Bear Grease - Ep. 93: Bear Grease [Render] - River Gauges, Thermal Vision, and the Death of Tecumseh

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

This week the Bear Grease Render is coming at you from camp in the Arkansas Delta on the Cache Bayou. Your fearless host, Clay Newcomb, is joined by the incomparable Brent Reaves as well as render veteran and owner of Sunspot Outdoors, Michael Rosamond. Cameramen Loren Moulton and Dave Gardner flew in for the render as well and decided to stick around and shoot some Coon and Squirrel Hunting for an upcoming Bear Grease project. As the river level rises, the crew discusses relevant topics like how river gauges work, where to hunt when your prime woods get flooded, and the importance of a good, bright coon light. The gang then dives into the last Bear Grease episode called "Tecumseh's Death," where they discuss the nuanced implications of the great orator and Shawnee leader's life and death. Stay tuned cuz you're not gonna wanna miss Clay's announcement for a special event... Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I'm a big fan of these snake boots.

I wore these the entire week while I was hunting in Mexico. These are lacrosse straight up snake boots. They kind of look, they kind of have a cowboy boot, but kind of with a non-aggressive heel, leather, square toe. Got the square toe like the old kicking shoe. They come up like all the way almost to your knee. But they put on easier than a rubber boot. They're waterproof.

roof and when you wear them you feel like you've got armor on your legs. Really? Yeah, I really like them. Did you see any snakes when he was down? No, it was cold. We were at 6,000 feet elevation.

So it was very cold up there. Well, that's good. Well, we have a very eclectic group here at the Bear Gries renter today, none of which are qualified to be here based upon good looks, education, accomplishments in life.

Speak for yourself. Or, Oh, just kidding. The least of which isn't. To my left, Lauren Moulton. Howdy? Thanks for having me. Longtime meteor videographer.

Correct? Four years. 2018. Yeah. That's a long time. Yeah. Traveled all over, all over with all different varieties of meteor folks. Great to have you, Lauren.

Thanks for having me. Yeah. To Lauren's left, the illustriest Brit Reeves. Good to be here. Britt, good to see you, man. Good to be seen. To Brent's left. That's the way, man, that's it.

That's the only intro you get today. Yeah. To Brent's left. This will greatly reflect my participation in today's endeavor. Go ahead. Do you want me to talk about your outfit again? Brent Reeves is wearing a fairly new pair of what's the brand overalls? Roundhouse.

Roundhouse overalls with a coon fob and his pocket watch wearing a first light shirt. Okay, that's enough. That's enough. That's enough. To your left. Michael Roseman. Hello. Michael, you've been on the Bergernerd before, haven't you?

Yes, on the, uh, where the red farm grows. That's right. So Michael is the owner of sunspot lights, which were the, they're the coon lights that, that we use all the time that if you see me or Brent wearing a light, a hard hat with a big old light, that's a sun spot light. Yeah. Arkansas-based company. Yes.

And they are super bright. Man, I tell people nonstop. People challenge me about lights. Like I'll be at a camp. It's happened more than once. And they're like, oh, I got a good light. And I'm just like, really? And we stepped out and, you know, turn the lights on.

And Coon hunters have the market on the most powerful lights in the world. Are you like Crocodile Dundee when that guy pulls a knife on him? That's not a knife. That's not a light. This is a light. And you pull out that sunspot? That's right. Yeah, we found out a couple nights ago that he would win more of those battles if he'd charge his life.

Yeah, yeah, I learned a little bit about these that from the time you start using, I thought they just powered all the way through until they went dead and they just died. but they but they they dim some some coon hunting lights just cut out I didn't ever I never liked that yeah no one wants to be standing there thinking your lights fully charged and be in the dark so it slowly dims it doesn't start dimming until about the four or five hour mark

yeah after that it starts to slowly dim and it's a gradual dim I mean you couldn't even tell yours wasn't charged until you shined it next to one that was charged. That's right. Yeah, I hardly ever charge mine because it doesn't need it. You know, I'll hunt or I use it every day, feeding my dogs, going outside, doing stuff at night, especially, you know, in the winter when it gets dark early. I'm dead serious.

I keep it by the door. I use it every day and turn it on. But great to have you, Michael. We're going to come back to that. To Michael's left, Big Dirty Dave Gardner. For Montana. How you be here? you doing man good big dirty and i go way back uh dave is hunted with me in oklahoma for white

tails for two years hunted in montana a couple well once maybe yep so arkansas arkansas this time so what we're doing is we're down here filming a coon and squirrel hunt and uh we're staying in in east arkansas over here on the white river and And White River's coming up. White River's like flood stage. Is that right, Michael? Yeah. I forget, was it 33 feet?

Yeah, about 33. Flood stage here's 26. Okay. Yeah. Explain to me these river levels. It seems like it would be zero would be like normal, whatever they determined for normal, but that's not true. Well, where is, where does, what does 33 mean unless you?

you're here and you just know, oh, 33's high water. What does 33 mean? I couldn't tell you the accurate answer to that. I know that they have the, when you check the water levels, you check flood stage. And whatever the nominal level for the river is, it's inside those parameters. You know, if it's between this, between two numbers there, it's deep enough to traverse. Yeah. Or it gets too shallow and you can't.

drive a boat so it's got I can't tell you that I don't know if that comes from core engineers like you know given channel depth average channel depth or not I don't know that's something for the Michael's looking it up for the Gugley there's a there's a gauge under the river that you can look at that has hash marks for feet under the bridges under yeah under the bridges and that generally on any river will equate to a cubic feet per second of volume of cubic feet per second of water moving by one particular spot. Is that right?

So the volume, when they say 33, 26, whatever it is, different rivers have different gauges, right? But it's always in the United States, gauged by cubic feet per second. So that doesn't mean like elevation? It'll equate to elevation on that gauge. That's how they tell. You know, like, okay, here's flood. stage here is like major flood okay uh Dave you got any yeah I mean I think I think like the

foot gauge a lot of that probably goes back to before they were able to probably calculate out CFS and so I've seen it a lot of places it's just like a foot gauge on a bridge right and so there'll just be marks on a bridge like Michael was saying and so this is probably one place on the white river where there's a bridge and it well there's got to to be zero's got to mean something because we're saying oh the river's 33 feet and then if you're around here for 50 years you know oh 33 foot is flood stage normal is like 24 feet the gauge you one of gauge that you use here is looking out the back door because see if there's water crimping up in your backyard there it is right there yeah because behind this cabin is a porch

that hangs off and there's boat cleats on a deck that's probably eight or nine feet off the ground so I guess I gauge it that way too yeah the floods here interesting in the Ozarks a flood would be like a flash flood like you'd be it'd be heavy rain and gushing fast water dangerous water here flood is it could be a beautiful usually a flood doesn't come till after a storm's come through and it's bluebird skies and the weather's beautiful and the river's just slowly inching up incrementally going to low water or you know at least where it's backwatering out slow water but we've been squirrel hunting and coon hunting we we had i'd say we had a good a real good squirrel hunt other than getting flooded out from some of our better spots what do you

guys yeah i thought it was really good killed quite a few squirrels at a good time guys what'd y'all think of squirrel hunting dave and uh and lauren hadn't squirrel hunter before no lots of action which is great usually on a hunt filming you're kind of waiting for that moment you know nine days in Alaska waiting for a move. Yeah. Seeing the animal from way off, but squirrel hunts live action quick. Same with Coons. It's pretty fun.

It's definitely one of the more action-packed hunts I'd filmed. Yeah. It's pretty fun, you know, the first day, what, you guys killed 12 squirrels? Mm-hmm. I don't think I've been on a duck hunt where we've killed 12 ducks in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

A lot of fun. And then we Coon hunted at night, hunted Brent's dog. and then we hunted one of Michael's dogs, and we're hunting as good a coon hunting as there is in these United States. Yeah, anywhere. Yeah. You know that there are raccoons in Europe, but they're an invasive species. They brought them into, yeah, Germany.

They have a large population in Germany. They're probably causing just as much ruckus over there as they are over here. Killing just as many bird's nest. Yep. What was the impetus of bringing them to Germany? Why would you... Probably the same reason people brought all kind of weird stuff over here. Yeah, yeah.

Just it was a novel animal that they could carry around, maybe even brought it over for hunting. Do you know, Michael? From what I understand, it was one of Hitler's chancellors that, whatever he was over the wildlife, thought they were fascinating, brought them over, turned them loose. That's, uh, don't quote me on that, but that's what I'm, that's what I'm remembering.

We just did. You're on a big podcast. Sounds good to me. I'm wrong all the time. I like it. No, you never know. You never know. Sounds good.

Um, well, a few housekeeping things. March 4th in Bentonville, Arkansas is the Black Bear Bonanza. It's a one-day event that, It's like action-packed vendors. Arkansas Game and Fish is there. I know Bear Honey Magazine's going to be there. A bunch of outdoor vendors. We're going to do a live render podcast in front of all the people that are there.

Last year there was like 400 people. We're going to do an Al Houghton contest, of which Brent Reeves is the MC. And just so a fair warning to all you contestants, Clay is a judge and he's not grading on the curve. And spelling counts. No, he's pretty judgey about this whole Al Houten thing. That's why I'm a judge. Yeah. I was a judge last year and I got fired.

Yeah. You weren't big enough? Or promoted however you want to look at that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We totally had some unqualified judges in our last year. So I'll be one of the judges. Brent's going to be the MC.

The winner gets a genuine whine coonskin cap made by Josh Lambridge spillmaker from one of the coons that some coons that that we killed in the Ozarks a couple years ago. Yeah. So that's a big, big prize and just all kind of fun stuff.

Now here's, here is the, family stuff too. Here is the addition to that, which is a wild addition, unannounced up until this point. Friday, March the 3rd in Bentonville

at a location to be announced. We're going to do a pre-referral pre-screening of the film that we made about Warner Glen. It's going to be a bear grease film. And so you will be at some point in the near future, people will be able to buy tickets to this pre-screened film. And it's sponsored by our buddies at Odex. They're paying for us to have this venue.

And the sad news is there's only, 200 tickets and when they're gone they're gone so there's 200 spots in this theater and so when the link goes up just first come first serve and they're going to be groceries with that ticket too yeah yeah yeah it will announce all all that's going on but me and brent will be there i know that for sure we're going to watch this film the film's only you know 22 minutes long but we'll be doing some fun stuff it'll probably end up being a couple hours the whole thing but so march the third so the night before the Black Bear Bonanza in Bentonville. It's going to be big.

It'll be fun. We're going to give the money that we, any money that we make to the Black Bear Bonanza, Arkansas BHA guys. So that's going to be big. Mark, your calendars. That would be a whole good weekend right there. It sure will. It sure will.

Well, so this is the Bear Grease render where we talk about for somebody who's new, the previous week's Bear Greene podcast. And we've come to the end of our series on Tecumsa. I feel like a burden has really been lifted off my shoulders. I really do. I think I started my Tecumsa research a year and a half ago, like six months into starting the Bear Gries podcast. I remember where I was at when I heard,

I was listening to an audiobook, one of Alan Eckert's audiobooks. Just where the idea came from? Yeah, I was listening to the Frontiersmen. and he talked about Tecumse being born on the night that this comet flashed across the sky in Ohio and they saw it

and they named him Tecumsa which loosely translates to Panther crossing the sky and I didn't know any I didn't know much about Tecumse you know it's not like I was just bored knowing about Tecumse I didn't know much about him

I would have known his name I would have known that there were always thought it was odd that there was a lot of businesses and stuff like Tacomsa Motors. There's a lot of Tacomsa stuff around the country. I knew he was a Native American leader. Didn't know much about him. But when I heard that,

I thought I just immediately knew we need to do a whole Bear Greas podcast on this guy. And it started researching and started trying to find the right guys. And it was difficult to connect with all the people that this podcast entailed now and it's when it was complete.

And that was the challenge is I was going to do a podcast on DeCumseh. Like, you know, I figured within three or four months of me first hearing about him, like I'll read a book and I'll get this guy. And I just kept finding difficulty getting the people, getting the people, getting the people. And I would get one guy, but I would need a little bit more and get another guy. And so it ended up being the most work I've ever put into a podcast, which is kind of cool because you have a lot of time to think about it and getting all these different perspectives was unique

and I think it made for a good podcast. But I feel almost relieved in a good way that the story is now out there. And not that it wasn't out there before, but we told it on Baragrees. So the third one is done. Brent, in the whole series, what stood out to you? Because you hadn't been on the last two.

Was there anything on the other ones that stood out to you? It's all intriguing and I learned a whole. lot of stuff on all of them but to me the tip of the spear the culmination of the whole thing was was chief barnes stuff man that guy is so insightful and and so he can he easily explains the thoughts and stuff in a viewpoint that I'd never considered and it wasn't because I was it wasn't important to me. It was just, I couldn't see it from his view. And the way they talked about the individuals and the difference in, and putting Tacomsa on a pedestal when he wouldn't, he wouldn't have been up there by himself, there was a lot of guys doing that kind of stuff. Yeah. And he was naming names of people in

his culture that were as significant, if not more so, than Tecumsehsa and names I'd never heard. And I thought, man, that's sad. And it has. It has. has inspired me to do a lot of a lot more research, but I think his participation in it, without him being in that, it wouldn't have been near as good as it was, and I absolutely loved it. I like this one better than the Daniel Boone.

Did you really? Really, I did. You know, here's what I was so impacting to me sitting across from Ben Barnes, and we did this interview back in 2022. I think I said that on there. But this guy is, like Tecumse.

I mean, he's a leader inside of the Shawnee Nation. Yeah. He would stand just right beside those guys. And I'm not necessarily talking about his accomplishments or not. I'm just saying he is the leader, a leader in the Shaanese, Shani Nation. That goes right back to the lineage of Tecumse, really not that far back. Right. And just really interesting.

And I was, yeah, super intelligent. guy and you saw his heart inside of it yeah his heart you know sometimes when you hear a political leader and i mean that's what you would call him i mean in today's world he has to be a political right leader and a lot of times when you hear some politician talk i mean every single one of us can be like that guy's full of it well you that that guy has interests that are not always of the purists Well, he's talking, he's pandering to try to get the large majority. This guy's talking to a group of people. And his talking points and stuff, I don't think those were vetted by a communications room somewhere in another state.

That was all coming out of his head and out of his heart that was important to his people and to the point that he was trying to get across. And it was, you could just tell it was genuine. To me, to me it seemed that way. I think it was. And I don't understand all the, I mean, I'm not inside the politics of these Indian nations. So, you know, we just had this one glimpse. But, yeah, when I asked him, I said, what is the, what is the, well, there were two questions. I said, what would a Shawnee Nation look like that you'd be happy with?

And he took it right back to the people. He said, we've got people, we've got Chonis in 50 states. And I want them to know that they have a cultural home. and that idea of home seems to be really powerful inside the Indian nations because they were removed from their home. Yeah. And, you know, it's been a long time ago, but really in human history, a couple hundred years is not that long. Correct. Michael, what did you say to me the other day we were talking about some historical figure?

And you said, well, I think we were talking about something about the Civil War. And you said, well, that guy's granddad was in the Civil War. Well, no, it was slavery. So my mother died early and a black lady helped raise me when I was a teenager. And her mother's mother was born a slave. So her grandmother was born a slave. So the lady that helped raise you. Yes.

Her grandmother. Her grandmother. Her grandmother. Yeah. So you know people that. new people that were it's just not that long ago right right so you just add another great or two to that and there you are with you know same time tocumso yeah oh yeah well i mean if tom if tecumse had lived out a full life you know he would have you know potentially die you know he's 45 if he

didn't live another 30 years yeah you know he would have been almost a 18 in the 1840s right something like that it's not that long ago yeah it really isn't man because it takes a while to sort those things out. And we don't realize it, but we're sorting stuff out that happened inside of our worlds that we aren't even cognizance of. Yeah. You know? But, yeah, that's powerful stuff.

And one of the most interesting things to me and the whole thing was Dr. Dave Edsman's talked about how the removal, and this is going back to Chief Barnes saying that he feels like his job is to undo the negative effects of their removal. Which I thought that was interesting. I didn't anticipate him saying that. But Dave Edmonds,

in maybe part one or part two, he talked about how removal from land was very different than a Westerners' worldview of removal from land because their religions are site-specific I'm reading a book right now about it's kind of an autobiography

Yeah, it's an autobiography of a Well, it's complicated Basically a guy wrote a book And it's about Native Americans And there's a part in the book Where this guy describes what he's seen Okay And he talks about the mountain

And he talks about the sunlight Going through these trees that have frost on them and the frost glistons and he talks about a river down below him. Well, this book was critiqued by

Cherokee Indians. And this book, the guy that writing that was supposed to be a Cherokee, the Cherokee said, if a real Cherokee had written that, he would have named the mountain. He would have named the river. he would have been much more specific than a generic.

More reverent to what he was looking at you. Well, just specific because to that spot, to that place, like that mountain would have meant so much to them. And it ties back to the site-specific stuff. So if you just uproot this culture and put it down somewhere else, and like, here's some good land, it's different. And I contrasted that. And it's kind of a simple, it's pretty simple,

So it's probably not entirely accurate, but these Europeans were coming over, and they'd been pushed out of their land. They'd been pushed out. And so they'd had some bad stuff happen to them, too. And, but they had this kind of utilitarian ideology of land, and they didn't have any historical connection to this land, and they were just happy to get it.

It's just interesting stuff. Interesting stuff. Chief Ben Barnes, good. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to. going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut

because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting

action. Big dirty? What, did anything stand out to you in the whole series? There's definitely a few things that stood out. I think the interesting thing to me was how, yeah, like we're talking about, he was, he played a role that was needed at that time in the community. And I think that's just so different than, you know,

especially in the United States today. Like, we're a highly individualistic culture, and we're not always looking into, like, pursuing something that is what our community needs around us. There certainly are those people doing that. But, yeah, it's just very different, at least from the way I live my life, pursuing a creative career.

It's kind of a highly selfish pursuit, you know, so. Some good lessons to take, to take, away from that. I have in my notes here that the I think it's hard for us to even comprehend really it's hard for me to really comprehend even what the chief was said because it's such a odd place to be a human because you're looking through life out of these two eyeballs that you have that you were given that and your the way you view out of those eyeballs is important and has some element of correctness to it.

It's interesting to, if you can detach yourself from that enough to understand the perspective of somebody vastly different, then you're, it's like, wow, I had no idea that there was even another option. Yeah. And this idea of a community being important, you know, It's not like that died with the Shawnee's. That is very much the worldview of most of the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes. And honestly, some of the, a lot of places still on the earth today view it.

For example, I had somebody write this in. I thought this was really interesting. He was talking about, this guy lived in China for years. and he said that when you address a letter in China, the first thing you write is China, the country, then the state, then the actual site-specific address, and then the name at the bottom.

And that is an indication of the importance of the things, like what comes first is most important. And, you know, at the bottom, him is the individual. And he compared that to the Shawnee language that these other guys were, you know, that the chief told us about, about how the Shanis, they focus on the verb, not the noun, the nouns at the end, the verbs closer to the front. You know, he talked about language and stuff.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot of things like that going on for sure. Yeah. The other thing that was really interesting was kind of how he's kind of glorified today because he lost in the end right right and it's it how would that how different would that be if things had played out differently i thought about something when when he was talking about that dave when he was the saying how the european or the white settlers and everything put him up the old saying if you want to be the man you got to beat the man you know if he had won

they probably wouldn't have put him up that far there wouldn't have been but they had value in, you know, if you're the number one seed and you beat the number 20 seed, who cares, you're supposed to beat that guy. Right. But if you're the number two guy and you beat the number one guy, you know, you've got something to talk about. And I could see where, you know, how that played out in how, I guess, it was put out through the social media of the time, you know, you know, yeah, we're number

one now. You know, we beat Tacumsa. Who's to come to? Oh, man, he was unbeatable. Yeah. He was this big leader. You know, he's doing all these great things. And we won. Yeah, but how that happened.

He had characteristics that were to be admired because there are a lot of people that we've beat that we hate. I mean, there are people that are considered the devil and we beat them. But he had these characteristics to begin with. Oh, yeah. And I wouldn't say, I wouldn't take any other thing away from that. I was just saying how they wanted it was more or less bragging rights. No, you're correct. I'm not, I'm not saying that you're not, but what it was talked about about the, what they call it, faustalgia.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that they add things to him. So with the racial climate at the time, they add, they basically whitewashed him to making more acceptable to the American people at the time. You know, they added characteristics also that would make these people relate to him. Like he talked about, you know, the lady, the white lady that they said that he would set their feet while she read to him.

And that's not true. Right. According to that guy, I have no idea. But so they add things like that so that he would be able to be admired by the people. And one of the reasons for that is they're selling books, too. I mean, you know, the people that did this. Yeah. And yeah, and we probably do that all the time.

We do it to a lot of people. There's a play. There's a play in Chilacothe, Ohio to this day, that has been going on for, I think, 50-plus years, and it's a big outdoor, big outdoor play. A big auditorium outdoors that holds, I think it holds 1,500 people. And there's a cast. of over 100 people as I understand it. And it's called Tacomsa.

And I've been to it. It was very entertaining. And that's the play that the chief said he didn't like at all. And it's because there's a lot of the fables kind of mixed into that story. Because that, the writer of that play was Alan Eckert. who I said I wrote the book Frontiersman. And Eckert, just at the time, I don't know, history at the time, and he wrote it whenever that was, maybe the 70s or 80s.

Somebody will write me mean email about getting that day wrong. But that was just kind of the going thing that he had this white woman that he was in love with. And so that's all in the play. And that's the kind of stuff that the chief was like, this is hogwash. This is crazy, which was interesting because that play is alive and well

today. It's worth going to. It was very well done, put together. Big tourist attraction there in Chilacothe, Ohio. But it's entertainment and not a history lesson. Right. And there's, I mean, there's parts of it that are true. And when you see it, I think you do

you do understand a little bit more about Tacoma. But it also, the play also paints Ten Squintawa, his brother, as kind of them battling against each other and kind of fighting for power. And I think now they've kind of dismissed that a little bit more and just said they really did kind of work in tandem together

more and more. Anyway, you know, there's some, you could nitpick all of it. Sure. But it was interesting because talking about the Faustalgia, I thought that was so, Such an interesting word. Well, we do that to a lot of people in history.

I mean, look at all the outlaws in the West that were, you know, idolized. These people were murderers. But they add these stories to them, you know, to make them more, when you said, palatable to everyone to read. That's the first time I've used that word in a long time. I didn't know. You knew it. I didn't. Postalgia, he said that that was longing for a past that didn't exist.

and hey I also took a little bit of criticism on this Tacomsa podcast from some people that said that okay and here's just the simplest version navigating some very treacherous political waters yeah let's go yes let's do this is that the Native Americans were

radically got the raw end of this deal like I don't think anybody disagrees to that I mean, massive. And their civilization suffered for it. America did all this stuff, which is absolutely true. Broke treaties, just tried to annihilate and dismantle this civilization, no doubt. So now 200 years later, in kind of response to us being so, when I say us, I'm saying that because I'm an American citizen.

So if you're an American citizen, you know, your country did this. our response to that is to romanticize Native American life as being this just like beautiful utopian place and these people were just one with nature

and one with each other and they didn't have problems and they had this great little world over here that got so and we know that that isn't entirely true either that's more of a recent thing though is a not Well, it's just the way we talk about. Like somebody said that, you know, we like hyper glamorized, you know, Tacomsa and him garden this way of life and him wanting just this traditional Indian way of life.

And what they would say is like, man, this place was a war zone before we got here, which is true. With their neighbors just like we are now. Yeah. And so, you know, you can go to one extreme to the other. and what you want to have is just kind of an understanding that yes, we did, the United States did give these people a radically raw deal. They did. And it was unique, too, in the fact that I don't know, I'm not a history buff, so I don't know the reasons as much, but we slowly crept across the land. So to keep from fighting an all-out war with all of these people, we just kind of slowly. lowly took it and made deals and, you know, we'll buy this from you.

And that was the thing. A lot of that land was bought. Right. They paid money for it. Yeah. But from what I understand reading, some of that land was sold by tribes that didn't actually own it. That's right. Yeah.

So a whole lot of, and it's so complicated and it's so, it's not stuff that's that I wanted to talk about just for sake of, it just wasn't the story we were telling. But, yeah, the acquisition of land of the U.S. of all the tribes is, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of treaties. People selling land that they actually didn't own. I mean, betrayal inside from tribe to tribe, but all this just wildly complex stuff that happened. But this was a treaty that he was against that started this, correct? Well, and that's a simplistic story because it was... decades of all these treaties,

but the thing that drew the line in the sand was the Treaty of Greenville, which drew a line somewhere in Ohio, what is now Ohio. And it was like, you know, Europeans, Americans can't come across this line. And they did. And that's when Tecumse was like, okay,

no more, no more being a diplomat, we're going to have to fight these guys. That's when he joined up with the British and started fighting. So another way that we could simplify all this too is that, or it seems like it would be simple, is like why weren't all these tribes in on this? Why wouldn't they have come to to Kumsa's idea of this pan-Indian confederacy and fighting against them? Because that didn't make sense to me at first.

Because the way we painted him is just this revolutionary Native American leader. It seems like every tribe in the country would have been like, yes, let's stand and fight against these guys. But, man, it was so complex going back to that a lot of tribes had great deals with the U.S. government where they were getting money, where they were getting supplies, where they were getting all this stuff. And Dave Edmonds talked about it. To come succumbs to that tribe and it's like, hey, we've got to fight these guys. and the chief was like, uh, bro,

we got a pretty good thing to do in here. I mean, that's what happened. And most of the tribes rejected him. Most. The guys that were fighting with him were a small percentage of the...

Well, most of those, or you might even know this may not have come up. Most of the folks that stood with him were they from, you know,

if they were from the same area or they had similar religions and ways of life? Is that how it came about? Not necessarily. There were at least 12 tribes that were represented in the Pan-Indian Confederacy. And many, a lot of the Shawnee's even rejected, Tecumse's vision. Yeah, lots of the Shanis.

And there's today several divisions of Shawnee's even. And today, amongst those divisions, you can trace back to the people that were with Tecumse and the people that were against him. Really? But that was one of the most remarkable things, and the reason we remember him is because he was really the only guy that ever united the tribes. That was a big deal. That was like major diplomacy, a major thing, which is also evidence why they believe that he was one of the greatest orators and leaders of the Native American people because he could ride up into a camp of Cherokees or, or, mingos and

give I mean all he had was a speech like he didn't have a website he didn't have a podcast he didn't have a television crew all he had was standing up in front of these people around a big fire saying

we got to fight these guys I mean wouldn't it have been something wouldn't it have been something to have just one of those recorded oh yeah that was my takeaway from it all was the fact that he was able to band together all those different tribes and all those different folks from different areas and get them to rally. So that alone just showed

how powerful his personality was. Yeah. Anything else? Stand out to you. You know, the two of them that just coming together and rally and everybody, that's what I was going to point out is that you hear about the Indian nation and warring nations, right? And the tribes apparently didn't get along a lot of the time. But now that it's all kind of spelled out, it makes sense. Yeah. But for those guys at that time to rally everyone together is just an amazing deal. That was, to me anyway, that was like, wow, that takes a lot of...

Yeah. You know, another thing that's interesting is that this happened here in what is now the United States where basically another group of people. people came in to land that was already occupied and pushed out the people that were occupied. That's the story of planet Earth. Yeah. That has never not happened somewhere. But that's what I was saying about it happened differently.

Normally, you come in, you attack a country, you take it all. You don't slowly make deals with people and then renege on it until you reach the other ocean. You just, the whole thing may have been looked at differently had there just been a massive army come in and just run through the whole thing. And then people do what they do just like they do now when a country's taken over. But the fact that so many, that there was trust involved. So these people are coming into your yard out here and they're going, I just want to buy your backyard. And you say, okay, I'll sell that. And the next thing, you know, you look up and they're coming through your back door.

And they say, well, I want to live on your couch. Can I do that? And you make a deal with them. And then they're in your kitchen. And it's just a complete different thing than coming in and taking everything from you at once. I see what you're saying. It would be more traumatizing for that to happen for me than for all of a sudden I lose it all. And you have this one feeling about that would be different than watching them just slowly take it from you.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. And it would have been generational too. You know, Tecumseh was born where he was born because his parents went to basically a shawnee convention about what to do about these white Europeans coming into Kentucky. That was right when Boone and them were coming in. That's why they were near Chilli Coffee was because they were like sending out messages to the people that were scattered or brought. God, we got to come together and figure out what we're going to do about these people coming into our land, killing our game.

So, I mean, he was born into this. It was a part of his life. It wasn't like they just showed up while he was here. And that happened for generations and generations. It's really interesting. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cut. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps game calls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. I over-emphasized it in the podcast, maybe too much, maybe not enough. I don't know. But about how we tell a story from a place of bias. You can't, I can't tell you about our Coon Hunt last night. It was from my eyeballs that I saw what happened. And that version of that would be different than your version.

Even the motivations. If I was telling you the motivations of why we turned right off the levee and went to the frog pond, rather than turning left off the levee and going to the inside the levee, I mean, I might have been like, man, Michael, he hates frogs. I don't like frogs. You're right. And then, but then Brent would have been like, well, actually, he loves frogs. That's why we were going in there to kill the coons.

They were eating the frogs. Yeah. Well, it's just like, you know, I've always said a hundred times, two different stories. If you want two different stories, you get two eyewitnesses to the same event. Because people's perception and their internal bias, whether it's subliminal or whatever, is going to determine how they see something. And even me telling the story of Tacompson, and I said it on the podcast.

When I first heard about him and learned about him, I was like, this is going to be a great story because this guy was so awesome. He was such a, he stood out. I totally had a way that I want. And there's no hiding it.

If I do a story on Warner Glen, I'm going to tell you the best version of him. I mean, it's not like when you get done listening to me talk about Warner Glenn. I want you to be like, ah, he was all right, I guess.

Like, I want you to be like, that guy must be the coolest, coolest guy on planet Earth. Yeah. Because that's the way I view it. Like, it,

and even, even the bias of the way that you view people and categorize them. And, so I, I over emphasize that a lot. Because there is a thing

that's going on today, too, where we demonize people that did stuff a long time ago. And I had a section in there about how usually the antagonist in the story that I was telling about Tacomsa was the Americans.

Like it was kind of like these evil people. And that's not entirely fair either. Because, but that just wasn't the story we were telling. You know, there was a, and I don't think it does any good to demonize those people

today 200 years after it happened. Absolutely not. And it's a war out trope. And somebody could be like, man you shouldn't even say that but I don't know it's like the people that are here today didn't do those things but but there is power

inside of being empathetic to this day because that's massively what I am like when I hear the talk of Tecumson and sit with Ben Barnes like I'm empathetic towards their cause like I'm just like

but there's a difference between having empathy and feeling guilty yeah that's right yeah I don't feel guilty about that. Chief Barnes cured the whole problem of me having to look at that. I had to come

say at one level when this whole thing started and when he slapped me in the head with a wet squirrel when he started talking about, you know, he was just one guy. I thought, wow, we were doing these other folks at this service by not recognizing them. And you know what I said. It inspired me to do some research about that. But that's... That brought what you're talking about now,

that brought that all home to me there. It just makes, it makes so much sense. He couldn't have done that without, you know, by himself. And there was, he had a big supporting cast of folks. And it just elevated the, it elevated the story or the history of it a whole lot more to me because of that. Well, someone that's a great communicator is recognized by history, a lot of the times more than the people that just had actions. So a guy that just has actions, he just seen something needed to be done and he went out and done it.

You may never know who that guy is. But the guy that could speak about it, well, you know who that guy is. Not saying that he didn't have actions, obviously he did. But through history, that's how it's always been. The great orator was always the one that was known through history. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably part of the reason he was such a good leader, too, was, I mean, he was a great orator, but he also led through his actions.

I mean, he died on the battlefield. Yeah. He wasn't, like, sitting somewhere up on a hill watching it go down. He was out there. Well, how many battles can you be in before you die? So he predicted his death. You had a podcast one time about making your own luck, I think. it was and that your your mindset and your attitude a lot of the times creates that luck i'm sure

this didn't happen but this is what was in my mind he thought he was going to die he had a vision of it so did that affect him on the battlefield that day yeah whether the vision was going to be true or not if you go out there with that attitude you know you know and i wondered if he ever said that before and it didn't come true nobody ever remembered it yeah yeah it could have been for real. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, that faux-stalgia, did he really even say it?

Yeah. You know, or was that just added to, you know, we don't know. How easy would it be, though? Yeah, that story, like, I want it to be true so bad. I want it so bad to be true. Faustalgia in it to the ground. It's like, why, for no reason other than you want to feel like his death was scripted by something bigger than him just taking a bullet,

a random bullet. Because if an authority from another realm informed him of his death the day before it happened, it meant that it was like supposed to happen. That's the way I think about it. Yeah. And, but how easy

would it be for a story like that to be made? Because his father died, his brother died, his chiefs died, cornstalk died. He had basically had three, he had real dad then he kind of had two basically adopted dads and all of them died chisiqua i said that over and over every single podcast i talked about chesaqua his older brother saying that he'd rather

have the fouls of the air pick his bones than to be buried back at camp it's like those guys they didn't think about death the way we do death was like tomorrow yeah well every day was If they wasn't fighting each other or somebody else, they were fighting the land they were living on to stay alive. Yeah. So every day was, they were in battle every day. Yeah. Well, we live in such a soft world now. We can't even comprehend how they felt about that stuff.

You know, now we, someone goes to war and they come back and we have something to describe what's wrong with them. And we call it PTSD. There probably wouldn't anyone back then that didn't have PTSD. Yeah. Right. So, you know, the fact of you're going to die is something that's just accepted. Like you said, everyone before him died, how many shootouts can you get into before you get shot? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. Now, when these series are over, I am a, I said it on the podcast. I use the word melancholy. It's a good word. It is. I really do.

Like, there'll probably be never another. period in my life where I'm as focused on, just doing the research and just having to do this stuff, as I will be on Tacomsa. And, yeah, I wish there was a fourth and a fifth. It's been my favorite. Really? Yeah.

It really is. All right, Dave, tell us why Avatar is like Dances Bulls. Chief Ben Barnes, just randomly threw that out there, as if we would all. all understand that. Tell me what that is.

They're very similar in the fact that a white guy goes in, you know, Kevin Costner goes in, what, is a scout and dances with wolves and ends up basically by the end of the movie living with the tribe. I can't remember the name of the tribe. Yeah.

That he was with that. And it's been a long time since I've seen either of these movies. And then dances with wolves. The guy goes in. Wait, no, that's dance. You just told us dance with wolves. Yeah. And then Avatar, basically a white guy goes in in this. To an alien world. To this alien world falls in love, turns against the people that are trying to basically mine this planet or this alien world and ends up living with them.

Yeah, okay, I see it now. Yep. I just forgot the storyline. Yeah, so Costner and Dances with Wolves was the American sent out on the plane. and then he becomes basically an Indian. Avatar, white guy sent to another planet to extract resource. Is that right? Essentially, yeah.

But then he becomes like an alien. Yep. Okay. The big overall, I think, arching theme there is the misunderstanding of that alien nation by the culture that's taking it over. I have no clue about their culture. whatsoever. Their spirituality, nothing. So they're coming from

that perspective. And those two films are the revelation of that character coming to that. Like, oh, I had no idea that these guys were this way and this is a better way of life or whatever. There was no value and they had value

after he realized what was taking place. That's good. That's good. That is everything. Okay. another thing Grant Lee Buffalo Did y'all hear that song? Yeah The Last Days of Tecumsa

I'm gonna I'm gonna look it up and read the lyrics Did y'all listen to the song? He's on the podcast Well you should put it on your playlist On whatever you do Last Days of Tacumsa And because it's

It's very short I'm gonna get the The lyrics of it So this is the entire song by Grantley Buffalo and it says in the last days of tocumsa there in the end there were rumors of invasion even talk of spacemen but he couldn't believe that all he knew would fade in the ground below the airplanes tocumsa were laid that's the whole song there's not a there's not

another part of it. When I first read it, I just thought it was kind of a nonsensical just like, what? And I went online and there were some forums. One guy said, oh, he's not talking about Tacomsa, the Native American.

He's talking about Tacomsa, Oklahoma, a town that kind of fizzled out. That was what this guy said. I don't know anything about Tacumsa, Oklahoma. there is such a place.

But I think it's talking about Tacomsa. And here it is. In the last days, and here it is, in the last days of Tacomsa, there in the end, there were rumors of invasion and even talk of spacemen, which spacemen would be equivalent to people from another place. Yeah. Okay? So that makes sense.

They would have had the first white people they saw were, they would probably thought these cats are from a different world. Yeah, well, they literally did. It literally were. They thought, yeah, they absolutely did. And that would have been a long time before Tacompson. They'd have been pretty...

But it also would have... Yeah, spacemen... So, Grantley, Buffalo's trying to put it into context for us today. It would be like spacemen showing up here and taking our land. That's pretty good, Grant Lee. Yeah. He couldn't believe that all he knew would fade. Now, that could tie right back to Cicumsa.

in the ground below the airplanes to Kempza-related. I think that shows that the spacemen won and this sacred ground now's got airplanes flying over it and Kempst is in the ground. Like they took it over.

Yeah. They, what could have, what was now has airplanes flying over it. So in the ground below the airplanes to Kempst-Relate. Any thoughts? What do you think? Lauren?

Goes right back to the avatar. Yeah. I mean, it's a very similar story. Dave? Am I right? Am I right or am I right? You're right. You're right.

I don't know. I dig it. I have no idea, but the one thing that I do know is you're going to get a lot of messages about that. Yeah. That song, though, was perfect because the first time I, Steve Ronell is the one who told me to listen to it. Oh, yeah. He said, oh, you got to listen to Grant Lee Buffalo.

Last day it's the Compsa. So I put it on, and it starts off really cool and acoustic. I'm like, right on. And they start singing, and I'm like, yeah, I can get behind this. And then it ends. And it's over. And six seconds, the song ends. And just like DeCompson's life.

You wish it were longer. That's a great metaphor right there. It may have been exactly on purpose. Well, hey, guys, it's great to have everybody. Michael, you can buy Sunspotlights on the Meteeter website, your media.com. You can just, they're a little hard to find on there. So just type them into the search bar up there.

Yeah, if you type into the search bar, Sunspot lights, they'll pop up. And these lights have a lifetime warranty. Is that right? They do have a lifetime warranty. Tell me what that means. means everything except for the charger which has a two-year warranty the hat that it's mounted to really doesn't have a warranty it's a wear item right uh everything on that light is um we fix it with no charge except for ten dollars for return shipping yeah um except for damage which most of the

time we wind up just fixing and sending back anyway because it's too big of a hassle to contact somebody over some little part that they broke yeah so even that's an incredible warranty. Even down to the battery. So you'll buy, some people might, you know, these lights aren't cheap. That's for sure. No, they're not. You're not going to pay $100 for one of these lights.

But I'm telling you, it would be like, you see these guys driving around with these little John Deer tractors that like almost would fit in the back of a pickup with a little backhoe, a little front end loader. It's about as big as a tractor. Yeah. This guy's going and he thinks he's going to landscape his yard. And then you see the dude drive by with a big caterpillar. backhoe on the you know being pulled by a dump truck the little hundred dollar light is like that

little john deer tractor that the guy went and bought three bags of mulch at lows and it's going to put them in his front end loader and drive around the backyard you know the caterpillar tractor is the sunspot light if you've never used a coon light you don't know what you're missing and the dark is a dark place and once you start using a coon light you can never go back just like one Once you get on that caterpillar backhoe and start digging a ditch in your backyard, you ain't going back to that little John Deere. Nothing against John Deere. They just have a little home-grade version.

Hate mail. No, I mean, come on now. John Deer. That one's going to get you more mail than that. Anyway, you don't understand what I'm saying, though. I'm serious. Michael, I tell people all the time, I'm like, you have no idea. You need one of these lights.

I do. So you can buy them on the Meteor.com. You can buy them from Michael. Lauren and I were both wearing little tiny backpacking headlamps. And you could hardly tell we had a light on our head compared to you guys. Yeah. I'm not going to tell you what we were saying behind your back. They made film in raccoon hunting way better.

Yeah. 100%. We wouldn't have been able to do it without it. And you guys did an excellent job out there too. Well, you haven't seen the footage yet. Amazing. I don't care. I enjoyed watching you.

cord out there? I hope so. Sometimes. I enjoyed watching you work. I've never seen it before, and it was, it makes you understand a lot better about, you know, I watch meat eater. But you're just seeing Clay or Steve or someone on there. You don't see you guys running around back behind it. You know, I was following you guys around hiding behind trees and such.

You don't realize that either. Don't get in the camera shot. If you can find Michael Roseman in the film that eventually comes out. We'll give you a sunspotline. There you go. Are we in? I was pretty good at hiding. I know.

I know. If you find a picture of Michael Roseman in the final edit of this, we'll give you a sunspotlight. That's not a Sasquatch. That's Michael. That's what I said. Somebody's going to be sending in emails talking about they've seen a Sasquatch in the background. The part that aggravated me, though, is I wanted to scream when you guys were over there missing squirrels that I could see backed off from 100 yards. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you are like, I don't see him and y'all walk away and I'm like, he's right there. That would have been worth yelling at as well. Y'all could have edited that out. Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah, that happened because you had your thermal and we're looking at these juries sometimes from way back. You can use a thermal to squirrel hunt on cloudy days. If it's sunshine and it's worthless.

But on a cloudy day, you can find squirrels with thermal. Yeah, and it's not a thermal on a gun. No, no, it's a little handheld. It's a monocular. A little monocular you put. put up and you can see heat rising off stuff. That's pretty wild. Fun hunt, man.

Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it was a good time. This whole project was great. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, thanks for listening. And you're not going to believe what the next bear grease is going to do about. Foreshadow.

Let's go get some chocolate gravy. Yeah. First Lights Fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. products built for early mornings, full days in real use, hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters, no shortcuts, just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last.

Check out, First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.