Jocko Podcast - 325: Let Me Die Fighting. The Journey of Crazy Horse. Native American Warrior.

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

0:00:00 - Opening0:10:15 - The Journey of Crazy Horse.3:08:04 - Final thoughts.3:13:04 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:20:21 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 325 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us again tonight is Jason Gardner. Good evening, Jason. Good evening. Chicago Times special Camp Robinson, Nebraska, May 24th, 1877. Your correspondent has obtained some very valuable information in regard to the Custer Massacre from,

crazy horse through horned horse as his spokesman which is authentic and confirmed by other principal chiefs i interviewed the chiefs this afternoon lieutenant clark arranging for the meeting and william hunter acting as interpreter a man perfectly reliable and thoroughly converseant in the indian language this is the indian version and the first published the attack was made on the village by a strong force at 11 o'clock in the morning at the upper end of the village. This was the force commanded by Major Reno, and very shortly afterward, the lower end of the village was attacked by another strong force that commanded by Custer. The village was divided into seven different bands of Indians, each commanded by a separate chief

and extended in nearly a straight line. The village consisted of 1,800 lodges and at least 400 wikiups, a lodge made of small poles and willows for temporary shelter. Each of the wikiups contained four young bucks and the estimate made by crazy horses that each lodge had from three to four warriors. Estimating at three made a fighting force of 7,000 Indians. This is the lowest estimate that can be made, for there were a good many Indians without shelter, hangers on, who fought when called upon, and the usual number was much above 7,000. The attack was a surprise and totally unlooked for.

When Custer made the charge, the women, Papooses, children, and in fact all that were not fighters, made a stampede in a northerly direction. Custer, seeing so numerous a body, mistook them for the main body of Indians, retreating and abandoning their villages, and immediately gave pursuit. The warriors in the village, seeing this, divided their forces into two parts, one intercepting Custer between their non-combatants and him and the other, getting in his rear. Outnumbering him as they did, they had him at their mercy, and the dreadful massacre ensued. Horned horse says the smoke and dust were so great that foe could not be distinguished from friend the horses were wild with fright and uncontrollable the Indians were knocking each other from their steeds and it is an absolute fact that several young bucks in their excitement and fury killed each other several dead Indians being found killed by arrows Horned horse represented this hell of fire and smoke and death by intertwining his fingers

and saying just like this, Indians and white men. These chiefs say they suffered a loss of 58 killed and over 60 wounded. From their way of expressing it, I should judge that about 60% of their wounded died. While this butchery was going on, Reno was fighting in the upper part of the village but did not get in so far as to get surrounded and managed to escape. They say, had he got in as far, he would have suffered the same fate as Custer, but he retreated to the bluffs and was held there until Indians fighting Custer, comprising over half the village, could join the northern portion in besieging him.

These Indians claim that, but for the timely arrival of General Terry, they would have certainly got Reno. They would have surrounded and stormed him out or would have besieged and eventually captured him. From what I know of Crazy Horse, I should say that he no doubt is capable of conducting a siege. In both the Rosebud fight and the Custer Massacre, the Indians claim that Crazy Horse rode unarmed in the thickest of the fight, invoking the blessing of the great spirit on himself, that if he would be able to be able to be able to, that if he, was right he might be victorious and if wrong that he might be killed so that right there is a excerpt from a book called I fought with Custer which we covered on this podcast podcast number 48

you might want to go check that one out and that's from a section that we actually didn't cover on the podcast the section of the book that's called they fought against Custer and it's got a bunch of firsthand accounts from the Indians that fought against Custer. And I didn't cover that section because we had already covered the Native American perspective in podcast 45 where we discussed the book called Wooden Leg, who was a northern Cheyenne Indian who fought against Custer at Little Bighorn. and that's a a good podcast to listen to. I've got quite a few seal friends that that's one of their favorite podcasts.

But this man that gets mentioned here, this warrior, he's mentioned in both those books. And he's mentioned pretty quickly in both the books, but he's someone that is definitely worth exploring as a warrior, as a man, and as a leader. Jason, you sent me a great book a while back called The Journey of Crazy Horse. This book is written by a guy named Joseph M. Marshall III, who himself is a member of the Lakota tribe. He was raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. And he kind of reports on or explores his journey of discovering and understanding crazy horse and starts off with the with a certain a certain image of crazy horse and then learns more about him over time kind of going from a legend you know held aloft sort of above

being human to being a warrior to being a leader and then ultimately understanding him as a man And much of what is you know, I always like to do the first person accounting. That's what I'm always trying to get for the podcast. And this much of what Joseph talks about, Joseph Marshall talks about is stuff that was passed to him through his elders, through oral history. And that's, I think, what allows this book to come to life so well. So I guess we dive in, dive into the journey of Crazy Horse by Joseph M. Marshall, the third. Where did you find this book originally? So I got a buddy that lives in Iowa, Chris Anderson, and he sent me this book to read.

He was like, hey, you need to check this out. So about two years ago, I knocked it out on Audible. And then as we started to do the You know, we're doing the battlefield A Little Bighorn I'm like, well, I want to understand more about the For everything that Koster did wrong There was stuff that sitting bull and crazy horse were doing right

And I want to try to understand more of that So I hit this book up And then it made sense for something that we could talk about here Especially because it's from the Lakota perspective And brought down from their oral history Yeah, the, we're so the battlefield that you're talking about, this is an event that we do at Eschlon Front where we go and look at the, we go and walk the battlefield. And there's all these leaders to learn from. I mean, we do Gettysburg,

and this will be the first one that, the first series that we're going to do up at Little Bighorn. So going out there, understanding the personalities of these individuals gives you so much more depth into understanding their leadership decisions and the decisions that they made. You can start to identify how their personalities impacted their decisions. And then you can look at yourself and say, what part of my personality is impacting my decision? And we, I haven't been to, have you been to Little Bighorn yet? Yeah.

I have. Same kind of spiritual impact as Gettysburg. Yes. And it's incredible because you can, you can sit, you can sit in the gully where Reno had hit, well, they came across the river and attacked the south end of the camp because initially they could only see a portion of it and thought it was much smaller and then the morons didn't listen to their Crow Scouts who said, whoa, that's a much bigger encampment than you think it is. And you can see all these spots and it's just, it's, it's, it's really humbling to be able

to see it and talk about it and discuss what's going on and feel the energy it was there. Yeah, I'm looking forward to When are we doing that? August. It's August. All right, so let's get into this book. Here we go. Crazy Horse has been my hero since I was a boy.

He was arguably the best known Lakota leader in the latter half of the 19th century a turbulent time on the northern plains. At first, I knew Crazy Horse only as a fighting man, the warrior. I didn't know or care what he felt, what he thought. I cared only that he was a Lakota.

and that he was brave and performed deeds that fired my imagination. But as time went on, there were more stories. I now know Crazy Horse as a man first and a legend second, a very distant second. In fact, he is much like my father and my uncles and all my grandfathers. He walks straight, he is polite, and he speaks softly. But there is also an aura of mystery about him. him as though sometimes I am seeing him in a mist that blends legend and reality. It's that aura that seems to appeal to most people and I'm convinced that many want to connect with the mystery

more than they want to identify with the man. I can remember consciously hearing his name for the first time the summer I was six years old. My grandfather Albert and a man I knew as grandpa Isaac and I had just crossed the little white river and stopped to rest. As they both, fashion their roll your own cigarettes one of them compared the slow the slow moving little white to the greasy grass river I learned later that the greasy grass was in South Central Montana and was also known as a little big horn in the shade of a thick grove of sandbar willow the two old men spoke about a battle and names that I had never heard before or at least that I couldn't remember hearing before

rolled off their tongues that day along the river. One name was repeated more often than the others in the story of that battle. The name, his Crazy Horse. He was a leader of fighting men, and his mere appearance on the battlefield was apparently enough to inspire others to fight. Crazy Horse had led a charge of warriors against the soldiers in the second engagement of that battle. A leader commented on that particular action when recaptory. Counting the battle years later by saying, I have never seen anything so brave. By the age of six, I'd already listened to many stories from these two grandfathers.

I was well aware that being a fighting man was one way of being a man in the Lakota ways of old. I knew that men were often injured or wounded in battle and sometimes killed. And I knew that in a battle, a man could prove himself. For one man to obviously evoke such reverence and respect from two grandfifference. who told the story of 1876 greasy grass fight the battle of little bighorn was of some consequence in my six-year-old world I could think of only two or three other old men in the same category as these two grandfathers so when they respected someone it was no small thing that day by the little white river crazy horse became a part of my life We were having this conversation, I think, yesterday.

This idea, and I think I had brought it up on some other podcast, but the idea that this, if you're going to go out and fight, is that programmed into us? Is that just what we're raised with, that we think, hey, going out and fighting and being heroic, being a warrior is a cool thing, is a good thing? or is there some sort of genetic component to it because as a human being in a group of other human beings that are trying to survive 10,000 years ago, and we're part of a gang, we're part of a tribe. And if Jason is the kind of guy that goes out and, you know, kills a buffalo or defends our tribe, then you help us all survive.

And so we're naturally, we naturally intuitively, instinctively elevate the people that are ready to fight and we can't even control it. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, it's interesting because the good hunters also translate to their good warriors, right? But then in their society, in the Lakota society, the medicine men were also revered as well. So I guess people were elevated based on whatever they brought to the community with large. and then oftentimes with either the medicine men or the warriors, eventually you age out of it. And then they're looking at you for your wisdom.

You know, like Chamberlain, that guy comes over from like the intellectual side of the house because he's a college professor when he joins the army. So it's kind of like he wasn't really, that's what makes him so interesting and so cool is he's like good at everything. Every side of the Rubik's cube you examine with that guy, he's squared away. It's solid colors. Yeah. The thing is, though, you have all these different societies around the world. Some of them are totally disconnected from other societies. And there's like always a warrior tradition.

Yes. It leads me to believe that at least at some level, human beings look at the person that's ready to stand up and fight and defend. And they have an instinctual enhancement. Elevation elevated attitude towards that person. This guy's six years old, you know, I'm thinking, and he's hearing these stories and thinks it's cool in the parlance of our time, right? Like, hey, that's wow, this sounds cool. What was I doing when I was eight years old? Watching Apocalypse now thinking, that's cool. That guy, he's special forces. He's going on this mission up the river. That's cool. I don't know.

I mean, my dad wasn't in the military. There was no. My grandfather was, but he wasn't super influential in my life. And all of a sudden, as just instinct, that looks cool. It, yeah, because it doesn't appear to be generational. Even in this case, Crazy Horse's dad is a medicine man. He's not a fighter. And so, you know, you look at how we,

reverer sports figures. In a lot of ways, they're warriors. You choose a sporting team, and they're the ones that are going out and doing battle with other sporting teams and we're rooting for them,

and there's who are putting up on a pedestal for the most spot. It's not that different than combat, which isn't going that on. It's an interesting thing to discuss. Feels like there's an element of risk there, too? So skill and then risk. Yep.

And sacrifice, actually. For everybody else. Sacrifice for everybody else. And there lies in why we hold up like that courage as being a value that we, or something that we value, right, is courage. Yeah, like if you're, let's say, I'm a six-year-old or whatever, and you think of some guy who goes out and kills a buffalo and then brings it back or whatever, you think, man, if I want him to try to kill a buffalo,

that's going to kill me, you know? So he's, like, good at what he? does he's risk dying and then when he brings it back it's for all of us he's a hero you know right so kind of it's I mean that's obviously like a metaphor or the the sporting teams and stuff that's a metaphor essentially yeah that's a big metaphor for it's the same thing though yeah exactly but I and I think this is so obvious what we're saying I ask my actual question is is it instinctual is it like part of our nature that we can you know it may or may not get you know,

uh, expanded upon as we grow up and some people, uh, you know, being a warrior, stupid, why would you go out and sacrifice yourself for other people? Like,

that's an attitude so you can overcome this instinct. But it is kind of crazy to, to, to think, hey, this is the way many different societies from all different background, all kind of elevate this warrior. Is it an,

is it an natural animal instinct to think, this person's going to protect the tribe? This person's going to help the tribe. This person is going to feed the tribe. This person's possibly going to sacrifice themselves for the tribe. And that's a positive thing. And we're going to elevate them. Because they're putting the tribe before themselves.

They're putting themselves at risk in order to save the tribe. And that's why it's very likely instinctual. And I don't, I think that's no matter where you look. If you examine closely, that's still revered today. This individual human overcame the, the instinct of self-preservation to look out for me and look out for my family, we're going to elevate that individual. All right.

Going back to the book here, every Lakota baby was born with thick, shiny black hair that stayed black for most of adulthood. But the hair of the son of Crazy Horse seemed to grow lighter even as he lost his baby fat, which happened to him quicker than in most children. To his mother and the other women in his life, it was an endearing characteristic, although they worried that it would prove to be troublesome for him later in life. Outside the reach of sharp ears, he was referred to as the light-haired one.

To his face, he was simply called Gigi, or light hair. So he's got a distinctive characteristic out of the gate, which is also kind of interesting. You know, you got to, my name is Jocko, which is a weird name. And I've had that, it's a nickname, but it's been my nickname since I was born, which meant when I met someone, when I was five years old, and seven years old, and four years old, and 10 years old, they would say, what's your name? And I had to say this weird name, you know, my name is Jocko. Like, that's a, I didn't really know that that was just a nickname until I was a little older.

So you kind of have to contend with this, right? It's kind of like, oh, you got to contend with this. What? Having a weird name. You having a weird name. Yes, I know that. Do you know that? Yes, sir, I do.

Did you feel that a little bit? Like when you were six years old? Yes. I did. You did. Now, Jason was as, hey, I'm Jason. Good. You don't have to spell it.

You don't have to mispronounce it. You're just good to go. No. So I think these kind of distinctive characteristic can sometimes help. They can also sometimes, I think, hurt kids when you're used. young. You got some weird, like sometimes it happens to kids grow really tall quickly. Yeah.

And they don't, they don't like it. You know, they feel like awkward or people are looking at them or when you get glasses, right? That's another thing. Maybe it's not that big of a deal. When I was a kid, like when someone had glasses. They had to contend with that. Yeah. You had to deal with it.

But they're tempering them. It's making, I mean, that's the metaphor he uses in here that the teasing tempers crazy horse to make him hard. And it's a boy named Sue. Yes. That's exactly what I was thinking about. and his metaphor is like hanging the staff in the TP for five years to slowly temper it and make it harder and then you're going to carve that ash dive into a bow.

We were talking about buds earlier and amazed that there's still a huge attrition rate. And our thoughts are it's because a lot of the some of the folks that are there and are such good athletes, they've never failed at anything. Whereas opposed when I got there and I'd already failed at a bunch of stuff, And I was used to getting beat up and getting knocked down. It's like, okay, I'm just going to dust myself up and get moving again. Yeah. You and I were saying that when the instructors looked at us and said, you suck.

We were like, yeah, I know, obviously. But if you're like the star athlete and you get told you suck and you and then you lose the race. Because by the way, because you're so athletic, they make you do a bunch of jump squats before you do the sprint race. And then you lose. And then they call you a loser. And it's never happening before. and all of a sudden you're like, I,

I, this isn't for me. I can't win in this arena or I'm not good enough. And meanwhile, you got Joe slightly below average athlete, which is me, just like, well,

I'll keep going to keep going. Yeah, I know, but I'm going to keep going. I'm used to this. Yeah. The other thing, and he mentions it in the book,

I'm not going to highlight it, but they called him, the women decided to call him light hair to just get it over with. It was like, hey, you know, oh,

you look a little bit funky, cool. We're just going to make it, we're just going to call you that. Just get it out in the open. Get the elephant in the room out. Why not? Isn't that what all the psychology does? It's like, oh, you're afraid of elevator, so let's make you look at a bunch of pictures of elevators.

And eventually maybe you get in one. And then late, you just do graduated exposure. And that's what they did here. It appears to work. Yeah. It's okay to be offended, everybody. They make you harder. There came a day when someone handed light hair, a bow, and a quiver of arrows to suit it to his size and strength.

It was the first tangible sign of life that lay ahead. And his mother smiled because she was proud her son would follow the path of a hunter and warrior. Hey, the caveat, obviously not reading the whole book. It's an awesome book. If it sounds a little stilted when I'm reading it, like, wait, what's going on? It's because I'm not reading the whole book. Get it. And the audiobook, you mentioned.

I think the audiobook is read by the author. I believe so. That makes it cool too. Change came into light hair's life. This is fast forward. Change came into light hair's life in yet another way. She who gave him life lost her own. In the perception of the child at the time,

the perception of time for a child can often be irrelevant, especially in a culture that was not given to measuring it. He was too young to understand that death is a part of life. Later, he would realize his mother's time on earth had been much too short. So his mother dies when he's young Fast forward a little bit more seasons turned And I just just FYI You know being a guy that's into language and stuff

There's a whole section that this thing starts off talking about the the language the Lakota language Really cool to read I'm not gonna read it for two reasons The primary reason being just me sitting here trying to pronounce these words would be a disaster but they add a lot to the story when you read the story. So another reason to get the book. One day, light hair and his sister were given new mothers. They were sisters, quiet and polite as they walked into the circle of their new life as the wives of Crazy Horse. So the crazy horse that we're talking about in this particular moment is the dad.

The dad that you mentioned Jason is a medicine man. So the dad is named Crazy Horse at this time. And that's where they're talking about when they refer to Crazy Horse. horse, not light hair, the son, who is the crazy horse that we all know about. And their mothers and daughters of his own son, going forward a little bit more, the boy didn't completely understand all about his father, but he did know that crazy horse didn't hunt like the other men or go to war. A father who was a medicine man and didn't do the things men did caused the boy to feel

all the more different. He wondered most of all why he looked different than the other boys. So that's another thing in his childhood. Everyone's talking about my dad's in the teams or my dad's going to war. And he's like, well, my dad's going to go, you know, move smoke around and stuff. So he feels awkward about that. Hunting was the Lakota lifeblood. Like the wolf, fox, eagle, mountain lion, and hawk, the Lakota were hunters.

At age seven, lighthair realized more and more that hunting was the way to have fresh meat and deer and elk hides for clothing and buffalo hide for lodge coverings. He also sensed that he would be part of the process somehow. Like all boys, light hair was becoming skilled with his bow. He had progressed to a stouter bow, stronger than the first he was given. One made in proportion to his size and strength. His favorite game had changed as well. Shooting arrows through a rolling willow hoop had become too easy and boring.

So his uncle, Little Hawk, and a few other men introduced him to a new game shooting at grasshoppers. The rules were simple. Walk along the prairie with an arrow on the bowstring and shooted a grasshopper when it flew. A rolling hoop was a much easier target. A grasshopper was about the size of his little finger and flew erratically and fast. The men would suppress smiles when at first the boy was unable to get off a shot. Before he could pull back the string, the insect was back in the grass. But as he learned to hold his bow ready, he could send an arrow in the general direction of the flitting grass,

Shooting at grasshoppers was not boring. It was, he learned, a very humbling experience. As the summer wore on, his reaction became faster and more and more. His arrows only narrowly missed. Grasshoppers, an old man told him, have much to teach. Awesome. Just awesome stuff. You're going out to see Dudley, aren't you?

I am. I was just thinking that. I wonder if Dudley does that or is going to start doing that walking around zapping grasshopper. Yeah, you're going to get dialed in. Freaking awesome. What a, what a way to grow up and what a way to get good. You're just, that's what you do.

That's what you do. Fast forward a little bit. Important character comes into play. As the days past, he unknowingly attracted the interest and curiosity of a man called High Backbone. The mini conju with an Oglala wife, and he liked what he saw in the shy light hair. And I might, I might, I don't think I've mentioned that yet. So Marshall mentioned it, um, that crazy horse is quiet and he doesn't talk a lot,

but they, they do give some examples in the book of when he's a kid. They're playing games and he's not saying anything. You know, he just, he's a quiet. He's a quiet. The term he used here is shy. Perhaps it was the boy's quiet determination or his innate humility. High backbone himself was a quiet man, not given to pursuing the path of glory. but he was deeply committed to achieving the status of Weika, the complete man.

The complete man embodied the best qualities of the hunter and the fighting man. Though all men necessarily filled the roles of both provider and protector, the hunter warrior, not everyone could achieve the highest ideals for both callings. High backbone was one of the few. High backbone was a leader of fighting men, muscular and broad-shouldered, exuding the confidence of a man who not only had physical strength, but also a lifetime of experience and accomplishment. So this guy, high backbone, kind of becomes a mentor to light hair. And this idea, this idea of being good in multiple phases, you know, who are you saying about the Rubik's Cube? Chamberlain.

Chamberlain. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, he's good on every side that you examine him. Yeah. And that's what high backbone has that same quality. They lay out these virtues of the weeka, which I thought was really interesting. Go. And it's in the forward, but it says the virtues are generosity, courage, fortitude, and wisdom.

And the very first thing they're saying for a warrior and a man is generosity, which is, pretty cool, courage and fortitude and wisdom. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit. Like most Lakota boys approaching the age of 12, light hair was a proficient hunter. Like all hunter's light hair learned to sit motionless in the driftwood blind along a creek

for the better part of an afternoon, waiting for a white tail to move with an effective killing range of his bow, which is as far as he could throw a stone with all his might. It's pretty cool. That's a pretty good, I'm thinking he's probably able to go 60 yards. What's your estimation?

Oh, I don't think he's. Oh, no, he's 12 years old. He's throwing a rock. He's 12 years old. He's throwing a rock. What do you think he could throw a rock? I think he's probably at 15 or 20 yards. Really?

Yeah. Echo Charles, assessment. 35, 40. That would be 1. Think about it. What's his draw? What's his draw strength at 12? It's probably not that far.

small yeah that's a good point but dude we're talking about a kid that's just walking around freaking shooting grasshoppers all day long so if you heard about like the um the the the old British long bow archers that had like a draw weight of 120 pounds or something and they weren't compound bows they were just drawing back that much weight yeah so the Mongols had to 80 pound bows that's insane that's insane. It'll be interesting to hear what they're, what they, someone will know or put in the comments.

Yeah, someone will tell us. Somebody will tell us what the, what that range was. So he's hunting. Here's another, he's got another friend. Another friend named Lone Bear. Fast forward a little bit.

Lone bear and light hair rode straight to a slight rise north of the fort. And this is, so now there's, they're doing exploring kind of like kid stuff. And they go to look at Fort. Leromey warned by crazy horse that's the dad and high backbone not to go nearer but it was a good enough vantage point to see buildings in the surrounding area a wide trail led to the fort from the southeast and away to the west on the other side of

the main area of activity which was among the light colored buildings and along the trail what were what they could only assume to be abandoned wagons they resembled skeletons most of them stripped down to the frames whites were everywhere Along with their horses, mules, oxen, and cattle, the occasional barking of dogs reached the boys' ears. South of the buildings, they could see the tops of several Lakota lodges. A few Lakota stayed near the fort from the days before the soldiers had taken over in the days when it was only a trading town. Now the rumors were the soldiers had come to protect the travelers along the Shell River Trail. And again, he gives a lot of good detail about all the way this settlement is happening.

The whites are coming, how they're doing it, what it looks like to the Indians. Yeah, and I'm trying to give enough that you can understand the story. There's a real bad smallpox outbreak prior to this happening. A lot of them are just like, just I'm staying away from white people, period. It wiped out entire groups of people. Yeah. They're scared of that. They don't want any of that. The Lakota called it the council at Horse Creek.

The white peace talkers called it the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851. The whites wanted three things. First, they wanted no more fighting among the people gathered. The black feet and the crow were called upon to live in peace with the La And the Lakota were in turn to live in peace with the snakes and so on Tell the wind to stop blowing some reacted or the rivers to stop flowing Second the whites seem to want to say where the land ended and where it began by drawing a picture on a parched hide Beyond a certain line was crow land and behind it was black feet

But who could find that line on the earth someone wondered Third the travel on the Shell River Trail must not be molested, they said, for they were traveling under the protection of the Great Father, who lived in some city far to the east of the Grandfather River. The Great Father would know if his people on the trail were harmed. The trail must be holy in some fashion suggested an old Lakota man, Riley. Thereafter, the Shell River Trail became known as the Holy Road. For agreeing to these three things, the Peace Talkers,

said, the great father was empowering them to pay annuities that amounted to many thousands of their money in dollars. The annuities would be in the form of food, beef, cattle, flour, and beans for starters, and various other goods such as plows, hose, and other farm implements. There were many raised eyebrows and helpless shrugs at the listing of other goods, but in the end, they were accepted. very very strange you know like it's just a complete it's a culture just totally separate even as you're hearing this deal you're thinking wait you're going to say this land is

that's like if you came into me right now and said hey a jocco I'll give you money for your for the air I'd say you want to give me money for air cool okay you give me money I then all of a sudden you had some contraption that like sucked the air away yeah exactly I was trying to wrap my head around this whole thing and that's exactly what's what's going on. And it's clear that like the whites there,

they obviously weren't organized and sound kind of screwed up to because they had their stuff. They were trying to muddle their way things through this whole mass on. Like, hey, yeah, we've got annuities coming and then they don't show up and they're like, oh, what's up?

The annuities too is a real good, you can see, and we're going to see it throughout this story. Just the way that we as people, if you become reliant on someone else, if you're giving stuff and you become reliant and you forget how to do things for yourself, you know, I don't know if the grand plan of the whites was to get them hooked on these annuities and then we can just kind of take advantage of it. I don't know if that was their grand plan, but that's what happens. It definitely, like, part of a three-prong strategy, one, the annuities, which I bet you they were just doing to kind of like calm things down. But then it wound up being like what actually screwed everybody over. And it's so relevant to today, right?

Because these annuities are like the algorithms on social media or they're like fast food or all kinds of other real easy stuff that's like, oh, cool. I'll just swing through McDonald's because I'm kind of hungry and not order something healthy off their menu. And then you're messed up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, any time this is from a greater perspective of communism, right?

Hey, look, I'm going to pay you regardless if you do your job well or not. Well, okay, cool. I'm not going to do my job well. And you're going to pay me. Right?

That's great. It happens with, you know, certain position, certain government positions. It's like, oh, you're going to get that paycheck regardless. If you're at the DMV, no offense, DMV, but if you work at the DMV, it doesn't matter if you process four license applications today or 29.

What's your motivation to produce any more stuff if it's all going to get taken from you and redistributed? Then you're just going to do the minimum. And I think that's one of the reasons of why communism is kind of falling on its face in a lot of places. It's very disturbing. So, fast forward a little bit. Each summer's lines and lines of wagons were not the same as those that had come the summer before. They carried a different group of whites who had never seen a Lakota or a Kiowa or a blue cloud, but who had been filled with stories about the dangers from the brown skin marauders.

So wide-eyed and fearful were the whites who arrived at the fort, not comforted by the sights of scowling Lakota men. But the Lakota were likewise troubled at the sight of so many white men. Some of the old ones would shake their gray heads and speak a warning. In any land among any kind of people, three human weaknesses are at the root of trouble. Fear, anger, and arrogance. Oh, my goodness. Say that again.

Right? How relevant is that to us today? Yep. Fear, anger, and arrogance. those weaknesses were about to be mixed. Yeah. Fear, anger, and arrogance. By the way, root cause of those, obviously, arrogance is ego,

but anger often also ego. And a lot of these circumstances are very egotistical in this book. That the anger is triggered from ego. Yeah, and the hatred, which I think kind of is a little bit different, but you can attach it to anger and usually it's rooted in some kind of fear. Yeah. Life has a way of creating strange circumstances that often lead to a bad end or an unexpected title.

I was like, damn it. You know? Because you don't want to admit that. You don't want to admit it. You don't want to say, you know what? Sometimes things happen that result to a bad end. It's such a sad thing to think about, but it's the freaking reality of life. So he goes on to this section here that speaking of anger and fear and arrogance, there's a cow that wanders into this camp.

And it says it was into conquering bears camp that an old foot sore cow wandered on an especially hot afternoon. The Lakota didn't own any cattle, of course, so it was correctly assumed that she had been lost or abandoned by some white man, trying to escape the barking dogs. She was running between lodges, knocking over meat racks. After the loft or stop, someone realized that, although old and thin, she was fresh meat. So they, you know, they kill a cow. Word of the predicament spread quickly through the camps. Because now someone's mad. I believe it was a Mormon.

They keep calling him the Mormon man, a Mormon man wanted the cow. He's complaining to the soldiers that his cow had been stolen. So word of the predicament quickly spread through the camps. The next afternoon, the soldiers started from the fort in two wagons and with two wagon guns. But the man leading them was not Fleming. This is one of the soldiers that they had worked with or knew. It was one called Grattan. A new officer lately come from the east.

With him was a man married to a Lakota woman, a speaks white, brought along to translate. Grattan, it was later learned, had been a. loud about his disdain for the Lakota. So you got now an arrogant guy that's also afraid. And when the soldiers reached his camp, Conquering Bear left his lodge to meet them. Even as they jumped from the wagons and formed two lines facing the camp,

the old man was still trying to stop the trouble. But his efforts were ignored. Meanwhile, the Speaks White rode up and down the line of soldiers shouting threats in Lakota. South of the camp hidden in low shrubbery, light hair and lone bear so you got young crazy horse and his little buddy watch the old man and strained to hear him but couldn't gratton stepped down from his horse and help load one of the wagon guns aimed into the camp the officer shouted the wagon gun blasted and all movement seemed to come to a stop but for a heartbeat the tops of a lodge lodge's poles splintered into many pieces then the soldiers aimed their rifles and fired before the echo from the wagon gun had faded, astonished and unable to immediately perceive the reality unfolding before their eyes.

The two boys watched Conquering Bear fall back, struck in the chest and stomach. The second wagon gun boomed, and then the Lakota men reacted. Before the soldiers could reload their rifles to fire again, a few Lakota guns boomed. Arrows flew, and then angry men ran toward the scattering soldiers. Grattan was one of the first to fall. So like that's how things kind of start to go bad in the world. It's like a little misunderstanding. Then you have that anger, that fear, that arrogance.

And initially they tried at some point prior to this whole thing breaking out. He's like, hey, we're going to give you, sorry about the cow. We're going to give you a couple of good horses, way better than a cow in our estimation, in trade for that. And they're like, oh, no, no, that's not going to work. show up and start shooting, which obviously does not not work, doesn't work out well for grabs.

Doesn't work out well for grad. It doesn't work out well for anybody. No. There's a, there's certain sections in this book. So there's books, there's part of the book, he's telling the story of Crazy Horse,

and then he's got sections, Marshall's got sections in here called, um, called reflections. And he's got this one section where he kind of gives his perspective on the events that he's kind of written about. He says, and I'm not going to read the whole thing. There's a whole bunch of incredible points that he makes.

He says, Crazy Horse came into the world at least four generations ahead of mine. He was born in the early 1840s, perhaps as late as 1845. I was born in 1945. As Lakota males, he and I have much in common. Enough of Lakota culture has survived through changes during those four generations, fortunately, to allow my generation to identify strong. with his so he has like things in common he says this by the time light hair was 10 or 11 Euro-Americans were a consistent presence and an increasing annoyance the Oregon Trail had been

cut across the southern part of the territory beginning the late 1840s it became a steady stream of white immigrants moving east to west from late spring to midsummer tens of thousands of people thousands of oxen mules and horses and hundreds of wagons passed through every summer for 20 years. Those people carried with them many things new to the Lakota. Some beneficial, such as iron knives and cooking pots, and some destructive such as liquor and disease. Most of all, they brought change.

My grandparents and their generation were not too different from light hair parents and grandparents. The elderly Lakota of the 1850s in the face of the white incursion and changes brought to them were telling stories and reminding. their children and grandchildren to remember the trails they had walked. Handcrafting a bow out of ash is almost a lost art for the Lakota. My grandfather taught me because his father, white tail feather and second father, which is his stepfather, Henry Two Hawk, taught him to make bows and arrows.

They learned it from their fathers and grandfathers. And the methods and process are the same as those that were taught to light hair. exactly the same. Each time I've had the opportunity to make a bow, a thought invariably passes through my mind. This is the way it has been done for hundreds of generations. I make my bows the same way Crazy Horse did. That is only one of the many connections I have with him as Lakota boys.

There's a great discussion somewhere in this book where they're talking about the elders and they're talking specifically about change. And they're like, hey, we used to use lances to hunt the buffalo before we came up with bows and arrows. And we transitioned over that. So we've got to be ready to change as things come along. And they give that historical example. And that's a struggle, isn't it? When we think of valued traditions that we have in our culture, what do we strive to hold on to?

And what do we let go of as we grow? Yeah. And there's, I don't remember if I'm going to cover this or not, but I'll bring it up right now. One of those same types of discussions, they're talking about there's a time when it's time to get on a new horse. And like the old horse isn't working anymore, you've got to get on a new horse.

And that's a good expression to keep in your mind because you're riding that horse and it's starting to fade or it's not able to do its job anymore. You got to get on a new horse. Even though you're comfortable with your old horse, even though that old horse has been good to you, it's not going to work out anymore. You've got to be ready to transition to the new horse.

getting now back into the story out of the reflections and back into the story light hair had been in the camp but a few days when a raiding party prepared to go against the Pawnee and Omaha who had become too daring of late coming north well past the running water he accepted the invitation to go along the raiders in the eat the raiders went east toward the loop river an area of rolling hills and tall grass and many deer. There they separated into two groups. One turned south to probe into Pawnee Country and the other, with spotted tail and iron shell leading, had spotted an Omaha camp in the breaks of the east, in the breaks east of the loop. A small number of the group crept close to the camp

while the rest hid and waited. Lighthair was one, staying close to his uncle. They crawled in among the horse herd and slowly cut the hobbles from the horse's legs and chased them out of the camp. Though the Omaha didn't immediately respond, a large contingent soon started out to recover their horses. Spotted Tails Group waited a little longer, then attacked the camp. The few Omaha men left in camp fought hard, but so did the Lakota.

Spotted Tail charged several times on horseback alone, and Lighthair claimed his first victory as a fighting man. And Omaha tried to attack through some tall grass, but Lighthair stopped him with a well-placed arrow. The confusion and chaos delayed his reaction to what he had just done, though he was vaguely aware of the man's death throws. Seized by a sudden bravado, he crawled through the grass to take the scalp of his first kill. A wave of sickness swept through him. The dead Omaha was a young woman. He turned away. The fighting was over.

The raid had been successful, though the Omaha had recovered some of their horses. spotted tails daring and courage was the talk around the fire light hair sat quietly wrestling with the reality of taking a human life like all newcomers to it he had learned something about the unfettered violence of combat ordinary perception did not exist and senses became confused the Omaha who attacked him seemed to move so swiftly too swiftly for a deliberate reaction on the other hand when he had let go of her head because he didn't want her scalp everything around him seemed to move very very slowly her hair was soft thick and very long light hair said nothing although he knew the

overall outcome of the raid had been good they had no they had new horses and no one had been hurt but the face of the dead girl stayed in his mind it's a humbling experience for him it's just It's absolutely awful. And they go into it and we'll get to some of these parts. But when they get done with a battle, they go back and kind of tell stories. And that's the norm. And he's already a quiet kid. And this just solidifies the fact that he's not going to talk about what he's doing.

A man from the fort came looking for iron shell with a message from the French trader Bordeaux. the long knives and it's a the long knives what they call the the soldiers because they have long swords so they call them long knives they call the soldiers long knives the long knives had received word that the great father which is basically when they say that they're talking about the president or at least some form of the supreme government of america the great father was very angry over the killing of grattan and his soldiers more soldiers were being sent and their purpose was to punish those who had done the killing it was an ominous message but not one totally unexpected had the great father been told that the soldier grattan had opened fire first had the great father been told that

more than adequate payment had been offered several times for the worst worthless cow of the mormon white man why should the great father care about such facts someone asked that was the problem everyone agreed the whites had one truth and the lakota another Yeah, I haven't talking about that quite a bit, especially on the academy. I haven't used those terms, you know, I have one truth and you have another, but I always say I have one perspective and you have another perspective. And if you think that your perspective is the right one, you're not correct. I mean, it's literally not, if you can't say that, you can't look at something, you can't look at a situation, you can't look at a plan, you can't look at an idea, you can't, you can't look at an idea, you can't, you can't. You can't look at a scenario and say, oh, I see everything and I understand it.

The old saying, there's two sides to every story. Actually, there's 48 sides to a story. There's all these different sides. And when these things break down, it's because you're not listening to other sides of the story. It's not you're believing your own story, your own side of the story. And you can't let that happen. And you have to put into your calculus that other people see things. differently if you don't put out in your calculus you're not going to get the right answer

so many of these wars so many wars are just misunderstanding start with just a straight up misunderstanding or a little incident that could be de-escalated and it just turns into the freaking disaster summer past light hair grew taller his voice deepened and he walked with a sure step when there was dancing he stayed in the shadows satisfied only to watch light Hair fast forward a little bit light light hair remounted and put his horse into a gallop from another and higher vantage point he could see that smoke was rising from the encampment so he's out on like a little personal patrol of his own which is he that's another thing I haven't done a good job indicating he likes to be by himself so he goes out and hunts by himself he goes out in the woods and just sits by himself he likes he's kind of a loner so he's out on one of these sort of solo operations and he says From another and higher vantage point, he could see that smoke was rising from the encampment. A few horses were scattered about, watching to the north, but there was nothing else.

No children playing, no dogs running about. Leaving his horse hobbled, he ran toward the camp. Light was fading. A dog barked tentatively, and a stench hung in the air. Among the smoking lodges and collapsed poles were objects scattered over the ground. Whatever had happened was over. An eerie silence hung over the camp. Nothing was moving.

The horses he had spotted earlier had not moved. They were still gazing intently at something toward the north. Lighthair entered the camp. The objects seen from a distance now took distinct shapes. They were raw-hide meat containers, willow chairs, clothing containers, robes and cradleboards, scattered indiscriminately as if by a sudden angry wind. but it hadn't been a wind. Someone had attacked the encampment.

The horses had been telling him something, looking north as they had. He walked over to a hobbled mare. She appeared unharmed, so he fashioned a jaw rope, untied the hobbles, swung onto her back, and urged to her into a lope toward the north

where there had been movement earlier. If the people in the camp were running away, they would be moving as fast as possible. In a bare patch of ground, he saw the grooves left by a pair of drag poles. Pausing to look, he saw other signs of drag poles. Then he saw something else. Even in the fading light, the distinctive prints of the metal shoes worn by long knife horses. Unless soldiers had taken to pulling dragging poles, something wasn't right.

Throwing caution aside, light hair galloped in the direction. of the signs and at the second or third hill he saw them people were walking and leading a few horses pulling loaded drag poles though it was difficult to count how many they were but on either side was a column of mounted soldiers they were heading northwest most of the men from Little Thunder's camp had been away hunting some of them were bound to return sooner or later but for the time being light hair was alone He returned for his own horse so he could take two along to follow his relatives who were captives of the long knives. Back at the burned out camp, he retrieved his gilding and gathered stones from several cooking fires and built a marker pointing it to the northwest.

And he would know to go in that direction, especially given the condition of the camp. He had only been in the south end of the camp, so he led his horse through it to the north end. The mare snorted in apprehension and shied away from a long dark object on the ground. Light hair bent to it and felt the leg. It was a woman. She was dead. He discerned other shapes in the growing darkness and went to them. They were all dead.

He reched after he bent low over a woman and realized that both her breasts had been cut off. Searching in the growing, darkness he found one dead body after another all of them scalped or mutilated in some fashion he wretched again and sat for some time before he pulled a robe back from the next body a child this time perhaps 10 gathering his horses he walked out of the camp he'd covered everybody he found covering the shame of the insults they had suffered after the pain of death with the shock and the grief came another feeling starting like a small cloud growing over the horizon.

Anger. So that's going to leave a mark. You get to a point where there's a trajectory where it's almost impossible to stop the direction that things are going. And when stuff happens like that, what are you going to do? I mean, through this book, you have a problem because there's this clash of cultures. and the Lakota have a culture that they're involved with raiding. They're going up and raiding the crow. They're raiding the snakes.

The snakes and the crow are raiding them back. And it's just what they kind of do, and there's an equilibrium there, because they're not industrial and they can't mechanize death the way the Europeans are capable at the time. Yeah. And they don't understand it. And there's like a, he doesn't say this at all, but you can assemble it. There's an ROE, like a legit rules of engagement that they're following. And you don't, there's just things that you don't do.

And there's times where he mentions in the book, they're going to, they're going on a raid to like to stay sharp. Yeah. Like, hey, we just, hey, look, this is like a training op. Yeah. But it's real. And they're going to go do it. And the other tribes kind of know that's, hey, this is part of what we do. Oh, this is, oh, they're going to run a training op.

We're going to have to get some. But there's rules of engagement. And there's, there's like, hey, we're going to go in. We got some horses from you. Cool. We're not slaughtering your people. We needed horses. So we got some horses from it.

Right? That's what we're doing. Oh, we want, we want to, you know, some of the meat that you hunted. Okay, cool. we didn't get enough so we're going to go take some of yours it's like there's rules of engagement that they're all operating on I think it was fairly common too when you rate like they mentioned in here and he leaves out like

we attacked the village and there were no men left in the village or very few of them what did you do exactly and I don't think it was uncommon for them to snatch slaves up at a minimum from other villages I think you know the empire of the summer moon which is another great book of the Comanche we're grabbing people from everywhere and then they would just assimilate them kind of in the tribe but they also

did a lot of slave trading and other things at the time so um there's no one that's completely clean in this whole situation and yeah it's just it's it's an interesting study yeah on on all this stuff and how do you stop it once once that boulder's rolling downhill and like you he comes in and he finds all these mutilated women like how do you put that fire out now it's gonna be rough there's a guy named harney i think he's a colonel maybe a general general general harney early in the morning the soldiers had been seen moving up the blue water spotted tail and iron shell and a few warrior leaders rode out under a white banner of truce to talk the leader of the soldiers was a white-haired man and bearded older man who said his name was general harney and they have

eventually put two and two together that this is the guy that led this raid. Word did come. Harney had stopped at Fort Laramie. Since he was the leader of the soldiers, he declared an end of trading with the Lakota, still demanding the surrender of the killers of Grattan. When the story of the attack on Little Thunder's camp on the blue water was carried north to the other Lakota camps, General Harney was given a new name to the Lakota. He would always be known as woman killer.

So the fact that they're giving him that specific name probably is an indicator. that it's not common practice for them to kill women. No, that's what I'm saying. There's ROEs, man, that were violated big time. One evening, he returned from a long outing with high backbone and waited for his father in the lodge when Crazy Horse, that's the dad, returned the boy held out a bundle of tobacco. It was a gift and offering to a holy man when one needed to speak from one's heart.

Lighthair needed to tell of a dream, a dream that had come to him the second night he had spent alone on a sandstone bluff. It had been with him every day and night for these many months, he told his father. Dreams were important, Crazy Horse said, as he took the offering of tobacco from his oldest son. So now we get into this dream. The dream was not difficult to remember, and this dream is like the central theme of this book. So the dream was not difficult to remember only to tell. It had been a part of the boy since the late summer night near the sand hill country when old conquering bear lay dying in camp after the incident with the soldiers with the soldier Grattan and his men.

He was almost embarrassed to describe it. The dream began at a lake, a small, still lake, bursting upward from the blue calmness, a horse and its rider broke through the surface and rode out across the land. The rider was a man, a slender man who wore his hair loose. A stone was tied behind his left ear, a reddish-brown stone. A lightning mark was painted across one side of his face. On his bare chest were blue hailstones. Behind them to the west as they galloped was a dark rolling cloud rising higher and higher. From it came the deep rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning.

The horse was strong and swift and changed its colors, red, yellow, black, white, and blue. Bullets and arrows suddenly filled the air, flying at the horse and rider, but they all passed without touching them. Close above them flew a red-tailed hawk, sending out its shrill cry. People, his own kind, suddenly rose up all around and grabbed the rider, pulling him down from behind. The dream ended. There seemed to be a warning in the dream. But glorious warrior in the dream was grown, but still young. The faces of the enemies that had sent bullets and arrows at him were not visible,

but the people who had pulled him down were like the rider himself. They were easily seen, as was the horse, the hawk, and the thunders. The thunders. They were the powerful beings that lived in the West, perhaps the most powerful of all beings ever anywhere. Rarely did anyone dream of the funders. And anyone who did had a special calling to be a sacred clown. The one who did the opposite of what was expected.

Light Herod described the lightning mark on the dream rider's face, as well as blue hailstones painted across his chest. Lightning and hail were both strongly associated with the thunders. Crazy Horse The door Crazy Horse closed the door And began singing again And another gathering song

To call in the spirits He poured water on the stones Sending steam and new waves of heat Rolling inside the tiny enclosure Light Hair endured the heat Even as he had held the dream In his mind's eye As his father had instructed him to do

Dying gloriously making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the people was the secret dream of every Lakota fighting man. It was the warrior code repeated in all the honoring songs. The dreams seemed to suggest that the dreamer would gain honor and immortality by living and dying as a warrior. But perhaps there was more to the dream. Perhaps there was a warning of a path that could not be avoided. So there's a lot of foreshadowing in that dream of his life that he's not going to live very long He's not going to live to old age and the scariest thing I guess is the fact that people his own kind of

Kind are the people that kind of drag him down from behind And you know this this got me to thinking you know when I had when I had Micah think on the podcast and I start Started off by reading some stuff that he's either said or written and that was that one quote This Native American quote and I don't know which tribe it came from And I didn't research it but the quote is a diagnosis Becomes a curse basically you get when you diagnose someone with something it can become a curse a self-fulfilling prophecy You know and That's something to look out for.

You know, it's something to look out for. Yeah, it's, I think it's better, as we go through the story to discuss it later, the struggle that the tribe has between the folks that are going to take the free annuities and the folks that are deciding to live wild, and then that friction. And that friction corrods them from the,

inside out yeah like man the egos that come into play are just very disturbing mentioned he's a few more characters coming to play even in the company of he dog and lone bear light hair laughed and smiled less often and didn't participate in their banter as much as he usually did this is after he kind of reports his dream to his dad his friends knew that crazy horse had taken light hair off somewhere for several days and that since returning their light haired friend was less communicative but they also knew that he always tried harder to win the games the boys played to emulate warriors. In fact, he rarely lost. He was not always the fastest or the quickest or the best shot, but he simply

kept trying. And though he didn't tell them what to do, they still followed him because he didn't hesitate to take the lead. He seemed to know instinctively the best trail to follow or the best way to do something. Word of light hair's dream had quietly spread among the fighting men. Sooner or later, some said the boy would have to put his medicine to the test. There was only one way to see if the enemy's bullets and arrows would not strike him. So preparations were made for a raid north into Crowlands. Crazy Horse and Little Hawk had found a reddish brown stone for light hair to wear behind his left ear and taught him how to paint lightning and hailstone marks from his dream. Then a bullet gone astray while someone was practicing grazed light hair's knee.

It's like a friendly fire scenario. Someone's out just training and get, and light hair gets shot. Though Crazy Horse, his dad treated the wound carefully. To him, it was a sign, a worrisome sign directly related to the people in the dream pulling the rider down. For the dreamer, there would be danger or harm from his own kind. We get into the love story part of this scenario. It's also tragic in many ways. News was buzzing about a prominent family planning a coming out ceremony for a favorite daughter.

There would be much feasting and dancing. Red Cloud was an impressive figure of a man and had reputation as an orator. He was the head of a large family and some would say he would be an important man for years to come. So it was only natural that the people were excited that his niece, black buffalo woman, was to be honored. As a tiny, doe-eyed girl, she'd crossed Lighthair's path now and then now she was a beautiful willowy girl with long, glistening black hair. Lighthair hung back as the crowd moved away and managed to catch a glimpse of her dress and a finely-beated dress. Her hair in two long braids hanging down over her breast signifying she was now a woman. That evening, light hair stayed in the back of the crowd during the dancing.

Black Buffalo Woman's brothers, her father and her uncle stayed close to her as a reminder that any would-be suitor could count on having to prove his worth in order to become part of that family. So he's got a little love interest. Black Buffalo woman. Fast forward a little bit, waiting for his first test about a light hair watch for the signal from high backbone, a stone's throw to his right. He had stripped to his breech cloth and moccasins, his hair loose in the manner of his dream and the lightning mark and hailstones painted on his chest. At the back of his head he wore the tail feathers from a red-tailed hawk, pointing down as when the hawk was about to strike his prey. Behind his left ear was the reddish-brown stone. In his right hand he held the bow.

Two arrows against his palm and a thurn clamped in his teeth. His quiver, bristling with arrows, was tied to the front of his waist to be an easy reach. A shout came from high backbone as he urged his mount into a gallop to take him up the slope. Light hair and others did the same. Strangely, each rider had only a vague awareness of the others, though they could hear clearly dozens of hooves clathering on the rocky slope. Low, angry sounded, humming noises buzzed past their ears. The experience fighting men knew it was the sound of passing balls from enemy muzzleloaders.

The gunshots could be heard less than a heartbeat later. A man with a gun stepped out from behind a rock. Lighthair's shot was pure instinct and he didn't see if the arrow had hit his target. His horse pitched forward. The enemy who stepped from behind the rock had managed to shoot the animal in the chest. Lighthair rolled across the rocky slope. His horse was dead. His bow was gone.

He quickly sliced the drag rope from his horse and ran down the slope first in one direction then another. A loose horse came out of nowhere and he managed to grab a handful of mane and swing on. There was gunfire from below and answering fire from the rocks at the top of the hill. The horse was rushing up the slope in a blind panic and took his new rider among the rocks. You got any commentary on grabbing a horse by the mane and just... Fucking nuts. It's so, like, that is so cool.

And it's not his horse. It's just the guy's so good he's grabbing any horse that comes by. By the main. And just hopping on. Sling back up, back into the fight. The pistol he snapped off a shot. With his pistol, he snapped off a shot at a man who doubled over from the impact of the bullet. Gaining control of the horse, he raced down the slope, stopping to recover his bow.

His quiver was still tied to his waist. High backbone joined him. His horse winded. Together they charged up the slope again in and among the rocks. This time Lighthair used his bow and put an arrow through an enemy's chest. Gunshots rang out from among the rocks and up from the slope. Bullets splattered against the boulders or shattered on small rocks on the ground. Unable to load another arrow, Lighthair used his pistol again, and another of the enemy went down.

Lighthair jumped from his horse to grab the hair of the dead enemy. A quick swipe with his knife separated a patch of scalp. As he ran toward a second body and grabbed another handful of hair a sharp smashing blow to his leg knocked him over He went down in a heap but hurriedly got to his feet Shouts and gunfire continued bouncing off the boulders all around Light hair went from boulder to boulder as gunfire waned and then he hobbled down the slope The fight was over every one of the enemies had been killed the Lakota rode among the rocks on the hill to make make certain and then came down to gather around light hair most of them had seen him in the fight

the bullets and arrows had not touched him except when he tried to take a second scalp his dream was true they decided high backbone took the scalps from him and cleaned the wound in his lower leg someone rounded up lighthair's new horse and they all rode away from the hill a few scalps dangling from lances or belts. Horses and guns were the prize, as well as the emergence of a new warrior among them. That night around the fire, the full impact of the battle settled in like an uninvited and unwelcome history. Men had been killed. Light-haired killed two men, the second and third human beings he had ever killed.

The first was the Omaha girl in the country far to the east three years past. Ghosts, the old warriors say, were the price of fighting man paid to follow the path of the warrior. Somewhere behind the noble and espoused traditions, somewhere behind the achievements and the glory, the ghosts waited. And they would always be there. Their dying would forever be a part of the path of the man who took their lives, whether the act was honorable or justified. or not. Their faces, and often their dying moments, could not be forgotten unless the heart of the warrior was made of stone, and few could boast of that, though many might have secretly wished it to be

so. Somewhere people they didn't know, wives and daughters, mothers and granddaughters, would mourn. They would wail and gash themselves, their hearts torn in anguish. The path of the warrior Was indeed strewn with broken hearts Like so many stones on a long and winding trail The victory dances honored the warrior And the victory stories reaffirmed the tradition of the warrior

But very little, if anything, Could chase away the dark memories that always lurked The ghost would always dole the edge of arrogance and bring a cold feeling at the most unexpected moments. Such was the price of being a warrior. You know, as you're reading that, and you think about, he gets dressed up for battle. You know, they're doing their war paint,

and it's part of a ritual that they're going through before they go into that. And I think the ritual is probably really important to the human psyche to help you, set aside some of the fear and the other things. And maybe it might even help you with those ghosts a little bit. I remember on one of the early podcasts, somebody asked if you had a ritual before you went out on ops.

And I think there is one that a lot of people practice, and it was like, I'm going to change out all my batteries. I'm going to get all the old battle maps out of my gear, and I'm going to put the new battle map and new comp plan. Then I'm going to go check my radio. and then we have this ritual that develops. It's like reinforcing that we're all getting ready to go out in the battlefield. Because one of the last things we do before we get in the vehicles or getting the helicopters

is we get together and we do com checks. We're saying to each other, hey, I want to make sure that you know that I can talk to you and then I know that you can talk to me. And when you need help, I'll hear you and I'll come, right? And that it's a different kind of ritual, but it's actually kind of the same where we present ourselves for inspection from each other, like, hey, check my gear out. And all of us, sometimes some platoons run it differently where they'll have one guy check it out, but every platoon has a system where you present yourself and you do all this ritual to get ready to go into combat,

and then you present yourself to your teammate, like, hey, check me out, make sure I'm squared away, and then I'll check you out. And then in that we're kind of reaffirming all of our bonds and getting ready to go into the belly of the beast. Yeah, it's probably worth noting as a leader to make that a little bit more ritualistic, right? So what can you do to make it a little bit more ritualistic? And I did this my first deployment to Iraq where we would, before we'd get in the vehicles, it was roll call. We would stand, like we'd all stand around the board with the vehicles, a magnet board with the vehicles on it,

and it was, you know, Gardner, yep, you know, Willink, er, you know, just going through that roll call that, yep, we're all here, we all know what vehicles were in, this is just going out tonight. And we, for some reason, in Ramadi, we didn't do quite that ritualistic role call. We had come up with a more decentralized system for, Yep, everyone's good to go, you know, probably just the vehicles, you know, six up, five's up, fours, up, three, two's up one, yep, we're good to go. We don't need to have everyone stand around. But as you're talking through this, that little, nice little ritual was a good thing. And it gives you a, you know, and I've talked about this before, the fact that in America we don't really have a ritualistic, solid ritualistic to wait to deal with death. There's not, a protocol to follow of what you're supposed to do in it. And it can, I think, leave a lot of open ends and a lot of loose strings

because other cultures have, hey, this day, we're going to do this kind of celebration. We're going to say this prayer. We're going to go to this place. We're going to do this thing. And then it's over. It doesn't make any sense, does it? Because dying is as natural as being born. Yeah.

And why don't we? Like, it's just like this weird. gap that we have where we haven't set up this a way for us to just cope with it. And even, you know, we have some rituals like in the SEAL teams like, okay, we're going to go to the funeral. We're going to put the trident, you know, we're going to pound our tridents into the casket. Like those are awesome things. But it's almost like the ritual needs to have completion where you say, hey, once you put

that trident in the casket and you bury that casket, you know, Now you've you've let that part of that warrior go and now you can move forward. Whatever the saying should be or whatever the ritual. Because you don't really know that. You know, no one said like, hey, man, once you do that, it's okay. You've given, you've given that warrior the most respect you can give him. You've given him him the most meaningful thing to you, which is your trident. You've given it to him.

You're going to bury him with your trident. you're going to be with him forever, and now you go back to doing your job. I kind of feel that way. You know, I felt some level of closure when I've done that. But if it was a little bit more, if it was a little bit more codified, it might be even more healthy for guys. So I think the idea of rituals are so helpful in everyday life, you know, if you've got some rituals to follow. I mean, people have all kinds of little rituals they follow in everyday life, right? I get up, I brush my teeth, you know, I do a certain, I put on, like I wear the same clothes all the time to work out.

You know what I mean? I have these little rituals and I pretty much wear the same clothes every day by the way. But you got these rituals. Like this is what I'm going to do. And it makes things easier and it allows your mind to sort of follow a path that is already known. And I think that's really healthy. and I think that would help people a lot. You know, it's what's so cool?

What's so cool is getting these windows and what's really cool about the story of crazy horses that was written by a Lakota. And then we get a window into their culture. It's not that much different than ours. No. Good grief. They're talking about that their virtues are generosity and courage.

I think we see that as a virtue too, right? They come back from war and they have PTSD, by the way. Yes. And so the things that these guys are talking about. And so the things that these are holding up as high standards are things that we hold up as high standards as well. Yeah. Yeah. If you're in a leadership position, the more ritual you can establish without getting crazy, you know, without getting crazy.

We don't want to create rituals for no reason. We also want to create rituals that become constrictive. But putting some rituals in place is a positive thing. Definitely. Speaking of rituals, that night, there was a victory dance. High backbone and the others described the battle and their parts in it. Four enemy warriors had been killed. And by the way, they were fighting.

I did a bad job. They were fighting against some snakes. It was snakes that they were fighting against snake tribe. Four enemy warriors had been killed. Guns and horses had been captured. Everyone waited for the son of Crazy Horse to tell of his deeds, since according to the other men, he had turned the flow of the battle. but the boy hung back reluctant to talk winning with humility he goes to sleep fast forward a little bit

the sun was high when he finally roused himself the pain in his leg had diminished somewhat and he managed to doze off a little he sipped tea from the horn cup someone had left by the fire pit and finally dressed he stepped out from the lodge and was surprised to see a crowd gathered in the camp circle at the edge of it stood his father wearing his best medicine robe decorated with long strands of horsehair a trilling arose among the women his mother stood behind his father gentle smiles on their faces and unmasked pride as well crazy horse lifted his voice in a warrior's honoring song joined by his wives and light hair sister after the song came more shouts and war hoops and trilling crazy horse lifted his hand and walked forward

and face the crowd. I give my first son a new name this day, he said, raising his voice. I have heard the story of the brave things he did. I am proud. His mothers are proud. All of his family and friends are proud of our young man. So this day, I give him a new name. I give him the name of his father and his father's before him.

From this day forward, I call him crazy horse. From somewhere in the crowd, a drum, pound. And another honoring song was raised and the crowd surged forward high backbone little hawk He dog and lone bear were among the many who came forward smiling Crazy horse the name flowed like water over the rocks There's a little ritual activity that was a cool scene Friken outstanding welcome them to the club man and this is Equally awesome or at least getting close so the five

Father passed on the name and took for himself another worm, a name of utmost humility. In time, even that name would have meaning for he would be known as worm, the father of crazy horse. It's like epic. You just, hey, just call me worm. That's where we're at. That's the humility level happening around here. Hey, Echo, can I ask you about a movie? Yes, sir.

Of course. Good fellas. Yes, sir. There's that scene where the main character goes to jail, and he's just locked up for a little time, but he doesn't say anything. And then when he gets let out, everybody's. Yeah, yeah. That's great.

That's when he was a kid. That's when he's a kid. Yeah. Popped your chair. Yeah. Yeah. Good scene. Yeah, there's something about that.

This is another thing we don't do great in America. a, you're a man now type thing, that ceremony, that thing. You're a woman now. You can see they did it for both Black Buffalo woman and, you know, like, okay, this is it. You're responsible now. We don't do a great job of that. I went through something like that in the Catholic Church where I did confirmation and so different cultures have got it. But as we've kind of morphed away from that, it's something.

that we've lost. So how do we replace it? And in a way, it's got to be something that you earn, right? It's so much better

if you're earning it as opposed to. For sure. It shouldn't just be like, okay, time and rate, you turned seven. You're a man now.

Isn't graduating high school is kind of like that though. Yeah, true. I mean, I guess in certain families, right? But you graduate high school, they give you like a bunch of stuff

and then your uncle or whoever gives you like, advice, it's like an actual thing. Dude, when you do a podcast on the advice you got from your uncle when you graduated high school became a man, bro. That might be a whole podcast series. I'm just saying, you know, you, well. Oh, you didn't get advice from your uncle?

No, sir. Not me. I'm just saying, did you have a lot of extended family around growing up? No, no, not really. I didn't either. But that's like some people doing, that's a great benefit because then there's all these adults putting good stuff into the kids' ears. And like, you read in this book where they're, you read it in this book where they're, you,

everybody's talking. So everything's kind of common knowledge and everybody's involved in developing. Well, one of the good things in Hawaii, it's very common to call, like, if you have a respected family friend or friends that come around, you call them uncle or auntie.

100%. Like, I didn't even know uncle was my mom and dad's brother, sister. I didn't know that. I try to even do it. Yeah. Yeah. But it feels more solidified in Hawaii

because, like I said, I was like 10, maybe 11 before I realized, oh, wait, like, uncle is like if you're actually related to them, you just call it. There's people now even that I still call Uncle Jill, uncle whatever, like you can't help it. But, yeah, so I mean, it's in a way, it's kind of the same thing.

Yeah, when you go, when you graduate, they're all there and they give you, you know, all the stuff they give you and whatnot. I got put in check on that stuff by my wife, because when my son was like six, and I was treating him like a team guy. And my wife's like, He's freaking sick.

Idiot. I was like, well, still, it should still be able to freaking. She just had to, like, crush me. And I said, oh, yeah, sorry about that. I mean, you know. You have to be smart enough to listen. I had to think through it. I had to think through it.

And I was like, well, wait a second. When I was seven, I realized I was like, oh, my God, I'm an idiot. Because I was thinking, you know, why would you not just do, you know, why would you not get up at four in the morning? Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, bro, was I, when I was seven, I didn't even have any concept of any of that. You know, I was a little boy. And there I was looking at my kid, like, hmm, better get up to speed.

Yeah. Don't you want a charxtreel? What? This kennelbell's for you, son. He can't respond because he can't talk yet. You know, little kids have blankets. Yeah. Do you know your kids have a blankie?

Yeah, my mom, that's a big thing with my mom. Okay. She got the kids their special blankie. But it wasn't like a security thing or not. Okay. So one of my kids, I think my second daughter had like a blanket that went with her everywhere. My first daughter, not so much. I didn't know what was going to happen with my son.

So I got him like this old school like SAS freaking scarf thing. And I was like, if he needs a blanket, it's going to be freaking tactical. And you know what? He rejected it. He never had a, he never had like that, that, that, uh, he never utilized it. Too early. Yeah. What, what, no, no, he was my, one of them, my daughter that had the blanket that really carried it everywhere.

It was, what is it called knitted? It was knitted and it had kind of like big knots. It had big knots. So you could kind of, you should constantly be, uh, fumbling with. them right yeah so but then the SAS thing kind of had some little things I said you know that'll be you know help the dexterity we're working on dexterity young age you want to be working your grip strength so my wife's like you are such a freaking idiot so there you go he yeah but he was definitely your son from straight away because I remember him coming over early on and I had like

a hatchet laying around and you're like you can't have that hatchet he'd already grab it and you got it from I'm real quick. Right before our pot belly pig tried to eat him. My neighbor came out. We saw one of our old neighbors, great friends of the family, great people. And they were like, yeah, we were looking through pictures the other day. And he had a picture of my kid at, he had walked over to their house. And he's like six.

And he's got a naked Barbie, a hammer, and a nail. And he says, can Shane come and play? and Darren goes, yeah, he can. Hold on a second. Went and took a picture. This is just too awesome. Some freaking poor little Barbie dolls about to get crucified. Twisted times.

Okay. Going back to the book, they're doing a raid once again on the snakes. To your point, Jason, this is what they were doing. It's not like all the Indians were out there. Kumbaya just, you know, living in peace and harmony. They were killing each other. And that's what's going on here. They're on a raid on the snakes.

It's going sideways. Crazy horse found good cover, but was soon surrounded. And his horse had been captured. Incoming fire prevented him from reloading his rifle. Without a horse's odds of survival were greatly reduced. His best chance was to move out of harm's way, but he knew he had to act quickly. The sound of distant gunfire was growing fainer, meaning the herd of new Lakota horses and most of the raiders were now well to the north.

He and a few of the other Lakotas in the trees were left on their own with more snakes arriving Moving from tree to tree he waited for a snake warrior to pass close and jump behind him onto the horse Dispatching the man with one swing of his stone-headed war club Any commentary on that besides us? How are you jumping onto the horse? That's just like athletic prowess as well Pulling out his pistol, he opened fire to distract the snake circling outside the trees and shouted for the Lakota to make their escape. Making the break from the trees, crazy horse, and his companions gained a good head start before the snakes could regroup. The snakes continued to pursue the herd and at one point managed to recover a few of their horses, but they had lost several more men and soon disengaged.

Never in recent memory had the Oglala Lakota taken so many horses in one raid. but they had suffered losses as well with at least five men killed victory stories abounded and the dances went far into the night the Lakota learned that one of the snake casualties was the son of their head man the young man had been one of the first to pursue the Lakota once more young crazy horse did not participate in the dancing in fact he said nothing even to his father about the new horse who was riding or the new muzzle loaded rifle he was he had brought back. Worm could only guess how his son had acquired them until one of crazy horses' companions who had been in the trees surrounded by his snakes told him what he had witnessed, that the young man had unhorsed a snake and captured the gun in one daring moment. His action had saved them all. The man was certain.

This is just a good methodology for life. If you talk about how awesome you are, you're degrading. your level of respect as a human. So just don't do it. It's just better just to not say anything. How much more awesome is this situation because Crazy Horse just rolls back in with a brand new horse, a brand new rifle,

and doesn't even tell his dad that he did this thing. And he has to hear it secondhand. 12 years of one-on-one instruction provided any Lakota mail, the basic physical skills to be a fighting man. By the age of 15 or 16, any boy was proficient with all of his weapons. But unseen factors determined how each would-be warrior would handle live combat. After the first few encounters with enemies on the battlefield, young crazy horse had demonstrated qualities that eluded many men for an entire lifetime.

Older experienced men, while initially impressed, waited to pass judgment, however. It wasn't unusual for young men to perform well in their first face-to-face encounters with enemies, if for no other reason than that their inexperience made them less cautious. Then the daunting realities of combat became part of their thinking, and the same young men who seemed so daring and reckless in their first few outings hesitated, taking stock before taking action. Caution was good. It turned reckless boys into thinking men, and a thinking man was overall more valuable on the battlefield

than one who placed others in danger because he took unnecessary risks. So the old man who heard, so the old men who heard of the first exploits of young crazy horse nodded knowingly, remembering that such and such had started the same way. And now he was a man with a family because there was more to life than glory on the battlefield. Some wisdom from these folks. They know what's up. The reckless die young, the old men advised.

And their only legacy is a brief moment of glory, but over time it's forgotten. It is the steady and the steadfast that prevail, the old ones say. So while it stirred the heart and the imagination to hear of the exploits of a new young warrior, one whose quiet ways in camp contradicted the stories of daring on the battlefield, the old men puffed on their pipes as they sat around the evening fires and nodded knowingly. Over time, young crazy horse would give up his reckless ways, they said. Everyone does. Not quite everyone.

Meanwhile, the lines of suitors at the lodge of Black Buffalo Woman were as long as ever. She's squared away. And the town or the village is kind of taking notice as time went by. Even the staunchest skeptics agreed that Black Buffalo Woman and the... the stalwart young crazy horse were a good match and that she would do well to bring such a man into her family but there were still many whispers behind the hand that her family had plans that didn't take the girl's own feelings into consideration one of the suitors was no water who of his own accord was by no was no comparison to crazy horse but no water's older brother black twin was a skilled

orator and a man of growing in And he held many opinions solidly in line with those of red cloud. So no water was suddenly a valuable man. There was nothing for anyone to do but wait and watch with great interest as to what would happen. So you got crazy horse. He's sort of the, he's like the warrior in this scenario. And then no water who has a little bit of prestige, some family connections, and there's a there's a mystery.

There's a mystery as to what's going to happen and who's going to end up getting Black Buffalo Woman going out in the field again. Scouts from one of the camps along the Powder River met the returning warriors and were quickly sent back to spread the news of success. But before he left, one of the scouts let slip a bit of news from the Red Cloud Camp that was like an arrow into the heart of young crazy horse. No water. The younger brother of Black Twin had become the husband of Black Buffalo Woman.

out on deployment. And he was supposed to go on that deployment and suddenly got a toothache. Yeah, he got a toothache. And they're like, oh, go back to the camp. And then you can marry a black buffalo woman, dirty trick. Jody. Oh, he's there staying in camp. Yeah.

The grain of hope that light hair dared to allow himself to hold in his heart had grown into distinct possibility when as Crazy Horse, he joined the line of hopeful young men waiting outside the girl's lodge. That grain of hope had grown even more. Each time she stood with him under his courting robe and seemed reluctant to leave his embrace, or perhaps it was only his imagination. This would not be the first time imagination totally ignored. His imagination totally ignored the boundaries and limits of reality.

So he gets heartbroken. Half a month later, he returned. Fast forward in a little bit. crazy horse said nothing of the trail he had traveled for nearly a month for nearly half a month worm knew that the broken heart was not completely healed and perhaps never would be but he knew as all fathers do that sometimes the best medicine for such a wound was life itself some good advice right there yeah because he'd left he'd gone out kind of just on his own for a few weeks to get over the heartbreak.

He does a little bit of rating all on his own too, which is something that he gets into. Just solo operations. More good comments here. A wound on the outside can be watched to see that it heals well as everyone knew. Wounds on the inside could not be seen but for pain in the eyes.

Several months had passed since Black Buffalo woman had taken no water as her husband soon after they had moved away for as everyone knew no water was afraid of crazy horse the old women knew that best of all but if their young man as they called crazy horse bore any ill will it could not be seen in the way he conducted himself or heard in any words he had spoken so they hoped that the wound inflicted by black buffalo woman was healed though some didn't blame her She was, after all, only 16, and how could one so young stand up to the powerful ambitions of her father and uncle? Rolling into the back in one of the reflections sections here, and again, I'm skipping a bunch of stuff, but wanted to talk about this part where he says, where Marshall says,

The seeking of a vision is a serious, highly ritualized process undertaken respectfully, prayerfully, and under the guidance of a medical. Listen, man. To seek a vision is to seek guidance for one's life or to answer a problem or predicament. Young Lighthair was probably afraid that the dream he had that night, he spent atop a sandstone, but Butte would not be taken seriously because he had not followed all the rules, but it came nonetheless. The dream that vision has been told and retold thousands of times since. The fact of the matter is that we cannot be certain of the exact description of light hair, that light hair later gave to his father. Furthermore, it is critical to understand that much of the discussion and interpretation

of the vision has occurred and is still occurring since Crazy Horse's death. There are those who see the vision as a foretelling, almost a blow-by-blow revelation of what lay ahead for light hair. It depicted a powerful Lakota warrior rising out of the lake during a thunderstorm on a horse that changes colors, riding unscathed through a hail of arrows and bullets, until he's eventually pulled down by his own kind, grabbing and holding back his arms. The vision might have been as much a consequence of wishful thinking as it is a glimpse into the future for every Lakota boy grew up with dreams of being a warrior and winning glory and honor on the battlefield. Lighthair was no different.

One elderly Lakota storyteller was the opinion that Lighthair and his father chose not to tell everything about the vision speculating that a warning was part of it, a warning that the boy would die as a young man in his prime. such a warning could explain Crazy Horse's daring and often reckless exploits in combat as a younger fighting man perhaps he believed each time he was about to perform the last act of his life

and wanted to be powerful and meaningful Yeah man the guy's got a broken heart at this point and essentially like they're talking about these other warriors get a family and now they got something to lose and Crazy Horse doesn't.

It's like the classic. But I don't want to take that away from his courage or bravery or anything else either. Yeah, the classic, you know, team guy on the ragged edge with nothing to lose. Right? That's like, hey, ready to go.

Getting back into the story. Crazy Horse decided to see for himself how things were at Fort Laramie. He found a loafer camp, which is, these are like Indian camps that are right outside. they're friendly with the whites and make deals with the whites and they kind of live off the whites. They call them loafers.

He found a loafer camp a short wave from the fort and stayed with them a few days to hear what they knew. Annuities were late again, they complained. And the longhorn cattle were skinnier every year. They noticed not without some degree of envy that while Crazy Horse carried a rifle and a pistol and a far-seeing glass, he was not dressed in white man's clothes as they were. He reminded them he was a hunter. Though some of them took this remark as an insult, others knew that living off the promises of the annuities was not really living.

The white man named Bordeaux could speak Lakota very well, and he was surprised to see someone from the northern camps among the loafers. He told Crazy Horse that more soldiers were coming to be posted at Laramie. He knew this because the whites had a way of talking over great distances that was much faster than the lawful. letters carried by stage coaches and the pony riders. They had a tapping language, which by which they sent messages along a wire faster than even the prairie falcon could fly. Now what starts happening is there's, they start to find gold, look for gold, discover gold.

And there's people heading north of Elk River to find gold north of the Shell River. And these are super-enjured. Intrusive, right? And here we go. After several days travel north of Shell River, the people in the gold-seeking train woke to an unexpected site. They were surrounded by hundreds of mounted Lakota and Sayyella fighting men positioned on the hills and ridges around them.

The trail north and south was blocked. The blockaders stayed out of rifle range and didn't make any aggressive move. simply maintaining their positions as the day wore on a ring of men and horses seeming to have risen out of the rocks after nightfall a ring of small fires burned morning light revealed the blockaders were still in place days and nights passed into five and then six so these these this big train wagon train is up looking for gold and the the Indians team up they team up and they surround them. Super strategic what they're doing, too. Super strategic. Because they're not, they're not,

but they're not killing all the women and children, which is going to commit everybody to something. They're just like, hey, and I'm sure those people must have been horrified. Horrified. He says here, there were only two ways for the whites to go.

Continue north or return south. If the soldiers came and tried to take gold seekers north, the Lakota, And Sayyella would attack. It was decided. If they turned back south, they would be allowed to return. Hopefully with knowledge that Powder River country would not be another trail for the whites, whatever their purpose or destination.

And then some soldiers come, and thankfully they turn the train south. And this is what I think is an important piece. Crazy Horse would always remember the strange episode on the Staked Trail, especially in light of all that was to follow. He carried a lesson from it that he would use as a measure every time he looked to the trail as a fighting man. All the warriors on the ridges surrounding the gold seekers had invoked a feeling of virtue of simply coming together,

a feeling of strength that comes from pursuing the same purpose. Several hundred had responded, some from the Sahelia and perhaps a few blue clouds, married into Lakota families. He knew several by name, but most were unknown to him. On those wind-swept ridges for six days, however, they had shared the kinship of purpose. So incredibly important lesson for him, unifying people and working together towards a common goal, that's an opportunity. Yeah.

And so when people feel like they're part of the group, they're capable of so much more. And so that means that no matter what you do, make sure that everybody feels included on the team. It's that easy. I have a simple statement about this. Together we are stronger. And if you can keep that in mind, it actually is like it's cover and move. Because with cover and move, if you get too far apart, now we can't cover and move for each other. Together we are stronger and if you keep that in mind whenever things are happening think hey together we're stronger

That's the way you want to go and that's the lesson he learned here Fast forward a little bit summer passed lazily and people talked about making presents to the Buffalo scouts and sending them out looking So the so the planning for the autumn hunts could be made as the first heavy snows fell Troubling news came from far south from the Sahelia who lived along the southern fork of the Shell River. Soldiers. It was always the soldiers. 300 people had been killed at a place called Sand Creek, most of them, Sayyla and some blue clouds, led by black kettle and white antelope. Both leaders were regarded as wise and always working for peace. The killing was bad enough because those killed were mostly women and children, but the

soldiers who attacked did more than kill. The white agent, trusted by black kettle and white antelope, had advised them to find a place to pitch their lodges that was away from the main trails. It was told. There were many whites in that part of the country, many living in a large town called Denver, and there was a hatred among them for the Sahila and people of the earth. the camp was to fly the white banner of peace as well as the striped banner of the long knives to signify they were peaceful but the soldiers found them

and the banners meant nothing the messengers could barely tell the story trying to keep back the anger and the tears as well as the bile that rose in the throat for remembering women and children were butchered after they were killed it was told parts of their bodies were cut away such as a woman's breasts and genitalias a child's hand or fingers and boys genitalias.

Brains were bashed out with gunstocks and eyes were gouged out. Some babies not yet born were cut from their mother's stomachs. The final insult came when the soldiers attached body parts to their blue coats and rode in a victory march through the streets of the large town as the other whites cheered. The Lakota did not want to believe the news, not because they wanted to deny the truth of it, but because it was much too difficult to believe that anyone could do such unspeakable deeds.

Sand Creek Massacre. I did a podcast about that with Danieli Bellelli and Daryl Cooper. We talked about the Mili Masker and the San Creek Massacre, and it's just a freaking nightmare. All the whites were the enemy now, and that thought was carried with guns, Lances, war clubs, and bows as angry men rode out from the great camp. The Lakota swept to the northeast, the Sahelia to the northwest,

and the blue clouds swirled like hornets in between. Way station, soldier posts, and any travelers along the Holy Road or any frequented by whites were the objectives. Young men took admonitions of their elders to heart as they hardened themselves to mercy and remembered Sand Creek. The spirit of revenge rolled with the thunder from hooves of warhorses across the frozen prairies. Crazy Horse joined the second attack on Julesburg, but the whites were reluctant to meet them face to face in the open so there was no

fighting to speak of. They left the post ablaze after taking all they could carry from the storehouses. So they go and they're just out. doing these raids and just getting after it. Essentially right now we're at total war. We're at total war. And yes, we are. And here's the disturbing thing is those soldiers at Sand Creek,

they were not connected to the soldiers that were in Montana, not connected to the soldiers that these other forces. They didn't know what it happened. Or maybe they knew what happened, but I'm sure some of them said, what the hell's going on with that? Just and so now you had you have the Whites that are that have been looking at all the Indians as the same

I mean I guess maybe not because they are they are have some Like the crows they work with the crows directly but you're starting to see the two sides divide and it's you're either on this side or that side and that's it And we're gonna take vengeance on if you're white. You're you're getting attacked Yeah and rightly so and So if you're a defender of the people, then that's what you have to do. And it just turned, it's attrition warfare. Yep. And it's just, it's not, it's just escalation and it's not going to stop.

So they're out doing these raids or going in these battles. Crazy Horse continues to distinguish himself. So here's something that occurs. They had not succeeded in wiping out the soldiers because a few impetuous young men couldn't hold themselves back for the right moment. This was on an ambush. And some of the young guys went hard early. And so it was a problem that had to be corrected if they were to defeat the whites.

They all agreed. And one way to solve the problem was to find strong young men to lead the others. For that, they said perhaps they should renew the tradition of the shirt wearers. Some people scoffed at such talk. No shirt wearers had been selected for a generation because the purpose behind the tradition, had been forgotten a shirt wearer was to be a young man of strong action and good ways one to set the example for others instead the tradition had become the father choosing his son to wear the shirt next Better to let it be some said instead of dishonoring a good thing

So they used to have hey if you were a badass you'd get this shirt but then eventually became you know oh it's my son I'm gonna get him hook him up Little Hawk was growing into a daring fighter already winning several war on But the most perplexing and heavy change was symbolized in the shirt made from the hide of a big horn sheep now rolled in a decorated case and waiting in his parents lodge also waiting with the duties and responsibilities that came with it the old man leaders had indeed decided to revive the old tradition of shirt wearers and as expected the shirts were given to young men of important families So they do end up saying, all right, we're going to make some shirtwears. The choice of young men, the choice of young man whose enemies are afraid of his horses, sword or long knife horse, a.k. an American horse surprised no one. So that's a bunch of guys that were, you know, from important families.

But when the name of crazy horse was announced, a gasp went through the crowd and the shouts, the whoops, and the trilling that followed were the loudest of all. He felt truly honored, yet was uncertain that he was a good choice. Later, two more short wearers were chosen, and he was pleased that his friend, He-Dog was one. The other was Big Road, a good, strong, and honorable man. To wear shirts, you must be men above all others, said an old man chosen to speak. You must help others before you think of yourselves. Help the widows and those who have little to wear and to eat and have no one to help them or speak for them.

Do not look down on others or see those who look down on you and do not let anger guide your mind or your heart. Be generous, be wise and show fortitude so that the people can follow what you do and then what you say. above all have courage and be the first to charge the enemy for it is better to lie a warrior naked in death than to be wrapped up well with the heart of water inside so that's an expanded version of what you were talking about earlier when they talked about the we the wita this idea of the short wars and again what do they talk about i mean they open it up with think of others before you think of yourselves. That's the, that's the, that's the opener.

You know, and essentially they're choosing their officers, right? Yeah. And it's pretty cool because, well, I guess part of it, they're doing it by birth because they're like, oh, you're from an important family, kind of like we did it. Yeah. And then they're like, you know, where it was a college degree or landowners are going to be officers and everybody else is enlisted. and then by actual prowess.

Merit for Crazy Horse. You know, and then you serve others before you serve yourself. And there's a tradition the Marine Corps has. That's freaking awesome. And that's that the officer eats last. That is similar in that. Leaders eat last. Yep.

That's as it should be. Absolutely. it should be. Fast forward a little bit. Calling the young men together high backbone scolded them for causing the ambush to fail. This is after they'd obviously just failed on an ambush. The young men listened without protest as he reminded them that fighting the whites was not a war for glory, but a war for survival. He reminded them of Sand Creek.

When he finished, there was a loud affirmation, but an even louder one came after he announced his plan for another ambush. Most of the fighting men would hide themselves and their horses in the ridges and gullies on either side of the wagon. Trail from Prairie Dog Creek to Lodge Trail Ridge. A small group would attack the wood gatherers who always went out from the fort by wagon in the morning. When the soldiers came out to drive the attackers away, 10 decoys would show themselves and lead them toward Lodge Trail Ridge and then north down to a slope ending in a meadow before Prairie Dog Creek.

When the signal was given, the hiding warriors would attack and not before or the ambush would be spoiled. The soldiers had to believe that only 10 decoys were fighting them. Most important to the plan were the decoys. If they failed, several hundred fighting men would be denied the opportunity for victory. Therefore, the decoys needed a strong leader, one skilled in warfare with proven judgment in battle. The leader of the decoys would be crazy horse. The cries and shouts of affirmation rang through camp and fighting men young and old crowded around to put their names in as one of the other nine they do some preparation then the attack came well away from the fort but still within sight so the Lakota could be seen surrounding the wagons so these are

the these are the decoys going into action after initial charge the attackers kept the wagon men and escort riders engaged the gunfire sounded especially sharp in the fridge mountain air. Soon the western gates swung open and a column of mounted and walking soldiers appeared. The Lakota attackers kept up the firing, making sure the rescue column was well out of the fort. As the soldiers passed their thicket, Crazy Horse and his decoys charged. So this is like going as perfect to plan as it could go. Fortunately, enough of the decoys, fortunately enough of the decoys had a few bullets that they could fire several shots to make it seem like an all-out attack. Crazy horse shot a few arrows when he was close enough to see the hairy faces of some of the

soldiers for some moments the soldiers seem confused then they finally opened fire uneven snow covered the cover over the frozen ground and dangerously frigid air with the decoys decor warriors first obstacles and bullets humming past them like angry bees reminded them that they had a daunting task ahead and a long way to finish it the first few mounted soldiers turned off the trail to pursue them and the rest of the column fell in slowly behind them. Fainting head-on charges, the decoys would swerve at the last moment, well within range of the soldier guns.

They took the soldier north, the soldiers north over the frozen snowfields. At one point, some of the decoys, including Crazy Horse, had to ride down a treacherously steep frozen slope. The soldiers took the gentle slope of the south face and kept pursuing an open valley with thick stand of trees on either side of the creek, lay ahead. with no serious obstacles to impede the soldiers advance. Once across the creek, the warriors turned straight north and came inside of Lodge Trail Ridge. The walking soldiers were slowing down the column.

Crazy Horse dismounted well within rifle range, pulled out a knife and calmly scraped the ice from the bottom of his horse's hooves. When bullets began to ricochet closer and closer, he remounted and loped away. The other decoys to infuriate the soldiers used similar tactics. Fast forward a little bit on the ridge. I think I want to say I read that this was about a multi-mile, like a five-mile trail. Yeah, five miles. They had to make a move five miles.

They had to get pursued for five miles. On the ridge, the soldiers hesitated, perhaps waiting for some to catch up. The decoys renewed their efforts, coaxing their tired horses part way up the slope, moving dangerously close. One pretended to be shot off his horse. bounced up running behind the horse before skillfully remounting from the back Crazy Horse had picked the right men for the task at hand for Crazy Horse and the decoys this was the decisive moment if the wading ambushers attacked prematurely soldiers could still escape the decoys looked left and right as they

proceeded north along a very narrow part of the ridge but could see no movement below the slope of the ridge falling away before them was the winding prairie dog creek and the end of their task. Now the soldiers were pressing harder, increasing their gunfire, obviously certain that the decoys comprise the entire enemy force. Crazy horse formed his men into a skirmish line, and those with bullets had spied with bullets to spare fired at the oncoming soldiers. Drawing into heavy, drawing in heavy return fire, the decoys raced their horses down the slippery slope, forming two lines as they rode. They crossed. Cross the flats to Prairie Dog Creek, each line of riders swinging out wide and then crossing each other on the opposite side of the creek.

This was the signal to attack. From out of the very earth itself came the awaiting ambushers. Horses and men burst from the gullies, cutbacks, and what little winter shrubbery was there. In a heartbeat, several hundred fighting men rose, rode south, some from the east and some from the west. those closest to Lodge Trail Ridge quickly shut the soldiers escape route back to the fort the soldiers advanced stopped then they instinctively began to fight their to fight to reach the safety of the fort the walking soldiers were strung out to the back closer to Lodge Trail Ridge they were the first to fall as gunfire blasted up the slopes below them there was no end of the guns firing the soldiers fought hard as they retreated up the ridge but there was nothing to be gained they were cut off with nowhere to go wave after wave of the mounted warriors fought their way up the treacherous slopes those with guns used up their bullets and then resorted to their bows some had only bows and arrows arrows flew up from the east slope and from the west the sky was dark with them and some found their mark in the body of a Lakota or Sahila toward the end the warriors waited in among the dead and dying soldiers killing soldiers killing them with a pistol shot or a hard skillful swing of a war club or the deadly thrust of a lance and then all was quiet

all the soldiers were dead it began with the sahilia as they remembered sand creek and what had been done to their relatives when the frenzy ended the soldiers were stripped naked fingers were chopped off belly slashed open eyes gouged out many warriors were wounded but fewer than 15 had been killed. Kind of a perfect operation, really. I mean, it sounds just like a textbook operation, and those soldiers got lured out. I think there ended up being 80 of them.

Then they were all killed and then mutilated. Fast forward a little bit. Snow's came and winter passed. A loafer brought word from the peace talkers. They had come with more presents, kettles, blankets, knives, and now guns. And they were asking for Red Cloud to come and sign the papers that all the Lakota could share in these gifts. So there could be peace in the Powder River County.

The peace talkers had come with a new offer as well. All the country from the Great Muddy River to the Shining Mountains would be Lakota land so long as the rivers shall flow and the grass grows. Where the whites, where did the whites get the power to give the Lakota lands? They already controlled. Crazy Horse heard many old. men ask. Crazy horse rode north to raid the crows. He returned with new horses

and to news that his uncle's spotted tail had his own lands to live on, given to him by the whites. Agency it was called. Crazy Horse pondered this news even as red cloud rode south to Fort Laramie

with a new power of his own. He made a mark next to his name on the white man's piece of paper. And that was the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. It's, you know, if you can get some people to compromise and you can make some people, you can win some people over and you can divide people. Yeah, right there, it's just done.

Yeah. There's a funny discussion in there where they're like, how is Red Cloud signing away our land? Yeah. Oh, he is? Well, hey, I'm going to sign away my brother-in-law's lodge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to them, right? It's just, again, it's like, hey, Jason, I'll give you money for your, for your error.

And you go, well, okay, what about, do you want to buy Echo's Air too? I can sign for Echo's Air. Yeah, I'll buy that too. Or, you know, I look at Echo and say, I already got your air. You know, Jason sold it to me. You're like, what does happen? You know, I, but at the end of the day, those guys, whatever their motivation, were, they kind of saw the writing on the wall and they got on the winning side and so they

were trying to carve themselves out even though, you know, maybe they're betrayers or they are betraying the other Lakota, but it's that change thing again. Yeah. Yeah. You sometimes got to change that horse. Yep. returning from a hunt crazy horse stopped in the camp of no water to rest since the great gathering below elk mountain two years past he had spoken to black buffalo woman several times whatever had been between them had long passed she was the mother of three now and seemed entirely proper for him to ask about her children but each time they talked they lingered longer something that did not go unnoticed by someone who knew what had happened before. So now black buffalo woman waited

discreetly for the gift of elk teeth. Crazy horse had lately been leaving for her with someone. But as he was preparing to leave, she approached openly and brought him food. And they stood together talking. He left not lingering too long, but as he rode away, some noticed that she watched until he was out of sight. Worm spoke. And there's some talk about, what was going to happen with black buffalo woman there was obviously a rekindling of this thing of this relationship of this this this love at first sight that they had had worm spoke nonetheless because much rode on the shoulders of his son much that was important to the people they will not let her go he said quietly fast forward a little bit one morning after the victory dances whispers flew through

camp black buffalo woman had left her children with relatives and rode out beside the light-haired one no two people could agree over this new turn some said it was a coming for a long time since her father had made the choice of a husband for her when her heart belonged to the shy quiet young man who is now the most powerful warrior among them others said there would be trouble though she was a good Lakota woman free to choose her husband was not one to let her have that choice besides the reasons her father and uncle had influenced her choice of a husband were even more important now some said cautiously and they were right the

couple and their friends came to a small camp in a narrow little valley and there they rested little shield he dog's brother and little big man were among were along and made a feast as night fell there came a commotion and a man tore into the lodge where crazy horse and black buffalo woman were guests A man worn from a hard trail and driven by anger of a jealous heart. No water stood above them a pistol in hand. As crazy horse leaped to his feet, the pistol booed. So got a little love triangle going on.

No water's not happy. And maybe I didn't cover it. But the tradition was if the woman wanted a divorce, she could do that. that. It was up to her. And the man was supposed to respect it. But everyone kind of knew that no water was not the kind of guy that was going to let this slide. It appears that there's like there's a lot of politics involved with this marriage and it was an arranged marriage, which is kind of outside the norm too. Um, yeah, what an incredibly tragic story. So luckily enough, back to the book, he awoken in a lodge unfamiliar to him, but knew the strong old

face that appeared as his eye cleared and he could see one eye was still swollen along with the left side of his face old spotted crow his uncle the brother of long face nodded a greeting and held him down as he tried to sit up she is back with her people the old man said and answered the question on his face my cousin bad heart bull made it so no one will harm her he'd been in and out of sleep for three days he was told the swelling on his face had gone down a little but he would have a scar where the bullet had opened his face from the corner of his nose down to the jaw line there will be black powder in the scar from the pistol worm had indicated two very fine horses were were tied outside his uncle's lodge sent by no water as a gesture of peace take them his father advised to soften the anger

of those who would take revenge in your name so he did and the young men who wanted no water turned over to them, set aside their anger, and put away their bows and guns. Then one night, the young men who had gone into snake country with little hawks slipped back into camp. Sorry, I'm fast forward in a little bit. The rating. So before we go there, he humbles himself, basically. He humbles himself. The guy comes to kill him, shoots him in the face. he happens to live and instead of starting a freaking war he says all right

you know what I accept the horses there's just for some forgiveness and acceptance and everybody can move on yep so fast forward a little bit now then one night the young men who had gone into snake country with little hawk slipped back into camp the raiding against the snakes did not go well on the way home

little hawk was killed by whites in an unexpected attack. The news was like a war club to the stomach. As his mothers began to weep softly, Crazy Horse went out to stand alone in the night. His brother had been killed while he had been chasing after his own selfish needs. So I don't know, probably failed to make that clear,

but Little Hawk, who we've mentioned a few times, was Crazy Horse's little brother. And so while Crazy Horse is going through this drama and injury and recovery, they go out on a raid and his little brother out with I think is out with him out without his older brother for the first time dies the next day he saw no water unloading

meat at the lodge of a relative seeming to sense crazy horse's anger no water jumped on his horse and galloped out of camp perhaps unable to contain his anguish over both the loss of the only woman he wanted and the death of his brother crazy horse grabbed the nearest horse and gave chase across broken land.

He kept up the chase until no water plunged his horse into the elk river and escaped on the other side. Not many days after that, the council of old men met influenced by the relatives of Red Cloud and no water. Crazy horse was to return the shirt, they decided. His actions over the woman endangered the peace of the Oglala and no one outside, like no one, Like no outside enemy could, and this could not be overlooked. Though there was anger in his own lodge and from the young men at this trickery, Crazy Horse gave back the shirt. Soon after that, the lodge of No Water moved far south to another camp,

and whispers were made behind the hand that Red Cloud was to be given the shirt. This is, like you said, there's just a trajectory that gait, that gaited, gains gaining speed. You know, you lose, now you lose your woman, now you lose your brother, now you lose your placement with the shirt,

as a shirt wear. And the friction points are, you know, him in Red Cloud. And so what is he doing? He's still fighting. And who's he fighting? I guess, unfortunately, he's fighting snakes.

He's fighting other Indian tribes. Going to this section here, they attacked, but the snakes were too many. The two Lakota groups were too far apart to regroup and the mud was too deep. Their horses tired. Somehow they managed to hold back the determined counterattack. Crazy horse, high backbone and good weasel with their rifles were rear guard as others retreated. First one fell back, then another managing to keep the snakes at bay. But several snakes on fresh horses suddenly were able to surround high backbone.

And Crazy Horse saw his old friend take a bullet in the chest. Still, the old warrior pulled out his pistol and emptied it at the onrushing enemy until they overran him. Crazy Horse ran in to rescue him, but his horse was too tired from pulling himself out of the mud, and the enemy fire was too much. Good Weasel finally intervened, grabbing the rain to his horse. The rain turned into snow as they rode toward home. Sometime in the night they found a sheltered place and built a warming fire with with their horses while their horses rested Crazy horse sat huddled beneath his robe alone with the thoughts of his old friend and teacher So I mean it's just again it's just it's just a

Downward spiral at this point They get back to camp crazy horse smoked his pipe and pondered all that had happened since he and he dog had carried their lances against the crow much had been taken away, it seemed. First, black buffalo woman. Then his place as a shirt wearer. Now his younger brother and his oldest friend were gone. He took little comfort in knowing they had died on the path they had chosen. There was only emptiness where they had been.

Perhaps these things had come to pass because he had not fully honored the calling to be a thunderdreamer. though he had learned the importance of honoring the old ways from his father's and from his father and uncles and his mothers he was not one for ceremonies or standing in front of the people but if he must live the life of sacrifice he would as a thunder dreamer he did not belong to himself he belonged to the people it was not what he wanted for his life but it was what life wanted from him as going forward a little bit this sort of of collaboration with the whites continues and it continues to escalate and finally at some point crazy horse returned home to resurgent rumors that miners were going into the black hills in violation of the rules set down in the horse creek treaty gold was the reason ah yes gold the white man's god the whites were willing to risk their own lives to get gold gold was the reason for their interest in the black hills the heart of everything that was to the Lakota.

So they got the sacred, the sacred Black Hills and the whites wanna get gold. This is, this is going, breaking away from the story for a second and going into one of the reflections sections from Marshall in this point. Most boys therefore basically learned the same lessons and were given the same opportunities to perform as fighting men.

So how does a crazy horse emerge from a broad cultural blueprint and set himself apart. Perhaps he is testimony to the premise that some things cannot be taught. Perhaps there is something innate that some have and others don't. Men and women who coach young athletes point out that while skill and methodology can be taught

to any athlete, the physical attributes of speed and quickness are frequently the difference between a good athlete and an outstanding one. Many people dream of becoming leaders, while others shun the opportunity even when it falls to their laps, General George Patton of World War II fame certainly sought the responsibilities of leadership and reveled in its rewards and prestige when he was successful. Crazy Horse, on the other hand, was not as quick to grab the opportunity when it came

and literally had no desire to talk about his exploits. But both were exceptional leaders, and their accomplishments could not have been achieved without a certain amount of basic ability as well as the experience of winning and losing. What is less obvious is that both of them also had inherent characteristics only a few of us have. Those characteristics enabled them to perform daring and reckless deeds and make bold decisions and to inspire others to follow them. What those characteristics are by name or label is often difficult to identify, but the consequences they enable are not difficult to see. You guys had some attributes, you know, and that question comes from. up a lot, our leaders born are made, and I always, my answer, which I wrote about leadership

strategy and tactics is, you're going to have some strengths and some weaknesses. All of us are. Are you going to be lucky enough to have, you know, the full, the full catalog of great leadership assets? Chances are about zero. Could you be a George Patton that, you know, has your articulate and you're smart and you're calm and you're, you have control of your emotion, you can, read people like all those things, I guess, but it's going to be very rare. We're going to have strength and weaknesses. And occasionally some people are going to get that level of charisma and influence over other people that's going to come from a place maybe not. Maybe you can't teach that. There's parts of leadership that you can absolutely teach. There's parts of even, you know,

the way you carry yourself that you can improve. but what we always teach people is you've got to build a team of leaders that help you with your areas of weakness. So if there's something you're not, maybe not that great at, find someone on your team that is. Boy, and if you want to find, step one to success, hey, start treating everybody with respect. And like they said with their leaders, their deal is your job is to teach, is to take care of the people. and then people will do almost anything for you. Yeah, I'm no doubt. Which is one of the lessons that you just, you could take away from this and see that, like,

crazy horse is doing all these things, but he's not really bragging about it, but everybody sees it and everyone else is talking about it, which makes it seem even greater. And then, you know, when he comes back from a raid, the first thing he does, He's like, I got all these horses. Let me go give them to the widows. And let me divide up all this stuff and give it and take care of people, which is a job. Yep.

Put others before yourself. Step one. Going back to the book. Black Buffalo woman, Red Cloud's niece was the love of his life. Politics, however, influenced her choice for a husband. She married no water only because he was of an influential family and their union enabled a broader influence in a stronger political base. Crazy Horse was, of course, heartbroken. in time the wound would heal

But as is often the case At true level is never completely forgotten A few years later when the opportunity arose Black Buffalo woman followed her heart And left her husband Lakota women can make a choice Because societal norms allowed it But in her case a jealous husband did not

And this is him just kind of debriefing this Crazy Horse had put himself in harm's way Many times as a fighting man But he probably never came as close to dying as he did when no water showed up With a borrowed pistol and shot him in the face There was no water's intention to kill Crazy Horse, and he thought he did. The subsequent furor brought several factions on the brink of bloodshed.

On one side, some wanted to defend no water, and on the other, some wanted to avenge Crazy Horse. To prevent any violence, Crazy Horse gave up the love of his life for a second time. Those who were jealous of him were quick to influence the old men leaders to strip him of the position of shirt wearer. Crazy Horse willingly gave up the shirt. but the status he had achieved circumvented the loss of influence. Many people, though not totally overlooking his mistake, still regarded him as a strong leader and remain loyal to him. It was a lesson not lost on him.

Never again did he put his own desires above the needs of the people. That was yet another example for others to follow. True leadership is rarely the consequence of election, appointment, dictatorship or inheritance. Good leadership overall is much too critical to be left to elect. politicians monarchs managers administrators supervisors and directors having authority does not make anyone a leader true leadership is exercised when someone performs a necessary or critical task and accomplishes an objective thereby

setting an example most of us will never face the daunting task of leading men and women into combat but we will likely have an opportunity to set an example we may not carry titles such as president governor mayor general or even chief, but we can be leaders simply by demonstrating that effort can be made. Tasks can be accomplished. Yeah. You know what's interesting, you look at a seal platoon, and there's going to be between one and five leaders in there.

Hopefully, there might be zero, but chances are very small of that. There's going to be one to five, and they might be anyone in the platoon. And you can just see, and if they're well-balanced, you know, like there's some young guy or, you know, one cruise wonder that just has good natural leadership ability, smart, and he's has his ego in check, and he can make things happen. And it doesn't matter that he's not the chief. It doesn't matter he's not the lieutenant. And as long as the chief and lieutenant are humble enough,

he's a good leader, hey, he's a good leader. Hey, you want to run this thing? It's going to be fine. Occasionally those guys get mad. They get scared. They get intimidated. They don't want someone running things. They think they should be.

And, yeah. I've seen it where you get like a new guy in a platoon. And he isn't necessarily calling any shots. But because his demeanor, he's got a good demeanor, he's never bummed out. It's like, everything's really terrible. And it's like, yeah, whatever. And you'll watch that, like his influence because he's got a good attitude, even in a worse situation, will bleed over to the rest of the platoon.

It's like, guys are kicking rocks and saying, this is dumb. That great attitude is contagious. So that leadership kind of by example, even when they're not really influencing people what to do, they're influencing the overall effectiveness of the unit by bringing its morale up a little bit. Raise the morale. Man, that's freaking priceless.

Priceless. The hits just keep on coming. Crazy Horse, who now has a different wife, who he has a daughter with, she dies. death was not new to him men died in battle sometimes and he was not surprised by that they were gone or that or the way that they had died as fighting men but the bundle atop his scaffold was harder reality it was a reality that challenged the goodness in life he fell across it and wept uncontrollably days passed there was thunder some wind and a little rain when he could no longer stay awake

he slept beneath the scaffold curled up under a robe he ignored hard he ignored hunger and thirst, worm had told him a kind of coughing sickness unknown before the whites came had taken her. Though he had tried, he could find no medicine to help her. Finally, when no more tears would come, Crazy Horse took his leave. The news that awaited him fanned his anger even more. Soldiers had gone into the Black Hills, a large contingent, according to the sketchy reports from a few Lakota who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,

a group friendly to the whites had been watching the column of wagons and the soldiers when they when they were attacked one Lakota was killed and another wounded they somehow managed to escape to tell their story so now you're you know you're blaming the death of your daughter on the whites as well and now they're going into your holy land yeah so now they go out and start just basically killing whites where they can find them. The most vulnerable at this time is the miners, people that are out in these little mining camps. And so they start initiating more of a guerrilla warfare. And this is something that, you know, knowing what we know now about insurgencies, that would have been the call because they couldn't get people to unite, but that fighting like an insurgent war would have been the, well, would have been another possibility.

And that's what he kind of ends up doing here. He says, the tactics crazy horse and his companions were simple yet effective. After observing isolated miners camps to determine their numbers and weapons, they positioned themselves and swept in. If the terrain was rough and offered good cover, they sneaked in close on foot before they attacked. In open areas with little cover, they charged in on horses. That's kind of crazy because that's exactly what we would do. Like if we could sneak into a target on foot, we do that.

If we couldn't, we just drive the vehicles right up to the target. And that's the exact same thing they would do. Massive explosive breach, lots of noise. We're coming in. In either situation, they use their lances and war clubs and the silent bow quite effectively. Rarely did any minor react quickly enough to fire a gun, which worked in the Lakota's favor. Without gunshots to warn anyone else in the area, the miners in the next valley or watershed remained oblivious and thus vulnerable to attack. He says this.

It was necessary to attack the. miners and kill them they were trespassers and thieves not honorable enemies the tactics they used were the only way to fight them especially in the black hills strike hard and fast and inflict him inflict as much chaos and as many casualties as possible and then withdraw swiftly that kind of fighting could play to the code his strengths and skills as fighters good at close combat crazy horse spoke these thoughts to his companions as they rode home and they listened and agreed they'd seen firsthand what could be done if a

enough Lakota fighting men could be persuaded to fight in the same way. And if enough bullets and powder could be obtained, the whites could be driven away. Yeah, I mean, that's the only strategy they got, right? Because the miners have got all these things they need. They got guns and they got bullets. They're not getting those from anybody else. And so they just sneak in, pick them out, sneak in, pick them out. Meanwhile, red cloud it was learned was making the trip to persuade the powers in Washington

to remove the little agent from his agency. when all was said and done, it didn't matter who the agent was on spotted tail agency or on the Red Cloud agency, as long as there was an agent and the Lakota accepted annuities, the whites were in control. But when Red Cloud and the others returned and there were many supposed headmen who made the trip, the news they brought back incensed the Wild Lakota. And you made this distinction. I haven't pulled it out yet, but there's basically the ones that are living in the agencies, and then there's the Lakota that are wild that are.

are still living in the traditional way to the best of their ability. And I say the best of their ability because they relied heavily on Buffalo and the Buffalo were being wiped out. And so this is, this makes living in their traditional way much more difficult in some case is probably impossible. The great father wanted to buy the Black Hills. sell the heart of everything that is, sell the dust of the ancestors.

Not looking, not, there's Lakota that we're just, we're not doing it. Yeah. The day, now there's more politics takes place and eventually they're supposed to all come and report. The day when all Lakota had to report to the agencies had come and gone,

the northern camps were nervous, watching the horizons for the first sign of soldiers that they had heard had been gathering at Fort Federal. winter relaxed its grip and a span of warm days had melted the snow and fought the ice on the creeks and rivers he dog took advantage of the opportunity to head for the agency his contingent of eight Lakota families were mostly women and children in no condition to outrun mounted soldiers before he left crazy horse had ridden up into the hills unable to watch his closest friend give in to the agency though we understood all too painfully he dog's reasons the spaces vacated by eight lodg were not as big as the holes left in the hearts of the relatives who watched their loved ones, riding away slowly and uncertainly looking back frequently. I mean, you know, the guy's got a bunch of women and kids and the, you know, he's going to do so much. Sitting Bull sent out his carefully chosen messengers to announce that the people should gather near Chalk Butes in late spring

and treating them to speak wisely and clearly to the leaders among the Lakota as well as the Dakota and Nakota. He wanted his messengers to appeal to their sense of pride, especially to those who were surely disenchanted with life on the agencies. So Sitting Bull is another wild one of the Indians, and he's very, I mean, obviously we've all heard of Sitting Bull. And so he has an incredible amount of influence and he's starting to try and gather people up and unite them a little bit. So that starts to take place. More and more people arrived almost every day. The horse herd was growing and eating down the sparse grass around the buttes. Some of the men said perhaps there was as many as 7,000 heads.

Sitting bull was already at work, inviting the older leaders to his lodge. He was an impressive and charismatic man, a slight limp from a gunshot wound to his hip. During his days, a young fighting man served only to give him more credibility. He had earned nearly 70 battle honors, more than any man at the gathering except Crazy Horse. Now past the age of 50 he had a solid reputation as a wise leader and counselor enhanced by his status as a medicine man. He was immensely pleased at the response to his message and announced he would conduct a sundance. Spiritually, as well as psychologically, it was the right thing at the right time. It could only serve to unify the people and add to the feelings of strength and pride that seemed to be growing as quickly as the horseherd.

It was that kind of insight that made him an influence. leader the encampment moved west across the powder and the tongue into the valley of the rosebud and across it as well turning at the northern slopes of the wolf mountains into the broken country near the greasy grass river while sitting bull was hard at work for the hearts and minds of the people crazy horse crazy horse sent scouts in all directions feeling among the military leaders was that the biggest threat laid to lay to the south from three stars army and um this book does not have a ton of detail about the battle at rosebud or really the battle at little big horn those are detailed pretty well in the book i fought with custer and also in the book wooden leg um but there is sort of a

debriefing here on on some of the things that went that went down Going to the book, the Rosebug Bud fight as the battle came to be known was the toughest combat crazy horse had seen The Battle of Hundred in Hand 10 years earlier that was when they Surrounded those soldiers and killed them out Yeah, the battle of the hundred in the hand Ten years earlier had had its own set of circumstances that made it tough But at the Rosebud The Lakota faced a larger and more heavily armed enemy force

Three stars soldiers were both infantry and cavalry and cavalry cavalry and cavalry forcing Lakota to adjust to different tactics as the fighting progressed attack was met with counterattack as the day wore on the valley of the Rosebud thundered with gunfire and dust hung in the air late in the afternoon who was evident that the soldiers were disorganized fighting in scattered units their effectiveness significantly reduced crazy horse was notified even though nearly a hundred had arrived at mid-morning the Lakota and Sahilia were critically low on ammunition sensing that three stars wouldn't be able to mount any pursuit crazy horse sent the word to withdraw crazy horse rode with he dog big road and good weasel among others as they once again chased dusk into night there was no pursuit from the soldiers to speak of the feverish aftermath of combat slowly faded as the reality of the day began to take hold 10 good men and been killed and many wounded in a day or two the scouts crazy horse had left behind would report on the soldiers so that's the first big battle that they engage is that battle at rosebud and then six days had passed since the rosebud fight

victory dances still went far into the night and the fighting men were asked to tell the stories of their involvement the mood of the encampment had changed from initial uncertainty to one of comfortable sense of strength hardly anyone no matter how old could remember the Lakota ever see in such numbers for any purpose at midday sitting bull sent criers to announce the move to the greasy grass valley and by mid-afternoon the first lodges were taken down and the families began moving by sundown most of the encampment was gone except for a few lodges and the Sundance arbor fast forward up a little bit more they're in their kind of camp now and we'll go to the book the

sides of the council lodge had been rolled up to allow cross ventilation a few men were waiting in anticipation meeting with sitting bull Women had already brought food sitting bull had been busy through most of the night attending to a gravely ill woman He arrived at the council lodge just as a slight din of commotion came from the south end of the encampment where he had just been A lone Lakota rider splashed across the greasy grass filled bank to bank with the heavy spring runoff from the mountain snows gaining the west bank he began to shout prepare yourselves the soldiers are coming the soldiers are coming and this is when we get into the little big horn battle the soldiers had crossed the river far to the south near the mouth of ash creek and tried to gallop tried galloping their horses

across the long open flood plain toward the south end of the encampment they had been quickly driven back and then chased across the river many were killed at the water crossing after heavy fighting in some trees near the river as far as crazy horse and the other leaders were concerned that was the first fight gaw of the hunk papa and old and oglala battle leaders black moon and big road were among those who had courageously led 200 fighting men in that action the second fight started at medicine tail coolie more soldiers had tried to cross into the encampment from the north end but were stopped by a small determined group of boys and old men armed mostly with old single-shot rifles by then many of the women children old people were fleeing to the northwest

somehow word had reached crazy horse and gall of the second attempted incursion gall immediately disengaged from the first fight and led a hundred men to medicine tail and crossed the soldiers galloped away up a long slope to the north crazy horse had hurried to to his lodge and found black shawl That's his wife waiting with his second war horse the camp was in total confusion not only were women and children running away to safety Men were galloping through to hurry to the second fight Shouts and screams filled the air gunshots could be heard to the south and now thinly to the north He took his second war horse and gathered as many men as to him as he could If a second group of soldiers was heading north north they could be circling to attack from another direction it made sense to try and flank them So he led the men who were with him to an old crossing.

Guessing the soldiers would stay on the high ground. He had crossed the river and raced to meet them if they came off the end of the high north-south ridge where he knew they lay to the east. On the slopes across the river, they circled to the east and encountered 20 or so soldiers, whom they chased back to the main body. The gunfire never stopped. He heard it as they crossed the river, a continuous sound, rather like someone tearing canvas. Gall and his men, Crazy Horse heard later, stayed in pursuit of the running soldiers even though they did not gain a ridge. At first the soldiers were organized, even managing to dismount and form skirmish lines to fire at the oncoming Lakota. But Gaul's relentless pursuit broke their lines and after that they were running away and their fire was no longer effective.

Crazy Horse led a charge when the soldiers tried to push north off their ridge. by then gunfire was thinning. It was sporadic and then there was silence. The second fight was over as he rode through the dust and he could see how it had unfolded. Dead horses and dead soldiers were strewn along the path they had taken. What's different about Little Big Horn Battlefield than Gettysburg is because the scale of it's much smaller.

They actually, they have markers for where these soldiers were dying and they went back and they could find all the skirmish. lines and everything so you can see it in real you know laid out where bodies fell um that came up from the river then across and then just the disaster that happened i mean you can all the way it's laid out and the bodies are laid out you can see that the guys are just trying to get away and getting mauled meanwhile the guys down at the other position they're surrounded up on that hill they're waiting for their turn they're wondering where because custard splits forces all these times.

And they're wondering, where did he go? Did he leave us? And some guys kind of push out and they can see this big swirling thing. And they can see the Lakota shooting down at the ground. They're like, oh, no, he's done. And then they wind up getting there under siege. Yeah. Yeah, looking forward to walking that battlefield myself.

going back to the story here after that, the sitting bulls trying to keep people there, but they kind of start to, like, it's the fighting's over and kind of people got stuff to do, right? Well, there's another element coming toward them too, and they're like, hey, we got to move everybody. Yeah, yeah, and I'm even going past that. So that happens.

And eventually he says this. What was left of the largest gathering ever of Lakota, separated in several encampments moving along the eastern foothills of the Shining Mountain. Soon after the departure from greasy grass, small groups began breaking away to head for the agencies. Sitting bull like crazy horse was deeply disappointed because they were losing the strength of numbers. Despite the best efforts of sitting bowl, the people scattered. Some made excuses saying it was time to hunt and make meat for the coming winter, which was more difficult now because of the scarce.

of Buffalo others unabashedly headed for the agencies sitting both finally headed north to more familiar territory crazy horse took his people east to the black hills finding a sheltered valley northwest of the mountains to hide the camps from there he led raids into the black hills there that continues for a while and this is all he does a great job in the book of just this kind of torment and anguish that that that crazy Crazy horse is going through as he sees what's happening. At some point, Dull Knife, another one of his friends, informed Crazy Horse that he was forced to consider living, giving in to life on the agency if it meant his people would be safe from facing continual conflict with the long knives. The idea was debated long and frequently.

Strangely, an opportunity presented itself when messengers arrived bringing word from three stars who had been given assurance that the wild Lakota would be a lot of. allowed to select the location for their own agencies if they signed a peace agreement. The only drawback was that it included an agreement to sell to the sale of the Black Hills. In spite of deep-seated suspicions, Crazy Horse agreed that this important issue should be discussed face-to-face with the long knives. Crazy Horse and a large detachment of warriors escorted the delegation north to the fort on the Elk River. A group of crow scouts met the emissaries just outside the walls of the fort, making friendly gestures to indicate their peacefulness.

As the eight Lakota rode past them toward the gate, weapons were drawn suddenly, and the crow opened fire at point-blank range on the unarmed Lakota and then fled on horseback. Crazy horse charged down from the bluff, but stopped when mounted soldiers emerged from the fort. Instinctively, the Lakota emissaries turned their horses and gallop for the safety of the bluffs. and protection of the escort warriors. Only three rejoined the warriors. Five lay dead on the ground near the gates of the fort. So there's chance for peace and the crow. This gets like completely fumbled.

Fumbled. And, you know, and the crow had motivations to do what they did. Yep. And, you know, I think the guys come out of the thing there and try and hunt them down because they realize, oh, dang it. Yep. This is... Fast forward a little bit more.

The harsh winter should have been to deterrent, at least providing a brief respite from worrying about the long knives, but that was not to be. To agency Lakota carrying a bold message from Bearcote, found the crazy horse camp. If the wild Lakota moved into the agencies, they would be given food but would have to give up their weapons and horses. Sword graciously as ever.

assured Crazy Horse's people that it was his idea to intervene because he didn't want his friends and relatives dying when peace and a good life could be had so easily. If Crazy Horse would come in, meaning surrender, his people would be given food, clothing, and blankets, and then he would be allowed to return to Powder River area to claim it as his agency. So like, oh, do you want, we'll give you peace, we'll give you food, you can have your own area. only he and Sitting Bull were stubborn or perhaps foolish. How could anyone continue resisting when even a brief battle used up the bullets that took several days of scrounging? Half the people who followed him wanted to go into the agency.

They were tired of running from the soldiers, tired of being hungry, tired of seeing relatives die. They stayed because they believed he had an answer of some kind, something that would solve the problem of the soldiers. Yeah It's just closing in And there's really Not much of an option Yeah, these essentially are glaciers Glacier forces

Just coming towards them And he's going to get crushed and squeezed in one direction So they end up Going to Camp Robinson Fast forward a little bit here Nearly four months had passed since Crazy Horse People had arrived at Camp Robinson, 900 and all with over 1,500 horses.

The soldiers had taken their horses first, and then their guns, and then their hope. In four months, the promise of an agency of their own in the north had turned into an impossible dream. He blamed himself partly because he could do nothing. Perhaps if he had learned to be an agency, Lakota, and put on the defeated smile in the presence of three stars and other soldier leaders, none of this would be happening. But the soldiers were not the only ones to cause the turmoil of the past four months. The finger of blame could be pointed at many Lakota as well.

In fact, they were mostly to blame. The white agents and the army officers fanned the flames of jealousy and let little minds that could not think beyond the moment. And little men who yearned for recognition and power do the rest. There was no other way to look at it. In the end, the Lakota defeated themselves. They had the whites outnumbered and outmaned and did nothing. The entire garrison could have been overrun by enough determined Lakota fighting men with a good plan if they truly wanted to return to living the old way in control of their lands and their lives.

Instead, men stepped over each other to betray their own relatives in order to obtain the power handed out by the whites, a power they couldn't get on their own. And he details some of this just ego drama that's going on and they have the opportunity. You know, if I'm in camp and, you know, Jason, crazy horse, Jason's out there still being a wild Lakota and I want more power in the camp. Maybe I say, you know, you don't want to deal with that Jason crazy horse. He's too crazy out there. You don't want to put him in a power position.

You don't want to get like all these things. This happens. A buffalo hunt had been promised, but there had been no hunt, and Crazy Horse understood why. First, someone with more power than three stars had to say that the Lakota could go chasing Buffalo. If given the opportunity, three stars reasoned, the hunters would keep going, perhaps all the way to Grandmother's Land to join Sitting Bowl, which is Canada, by the way. Adding to that, some among the Lakota complained to three stars that if Crazy Horse and his young men were allowed to hump Buffalo, then everyone might be. be allowed and it was a Lakota who warned that it was dangerous to put guns in the hands of Crazy Horse so he's just getting stabbed in the back by you know as his dream pointed out

by some of his own people after many of the soldier leaders at Camp Robinson came to crazy horse with with questions about the greasy grass fight and the defeat of the long hair which is Custer two agency chief sent messages complaining to three star Perhaps there was no place for another agency chief. Crazy Horse thought to reassure his uncle, Red Cloud, that he had no wish to be made a chief of any kind. But he knew anything he had to say to them would not be regarded as truth. But eventually the rumors did fly.

It was said Three Star would make Crazy Horse chief over everyone, including spotted tail and red clouds. You can see this is just like political drama. To make matters worse, many of the lesser soldier leaders were themselves saying that Crazy Horse could influence the younger men. better than the two older leaders could through it all he had tried to talk to three stars about the promise of a northern agency day after day traveling to Robinson from Cottonwood Creek if you want your agency some of crazy horse's friends said carefully in low voices for it was hard to know who might be listening you will have to travel to their place of power where the great

father lives and speak to him face to face of course they warned warned if three star sends you ahead of red cloud or spotted tale, they will find a way to make it difficult for us while you're gone. They will find a way to take you down when you return. Crazy Horse had no wish to travel to the great father and Curry favor from a man he didn't know. He would be out of place and only something for show, someone to perform for the powerful. Crazy Horse did not wish to be a thing of curiosity. Fast forward a little bit more.

And now, he's trying to make a deal, man. He's trying to, like, get it done. he knows where these things are going. He's late in the game, but he's trying to make it happen. Yeah, I mean, he's got to think about the women and the children at this point. And he's like, well, you know, I could keep fighting, but then who's going to protect them?

And that's where the guy is just so honorable because he knows where his responsibility is. It's not like how many soldiers I can kill, because he can kill quite a few more. And he can probably, you know, inspire a bunch of the young men on the thing to rise up, but to what end? And at the end of the day, it's the women and children that are going to suffer. So then he's like, I've got to try and fix this and negotiate the best deal that he can at that point.

So he starts to put a deal together. Lieutenant Lee, the soldier leader in charge at Spotted Tails, agency sent word that Crazy Horse must come to the soldier house. Crazy Horse rode out with touch the clouds and white thunder, spotted tail, and over a hundred of his young men met them on the trail. Lee arrived with Black Crow and Louis Bordeaux and was frightened, seeing that he was between the mini conju and Aglala on one side and spotted tails. On the other, there were shouts and threats hurled back and forth and weapons brandished until Crazy Horse raised a hand and silenced slowly fell over the gathering. Lee, now very frightened, told Crazy Horse that he must return to Robinson and make it good with the soldier leaders there. So the night passed, the morning came. When the sun arose, he hurried to the soldier house to speak to Lieutenant Lee.

To assure him that he had not changed his mind, he was ready to speak with Randall, he was one of the leaders, to make things good. So with Touch the Clouds, Swift Bear, and Black Crow along, they started out for Camp Robinson. The first group of blue-coated Lakota men met them along the trail. They said nothing informed a wide half-circle around Crazy Horse and the others. Further on, more blue-coated Lakota arrived, and now they became a mob of more than 60. It was then that Crazy Horse knew he was in trouble. So now you have Lakota's that are wearing the military, the American military jacket. Fast Thunder was lost in the crowd.

So too were he dog and touched the clouds. All around was noise of running and scuffling as if men were pushing together. Crazy Horse was pushed toward a square house made of logs, a strange place for Randall to be. Before he could help himself, he was through the open doorway. There was a bad smell. A man with dark hair and braids rose from the... corner then he saw the iron bars he spun on a heel and saw a man little big man blocking the opening crazy horse shoved the shorter man aside and tried to push past but almost immediately felt little big

man grab both of his arms from behind with a great effort he pulled himself free and reached into the opening of his blanket for the knife outside there were shouts of both soldiers and the Lakota Let me go, he said to little big man. Let me go. The man, the Oglala warrior who had ridden into battle with him, stood fast. Perhaps it was the blue coat of the soldier that had turned his heart. With a sudden swipe, Crazy Horse slashed the arm of the coat, and immediately blood flowed and Little Big Man jumped back.

With a step, Crazy Horse was outside, and there was movement everywhere. More hands grabbed at him from either side. Brown hands holding him fast. The strident voice of a soldier yelled. From the middle of the confusion came a soldier, thrusting with the knife at the end of his rifle. Those near him heard Crazy Horse gasp and saw his knees begin to wobble. Brown hands still holding his arms, even as the soldier withdrew the long knife.

Let me go, they heard him say quietly. You've gotten me hurt. then he fell and crazy horse died a few hours later um it details that in the book and yeah and his dream the dream that he had became fulfilled and yeah again it it makes me think about that that that quote that native american quote from that podcast with with micah fink that the diagnosis is a curse. And this seems to be something similar. You know that thing when we're driving?

Go through that driving course and they warn you. When you're going through like a tactical driving course and you're driving around a track or you're driving in and out of traffic, you're doing these things and they warn you, give you a warning. They say when you're driving, if you look at something, what you need to look at is the opening. You need to look at the part of the track that you can drive. You need to look at the part of this road that you can go through, that you can make it through. Because if you look at another car or you look at a guardrail or you look at a ditch, that's where you're going.

That's where you're going to end up. We go where we aim. And I don't know. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy here. But it might be. And I think it's a good idea to try and set yourself your sights. on a positive outcome. Another thought I had about this is,

you know, B. H. Liddell Hart, who go listen to some podcasts that I've done on B.H. Lidlardt and the indirect approach. But he also talked about the fact that what happens to profits? You have profits and you have leaders. What happens to profits? Prophets die.

When you go out, you profit, you make statements and you don't compromise, you die. And your message will get traction later on. And it's usually the leaders that take the message from the prophet and turn it into something that can be brought to fruition. You know, they use compromise, they use understanding,

and they use relationships to move an idea forward in a more practicable way. But the prophets, the believers that don't compromise, oftentimes they're crucified. They're killed. And pretty clear where Crazy Horse fell in that category, which category he fell into. Powerful lessons to be learned.

If you want to join us on the battlefield, Little Big Horn, we're going to be up there in August, August 16th and 17th, and then August 18th and 19th. We're doing back-to-back. we'll go out there you'll learn we'll learn we'll explore so many characters

Custer is a leadership lesson after leadership lesson about what not to do so much so much incredible stuff so you want to join us up there we'll see you go to echelonfront.com

check out events and you can find it we're also going to Gettysburg past couple podcasts we're about Gettysburg we're doing that May 11th and 12th and then again on May 13th and 14th

and there's a dinner before both those the night before so if you want to come those check them out if and look go anyways you don't have to go with us go and learn this

as Americans all of this is part of our shared history all these lessons at both these battlefields. There's so much for us to learn from and we can learn from, you know, in the case of a lot of the things that we heard the soldiers were doing were not good. Like, hey, this is what I'm not going to do. This is not an honorable way to behave. And then we can see when the Lakota are talking about generosity being a virtue of a warrior

and then considering that and saying that is a virtue that I want to strive to as an American. And this is such a great way to learn these lessons. It is. Thanks for listening. If you want to support yourself while you're supporting us, you go to joccofuel.com, get some medicine. Is that my allowed to say that? Yes.

I don't know. In the context that we've got, right? Get some medicine. You get some milk. Moke's a good medicine for you. Yes, it is. Um, get some stuff for your joints. Get some stuff for your immunity.

Get some stuff for your energy levels. Sure. Energy. We got an energy drink. Yep. That is not a typical energy drink. It's good for you. Yep.

It's good for it. So, and it does seem kind of like a rough transition a little bit. It's totally rough. I don't know what else to do. Man, like, a lot of these, these. like Native American stories or whatever, for whatever reason. I don't know.

We were talking earlier where I kind of get a little bit more into them. I don't know why. Maybe because a lot of times it starts with just right at the beginning, how they start with how they're raised, like how the kids are raised. And then, you know, I have young kids. So I'm like, man, I want my kids to be like crazy horse. What was his name before, Crazy Horse?

Light hair. Light hair. Yeah. So just from the beginning, you're into it, you know? And then you kind of, you know, You're kind of cheering for him and rooting for him. Then at the end, it's all tragic. And then now I've got to tell everybody how Jocko discipline goes.

So healthy for you. It's hard transition. It is hard transition. Well, if you want to support, that's a good way to do it. OriginUSA.com. We're making a bunch of stuff in America. Jocco store.com. We got some T-shirts for you.

Some other stuff. We got Jocko Underground.com in case we get shut down for, whatever reason you can go there and help us out. We got a YouTube channel. So that's cool. A bunch of books. Eschelon front are our leadership consultant. You can check that. We got an online training platform, which is, which is awesome. These leadership lessons that we're talking about, they're not, they're skills that you can learn. Look, is there some charismatic thing that crazy horse had that maybe we can't give you? Yes. But there's an unbelievable number of ways that you can improve your leadership. And that's what we teach in the academy.

You know, at the academy, when we do our live sessions, every single one of them now, someone gives a sit rep. We're like, hey, I've been practicing this stuff. I've been checking my ego. I've been working with the other teams on our group. And here's all these massive successes. And they just compile every week. So you can hear from other leaders that are putting effort into leadership instead of just not really paying attention to it. And then you, you know, then you can quantify their successes. So cool. Also,

you mentioned like leaders, you say other leaders, whatever I think a lot of times we talk about this from time to time where some, a lot of people I think, don't hear the word leader and then it's like,

that's me, which kind of they were taught where they were straight up talking about that where it's like, hey, you don't got to be the general, you don't got to be the manager, you know,

everyone's kind of like a leader for different reasons than the title. That's a great point. Man, and so when you kind of in, you know, I hang around this group a lot, you know, I'm not leading, no, I'm not, I'm no manager, you know, nothing like that. But I'm a little team now, I do, a team now, yes. But team of one. I'm over here reaping massive, you know, rewards from you guys, and it's just me, you know, from the beginning. So I think that's like a, the good thing to bring up,

and a good distinction where it's like, yeah, sure, you're talking to quote, unquote, leaders, but it's not just the boss. You know, it's like everybody's on there. No, and there's individuals, whether maybe they're running their own business or they're just working somewhere and they're leading themselves and they're part of the mission.

Yeah. And we get great feedback from them too. Yeah, man. You know, and here's another thing. This translates everywhere. So in the last couple I've been in, people have talked about parenting issues. Oh, for sure.

The leadership straight up. It's the lifetime leadership. And they're like, hey, I had, you know, I had this issue, and I've been having this issue with my son. And then I realized, wait a minute, it's not my son. It's something that I'm doing wrong. And I've adjusted the way that I interact with them. And now things are great, you know, and they're looking at themselves first and taking

ownership. And if that, what you just said hits you. If you're listening to this right now, you just heard Jason say that, like, oh, it's something wrong with me as a parent. And you go, oh, that's bullshit. shit I'm that's my kid you better do what I tell if that's what your attitude is I'm telling you got a rude awakening coming your way it is leadership it's the same you want to impose stuff on your children it's not gonna go well for you it's not so be

careful that thing you just said or said about the the example or whatever it's like oh yeah I I used like this lesson I looked at myself or whatever yeah anytime where I looked at it as no it's not them not doing the right thing. It's me not doing the right thing. Every single time. 100%. No,

not the guy 99 to me. No, 100% of the time. It worked. 100%. When I have a discipline issue with my kids and then I do run the internal debrief or Iris gives me the debrief.

It's like, what are you doing? How's it going? Jackass. Then it gets fixed. And I'm like, well, this is what I did wrong and this is what I need to do better.

Next time I do those things next time and then there ain't an issue. Yeah. Just like that's the that's extreme ownership extreme ownership.com if you want to come and join us and a bunch of other people on that we're doing it all the time if If if you want to help out some service members go to America's mighty warriors.org where Mark Lee's mom set up an incredible organization and and also check out heroes and horses heroes and horses.com Micah Fink we're talking sweat lodge there's some ancient rituals we're talking about rituals being brought back That's one that that he's doing that to help out a bunch of veterans that need it. So look at that as well if you can help out if you need more of us.

We're on social media. Watch out for the algorithm warning. Jason's Jason and Gardner. Jason dot and dot Gardner on Instagram and Jason and Gardner on Twitter and And echoes at Equitralz on everything. I'm at Johnckel Willinkin. Thanks to all of our military personnel out there, especially today the Native Americans,

the Native Americans from our military that have served in every conflict America has been involved in, starting with the Revolutionary War and in the Civil War, in the Civil War where General Eli Parker, member of the Seneca tribe, he was the military secretary to Ulysses S. Grant. He was there when General Lee surrendered. And General Lee looked at Eli Parker, a Native American, and said, I'm glad to see one real American here.

To which Parker replied, we are all Americans. That's a righteous attitude. And the Native Americans continued to serve the code talkers in World War to Ira Hayes, raising the flag on Iwo Jima. He was from the Pima people. 10,000 Native Americans fought in Korea. 42,000 fought in Vietnam. 19% of Native Americans have served since 9-11,

including one named Michael Kenneth Bell, who was a member of the Fort Peck tribes and a seal who I worked with briefly in 2005 was a complete warrior and who was murdered in 2006 when he was home on leave. But a salute to him and all the Native American warriors that serve our country. And thanks also to our police and law enforcement. Firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders.

Thank you for your service here at home. And to everyone else, there is another account. There's another account of Crazy Horse's death from a man named Charles. A. Eastman, who was a member of the Santi Dakota tribe. And he was the first Native American to be certified in Western medicine. He wrote a book called Indian Heroes and Great Chiefs. And in that book, he reported that crazy horse. And that book was written maybe 1915, 1920.

In that book, he reported that crazy horse after he was stabbed with that crazy horse. the bayonet he didn't say let me go you've hurt me what he said was let me go let me die fighting and I don't know which one of those is more historically accurate but that sounds like a good plan let me die fighting and until next time this is Jason and ECHO and Jocko out