Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 219 - The Battle of Little Bighorn Part 3: The Death of Custer

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Part 3/3 Custer leads his command to their deaths. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: 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. let pachasus sons not be dismayed but join with me show me your blade come drink and sing and lend your aid to help me with the chorus and instead a spa will drink brown hello and welcome to another episode of the lines up by donkeys podcast i'm joe and still with me trapped in the content minds is francis host of hell of a way to die what's up francis i'm very excited uh but you know to get to the point that everybody um everybody's favorite part of this story which is you know custer's last stand we have to jump in a time machine and go back to the time that the supreme court is trying to return us to which is the late. Now, when we left you last time, the Allied tribes were

kind of joining around Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and joining in their Sundance vision of defeating the encroaching American soldiers. They had gathered in the literal thousands at the bank of the Little Bighorn

River, hence where the battle gets its name in English. Native Americans know the greasy grass, which is gross and I like it. Why is the grass greasy? What is that? Is there something about the grass specifically? Is it greasy with the blood of white men? What's the greasy here?

It was fried in full fat oil. I don't know. Do you live, uh, in the little big one area? It's, it's the Midwest. So it's,

it's not that Midwest. Where's a little bit. No, it's Montana, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

And even then, like, you know, this is about like the black Hills of, of, of the Dakotas, which I also don't consider the Midwest. No, that's not, I guess I was thinking more, like, you know, this is about like the Black Hills of the Dakotas, which I also don't consider the Midwest. No, that's not. I guess I was thinking more of like, you know, some sort of deep fried cheese curds of Wisconsin, but that's too far east.

I don't know. I don't know what's greasy in South Dakota. And fried like goat balls or like a Colorado thing. I feel like. What is? Yeah, the Rocky Mountain oysters. Yeah. Those are goat balls or like a Colorado thing. I feel like what is, uh, yeah, the Rocky mountain oysters. Um, yeah,

the goat, the goat balls, right? No bull testicles. Oh, I think that's enjoy eating your balls. Whoever you are. Yeah.

Enjoy it. Enjoy your greasy grass balls, I suppose. Yeah. Uh, are you, uh, from the area of the little bighorn?

Is your grass in fact greasy? Could you tell usorn? Is your grass, in fact, greasy? Could you tell us why? And it's in a cool condition. Yeah. Go clean your grass. Yeah. Slick its hair back. This grass has got too much product in it.

It's got the suavecito in it. Now, that's the only reason why I know about the name of that is because that's the pomade that nick used and it made his hair like into a helmet um he used crazy grass on his hair is that what it was called i never had enough hair or style to ever pull it off um i just buzzed it down man people people in the army who like grow their hair out and do weird things with it what are you doing i can respect them my hair was always way i mean i've my hair is very armenian it's super super thick and super super curly so i can't do shit with it like if it grows beyond like just enough uh to to show that it exists it goes straight up um into like completely uncontrollable girls. It's, it's awful.

You get a fro? No, not quite. Cause like a fro, you can rock a fro. If, if I grew my hair out, it,

it, it, I look like an unkempt mountain person because it's effectively what I am. I was going to say, I mean, currently you are a kempt mountain person, so. That's right. Yeah.

That's about to go real, real south. Let me tell you. Now, when we left you last time, the American advance had been turned away at the Battle of the Rosebud. And now we get to talk about everybody's favorite failure, George Armstrong Custer, which we did talk about a little bit before, he was involved in the gold expedition that started this whole thing. But now we can tell, talk about what happened after that. Uh, noted West point basement dweller.

Hey, you know, you know what they call the lowest graduating person from West point, my former platoon leader, probably fucking sir. Don't you? He's standing attention. This is normally where I would say like the producer of this podcast but

nate didn't go to west point no nate went to a normal school yeah that's probably why he likes us we have west pointers that like us i don't know if they'd ever like you know i don't know if our relationship would go any further than uh casual twitter acquaintances. I've had two West, actually three West Pointers on the show. So I know you're out there. We love you. You personally, not your classmates. Not the rest of you. In general, right.

You know, on an individual level, I'm sure you're all people, but as a whole, I do not consider you people. I mean, don't get it twisted. we don't want to pass up the people who truly earned our scorn and that is via my graduates um we've talked about them before too uh all of the hate that i project at west pointers is actually all earned by via my people everything that i i say about west pointers is only rooted in the fact that I'm a better enlisted person. Right?

Like, but VMI and like the, like, was it the Naval Academy? Truly just a hives of scum and villainy. I think, I think VMI, is that the one that we just had a,

I can't remember which military prep school it was, uh, where there was, um, a whole lot of, just a whole lot of abuse and hazing and everything going on. But the thing is, that's all of them. I'm going to say that certainly sounds like VMI. Literally founded to propagate slave-owning military leaders. That's fun.

I mean, the Air Force Academy is awful, but at least they have a sweet anime sword. I mean, all steep and horrible religious bigotry but you know whatever their chapel looks pretty cool but that's about it you know that it's like uh someone told me how weird uh weirdly religious the air force academy is so the chapel makes sense i know you think people who are training to like spit in the face of god and fly jets at like mach six or wouldn't be super religious, but what do I know? We talked a little bit about Custer before, but now we have to talk about him a little bit more in depth. We talked about his West Point career.

But for starters, Custer was really, really known for liking him some Custer. He loved himself. really known for liking him some custer. He loved himself. He was already something of a press darling of his own making because he always made sure to make friends with journalists and newspaper people and bring them along with him when he campaigned or where he was stationed. So he could lavish them with love, attention, and probably more than a few unethical gifts. So whatever they wrote made him look very, very good. So hold on. So I'm trying to, like, and, you know, the last couple weeks of discussion,

we've talked about, like, these military, like, trains, not like a physical locomotive, but, like, you know, moving large masses of people from one place to another militarily you know you've got obviously it's like we we've all got to move over here cool and like you know you and i as soldiers in the 21st century be like yeah you get into an lmtv you get into an airplane or whatever they're like no we have to walk and we have to bring like 300 head of cattle along with us so that we can eat. And now you've also got like all these journalists. Like I cannot imagine that like the cavalry at this point in late 1800s,

like there's nothing. Well, what do the natives need scouts for? I imagine these people like just sound and smell and just like a huge dust cloud from 10 miles away at any given point. I mean, you pretty much nailed it. I mean, that's one of the, one of the problems with their military operations in general.

Um, I mean, a lot of it won't matter, especially in the, in the case of Custer, because he had surprise. He thought he didn't, but he had surprise and didn't fucking matter.

So, so much for that. Now he, he was, he was one of those guys that tried to control every little bit of information that came out about him um and made sure that it portrayed him as some kind of hard-bitten hard-charging manly man planes warrior um he was general mattis before general mattis the fact this is the first he's the first PAO, man. Everything's got to rip through me before it's authorized for release.

Kind of. With the added difference of if the journalist is critical of him, they're just not going to get access to the army again. At least around him. Because the army, even though it is centralized at this point, distances are a thing. It's the late 1800s.

If you're not stationed out in the West with these guys, you might as well not exist because it takes so long for word to travel. But this is where the war was at this point. So you didn't want to burn any bridges. It's the journalism equivalent of just publishing a police press release. Were there journalists that were critical of him? Was anybody critical of him because i mean he's alive uh he's alive i mean he he did a very good job uh making himself look good with help of course i mean he wrote a couple books too um that like again made him look like

this mainly manned wild west type uh but then he died and he was a martyr so like you couldn't talk bad about him so like it's honestly pretty recent where people have been giving an honest appraisal of custard which it's unfortunately you you know you have a hundred fucking years plus of of hero worship to chop down even without the even without the hero worship though like i i feel like common you know just common sense like you know uh this the the civil war was about the state's rights the state's rights to do what right like uh custer was a hero when he was fighting these natives why was he fighting the natives that like answer that. Did he fucking deserve it? Because he was fucking with somebody else on their property? That sounds like castle law.

Well, I mean, it's easy to square when the people who champion, you know, the quote unquote Indiana fighters of the West don't see Native Americans as people. Sure. But I mean, like, you know, later on, like now that, you know, obviously, as you said, people are turning a more critical eye to it. It is just that I and I'm very glad that like in the last, you know, couple of decades, you know, multiple decades, but obviously not since the 1800s, that there is more of a reckoning of no, no, you the natives were were like they were people. As it turns out, Joe, as it turns out, they were people. they were people as it turns out joe as it turns out they were people i mean who knows what people can learn in school and depending on what state they live in learning about this might be considered critical race theory or something it could be like i i i think about what i learned about native

americans and in history and it's uh it is not anything that i have learned since then so i had a decent public school education i mean all things considered but i mean for a lot of people they're like well i didn't learn about this in school i'm like you know barring some of the most egregious shit you probably did but you're also a child and you weren't paying attention that's fine exactly or you forgot it because it's been 20 years you know but also history's long like there's so much of it. I can confirm. Yeah, I can confirm that.

Many people are saying history is, in fact, long. There's a lot of it. And, you know, the more atomized you get with it, just the more history there is. Because it's easy to just be like, yeah, native americans versus the u.s cavalry but like as you have been pointing out the native america some of them were some of the natives were working with the u.s government some of them weren't uh some of them were you know there's just all kinds of intricacies everybody's got their own agenda everybody's got their own shit going on uh and everybody's got their own idea of what victory looks like. And they don't all mesh. So I am glad that it seems like more of this is kind of coming out.

Of course, it's not going to stop the weird chuds, but give it another 30 or 40 years, they'll die off. And the only historical records that will be left is your podcast. I mean, there's going to be someone with like a Twitter profile picture of like Custer with laser eyes out there or something. I mean, it's also important to remember that like, I didn't learn about this in high school.

Okay. Maybe your high school did suck. That's a very good possibility, but also public schools, general education, like your history education is not going to be that in depth. It probably should be, but you know, budget cuts or whatever.

You're not rich. You don't get a good education. You got to put math in there. You got to learn like Spanish. Somebody's got to teach you art at some point. There's got to be, you got to read books. Like there's a lot going on. And if history is not your favorite subject in high school, it certainly wasn't mine.

It was the only subject I paid attention to. I'm interested in high school. It certainly wasn't mine. It was the only subject I paid attention to. I'm interested in history now. And I do read historical books. But I like to read history books that are very specific to what I want to learn about. I'm learning about the rise and the fall of the Anheuser-Busch family. I'm from from st louis the fucking original brewery is like four miles from my house um so like that's something i'll read a really big long book about you know the the an the anheuser-busch family from you know the mid-1800s until now uh but like if you're like do you want to read this book about the schlitz brewery fuck no get out of here i don't give a shit it's a step too far. I mean, also I'm speaking

from a very American centric point of view with my opinions on education. And I don't I do not mean to make that as like a defense of the American public school system. It is not good. However, like, you know, the way it's designed,

I would be very surprised if many people learned about the battle of little bighorn um in an educational setting before like an undergrad in american history um unless i mean granted there's also different kinds of schools out there now i know europeans have a different kind of school system depending on what country you're from um also i mean some people don't get any american history because they're not fucking american i don't know yeah what do the british learn about the american revolution uh a day and a half of like and then those assholes so we let them go fuck them i mean to be fair it's probably about as good as ours when like our education completely cuts out the uh the help that we got from the

french um now there's a there's a large part of uh of george aren't speaking of a different part of education that america likes to skip over reconstruction um george uh custer was in the army during or the volunteers and then the army during and after the civil war where he was stationed in tex reconstruction. Great fucking job there, boys. And his own men hated him a lot. At one point, there was damn near a strike of them demanding he be reassigned. It didn't work. And they called him, quote, a vain dandy.

West Point strikes again. So it seems like if you were anybody that he considered a peer or a superior, that he kind of had to worry about what you thought about him. If you spent any kind of extended amount of time around him, you immediately saw through his bullshit and hated him. Nobody really has any positive things to say about him unless they kind of had to. Now, he was so used to being allowed to do pretty much whatever he wanted

from his time in the Civil War. I remember he was the boy to being allowed to do pretty much whatever he wanted uh from his time in the civil war i remember he was the boy general everybody loved him that uh less than 10 years before his fateful and final battle in 1868 he got arrested for going awol um now i should point out he was a lieutenant colonel um and this would not be the last time this happened uh he requested leave which was then denied during an upcoming campaign in the West. So he just went on leave anyway. Again, I really hate saying things that I support about this guy. I'd fucking do that, too.

Oh, yeah. Deny my leave. I want to, you know, if I'm looking for a long weekend in Atlantic City doing some hedonism and I've already bought my tickets and the the general says no i mean come on he was a lieutenant colonel i think he just wanted to go see his wife or something but also he was pretty routinely cheated on her on his wife so it could have been one of his many mistresses it was one of the things that like one of his subordinates fucking hated him because his subordinate was very much an uptight puritan. And Custer was pretty open with fucking around on his wife. So he's like,

you know, he thought of him as a man of low morals, which like arguably he is. And mostly for the genocide though. Right. I'm going to say the things I'm going to, I'm going to judge him for his adultery is very low on the list. And the genocide is quite high.

It's not great. We're not going to say that it's great. And you know what? Maybe, maybe he and his wife had an agreement. I't know i'm not going to make any assumptions we'll say though the murdering uh hundreds of people is is probably a little bit worse it's kind of like when everybody talks about like amen goth who was like a nazi camp commandant who was so bad the nazis fired him um and like oh everybody stay alive in the death camp like no no he stole from

the nazis that was his downfall they're like well yeah that's bad i guess because like what he was stealing was like jewish property but like being a camp commandant of fucking auschwitz is significantly worse or i think he was auschwitz i don't't know. But yeah, like I'm on the, on the things I'm going to rate here, like embezzlement isn't very high, you know? I mean, we still do that. I mean,

to be fair, we still do the genociding too sometimes, but you know, we keep it a little bit more quiet. Yeah. Keep it to a dull roar, you know, just like elementary school.

Yeah. He got arrested for going AWOL. He'd do that a couple of times. But mostly because he, he really didn't seem... Even though he wasn't very high-ranking. He wasn't politically pure enough to get a White House gig. He

wasn't an actual general. He was a brevet general. So it was temporary. But he still really didn't like listening to anybody that wasn't him or agreed with him. Fair. I get it. Now, immediately after getting released from being arrested for a while he let he read a uh he led a raid on a native american named chief black

kettles camp and he wrote a dispatch saying he killed over a hundred warriors now he didn't kill over a hundred warriors black kettle himself says he killed only 11 people, and they were all unarmed. Even his own soldiers' stories don't match Custer's story. And it was a massacre, not a battle. This happens a lot in Western history, especially in the history of the Native American genocides in America, where things are originally labeled a battle. And then you quickly realize there was no battle. Uh, I mean the, uh,

the, the wounded knee massacre was called the battle of wounded knee for several years. Yeah. It's, it's only a battle at both sides have guns. Yeah. When one side has guns and the other side doesn't,

that's just, that's just a massacre. Yeah. There was also the, the immediate aftermath of this raid. He used native children and women as human shields so he could withdraw because the actual warriors were showing up. So, yeah, he's the kind of guy who literally lies to make his war crimes worse. So I actually take it back.

He's more like Mikuya, the guy who claims he killed Bin Laden. And at this point, he's claimed to kill several dozen people and threatens to kill more pretty regularly. No, he's on the outs because he said that people having mental health problems shouldn't have guns. And every person with mental health problems on Twitter just had massive issues with that. And he has forsaken the second amendment. If you're wondering where our bill of rights is standing right now, it's Mikuya, the guy who everybody thinks shot bin Laden is a traitor.

Now we're, we're truly going through it. Are we, you know, at least I gotta, I gotta say at least the silver lining is like watching other dumb chuds fall, too, because like the thing about like a fascist government that I have noticed, not necessarily just with ours, but like, you know, ones in the past is that like it really eats itself. people they're gonna have their day in the sun but also more than likely they're gonna get ground out and i don't know end up selling fucking pillows by the side of the side of the road or something with uh the my pillow guy i don't know like i don't know where jesse kelly ends up

um but hopefully it's um you know somewhere probably yeah family court i don't fucking know somebody's got to take something away from them and one of the downsides of well upsides downsides i don't know of reactionary politics is you have to constantly be reacting right in that fire that fires in every direction baby uh now if uh if this wasn't weird enough for uh for custer you know going awol's lieutenant colonel getting arrested than doing massive amounts of war crimes uh he got into politics uh now we talked about this before we love a veteran uh getting into politics don't we well he first got out of the military with intention of running like running for office and realize that like, ooh, I don't really have enough money for that.

So he became a whistleblower, but the term whistleblower doesn't really fit because it gives him a certain amount of good faith. So he got involved in something called the Trader Post scandal, where the Secretary of War, William Belknap, under Ulysses S. Grant, was definitely getting kickbacks for selling trade deals to private companies to supply local military bases that were out in the frontier, which Custer was at one of them. It was fucking Kellogg Brown and Root of the 1800s. Yeah. This was without a doubt happening. Belknap resigned because Grant encouraged him to resign. Grant and at that point, most people had quite a loose grasp on what an impeachment was and how you could do it. And he believed that, like, look, if you resign, they won't impeach a private citizen and that will protect both of us.

He was immediately impeached. He pissed enough people off like yeah we don't fucking care we're impeaching him anyway uh no bro it's cool if you if you just come over if the teacher is 10 minutes late we all get to leave it's cool exactly yeah um now uh that seemed to surprise grant because he was kind of a big fucking dumbass uh um now one of the forts that was brought up in this whole scandal was fort ab Lincoln, which is where Custer was stationed. And he was called upon to testify against his former boss, the Secretary of War, and technically his current one, the President of the United States. Which I should point out here, Custer really did not fucking like Grant.

I should point out here, Custer really did not fucking like Grant. Now, Custer at this point had also worked as an unnamed source for the New York Herald, who were doing their own investigation into the scandal. Though I use the term unnamed source quite lightly, because while he was unnamed in the New York Herald, everybody fucking knew it was Custer. This is due to people not taking secrets and sources very seriously and Custer himself could not fucking help himself to be like I helped take down William Belknap

the secretary of war like oh man you are stupid there's no way that that that Custer can deal with a pen name longer than five ten minutes yeah exactly it's kind of like a gideon pillow uh way back uh in an episode we did uh wrote complaining about the government and had the pen name uh leonidas and everybody's like that's gideon pillow fucking loser um now uh custer again wasn't a fan of grant but he's even uh less of a fan of belknap who he had to deal with more uh seriously as the secretary of war he didn't like a lot of his decisions because custer believed the easiest way to solve what he dubbed the native american

question um and to be to be fair custer was not the first person to use that term, and it's never a good thing when that term is used. We're looking for a solution. A final one, if you will. We've had many solutions. We just need a final one. And he believed the

final solution to that was the final solution to that. Where Belknap and Grant were less bloodthirsty at the time. Obviously, Grant launched this manufacturer and launched this war. So things change. Also, you know, all the other shit that he did, but he fucking hated them. So what he could have done is Custer could have gone to this committee in DC and told the truth because he

did witness things that almost certainly were very illegal on Fort Abraham Lincoln. But he couldn't help but know he was in the spotlight. So he put on a fucking show and he lied his ass off.

Now there's no doubt of anybody's guilt in this scandal they did this shit and grant was probably connected to it i mean it's not even the first or only scandal that would rock grant's administration because again bad president um was he was at least an all right dude just uh i mean as far as people of his day before he was president sure um he did he free when i say he was a good dude i mean he freed his slaves i think he had slave singular uh if i remember correctly and he did free him um but he was also dirt fucking poor most of his life which kind of helps make you honest right and and kind of helps me like you a little bit more. And then once he was given an immense amount of power, he was a genocidal maniac.

Immediately. Immediately a shithead. But now with being in the spotlight, Custer began to talk about things he had no proof of, things he did not witness, namely implicating the president's own brother Orville Grant in the scam, which at this point nobody had done. I'm not saying that Orville wasn't involved, but what I am saying is Custer had no evidence that Orville was involved because he claimed he saw it. He saw a deal go down, which implicated Orville Grant, but his commander, General Sheridan, pointed out that

Custer couldn't have seen it because he wasn't even there at that time. But it did not matter. Custer was virtually a military celebrity at this point, so the press went wild with his testimony. Nobody double-checked or doubted anything

he said. They just ran with it. As you can imagine, this would make, one, the President the United States, quite unhappy with you as a lieutenant colonel, which is never anything that you want to happen. Literally your boss. Yes. In a much smaller military, may I point. Not to mention, they have known each other because they both fought in the Civil War under the same command. Like these guys have been in a room together.'ve exchanged pleasantries the world is much smaller back then um especially especially for like military age white men yes uh who probably know west point

yeah they're they would be in the same circle immediate circle if grant did not become president for sure uh the only thing that separated him was, of course, General Starrs and the presidency. Now, Grant refused to see Custer while he was in DC at this point, and so did Sheridan, which seems like something small. However, when Custer went back to Fort Abraham Lincoln, Grant immediately ordered him to be arrested because he failed to report to his superior commander, that being the president of the United States while he was in DC. So he kind of set him up for that one. That's some petty shit,

but I'm going to let it fly. Cause fuck Custer. Yeah. I mean, again, how petty does the president of the United, I mean, we've lived through a very,

but like setting, doing all of this extra shit to arrest custer when he could have just arrested him anyway because he lied under oath and sharon's like no he's fucking lying you could arrest him then but he's like no no we're gonna we're gonna do this whole elaborate thing so we can arrest him for a different reason i want him i want this man to suffer for completely unrelated and bullshit reasons. And that that's the, that's the military kind of shit that I like to see. I like to see,

I like to see group punishment over the dumbest shit possible. Now at this point, Custer was immediately relieved of command, his command going over to general Terry. Uh, however, Custer was, like I said,

kind of a military celebrity. And once we're a word of grants, punishment got out, a letter writing campaign began and uh his fans insisted that he be reinstated now this probably would not have worked i'm willing to give grant that much that he probably would have ignored it because this would not be the last the first thing that grant fucking ignored um however general sheridan kind of asked quite nicely like hey we could kind of use him we're're doing a war over here. Uh, we could use a lieutenant colonel who's like, has experience. Because at this point, you know, the, the idiot that we know Custer of in the battlefield doesn't exist yet. These guys know the boy general of the Civil War who's, you know, did some not idiot shit again. That was all because he was under the command of somebody else that to

temper his worst habits, um, which he will not have very shortly. Um, and that is how at the last minute Custer was given command of the seventh cavalry, the unit, which he would destroy.

Um, so like if Grant told him to fuck off or shared in a fuck off, none of this happens. I don't think anybody else leads soldiers into this battle like this. They probably like, so I go and pump the brakes on this one, but Custer got put in charge. Now,

after Grant's insistence, Custer was only reinstated and allowed to go on this expedition, the black Hills expedition, which we've been talking about, under the direct supervision of a general, namely General Terry and Crook, either or, but he'll stay under Terry for a little bit. Now, Sheridan agreed to

this. However, when Custer heard about it, he told Sheridan to his face that he would ignore that as soon as he could. And Sheridan just threw up his shoulders like, alright, what are you going to do? Now, let's talk about the 7th for a second. All right.

Does the 7th Cavalry still exist? Yes. Yeah. Or Hood. Yep. All right. When you read about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, they're often noted for being one of the best units out on the plains,

which just wasn't true. Not in their current form. Just like any other unit, the 7th had a unit history. Their heraldry, etc., etc., their stories from back in the day. And they stuck to that, and that seems to be what Histlerains were writing about. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because it would be like the 7th Cavalry has since been reconstituted and deployed.

And it would be like people like, oh, the 7th Cavalry is dog shit because they got wiped out at the Battle of Little Banghorn. Well, that was 100 years ago. So why do we care? The 7th had done other campaigns, which they did conduct perfectly fine. They've been out in the plains for quite a while.

These soldiers, however, were not those soldiers. And these officers were not those officers. The only thing that remained the same was their fancy red and white cavalry flag said seven so completely new group of people know are there are there at least veterans in this group or is it all just a few um a few have stuck around for a while because most enlisted men, like enlisted life fucking sucks back then. So people don't stick around very often and officers live a different existence, right? And not to mention they move around a lot.

Most of these guys' experience comes from the Civil War, not planes warfare. Though there was people who fought in the other planes battles and wars that we have talked about, on a long enough timeline, most of those dudes are gone uh which was the case most of the soldiers and the ranks of the seventh were brand new um or at least brand new to combat because there's a difference between staffing some shitty garrison in fucking bumfuck montana doing manual labor and trying not to die

from typhus and then like actually fighting right now the officer corps was the honestly the real problem as it generally is as it is so it goes um there is an equation that i'll bring up in a little bit um now the officer corps was faction ridden uh it was tearing itself apart in the seventh and that was because of Custer himself and how he commanded every unit he had ever been in. He made sure to pull his weight until several generations of his own family were under his direct command. And no matter the rank, they were in charge of everybody who was not a Custer. So this happened so thoroughly that his officer corps was jokingly referred to as a royal family this included no fewer than five different custers of different generations

the regimental commander himself obviously his brother tom commanded c company another brother boston weird first name there was a civilian hired as a quote unquote guide despite the fact he is not from the area a nephew with the first name Armstrong whose nickname Audie fucking weird nicknames back then was a cattle herder like Audie Murphy Audie no Audie's

first name Audie Murphy's first name was Audie like the IY or something like that but this is like auty i think audie murphy's first name was audie murphy i have to look now i'm gonna be a fucking idiot yeah audie leon murphy yeah au it's aud ie right his brother-in-law james or jimmy uh calhoun was the commander of L Company. Now, all of these people were treated better than everybody else.

Even the civilian, again, who was like a cattle cow manager or whatever, and a guide. The two civilians are part of the family who had no military ranks. Like Custer would routinely give them messages to give to subordinate commanders, but like tell them what to do. So was there not like a private Custer anywhere or Sergeant Custer? They're all, why would they be enlisted?

No, you don't go from being back then. You don't go from being like an illustrious West point family to having an enlisted guy. That's how it worked. That makes sense. Now, now obviously things are much different,

but like, sure. Much. Yeah. Not happening back then. Um, so like, imagine being like one of his major subordinate commanders,

namely like major Reno or captain Ben teen, who will be very important here. Fucking hated this so-called Royal family because Custer also hated them. And he would show their disdain, his disdain for them and how little he thought of them by sending his nephew cow driver to tell them what to do. I'm a fucking major. I'm sending this asshole cow guy telling me what to do. Speaking of his subordinates.

Let's be honest, though. I mean, cow guy, farmer. Everybody was a farmer. If you weren't cow guy far like everybody was a farmer if you weren't you know actively doing something i'm a farmer because that's i don't have anything else going on so these guys definitely were not farmers uh the officer the officer class is not and and this goes for cusser's family we're not farmers like i need to get that straight they were like administration yeah they were solidly above uh these people um above their definitely their enlisted men and farmers uh you're not going to go from the fields to west point uh you will go from however west point to the fields as ulysses

s grant would find out because you'd go poor uh but of course that would not be forever he'd be president but um so let's talk about his direct subordinates. There's Marcus Majorino and Captain Frederick Benteen. Now, they hated Custer almost as much as Custer hated them. And they also hated each other as much as the other routes of hate go here. Now, Benteen, by all accounts, was a decent officer as far as these officers go. Right. Considering the company.

Yes. I will say that he showed the most command sense of anybody involved in the situation. Reno, one of the worst. Not worse than Custer himself, of course, but not good. And a lot of the fault of what would happen what happens from here on out would fall unfairly on Reno, though I'm not going to defend Reno. He really

sucks, but he doesn't deserve all of the blame. Now, another problem with the unit, like I said, were the soldiers themselves. The Civil War veterans that were enlisted were mostly long gone. I mean, this is quite a long time after the soldiers themselves. The Civil War veterans that were enlisted were mostly long gone. I mean, this is quite a long time after the Civil War.

Yeah, there might be like an incredibly grizzled old supply guy still around. Most of those dudes are fucking gone. Unlike the officers in their place, it was a largely new crop of soldiers who had the bare minimum of training, which at the time was not a whole lot.

And most of them were recent immigrants to the United States, largely from Ireland. soldiers who had the bare minimum of training which at the time was not a whole lot and most of them were recent immigrants to the united states largely from ireland um because back then the u.s truly did not give a single fuck they would recruit people literally as they stepped off the boat yeah i mean of course it helped if you spoke english but there was more than enough times during the civil war where they were not that picky. Um, they're like, whatever, sign an X. I'll teach you. I'll teach you how to shoot a gun.

It's fine. I mean, for most of these immigrants, life in one of the overcrowded cities and like tenement housing and working awful fucking, uh, like jobs was not a bright future. Um,

and not to mention that insane amounts of discrimination is happening to other white people back then being in the military was a sweet fucking deal uh you got a government paycheck every month and as long as you could shovel some shit on the frontier somewhere and suck it up for a couple years you had a pension right like and considering what we've been talking about with these guys if uh if the the prospect of like walking your ass across Montana on a regular basis for a couple of years is more, you know, it's just a better idea than like living in one of the cities. That's not a great time to be alive. Being like a recently or like even black guys, maybe they were they may have been emancipated but not by much uh like things were things were quite grim for uh for people in the day and it's like

okay do i do i eat shit in the cavalry for a couple years which of course uh there were black units for but most of them were were white um or do I like I don't know go die in a factory fire in New York City right like those are your options or put my put my small child to work sewing shoes or something and tell her arm gets ripped off or something right

I mean being stationed in the frontier in the cavalry was not something that most people wanted to do desertion was quite a problem um so so was awol desertions are such a problem their own damn commander keeps going awol right um now pop culture makes uh you know wild west posting in so-called indian country look exciting from movies and shit but in reality most, most of the time, soldiers spent their time doing manual labor in awful conditions in pretty austere frontier forts, where disease occasionally swept through the

ranks, killing them. And sometimes they were shot at. Now, this at the end of the day, of course, they would be offered a paycheck, whereas many recent immigrants in the United States did not have what this is considered luxury, that being food and a government paycheck. Right. Sometimes it's aim low. Right. Yeah.

You got to take what you get, man. Now, this this makeup, which, of course, with the underlying current of racism, there was one Irish officer outside of that. Most people thought very lowly of the Irish at this point. So this, this, as you can tell, there's be some problems when it comes to a communication and be how highly you think of your soldiers and therefore give them training.

There, there seems to be a very strong, I don't give a fuck about you attitude so they were i wonder what that's like right uh they they they seem to like whatever dig a hole to shit in we don't need to do rifle drills or anything they were not well trained um i mean i think a fair amount of that is the officers did not think of their own soldiers as americans um and you know probably yeah and a lot of cases not much more than they thought of native americans which gonna gonna be a rough command to

be in right so not i'm not saying soldiers fresh out of basic training can't fight of course they can we've literally won wars with them however normally there's an equation which we've talked about vaguely here on the show before can a fresh and can a crop of fresh and inexperienced soldiers be led by a decent commander or can good soldiering overcome a bad commander like how good does the soldiering have to be to make up for a custer right um but can a good commander out command bad soldiering, right? Like can, can, uh, if say if Custer was the most competent man to ever walk through the gates of West Point and he's given a crop of dudes who really don't want to fight or be there, um, could he command them to victory?

Or do we have the rare ultra negative, which is can really bad inexperienced soldiers be commanded by a terrible commander and overcome and and win no i was gonna say we've gotten one answer here and that is no spoiler alert this does not end in an american victory um uh well i mean look who owns most of america and who doesn't so So somebody won, not Custer. The Irish. The Irish immigrants who got three squares and a place to sleep. Yeah. Hey, they have the presidency now.

All right. It's been a long road. Now I'm not, and I'm saying like inexperienced soldiers can't be bad. I truly believe that you get bad soldiers from bad command you can like not everybody can be a soldier of course you'll wash out go dessert good like dessert or go or whatever but these guys could obviously put up with some awful shit they're still out in the frontier they could be fine if you actually taught them how to do their jobs and commanded them

competently but they did none of those things or train them i mean you got a lot of time pounding around the nowhere's land here teaching time yeah like they're not doing anything you gotta do this is see this is the time before hip pocket training and it's it's not like they're getting the soldiers are going to wander off to a porter shitter and watch porn on a tablet and jerk off like our generation did and even to be fair though being able to go jerk off in our generation did. And even to be fair though, being able to go jerk off in a port-a-potty was probably what kept a lot of people from going AWOL. Endurance training, baby.

Now, now with that on June 21st, 1876, general Terry sat down with Custer and his other officers to plan their advances towards a little big horn river. Uh, the idea of being a quick moving assault would drive the allied Native Americans from their village right into General Gibbons force. The man, not the monkey, who would act as a blocking unit to catch them as they went away.

Now, it is much more adorable if you think of him as a monkey in a military. His Gibbons are small. it is much more adorable if you think of him as a monkey in a military because gibbons are small um now terry would accompany gibbon mostly because custer and terry of course hated each other uh and you know terry wanted to be as far away from custer as he could and custer wasn't going to object to that fact at all because that's what he fucking wanted oh you want to fuck off cool now however knowing that terry and custer hated each other didn't mean that he wanted custer to fail right because that reflects on him that's bad for your career you don't want him to die so before the two sides set off terry offered custer the entire fifth

cavalry regiment as reinforcements because he knew as the attacking force they would need to be bigger right custer turned them down uh people bigger, right? Custer turned them down. People have argued why exactly Custer turned them down ever since. And the best reason I could come up with was if you had another regiment under a different regimental commander with him, even if it was under the unified command of George Custer, it would steal from his and the 7th Cavalry's glory. And they, of course, inevitably won. Now, famously, he also turned down infantry support and a battery of six Gatling guns. A lot has been said about how

dumb it was to turn these things down, and honestly, this is the one that makes the most sense to turn down. And please bear with me. People are probably really mad at me right now. These at least make sense. The biggest glaring fuck up here is turning down the fifth regiment of

cavalry, which truly does show how dumb Custer is, as long with everything else we're about to say. Now, for starters, Custer fought in the civil war. So he had experience kind of sort of with Gatling guns. And that was,

they sucked. They had huge problems with reliability. And, and those were true. Like the Gatling guns had a ton of problems. But they would also, these things aren't light. They're towed by a team of horses, so they can't move very fast. So it would slow down his advance.

As same goes for the infantry, but it would probably slow them down even more. And remember, he's cavalry. The whole job of cavalry is to be fast if you take that away from them they are functionally pointless um now again he could overcome this little hurdle by like i said accepting the help of the fifth cavalry regiment but he didn't because he's very stupid this is what happens when you get more concerned about your personal glory than the mission you know like had he just been like look custer i understand that we really want to uh you want to you want to make a name for yourself more than you already have and you want to be you want these great stories but like the mission here is

we got to kill a lot of people like we just got to massacre some people and you're not going to be able to do that without some backup i mean the easiest answer here is terry is a spineless fuck and he could have just said no i'm ordering you to take the fifth cavalry with you i'm a fucking general but he didn't i mean let's not also look as we said custer's not the only dumbass in in all of this in fact pretty much everybody is a dumbass and and we should also point out we're not in fact rooting for their victory we're merely merely saying, this could have happened. It's good that they lost. It's extremely funny.

Yeah. It's extremely good that the U.S. cavalry was defeated and Native Americans were not genocided in this particular village at that particular day. However, as we're looking through history, we're making fun of Custer at the moment. Now, what was even dumber than all of this is how exactly he planned this operation in the first place. During this planning, absolutely nobody was worried or cared about the enemy strength of the Allied force that might be in front of them. Remember, according to them, at the first sign of battle, Native American warriors would run away and so would the civilians. Not that they really saw a difference.

That meant that their only plan of attack was how to catch them when they ran, not how to, you know, fight them. Their whole plan started from step one. They will run. Right. It's the easiest way to think of this. And they're still under the impression of they will run because they're cowards. Not they will run and lead us into getting our shit pushed in. Despite the fact that that already happened, yeah.

Now, it turned out they should have been very worried because the Native American village at Little Bighorn was made up of around 1,000 lodges, 7,000 people, and at least at least 2 000 warriors which is very large a bunch yeah this is common as tribes would occasionally move into the area for the warm months but couldn't stay together for very long uh their numbers were simply too big uh to live on the countryside uh they would strip it bare so they could only be there for a very limited amount of time. Um, and this number was further inflated by American military action. Remember, there was a lot of bands of native Americans who weren't exactly sold on,

you know, war. They wanted to just go about their lives, but then they had their shit rated by, by cavalry. And they're like, all right, fuck them.

You know, uh, now I guess I got to do this. Yeah. There was a whole lot of greater unified theory of fuck that guy going on here. On top of remember, we talked about the Sundance at the last at the end of the last episode. So this is quite honestly a perfect storm of a village. You absolutely do not want to attack. It could have not happened at a worse time if they waited two weeks.

The numbers would be half this. But they didn't. Because, again, Custer's an idiot. That meant, accidentally on purpose, the U.S. Army would attack the absolute wrong village at the worst possible time. Now, Custer and his men marched down the Rosebud Trail less than 10 days after the battle between Crazy Horse and General Crook that we talked about in the last episode. Marching through the area in the baking sun of June kind of sucked. It's really hot. They're wearing wool cavalry uniforms.

And then a dust storm happened. So the soldiers are also going to be quite tired and miserable. And the Rosebud Creek snaked back and forth through the valley, meaning like every short amount of distance they do a river crossing, which is a bitch. And it adds time onto their march. Custer knew he was getting closer and closer to a large settlement. And he wrote on June 24th, quote, past several large camps. The trail is now fresh and the whole valley scratched up by the trailing lodge posts. now fresh and the whole valley scratched up by the trailing lodge posts

um now however what he didn't notice nor his scouts for that matter for some reasons that are not still entirely clear was the massive amount of horse tracks that was on the road that he was walking down

like huh there seems to be several thousand of these motherfuckers um must be some wild horses out here. Right. Like all of all of the ones in the entire West took this trail very recently. So we'll get some free horses wherever we're going to score. Not only are we going to do a triumphant victory, we're going to have mad horses fell as you hear that. mad horses fell as you hear that.

Now, remember the Sundance ceremony, because of the Sundance ceremony, more and more Native Americans had come to Sitting Bull and Crazy Horses side, including a large amount of people had previously already moved on to reservations. These are sometimes called agency, and you'll see it written as. So

Custer knew he was on the right track, but ignored all of the hints that he was coming up against a force he did not want to fuck with. Because altogether, if he mustered his force in one unit, which, spoiler alert, you would not, he only had 700 men. How many more men would he have had with the 5th Cavalry? It would have given him at least 1,000, I believe. Up against how many? Probably around 2,000, which probably would have given them at least a thousand i believe up against how many uh probably around 2000 which probably would have been enough men um to not get massacred i'll say it wouldn't

be a victory it'd be more like uh best case scenario like the battle of the rosebud how that ended where it's like well i guess we're gonna leave the field now uh bye like are we are we done here can we be done stabbing each other cool we're gonna get we're kind of kind of ammo it's kind of hot uh we're gonna hit the old dusty trail you know but uh remember he wasn't trade he wasn't planning for a battle he was planning for a trap there wasn't gonna be a battle they were simply too cowardly or whatever remember there wasn't going to be a battle he was were simply too cowardly or whatever. Remember, there wasn't going to be a battle. He was simply going to drive them into General Gibbon's arms.

So again, he changed his plan to reflect this. He ordered a detour to go around the Rosebud Creek to make sure this Native American village or armed group, whatever he believed he was coming up on. We're not entirely sure because, you know, dead. He didn't know the size or location of couldn't escape. He's planning his victory parade. He's not even planning how to get there. He called his officers together and Custer outlined a new plan. Instead of continuing up the Rosebud, he would follow a trail across the divide under the cover of night, spending the next day resting his soldiers and fixing the location of this village via forward scouting.

He then planned on a dawn attack on June 26th. Because the 26th is when General Gibbon was scheduled to be at the mouth of the Little Bighorn as his blocking force. So again, planning from the end to the beginning. He's backwards planning, but the dumbest way possible, I guess. I mean, I'm not going to say that backwards planning doesn't work in some scenarios, but also some forward planning would have probably helped. Yes, you can't have backwards planning without also forward planning. He built the second floor

of a house without planning on stairs now this movement however would require his soldiers to immediately move uh like and this is the middle of the night where it's like midnight so everybody immediately got kicked awake and we're forced march six miles up a fucking countryside mountain uh that nobody could see it's like 2 a.m there's like very little moonlight flashlights don't exist yet people are just like tripping over themselves i almost quit the army when they made my ass march 12 miles in any direction it should suck yeah it's fucking like i am public affairs. I do not do this. And drill sergeants don't take that as an answer, as it turns out.

So, well, I was in cavalry units for most of my career and I can confirm it still sucks. And they ended up having to call off the night march early because like a couple of guys fell down the fucking side of the hill. Like, all right, well, we should probably wait. March early because like a couple guys fell down the fucking side of the hill like all right well we should probably wait they wait until 8 a.m. and not because this is planned but because Custer's scouts who

weren't smart and climbed a nearby mountain known as the crow's nest to scout reported that they saw a what they believed to be a Sioux village about 15 miles away though they didn't know that there was way more than just Sioux in there. And they probably didn't see the entire village

because it was so big. It was probably, they couldn't see it all. Because if they did see the whole thing, they'd probably be like, well, time to run. We're not sticking around for this one, boys. And I'm giving them the very charitable benefit of the doubt

because even if Custer was given a realistic, uh, scouting report on this, even he probably would have said no. Um, and that's again, giving him the most charitable, uh,

uh, interpretation of what happened. I mean, the man was a racist. He was full of himself, but he wasn't suicidal. Like if you would have saw the breath of this village, you'd be like,

Ooh, I should probably call for my, for my reinforcements. Like he had if you would have saw the breath of this village, you'd be like, ooh, I should probably call for my reinforcements. Like, he at least would have double tapped the brakes before going in. Yeah, where's my fifth? Bring him in. Exactly. Now, Custer wanted to see the village for himself, so he climbed up to the crow's nest,

and so he could plan out this attack on the village. But by the time he got there, the sun had risen, which burns off the dew on the grass and creates fog and valleys. And it blanketed the whole area. He couldn't see the village at all. Now, the scouts also told him something else. They had seen people on horseback. They knew to be probably Sioux, maybe Lakota, whatever, moving through the neighboring mountains. So they had to be probably sue maybe lakota whatever um moving through the uh the the like the neighboring mountain so they had to have seen us they didn't they just assumed but they're like if they haven't found us they will any second sure now for anybody else who isn't foundationally the

dumbest man on earth this would have meant like the attack has to be called off right i can't see the village i don't know how big the village is i don't know how many people are in it we've been found so our element of surprise is ruined it's like you're running a checklist down on like what not to do right do i continue this you know and then it's all signs but you you're shaking you're shaking the magic eight ball and it's saying all signs point to no. Yeah. Not to mention like a cavalry attack without surprise. It's pretty pointless.

However, again, that wasn't how anybody in the army thought. Instead to them, it meant, hey, if they saw me, they're going to pack up and run. Not that they're going to attack me. They're going to pack up and run. So we must now attack immediately so we can catch them. He didn't think for an example that they were preparing for battle or they were

capable of putting up a defense or an organized counteroffensive or anything in between. I to be to be clear here the village actually had no idea he was coming those were not their scouts and if they were their scouts they didn't see shit um because he did have an element of surprise so uh to custer he meant we gotta go now stop the village from fleeing this meant he couldn't plan anything really not to mention he he couldn't really plan anything he couldn't plan anything, really. Not to mention he couldn't really plan anything. He couldn't see the village.

And because of racist doctrine, he thought he was on a time crunch. He couldn't send any more scouts out either. He didn't have time for anything, right? So he simply decided to order his entire regiment forward against a target he could not see. That's cool. That's normal. Normal thing you do. And what happened next was probably, in reality, the final nail in Custer's coffin.

And, you know, hundreds of his men. And the regiment was formed into battalions, and then the battalions would be split up. Now, who was leading what battalion would end up determining if they lived or died. Major Reno commanded one battalion consisting of companies M and A, around 140 men. Yeah, I know these numbers are weird when you compare them to modern unit sizes. Captain Benteen led another,

companies H, D, and K, for a total of 125 men. Companies E and F were under Captain Yates and C, I, and L were under Captain Kehoe, who was the onlyish officer in the unit that was a total of 225 men and they remained under custer's direct control they were all fucked if you were under custer's direct command the situation you are doomed of course you know they don't know that yet uh bententeen was set off to recon a nearby ridge

to make sure the Native Americans had not already began to escape into the upper Bighorn River. However, Benteen completed his mission pretty quickly because nobody was running. So he just didn't tell Custer. Benteen, like I said, fucking hated Custer. Remember, he thought Custer was just a huge dumbass

and he really did not have any faith in Custer remember he thought Custer was just a huge dumbass and he really did not have any faith in Custer's command this ended up and he was also not wrong yeah probably end up saving Benteen's life so he rather than telling Custer or sending a runner forward like hey we've completed

our mission what do you want us to do he simply ordered his men to slowly begin walking back towards the main force didn't tell anybody wasn't in a rush they were just like plodding along homer simpson into the bushes now this gave reno and custer enough time to get a full three miles ahead of him at this point the unit's local guide and interpreter pointed out that he saw some warriors running away, which he didn't.

If he did, they weren't warriors, and they didn't see the white guys there. Because again, surprise did happen. Custer and Reno took off after them, and the chase went on for another three miles before it was broken up, but not before Custer saw some dust and what he thought was smoke

rising from behind a nearby bluff, which the amount of smoke told him, like, that's a village. Like, that's our village. That's where we need to go. So he immediately ordered Reno to attack it, telling him he would be supported by, quote, the whole outfit.

He would not. Instead, as soon as he gave that order, Custer took five companies off to the right as Reno moved forward. This is, again, based on the idea that the village would flee as soon as Reno's attack of, remember, only like 120 dudes hit the side of the village. He would need to be a blocking force to keep them within that village and start shooting at them. So that's where he was planning to move his soldiers as another blocking force to keep them within that village and start shooting at them. So that's where he was planning to move his soldiers as another blocking force. This is despite the fact he literally just told Reno that he would be supported. Reno would never get any support during his attack. He immediately moved to not do that with everybody else. I mean, I don't think it's... He wasn't sabotaging Reno. I honestly just don't think Custer knew what the fuck to do.

By the time Custer and his men even got to their positions on the opposite side of the village, Reno was already attacking the village, so a lot of help that did. According to one of Custer's Crow scouts, quote, down the valley there were camps and camps and camps. There was a big camp in the circle

near the West Hills. We could see Reno fighting and everything was a scramble with a lot of Sioux. They were not running. At this point, Custer could clearly see that he decided to just sit there. So he was just so like, they're not doing the thing that we expected them to do. And I have no idea what to do now. He could have done that or he could have been like, ah, they'll start running anytime now. And no good answer here really so now with custer's unit already technically being in battle that because you know reno's under his command uh custer hadn't actually planned on what to do next so he passed orders for the supply train which he had left behind um to move forward because it

carries all the ammo and he knows knows that, Oh, Oh boy, we're going to be using a lot of ammo. Look at how big that village is. Right. All while Reno's force of a little over a hundred men was fighting. What was now quickly turning into thousands of warriors who Reno is also probably seeing. Now we're not running away.

They're running at me with guns. Yes. So notably, like the, they're running at me with guns. Yes. Uh, so notably like the, the baggage train didn't show up. And also Custer began to wonder where the fuck is Ben teen at? Like where, like did he fucking run away?

What's going on here? So he sent a runner to Ben team and, he ordered Ben team to like to move up, hurry up and bring the ammunition train with him. Ben Teen was like, nah. It just kept moving real slowly. But he did pick up the baggage train because he also was coming to the conclusion that he was also going to need ammo. Now, this time, Custer sent another runner with a note that read, quote, Ben Teen, come now, big village, be quick, bring packs, signed,

WW Cook, PS, bring packs. I don't think Cook meant to put that twice. I think he was just writing it so quickly that he didn't really realize what he was writing. When you say packs, you mean PAX, right? As in bring people? Now, one is spelled P-A-c-k as in bring the packs you could probably think like that's supply train and the other is p-a-c-s uh imagine that one of

the other means personnel um however you know ww cook by the way is custer's adjutant um and you know um bentine would have known that. Like, this is now my, like the lieutenant colonel's yelling at me to hurry the fuck up. And we do know about this because this physical order survived because, you know, Benteen survived. As Custer moved into position,

he split his command again. He sent Yates' two company battalion galloping down the medicine trail Cooley. Cooley is some kind of drainage Valley. I guess that's a verbiage they use in the area towards a little big horn. And he posts captain Kehoe's three company battalion in despondent positions on a Ridge, separating medicine trail from the next Cooley to the North called the very

imaginably called the deep Cooley. Now the idea was that this force close to the village would now threaten the warriors who were attacking Reno. And they'd be like, oh, shit, there's some behind us. We have to peel back and attack them or they're going to come into the village, which would theoretically relieve Reno. It didn't work. And I should point out here that Reno was getting the shit kicked out of him. Now, Reno, as soon as he rode up on the village, he saw how big it was and was like, oh dear

fuck, and he realized that he could not attack it. Now, he also realized he could not retreat. He had his orders, which is stupid at this point. You should probably break off the attack, but also because as soon as the warrior saw 120 dudes galloping down the side of a hill, they were like,

oh shit, look, white people are here. And they ran out to fight him. So he could not pull back. He was now too engaged in battle to really do anything other than fight. He ordered his men to dismount in a skirmishing line. And according to standard military doctrine of the time, this formation, every fourth trooper would be holding the reins of horses for the other troopers in the firing position. With every five to 10 yards separating

each trooper, the officers were to the rear of the firing line and the horses were behind them. Now, they were already very, very badly outnumbered. Now, when you deploy this standard tactic, you reduce your numbers even further because while you're holding the horses, you can't shoot. Yeah, but I'm going to go ahead and take horse holding duty. It doesn't really matter at this point.

Things get pretty chaotic pretty quickly. A lot of the horses get shot. When I say that, I mean, I'm behind the officers and now I'm fucking leaving on a horse. Yeah, that's a good call. Like, nobody's looking. Time to go.

I got four horses. They can't even chase me. Who are they going to? Who's going to believe them? They're all going to be dead. Oh, he went AWOL. Did I? No, I just survived.

Prove it. Yeah, I didn't go AWOL. I was a survivor. Now, remember, Reno thought there was around 600 more soldiers that were supposed to be running in directly behind him to support him. So he held that skirmish. I was like, oh, they'll be coming any second now. Any second now, boys. Don't worry.

Oh, God. Oh, no. Yeah. It didn't work. It didn't come. Back. The soldiers never came. They never came.

Now, back with Custer, his plan may have worked, but also probably not with relieving Reno. It really seems like the native warriors did see him, but they're like, hey, he's not shooting at us. Yeah, we got a guy shooting at us over here. Let's deal with those guys first.

We got these idiots standing in the middle of the field. Let's go get them. Now, Benteen had still not shown up. And, you know, Custer was getting kind of worried. And Reno's line then got flanked by an attack on the right.

Now, this broke them. It broke their skirmish line and forced them to fall back into a nearby grove of trees that kind of protect their flanks a little better. And then everything went sideways. Reno lost his ability to command because bloody knife was Reno's, uh, native scout.

And apparently a very, very close friend of his got shot in the fucking head. Um, and it splattered brains directly into Reno's mouth. So he was too busy throwing up that shock. You know, the overall you, uh,

right. The, the realization of, Oh fuck, I'm about to die. Yeah. Like that's going to be my brain soon. Uh,

this caused him to, kind of a bit of a mental breakdown and order a full on retreat. Now, whether this was ordered or implied is kind of not known. According to some people, it seems like Reno just turned and ran and everybody's like,

oh, fuck, we got to keep up. Or other people said that he did order it, which does make sense. It's not super uncommon for officers to pass orders in warfare back then and just other people just not get them. So that's like, which is

why one of a very important part of the training is like hey if you see your line doing something just follow them right um which honestly it still kind of tracks right do yeah do what everybody else is doing um when in doubt follow everybody else right now uh this second retreat uh was completely without order and it seemed to be more of a route. And they fell all the way back to the first hilltop where Custer had first got out of the valley. And this position would become known as Reno's Hill, obvious reasons.

Then Benteen finally showed up. Not to Custer, though. He showed up alongside Reno and all the guys who just survived the first firefight. Like, man, you guys look like you got fucked up. What happened out here? He did bring the ammo and he joined Reno there, deciding not to advance any further because he had seen the condition of Reno's men. And remember, Reno had seen the full scope of the village and thousands of fighters.

So he's like, do not fucking go down there. Like, this place is huge. We do not have enough people. And Benteen, honestly, was just like, do not fucking go down there. This place is huge. We do not have enough people. And Ben Teen, honestly, was just like, yeah, it's a good call. You should probably not do that. So they dug in on the hilltop. So these guys get a lot of blame for what happens next. And you can blame Reno

for a lot. You can blame Ben Teen for a lot because it took him so long to get there. I don't know fuck custer i guess that's that's that is not a good thing to do if you're been team especially because you know soldiers are in combat but but let's i mean look sure there maybe there were maybe there were problems but like the the original problem still goes way back to custer yeah like he's the gene seed of all of the problems

in this immediate situation. But yeah, Benteen parked on the hill and they dug in. And it's not like they skipped out of combat or anything. Like they would be pinned down on that hill for the entire day. They just would not take part in what happens next, which is of course the most famous part of the battle. Now Custer back in his position next to the village

realized that, oh, he is alone. And the entire enemy force is now reeling back in his position next to the village realized that uh oh he is alone and the entire enemy force is now reeling back around towards me this is where things get kind of hazy as custer's force launch into a fighting retreat up into a flat hill now known for obvious reasons as custer's hill but uh along the way a lot of it seems like most of the battalion's horses got shot out from under them or they ran off um there's also one warrior named white bull cow or white cow bull seen it in both ways claim he shot a man in the back who was wearing a buckskin jacket and he saw him fall off of his horse custer famously dressed that way his other soldiers didn't, his claim does not make any sense. He's a Native American, Mikuya. His claim does not make a ton of sense.

No other warriors' claims match his. But indisputably, Custer died on his hill. That's where his body was found. Not on the way there. It's been thought of that Custer could have been wounded on his way, gotten back up or dragged there by his men. However, Custer suffered only two bullet wounds,

one to his head and one to his heart, meaning both of them would have been fatal. He never would have made it back to his hill. Not to mention, there's like a dozen warriors who say, yep, Custer was definitely fighting on the hill. So homeboy's full of shit.

That's my final judgment on him. Now back on his hill, Custer would have seen that he was well and truly boned outnumbered in every direction with no escape. And the, and the hill that he had chosen the heat of the moment, of course, he's not planning anything.

They're just fucking firing from the hip here was too small. All of his men couldn't fit on the top of it so like they just kind of formed ad hoc units and defenses in the immediate area now the warriors began their advance and this is one of the parts that honestly just bone chilling so they have these things called war whistles now famously most people think of like the aztec war whistle because it sounds like a human being screaming and it's legitimately horrifying these were more

like just an ear piercing shriek and there were thousands of them it just like a high pitch shrieking noise as they advanced and not to mention you're on a hill Native Americans know how to fight in this terrain they're hiding pitch shrieking noise as they advanced and not to mention you're on there. You're on a Hill.

Native Americans know how to fight in this terrain. They're hiding in, in the tall grass and scrub brush and whatever. You can't see them. And you're just this, the, the grass is screaming at you when the, when the trees start speaking Vietnamese or when the grass starts screaming at you,

one or the other, you're boned. Yeah. When the grass starts screaming at you in Lakota the other, you're boned. Yeah, when the grass starts screaming at you in Lakota, it's time to shit your britches. Good thing I wore my brown pants.

As the warriors closed in, they deployed a tactic that listeners of the show might be familiar with, though I will point out that military tacticians and historians don't give native people credit for deploying this because of racism and that is the classic finnish moti or mari or you should probably consider the native american moti because this out this predates it by a hundred years what is what is moti it's

generally what happens is when you pick apart a smaller or a larger force by encircling it bit by bit. Okay. The Finns famously deployed this expertly during the Winter War against the Soviet Union. And I know we have a lot of new listeners recently. Go back and listen to the Winter War series. We talk about it a lot. But generally,

though, in this situation, it's a much bigger force doing it to a much smaller force. and the reason why they did that is because once you separate the cavalry force up they can't master fire which they were still good at like even badly trained soldiers in the day still knew how to fire in a volley which if you're charging a line of soldiers firing from trapdoor weapons you're gonna have a bad time. So by encircling these small units,

making sure that they cannot link back up to make a bigger one and slowly snuffing them out before moving on and doing that same thing repeatedly is, in my opinion, a moddy or a moddy. My Finnish pronunciation is flawless. I'll hear no dissent.

So that's, in my opinion, that's what they deployed. That's what it seems like they deployed when you look at warrior accounts. Now, as the remains of the 7th made their way up the hill, they weren't all able to be able to fit. And they realized that finally. So there was no battalion-wide orderly last stand it was impossible uh so they began breaking down into piecemeal uh some formed lines maybe they had like an nco that was still alive and could command them to hold their shit together others were according to eyewitnesses uh

and by eyewitnesses i mean you know obviously the native americans there were no american eyewitnesses that survived terrified gaggle the Native Americans. There were no American eyewitnesses that survived. Terrified gaggle of men that just didn't want to die. And they were generally the first to go. And the warriors moved only so fast as they could surround one of these at a time. And then one by one, they snuffed them out. Though it wasn't like an encirclement followed by a charge it was like they would very clearly encircle them at a distance and then kind of pick them off until it was clear that they'd been weakened demoralized and they could be easily overwhelmed

but they always made sure to target the horses first which while I support the clear hatred at horses because they're evil, the real reason for it was they knew cavalry kept all of their additional ammunition on saddlebags on the horses. And not to mention, it's quite hard to kill a horse with a rifle back then. Horses are quite hardy. They knew if they shot a horse, it would run off. Which also, yeah, which also still gets you your goals. Yeah, you separate them from their ammo, and now they're not getting on a horse and trying to run away. They only can go as fast as their little feet will take them,

which generally isn't going to be very fast, right? They've already been sprinting through the scrub rush in June heat. They're not in tip-top physical condition at this point. Now, some of these men joined together separate from Custer on Custer's Hill. This included the remains of forces led by Kehoe, Yates, and Calhoun, where they would defend what would become known as Calhoun's Hill, which is generally considered to be right next to Custer's Hill, but in reality, it's about a half mile away.

So at this point, in this reality, that's about a half mile away. So like it's quite at this point in this reality, that might as well be in a different fucking country. You're not going to make it a half mile. Uh, they, they might as well be separated by a fucking ocean from what unfolded. Next. We only have one side,

obviously. Um, however, uh, from the outside looking in, uh, the attacking warriors and their firsthand accounts, what happened next was not a epic brave last stand,

though. I will say there were incidents of last stands because it be, it was very, very clear to the soldiers. Like, Oh boy, they are not taking prisoners. Surrender is not,

not to mention that was quite uncommon for them anyway. Like neither side in this conflict was known for their uh hospitality when it came to prisoners of war and again i do not blame native american warriors for being very thorough on their on their killing these people were their mission was to wipe you out like you're not gonna like oh well no let me get you three hots in a cot like I'm gonna brain you we're gonna we're gonna have a prisoner swap later on we're just gonna

swap the body parts that we've all hacked off of our prisoners now cornered and in their final positions the warriors still did not charge in the troopers had the high ground and they would have made a fucking bloodbath even if the warriors would have

overwhelmed them with numbers like it's not a price they wanted to take they're not going to get up close and personal with a skirmishing line that's they're going to sit back and they're going to pick you apart bit by bit they don't need they don't gotta why you know why would they you have already handed it to them man

like yeah there are these people on the hill are already dead they just don't know it yet right Why would they? You have already handed it to them, man. Yeah. These people on the hill are already dead. They just don't know it yet. Right. And not to mention, again, the high ground, right? They think they have a tactical advantage, which they kind of do. But they actually lost. One of the elements they lost to was inferior technology. One of the elements they lost to was inferior technology because up on that hill on the high ground, Native American warriors like, we'll just arc arrows in on them.

We can't shoot at them. And so that's what they did. They arced arrows over the hill and onto the formation of soldiers that were gathered in the middle. Oh, no. They had no cover from. No. They didn't really bring shields out to the, uh, the middle of nowhere.

Did they? Yeah. A shield wall in the late 1800s is picking up the E one and putting them above your head. Now what, what broke one of many of the small defenses was a charge from the North led personally by crazy horse. Um,

now crazy horse, of course himself will say this ended the battle, which it ended part of it. Now, Crazy Horse, of course, himself will say, this ended the battle, which it ended part of it. Custer had no command ability over his entire force. And what Crazy Horse probably did is break one element of it. He didn't take out, by all accounts, nobody's really sure who killed Custer. But this wasn't the last stand of Custer himself. This is just an element of the people on

the hill. Each unit or group of people, unit Cohesion was long since dead at this point, kind of made their own last stand. A group of men from F and E companies decided to fuck this shit and they jumped on a few surviving horses and attempted to break out, but were killed before long. Quote, we finished up this party right there in that ravine, said a warrior named Red Horse, which is like 100 yards away.

They didn't make it very far. On the hilltop, it was total chaos, and Custer and around 40 of his men, give or take, formed their own last stand, and they made defenses out of their own dead horses, some of whom they shot right then and there to to make into into cover very very reminiscent of uh the uh the the wall at

the hot gates is being like oh we're gonna use dudes as mortar we use horses as cover or in roamcast you know your homie raft gotta make a raft out of homies. That's right. There you go. What are horses but four-legged homies? Yeah, this is a homie you can ride. It's a homie gonna get you to places where you need to be. Locomotive homie. Exactly.

Transportation. Many different kinds of homies. These are just transportation homies. transportation many different kinds of homies these are just transportation homies if uh things get bad they can become food homies you know uh they're also ammunition homies uh whatever whatever we need them to be they're also uh i don't want to be in this war right now so i'm going to stand in the back and hold on to these homies according to everybody is different timeframes and how long this battle took, which makes sense. Anybody who's ever read firsthand accounts of soldiers in war, they have wildly different conceptions of time while under stress and fire. And there's no

reason to believe that the Native Americans didn't also experience that well what and I can also agree to that idea of what you believe took 10 minutes probably took 30 seconds the firefight that you think lasted two hours probably took 10 minutes you know your brain just doesn't work well

when people are actively attempting to murder you and it doesn't matter how like hardcore you are. It's your brain goes into fucking lizard mode, fucking goblin mode, baby going goblin mode. And by that, I mean killing the cavalry.

This is when the natives really want goblin mode. Oh, now, according to some people and according to some warriors, uh, this took two hours from start to finish, though to others, only a couple of minutes. Not even the warriors own accounts on this. And there's a lot of conflicting accounts.

And what exactly happened during Custer's true last stand or even how well the troopers stood and fought? According to some, like Crazy Horse said that they like ran, broke down for their lives, dropping their weapons and pleading for their lives. Other people say that didn't happen at all. Horn Bear and Iron Hawk say that soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder and fought to the bitter end to the last bullet. And again, this all could be true. There could have been groups that were like, yo, fuck this. We'll do whatever you want. Don't kill us.

And there's others that probably fully realized what was going to happen to them. And they went down fighting. There's a kaleidoscope of different kinds of murder happening on this hill at the same time. Newer research on the site show that there was probably, in the end, three different groups on the hill. Each of them kind of putting up a fight. They were surrounded by a lot of empty shell casings and ammo, and all of them cut off from one another, again, on purpose,

because that's what they were doing. And the warriors' main goal is to make sure they could not link back up, and they slowly tighten the noose. So most of the hundred or so warriors that are thought to have been killed in the battle, according to Crazy Horse, were killed assaulting Custer's final position. of the hundred or so warriors that are thought to have been killed in the battle, according to crazy horse, uh,

were killed assaulting Custer's final position. And that's because this, you know, the immediate command structure around him had held up. And that meant that they could order volley fire, which is not something you want to run into on an open hilltop is guys behind, you know, meat filled sandbags of horse corpses unloading volley

fire into you is a bad time and this is still is this still the time when rifles take like a minute to reload or do we have a little bit faster reloading kind of so these were trapdoor rifles so they weren't bolt action of course bolt action rifles weren't weren't a thing yet though they're firing much faster um like uh i think for exactly the type of springfield but they fire they drop down a trap door they insert another cartridge they close the trap door and they can fire again so it's kind of okay but it's not a rolling block which is different i don't believe so i'm not enough gun nerd to say uh but yeah it's they they're shooting much fat they're not shooting uh like muzzle loading muskets or anything like that they have

cartridges that they're loading and yes now there were certainly some muzzle loading uh muskets floating around the native ranks they also had trapdoor rifles um i saw one report that said the native americans actually had more trapdoor rifles or more advanced trapdoor rifles than the soldiers did due to buying and selling guns through frontiersmen. Somehow there's a bunch of Mosin Nagants out there. They're just in every war. Crazy horse loading a belt into his 240 Bravo. They had mounted on his horse's head. That's technical.

That is some fan art I would like to see. But yeah. And like, there's also a lot of reports said that the trap, the rifles were, were awful. They were being fired so much that they overheated and cause the cartridges to swell and jam. And then,

you know, you have to pull them out with a knife so you can load a next one and do it again, which that was partially true from my understanding, but certainly not the entire problem. There was a time frame where they attempted to blame everything other than Guster

and the rifle was one of those things which like all of those things can be true at once. You got to perform your sports man. Slap, pull, observe, release, tap, and get shot I guess. In this situation sports, observe, release, tap, and get shot, I guess. In this situation, sports, the S starts with surrender. And you just go from there.

Now, some warriors have said that Custer's true epic last stand lasted less than 15 minutes, which probably was true due to the sheer amount of humanity attempting to kill him on the hilltop. true due to the sheer amount of humanity attempting to kill him on the hilltop. Now, what Crazy Horse saw that he claimed was the entire force breaking and running was probably the last breakout attempt of around 28 men. They only made it like a football field away from Custer's Hill. Now, after finishing off Custer's men, which again, didn't take that long. They circled right back around and attacked Reno and Benteen who are still dug up on Reno's Hill, completely unaware of what was happening over in Custer's Hill.

Now Reno apparently froze under the assault, leaving command to Benteen, which he commanded in person running around the lines from position to position, rifle and sword in hand and fighting until the sun rose the next day so like in comparison benteen is much better commander for reno yeah we're not i'm not gonna i'm not gonna like you know celebrate any of these guys but like i will at least say you died with the sword in your hand quite literally well he didn't die right benteen

survived oh ben benteen doesn't die no reno and Benteen's hill holds because, you know, one, they focused a lot of their attack on Custer. And by the time they got to fully assaulting their position, pretty worn out. They've suffered a fair amount of casualties themselves. And Reno and Benteen had time to dig in and form firing lines. And they quickly learned, like, holy shit, this sucks. Like, assaulting a well-led, organized defense is a tall fucking offer when they have the high ground. We're not going to be able to pull this whole hill thing off twice.

So they eventually broke off their attack and withdrew. And, you know, another part of that is, probably rightly, is that Crazy Horse is like, hey, if this battle continues, they're going to get reinforcements. And that's bad for us. We need to get the fuck out of here. Now, once they pulled back into the village, they immediately set fire to the surrounding brush. So they could put up a smoke screen. They packed their bags and got the fuck out of there because everybody was well aware that, like like after standing on that hilltop covered in dead

cavalry troopers like oh boy we need to get the fuck out of here boys like this is gonna be a bad time for us and the blue jacket show back up or whatever you know by the morning of the 27th June 27th General Terry and his men arrived all of them wanting to know

hey where's Custer whenever Custer's not on screen everybody should be asking where's Custer so this is hey this is like the anniversary of Custer getting whacked it's June 28th that we're recording this yeah this mission almost

started on my birthday I'm not sure when this is going to be coming up but we almost did this on time mark it down that counts for us because we always fuck this up it doesn't matter every december someone's like are you gonna do pearl harbor this month like nah probably not uh i do these things like three months at a time what's what's gonna what do you think history's gonna change guys it's fine we'll get to we'll We'll get to your favorite military fuck-ups whenever. The good news is Custer is still dead. So, nobody was sure

what had happened to Custer yet. Reno and Benteen did not want to venture out from their positions for obvious fucking reasons. But the battlefield over on Custer's Hill was discovered the morning of the next day by some scouts, with one of them describing it as, quote, a scene of ghastly, sickening horror. Which, accurate.

Yeah, fair. The Native American warriors had done a fucking number on these corpses, as they generally do that. All right? They're dead. Why does it matter? They're not feeling it anymore, unless it matter? Like they're not good. They're not feeling it anymore unless they did. In which case you won't feel it for very long.

I mean, I figure so, so they, I mean, you said that they had to leave, so they didn't, how much time did they really like devote to a time to do some, some mutilate mutilation quite a bit. I mean,

they had, they fought Ben teen and Reno on his hill for several hours after custer had been wiped out okay so you have your fighting group and then you have your corpse desecration group yeah you gotta you gotta send in your your your desk uh corpse mutilation core i don't know like get in there boys cutting up good yeah i think it's mortuary affairs i came for the sundance and my mls is mortuary affairs. I came for the Sundance and my MLS is mortuary affairs. We'll hold back. We'll get you some white people

in no time. Not to mention they've been sitting out in the sun in June. Crispy. Always gross. They've been bloated from the sun. Now Custer managed to escape being scalped. All of the first people on scene said that his body was free of

mutilation. Do we believe that? He was found completely naked, though, so he got his shit ran through. People stole all of his shit, which is funny. To be fair, that's most of them. Most of their corpses were robbed blind, which, again, they don't need that shit.

Now, one of the reasons why I believe the account set Custer was unm need that shit now one of the reasons why i believe the accounts that custer was unmutilated is because one of the accounts comes from a cheyenne civilian and there were a lot of civilians present on the hill um one of the things that happened was as the greater native american force advanced civilian women came up behind them and killed the wounded by bringing them with rocks um so there yeah go ahead and get in there it's good to involve everybody you know community defense you know exactly yeah you've heard of you've heard of picking it up by your bootstraps and sometimes you gotta set it down on the rock sometimes sometimes a problem is solved with a rock. Now this Cheyenne woman was named,

uh, Kate Bighead, who said, Kate Bighead said the women then pushed the point of, of a sewing, uh, into each of his ears and into his head. This was done to improve his hearing.

As it seemed, he had not heard what our chiefs in the south had said when he smoked pipe with them um she also says that she stopped um other warriors from mutilating him by saying like she was related to him i don't know why exactly uh i think it's i think it's because she recognized him um after i wanted to mutilate him herself with the yeah okay makes sense oh no no don't know this is a nobody don't touch him this one's all me baby now a lot of this has to do

has been interpreted her words have been interpreted as you know because of the belief and reasoning for mutilation is you take that damage with you in the afterlife in the next world whatever and she believed that his ears were obviously closed because he hadn't heard what the chief had said and if i jam the sewing needle into his fucking ear his dumb ass will hear things

better in the afterlife um which i would like to believe is true because there's nothing better than a a post-mortem burn now as news reached the rest of the U.S., this obviously turned into a bit of a thing. Can't let this one go untouched. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, several hundred soldiers being killed didn't happen very often. And the front page of the

New York Times read in all caps, Massacre of our troops, and they were not alone. This was quite shocking to the conscience of the uh the white people who believed that the the manifest destiny was steaming right along right um this of course led to a flooding of reinforcements into the area and a lot of this had to do with you know it was a revenge mission at this point and general terry and crook refused to budge without thousands of reinforcements at their disposal because they're like, they're going to come for us next.

Which at this point, the warriors were so far fucked up. They had to get the fuck out of there and they knew it. Everybody involved in that battle was like, we need to make ourselves real scarce for a while. It's like at the end of a heist movie when they're taking apart the gun and throwing it into three different dumpsters and jumping into three different getaway cars. The Allied bands had won the battle, broke apart almost as soon as they had won. The people from the reservations went back to the reservations and then pretended they didn't know what the fuck anybody was talking about whenever they talked about all the white people getting killed. Like, good. I was out seeing a guy about a horse.

I don't know what you're talking about. I was out seeing a guy about a horse. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, let me tell you. Do you hear about all these dead white people? And no, you didn't. If anybody asks, I was here the whole time sewing this corn or whatever into the dirt. Sitting Bull and his band of people crossed into Canada and went to exile.

And Crazy Horse eventually turned himself in in Nebraska. There were some fights. The war went on much smaller scale for a little bit longer. America had won the last gasp of Native American warfare in the West and the genocide of the Native people of the Americas had continued on unabetted and largely unopposed. And it still does, unarguably, until this day. Obviously, the spark of this war is multifaceted, but if you could simplify it,

and I will for the sake of having the ending here, I will say is because the, over the ownership of the black Hills. Well, this finally got figured out, um, legally by the Supreme court. You want to guess a year?

Uh, I'm going to say 19, uh, 97. Okay. Not that recent 1980 all right 1980 over 100 years after the battle and after the government had stolen it now the supreme court ruled in the united states versus the sioux nation of indians, yep, government stole that shit. That was illegal. Oh, that's nice. Everyone smells something surprising happens.

Where's that Supreme Court? There was one lone dissenter known gigantic piece of shit, William Redquist. Yeah, he was still a bastard back then too. The ruling said that the government owed the full value of the land in dollars that it had seized which they appraised to be around 100 million dollars now the sue was not suing for money they were suing for their fucking land they didn't want money

they asked for their land back and they they refused to accept the money because and I agree with them here by accepting the money that's accepting government control over the land which they rightfully still reject to this day that money sits untouched in a Bureau

of Indian Affairs account accruing compound interests and as of 2021, it is worth over $1 billion. Ooh. Yeah. I mean, I get it.

I get, I understand, uh, you know, it's their land. It's absolutely their land, but a billion dollars is a lot. That's a lot of money,

Joe. Like, I mean, if someone's offering me a billion dollars for the land that I, I don't have, um, in Armenia, if somebody offered you a billion dollars for your compound,

it's like, it's like, look, I keep getting people trying to buy my house for some reason. And the last thing I told him is like, I'll sell it for half a million dollars, which like you would think it's not that much money, but it's a small house in,

in South city. And, uh, you know, I still maintain that. Um, if somebody's a small house in, in South city. And, uh, you know, I still maintain that. Um, if somebody wants to give me half a million dollars for this house, I would give it to them.

But also this is not my ancestral lands. This is South St. Louis. If anything, I'm from Ferguson, you know? Yeah. And my,

my land is not a, uh, um, uh, ancestral. Well, I guess it is ancestral land, but it's not a holy site.

All right. I can't even even i won't even rightfully argue that the property uh that i i live on in armenia is ancestral because my family is not from that part of armenia um but you're not even in the right ethnic area of your own armenian people but it's got a compound it was a whole thing i can't go back uh it's called turkey now um but you know it's you know it's religious land it's considered very sacred to them and they no amount of money is worth that and i have a hard time disagreeing with them nobody should it's their fucking land just give it back um now there was a a very weird largely unrecognized and unpopular attempt

by a very strange ron paul-esque libertarian native american named russell means uh to declare an independent republic of lakota over the land which as all of you are aware looking at a map right now and seeing it doesn't exist was pretty much ignored by everybody uh this happened 2008 i mean if anybody gets if anybody can claim sovereign citizen it's a native american uh claiming admiral t law over the black hills of the dakotas well yeah the only people who just like uh i don't have a driver's license because i don't recognize the united states government um i'm part of the lota tribe. It's like, oh, yeah, I get it. No, you're right. I wouldn't recognize this shit either.

Yeah, and Russell Means had a very strange career in Native American activism ending in this Republic of Lakota thing that went ignored mostly. And of course, it's 2022 at the time of recording and the land has not been given back

yet. As for the American survivors of the battle, historically, Marcus Reno and Frederick Ben teen were blamed for pretty much all of clusters failings until quite recently, though. It's fair to say that they both fucked up pretty badly. They don't deserve all of this because they wouldn't have launched that

battle on their own. Reno faced a court's martial in 1877 facing charges of not only incompetence but being drunk on the day of the battle he was found guilty to be fair i probably would have been a little toasty too he was found guilty and dismissed from the army but later reinstated by rough president rutherford b hayes uh in 1879 he demanded a full board of inquiry into the charges to rehabilitate his image and it was found he acted not in cowardice nor was he drunk after several soldiers and officers testified on his behalf but it still doesn't end there. Those same soldiers later said they had been threatened by the other officers to protect Reno and Benteen. I know Benteen had not been court-martialed yet, but he was testifying at the Board of Inquiry in defense of Reno, mostly because it was a circle-the-wagons type deal, like we have to protect ourselves. And I will take the fall if Reno takes takes the fall therefore i have to protect him

then reno years later in a conversation with an editor at a newspaper he worked out admitted that he was in fact drunker than shit on the day of the battle of little bighorn again i get it yeah i mean that that was probably super common back then when like you know water was just like cut whiskey or whatever sure it's just water is just a 3.2 bud light at the time that's right um now after a reinstatement reno got court-martialed again for getting drunk and beating up a subordinate and was again kicked out of the army which is is impressive. Uh, right. How are you going to get kicked out of the army twice? I mean,

the president had to fucking save him the first time he did look that gift horse right in the mouth and shot it. Um, he then spent the rest of his life attempting to restore his, his reputation once again, before getting cancer of the mouth and dying. Um, Ben teen screw arc followed a much of the same thing,

staying in the army without a court martial until he hit the rank of major uh he was brevet promoted to general got drunk beat up a subordinate and got thrown out of the army uh now wait they throw people out for that he again his pension was saved by the president this time grew over cleveland so that's fun man presidents love to just pardon the wrong dudes don't they oh i was gonna you know a long history of presidents pardoning war criminals yeah yeah well i mean they weren't charged with war crimes they were only charged with the crimes they did a war crime oh there's so many war crimes well i mean i okay you also can't technically consider them war crimes since those things didn't exist yet.

However, I don't care. Fuck them. Our modern day, you know, if there was a Geneva Convention in the late 1800s, there would be a Hague going. Well, actually, probably not because they are American officers, so they'd still get away with it. Look, they're assholes. officers so they'd still get away with it but look they're assholes we have a law on the books that if any American is charged

at the Hague we will invade the Hague so that's so fucking stupid honestly that sounds like a bit that we'd invent that's a real thing but you know in the end it's bad news all around is fucking shit

sucks and it's bad news all around is fucking shit sucks and it's it's uh the last it's the the the last and biggest victory um that uh native americans would ever score on the u.s military um yet anyway i don't know the u.s still exists shit could happen i don't know yeah reservations and native americans both still exist uh exist. They could fucking come back. Who knows? Despite the government's best attempts for otherwise. Yeah. Maybe the natives were really hoping COVID would go the smallpox route with the white people.

Sorry, guys. Next time. Now, we do something on this show called Questions from the Legion. We're going to do this two hours in. All right, let's go. Yeah, it's not our fault we can't shut the fuck up. Literally it is, but okay. Now this one was sent.

If you would like to send us a question, Legion support the show. Shoot me a message on Discord, email or Patreon. Patreon being the easiest. Ask us a question and we will answer it. That's generally how Q&As work. I don't know why I have to say that every time,

like I'm explaining it to myself. But look, it's because we're both in the military for a long enough time. And you know, sometimes there's always some guy you got to explain everything step-by-step too. So, you know, you're just- That guy is me. He's doing your due diligence

that is not for our listeners that is for me and this one is how many clones of you would it take to kill a monkey I'm assuming they meant gorilla it's like some monkeys are very small yeah gorilla how many clones of me so like how many how many of me do I need

like and again there's too many questions that see I don't like these hypotheticals because there's too many questions that see i don't like these hypotheticals because there's too many questions there's like are they are do we get to am i working these clones out do i have these clones specifically for monkey fighting like i'm assuming as you are right now you just get like 10 of that okay i could take that i think we could take a gorilla i think it took one guy to kill harambe I feel like I could do that now if you give me a gun. Are we talking like fist fights? Like fist fighting a gorilla?

I would imagine this kind of comes down to bare knuckle brawling, hand to hand kind of fighting. I don't like our odds, Francis. Look, 10 though. 10. I'm just saying that I would have no problem sacrificing at least three to five of my clones you know just to be like look you guys gotta be go the lorigi cadorna of clone warfare okay you gotta be you gotta be uh instead of bullet fighter you gotta be banana fodder i guess and uh go out there and let the gorilla beat up on you the the gorillas are just gonna feed you fists

and tear you apart i hear they go for balls and face first but there's 10 of us so like eventually somebody's gonna get through i think all right let me hit you with this okay i'm gonna go full italy in this situation i'm gonna let my nine clones go in and then i'm gonna start with the gorilla you know there's always got to be there's always got to be a judas iscariot, you know, why not be me? Why can't it be me against my own clones? Fuck those guys. I know,

I know what I've done. I don't deserve this. And besides I've seen Jet Li's film, the one I have to kill all of those clones and I become stronger. And then I'll take that grill out. Yeah. What if instead of this, of this was actually a bunch of highlanders and you all had to like kill each other and chop each other's heads off until

there's the one who gets to fight the gorilla and the gorilla is watching i'm confused as fuck why are all these people in my cage this gorilla is gonna die of boredom as we try to figure out how many fucking clones it takes to take down a monkey. I cannot think of a more boring fight than me fighting myself. I do that every fucking day of my life. So, I mean, who wants to watch just called me waking up in the morning. Francis

has been two hours. We've talked a lot about Custer. Plug your show. What a hell of a way to die. Military leftist kind of stuff, although nate and i just talk about our gardens at this point because we're old so if you like that and if you like us making fun of the army um without being shitty right-wing chuds then uh then we got that for you the only like i've learned something important from your show and that is i suck at gardening

i can't grow shit look it takes it gardening is not i know a lot of people think that it's it's hard it's not hard uh because i ignore my garden a lot um and i just like check on it every three to four days uh pull some weeds tie the you know tomatoes up and stuff i feel like a lot of people just like neglect further because they just don't give a shit uh which is fair um not everybody wants to garden so don't don't grow things if you're not into it if you are into gardening you will have a successful garden because you'll do like what you do with history you'll obsessively read about it and figure things out and then do crop rotations and stuff see i'm simply trying to give my plants the same love my father showed me. You just go out and scream at them.

I get drunk and punch my tomato plants. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to this very bloated episode. I hope you enjoyed the series. If you like our show, consider throwing us a dollar. You get Discord access, bonus episodes, early

episodes. You get to listen to we have two different premium series going on a patreon now we're talking about HBO's Rome two episodes at a time for with Francis and shocks and then we also have history of Armenia which is me and

various people I've pulled into the show to talk about Armenian history, law, and reparations, and current events as the world kind of goes to shit. So consider donating. If not, leave us a review. That helps us too.

And it's free. It takes like five minutes from my understanding. And everybody, thank you again. And until next time... Don't fuck with the Lakotas, man. Just leave them alone alone let them do their thing i was gonna say fist fight gorillas but i like yours better