when do you think it would be? World War II?

You were right. Bam. Yeah. Joseph Madison Crowe's story was made famous by that, was it the World War IIi documentary by ken burns yeah i think he uh gives him like a whole 20 minutes so good job ken uh so the last war chief of the crow tribe would not be made in the battlefields of the plains wars or the little bighorn or the crow agency war but rather killing nazis in western europe World War II. Yeah! So Joseph Madison Crowe was born on October 13, 1913

as Highbird of the Whistling Water Clan of the Crow Tribe on the Crow Indian Reservation near... I heard they're good whistlers. Yeah, sure. Near Lodgegrass, Montana. Now, the Crow Tribe's lineage passes down from the mother's side, so he's considered of his mother's people, meaning all titles, lineage, and positions are passed down from her.

Though we do know his father, Leo Medicine Crow, was considered something of a heroic war chief himself. So, yeah. Also, Joe's family had one hell of a history of being incredibly important historical characters. His step-grandfather, who I will just call grandfather from this point on, was a Crow Scout for George Armstrong Custer, whose name was the kind of unfortunate White Man Runs Him. Oof.

Though he was also known as White Buffalo Who Turns Around, so I'm willing to bet he liked that one better. I don't understand the turn around part. I don't understand the turnaround part. I don't understand what his name meant, except the white man runs him one. That one's pretty good. Oh, God.

Because, I mean, even though Crowe enlisted to fight in the U.S. Army, it did not mean it was a popular job within the tribe. So, like, I don't know if that was considered a snide, shitty nickname, or I don't know. There's not a snide, shitty nickname, or I don't know. There's not a lot of evidence on that either way. But so he had options, at least. His stepfather or step grandfather survived the Battle of Little Bighorn, though how he survived depends on who you talk to. Some claim that he and other Crow soldiers change out their army uniforms into warrior clothing, telling Custer that they wanted to die as warriors rather than soldiers.

And that, well, the change of uniform didn't piss Custer off so much as like, yeah, we're gonna fucking die. We want to die dressed as our people, not yours. So they got told to leave before being fatalists. Okay. Not the fact that they're like, this guy sucks.

He's all killed. Another account is they just ran. I don't think I believe that one. Mostly because all of them kind of tell the same story and the survivors don't really like each other all that much. Like they just shot at each other. So the idea that they all are like, no, we changed. And that is the popular narrative is like they changed.

But also I've heard a different one is like they changed in their warrior clothes so they could escape. But like they knew that they were crow. Yeah. Like that's like some really shitty racist version that like all natives can't tell each other apart or something. Yeah. Like, no, fuck that. He's a crow. Fuck that guy.

He's with the U.S. Army. Like they know. But yeah, it depends on who you talk to. I'm willing to believe that he changed to fight and die as his people and Custer being a shitty racist told him to fuck off. I'm willing to buy that. Is that bias because how much I hate George Armstrong Custer? Yes, probably. But he's also that big of a dumbass to get rid of his fucking scouts.

Because remember, all of these guys are native scouts who know the area, and he got rid of them all, and then he died. Yeah. Now, Joe had what is considered a normal life for a crow growing up on the reservation. And as he was trained, he was raised traditionally. His parents kind of let the whole tribe raise him as a young man. And it was not an easy life. He was trained to track and hunt with bow and rifle. And he was taught to ride horses bareback from a very young age.

He also trained how to be a straight up hard ass motherfucker. For instance, when he went on hunting trips, regardless of the weather and how long that he was gone, he was only allowed to bring a single blanket and sleep on the ground with it. No shoes. I couldn't do that. He would also be forced to hike for miles in the snow

barefooted in order to literally kill the feeling in his feet. I step on a pebble, I'm done. Also, one of the people raising him saw that he was kind of afraid of heights when he was younger. So they forced him to jump off the highest cliff in the reservation into freezing cold water in order to break that from him. How deep's the water? We don't know. You'll find out when you hit it, kid.

No, he was more than just trained to be a warrior. He survived this weird upbringing as a future scout and warrior and all-around hard dude, but he was also an academic prodigy. He attended white schools and was ruthlessly picked on and bullied by his classmates. He remembers white girls pinching him and poking him with pins, because they thought that his skin would turn white. Yeah, white people are stupid. And all while he's trying to pay attention in class,

and everybody thought that he was subhuman, because he's native. But then that seemed to slow him down, because in 1929, when he was in eighth grade, he began attending a local college on the side. Jesus. Yeah. I can't imagine doing that on the side. Yeah.

You know how you're just learning about, I don't know, your times tables? Go to college. Yeah. He was the first person in his tribe to attend college as well as the first to get a master's degree. What? Yep. He would also be the first doctor. But that comes later.

Oh, he puts the medicine in his name to use. No, no. He's a be the first doctor. But that comes later. Oh, he puts the medicine in his name to use. No, no. He's a history PhD. Oh. Yeah. He got his master's in anthropology in 1939. In his thesis, the effects of European culture contact upon the economic, social, and religious life of the Crow Indians

remains one of the most widely read sources on Crow culture and one I used for this podcast. That was very, very long time ago uh cool yeah uh joe is also one of the last people to receive an oral history of the battle of little bighorn and this little bit of history stuck with him until the day he died uh like his like i said his great grand his grandfather survived the battle and he was one of the last people to hear his full account because he got it for his research and then his grandfather died. That's great.

In 1940, Raoul Walsh, a director, came into Crowlands to scout out filming locations for a biopic of George Armstrong Custer called They Died With Their Boots On and it starred an old Hollywood star named Errol Flynn.

They were looking to cast extras. Now, Joe had heard the story from his grandfather however many times, and so he's like, hell yeah, I want to be part of this movie. Like, my grandfather lived through this. How cool is that? So he went in and had to be interviewed to become part of the cast.

Walsh asked him if he knew anything about the battle, and Joe pointed out that his grandfather was one of the few people that had escaped alive. When Walsh asked him if he knew anything about the battle. And Joe pointed out that his grandfather was one of the few people that had escaped alive. When Walsh asked him what he thought about Custer, he answered the same way his grandfather did, that he was an idiot who got his command destroyed because how dumb he was. He was immediately told to get out of his office and not

hired. What? Yeah. God. Some people say this is because they're planning the movie to get people's spirits up about uh the u.s getting involved in world war ii and like they're gonna turn it into like a heroic last stand i see that type thing and uh telling the true story of how a white man tripped over his own dick into being massacred by a native army would be a real downer even though that is the true story it is yeah um well that might be be the case, Hollywood has a really hard time admitting

that the U.S. Cavalry Forces of the Plain Wars were dumb war criminals to this very day, and so do those units themselves. Cavalry units still have awards in their headquarters from the Plains Wars. You slaughtered innocent people. We gave 20 fucking medals of honor. Go to a battalion.

You'll see fucking streamers and shit. We gave 20 fucking medals of honor for to a battalion you'll see fucking streamers and yeah like we gave like 20 fucking medals of honor for uh uh the wound and knee massacre where they shot unarmed people and they gave purple hearts out or not purple hearts but like their version of the wound badge uh at the day uh fucking for shooting themselves on accident because like it is pretty much all friendly fire oh wow yeah yeah. Yeah, they're real dumb. So I don't know if World War II was really the reason rather than a tad bit more of that old institutional racism

we've heard so much about. Hmm. Yeah. Not in our Hollywood. Not 1940s Hollywood. No, the movie was eventually moved to where else? But California. And due to budget constraints

and crew objections objections they just hired a whole bunch of Filipino extras rather than Americans with only 16 natives they had a real crew they had a whole tribe that were willing to help but only about 16 natives were cast in

like applicable roles despite the fact that literally hundreds of extras were hired three people died during filming though including applicable roles, despite the fact that literally hundreds of extras were hired. Three people died during filming, though. What? How? So I wasn't going to include this, but it sounds like something that would happen. It sounds like we have to think.

It sounds like something that would happen in an Acme cartoon, is that one man who insisted on using a real saber during a cavalry charge scene fell off his horse and impaled himself. Jesus. How the fuck do you do that? I have no idea. It's fucking amazing. So, uh,

congrats, Joe, for dodging that, I guess. Another one in Anvil fell on top of him. Yeah, and then, like, uh, on his last stand, Custer leveled his revolver and went to fire and a flag that just said, bang, dropped out. It was like, oh, those Indians! As it gets scalped.

As an extra little stab of revenge, Joe became the author and main editor of the script that reenacted the Battle of Little Bighorn. The main one used on scene since 1965. The one that is considered the most accurate account ever written. So eat shit, Errol Flynn. After he completed his master's, he began to study for his doctorate. But he had to, you know, work. He didn't have any other money on the side.

So he taught at a nearby school, but also eventually picked up a job at the Naval Yards at Bribberton, Washington while he studied. But in 1943, he decided eventually picked up a job at the Naval Yards at Briberton, Washington while he studied. But in 1943, he decided to enlist in the U.S. Army, becoming what else but an infantry scout,

following his grandfather's footsteps. Joseph, like hundreds of thousands of others, was destined for the battlefield of Europe. But before he went, his grandfather told him very specific steps that he had to take in order to become a crew war chief.

Just like his father. You know, for some reason I thought you were going to throw typist at me. Every typist we talk about is a fucking war hero. Only in movies. Yeah. He was actually machine from Fury. The first was

touching an enemy and then escaping without killing your enemy. Touching? Yeah. It's a very common practice across various native tribes known as counting coup. This proved that you're brave enough

to run right up on your enemy, smack the fucking taste out of his mouth, and get away. This practice was used by a lot of different tribes. Someone used a blunt side of a lance to poke him, while others would literally run up and grab you with their bare hands the tribes of the pacific northwest had a practice where the stick that they used for counting coup would have a feather attached to it for each coup that they had counted oh i thought they were gonna tickle him with it i mean maybe

i mean you could i mean imagine though like you're manning a line or whatever as if a trade, you see a guy with like the most feathery stick. Like, oh fuck. Like the baddest dude is coming right towards me. You could tell from like a football field away. That guy is going to poke me and then kill me. Though something was important about counting coup. Your life had to be at risk while doing it. Like you couldn't like down a guy with a gut shot and then run up and smack him with your stick like you can't game

the system you had to like run up while this guy's actively shooting you'd be like what the five fingers say in the face like there were steps involved the next was stealing an enemy's weapon this is kind of like Counting Coup, where you could quite literally snatch it from somebody's hands in the midst of battle, or you could show how clever you were by sneaking up on someone while they were asleep. It's kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure, stealth gaming, where you could rush in and die a million times before rage quitting. It's almost like you could knock out two birds with one stone in that one.

That's what we call foreshadowing. Oh okay so you did do this all right uh now like uh the joe explains in his book that the the traditional crow way of waging war was like almost like a game of like who could be more clever like you'd raid one another steal stuff like you weren't like everybody online like marching forward and shit like so like you know stealing you could show how brave were you were by like running up on a line of infantry snatching a weapon or how clever you were by stealing it and like one is not considered better than the other i mean yeah once you get there cool but then you gotta go back yeah you have to escape and like you could get wounded while counting coup, and it was considered like you still counted coup.

But if you could escape and not wounded, it's like the height of where you're at. Oh, it's platinum. Yeah, yeah. You get the achievement unlock. Nice. The next was leading a successful war party. This one is kind of up to you to be understood.

As you could be leading a unit of really any size on any mission, more traditionally during a raid of some kind. But that is like how we just talked about how the Crow saw traditional warfare. It's just stealing a bunch of shit and running away. Or raiding someone, wiping out an enemy column or whatever and running. Or shooting and running. You know, partisan shit. Now, this leads us to the final point of becoming

a war chief stealing an enemy's horse obviously you're gonna lead a war party you probably need to steal their shit smack them with a stick and shoot a few at the same time going off all of our previous video game analogies if because you know we're scholars this these would all be like quests that are tied together oh i'd be so bad at those yeah i would die immediately like quests that are tied together. Oh, I'd be so bad at those. Yeah, I would die immediately. Like, I'm going to go try to count coup guys and then immediately get shot in the face. God damn it. Get dome pieced. It's really easy to aim for the six foot four native guy in horseback.

Now, anyway, Joe went off to the European front almost as soon as he was done with training. Which, surprise, surprise, he ended up being a better scout than all of his instructors. I imagine. I've been doing this since before you. I could walk, motherfucker. He could also outmarch most of them because this is kind of what happens. His feet were dead.

This is kind of what happens when you get put through the native equivalent of the agogae and your feet turn into an unfeeling mass of dead flesh. Alright, everybody, quick, take off your boots. Holy shit, your feet are black. All of his toes are fused together. These are just hooves. Private

Medicine Crow, why are you not wearing boots? I like it better this way. I can feel the earth. So, I wonder if he was that guy during training who was, like, actually instructor for fucking scouting? Yeah. Like, he was that guy. I feel like he just stood there, because he was used guy during training was like actually instructor for fucking scouting. He was that guy. I feel like he just stood there because he was used to being

well-actualied by white people his entire life. So he's like, I'm just going to let this fucking idiot talk at me for a while. Because this shit doesn't work. And then I'm going to hide in the woods he's not going to be able to find me. Joseph had been given a yellow painted eagle feather by a tribal medicine man before leaving, which he kept in his helmet at all times.

And it was believed to be sacred. He also donned crow war paint before every mission, though probably not like what you're picturing in your head. He was given a special kind of clay from his reservation that he could mix with water. And then he could draw two red lines on the length of his arms under his uniform jacket. Yeah. Whenever he was anywhere that he thought that he would be fighting Nazis, he put his motherfucking feather on,

donned his war paint. Nice. And I really wish... Time to rage. Now, I couldn't find any evidence that the crew engaged in scalping. But if they did, this would just be the real life of glorious bastards

now joe and his unit landed in france as part of operation dragoon outside of marseille though something of a little brother of operation overlord that nobody really remembers as the normandy beachheads had become overcrowded and more shipping lanes needed to be open to fuel the allied invasion of Western Europe. And also because they didn't land on a beachhead full of machine guns and landmines and stuff, they were facing not the best forces

in the German army there. Instead, they were facing the Ostrupen. We've talked briefly about before, which are conscripts from Soviet states and pressed into the Wehrmacht. They started pretty much immediately without a fight. Like, time to get out of this motherfucker. Out of this enlistment.

Yeah, shoot your shot. I quit. During the fighting across France and Germany, Joe and his unit were always in the thick of it, eventually leading them to assault the Siegfried Line.

Are you familiar with the Siegfried Line? So for anybody who is unaware, it was the German answer to the Maginot Line, meeting a giant dumb and pointless. Well, construction had begun under the old Weimar regime and using like military contractors and staffed by Border Patrol, which is somehow less Nazi than our current Border Patrol.

It was like a small collection of positions with some traps in the middle. It wasn't like what we ended up seeing in World War II. It got beefed up multiple times by the Nazis using what else but slave labor from the Tote Organization. Like a half million slaves a day. Jesus. Yeah. Working conditions were terrible.

And that's actually one of the reasons why they had to resort to slave labor. Because the Nazis tried using the old system of like, like well we'll just talk to all the the factories and they'll send their workers to like you know the contract workers have to do manual labor all those guys walked off like this shit sucks i would too i mean i don't know if i'd have the balls to quit my job in literal nazi germany where like labor unions are crushed because they weren't socialists yeah uh but like i'm like you know this job sucks but when that gestapo guy leaves i'm gonna start complaining again but yeah they like walked off like they'd let they'd stay at the job for like two days like fuck this i'm gonna go get cut i'm gonna go get drafted so they had to resort to

slave labor uh you know you know the thing about slave labor is you get what you pay for uh and like the construction was terrible uh like they had for instance they had like no um they'd lost the ability to create like quality steel so they had to just use whatever the fuck they could just melt together and like it's steel adjacent uh and they had no like heavy machinery so like uh literal tons of armored plating had to be pushed and pulled into position by slaves with ropes i imagine it just all in one pile and saying good nailed it eventually the nazis stopped working on it as their invasion of the ussr and other activities drew their attention elsewhere see they can never finish

something off they just half-ass one thing go on on to the next. Yeah, I mean, the entire Third Reich is nothing but a half-ass bullshit project by an Austrian with a baby penis. That was until the D-Day landings of 1944. Hitler immediately ordered the construction to be ramped up, but instead of using the old slave labor

because he had killed so many of them and they were working on other projects, he turned towards the Reich Labor Service. Think of the RLS as something of a new deal for Nazi Germany that put people back to work as their economy was utter shit and poorly managed. Though, by this point of the war, most of those unemployed Germans

had been conscripted and killed by the Soviets. So the RLS was staffed by teen boys too young for service between the ages of 12 and 16. That would change again as the 16-year-olds and below eventually got conscripted as well. The good news is you guys are alive right now. I mean, by the end of the war, the RLS is just like babies, newborns. Just coming straight off the line.

Fresh. Give that little bitch a fucking shovel. What happened to all the 12-year-olds? Hitler Youth shovel what happened to all the 12 year olds Hitler Youth what happened to all the 11 year olds Hitler Youth what happened to all the 10 year olds Hitler Youth alright time to go to the Hitler babies can we give them a shovel in utero

can they dig from inside their mother I guess what I'm getting at here is the Siegfried line sucks yeah like turns out slave labor is shit for labor because they don't want to work because from inside their mother. I guess what I'm getting at here is the Siegfried line sucks. Yeah. Like, it turns out slave labor is shit for labor because they don't want to work because they're slaves.

Weird. Also, it turns out 14-year-olds can't do great manual labor. they suck at it. They're awful at it. You know what? If you were the master race,

your 14-year-olds should be good at this. I'm sorry. Those kids suck. I, as a 14-year-old with my brother, we did some great manual labor. I'm suck i as a 14 year old with my brother we did some great manual labor i'm pretty sure as a 14 year old i was still playing like pokemon and i think i may have just discovered weed and anime i'm not entirely sure i just discovered what 20 bucks

would get me for the week i don't think i would have been great at digging anti-tank ditches, I guess is what I'm getting at. We just did anti-lawnmower ditches. So you're saying is, if Hitler would have invaded LA, he would have had a labor force that he would not have been able to control. Yeah, their John Deere's would have been fucked. Anyway, Joseph and his unit were tasked with clearing large portions of this line. As a key part of the line was tank traps and delaying type obstacles. It slowed down invasions. It wasn't great, but it had dragons, teeth, anti-tank

obstacles everywhere. It was a real bummer. History. I can imagine you looking at it like, we gotta go left and make it right. Can't go straight. History. A real bummer. One fateful day in March of 1945, while fighting in the Siegfried line, Joe completed his first

war chief task. Joe was tasked with leading a seven-man patrol against the German fighting positions. So they snuck up on them, blew them up with dynamite. Joe had led a successful war party. Nice. That's one down. Now. You have a to-do list uh yeah he had a tattoo on his arm like i do now uh he actually subconsciously he was not keeping track of this stuff um he was just kind of doing his his job right and it turns out he was really really good at it uh now the sigfried line being breached the u.s army began its invasion of the nazi

homeland uh as joe's unit was assaulting the town of moonsagan i am fucking that up but it's a german town so i don't care uh i do not feel the importance of pronouncing german things right circa 1945 uh talk to me in 1948 uh in april he came face to face with a nazi soldier and by face to face i mean he literally ran into him at full tilt smashing each other's helmets off of each other's heads and nearly knocking each other out just he just like linebackered right into a motherfucker joe came to first and kicked away the nazi's weapon and the nazi lunged at him and they rolled around the ground fighting in hand-to-hand combat. Thankfully, Joe had been taught how to do that, too, from a young age and beat the dog shit out of this guy.

He eventually pulled his sidearm, but then stopped, deciding it wasn't fair, and then tossed his gun away. And then decided that if he was going to kill this guy, he was going to kill him with his bare hands. So Joe grabbed thei by the throat punched him repeatedly and began to choke the life out of him he was about to kill him when he heard the nazi cry out for his mother so joe let go of him uh leaving him knocked stupid and gasping for air picked up the nazi's rifle and then walked away jesus christ joe had not only counted coup but he had taken an enemy's weapon he encountered the shit out of it too i don't know if each punch counts as a feather but he got at least a dozen uh also like it's almost like a fucking action movie trope yeah he's like we'll settle this like

man and he throws away his pistol and like dropped his pants like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not like that. It's like the music from the cable guy starts playing. They start circling. All right, this is now the second occasion where I could use that as the intro for an episode. Yes, you can because it works. Him and a Nazi circling around each other uh but now if you're keeping track at home which i assume you do for reasons i'm not entirely sure

of there's only one thing left for joe to do and that was to steal an enemy's horse obviously this would be a pretty hard thing to do right like this is world war ii the land of tanks aircraft and nukes fuck no it's it's not. And combined arms warfare. There's no way some random E4 is going to steal some Nazi's horse, right? Well, I hearken back to Band of Brothers. You have horses! What are we doing? General fucking motors!

So the next day, after voluntarily getting into a kung fu fight with a Nazi... You think... It almost sounds like his ground game was fucking A1. Oh, yeah. Dudes get some strong top pressure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Crow jujitsu. Yeah, crow jujitsu.

Yeah. Fuck BJJ. CJJ's worth that. Yeah. This is literally the day after this happened. He... Eagle sweep. He decided that he would steal

some horses. And if you're saying, if you notice, I said Nazi horses, which I did. Not Nazis horses. Because I'm pretty sure at some point they fed the horses some peanut butter and then made them say Heil Hitler like some horrible, bizarro world

misread. Yeah, the horses are not innocent here. So those horses saluted as well. Oh, you got it. Goose-stepping horses. Horse-stepping. I think they just called it trotting. Yeah. I don't know.

This isn't a horse podcast. No, it's not. We can't afford one of those. Joe, acting as a scout near the Danube River, watches around 50 men on a horseback road towards a nearby farmhouse. He tracked them and realized there was a gathering of SS officers

planning an operation. What? Yep. Joe reported this back to his commander who ordered the house to be surrounded so they could be bombarded then attacked. Now, Joe, remember, I already said he wasn't thinking of becoming a war chief.

He wasn't keeping a mental tally. But he had a deep love of horses. Remember, he'd been riding them since he was a kid and like he was worried that the horses would get caught in the crossfire uh and be killed you know horses don't pan doesn't pan out well for horses in that situation i mean the only way to stop a an attacking horse with a gun is a defending horse with a gun. I don't know. So without orders, he snuck back into the area. He passed a sleeping guard and calmed the horses down. They began to panic in his presence.

You little bitch. I'll count you too, bitch. Shut your horse mouth. I swear to God, if one of you says something anti-Semitic, I'll fucking kill you. He quickly made up a brindle out of a nearby rope, jumped on a horse bareback, and rode it away, hoping the rest would follow him. And they did. He's the horse king now! Follow him! The Germans woke up because there's like 50 goddamn horses coming by, and they began shooting at him. Instead of returning fire,

Joe began singing a Crow War song, which is something that has to have been the most confusing thing on Earth for a Nazi currently sitting in Germany, like, a native man stole our horses and chanted it in a native language as he rode away. I don't understand what's happening.

Am I dreaming? Yeah, like, I'm gonna shoot at him! Joe says the song he sang went, Highbird, Highbird, you fought the Germans, you great warrior. Which I assume slaps in his native Creole language. They opened fire at

the same time that the US Army opened fire. So like, Joe was caught in a crossfire, but managed to save all of his horses. This guy which i don't know i'm assuming he did not keep them like all right uh specialist medicine crow you have to fit all 50 of those horses into your duffel bag where you can't put it in the connex shit now when joe returned home after war his tribal elders asked him what he did uh during war because i'm assuming there's not that weird faux pas of like, so, Joe, did you kill

anybody? So, Joe told them, not really expecting anything to come of it. That's when they informed them, like, oh, I guess you're a war chief now. And he became a great war chief. Jesus. But because Joe is Crow, the U.S. Army did not think to reward

him for his remarkable wartime service until, drumroll, 2008. Jesus. Army did not think to reward him for his remarkable wartime service until drumroll 2008! Jesus. That's when they finally gave him a fucking bronze star and a French Legion of Honor and a Chevalier Chevalier? I'm not sure

if I'm pronouncing it right. He's a knight. And actually when Obama was campaigning for president in 2008 um and he's still a senator he came to the crow reservation expecting to like get a uh like a blessing from from the the local doctor who's also a crow guy joe and he's like i don't give a shit about you until you start treating crows like people we've been treating like second class citizens since this country's been a thing fix that so he got the medal of freedom the next year he literally shamed the president until he gave him a medal i i don't know if the two are

connected but the two are connected come on that's awesome but jo Joe was not done being a badass. He founded a whole college, the Little Bighorn College, which he taught at until he died at 102 years old. Jesus. He's founded the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Plains Indian Museum, and became the main historian for the entire Crow agency. He was also an advocate for his people in print as well as in DC. He published at least 10 books, some of which are like, um, like handwritten notes and stuff that are in,

in museums, uh, on his reservation that aren't, aren't books, but like they're compiled notes and stuff that he got from gathering oral histories from other crow members, uh, including the one that we used as a source for this episode,

Counting Coup, becoming a Crow Warchief on the reservation and beyond. The last Crow Warchief died April 3rd, 2016 at 102 years old. This guy was a fucking badass. I say the last Crow Warchief, but I say so far, because Crows are Americans.

You're going to end up in Afghanistan oristan or some shit it's possible man like i'm just saying in 20 years in like 2040 and like you know uh he has a son but i don't know if his son has i don't know if he has any grandkids but like his great great grandkid fucking chuck medicine crow ends up getting deployed and steals some Taliban horses and shit. Like, maybe make him a war chief. But yeah, that's the last one. God. Yep. That was awesome.

I've heard his story quite a few times, and like a lot of people. I've heard it very little, and it was like a five-minute, like, check this out. Yeah, that's exactly what it is is a lot of people don't realize there's a lot more to it and like some people frame it as like no no no he was trying to become a war chief but like no he wasn't i mean he had ideas of what a war chief was and like how to become one but like in his book he admits he's like i wasn't really keeping track of this stuff i I just really like horses.

And who am I to judge a man who likes horses enough to then not let them get killed? Yeah, and it was given a whole 20 minutes or so in the Ken Burns documentary. And in anything, it's a whole own documentary, especially because a lot of people are like, yeah, he became a crew of war chief, and then he just went back to his reservation. He did more than that.

He was a badass from the time he died until the time he was born until the day he died. He taught a class the week before he died at 102 years old. That's insane. I'm 32 and I don't have that kind of stamina. I mean, come on. Well, your feet aren't dead.

No, I need to walk more in the snow. It's going to be hard to do in Hawaii. Shout out to my parents for not making me do that in Michigan, I guess. We were poor, but I still had shoes. So, Nick, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. And if you would like to ask a question from the Legion, you can donate a dollar to the show and you can ask to us on Discord or DMs or email, whichever.

Smoke signal. Medicine or medicine crow. Messenger bird. If you were a soldier of World War I, what melee weapon would you choose and which one do you actually think you'd end up with? Oh man. I'd imagine me with like like, a fucking mace.

Maybe even a cool trench knife with the fucking knuckles on it. Oh, so if you get captured, you totally get murdered? Yeah. That one is fucking cool. It is badass. But what I would get would be, like, a Swiss Army knife. But it was, like, really small. A flat bayonet?

Yeah. Or, like, the bayonet that wasn't really made correctly. Like, it was half production, and it only came with the handle. Can we get a bayonet yeah or like the bayonet that wasn't really made correctly like it was half production and it only came with the handle can we get a bayonet it's for the regiment of mexicans from la oh we're out shame god damn it 1900s uh i don't know i i think the trench knife is really cool i think i saw uh it was um like the bayonet with like serrated edges that people cut into it yeah that looks way cooler than i feel like it is because it would make it a lot harder to pull it out right yeah i imagine so but it also um but i'd probably i'd probably end up like if i was ever like if i followed the whistle went over the top survived getting machine gunned

or gassed or my family's instance not getting murdered in their bed by the Ottomans. I'd get to the other side and immediately remember I left my bayonet in my other pants! And then I'd just have a club. Because one time I went on a night mission and I say that I forget something mission essential because I've

done it before. I went on a night mission a two day long mission in Afghanistan which was overnight and I left my night vision goggles at the pub don't need them whoops whoops doodle jokes on me the motherfuckers didn't work anyway uh so nick thank you for joining me everybody thank you for joining us in this wonderful bit of planes history fucking awesome um and thank you everybody for supporting the show. And until next time, don't be a Nazi horse.

This one doesn't have a good ending. No. Don't feed your horses peanut butter and make them say anti-smack slurs. There you go. Next time, y'all. Later.