Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 218 - The Battle of Little Bighorn Part 2: Racism as Military Doctrine

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Part 2/3 The American invasion of native land gets off to a bad start. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeysSources: 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 lines led by donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me still is francis hello hey i am i am ready to learn some American history. Oh boy. I love American history, Joe. I love to learn about just what bastards we are. Yeah, it's always fun whenever I do an episode like this, or episodes

rather. This is part two of our series on the Battle of Little Bighorn because I can no longer control myself. It could have been worse. It could have been worse. It could have been a seven. See, you could have made it one, you could have made it seven, but you settled for three. I find that

three is the sweet spot. I say as I literally just finished publishing a five-week long series. Three does seem like it's the perfect amount it doesn't overstay its welcome we can move on to something else but definitely this deserve more than one because yeah if we just talked about like how dumb uh custer was and then the fight and then the battle

you gotta you gotta uh marinate on a little bit you know you need a little bit of backstory and then wait a week and then get a little bit more and you know before we finally you know bust our nut and canoe the fuck out of this guy yeah i i really um oh it's got a vivid imagery there we're gonna clap them custer cheeks um like and and next week's episode is fully dedicated to the idiocy of George Armstrong Custer. But I think that there's a lot of context missing when you look at the Battle of Little Bighorn under a microscope. Especially what we're going to talk about this week. It really sets the stage for all of the dumb shit that's about to happen. But I have a drop for this.

Last time on the podcast, the sins of the American Empire. That's all three of these parts. I always like doing these episodes because there's always one brand of weirdo you piss off with no matter what genre of history, even like my history of Armenia sub series over on Patreon pisses people off

from time to time. And I find like American history nerds are always the funniest. They're, they're not the most annoying. I feel like that probably goes to Confederates or the Japanese nationalists. But like, they're always the funniest because you're like, yeah,

Custer helped do a genocide but he died a hero like all right we have we have very different ideas of what a hero is but you know and that's and that's the thing that's why i love uh i don't call it history i call it american mythology man because that's yeah that's all this is is a bunch of like did these things happen i mean in a manner of speaking, yes. Did they happen in the way that you think they are? Like, you know, Paul Revere and his ride, Midnight Ride. And, you know, does all these all these like wonderful, beautiful things we learn about the history of America.

And then you find out that like George Washington was crazy and horny for war constantly. And I think Paul Revere even stole his teeth. george washington was crazy and horny for war constantly and um i'm like paul revere even yeah uh yes ripped ripped uh teeth out of other human beings because he needed his own he needed teeth honestly if you put that in like a sci-fi novel where like uh like the antagonist had a mouthful of stolen teeth my editor would tell me it's over the top you know yeah and that's if you make the bad guy the guy with stolen teeth like you can't make the good guys walking around with a head full of stolen teeth i don't have a lot of positive things to say about george armstrong custer however he did do a whole lot of work to make sure he'd fucking die

but we're not quite there yet when When we left you last time, the United States had manufactured a war against the allied tribes of the Great Plains area. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and others. And all of this was in order to steal the Black Hills of North Dakota so they could extract gold, timber, and other resources from it and finally force these tribes onto reservations once't be able to do this because of the time of the year, their way of life, etc., etc. 1876, General Sheridan telegrammed Generals Crook and Terry, ordering them to begin their winter military operations against the Allied tribes. I'm going to use the term Allied because a lot of you just hear people say like Lakota. It's very reductive. There's a lot of other people at play here. And generally, there's a tentative alliance in place. So I'm going to go with Allied tribes. Yeah, the alliance of fuck those guys over there.

Yeah, I mean, it's a greater unifying theory of fuck that guy. It's what this podcast is built on. We can kill each other, but also that guy's going to try to kill both of us. Let's kill that motherfucker first. And just like there's tribes that allied themselves with the United States because as much as they hate white people,

they're like, okay, but fuck the cheyenne in the lakota right yeah the the entirety of cortez uh overtaking the aztecs was a bunch of aztecs were like uh yeah dude you want to be on our side and kill the fuck out of some uh our rival tribes now launching this winter military operation was no easy task. The U.S. Army couldn't really move in winter any easier than the Native Americans could. Not to mention, they'd been in largely garrison duty for years. This is a system of forts that had been built around the Sioux Reservation and accompanying unceded territory. And this duty fucking sucked, to put it lightly. They literally just sat around doing mostly manual labor

and trying not to die of some various diseases. It's a lot like being in the Wild West or whatever. People think it's like gunfights around the clock and horseback chases. In reality, it's like, like well i have chlamydia again i don't have food you're just like i i really don't think and certainly anti-vaxxers just do not have the concept of like do you know how much we used to just die because like it we were still shitting where we drank water like 200 years ago. That's,

that's ridiculous. I mean, at this point, people really weren't sure how to prevent many diseases. Um, other than, uh, like drink water that's moving and don't stay inside the same fetid building

with all the sick people. Like, uh, yeah, it's not great. It's not great. And and and i meant to ask this joe um and i hope this isn't too much of a sidebar but like when when did when did the like crossover from like soldiers die just as much of like you know uh cholera or typhoid or whatever into like i mean like like you know we didn't i got dysentery a couple of times but i took some pills and i was fine so what's that probably would have killed you 100

years ago right exactly multiple like i would have died multiple times um yeah 100 years ago but like so when was that crowd like world war one was that like the last time when everybody was dying trench foot and then um it it's hard i mean the total casualty wise disease and um just general uh just a hardship definitely was the main killer in world war ii as well for people in general but for combatants i'm not sure i i know in world war one the uh the vast majority of people died from disease and illnesses and uh maybe not died specifically but were you know became casualties of um because you know bad water supply bad food supply uh living in a shitty dugout with some guy who's hacking into his lips the fucking spanish flu tore through the

trenches you know what i mean you're eating literal rats and god knows what's crawling all over them so everybody loves trench chicken all right oh um i don't know if they call that but i hope they did it is now yeah it's trench chicken now baby if you're an artist get with me um we're gonna make a sticker we're gonna make a trench chicken sticker put it in the store i can't believe it's not trench chicken just there's like two two uh guys with like a rat skewered on an old bayonet hanging over a fire and you know those rats got fucking huge too because they're eating well your food but also like dead guys in no man's land yeah they're fat man that's uh i wonder if they're marbled can we get some like why gooigu rat? That shit's pasteurized at this point.

You have, like, a fucking Joe in the trench, like, massaging a rat as he's feeding him food. Like, you gotta get the marbling just right, homie. Yeah, what is, uh, what is it where you fatten up a goose and eat the liver? Oh, foie gras, whatever. Foie gras, yeah.

Just pumping MREs directly into a rat's stomach the mres are so bad we'd rather eat rather eat the rat after he eats it well i mean look what else are you supposed to do with the omelet mre other than feed it to a rat i actually have a picture of this but i i probably have told this story in the podcast before because after four years i feel like i'm just repeating myself but um i was at like a pretty remote outpost uh in the east of afghanistan and like i someone chucked me up an mre uh while i was on guard one day and uh like it was the the veggie omelet one because the guy hated me he did it on purpose like but thankfully uh outside of the veggie omelet itself everything in the mreRE is pretty good. Yeah, it is. I do remember that. It has good M&Ms and whatever in it.

I think the jalapeno cheese and bread was pretty good. I think that was the one that had the bacon hash browns, too. Did you ever get those? I don't think I got that one, no. I feel like I had that one at some point. That might have been a really old MRE. Anyway, way off topic. I apologize.

I opened the veggie omelet. at some point that might have been a really old mre anyway way off topic i apologize but uh i i opened the the veggie omelet i gave it to a stray dog that lived on the roof with me and the dog would not fucking eat it and that dog looked like it was days away from death um despite i mean i'm sure it had like some pretty horrific internal problems but i fed it all the time because having a dog that's your friend on night watch is pretty good because he barks at things that aren't you um but yeah he wouldn't fucking touch the fish he humbled mr he's like they had fun this is animal abuse fuck you he's like that's not technically food i don't think it's like i eat my own shit i'm turning that down i see no difference between

this and a literal rock that it's sitting next to a rock or something uh one is that has veggie chunks in it i don't know anyway speaking of bad garrisons to be a part of um they had to like march from one fort to another to kind of collect all the various companies that were strung out at these places so it's kind of like a conga line to pick up everybody along the way and form them into an attacking army which i should point out none of these guys have ever been a part of before other than their officers like there's a lot of civil war veterans and shit but like none of those soldiers have been a part of like a major military operation before um general terry was at the at the south at uh fort fetterman uh i, named after the gigantic guy from Pennsylvania.

Instead of wearing the Union blues, you wear a hoodie and shorts there. Yeah, it's just an angry guy, the goatee in a Carhartt. And the other general was in the east at Fort Abraham Lincoln, and another commander, Colonel John Gibbon was commanding coming from the west with probably the longest overland march from fort shaw which was on the sun river in most of the montana though most of these commanders like i said would have to make a whole bunch of different stops along the way uh they couldn't just like hit the logistics button and suddenly be able to launch a major military operation that again these guys are all on like

sentry duty and you gotta walk to all these places right like everybody's just all right we picked up everybody from this base I guess I guess he's like okay like half you're gonna come half you're gonna stay on the base and do it like that or they just empty out the forts completely I think they left like a skeleton crew

and some of them did have horses like a lot of cavalry units but a lot of guys are just like on their chevrolet eggs like shit sucks just walk in Montana baby and your foot wraps Montana in the middle of fucking winter like god damn it another small hitch in the matter was

the hundreds of native scouts that had been in the ranks of the military at the time most of whom were crow now many of these detachments absolutely refused to go out once they realized how big this operation was. Like, whoa, buddy, I didn't sign up for this. And they're like,

okay, we'll go, but you have to triple our money on the spot. And the army's like, fine, fuck it, whatever. I'll pay you more. So, yeah. Some early overpaying of contractors. And to be fair, the Crow some some early overpaying of contractors and to be fair like the crow were absolutely aware of the uh the position of strength they were coming from because without them the army they knew the army was completely fucked and the army knew that too

so like fine take all the money we don't care fine we'll get you we'll get you fuel for your high luxes this is just the same thing as like being chickened down by like an ana guy it's just like uh we'd love to go with you on this patrol but uh we don't have any bullets guns or gas did you guys have those things but i did show up wearing my boots this time yeah i brought i brought my boots and i brought a lot of opium i i'll never forget i went on a patrol and like as like a team leader i'd go and talk to like the ana uh uh squad leader or whatever and uh like hey man uh are all your guys good he's like yeah yeah and like we didn't believe them because this wasn't like a good can deck or anything uh so i went and like i grabbed this guy's like load bearing faster he was very very light and i pulled out all of his magazines were empty um and through our interpreter he's like well

bullets are heavy i'm like uh-huh you do fucking throw your m16 at him yeah he was high too so that probably didn't help he's not he's also not wrong no he's not wrong bullets are fucking heavy bullets are heavy i'll give him that he's he's right he's not wrong. Bullets are fucking heavy. Bullets are fucking heavy. I'll give him that. He's right. He's technically correct, which is the best kind of correct. Now, this is in early April, which I'm not really from this area of the United States. I've never really been through it.

I know the Midwest is still quite cold in April, but this area is very fucking cold. Um, not to mention this is, this is before the creature comforts, uh, of really any kind of life in the planes outside of like the native American way of life was prevalent, which of course the Americans are not going to be, uh, doing or have any knowledge of. Cause why would they,

how, uh, so, so what, what year is it? It is in the 1870s 1870s okay yeah in that general area and they're just tromping around in the winter of all things what is it joe what is it about like militaries in winter and not figuring out winter's fucking cold well it's it wasn't

considered normal to do this um the reason the reason for launching their offensive in the winter was because the native americans during the winter would set down camp um and they wouldn't move as much so their idea was like well if we catch them in their villages um we can like end this rebellion quote-unquote rebellion once and for all uh by raiding these large villages and and force them all into the reservations because as things warm up they break camp there's not as many of them all together at once and this that eventually leads them into the kind of guerrilla warfare that the army is notoriously not good at not not good at at all and you know the whole plan boiled down to this really sucks in the winter.

Therefore, it will really suck for them, too. We shot him. If we both put our feet on top of each other and shoot the bullet, we'll both have a hole in our fucking foot. And that is some real, like, 1870s army logic, too. Yeah, it requires a healthful hatred for your own soldiers, which officers have no end of. And meanwhile, Native America is just trying to survive the winter. They're not hunting so much as much as they're eating things

that they've cured or stocked up, living in lodges. They're not launching a war. Of course, there's the bands, known as quote-unquote hostile bands and tribes that had no intention of ever moving in the reservation because fuck that, why should they? Which, yeah. Why the fuck should they?

They weren't exactly going to launch a goddamn military offensive in the winter either. It's cold. This is fully invented by the army. So the army, in a way, was correct. That, yeah, would suck for the natives, too. Yes, they knocked that one out of the park. They got it.

You figured it out. Sun Tzu would be very proud. If it is cold, people will not want to fight. Oh, I thank you, Sun Tzu, you fucking genius. Next, are you going to tell me to outnumber my enemy? Thanks. I didn't learn that in West Point. If you're close, make the enemy believe you're far away.

And if you're far away, make the enemy believe you're close. God damn, dude. God damn, can I get a license plate with this shit on it? One of my favorite passages in sun tzu is how to fool someone into believing you've stolen their nose uh now the the u.s columns were all converging on um three rivers one of which is more like a creek uh the powder river the tongue river and the rosebed river kind of creek creek creek adjacent whatever right yeah scouts had heard that they that the quote-unquote hostile bands of sitting bull

crazy horse and others were all in the general area uh so their idea was if we could rush all of these columns into this area the hostiles would be would be mostly killed and you know the the people who ran away fastest would then be forced under reservations because remember their military objectives are literally villages full of civilians right it's just that is what they're attacking yes murdering the shit out of anybody yeah there there's no uh like oh hold your fire There's women and children. There's none of that going on. So their idea, of course, is if we go in and crush these so-called hostiles, anybody else that's kind of sitting on the fence, if they want to go on the reservation or maybe grab their hunting rifle and shoot at the white guy in the neighborhood,

they're going to go into the reservation because we've taken out their most well-known powerful warriors. Now, depending on whose account you read, what to general terry is kind of for debate uh reportedly he got intelligence at native bands or camped around the little missouri river which is not even remotely close to where they were and this caused a detour which slowed him down another account is that he got lost because his scout commander had ghosted him which is the one i would like to believe um another is that colonel gibbon uh didn't like terry and was giving him purposefully vague intelligence uh and while attempting to follow his intelligence he got lost regardless of what happened he was very badly behind schedule for

this whole thing he can't be late to war man can't be late he was very late to the war and you know honestly i would respect him more if he's like actually i was late on purpose because i didn't want to fucking go all right uh general crook marched north from fort fatterman commanding the soon to be ominously named bighorn expeditionary force um thankfully for crook he would have nothing to do with bighorn for a reason that we will talk about later um and from there he experienced the first battle against hostile forces if you can call it that on march 3rd around 200 native warriors appeared on horseback and attacked crook's cattle formation. Now, this is still that point of history where armies literally bring livestock with them to kill and eat.

Because, you know, refrigerators aren't a thing yet. Shelf-stable food is more of just like hardtack and rotten beef. So it makes sense to bring around like hundreds of cows with you. And that's, you know, very wisely is what was attacked by the warriors uh they they made off with all of crook's uh livestock oh boy i think like 200 head or 300 head of cattle maybe more uh for some reason crook had absolutely no soldiers guarding this very important uh important food source uh and he left the job to two civilian cattlemen who found themselves squaring off with again 200 warriors and horseback

freak out guys here you go exactly yeah one cattleman immediately realized like I'm getting the fuck out of here and rode away the other one named John Wright decided like you shall not pass and immediately got fucking connected to God's wi-fi

i don't know what the fuck this guy was thinking like the warriors weren't even after them they were after the cattle because remember like it's winter their food might be running low because they hunted several months beforehand hey look a whole bunch of cows look at all that fresh meat over there they don't give a fuck about some cowboys hanging out there like run off i'm sure they'll let you go not worth it yeah right got clapped and then all of his cows got stolen uh the next day a blizzard dumped over a foot of snow on the crooks army and the temperature dropped so low that the thermometers that they brought with them couldn't actually read what it was anymore. This is generally known as bad.

This caused them to detour towards Fort Reno, which had been abandoned by the army eight years before so they could hide inside and wait for the son-bitch slap of General Winter to pass. And they settled in. So their plan is to hunker with no

food. They have other provisions, but their best source of food is gone that's for sure i mean don't don't get me wrong they have a mad amount of like shitty hard tack and like lard and shit like it's gonna be a miserable existence going forward uh you're not gonna be hungry but you're gonna wish that you uh had that cow you know i mean as they settled in for the night the soldiers were shocked to find out that they were getting shot at by warriors.

Now, this is shocking for more than one reason and ones that like seem kind of dumb unless you know the context. Winter warfare for native warriors was pretty unheard of and they also generally

didn't like to fight the army at night. So like to have this happen at the same time was like oh god what's happening now this is mostly harassing fire which is generally what the native warriors like to do just to fuck with people i mean they might take a couple people out but you're also not sleeping yeah just i mean it's just like indirect fire you know just yeah probably not gonna hit me but sure the show the fuck made me wake up at three o'clock in the

morning and have to stand around on my own door for 45 minutes it's very annoying it's it's like whenever like a taliban dude would shoot at you from like a half mile away he's not gonna hit anything he's playing firefight he just wants to let you know that he's still there all right and he's just you know hey just how else is he supposed to get his combat infantry badge? If he doesn't actually respect that, the Taliban ribbon chaser. Yeah. Hey, hey, you know what? At least he did fire something. He's not just fudging his reports to send up to send up to the Taliban talk.

And you know, who are we to judge? He won, not us. Fair enough. Yeah, he got us there. And like now, this should have been a clue for all of these soldiers hunkered into Fort Reno. Like, things are different now. Like, the Native Americans sure are fighting us differently. Maybe we should learn.

So, of course, they ignored all of that. After setting up their logistics space at Reno, they, Fort Reno, not the littlest big city in Nevada or wherever the fuck is. That's what it's called, right? The littlest big city? Yeah. We're sorry. We're not Las Vegas. Yeah. The only thing I know about Reno is one of the most annoying people I knew while I was in the military was from

Reno, and he never shut up about how he was from Reno. That's all I know about that place. They set up their logistics base at Reno and they set up again towards the Tongue River where it met the Prairie Dog Creek. Now, unlike Terry, Crook had

a legendary scout at his disposal named Frank Grodd. I'm sure I pronounced that one right. Sorry, Frank. Frank was actually Polynesian of all things. I was going to say that sounds real French, but alright, actually polynesian of all things i was gonna say that sounds real french but uh all right a polynesian guy in the middle of uh are we montana i believe getting close to yeah yeah the general the general great plains region how he got there is even

weirder um he he was half polynesian uh his uh i believe it was it was his dad was a Mormon missionary, which is unfortunately very common in Polynesian history. Before they moved to, yes, Utah, he got there, realized, wow, Utah sucks, and ran away from home. Once that happened, he got kidnapped by a band of Ogalla Lakota, taking the name Sitting with Upraised Hands, and he learned their language fluently. Though I need to point out here,

he was not a peaceful house guest. He was definitely kidnapped and held against his will. Right. And he was there for several years before he finally escaped. However, he got to know a lot of the people involved in this war, and he became such a well-known scout and not to mention

he spoke the language fluently that like sitting bull knew him by name and had a standing bounty on his head um yeah now while in this area uh frank saw what he thought were two uh lakota scouts watching the soldiers which to him meant meant Crazy Horse must be camped nearby. Now, Crook got his report and he split his force in half. Now, he gave a section over 300 men over to Colonel Joseph Reynolds, gave them a day of rations and sent them towards the Powder River where the scouts were trailing the enemy. And they believed that there was a large Crazy Horse-related camp there. Now, they did eventually find 100 lodges tucked next to the river, and the Native Americans really did have no idea that they were coming,

so they probably weren't scouts that he saw. I don't know what he saw, but if there were scouts, this camp already would have been cleared the fuck out. Yeah. They had set up there for their the fuck out yeah um they had set set up there for their winter camp and uh because they had them dead to rights that meant reynolds could easily set up a plan where his 300 men could surround the village uh and encircle them before launching the attack but it's you know the 1800s once the various companies of men were split

apart there was no way for them to communicate and instead they were given a very strict timetable to launch their attack for 905 a.m uh you want to guess how well that went synchronize their watches and everything so they could uh i don't know if they did but they didn't work now uh this timetable immediately goes to shit um and there's many companies all of them launch their attacks separately. And a company size element is much different back then. It's like 50 to 70 guys. And a lot of these are under strength because of frostbite, disease, whatever.

So company K of 47 people attacked at the correct time. Nobody else did. They attacked directly into the village, which was at least 200 people. We have no idea how many were warriors, how many were civilians, though I should point out here that technically, they're all civilians because

native tribes didn't have a set up military. Also, they were just in their village trying to live their fucking lives. What is a warrior? But anybody who picks up a club and says, fuck you. Yeah.

A warrior is a man that has a gun and sometimes not even a gun. And also sometimes not a man. It's, it's, it's just like an quote unquote armed combatant. Also, again, the American cavalry did not give a single fuck.

If someone was a man a woman a child or armed or unarmed they just shot anything that moved according to one leg who is a native man in the village described the attack as quote women screamed children's cried for their mothers old people tottered and hobbled away to get out of the reach of the bullets singing among the lodges brave seized whatever weapons they had and tried to meet the attack. And the only thing that saved Company K from probably just getting absolutely hosed was the fact that the village was taken completely off guard and warriors ran for the high ground or so they could fire down on the soldiers

once they were trapped inside the village, pinning them in place. And eventually the rest of the army showed up in their sweet ass time. Everybody else's alarms went off suddenly. Yeah. Like, hey, you guys hear gunshots? Oh, shit. Reynolds ordered everything in the village to be destroyed, including food that the natives would need to survive the winter.

And if that was enough, they literally stole the clothes off of their backs the destruction went on for five hours and reynolds ordered his force to withdraw but not before stealing 700 horses that the village had as well now we're not entirely sure of the casualty rate of the battle if you want to call it that because it's really not a battle they raided a town and then burnt it to the ground that's what we call a massacre yeah that the massacre certainly a word that fits um and then they drove them into the uh harsh environment virtually naked with no winter clothing or food or horses um and from native accounts dozens of people died from exposure after this um as for the American side, four people were killed. Those 70 soldiers were sidelined with frostbite because, yeah, they don't have winter clothing either.

And there was at least a couple dozen people that had to go get things hacked off of them. Not sure exactly how serious many of the other frostbite cases were though a wounded man was left behind a wounded american soldier was left behind and two of his friends went back to get him which they ran directly into a group of uh of warriors who captured them and did things i can only describe to you as yikes or as i call fucking around and finding out you didn't have to go back guys you should have like i understand i get it like going back for your buddy should have taken him with you though should have said don't leave him in the first place maybe or or maybe there's like a karmic justice that comes through raiding a native american village and going back and getting

your fucking dicks on off i don't know. Is that what happened to them? Oh, God, yeah. It was real bad. They're really sawing my dick off. Literally, they're doing it right now. Buddy, you are really chopping my balls off. Yeah, they did some really fucked up shit. And you know what? Yeah, of course they did.

You just raided their village and killed their families. What do you think they're going to be like? Oh, friend, you're looking for your wounded buddy that we are taking care of. No. You know, it's not really a time for a lot of high intelligence, especially our military members. Look, man, I love you, Joe, but I'm not going back if the Lakota are around. If you fall wounded while raiding a Native American village, by the time someone would realize that you're missing and is going back for you, you've already died in unspeakable ways.

And you know what? You would have deserved it. We left a wounded guy back there. Don't think we did. Don't think he's wounded anymore. And if he is, he won't be for long. Not a lot of POW transfers going on there uh now as fucked up as the situation was here comes a bit of rare comeuppance if barely uh reynolds was eventually court-martialed for the battle and i'm sure you

already know it's not for all of the horrific genocidal violence. Because he went too early. That was part of it, but for also burning the village and not because that he burned the village as in how could you think of the people that were driven into the snow, but because the army was supposed to steal everything, not burn it. Like it was common practice to like steal the horse feed,

steal their food, steal their clothes. And he burned it instead. That's why he got in trouble and also his soldiers lost the 700 horses they stole which again the army would press into military service yeah so that's why he got in trouble not for you know yeah being great planes himmler or whatever those were perfectly good houses and well i mean and i guess that's why they steal the clothes, too. You take the clothes, it's like you take everything. Yeah, it's like Custer was pretty famous for wearing like native winter jackets and stuff because he stole them. And they were better than a shitty woolen uniform.

Yeah. I mean, everything that the natives has is way better than whatever the American. yeah i mean everything that the natives have is way better than whatever the american i i don't know what it is about like europeans and then you know offshoot to americans about just everything being just fucking ghastly like everything's uncomfortable and like you smell bad all the time because no one like washes their balls like i don't i don't understand the entire culture that we come from joe, that I come from. You're Armenian. You get to escape from this nonsense.

Oh, man. We have a very long history of probably smelling terrible. But everybody smelled bad. Like, there's a lot of mysticism that goes into, especially communities communities that aren't ours to like so you can say how how bad our community is in uh comparison to but like in the 1800s man everybody smelled like shit and was full of parasites like there nobody was free like i think and the thing is is like yeah like when you read firsthand accounts of one civilization meeting the other, your habits will be different. Some people will smell differently and they'll be like, ugh, gross.

That still fucking happens today. When it's like, no, they're normal where they're from. You're simply different. And it's not a good or a bad unless you're, I don't know, from Ohio. That's bad. There, I got my one in per episode um and every time i go to ohio like oh you people are disgusting what is with this what is the the general smell of the state you know what i'm talking you know what i'm talking about actually i have no idea i've at this point my cartoonish hatred for ohio is just one

four year long bit that i can't give up at this point the only thing that probably saved um reynolds from any real punishment because he was about to get thrown out of the army which was actually much easier to do back then for colonels and generals and shit um was that he had gone to west point with ulysses s grant who president. So he got to retire with a pension. But he was found guilty for everything. Not that that really matters. Well, good for us. Justice was served.

Yeah. I mean, when you're an officer in the military, that is justice. Is that smack on your hand, you get a pension. Right. We admit that what you did was wrong, but not for the reasons you think. But they were wrong. Now, the Bighorn Expedition was a complete and total failure for reasons that for not reasons you probably think like this hadn't been running into a massacre yet uh for starters remember how i said that they

were supposed to be attacking a very specific band of what they considered hostile native americans and that's what they you know massacred in village. But that wasn't who was there at all. While that was a village, obviously, of Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux, neither Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse was anywhere nearby. Instead, it was a village of completely random people the government had no knowledge of, led by Two Moon, He-Dog, Little Wad, and Wooden Leg. by Two Moon, He-Dog, Little Wad, and Wooden Leg. All of whom were for different kinds were, I guess you consider them fence sitters. They weren't down with a

popular uprising. They wanted to be left alone. Wooden Leg at one point even noted that they were talking about moving onto the reservation, but they really didn't fucking want to. But after you storm through and kill their family and burn their village to the ground they sure as fuck would now uh they're full they're fully on board with with like all right time to go shoot some white people

funny how uh you know your your attempt to pacify somehow radicalized them i wonder what i wonder what that was maybe don't worry francis I'm sure we'll learn from our failures. Hey, man, at least in Afghanistan we came up with the hearts and minds thing and we dug some wells, I guess. To be fair, we did the same thing with natives for nefarious reasons.

But the only thing I'm learning here is that reservations need to build IDs. Now, driven from their camp, the survivors, starving and freezing, walked to the village of Crazy Horse further north and they were welcomed with open arms.

Led by Sitting Bull, the Allied Great Plains Force grew as American military movements and action displaced more and more Native Americans. All of this occurred as the Bighorn expedition retreated, having largely failed back into Fort Fetterman for the rest of the winter and spring. They finally realized, like, wow, this really isn't working in the winter, is it, folks?

Let's wait until we're not freezing to death. So they wait until June. In June, America set out again for an invasion of the Powder and Bighorn River country with the same goal of defeating and driving the hostile bands back onto the reservation. This would end in a three-pronged assault on the plane's allied forces, which were loosely led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and a few others that were situated around the Rosebud Creek. crazy horse and a few others that were situated around the rosebud creek the american force was joined by some shoshone and crow warriors who again were active scouts but also really didn't fucking like the people that the americans were fighting uh they had their own internal politics that of the greater unified fuck that guy theory especially the crow who had been kind of nudged out of their territory and really wanted to get the revenge and

you know when the u.s shows up that happens a lot um everywhere for pretty much all of time like hey let's use these dumb white people to further our goals they don't know any better now this force eventually grew to be around 1800 soldiers and warriors um i guess you can get some auxiliaries, but warriors nonetheless. However, the Americans' native allies warned General Crook that the Lakota and Cheyenne were all over this part of the woods, quote, as numerous as grass,

and they should move very slowly to make sure they don't get ambushed. You want to guess if they listened to them? Like, quote, white on rice. I'm going to say they did not heed the warning. Nailed it. It's almost like I know what podcast I'm on.

Imagine the show like a non-white scout went and told his white boss white boss like hey this is a really bad idea the general's like oh you're right thanks thanks man yeah we're gonna go home now what what do you think we should do i mean yes you're my underling but i'm going to take in the information and knowledge you might have and add it to my own no no no i'm not gonna do that some crow warriors like well have you tried fucking off like back to the east coast and then back across the atlantic ocean from whence you came um now this is where we have to talk about what is a tactic known as quote indian fighting um which is as gross as it sounds yeah it's a fanciful word for war crimes, mostly. Okay, so this is them fighting the natives, not the natives fighting them.

No, no, no. This is just what you'll hear post-Civil War generals will get called famed, quote, Indian fighters. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's mostly because, without a doubt, they're all bloodthirsty lunatics and committed unspeakable crimes across the Great Plains. Here's the genociders. Yeah, pretty much. And then they get elected president eventually. But the idea was, like we talked about before, was to strike villages and camps very quickly because white people believed that Native American warriors would run away from a fight. So you had to ambush them or hit them where they lived before they could run. Now, this is obviously ghoulish as fuck. I don't need to go into that.

Obviously, warriors were not going to form a line and slug it out with blue-jacketed assholes that showed up in their backyard. That would be pointless. That's just not how they fought. But it did not mean that they ran away from combat, obviously. It's the 1870s, and we're still talking about wars against the government. They'll fight. This is kind of like whenever anybody points at any irregular war in history

and be like, well, if they just simply stood toe-to-to army they would lose yeah no fucking shit that's why they don't yeah did you did you not again as we said earlier about the taliban yeah if the if it was like we lined up all the army soldiers and all the taliban soldiers and we all shot at each other we'd fucking win but guess what that's not how you win. It's called asymmetrical battle. And sometimes you got to build a Native American technical. That'd be fucking rad. It's like a Model T. I mean, of course they don't fight that way.

That would be very stupid. Like, no shit. They'll fucking lose. Yeah. However, they did tactically withdraw from battle, but only to reform and skirmish on with coming soldiers. They would do this again and again, charging into battle, pulling back out,

and then shooting at you as they ran away. This is not cowardice, unless you're very stupid or racist. This is actually a legendary fighting tactic known widely as the Parthian shot or the parting shot because it makes so much sense to do this for fast moving lighter soldiers, which native warriors were compared to American soldiers. That you could just like literally run circles around a guy chasing after you and slowly whittle them down as they press the attack. This is so common sense for anybody in this situation. That's been independently invented by like a dozen different fucking civilizations

and never had contact with one another. That's just how they would prefer to fight because that's how it works for them. Or like, you know, ambushes and guerrilla warfare because they're good at it and they're not going to stand toe to toes. You like wheel a Gatling gun around at them. Exactly. These guys' dads and their grandparents and their great grandparents have been shooting at white people since they showed up. They know how they fight. They know how to fight. Granddad always knew how to kill a white man tell you that that's why it was called kills white man

crook's original plan was for the three prongs of the attack to fall on the allied camp within the bighorn valley the vast distances and lack of reliable communications made it difficult to coordinate. Making the whole thing harder was the small fact that nobody actually knew where this camp was or the size of it. It's probably around there somewhere. Nobody could pinpoint it on a map.

While the scouts couldn't find the Allied camp, they did find evidence of a large Allied force that was probably nearby namely like horse shit like in a trail depressed like hoof prints and stuff like that like a lot of people

have run through here that's because they wanted to pinpoint exactly where the camp was Crook wanted to get as close as he possibly could and move as silently as he could. Now, he was moving a thousand dudes,

so it's not that silent, but like as silently as a thousand people could move. However, of course, Allied scouts were already very well aware of his movements as far back as like early June. And Crazy Horse himself in his camp said if three star which is

what he called crook because three star general crossed the tongue river then it would be war and he would launch the attack like he would go on a military offensive which is something that the americans thought that native americans were simply incapable of because they're dumb right man people have have died from their own dumb racism just a lot in america all the time it'll continue to happen baby it's incredible that like america exists as it does considering how stupid like the people in charge of it have been for an incredibly long time i guess we're just like the one thing we're really good at is like ethnic cleansing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

military, if you build a very strong military, you can give them guns and they don't have to be smart as we can both attest to. If that wasn't a big enough hint that crooks plan was going to be kind of fucked up from the beginning, the scouts are tracking where he was, um,

his soldiers and, and, and native exhilarators or, or, or scouts ruined it even further uh on june 16th crook ordered his baggage train to be left behind uh because it moved slowly um leaving some civilians to guard it he then issued rations out for about a week to all of his soldiers which is normally just like salted shitty meat and hardtack. It's bad rations, man. And, you know, timelessly,

army rations aren't great. So when his soldiers and his allied native warriors saw a herd of buffalo wander on by, they opened fire on them. To, like, to eat them, I guess? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

But, you know, when you're just firing rifles off off when you're trying to sneak up on a couple hundred uh what you consider enemies that just means that you just broadcast it to everybody in that particular valley like hey assholes are over there they're shooting at the buffaloes yeah on that same day over a thousand allied warriors set off from their camp near the Rosebud Creek to confront all three stars and his hungry, hungry soldiers who they now knew exactly where they were. Between June 16th and 17, Crook was desperate to press the march and close the gap between him and what he thought was a native village. Remember, he doesn't know where it is. He just figures if we continue to march hard in this one direction, we'll find it.

So he's having them march constantly. In one day, they marched over 35 miles in the middle of June in Montana. Remember, all wearing horrible wool army uniforms and probably not carrying that much water. They weren't in good shape. Sounds bad. Sounds like a real bad time. Now, while you're that tired, you start to do some very dumb things.

Like, for instance, when the army stopped for a short rest, Crook gave no orders to form any kind of defenses whatsoever. He didn't even order anybody to pull sentry duty. So everybody just kind of like sat down on the ground like desperate to stop sweating and being sunburned pure tactical brilliance and oh

they were also in the middle of a valley surrounded by high ground so that's that's a tactically just a great place to be and remember like they they're under the understanding they're in enemy territory. So great stuff all around, guys.

That's when Crazy Horses Warriors began sniping at the resting soldiers. And if you didn't immediately get shot, they just ignored it because people who were far away assumed that, oh, there's just some asshole shooting at Buffalo again. That only changed after a couple minutes when a couple scouts ran back in the camp screaming that the Lakota were coming as the weight of the attacking ally tribes smashed directly into the scout camp first because the Crow and Shoshone were smart and set their camp up on the high ground and put guards up on duty.

And obviously, Crazy Horse wanted to take them out first because high ground, right? Now, Crazy Horse's force, which is around 1,500 mounted on horseback, smashed into the 260 or so Crow and Shoshone that had camped only 500 yards away from the main body of soldiers. Now, somehow, despite being massively outnumbered, these scouts jumped on their horses and fucking charged right back at Crazy Horse. Now, Crook ordered his junior cavalry commander named Captain Anson Mills of the 3rd Cavalry

to immediately rush in and support them because it would buy the rest of the force enough time to wake the fuck up and go do soldier stuff. Now, this also led to the event that the Battle of the Rosebud, as it's called in English, gets its name to the Cheyenne, the battle where the girl saved her brother. Very literal naming convention, which I could respect. Now, a warrior name comes in sight, naming convention which i could respect now a warrior name comes in sight i had his horse shot from out under him as mills uh men rushed in to support the crow and shoshone and he was about to be killed when his sister buffalo calf road woman charged in guns a blazing uh and rescued

him i would really like to believe she's like's got revolvers akimbo or something. This pretty much suicidal counterattack, led by the Crow, Shoshone, and Mills gave the soldiers behind them enough time to wake up and regroup and get their asses onto a nearby hill where they could fight from more effectively. This ruined

Crazy Horse's plan for a quick and almost certainly decisive ambush should the scouts had not saved their fucking asses however crook didn't really understand what was happening he immediately uh judged crazy horse and his attack being something completely different he figured i'm under attack that must mean their village is nearby right because sure that's what a village does it attacks you well he believed that the only reason they could be attacking him is because they're near their village not like launching a coordinated military offensive oh like so it's kind of one of those um

the the bird pretending that it's got a broken wing so it distracts you from the nest that's what they're thinking right like he he was always under the belief that like the native simply could not comprehend complex military tactics because racism, right? Like this isn't just him. This is a military doctrine. And this is, this is not like they didn't just meet the native Americans.

This is the crazy thing. Like they've been actively hundreds of years, right? Actively fighting them but like you guys have been talking with the people who lived here for like a while now have you not figured out that they're not stupid not to mention they have fought countless conflicts not only with native americans as their enemies but as their allies too like it's just one racism based ignorance um he believed that crazy horse had to be defending a nearby village not that crazy horse was attacking him personally

so like an idiot crook despite being secure on a hilltop diverted his forces in half to go looking for this imaginary village which i need to impress on you did not exist he had no he had no hint of it actually existing he just assumed it was there the sure of it though they've got they've got like a they've got like a an old-timey treasure map from from uh pirates of the caribbean it's like it's here it's here i know it's here yeah you know secure on a hilltop with the generally superior firearms and you know tactical training despite the fact these soldiers aren't the best

but you know they can put up a they can fire online and that will fuck up an attacking force on a hilltop crazy horse was probably in a bad spot at this point but then suddenly out of nowhere a whole bunch of assholes rode off the hill he's like oh let's go attack them and And that's what they did.

Immediately surrounding them. Absolutely. Lieutenant Colonel William Royal, who was Crook's second in command, was leading this detachment. Immediately got pinned down in a valley about a mile away from Crook's main body. And that is when Crazy Horse ordered a frontal

charge. They came tearing down the valley and immediately broke Royals forces the the American soldiers like like fuck this I'm out we're getting on their horses and riding away and the only reason that this did not end in like

a mini little big horn type massacre actually if this if this would have happened this way a little little big horn yeah a littler big um a little little horn i don't fucking know a little big horn actually i'll go on a i'll go on another uh branch here and say if this was successful it would have been caused a big enough black eye to the u.s army that little bighorn never would have happened because they're like all right let's go talk to these guys the war's not going well um because this would have been like you know 50 dead soldiers which is really fucking bad for pr right um but as they tore down the valley and the american

soldiers broke and ran guess who saved their fucking asses again but the crow and shoshone who probably sighing and rolling their eyes at this point, jumped back on their horses and charged directly back into the enemy and like fought a rear guard action that gave Royal and his men enough time to get away. It's hard to believe you're not doing it on purpose at this point, guys. You're just so bad at this. We have to hold the white people's hands again. God damn it. I thought you were supposed to be the good soldiers.

Why did we pick the fight with you? Now, this battle began at 8 a.m. and went on until about 2.30 p.m. when the forces under Crazy Horse finally realized that, nah, we're not going to win this. Time to pack it up and go home and left the battlefield. Their hopes of a breakthrough or their ability to surround the force piece by piece was not really going to happen.

Also, they were running low on ammo. At this point, everybody's up on Crux Hill position. And in another world, this battle ends very differently for another reason other than the one I already talked about. It was found that at this point, almost every single soldier in the battle was pretty much out of ammo or down to their last few shots. Because each of them had only been issued around a hundred rounds, which I know sounds like a lot. And they burned through that ammo in an impressively fast rate for a much dumber reason than you probably think now.

Shooting at Buffalo. Oh, well that's one of them. Sure. Which is also very stupid. So is this, is it both, both sides are,

are having, are having some ammo problems or is it just the, the American problems, or is it just the American government? Both. But the American government would have ended worse, because Native Americans also carry things like hatchets, daggers, and bows and arrows. And they were much more comfortable fighting up close than some like random 18 year old polish immigrant from new york right at this point they're probably irish but now one of the reasons for why the americans went through so much ammo was actually how they were trained uh those soldiers were trained at a sterile firing range right um and when they were taught how to basically use their weapons and basic

rifle marksmanship is pretty much all these guys got uh now they use these springfield modeled 1873 trapdoor rifle and carbine and when they went to the range it was super common for every soldier to take all of their ammo out of their cartridge cases on their belt and place it on the ground in front of them to make shooting and reloading much easier. Sure. That makes sense at a firing range. Yeah. Really fucking, fucking up that muscle memory though.

Yeah, exactly. Now on the battlefield, they found that soldiers were still doing this, which meant, you know, if you have to quickly displace and say, run onto a fucking hilltop and you've already taken 30 fucking rounds out of your out of your belt and put them on the ground

next to you you're not gonna pick them up before you go you gotta run because you're about to catch a fucking arrow between the eyes right and that's why um they marked that 25 000 rounds have been used during the battle however only somehow only 36 native warriors were killed so they're counting the lost bullets as used as well yes they assume that they fire them all however uh that's the that's the excuse i would give to and not go to my sergeant be like uh i just left like another fistful of bullets back there my bad well later investigation of the scene found very neat piles of bullets in all of the defensive positions at the American. And this is actually something that isn't unique to the 1800s.

Famously, there was a firefight between the FBI and some guy in Florida. And they found that the FBI at the time still used revolvers. And whenever they went to the shooting range, because FBI agents don't shoot their guns very often, they go to a very nice shooting range. They fire off 10 rounds from their fucking revolver to qualify for the year. And then they leave. And every time that they would reload the revolvers, they would empty the cylinder into their hand and then put the shells in their pockets so they didn't have to pick them up later. Right. There was no rapid reloading going on.

They found that these FBI agents who I think two or three were killed had pockets full of empty brass because they were taking their time to continue to do what the habits they had built up. This isn't unique to some idiot cavalrymen in the 1800s people still fucking do it

um now the army lost around 30 people killed um now this also counts in native scouts um there was more native scouts killed i believe than uh american soldiers but another 50 were wounded and um of course crook uh claimed this as, as a major victory because he could play it as we've met the enemy and we've driven them from the field. It's like, no, they left. Fucked off.

Cause they were just kind of done with this. Yeah. Now they also immediately withdrew from the field as well. Stopping the search for the mysterious, the unfindable village that they claim they found, pulling all the way back to his camp at Sheridan, Wyoming, where they would stay for a month because of, you know, the wounded and the dead and, you know,

that black eye that he just suffered. The whole war losing thing. Yeah, it's a bad look. Little to no credit was given to any of the Native American allies for saving his command from complete destruction um now immediately after this the crow and the shoshone that had been with them like man fuck y'all we're going home like they they literally said we don't care how much money you pay us we're going home this is stupid yep i'm done with it y'all can't fight

like i mean if if you were a mercenary and you discovered that the people who hired you were just like incredibly bad at war all you're gonna see is like these guys are gonna get me killed and they're probably not gonna have their money on time either yeah it makes a lot more sense politically at this point for the crown the shishami like look we're gonna sit this one out it really it really seems like crazy horse might have your number on this one we really don't want to piss him off um and crook's force would be so badly beat up from this that they would not be able to take a part in the next phase of the operation which is the important one according to with crook at the rosebed only a few hours after the battle allied warriors returned to the battlefield and began pocketing all of the bullets and guns that had

been left behind by the Americans, as well as stack up rocks and places of importance that they thought that should be remembered and storytelling and stuff like that. And you can still find some of those stacks of rocks there today. So that's kind of neat. So to end this episode, we actually have to jump back in time to be dramatic. Um, and for story, we got a Tar jump back in time to be dramatic. Um,

and for story, we got a Tarantino this, I gotcha. Let's go. Um, so in the beginning of June, uh, now around June 5th ish, nobody seems to agree in whether it was the fourth,

fifth or the sixth, the Sundance of 1876 was held. Now the Sundance is a very important ceremony, uh, that is done at the end of spring and beginning of summer that involves a very large gathering of an extensive community and surrounding communities of Native Americans to pray and make offerings for future healing and safety. Now, this is different depending on who does it. Of course, know different cultures whatever but this can involve a lot of different things um depending on which kind of ceremony it is and who's putting it on uh it involves singing and dancing but when i say dancing let me be straight here this is a fucking endurance contest they don't dance like for like the end of their favorite

song or whatever they're dancing for literally days at a time until they collapse from exhaustion. This also sometimes involves fasting, drinking vast quantities of alcohol or hallucinogens. Oh, yeah. And also piercing of the skin. This is all done as a personal sacrifice. A sacrifice for, like I said, future safety and good things. Now, in the case of this particular Sundance, this is already done in the context of like, shit's already going down. The winter campaign already happened.

The war is on, right? So this Sundance is very important. For a lot of the people involved, the sacrifices that they're putting out is much more steep than they would be in any other point it's much more important to them because they really want according to the religious beliefs the safety for their people going forward because they know that this campaign is going to come back like they know war is coming back to them yeah of course and if there's one thing about uh shitty american imperialism it is very dogged. It does not go away when it gets punched in the face. Now, we do actually have firsthand accounts of someone that was there.

A guy named Standing Bear said, quote, The chief sitting bull was the leader of the Sundance. From every band, some came to dance. There were many people dancing here. Most of the Sioux Nation was there, except some of the ones around the agency or the agency being like the reservation. They danced for two days. The chief sent scouts all over guarding the sacred place to make sure they would not be disturbed. Now, this is a very, very big event, and it drew more people than normal from the surrounding areas to take part,

eventually forming around 15,000 people strong in a village ish temporary village situation they either took part in the sacrifices themselves or watched as chief sitting bull hacked 50 pieces of his own flesh off an offering some accounts say he was up to 100 all while he was dancing um now he danced throughout the day and night and eventually passed from, I assume a combination of exhaustion and blood loss from, from, you know, everything we just described. Yeah.

He was unconscious for hours, which was probably a cause of concern for a lot of people there, but eventually shot back awake wide eyed and said that he had a prophecy that he had just seen. He needs to share with everybody. He had a vision of soldiers attacking the village, but they and their horses were upside down with their feet towards

the sky. To him, this meant the soldiers were dead. He interpreted this vision as an indication of their victory over the soldiers during the coming war. This gave them peace and hope that their warriors would defeat the Americans. Soon, word got out,

and it spread further and further as people came back towards the village swelling even more with more and more warriors and weapons and training because prophecy told them they're going to win. You want to know where this village was, Francis? Where was this village?

It was on the shores of the Greasy Grass River or by the name of the white people the Little Bighorn. And that is what we'll pick up next time. We need to add a dun-dun-dun sound clip. I don't have one. I'll work on that. I'll get that in there.

That is part two, Francis. And things are about to get, depending on who you are, very funny. about to get things are about depending on who you are very funny she's gonna she's gonna uh little your bighorn in just a minute buddy when you're littling the bighorn oh god damn it thanks uh i really like i really like our offset to my my doom uh doom inspiring ending ending is that it's a dick joke I was trying to make a who need their big C8 but that just didn't kind of work out god damn it

who need their you know what let's just stop there thank you for joining me in part two this is the area where you get to plug your show plug your show good lord does anybody really want to come listen to my show after this? I am on What a Hell of a Way to Die with Nate, who does all of the editing of every good podcast on the internet right now.

The poor bastard that puts up with all of my fuck-ups. Bless his heart. Everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you like what we do, consider subscribing to the show on Patreon. You get bonus stuff, access to the Discord, access to, I guess we can call it a premium series over on Patreon, where me, Francis, and our fake podcast attorney, Shox, watch HBO's Rome. Hell yeah. Great show.

Fantastic. Loving it. It's about to get real bad but I'm excited and if you don't have money consider leaving us a review or if you do have money it's your money do what you want but relieving review is free it helps us with

algorithmic based reasons that I just not sure why but it does it makes it makes Google happy let's make Google happy for Joe please the iTunes gods. Joe's got to dance around the podcast studio cutting off 50 chunks of flesh to appease the algorithm. I'm going to dance under the blazing heat, cutting myself with like a butter knife while tripping balls on hallucinogens to make the gods happy where I might have a week off one time. I guess what would

the Midwest version of that be? It's a bonfire party. It's just a bonfire party. It's a bonfire party. You're drunk on some MD 2020 or you've just done speed for the first time. Somebody showed up with a white powder

if you're not exactly sure what it is, but everybody seems like they're having fun yeah see if we could and this is my high school everybody's just like it's just everybody really high on spice it's just stripping naked and screaming through the woods

actually to appease the gods you need to get really high on spice and eat somebody's face like a pagan or like animalist or spiritualist midwestern belief would be getting so fucking high off your tits that you

drink a three liter of phago mix with pop off until you fight a cop exactly Francis thank you so much everybody thank you again. And we'll see you on part three, the conclusion of the Battle of the Little Bighorns.