Empire: World History - 162. The Oregon Trail & the Gold Rush

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Fort Laramie was once a stockade where European fur traders and Native Americans lived together peacefully. But by the 1850s it became a stop-over along the busy trail of emigrants moving westwards seeking gold and religious utopias. Their effect on the environment increased tensions with the local Lakota, and peace crashed down in 1854 all thanks to the death of a Mormon cow… Listen as William and Anita are joined by Katie Hickman to discuss life at Fort Laramie and the First Sioux War. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpirepoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Turinful. I think we're in one of the most fascinating chapters of American history, and one that is so frequently passed over, or just misrepresented, if you like me, have grown up with Westerns. The people who were there first, the Native American Indians, are really unimportant, or they're the backdrop, or they're the savages.

These are the only stories that I certainly was brought up on. There's a fantastic historian of this period, Pecker Hammer Lionette, and he uses this amazing phrase, which I'm just very anxious to put to our very, very special guest today because she's got so many great stories. Welcome to Empire, the brilliant Katie Hickman. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. It's so nice to be here.

Last time she was anocculating us in the Ottoman Empire. Yes, I was. And do you know how many people have written to me about Skeffington? Oh, how am I? Brilliant. Claiming to be relatives of old Skeffington. If you haven't heard that, clot-worthy Skeffington, the best name in history. I don't think we've had a better name, so it's true.

No, and arguably nor will we. But Katie Hickman is a guest today because she's written this a amazing book called Bravehearted, the dramatic story of the women of the American West. And I'm sort of acutely aware that you also come from that sensibility, that this is almost like discovering a new land because we've been fed such, well, horse droppings for so long about what it was actually like. Yes. I mean, if you were brought up on a diet of Westerns, as I was, and as so many people were, you could be forgiven for thinking that they just weren't any women in the West, or if they were, they were just peeping shyly, you know,

out of the windows of a wagon and never engaging very much. Or in some of the racier Westerns, peeping out of a bordello. Peeping out of a bordello, exactly. On the corner of a Clint Eastwood set. Precisely. This was always the moment my mother used to walk in when I was watching Clint Eastwood films. Yes, vaguely pornographic. But, of course, in order to settle the land, it couldn't just be men.

you needed to have women and you needed to have family. So that was the impetus for my book, really, was thinking, well, we never really hear about these women. Where were they? And what was their experience? Well, quite. I mean, but you've managed to do two things in this book, which I think are really important and interesting.

First of all, you go sister, putting women back in the story, thank God. But also, I mentioned this Pekehameleinen phrase, where he refers to the Indigenous communities as the dark matter of American history. Fantastic phrase. Absolutely brilliant phrase. You just can't see them. You look through them. It's what's beyond them.

Except when they bounce off the other matter, exactly. Yes. And also, of course, in all the westerns, they are horribly portrayed merely as savages. You know, and often they were white actors with their faces blacked out. Often, Ronald Reagan, it turns out. Often, well, at least once, certainly Ronald Reagan. We can come on to him later. So they were sort of almost cartoonish figures who were the backdrop to this incredible.

noble endeavour, which was to go west and to basically conquer this enormous landmass. Shall I give a little tiny bit of background to this, the geography of it? The geography and the timing that we're talking about, because we're talking about 1840s, 1850s when this really starts taking up. So the westward expansion, as it's known in American history, began in about 1840. And at that time, the United States of America, there were only 20. states and the geographical landmass of those states only covered a third of what is now we've come to known as America. The Great Plains were known as Indian Territory and they were kind of

notionally part of America. America had bought it from Napoleon Bonaparte. Go figure how did that one work? So it was kind of notionally part of America. But no whites had really ever been there. It was this enormously huge great area. Then you had the Rocky Mountain. which are about two-thirds of the way down looking from right to left on a map. And beyond that, the whole of the south and the west, so from California right through to Texas, wasn't American. It was Mexican, belonged to Mexico. And the Pacific Northwest, the areas that now Oregon and Washington State and bits of Idaho,

and I'm using heavy quotation marks because obviously there were a whole lot of Native Americans there, but it was disputed terrain between the United States of America and Great Britain. So when the first pioneers or past settlers, first colonists, however you want to describe them, made this journey from the Mississippi River. The Mississippi and the Missouri River was considered the frontier, so about a third of the way across America. When the first people set off, the first overlander set off, they were going to a foreign country.

It didn't belong to America. You know, I hadn't realised that beforehand. When you see these Westerns, there is no proper geographical location for it. You don't really know where it is that they're talking about. It's almost like a sort of fantasy land. And so as well as the history of the Indigenous, there's also history which is not part of our education at all, of a Hispanic California of a whole period when these cities are born. Absolutely.

And as we discovered last time, a Russian colony in part of it, yes. About a third of American territory, as it is now, belong. to Mexico. And then there was the Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848 under the treaty that was signed. America basically took this huge landmass for itself. But at the beginning of this, and this is a story that's just starting to be told in popular culture from a very specific prism. I don't know whether any of you have seen Yellowstone, which is this huge, great series of Kevin Costner and it, they keep skipping back in time for some specials. And they've got one of Kevin Costner's forebears who are crossing the West or trying to make a life for themselves.

And there are places which come up, which are going to be very important to your story, like Fort Laramie, for example, which is going to be the prism through which we look at this idea of settlement, immigrants and immigrants and refugees from land that belong to them for thousands of years. So let's focus in, if we can, and just use Fort Laramie as our touchstone. When did it suddenly exist and what did it look like right at the beginning? So Fort Laramie was originally a fur trading stockade that belonged to the American fur company. So the only whites really who visited this huge landmass beyond the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers were fur traders and trappers and the odd missionary. In popular culture, this is reverend territory, isn't it? This is Leonardo DiCaprio.

Exactly. In fact, I was going to say if any of your listeners have seen that film The Revenant, which is sort of loosely historical, I'd say, the stockade that you see in that, I thought was a completely brilliant reimagining of what socade such as Fort Laramie must have looked like. In fact, Fort Laramie was the biggest, and it became a settlement for these fur traders, all of whom, by the way, married Native American women for a brief period before, the emigrations began in 1840, it was a locust, pretty much the only place in this enormous landmass where Native Americans and whites lived together in relative harmony. So Fort Laramie itself, though, was named after a man who came to this part of the world even earlier. I was fascinated

to see that it's named after a man called Jacques La Ramee, this French trapper who apparently got to this part of the world and was taken by a rapid. Perho Indians, we're talking about 1819, 1820-ish. They were accused of killing him and burying his body in a beaver dam. And it's in recognition of him that this fort, or this fortification, was named Laramie, which I'm just very fascinated by. So it was, it was dangerous territory, it was dangerous territory where people could die. It was on the rim of the known world. I mean, I find out if I was in Fort Laramie back in September, and it's, in order to get there, if you were lived in that period, you would have travelled for 500 miles across the Great Plains,

arrived at Fort Laramie, having not seen any other... What state is it in today just to place it geographically? It's in Wyoming within sight of the Rocky Mountains. So when you get to Fort Laramie, travellers across the plains knew that they weren't nearly at the Rockies. The Rockies are like a kind of smudge on the horizon. So it was these fire trappers and traders who used it as part of their fur trading endeavours. but other people went there to, I mean, we're talking about tiny numbers. So there were various sportsmen, for example, who went to hunt the bison who would turn up there.

And then when the emigration proper started, which was in 1840, 1841, it became a kind of a way station for traveling along that route. Kind of like a road house where you restock, you have a little nap, you have some water, and then you go on your way. Is that what you mean, a way station? Not exactly, no. It was more a landmark. You know, it was very small. Sometimes people stayed there, but the emigrants tended not to. They might perhaps try to trade.

They might try to buy new supplies. And as the emigration progressed, because I should mention, it started very, very slowly. So in 1840, there was one family who left the Missouri, Mississippi frontier and traveled to Oregon. Just one family. That was the first non-missionary woman who went. In 1841, 100 people left the Missouri River. In 1842, it was 200 people. In 1843, it was 1,000 people.

In 1844, the numbers doubled. So these are still really small numbers of people. Katie, you mentioned earlier the date 1848 as the date which the treaty with Mexico is signed at the end of the war with Mexico and the absorption of this area into the United States. but it's also the date of an important discovery. Tell us about that. Yes, well, gold was discovered at a place called Sutter's Mill in California. And if you were Mexican, it would be incredibly unlucky. If you were American, it would be incredibly lucky because until 1848, the whole of California was Mexican.

The Americans had fought a war with the Mexicans. And some of these American colonists who'd gone over there to get new land and start new lives. And I think that gold was discovered in January, and the Treaty of Guadalupeedalga, which was the treaty between the Americans and the Mexicans, was signed in February. So literally within a week, within a week of gold being discovered, the Americans signed this treaty. I don't think it was ratified a bit later on until about July. They signed the treaty and suddenly this incredible wealth belonged categorically without any, you know, dispute belonged to America. You write so beautifully about this as well and about this sort of notion that goes out

that the rivers are running with gold. Talk about gold rush and gold fever. There's a lovely line you have. You say that you could get your hands on the wealth of creases merely by quote, dipping one's hand into the sparkling mountain stream. Yes, and it created literally a fever.

Before that it had been Oregon fever when everyone was crazy to go to Oregon what was then called Oregon Country before it became part of the United States. but I think it's really important to understand how much the numbers increase because it would have such a huge impact on the Native Americans and what happened subsequently. So in 1848, I think about 4,000 people had done this yearly emigration.

Everyone went together for protection. They started at a particular time. So 4,000 people was not very many. But of course, the gold was discovered and then news got back. In fact, news spread all around the world. And the following year 1849, which is why you talk about 49ers, in 1849, the numbers jumped from 4,000 people to 30,000 people left the Missouri frontiers and travelled overland. The year after that, it was 50,000 people who left. So all of a sudden, the numbers were just insanely large. And, of course, people were coming in by ship, so they weren't only going overland. And they were also going to San Francisco, which was then, it was called Yerba Buena, you know, when it was under Metz. It was just, it was nothing.

It was like a little tiny village. Suddenly there was this huge influx of people by ship. People, settlers were coming down from Oregon. You know, everyone just flooded to California, all thinking that they were going to get rich quick. You just said something which maybe some of the younger people won't know that minors, 49ers. I mean, what is the song that that's in? It's a very famous song, isn't it, minor 49er? It was a minor 49er.

No, that something came to 49. Isn't it Clementine? I think it might be. It was a minor 49er, I think. But what about the people who were there already, who was living in these places already, who suddenly have to witness this? You mean the Native American people? Exactly that.

You know, there may be a sudden, you know, and I think your numbers are fascinating, by the way, how quickly and exponentially the numbers start growing. It's essential to understand how destructive this. influx of people was. There's a wonderful woman, a biracial woman called Susan Bordeaux. Her name sounds very sort of white American, but actually her mother was a Lakota Native American called Red Cornwallant woman, and her father was a French-American fur trapper. Their family was one of about 300 mixed marriages who all centered on the area around Fort Laramie. It's one of the reasons why Fort Laramie is so

important in this period of history. And Katie, how rare was this coexistence? You painted a picture in your book of these many mixed marriages between indigenous women and fur-trapping men. How rare was this, this sort of state of coexistence? It wasn't rare at all. It was very, very common. It was extremely common. This is another really surprising fact. I mean, it was rare elsewhere in the United States, you know, the 26 states that already existed. But these fur trappers, I'm fascinated by them. You know, they were called fur trappers in the rocky mountains. They were known as mountain men. And they were men who went out to trap anything with fur, anything that moved, beaver, particularly was what they were after, because men's hats were made of a kind of

felted beaver. And it was like going to the moon. I mean, they were in a terrain that was utterly unknown to them, and they were just a very few of them, maybe a few hundred of them. So in order to be able to live alongside the Native American tribes, who mostly but not always nomadic, who roamed around this area, they made these strategic marriages with Native American women. And sometimes they were just marriages of convenience. Actually, will he not unlike the BBs in 18th century India. East India Company traders, very remarkable. reminded me so much of that period of history. They were often strategic marriages. If you wanted to be able to roam freely around the terrain of a particular tribe, you married a woman and then

you were kin. And another important point you bring out, Katie, is that there was a economic reason why there was coexistence. The indigenous peoples had access to furs, which the trappers wanted to buy, and the trappers wanted to buy them and the indigenous were happy to sell because it brought in money. Principally, really, it was to give a degree of safety and an degree of belonging to these fire trappers who were totally isolated in this immense terrain. So they married into various different tribes. Yes, which tribes were there? Give us a picture of the indigenous tribes of that area. So the tribes on the Great Plains were the very powerful warrior tribes of the various bands belonging to the Lakota people, then the Cheyenne, the Chishon,

the Arapahoe, these were the big, powerful warrior tribes that were different to the sort of more hunter-gatherer tribes who existed, for example, in California, who didn't have guns and didn't have horses. And did they get on with each other? No, they absolutely fought one another. Like anyone else, you know, in Europe, they had allies and they had enemies. So in order to, for their own protection, these white trappers, you know, married into a particular tribe. and then the areas that were roamed over and sort of controlled, if you can put it like that, by various tribes, they would have free rain, you know, pink ticket to go and trap these animals, which was a hugely valuable, lucrative trade.

I don't think that the emigration could really have happened without the fur trade, because these men had made the first sort of incursions into this enormous terrain. Overlanders were following the Native American trails that had then been picked up by the fire trappers. So they provided a roadmap of where to go apart from anything else. You mentioned one really very important name, and I'm so glad you did, the Bordeaux family, because I want to know much more about them, because thanks to one of the Bordeauxs, we have a wonderful history of the time period as well. But just, you know, when I said 49, I can't get that out my head, Katie, because I haven't heard that for such long time.

He's a 9-49. It's Clementine. I've looked it up. I didn't know. In a cabin in a canyon, excavating for a mind-dwell to Miner 49er and his daughter, Clementine. There is now a regular Anita Sing-Sog slot on this podcast. We had a rap last week. I don't mean to be, but I'm doing, following Tom Holland's Switzerland. But also, I think in Scooby-Doo, there was a character called Minor 49er. Anyway, that was just a little aside. Yeah, had a big beard, big shaggy beard. But yes, the Bordeaux family. Tell us more about the Bordeaux family. So they are also these fur traders, American fraud. French? I mean, the name sounds French. Susan Bordeaux, who left this wonderful account,

you know, first-hand account, which is extremely rare because she gave a Native American perspective. And of course, most of the histories that we have are written from a white American point of view. So Susan Bordeaux wrote this extraordinary account of the various things that happened. And she was biracial. So her father was James Bordeaux, who was a French American fur trapper. Her mother was a Brulet Lakota. So La Cota had various tribes that came under the kind of general banner of Lakota. With the best name ever, red cormorant woman. Red cormorant woman.

And so they were very typical of this small, I don't know, not sure if you could really call it a community, but there were about 300 families all living within the vicinity of Fort Laramie, which was like the kind of hub for everybody. and they all had these large families. And I'm very much, I'm very fascinated by the idea of this because this is a period before the immigration happened. And indeed into the sort of very first early years when the overlanders, you know, the settlers,

pose no threat to the Native Americans because their numbers were so few. The Native Americans actually welcomed them as a trading opportunity. They lived in this area. And the way that Susan Bordeaux describes it, is that it was a period of relative racial harmony between these white men and their Native American wives, who were from various different tribes. In Susan Bordeaux's case, her mother was a Lakota, but they married into all sorts of different tribes, depending on where they were. They married

Shoshone women quite frequently, for example, who were more towards the Rocky Mountains. They lived together, and there was no sense of sort of racial prejudice between the whites and the Native Americans. Or hostility. I mean, you write about the good times really well. I mean, through her words, you quote from her original source material, which I always find is really helpful. But she talks about that period that you've just been talking about and the emigrants start to flood in. They sort of come in great numbers and they eat together, which is a huge sort of leveller of people. You know, they're coming in, they're eating all this. Supper was dished out a pie plate, meat and bread was bill of fair, sorghum, molasses, a luxury. And she describes how all these different people gathered around this enormous big plate, share. not just food, but also music, impromptu dances and things that happen between races. Tell us more about that, because I love those stories. Well, her father was a very good musician. A lot of these fire trappers, you know, they carried their fiddles around with them into the wilderness,

which is quite a wonderful thought. And so her father and a lot of his friends could make music, and they would have these impromptu dances at Fort Laramie that Susan Bordeaux as a little girl remembers. And so she describes, as you say, all the little girls would put ribbons in their hand. They'd all get dressed up and they would watch the old timers, as she calls them. So the older settlers who were coming over, dancing these jigs. There's a lovely quote you've got here. Many times some of the older men were called out to the centre to step off a jig to fast music.

They can be sure to do it to perfection. Yes, exactly. And I like how she describes her father, you know, what you say about sort of all these people with their families and loves and lives. You sort of bring life to it, and she brings life to it, talking about her father, saying that he was a man who was born for gaiety and music. She says it is life with them.

They are never as happy as when the music was on the air and a crowd of people were moving to its rhythm. It seemed like a happy place for a while. I think it was. It was certainly a peaceful place where everybody, Native American and white Americans, all rubbed along very harmoniously. But partly the reason for that,

these men had their families and often they were marriages of real attachment. You know, they weren't just strategic. These men really loved their families and they brought up their children and they had no intention of returning home east. Sometimes they had white families, a bit like the situation in India. They sometimes did have white families back at home, but often they didn't. They'd thrown in their lot with these Native American communities on the Great Plains. And so it seems to me like there was this moment when, the relationship between the white Americans and the NATO Americans could, and indeed was very different to how it became later on. And then you present this picture after the gold rush

with gold-crazed emigrants coming like a living avalanche, sweeping before it all that the Indians prize. That's Susan Bordeaux's own words. Susan Bordeaux's own words, and she witnessed this. And of course, the principal thing, you know, the Indian war so-called hadn't really begun at this point. So there was no conflict. You know, all the settlers were terrified of what they called Indian attacks. Actually, it was extremely rare for that to happen. Something like only 4% of deaths during these migrations were from enemy fire, so to speak, you're much more likely to die from disease or actually shooting yourself. A lot of accidents happened. And cholera was also in 49, but the main damage really was environmental. So these settlers,

followed the Platte River. So the Platte River was like the highway, the motorway, that cut right the way across the Great Plains. It was in the absence of any maps, they would follow the banks of this river. The main detrimental effect, environmental effect that these larger, huge numbers of people had was they polluted the water,

they took all the pasture, and they had a very, very bad effect on the migration patterns of the bison. So before 1840, there were vast numbers of bison roaming around in these huge herds on the Great Prairies. There was 30 million of these animals. And the herds that they roamed in were as many as 100,000 strong. So they were absolutely, they were like one of the wonders of nature. Just this huge travelling cloud of dust travelling across the plain, which will sustain thousands of people.

You know, they use the meat, they use the fur. They travel with these herds. It's a migrationary pattern. You upend that. You're destroying countless lives. You destroy everything. That was the main sort of flashpoint of trouble was the fact that very soon these plain tribes realized what a bad effect these large numbers were having on the bison. And they totally depend. You know, they were a hunting people. They depended on the bison for everything, for their food, for the clothes that they wore, the buffalo robes. They would sometimes trade these buffalo. robes that were very valuable. They made their tepees out of them. All their spiritual belief centered around stories about the buffalo, also known as bison, by the way. And so it didn't occur to anybody that there could ever be an end to this vast natural resource. Well, it's an apocalypse, really. If you're watching it, with the numbers and the growing numbers that you just

highlighted, this is happening within years. So somebody will be seeing their life collapsing, like an entire city being detonated around you. And I just want to go back to one of the figures again, you said only 4% of all deaths on the emigrant trail were down to Indian attacks, where people fought back against this apocalypse that's starting to go on around them. Within 1840 and 1860, yes. And yet, between 1840 and 1860, you also have that very strong, pervasive narrative of the savage, the women killer, the rapy Indians. You know, all of that starts, all of that starts, all being promulgated. Now, is that as a result of fear from people who are going into the unknown? Or is it a deliberate propaganda to tell people you go, you go tooled up and you clean these people out?

Is it a mandate for giving people, you know, that sense of right that it's okay for you to go and detonate this entire civilization? I mean, where does that savage thing come from? Old as America itself. I mean, from the first Puritans arriving on the East Coast, Native Americans were portals. trade as these savages, you know, who wanted to kill and destroy them. And of course, in some instances, that was true. But I think it was a lot to do with sort of folk history. So on dark winter nights, you'd gather around the fire and your granny would tell you stories about someone she knew, who knew someone who knew someone else, you know, who was attacked by the savages and taken captive. They were like the boogeyman. There's a sense in which they were always pulled

trade as sub-humans. You know, the very fact that they're referred to as savages. Even the missionaries who went, were going west to allegedly convert Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. They were savages. They were heathens. They were benighted heathens. There was no sense in which they were human beings like you and me. Which left it possible in that mindset. To do the things they did. To commit a genocide. They simply did not count. And you give a picture in your book of when the gold rush takes place, all the stereotypes we have of the gold rushes of emigrants going and panning for gold. But we never hear that 16,000 indigenous Californians are enslaved, kidnapped and killed. Oh, my God. I mean, that was the least of it. It was a, you know, in California, it was technically a genocide.

So there is a figure before the gold rush, there were 150,000 Native Americans in many. many, many different tribes and bands. And these were very different from the warrior-like horse riding plains tribes, you know, like the Comanche and the Lakota, for example, who could give as good as they got and who indeed fought back against white incursion and won for quite a long time, which is something certainly I didn't know. But in California, they were very different. They tended to be hunter-gatherers. They'd already been weakened by Western diseases brought in by the Mexicans. And within something like five years of the gold rush, from 150,000 Native Americans in these various different tribes, there were only 30,000 remaining.

Thank you for bringing Susan Bordeaux as well, because thanks to her, we actually get an idea of how sometimes these enormous numbers of killings occur, because you said that she was one of the Brulet Indians. Her mother was a Brulet, Lakota, yes. So the first flashpoint of proper fighting was something called the Grattan Massacre. This was after the Fort Laramie Treaty when there had been a brief moment of... After the Fort Laramie Treaty. So the Native Americans complained to the US government that their resources were being taken and that their bison were being affected. And so there was a treaty, Fort Laramie Treaty, which happened very, very close to where Susan Bordeaux lived, which was going to set out various terms and conditions of how the

two sides were going to get along. And Lakota agreed to confide. find themselves to certain geographical area, but they were still allowed to hunt wherever they want. And they were paid by the US government? They were paid annuities. Yes, every year. There was supposed to be $50,000 worth of annuity. Within a year of this happening, the US government changed its mind and said, oh, sorry, we can't afford $50,000 worth of annuities. We're going to just pay for 10 years. And so the Native Americans were pretty fed up. It also was the period in which the military came into the picture. So Fort Laramie, which had been a fur trading fort, was bought by the US Army. And from then on, from 1849, I think, it became a US military post.

And of course, the minute you start introducing soldiers and guns, it becomes a much more friable situation. And this car wanders off. The car was pretty much dead on its feet. The cow wanders off, doesn't it? And then it's killed. This is a Mormon cow. I mean, it's definitely a Mormon cow. A cow that belonged to a Mormon group of people. This Native American shot it and took it for its skin. The Mormons complained. And a young firebrand officer called Grattan, Lieutenant John Grattan,

decided he was going to go. And as he put it, he was going to crack it to the Sioux. Sue is another word for Lakota. And he went into this village. And the chief was called Chief Scattering Bear. Brilliant name. turned his back to walk away from Grattan, and Grattan shot him in the back. Right.

This was a party of 30 young soldiers in a Lakota village, moving village, of many thousands of people. And so this was the most dishonourable, terrible thing that the soldiers could have done. You don't shoot someone in the back, yeah. And they slaughtered this group of soldiers. You know, Grattan's body was so badly mutilated that he was only recognizable by his pocket watch. Can I just also point out that the chieftain who took the lame Mormon cow, you know, the skinny Mormon cow, did offer a horse as compensation, but none of that helped. You just have this downward slide into, well, we'll find out into Wad. Join us after the break. Welcome back. Still with us, Katie Hickman, who left us on a cliff edge with this, I mean, this cow incident. It's really hard to think that something as mundane as a skinny cow could spiral into such an orgy of violence, but it does. So you left us just before the break. with the killing of Grattan and his men after this shooting of a warrior in the back. But what is the retaliation to this?

Because there must be one. These things don't go unanswered, do they? Absolutely, no, definitely not. And, you know, the military by now was totally involved because they wanted to protect this golden cord, which was linking the United States to California, which was the richest place on earth at that point. And so the government sent a general called

Harney with a whole load of troops across the plains to try to track down and punish this Lakota group who'd killed Grattan. And they came to a place called Ash Hollow, which is in Nebraska, to a peaceful village. That had nothing at all to do with the killing of... Nothing whatsoever to do with the Grattan massacre, as it was called. That band had ridden off to the north were completely out of anyone's reach. And so Harney, in fact, the chief there high forehead said that he wasn't going to fight because he could see that he was totally outnumbered and he decided he wasn't going to fight. They had no chance to prepare themselves. And so they went out with white flags to this general saying that they were going to surrender. And the Harni said,

no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fight you. And so they said, well, give us an hour to remove our women and children at the very least. And according to Susan Bordeaux, who spoke to survivors of this, that didn't happen. Harnie just attacked straight away and it was complete mayhem. He goes with the intent. I mean, he calls it a day of retribution is what he's after. And when, you know, one of these people with the white flags comes out an elder of the tribe and tries to shake his hand, he refuses to shake his hand. He's there with one purpose and one purpose alone, which is to punish and cause terror. It doesn't matter that these people were not the ones responsible for shooting Grattan and his men. They're still going to get them. The women and children

are they hiding in caves at the time? The women and children scattered. This is Nebraska. It's a very open plain. There was not really many places to hide. And there's an extraordinary account by this woman called Kaukawin, who Susan Bordeaux later got to know and talked to, who described.

It's a firsthand description by this woman of what it was like to be in this, what was effectively a rout, but a massacre by the American army on this otherwise totally peaceful group of people. that she turned around, she was running away, and she turned around at a certain point, and she saw this soldier who was about to shoot her in the back, this is this woman, Kukalwin. And because she happened to turn at that exact moment,

the bullet didn't go into her back, but it perforated her. Her stomach, it literally disemboweled her. And this woman was running along with half her guts hanging out, and she managed to hide in a washout, so in a little dry stream bed. And she lay there all day, waiting for the fighting to, die down, getting a sleeve of her dress, making a temporary bandage, stuffing her guts back in. Covered herself with tumbleweed. Covered herself with tumbleweed and finally saw a little skunk

and somehow, I don't know how she managed to do this, managed to kill and eat this skunk and took a strip of skunk skin and used the skunk skin to bandage herself up. That's no small feet when you've got your guts hanging out. No small feet with your guts hanging out. I mean, they were extremely, extremely resilient and strong these people. And finally, she was left on this battlefield, surrounded by dead people and dead horses, and she decided she was going to go and give herself up. And so there's an incredibly moving account by this woman of how she went towards the American troops singing her own death song, which is the chant that you might sing if you know that you're going to your certain death.

And what happens? Well, in fact, she was to take a prisoner. Harney took about 70 or 80 prisoners, mostly women and children, but having killed nearly 100 people of these completely innocent people in revenge. Many of those hundred women and children. And so forever after, you know, the name of Harney was, as you can imagine, like mud to the Native Americans. They called him Harney the woman killer he was known as.

Right. Because in the Native American societies, you would never, warriors were the ones who went to war. You would never set out deliberately to slaughter women and children. But Harney did that. Partly, it was a terror campaign. You know, they wanted to show their strength, show what would happen if any Native American tribe tried to push back against them. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work with the Lakota Indians, with the Sioux Indians, because, you know, they are outraged by this terrible massive.

of their women and children. So it sparks off a long-running battle, which, I mean, historically was known as the Sioux battles. The Sioux Wars, yes. Just to think it starts with a cow, a cow that could have been swapped with a horse, which could have all just been sorted out at the time. Yes, and then a horse would have been more than enough of a compensation to this Mormon. But I think there was, by this time, there is a sense in which white Americans were beginning to realize that they were not going to be able to settle these huge amounts of land. You know, the Native Americans were an impediment to them. And as the decades roll on 1860s and 1870s, there's a definite sea change in the attitude of particularly the US government towards the Native Americans. You know, this whole rather

wonderful sounding, very diverse society of these fur traders and trappers with their Native American wife, that is absolutely blown up. After that, it wasn't safe, even for suit. and Bordeaux's father, who was kin to half these people, it was not safe for him to be in that area anymore. So where does the Lakota Nation and the Sioux Nation go? Where is left for them to hide? They went north to their hearthland, which was the area, the Powder River country, it's called, which is between, if you can imagine, directly north from Fort Laramie, between the Black Mountains and the Big Horn Mountains. There's a whole huge area. They all went north to regroup. group and to strategise and to think how they were going, they realized that the whites did not

mean them well and that they were going to have to fight that. And it was an existential threat to their existence, just like it was to the buffalo and the bison. And it was the bison and the terrible environmental destruction done by these enormous numbers of people. But also, I think that by then they had a sense that if ever there were any minerals found, so there was the California gold rush. Gold was discovered in Colorado and gold was also discovered in Montana.

So basically, whatever gold or minerals, mostly gold but sometimes silver were discovered, that was the beginning of the end for the Native American people. You and I met last autumn in Boulder, Colorado in this very area. And there's a big massacre site there, isn't there, where another massacre took place? Yes, I think you're referring to the Sand River, Sand River Massacre, which was later on And I think that was much late. That was during the Civil War. So that was a man, was part of a militia who again attacked a completely peaceful village.

Of women and children and just gun them down. Yes, women and children. But, you know, not only that, it was brutally cruel what they did. So they didn't just mow these people down. They scalped them. This shows you what the attitude of not all whites, but of many white, whites, particularly the ones who were interested in settling or who just wanted the land, you wanted to terrorise the Native Americans. So at the Sand Creek, Sand Creek massacre, these militia soldiers

took gruesome souvenirs. You know, scalping, we always think of scalping, but if you've been brought up on Westerns, you think of scalping as being something that Native Americans did to whites. Actually, it was much more prevalent that whites did it to Native Americans, and people would collect scalps as souvenirs to take home. Not just scalps, but other body parts as well, including women's genitalia. They would cut it off and they would string it up on their saddles. The commander responsible for this, Colonel John Chivington, himself estimated killing 600 warriors, most of whom, two-thirds of whom were women children. It was butchery. We're going to have you back because you're sort of ending, or we are ending

this episode with this huge division now, bloody divide between the Native American tribes and the Americans and these people who are following this lust for golden land who are sort of travelling through historic Native American lands. And you talked about the Bordeaux family itself being ripped apart by this because you've got the father who was once of the people who's now being sort of almost outcast. The next episode we're going to talk about a young girl who's taken in by the Native Americans and can't. counted as one of their own. So there's a rather lovely story coming up, so stay with us. But just one final thought to end on this one, Katie. There was divided opinion at the time on Harnie's actions,

you know, Harnie's massacre of women and children near Fort Laramie. You had the New York Times calling it a massacre, just straight out saying it was butchery, what he did. But then a lot of other Americans saying it was a victory, it was heroism, he did the right thing, this is how we treat the savages. So you do have a really rather intriguing divide in America. It's a very, That's completely true. And there were definitely people on the East Coast and on those eastern states who thought it was appalling what was happening to Native Americans and pushed back and wrote about it and campaigned for them. Interestingly, a lot of the time, these were Quakers. The Quakers were very active, had always been very active. They were active, you know, abolitionists as well. But they were also people who campaigned in favor or who tried to point out that the barbarism was on the side of. the whites rather than on the side of the Native Americans, although I have to say, Native Americans were incredible warriors themselves. And as I said before, they fought back against the US Army and bested them for quite a number

of years before finally, actually the thing that really did for them was that the railway was built. And so once the railway was built, which was in 1869, so incredibly in the twinkling of an eye after these first little rag and trains went, then the army was able to move large numbers of troops. And once that was possible, then it was much easier for them to follow the Native Americans and fight them in sufficient numbers.

Right. Well, look, thank you so much for now, but we're going to have you back, Katie Hickman. Until the next time we meet, then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnden. And goodbye for me, William Durember.