Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 217 - The Battle of Little Bighorn Part 1: Custer, Bad Student

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

The US manufactures a war against the indigenous people of the Great Plains. Part 1/3 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources for the entire series: Thomas Powers. The Killing of Crazy Horse Dr. Margot Liberty. Cheyenne Primacy: The Tribes' Perspective As Opposed To That Of The United States Army; A Possible Alternative To "The Great Sioux War Of 1876" Ernie Lapointe. Oral History of the Little Big Horn Battle. He Dog. Story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn Joseph Medicine Crow. From the Heart of the Crow Country. The Crow Indians' Own Stories. The official record of a court of inquiry convened at Chicago, Illinois, January 13, 1879, by the President of the United States upon the request of Major Marcus A. Reno, 7th U.S. Cavalry, to investigate his conduct at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, June 25-26, 1876 Thomas Powers. How the Battle of Little Bighorn was won. Robert Utley. How Custer Met His End at Little Bighorn

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 today. And now, back to the show. Oh, and welcome to another episode of Lines Up by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is Francis Horton. Hello, buddy. Hey, I'm excited. Always excited to come here because I always learn. And if 90s TV has ever taught me anything, it's that knowledge is power. Knowing is half the battle and, you know, a star wipe that says the more you know.

So this is why this is education. This is edutainment, as the kids say. You know what the other half of the battle is? Lasers. Violence. Shooting somebody in the face. You got to you got to know where their face is so you can shoot them. You know, I've realized that the last time that we've had you on a regular episode, a regular series was also something about American history. And that's what we're doing again. I love.

Well, I mean, I came on your show and talked about jesse james and i love like i love just the the wild dumb shit that happens like outside of wars around just especially in the midwest like that like you know i know a lot of people like to say south dakota deadwood was the wild west but goddamn man was like the wild hinterlands of uh of the ozarks were just insane and it's still full of insane people that's why i love it we will be talking a little bit about the department of missouri um we're gonna be talking a lot about the west uh speaking of how do you feel about uh american westward expansion uh i mean it's uh it was real bad for some people and real good for others that's man that's the most centrist answer i think i've ever heard you give

are you running for governor of missouri no then i'd have to say that it was good as hell that's true yeah um no i mean obviously westward expansion was incredibly violent and lies and uh you know the american government doing what it does best all the things all the hits that you know from uh today were also played yesteryear once upon that's what i call genocide volume three uh i've just envisioned the worst album ever made uh uh yeah actually and this is all apt because for the next three weeks we are talking about uh honestly one of the patron saints of donkeys when you think of all the dumbass fucking people who fall into that category uh the battle of little bighorn uh sometimes known as the battle of the

grass uh for native american people or Custer's last stand. Joe, I have heard that General Custer was one of America's great generals and knew a lot about killing things, I guess. Well, that last part's true. He is a real deep part of

American mythology. Especially American hard-nosed frontiersman yeah um and you know i'm gonna get i'm gonna get shanked in the neck because i'm stupid ah uh he actually he he died um unfortunately uh much quicker than he deserved uh and certainly a lot quicker than some of his soldiers did and this is honestly probably in the the top five most requested topics that we cover. So yeah, yeah. I fucking listen.

Also, as true heads will know, once upon a time, I had a laptop get nuked. And I lost, I think, five parts of a series in the Korean War, which I still have not. Yeah. I haven't gone back to that one. My, my heart is still too fucking broken. That. Yeah.

I don't, that, that, that'd be one of those, like the lost episodes that never, that that's going to go right next to the one where you guys were so drunk that, uh,

you bet Nick was throwing up in the middle of an episode. You just, just never going to be able to redo it. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't built up, um, uh, the, the mental toughness to go able to redo it yeah i haven't i haven't built up um uh the the mental

toughness to go back to that mind because that was probably like three months worth of work at that point but also war that's not like a that that's not a quick one that's not a uh oh just you know a little jaunt through some funny war stories no that was fucking brutal for everybody involved and and unfortunately if it was going to be i thought it was gonna be about seven episodes back then and if that was the case back then now it's gonna be like three months long um speaking of which on that safe computer was a script for the battle of little bighorn it was one single script about the battle itself um but now you know four years into this journey it's three weeks long.

Joe's a proper historian now, which means that he's much more long winded. That is very true. Blame my grad student or my grad professors. Now, so this is probably one of the more well-known American military defeats. This is probably because it happened in America. Honestly, it truly does mark the end of the so-called Indian Wars.

There was still some violence afterwards, of course. Arguably, there's still violence today. That's actually not that arguable. It still happens. It's a little bit different, but yeah, it's still it's still fucked up violence yeah um and before i go further neither francis or i at least i'm aware of

are our native people uh to the americas or indigenous or a member of any tribe um so i'm gonna do my best to not call any native people indians however However, it's determined common usage during the time. And virtually every single goddamn source I use uses that word. So if I, if I quote directly, I will use it. However, sometimes the sources use significantly worse words,

including slurs, which I will not be quoting. And if they use those things, I'll make sure I switch them out. I'm going to name all of the tribes involved when I'm able to, and when I'm not, I will simply say Native American, tribe, band, allies, etc. There's still some arguments whether or not the labeling

people use, and it is not my place to choose for that. Just understand, Joe and I are sympathetic towards the plight of the people who were here before us, and we acknowledge the American government did real fucked up things to them. Nothing is going to be said, I imagine, that's going to be derogatory towards the natives because they've had it bad enough. Don't fucking come yell at us, all right? We're chill with the natives, all right? The bad guys in this story is the US government.

Absolutely. Every story is involving Native Americans. Yeah, if you've been listening to Joe's show or my show for any length of time, you know where we fall on this one. Yeah, this isn't even like, you know, occasionally we do talk about things like wow it's actually quite gray not this one folks nope nope real bad real bad u.s government stuff um and i am assuming that people listening have some background in knowledge that the u.s colon that the u.s is built on, settler colonialism and genocide. So I'm not going to go super deep into anything that really happened before 1800s, give or take,

um, just go listen to my episode about the beaver wars, I guess. Now for this series, I had to use quite a different, uh, quite a few different sources because there's two different perspectives. Um,

the American military perspective is probably the most commonly known though widely. A lot of it is fluffed up for propaganda reasons and until recently really only partially correct. There's also the added wrinkle that archaeological studies still go on at the scene of the battle and occasionally what we know changes. So this truly is like we there's a lot of shit we don't know, even today. This is live and up-to-the-minute history. And for the Native American perspective,

I use the book The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers, who collected a lot of oral histories from Native Americans and compiled them into a book about this battle and a lot of other stuff. It's very good.

I recommend you check it out. And though I will be polling heavily from american military sources regarding campaigning and planning which led to the battle uh of all of the flaws that the american military has one of those uh things is not uh having a problem leaving behind mass quantities of paperwork and reports which really we love to write shit down yeah although after after your battles and in war did you guys ever write did everybody have to do like an after action everybody sits down and writes about like what they felt or what they saw or whatever happened during the fight oh yeah yeah i mean uh after every firefight generally there's a paperwork

you have to fill out it's uh quite annoying especially when it comes to like awards and shit god bless american fucking bureaucracy man but yeah annoying especially when it comes to like awards and shit god bless american fucking bureaucracy man but yeah the words thing it makes sense for awards like to get eyewitnesses uh accounts whatnot so yeah it makes sense i won't be using any first-hand accounts of custer's last stands uh for obvious reasons i've yet to harness my uh ouija board here to get old george to come and guest star on the show. Now, to tell the story about the Battle of Little Bighorn or the Battle of the Greasy Grass, we have to tell a story of just how the hell a group of Native Americans end up facing off against Custer. And why they decided to take up arms against the encroaching soldiers of the U.S. federal government anyway.

You know, besides the obvious reasons that we all already know in this specific circumstance. I mean, why did you want to shoot these guys in particular? Because, I mean, there had been wars before, of course, like this is late 1800s after the Civil War. But for a period there, there was a series of treaties that, depending on how much credit you want to give the federal government, which you should give zero in this situation, were meant to end stuff like this. Of course, we're going to talk about why those treaties were insanely unfair, why the federal government broke them, and why they effectively forced Native Americans into an armed conflict to solve this.

Hey guys, we brought this cool thing called capitalism to your shores. You guys are going to fucking love it. Can you just go ahead and slip these chains on real quick? Yeah, go ahead and get in this open-air death camp that we built for you. It's called Oklahoma. It's still there, too. It's still killing the brain cells of many a good people.

This might surprise you, but there had been something of a tension between uh you know the white man's government and the people of the great plains area as well as native americans from everywhere um and also you know native hawaiians native people in general not huge fans of federal government in the late 1800s of white people in general it seems yeah yeah you know to quote dave chapelle before he was an awful, awful transphobe. Hey, look, a boat with some white people on it. Let's go talk to them. Yeah.

Now, the tribes of the Great Plains were often at war with one another, as all powers tend to do, mostly over land and resources. Power plays normally by the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Arapaho, the Crow and others eventually would run smack dab into the expanding United States who were sending a collection of assholes west to settle or occasionally get lost and eat one another. Now, this would get significantly worse as the increase of gold prospectors showed up and made their way towards the oregon trail now again this would inevitably lead to conflict leading the u.s superintendent of indian affairs which i have to use that word that's literally what the bureau is still called for some reason or missouri a guy named david mitchell uh which he recommended that the government get ahead of this problem and throw money at the native americans draw some lines on a map before you know all the bodies began to pile up a bit too much. That is a surprisingly smart and well-reasoned argument from a Missourian about Native Americans,

I got to say. Yeah. That it isn't just like, I think we need to do a genocide. I think it'll be cheaper and easier to just give them money and say that half is yours now. There's truly like three branches of thought when it came to the government's handling of Native Americans. One was, of course, just kill them, right? Kill them or force them to assimilate. That was effectively the government's position, especially under President Ulysses S. Grant,

who we will be talking about later. there was people who um believed that assimilation like would save them uh and and and turn them into christians like there's a famous saying uh connected to this era called uh save the kill the indian save the child uh where you kill their culture and you could turn them into uprights it's's genocide. I think there's a word for that. That's cleansing of ethnicity, I believe. Yes, it's 100% genocide. Yeah. Don't let anybody tell you differently because they're wrong.

And there were people who wanted these reservations to not be death camps and to pay people to go on to them. Like, well, we clearly can't live together. So we should be separate on our land. Right. Which is, which is like, it doesn't really feel like they, they tried to live together. Like there was when the, when the French settlers came over and, you know, they were all like, yeah, intermarried, do whatever. It's natives. This is there.

They know what they're doing there. Like your dumb ass grew up in Paris and like the 1700s, you don't know what you're doing but like it really seems like as it as it kind of went on they're just like no i just i just don't like you guys as neighbors anymore so uh i'm just gonna start killing you i think it's gonna take i mean i think a lot of the early if you want to call it friendliness between the french and native uh people was because the french weren't expanding um if that if one if you know in the alternate history of somehow napoleon taking over the united states is absolutely still would have happened um just napoleon going for the real french and indian wars i guess it would just be a legit aside. Right.

There was no. And to be clear here, like the Native Americans at no point needed to make an effort to live together with white people. They didn't fucking ask for us to be here. Right. I mean, we spoke the international language of like, hey, I have this stuff and you have that stuff. Can I give you some of my stuff and you can have some of yours because like native like reading about like native populations versus european populations like you know there's not really domesticated animals here in america so uh and i mean back then there's no like cows no pigs no goats or anything like that you didn't have those things and it's like we could have just could have just had it as a uh

as a thing where we just trade. But, uh, eventually, so as you said, eventually somebody wants to start expanding. Eventually somebody is just like, that's,

that's the end goal of all colonialism is eventually the people who are there first will be wiped out. I mean, you got a real nice, uh, you got a real nice, uh, you know,

hundreds of millions of acres of land here. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it. Yeah. I mean, like, uh, there's a reason why, uh, Raphael M. Ken, like the father of genocide sites considers settler colonialism, of land here be a shame if anything happened to it yeah i mean like uh there's a reason why uh

rafael mkin like the father of genocide sites considers settler colonialism a form of genocide because like there's no such thing as like benevolent colonialism it doesn't happen it doesn't exist even it even if somehow like the first wave of people don't have that intention eventually that's gonna happen yeah eventually somebody eventually there's gonna be enough rubbing against each other where somebody's like i gotta kill all of them yeah i mean of course and like like i said this this is again not the native americans fault they didn't need to have to live together with us um no i mean and to be fair if they were at their like 1200 strengths they would have just

you know stabbed everybody in the neck and fuck them off but uh smallpox it's a bitch as it turns out plagues are a motherfucker now uh this led to uh a negotiation between the government and a collection of tribes that inhabited the area between missouri and arkansas though it's not really a straight line surprisingly especially compared to what we're going to talk about shortly, the Native Peace Commission did manage to strike a deal. The deal was the tribes would allow people to pass through their territory and even build roads and forts to the area to make transportation easier. Now, they did this in order because the government's like, we're going to pay you tens of thousands of dollars to each tribe every year for 50 years. And then they could use that to trade, do whatever.

There's also some building parts of it as well. None of this really ended up happening. The treaty was also parceled out land to certain tribes in exclusivity, despite the fact that these tribes moved pretty freely before this, there weren't really borders to speak of. And most of their way of life was dependent on the freedom of movement. So once borders start getting thrown down, I mean, borders inherently are violent. So that's from violence breeds violence. Though admittedly, the government did not give a single solitary fuck about any of this just because it looked good in paper did not mean it'd be good in reality because they had no

intention on following up in any single part of what became known as the first treaty of fort laramie there will be another one they didn't care about the second one either but we'll get there and even before the first deal was final the government immediately began fucking with it changing the payment method from 50 years to 10. So that led the Crow tribe to be like, what the fuck? No, we're not signing this. But they ended up being

signed anyway by the government, and by 1851 it was already unenforceable by the government. Now, a key part of the treaty was that settlers moving west through this territory, down these roads, were only supposed to be passing through. They were not supposed to be moving in. They were not supposed to be settling and popping up shop or whatever.

This was legally Native American land under their jurisdiction. The government was supposed to use its own methods to ensure this did not happen normally this is done through a bureau of indian affairs agents where uh native americans would go tell these like hey some fucking white people moved in and then the government sent in soldiers to evict them they didn't do that no why would they instead the government simply let people flood in many of them coming in from uh following the pikes peaks gold rush of 1858 and uh like most of these guys are heading west like california and stuff but you know a lot of people along the way that's like wow this is really hard let's just settle here um i don't want to keep walking let's just build a house here and we'll be home. Yeah. Now, this influx of settlers strained resources in the area between the whites and the native tribes.

This led to conflict not only between the tribes themselves, but also the settlers, because everybody's fighting over the same shit. This also led to events like the Grattan fight, also known as the Grattan Massacre of 1854, when Native Americans driven off their land and not being able to find enough food, stole a cow from a white settlement. This is something that happened quite often. And according to the trade, this was supposed to be handled by an agent from that same bureau who would,

hypothetically, these agents have relationships with the tribe and they could go in and smooth things over, generally by money or supplies um but you know that sounds familiar to a war i've been part of right um and you know this is better than violence for everybody involved so everybody was largely okay with it um for some reason instead of doing any of that a local army commander named hugh fleming marched his platoon of soldiers into a sioux camp to confront the man accused,

or at least the person they believed to be accused of stealing the cow. It is thought that Grattan did this because the agent, a guy named John Whitfield, was several days away and he simply didn't feel like waiting. Now, the man who had a cow stolen and a Mormon settler demanded the sum of $25 as the only restitution that he would accept. Now, the local leader for one of the tribes, a guy named Conquering Bear, pointed out that he had no goddamn money because why the fuck would he? Now, another reason for this was Agent Whitfield. This is how they doled out the settlement money was that the agents of the bureau would go around and be like, Okay, here's your tribe's money. And they would just hand them a sack of cash for the year or whatever.

And Agent Whitfield was on his way to deliver that yearly check from the government. So Conquering Bear pointed out like, Look, man, fine. I didn't steal your cow, but I will give you $25 when Agent Winfield shows up with my money. Fair enough. Sounds like everybody's got it. Sounds like everybody's got it smoothed over and there's no more problems, Joe. And he wouldn't even feel like, look, if you don't want to wait for the money, fine.

You can have my personal horse to square the debt. Now, the Mormon refused to take any of this and insisted on only having $25 immediately. And the next day, Fleming sent a detachment under the command of John Gratton to arrest Conquering Bear, who should be pointed out, was not even the guy accused of stealing the cow. He was simply the guy in charge of one of the various tribes in that camp. And he pointed that out that it was actually a guy from a different tribe who stole it. And he pointed that out that it was actually a guy from a different tribe who stole it. He had no authority over that guy, but he was willing to pay you off to fuck like go away. Here's a hundred bucks to fuck off. Yeah.

Now, the detachment under Gratton was about 30 men strong, including a French interpreter named Lucine Auguste, who was known for being a bit of a dickhead. named Lucine Auguste, who was known for being a bit of a dickhead. That's it. And that's got to really stand out for the 1800s, man. Yeah, he was known for being just a violent alcoholic, and he did speak the native dialect fluently, but he was pissed drunk when he showed up, and he just began shit-talking them.

This is a supremely bad idea as the camp was quite large and had around a thousand warriors in it. So I really know what happened and why things went so violently south. But according to James Bordeaux, a guy who was friends with the tribe and ran a nearby trading post, said that the interpreter wasn't doing his job and he was personally insulting Conquering Bear, who was still trying to talk the whole thing down. As like the fact that Conquering Bear didn't really seem to buy into any of this violence, seemed to piss everybody off more and more. And when the warriors,

maybe not quite understanding the English that they were speaking, but realizing that things were getting quite heated, surrounded them. Seeing the situation was going real, real bad, Grant ordered his men to leave. But then one of them, nobody is sure who

because what's about to happen, shot a warrior. This is known as a bad idea. This is known as a dick move. All of them died within minutes. Yeah, I mean, It's known as a dick move. All of them died within minutes. Yeah. I mean, look, I can't blame them.

No, of course not. No. You shot a dude, man. You're all going to fucking die. I mean, this is literally the reverse of what happened at Wounded Knee. Like, the Native Americans were attempting to smooth everything over, and then a random outburst of violence from American soldiers caused a lot of people to fucking die. In this case, it was them that got it. So in the end, 31 people were dead, all 30 soldiers and one Lakota, that being Conquering Bear.

Seems like just some bad numbers here joe and and this is so how how many years are we or how soon are we before um wounded knee or not so now um custer's last stand uh 20 years i think 20 okay so we're we got we got some some background story going on here all right yeah yeah and this is building to what is known as the great plains wars because this is one of many sparks that caused it um and these wars were a long series of conflicts that burned through the next several decades these included countless massacres unspeakable war crimes by an already generational genocide of the native americans as they continued at the end of a rifle by the U.S. military, settlers, and other functionaries of the U.S. government.

These wars went on for a very long time, and we really don't have time to go into all of them, and at one point they'll probably all cover their own series. But they included the Dakota War, the Colorado War, Red Clouds War, and the Powder River War, amongst others. And the battle lines were chaotic to say the least some native tribes sided with the united states in order to get one over uh against their generational enemies while sometimes fought just one another as a three-way kind of thing it was

all bad yeah there's there's a lot of um uh inner inner fighting that was happening because like you you also got to understand like you know natives had warriors because they fought the fuck out of each other constantly too yeah they had a monolith they have their own political goals exactly although they have a uh their their way of doing things was interesting because they just like they they wouldn't like necessarily murder everybody in a warring tribe they just like kill some of them and the rest of them just be like you're part of our tribe now and that's it that's just how you got more you either gave birth to them or you went out and you just uh fought a bunch of them and uh you won and

then it's like you guys are lakotas now congrats yeah and even and even that was tribe depending like uh they they all had their own thing going on, which, of course, they did. They were all different people. Now, at the end of all of this, the government brought a lot of these parties together, though some parties refused to be involved for another round of treaties because the violence is getting to the point that even the American public is beginning to be outraged. I don't know how you commit. Well, I do know you commit so much violence that civilians who normally cheer for it are disgusted. And that's because there became a pretty common trend to allow journalists in with military units who, you know, maybe didn't put everything in the best possible way. Like, wow, there's a lot of dead women and kids over here, guys. Why did you do that?

Fuck them. That's why. Oh, OK. Let me write this down. Is that a direct quote there sergeant and then and thus was immediately invented the first pa already really whoa whoa whoa whoa you don't talk to him you don't talk to me yeah i i mean that's one of the things that one of the reasons why a lot of specific officers get uh in the in the west get very very famous is because they were very vain and they would make sure they personally

brought journalists with them to like put them in the best possible light and they like wine and dine them and shit like that it was gross thankfully that doesn't fucking happen anymore right now in the 1868 treaty again the second treaty at Fort Laramie the United States

recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation set aside for the United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for the exclusive use of the Sioux people. I should point out that some people accepted this, other people didn't. The line was sometimes cut straight through tribes, families, and bands or whatever. Some people were moving on to reservations while other people refused to. And a lot of the people who refused, like the government calls some people

reservation people and other people hostiles. And the hostiles would be people who refused to move on to the reservations. Other being hostile to the fact that we're trying to force them off their ancestral land. Right. And despite the fact that this

treaty allowed people to not live on the reservation like there's a huge swath of land called unceded territory which they were allowed to freely live and hunt in however you can kind of see the blueprint of what the government really wanted to do because they did everything they could have discouraged people living on the unceded land like okay we're gonna give this to you wink wink nudge nudge uh you know this is everything in the every single fucking treaty the government signed as an asterisk next to it land like okay we're gonna give this to you wink wink nudge nudge uh you know this is everything in the every single fucking treaty the government signed is an asterisk next to it um it's all barry bonds's home run record just like just like every medal of honor before world war one is uh

is sus uh yeah like a lot of the medal of honors that were awarded during this time period to include i believe 11 for the massacre at Wounded Knee. Yeah. This is all part of an overall plan for the natives to only live on reservations. As according to a study and report commissioned by Congress only a year before this treaty, that was the only way the government ever saw the wars ending. Weird how that works. A study commissioned by the government found that the wars

would only end once the government got everything it ever wanted. We'll only stop killing them as soon as they're all dead. We've investigated ourselves and found we've done nothing wrong. The entire United States government has cop tents in this situation.

The rules of the treaty stated that at least three-fourths of all men in the tribes of the Sioux Nation would have to consent to the treaty in the situation. The rules of the treaty stated that at least three-fourths of all men in the tribes of the Sioux Nation would have to consent to the treaty in a vote. The vast majority of people that didn't vote didn't vote out of refusal to accept the deal or just because they didn't understand it because maybe they didn't have the greatest grasp on the English language because, of course, this is only presented to them in English. It's a tried and true tactic that the government always uses. I mean, this is only presented to them in english it's a tried and true tactic that the government always uses i mean this is also kind of like a nudge thing into the assimilation

camp that a lot of people in government believe like they have to learn english if they're going to do business with us you know the rules in the treaty were also not even understood all that well by people who did fluently speak English because they were purposefully vague. Another tried and true tactic, like you don't use very tight language so you can shoehorn in random things later on, which of course they would do. We don't, unfortunately, we don't have the Zoo Crew legal expert on today to explain exactly the benefits of that. Yeah, Noted Native American tribal law expert. Carry shots.

Now, still others didn't vote because they simply weren't even told about it. Some people didn't hear about this treaty until two years after it was signed. And again, the government knew that this was going to happen. It also completely fucked over the Crow tribe as well as the Shoshones, though the Ponca tribe probably got the worse as they were completely left out of the proceedings altogether. And all of their land was given to the Sioux. Again, I think the easiest way to explain this as the American government saw the Sioux Nation as its biggest threat. the American government saw the Sioux nation as its biggest threat. So they attempted

to appease them in the short term while figuring out how to defeat them in the long term. So they fucked over smaller tribes to appease the Sioux so they could fuck the Sioux over later. And the Ponca were a good example of that. All of their land was given to the Sioux

requiring them to be forcefully removed from it in a process known as the Ponca Trail of Tears. There was more than one of those in case anybody's keeping track at home where they were relocated to a completely different reservation and a lot of them died along the way.

So you can see that there's layers to the atrocities, which is not a fun fact, but it's the foundation of this whole thing. And by this whole thing, we mean the podcast. Yeah, unfortunately. This is the human suffering podcast. The treaty in its original form established the Great Sioux Reservations, which within it included the Black Hills, and then set aside that large swath of so-called unceded territory, which

included parts of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Montana. It was quite large. But again, the government had no intention of leaving it that way, of course. The treaty also marks something of a high watermark for the military power of the Sioux Nation. The Red Cloud, noted because there's a whole war named after him, and leader of the Ogalla Lakota, had in his mission to kill the Bozeman Trail, which was the path people were using to get through into Montana.

And he eventually exerted so much military pressure during that war, the government made sure that part of that treaty was to close it, marking as officially offits for American settlers. So, at the time, President Ulysses S. Grant kind of accepted that there is no military solution and ceded ground, at least temporarily. Though it would definitely not be left that way, unfortunately. The terms of the treaty not only closed the Bozeman Trail, but also promised the demolition of all the forts along it, but guaranteed exclusive tribal occupation of extensive reservation lands, including the Black Hills, which were considered sacred. While white settlers were barred from tribal hunting rights on adjoining unceded territories, the Native Americans was to have free and unhindered access to these lands. The treaty stated that any future succession of lands through the U.S. government was completely

prohibited unless the approval was met from 75% of the entire male population of all involved tribes. Guess how long they would listen to that. I was going to say, that sounds like and here's the thing about some of these treaties sometimes it's just like oh american government is trying to not be a bunch of dicks but we always just turn into a bunch of dicks and i'm always just i don't know if like is this was this calculated as like we're gonna do this specifically so we can fuck them over later so it was it wasn't like ah maybe you know like two years down the line you're like oh what if we just killed them

all instead pretty much these were specifically made to to fuck them over it was part of a long term plan um now the reason you can see this is the treaty included incentives from the federal government this included building schools. Most of them were sponsored by religious organizations, hospitals, which were also sponsored by religious organizations, and other things that could sweeten the deal for Native Americans to buy in. These were all like carrots on a stick to attempt to get them to assimilate. So it was either you're going to become Americans or we will fucking make you them.

It was like a carrot and a stick. Like I said, you're either going to buy into this or we're going to fucking come back. The idea was, especially Grant at first was actually a pretty big fan of this, was that we are going to give them everything they need to assimilate themselves rather than putting them under with military subjugation. Because while Grant was obviously very comfortable with war, it was bad PR at the time. So it was considered... It's effectively... I mean, cultural genocide is largely easier for the lay people, civilian population to accept. You just got to pop a McDonald's down in there and call it a day.

Let quarter pounders with cheese take control and make everybody fat and American. You can frame it a lot easier. It's like, well, we're building schools and hospitals for them. What's so evil about that? And then you'll actually look into the schools and you're like, god right yeah the jesuits are building the christians are building schools and the treaty the treaty passed a tribal vote and congress uh as well pretty quickly and both sides immediately violated that will um and this is often how it's framed is that like the american government was like a good faith signatory to these treaties and those,

those damn natives just kept breaking them. And that's on, in my opinion, the, the tribes had no, uh, like what, first of all,

what, what authority does the federal government have to force treaties on people on their own land? Like these, uh, these are already, uh, completely,

uh, should be completely unrecognized and a lot of members of a lot of tribes did see it that way they're like who the fuck are you to sign the treaty with me right you showed up you have a whole continent you can fuck off back to right um and like the u.s violated the treaty at will and invoked the treaty only when it benefited them um and the thing is is there were no real enforcement methods and the i mean native tribes didn't exactly have a centralized government it was you know the only thing that they had to enforce this tribe or this agree this treaty on people who maybe that weren't bought into it was like the honesty policy right the pinky swears yeah i mean like who gives a fuck really like especially when it comes to uh hunting and stuff like that and like i said almost immediately the government began to violate it to

include settlers going on unseated land so like yeah i think it's free game to fucking steal from those people if they come into unceded territory. Right. Sounds good to me, man. Just fucking steal their cows, steal their land, fucking take it all. Now, one theory, which I strongly do not doubt, I actually believe it quite a bit, is that these boundaries were drawn on purpose. is that these boundaries were drawn on purpose. These tribes were put against one another on purpose within these reservations in so-called unceded territory

because there simply wasn't enough resources to go around in them. So the conflict was inevitable. By forcing tribes into smaller and smaller areas, the government knew they would fight one another in order to survive and do more than survive to be comfortable and thrive like they were attempting to start warfare against their enemy like have their enemies fight each other to make them weaker now the other option is the government was simply so stupid they didn't know that was going to happen which honestly i understand why some people believe

that because yeah fair enough but like also don't you know uh don't don't give way to stupidity what can also which can actively be uh described as malice from the american government like we're shit like i don't know what to tell you guys there's truly two wolves and fighting inside the u.s government uh violence breeding from incompetence and violence breeding from purpose. And they are always fighting against one another. And I can believe it either way, though this worked very, very well in the American government's favor. So I know which one to believe. It was only a matter of time before the army marched through and forced everybody from the unceded territories onto the reservation, even if the tribes weren't fighting one another.

And in fact, there's proof of that. As early as 1873, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ulysses S. Grant, noted that, and by the way, Ulysses S. Grant is often known as being the guy who destroyed the Confederacy, but he should probably be better known as the guy who was a genocidal psycho

in regards to the fate of the indigenous people of the americas uh like not enough attention is given to that um but maybe maybe it should be but you know in 1873 the commissioner of indian affairs recommended to the president that everybody be forced onto the reservation and this is even before all the so-called sparks that caused what happened next. So it was going to happen. And this wasn't. I mean, it was inevitable that the government was going to tighten the noose. As it does. I mean, look again, we know the government's a bunch of dicks. Yeah.

There's further tension between the Sioux and the government that was building as well. I remember how I said Grants Coal was so-called assimilation, which is not the greatest word, but it's used. This meant for educational reasons, but all of their education was based in Christian theology for the most part. They were going to be taught to read

and speak English. All of these were meant to turn them away from their traditional way of life. And by penning Native Americans into reservations and eliminating the freedom of movement, it was highly suggested and encouraged that Native Americans adopt tenant farming and to give up their migratory way of life that ran counter to the goals of American expansion.

Some native people tried this and found it incredibly fucking hard because farming sucks. Yeah, Sussman's farming fucking blows. I like having a garden, but also Native American crops just weren't like that. They're like, we already have a way of feeding ourselves. We don't need to do this. Right. And not to mention, they weren't exactly forced onto land known for being heritable.

If it was land good for growing crops, they wouldn't have fucking gave it to them. There's a reason why Oklahoma is ranching country and not farming country, y'all. Yeah. And so they tried and they failed. And not to mention, they weren't exactly given a lot of assistance to try to pick up the slack on their rather large knowledge gap on this kind of thing.

Um, you can't just learn how to do like organized farming overnight. Um, and like they, the government also promised supplemental food because there was this understanding that it's going to take them a while to get these farms up and running, even the best case scenario,

which basically basically did not happen. But they also promised supplemental food, which ended up being unpalatable at best and straight up poisonous at worst. It consisted of rotten meat and hardtack. They just dropped off some MREs, huh? MREs

would have been a much better option. At least those won't kill you. And this immediately created food shortages, and it pushed Native people against the wall, even those who would have acquiesced to the government to save themselves from violence they almost certainly would have already seen in their life. They didn't have enough food,

so many people simply left the reservation to go hunting, like they always did. And this pissed the government off, despite the fact it was literally fucking allowed in the treaty. But that isn't what they wanted them to be doing. Right. That's not what... Yes, we put it in the treaty, but you weren't supposed to do that. Right.

Now, the true final nail in the coffin for the treaty and the Black Hills themselves was in 1874, when one of the stars of our story, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, was dispatched from Fort Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota, to take an attachment of soldiers, prospectors, and various other people into the Black Hills, following a rumor that the area was rich in gold. Now, how old is Lieutenant Colonel Custer here? In his 30s, yeah. Okay.

That's about right for 1800s, 05, I guess. Yeah, I mean, he was breveted as a general, which earned him his nickname, the Boy General, because he was in his 20s during the Civil War. Now, Custer was born in ohio but raised unfortunately in michigan um and uh who's who gets to claim that one then i think this is unfortunately a team effort uh because he's there's enough statues of him in michigan to get the blame i think ohio also claims him i don't know. That's on them.

If you're doing it on purpose, can't help you. Don't get me wrong. There's definitely parts of Michigan who are very proud of this man. I keep telling people that Michigan is the Florida of the North, and we don't get enough credit for how fucking insane it is. By this point, like I said, he's in his

early to mid-30s, and he'd been a teacher before he'd enter West Point Military Academy in 1857 as a member of the class of 1862. Now, a lot is made of the fact, the very, very popular fact that he graduated dead last in his class, which he definitely did. There's no argument there. Out of 34 graduates, he was 34th. Now, you're probably wondering like, wow, that's an awful small class number. Yeah. It's because the real reason that he was dead last is almost certainly because the Civil War started.

And his class was cut short by a year. And nearly a quarter of his classmates resigned to go enjoy the Confederacy. So odds are one of those guys probably would have done worse than he did in class uh but they ran off knowing how the dumb shit yeah knowing how the confederacy did if only if only the civil war hadn't broken out he would have had dumber people in class with you yeah if only the civil war didn't break out he would have graduated like on the the bottom five rather than just the bottom now to be fair this wasn't like he tried really hard and just like didn't succeed he didn't care uh it's actually

all of his classmates would attest to the fact that he did not give a single shit about his like uh academics at all uh he famously said there's only two places to be in the class at the head or the foot and he had no intention of being in the middle, which like, yeah, I guess. Yeah. He,

he was fine being the foot. It's like lead follower, get out of the way. I was always happy with just getting out of the way. Like that's supposed to lead or at the very least follow. Yeah. It's like, everybody always tells you lead,

follow you out of the way. And they never assume that you're gonna be like, all right. And just like step aside. Right. They're like, shit, that was supposed to be motivating. Now, and unfortunately, like during his time in West Point, solid dude. Because I would have, this is me and doing it during like high school.

Well, it may have accounted for his low graduation placement. His record at the school isn't graduating last. I mean, after all, as two enlisted guys, what do we call the guy that graduates last at West Point? Sir. And you fucking salute him. Unfortunately, that's not where his legacy ends off. He was so

bad in school. It is something of a legend. He has the worst conduct record in school history. At least the worst I could in school history. Oh, yeah. At least the worst I could find. He accrued 726 demerits. And remember, his school was a year shorter than it should have been. He probably would have broke a solid 1,000 if they didn't cut school short.

What did he get in trouble for? Now, the demerits back in the day, I saw someone say that in this era of West Point, you get a demerit for almost anything. Like not standing right, not wearing a uniform right, not shaving correctly, disrespecting someone. It's demerit, demerit, demerit, demerit. The things that we would have to do push-ups for in basic training, they get a demerit. It was almost unheard of for someone to graduate without a demerit back then. That's not the case anymore. They loosened up a bit. But I couldn't find...

Hundreds of demerits weren't unheard of. It wasn't good, but it happened. I never saw anybody with a record quite like Custer's. And like ye olde West Point or not, his classmates point out that other than just being a bad student, he was just an all-around shithead who did not give a fuck. If it wasn't for the Civil War, because he did graduate, but he wasn't a rich guy.

He didn't have family connections. And if it wasn't for the Civil War, he was destined for a very, very short, dead-end, horrible career and some shit posting in the U.S. military. Because that's what happens to people who graduate last in West Point without political connections. Yeah, bitch, you're going to Alaska. I mean, that was Russia at the time, I believe. I guess we didn't really own that kind of thing back then. What would the shitty post be?

I guess it would still be JRTC. It's still going to Fort Irwin. We discovered California and the first thing we did was invent Fort Irwin. Yeah, the US only seized California during the Mexican-American War to invent Fort Irwin to punish people with. the uh during the mexican american war to invent fort irwin to punish people with um i i assume somewhere out in the west because like the west wasn't a glorified uh or a good place to be stationed it was it was hard fucking living it was mostly manual labor uh living on shitty food i assume cornholing your subordinates i don't fucking know As the genuine military tradition is. Yeah.

This is cornholing. But like I pointed out, civil war happened, right? So even an idiot like him could get a decent command. And he did. And he did very well. He committed volunteers and volunteer cavalry throughout most of the war.

And he participated in virtually every large scale engagement that happened that you've probably heard of. And he got promoted time and time again, eventually being promoted to the brevet rank of major general for people who are brevet ranks, like a temporary promotion. And he held, I believe the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the active duty,

regular military and general and the general of the volunteers, which were different back then. Before we truly destroyed the concept of a militia existing in America, that one, that thing that people really like pretending still exists. Like he that's how he earned that. I mean, boy general, because he was literally in his fucking 20s. earned that he didn't mean boy general because he was literally in his fucking 20s um the things that he was kind of praised for back then are truly the things that kind of make sense when we talk when we continue to talk about how the battle that killed him took place because he was insanely aggressive um over the top always volunteering to charge never really worrying about too much other than just good old violence um he would have fucking loved the vietnam war i i assume that he would

have done much of the same thing that he done in the west which is you know my lies all over um and so like all of the things that he did in the Civil War, I mean, he was also acting as a part of a much greater sized force fighting a regular military. So he got away with kind of not being a good overall field commander. And all of those things, the hyper aggressiveness, the not scouting ahead, kind of just acting like a fucking idiot and and getting away with it uh it's gonna come and bite him in the ass now uh at the end of the war like he got stationed in like texas during reconstruction uh but he got out of the army thought about a career in politics uh before realizing that you kind of have to be rich to do that and he rejoined the regular army retaining the rank of lieutenant colonel now in his 1874 expedition into the Black Hills committed by Custer was a bit of a problem,

mostly for the Native American population, because they had signed this treaty not even 10 years ago. And everything that they were doing was illegal. They couldn't just mount a fucking expedition into the Black Hills and start digging around for gold. Like, guys, we have this piece of paper signed by you know your president says fuck off but uh yeah you have the president agreeing with this it doesn't really matter i guess i guess you do you but uh i got a piece of paper here it's it's just like everybody who's just like uh actually uh republican congressional it's just you have the hypocrisy

it doesn't matter man you're gonna do whatever they want you guys root around over in that riverbed looking for shiny rocks we're gonna start shooting at you now when they pointed out that this was very clearly in violation of the treaty they were given a solid middle finger and it did not

take long for Custer's gold prospectors to find exactly what they're looking for within a very short amount of time. By August, the news was out that there was a mad amount of gold and then there are hills and inrush settlers and gold miners to strip that shit bare, all without the permission of the people who legally owned it. And again, the U.S. government was allowing them to do it by not enforcing their end of the agreement. And to be fair, the U.S. military, at least some people, did attempt to uphold their part of the bargain, to include General Sheridan, commander of the Missouri Division, who ordered his soldiers to arrest any settlers on site. However, there's only so many of those guys that go around and thousands of settlers.

However, there's only so many of those guys that go around and thousands of settlers. Now, obviously, this pressure led to open combat between the settlers and the tribes as the two sides wage a guerrilla war against one another. But unfortunately for the tribes, despite the fact they're quite well armed at this point, they're always, you know, having the smaller hand here. Yeah, you know, they're even though they've got the home field advantage you know it's it's a numbers game like i cannot express enough how big of a deal as gold rush was uh as soon as gold was found it was not just broadcast across the united states but the fucking world like if you were in a place that got english language media you heard about this uh and so it wasn't just shitty fucking farmsteaders from i don't know from missouri from missouri or new york or wherever that were trying to come steal your shit it was people from england ireland

scotland germany you fucking name it. They were all coming towards the Black Hills. Or as John Fintery put it in 1890s Warpath and Bivouac, quote, every man who lacked fortune and would rather be scalped than remain poor saw in the vision of Black Hills his own Eldorado. So that's a problem if you're a Native American. Well, not if you like scalping people, though. I mean, yeah, I guess that's good problem if you're a native american well not not if you like scalping people though i mean yeah i guess that's good for the short term but you know you only scalp so many people until like 8 000 more people keep fucking showing up because here's the thing it's the exact same thing that happens with other kinds of colonialism like the french were very big about this where

they would send uh missionaries in those missionaries would then get attacked um and then the french government would say well we have to send soldiers to protect the missionaries and then it just balloons from there um and this is how the u.s did it virtually every single time throughout the west was like well we told the settlers to not go there but now they're getting shot so now we have to send soldiers protect the settlers despite the fact they weren't supposed to be there in the first place. And then it just balloons out from there. It means to an end. They did it on purpose. Sure. I mean, because this

directly benefits the United States. I mean, they're mining gold in the Black Hills. Where do you think that fucking gold is going? It's in their best interest that shit gets flooded with every poor bastard that can get a ticket there. Gotta get them tax dollars, man. Yeah, exactly. Give me the gold, don't fuck with the bag, or you're going to come get visited by some asshole in a ticket there. Gotta get them tax dollars, man. Yeah, exactly. Give me the gold, don't fuck with the bag, or you're gonna come

get visited by some asshole in a blue coat named George Armstrong Custer. This is one dude. This is one asshole who just really fucking hates everybody. Now, Lakota and Cheyenne Warriors responded to this influx of people in the way that you

would assume they would. Putting some speed holes in prospectors, which would lead the U.S. to pass a decree which ordered all Lakotas, Cheyennes, and Arapahos to be confined to the reservation under threat of military action. Now, this decree directly violated the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, but it also flew in the face of any tribal conception of freedom. And it threatened to destroy their way of life because their survival depended on the freedom of movement, which the government knew all of this. Now, a lot of people gave this order a middle finger because fuck them. That's why the government stepped in to mediate the only way it knew how to buy people off.

That comes next. They know two things, money and violence. We're at the money stage. Now, they offered to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux Reservation, who immediately rejected the offer. Remember, this is considered sacred, and it still is. No amount of money would ever be enough to compensate them.

And there were people in the government who pointed out how bad of an idea this whole operation was. Pointed out, if you keep pressing them on this, we're going to have another war. And then, unfortunately, there were people like, hey, if we keep pressing them about this, we're going to get another war. The Halliburtons of the time are just getting

really excited. Specifically, military officers who had something of a non-shooting relations with the Sioux Reservation, a guy named Colonel John Smith wrote to General Ord that said, quote, this is the only portion of the reservation worth anything to them. Nothing short of their annihilation will get it from them. And I think he meant that as like, this is going to lead to violence. We shouldn't do it. But other people are like, annihilation, you say? It wasn't a suggestion.

It was a warning. Right, right. And tribal leaders did everything they could to stop this from happening. In May of 1875, a Sioux delegation that consists of Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, and Lone Horn went to Washington, D.C. to plead with the government to uphold their part of the fucking treaty.

Both the parts about the Native Americans keeping the Black Hills and keeping the miners out because we're running out of bullets out here, guys. They were told by Congress that they were willing to offer them the whopping sum of $25,000 and then to move them to Oklahoma. That sounds like a bad deal even today. Yeah, it's a horrible deal.

Now, in case you're wondering, in case there's some grand conversion that's actually being offered billions of dollars for the Black Hills. In today dollars, that's only a half million dollars. You can't buy California, any part of California, for that now. You can't even buy a decent-sized house for one guy, let alone literally thousands of people. All these dudes.

Yeah. So even their offer was a fuck-off offer. Again, America wanted them to reject it. Otherwise, they would have offered them maybe a better deal. I mean, of course, they were probably always going to reject it because it's the Black Hills. However, the government had all the power in the world. They'd be like, look, we'll give you several million dollars and whatever else you want. But they're like, no, we're going to give you this fuck-off amount of money that we know you'll reject. So we get both the Black Hills and your dead bodies because that's what you want. But they're like, no, we're going to give you this fuck off amount of money that we know you'll reject.

So we get both the Black Hills and your dead bodies because that's what we want. And so, of course, the delegation rejected the offer. Spotted Tail famously said, quote, you speak of another country, but it's not my country. It does not concern me and I want nothing to do with it. I wasn't born there. And if it's such a good country,

you ought to send the white men there now and leave us alone. But, you know, it's Oklahoma. Nobody wants to born there. And if it's such a good country, you ought to send the white men there now and leave us alone. But, you know, it's Oklahoma. Nobody wants to live there. Yeah, neither the white people nor the Indians. It's like, just don't give me this weird fuck off shaped nonsense down here. You go to Oklahoma. No, you go to Oklahoma. No, you go to Oklahoma.

And when that didn't work, the government moved to the next thing they know how to do, violence. government moved to the next thing they know how to do, violence. The following year, Congress passed an act that redrew the lines in the Fort Laramie Treaty, seizing the Black Hills and forcing the natives onto permanent reservations and taking away the unceded land that we had previously talked about. This allowed the US to build roads through reservation lands as well, just as an added fuck you on top of everything else. The native people had no legal recourse or any way to challenge this. And if they really did, would it really matter at this point? Like we've kind of exhausted that,

right? Like pointed out time and time again, how illegal this is. The Supreme court ain't coming to help you at this point. Actually, we do have an addendum to that, uh, at the end of the series involving the Supreme court.

Um, good. It's not good, unfortunately. I mean, is anything with the Supreme court ever good it's not good unfortunately i mean is anything with the supreme court ever good uh and like remember they there was a stipulation in the treaty already that the government could use to seize more land and they didn't even fucking attempt it like not and not that there was a good that they could there was a stipulation to seize land i'm not saying that was a good thing but like they gave themselves a really easy out then gave themselves a middle finger and just

stole it via congressional act it's just like i said it's compounding amounts of being shitty yeah that's uh that's kind of how we operate man yeah i mean the law for the government in general is more of a vibe but the law of the U.S. government as applied to Native Americans is even less than that. Yeah, we vibe on it, but you got to stay with it. It's a non-consensual vibe and nobody likes that. Now, Grant called his military commanders to D.C. to begin plan for what would happen next. This included General Philip Sheridan of the aforementioned Department of Missouri and George Crook of the Department of the Plate. Everyone involved was in favor of military action, but this might surprise you.

All of them were worried about something. Bad PR. They knew at this point the wanton slaughter of Native Americans for virtually no reason without any kind of provocation would not play well in the press. So he would do something else that the US is quite good at manufacturing a reason to go to war. We're just going to make up. We're going to wag the dog ourselves into a war.

You know, it's it's a tried and true American method. It's always worked. And by works, I mean, it's never worked, but it always has dragged us into an unnecessary war. Like you said in the beginning of this episode, it worked for some people. It did not work for others. In November, Grant ordered the agents of the Indian Department to notify all Lakota and Sioux to move immediately into the reservations and get there no later than January of 1876, where they would face immediate attack by the United States military. Now, I don't need to point out that this is already against the treaty because

everything is at this point. But this also includes the unceded territory. And remember, there's a lot of people who did not live on the reservation. This was an immediate forced deportation order onto reservations. And it did not matter where you lived before, anything. Now, this was immediately pushed back on by all of the departments and the agencies which handled individual reservations. For instance, the Standing Rock Agency pointed out that it's fucking winter. It took much longer for Native Americans to travel in the winter. And this is still not at the worst part of winter.

So there's still a lot of people out hunting in order to survive the winter. So a lot of people are not going to get to reservations before January. Now, that didn't matter. The government said, I don't care. Do it anyway and i also should point out that not every band of uh of native american was party to the treaty like i said a lot of people rejected it so they're like well this doesn't apply to me fuck you i'm not part of your treaty but according to the government it did so whether you were a reservation native

american or an unceded territory native american they're they were immediately giving you a blanket order despite the fact they had no fucking author like they they had no grounds there's no grounds here yeah you're just grabbing their crotch and saying here's my fucking authorization right um like oh you you need a reason fuck you that's why like that that's the that's the entire authorization of of government authority here because we have more guns than you and to be fair a lot of uh native americans were like i'm not really like because remember all these guys have survived violence from the government and uh they really didn't feel like dealing with that again so a lot of people like fine whatever

i i'll pick up move to the fucking reservation. Some people didn't. And still other people were like, we'll go to the reservation when we can, but we have to finish hunting first. So there's again, still not everybody's a monolith here. Some people moved into the reservation. Some people said

get fucked. And other people said we'll get there eventually. For the government, it didn't really matter like the second you didn't get onto the reservation you're immediately declared hostile and you know uh there were quite fairly a lot of bands of native americans who saw themselves as free people not subject to the united states government so go away uh and one of you get you get one option you get to sign the treaty or you get shot in the face so like you know the american government's not really giving them a lot of uh options to not

resort to violence themselves of course this is what they wanted like i said they were manufacturing a reason for war um grant gave an ultimatum that he knew Native Americans could not or would not meet because he needed a reason and a provocation to fight. And he found it. Famously, one specific leader and one band led by a Hong Papa Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, would become... Hey, I know that guy. He would begin to unite the so-called hostile tribes around him as the U.S. military closed in for a winter campaign.

And that is where we're going to pick up time oh i'm ending on a cliffhanger that's uh that's the lions led by donkeys guarantee it's all a cliffhanger until they die on the hill so right it's like it's like the movie titanic we know how it ends the boat's gonna stay but like there's a lot of cliff there's a lot of uh you know fucking in an old model t before that that we're gonna get i i i really like uh the saying dying on a hill in this series because like you're really gonna die in the hell and custer's giving you finger guns like yep literally yes i do want to actually die on this specific fucking hill good news it's named after him now uh I hope that was worth it, buddy.

It's like it's like any Lou Gehrig's disease. We named it after you, Lou. How about that? Custer dying from a shot to the face on his hill like I am the luckiest man alive, but not for long. Not in this exact moment, but up until here, it worked pretty well for me. But Francis, thank you for joining me on part one of this three-part series. This is the area where you get to plug your show.

Yeah, I've got a show. It's What a Hell of a Way to Die. It's military stuff. But, you know, imagine a military podcast not run by complete assholes and who are not like complete right wing chud chud fuckers you know that's us that's that's what we do and and if you are a fan of joe's uh podcast also i have stickers and stuff of joe's uh various jokes in the store at hell of a way to hell of a way to die.com your tonus are going to be, by the time this starts airing, Tonus stickers will be in the

shop. Highly recommend. Those stickers fucking rock. I'm so glad that I took a chance to spend $60 to send it to a man in Brazil and explain to him, I need a golden eagle wearing an Adidas tracksuit, squatting and drinking an energy drink.

And to only have him ask two clarifying questions, which were like, like i'm sorry is this like somebody's bird and i was like no i need the actual bird like luckily luckily he's a dnd artist and there is a dnd race that is giant bird people so i was like imagine the uh the eric cockle in an Adidas track suit. And he's like, all right, I got that. But I specifically said Slav squatting. And he's like, I need to know what that means. So I sent him links to Reddit's like our Slav squat. And I was just like, kind of like this.

And by God, that man delivered something truly beautiful. The only thing I'm learning from this is we have not yet penetrated the brazilian market for listeners otherwise he would have known um i don't know i'm gonna have to start giving the transcripts of some of that speech portuguese uh yeah we have to we have to do a lot more dnd episodes probably to snatch that guy in god damn that means i have to learn how to play dnd you don't i play dD a lot and I have no idea what the fuck to do in that game. So it's fine. I think I played once when I was in high school. You have a game master who pushes you and tells you what to roll.

It's fine. I think I played once when I was in high school and it wasn't the fact I didn't like D&D is I didn't like the guy who invited me. Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah. Um, yeah, everybody, thank you for listening to part one. Uh, if you like what we do here on the show consider supporting us on Patreon even a dollar gets you some bonus stuff

more money gets you more stuff to include an entire premium series or two of them now that we have going on and even if you don't have money that's cool or don't want to give us money you can leave us a review that's free and it helps us for algorithmic based reasons

my dumb ass cannot comprehend. But thank you and until next time I have no quippy way to end this other than all this is bad. Don't break your promises to the Native Americans, man. Yeah, don't break legally binding treaties.

And then have the gall to call like taking something back Indian giving. Jesus Christ, what's wrong with us as a culture, as Americans? Until next week. Bye, everybody.