Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 262 - The Nez Perce War

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

A group of Native Americans launch one of the longest fighting retreats in North American military history in order to escape genocide at the hands of the US government. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Bruce Hampton. Children of Grace, The Nez Perce War of 1877 Elliot West. The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/the-last-battle-of-the-nez-perce-war/ Elliot West. Dreamweaver.

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, the only podcast to get your military history based oppression. I'm Joe, and with me again is Tom, not in studio this time. How's it going, Tom? I'm good. I'm good. I'm recording from home, powered by Elf Bars.

Nate is currently on tour, so he has the mixer with him. So I am working from home for once recently, so it's a bit strange. My setup is going to get so much better when I move in a couple of weeks. I won't have to be in this audio cube right here. Forget the content, minds. We're all about the audio cube. Embrace the cube. When I move, I would like to have a dedicated recording.

I mean, I guess I do to have like a dedicated recording i mean i guess i do kind of a dedicated recording space but i because of my apartment i cannot have like a sound proof area where i can record not that there's a lot of sound uh my apartment is quite quiet but uh you know yeah like it could be better at the same time i'm not the producer so i cannot hear when there's something wrong with the podcast that is like more than once like you or nate will be like oh you know i i don't want to record from like for instance when we're recording the taiping series uh a few weeks back nate's like well i record the first one at home so i should record all of them at home so nobody can tell the difference. I'm like, Nate, I have some bad news.

You two are the only two people that can tell the difference. Like nobody. Yeah, 100%. Nobody else can tell. So last week we talked about Eurovision. And in that time, we have had the finals um which seemed to have pissed everybody off i am so angry i'm so mad finland was robbed i fully believe the conspiracy that sweden got it purely because it's the 50th anniversary of abba next year

it's now a conspiracy theory i also also believe. And even going beyond Sweden, and yeah, I understand this podcast is coming out three weeks after Eurovision. I'm sorry, this is just how we work. But even beyond Sweden, which got all of the judge votes,

Germany was fucking robbed. They did not deserve last place at all. The UK was by far had a worse performance. Israel did not deserve to A, B in Eurovision and B, third place. Yeah. Like on a technical level, I can't remember her name. She sang Euphoria,

won it in 2012, and then won this year. It's Laureen. Yeah, Laureen. To give her her credit, is a phenomenal performer. Literally world-class vocalist. The stuff she does is just, on a technical level, is insanely difficult.

I am cha-cha-cha peeled finland 100 yeah korea korea korea absolutely own that like the crowd turned on eurovision as it became clear what was happening and i'm pretty i'm pretty sure there's like because i was watching it and there were sections where the hosts were talking and i'm pretty sure they had to like cut some of their mics because everyone was chanting cha-cha-cha so loudly yeah i was watching the live stream and like when during judging well for instance during his performance the crowd was louder than he was during the chorus or his backing vocals whatever and then um during the judging you could like people were losing their fucking minds. It quickly became clear that the judges are giving this to Sweden.

Germany was fucking robbed. Italy was robbed. Italy's performance was incredible. France should have done better. Spain should have done better. The only thing that I learned is that as an american the electoral college also fucking sucks for eurovision but like so spain should have done a lot better than they did that was like an incredible like performance song and like i kind of look at it as you're taking in like

not just the song but the whole stage performance and like spain was great france was serving like unlimited levels of cunt it was very like it was very like jesse weir inspired belgium just did a straight up rip off of take that's really like my fire like literally like almost note for note in the chorus it just sounded exactly like uh take that three light my fire i you know my my sleeper on this like obviously last week i said i didn't expect armenia to win i'm a realist i fucking love australia's performance it was so good it was so good and we had two bands that did fucking death growls at eurovision australia's chorus and death and glitter uh germany which is like like i said last week this is not my kind

of music people have listened to this show before know what kind of music i listen to you know i'm not into like europop or techno and shit but like the fact that you have like heartfelt like edith piaf type ballads from france next to some guy from germany doing death growls is fucking incredible see this is the benefit of like automatic entry into the final like you can take risks france is usually quite conservative with their entries it's usually kind of a ballad or something kind of disco inspired something like that something very french yeah yeah like germany like once again they benefit from automatic entry so they can do stuff like that it seemed like there was a lot of kind of people trying to do lordy stuff i can't

remember the country that did it but i did enjoy the ghost in the shell inspired song where i had like the big robot on the screen serbia that was serbia and they also they also had like a mortal combat bit as well yeah which fucking ruled i mean not my kind of song that guy tumbled out of the womb of bergheim but like uh the the performance ruled yeah a lot a lot of failures this year of weaponizing twinks like usually switzerland did a good job switzerland did a good job but like overall like i i felt like because i was watching with some mates of mine we were drinking and it was like the first half of felt like lacked something and then the second half it was all systems go you know once you got to uh it was who came before finland uh whoever came before finland um kind of that was the turning point of like okay it's starting to pick up in energy but like finland's performance like

the staging it was just so good like conceptually as well like the performance like the song is cha-cha-cha and we were watching it and they're like what what's with the dancers like they're supposed to be cha-cha dancers yeah um and i feel uh so bad for poor albania they had like the only like folk tinged song on there and they were served up to eat the most amount of shit on earth by i believe they followed sweden like oh just go out there and die guys you're fucked yeah and like one of my uh favorites was uh wasn't even a per a performer it was a daddy fear who like was meant to compete during covid did a cover of atomic kittens you can make me whole again and i was like this is

this is great like this is you know because uh i know we talked about it before but uh kieran dole from corner spady you know his theory that like half of europe thinks your vision is the straightest thing possible and then everyone else realizes it is just camp as hell and like there's a reason why everybody calls it the gay olympics yeah gay christmas yeah um now is this like gay christmas is it like christmas in general as you text you texted me yesterday and said like this is going to be revenge for the trouble series so this is going to be revenge for the Trouble series so this is going to be horrible. For the first time ever you hosted a series that made

me depressed. I mean and I fully understand that as a guy who researches genocides as an academic profession it's hard to make me like feel things anymore and you did that with the Troubles so my job

now is to make you very sad which is which is why we're talking about the u.s government's treatments of the indigenous american people today oh no oh no tom uh normally like nate would be on for an episode like this but like he's you know working he's on vacation and disposed and it would be very fun to take someone who's not very familiar with the u.s government's i mean everybody's kind of familiar with the u.s treatments of indigenous americans but not intimately familiar with it like i won't i won't even say most americans are but like you know someone who researches genocide yeah uh so this might shock you tom when i tell you that the U.S. has something of

a bad track record when it comes with the, let's call them relations with the indigenous people that the American nation was built on top of. Now, we've talked before kind of at length at the slow rolling generations long genocide of the indigenous people of the Americas, something that is still criminally undertaught in American history classes, unless, of course, you are one of my students. Hey, guys. I know some of you still listen to the show. Today, we're going to talk about something that should be familiar for some people, especially

people maybe from the Pacific Northwest, but maybe not, is the Nez Perce War. Oh God, just as soon as you mentioned the Pacific Northwest, I'm like, oh, we're going to experience some weird proto-fascist genocide. I mean, that is just American history up until, well, I would say today, uh we now go live to florida um and texas i shouldn't laugh about that that is so depressing that we've talked about this before like when we did the series on nan king and like the khmer rouge series like we're we're laughing nervously because we don't know what else to do these are not lat these not labs of joy. There's no joy to be had here. This is a cry for help in the form of laughter. And without going into it too much,

because I don't want to fall into a rabbit hole here before we get started, because this is quite a bit of an episode we have to go through. There is no uniform experience when it comes to the genocide against indigenous people, depending on where they were in the United States, what tribe they belong to, et cetera,

what happened to them was different. For instance, the Nez Perce tribe specifically did not come in contact with the United States, really, until very late into what you'd consider the history of this genocide. That doesn't make them any less of victims or anything like that. It just means that their experience is quite different.

Because the United States is so fucking large and they generally live in the Pacific Northwest, it took America time to get to them. Now, today we're going to give you a little bit of a short overview, not an exhaustive overview of the Nez Perce people, just so you can kind of understand why this took so long. For instance, Nez Perce, which is the name they legally go by today, is not the name that they use for themselves. It was given to them by your first contact with white people, which was by French Canadian fur traders. In their language,

their name that they give themselves is Nimi Poo or Nemi Poo, which just roughly translates as the people. But today, like there's the Nez Perce nation and reservation and stuff like that. They were the dominant people of virtually the entire Pacific Northwest. At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, that you could consider roughly their

territory, though obviously they were not what you'd consider a solidified state, but their territory that they moved through covered about 17 million miles throughout what is today Washington State, Idaho and Oregon. Or if you really want to

piss people off, Oregon. Oregon. Of course they were not a unified people. They had tons of different bands or subgroups spread out over a collection of different nomadic groups but also permanent villages

and towns which would grow and shrink in population as the season changes because you know seasons changes they go out to hunt they need to go further to forage people move yeah they historically survive through foraging as hunter gatherers specifically in the form of gathering wild berries and herbs but also hunting and fishing, uh, fishing, especially because the Pacific Northwest great fishing, um,

you know, until a certain time there was, uh, these things are very plentiful in the area. And then the fucking white people showed up. now obviously they had already made, uh, incidental contact with,

uh, French Canadian fur traders, but we've talked about before french canadians and the french in general used much different colonization tactics when they had holdings in america uh so they weren't that there was not a sustained contact that the nez pers really had to worry about um and this this sustained contact began with the lewis and clark journey now when lewis and clark met the tribe they were overwhelmingly nice to the explorers giving them whatever they needed including fresh

and rested horses because you know we've talked before you can literally ride a horse to death um it's yeah pity the horse yeah not too much though They have weird people teeth and I can't forgive them for that. I don't like horses. I don't either. I rode horses a few times growing up. And you know what? Just let them be. It's 2023 now at the time of recording this. You don't need to ride a horse anymore. Unless you live somewhere where you do, in which case you probably aren't listening to this podcast. Save a horse, ride a cowboy. You know what? I'm actually in favor of that as long as you treat the cowboys the exact same as the horses, which means you have to nail their cowboy

boots to their feet. That's how you stop snakes getting in them. Yeah, that's right. No more snake in my boot. Now, when Lewis attempted to trade them some meat for the horses, the local chief was offended, insisted, no, take the horses for free we have plenty and if we needed meat that badly we need the fucking horses take the horses um they were so friendly that they ended up living together for

over a month not like the french to take horse meat the lewis and clark are american okay yeah yeah sorry i i mean there's another series sometime in the future about the Lewis and Clark expedition. But yeah, Lewis and Clark were American explorers contracted by the government for a reason, which we're about to talk about. soon to be, like would always be, completely ruined by the concept of the United States and Thomas Jefferson's idea of manifest destiny. All my homies hate Thomas Jefferson. I'm the only good Tom. That's right.

I mean, you're vaguely aware of the concept of manifest destiny, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Westward expansion. Yeah. You know, by value of being god's favorite people etc etc now this manifest destiny in the expansion west was the entire reason why lewis and clark had been sent west to begin with making contact with the nez purse only two years after the louisiana purchase and the true beginning of american westward expansion so let yeah like the whole while

lewis and clark themselves may have been friendly to the nez perce their entire reason for being there was inherently violent yeah throughout the years uh after and you know with a few wars american holdings in the west continued to solidify though these wars were not against the nez perce who continued to live in peace and relative isolation uh the nez perce never fought a war against the Nez Perce, who continued to live in peace and relative isolation. The Nez Perce never fought a war against the United States until the time we're talking about during this podcast. They were out there. You're in the middle. Even today, some of these places are quite a bit divorced from the rest of Washington State and Idaho and Oregon.

These are wild places. State and Idaho and Oregon. These are wild places. So in the 1800s, it takes a lot of time and effort to get to these places. But just 50 years after first contact with Lewis and Clark, the US government was now at their doorstep attempting to get them to put pen to paper and outline the creation of a Nez Perce Indian reservation. Now, I don't like using the term Indian. For one, it's simply incorrect. I am not a Native American person, so it's not up to me to decide if people prefer to be called Native Americans or Native Indians. However, the term Indian reservation is the legal term, so I do have to use it. My bad. Now, this is for a lot of reasons, mostly just the obvious ones. They wanted the Nez Perce, as well as other tribes, to be moved out of the way to make room for the exploitation of the land they once considered their own. But most importantly, in this case, the form of the Transcontinental Railroad.

The most important part of the reservation system, of course, though, was control. Because remember, the Nez Perce were not hostile to the United States government. They had not fought them at all. They had been overwhelmingly friendly towards outsiders, even government officials. The government simply could not let them to continue to exist without their total and complete subservience to the US government. That is the most important thing here. Because there's a very good chance that if they cut a deal with the Nez Perce about the Transcontinental Railroad, they would have let it be built without any problems. Like, can we still like hunt and gather here?

Yes. Cool. We don't give a fuck. You know? Now, this coercion towards a deal came in the form of the Walla Walla Council in 1855. 1855. Over the course of a month, the U.S. government represented by the Washington Territory governor and head of Indian affairs, again, name of the government department, was a guy named Isaac Stevens. Now, this guy is fucking nuts, even for the time, I should point out. He was considered violent as hell towards indigenous people, again, in 1855.

as hell towards indigenous people again in 1855. Well, gee, like that, that is a very short measuring stick to, uh, be, you know,

compared against. Yeah. It's like getting fired by the Nazis for being too violent, which actually did happen by to like a death camp, uh, uh, commandant. Yeah. Though that was for embezzlement actually.

Nevermind. Don't fuck with the money is kind of the trend through history now his form of negotiation came in two forms sign the paperwork or i'll fucking kill you that's it i can only imagine this goes swimmingly yeah uh now in more than one situation when dealing with other tribes not not the Nez Perce exactly, he simply forged their signatures and then showed up with an army to enforce the treaty that he invented. Like, this guy doesn't give a fuck. Jesus Christ. case was president pierce to remove him from office due to his not only uh an amount of murder and violence towards the indigenous population that made doing business hard with them because

you know they in the pacific northwest free trade between the two groups of people is quite commonplace but he also crushed political dissident like uh or political dissent he threw people that disagreed with him in jail he evicted white people from their lands if they married indigenous people which was quite a common occurrence um at one point he almost he tried to arrest a judge what yeah um and like this like this is a guy who like he, this is, I believe, in a year. He published a letter in the local newspaper calling for the complete extermination of, like, Native Americans in the area. Like, he's nuts.

He's insane. This is, you know, the 19th or 18th century. Like, how the fuck can you be this much of a fucking monster? Now, obviously, that is a bit of a rhetorical question but like this is yeah being out of the norm being a territorial governor during this era of the United States is not too much different than being like a camp commandant

like the extermination and subjugation of the native populations of these westward territorial governors was a very important part of their job. Yeah. This is the thing where you have the argument about the camps and stuff.

The complicity of the administration. When you think about these things, mass extermination of people doesn't happen without administration. People pushing pens and pushing paper. The banality of evil, so to speak.

Yeah. I mean, the entire reservation system in general, again, without falling into too much of a wormhole, was to kill people. The reservations that they set aside for the people that they interred there was not their ancestral land. They didn't know how to live on it. And even then,

because the US.s wanted to turn the generally mobile people into an agricultural type people on land that you couldn't grow anything so they're setting them there to starve and freeze to death you know or you know in the summer die of heat exhaustion or heat stroke or and various other easily communicable diseases because, again, they also put no healthcare in place. So, like, the comparison is, I know some people are not

going to like the comparison, but it's apt. Deal with it. I'm sorry. Now, you could see why in 1855 the Nez Perce fully know who the kind of guy that this dude was and what he was capable of. So the Nez Perce and other tribes grinned and bared it, signing the Walla Walla Treaty.

The treaty granted the Nez Perce and other tribes to remain in a large portion of their own lands, which spanned Idaho, Washington, and the Oregon territories in exchange for relinquishing about 5.5 million acres of their approximately 13 million acre homeland to the U.S. government. Now, this treaty was interesting in that it gave the tribes the right to use any public land the same way white settlers could use it. In a form, it granted them a separate but equal status. Okay. Which is bad because anybody who ever uses the term separate but equal knows exactly what they mean yeah it's not it's not one of those phrases that uh fulfills a very generous promise yeah i mean it fills up promise it's just not one that you want yeah now it created the nez

pers reservation which spanned the three territories and was supposed to be under the nez persis control per the treaty no white settlers were allowed on the land without which spanned the three territories and was supposed to be under the Nez Perce's control. Per the treaty, no white settlers were allowed on the land without permission from the tribe, and this agreement was supposed to be enforced by the U.S. government under force of arms, in the form of the U.S. military. We've been doing this show long enough now that nobody listening probably should be surprised when I say that this is not how anything worked out. Yeah. Almost immediately, white people moved onto the reservation

and the government did nothing to stop or evict them when the tribe reported them to the government. Now, in a lot of situations, this is where the tribe says, fuck it, we'll evict them themselves, and this ends in violence. But the Nez Perce do not do this. They know, specifically one of their main leaders

know that if we resort to violence they will resort to violence and they can do violence better than us because of you know this army that they have you know this was kind of the status quo for about five years and then someone discovered gold in 1860. Oh, fuck. Yeah. The small numbers of white squatters on the reservations quickly ballooned into the thousands. They established a whole-ass illegal town named Lewiston, which still exists today. So, residents of Lewiston, I hope you're proud of your town's history. And after thousands of miners moved in for this gold, the people that follow miners and prospectors showed up. Traders, ranchers, farmers, business owners, things like that. The things that

make gold rush towns possible. Yeah, building an infrastructure around a single industry. Yeah, which was technically illegal, but is something illegal if the government doesn't actually enforce a law? I would argue no, especially when the government benefits from this kind of thing it's soft colonial genocide the government isn't doing it private

citizens are doing it yeah yeah yeah with the tactic endorsement of the government because the government refuses to evict them now there's no evidence to suggest as the government has in the past though it has softened in years, that there was some kind of centralized Nez Perce government that came to the conclusion they need to start shooting settlers. And that's because there was no centralized government of the Nez Perce at all. Traditionally, they didn't really have a government. The government, as far as one existed, which was described by historian Elliot West as, quote, Nez Perce leadership varied with place and circumstance. Day-to-day leadership was by band headman,

sometimes called chief, and they were recognized for skills with dealing with other bands and for being modest, generous, fair, and always ready with kind words, diplomacy. Yeah.

It's like a decentralized community leadership where it's kind of a flexible role that changes depending on the circumstances, community to community. And chiefs could be hereditary, but not always. If an emergency came up, they would decide who would be best at

handling that emergency, like war or something as simple as we don't have enough food, that guy's a really good hunter. Let's put him in charge of this. Or that guy's really good at finding berries and herbs and whatever. He's now the food guy. What a weird concept, putting someone in charge who's good at something. But violence began to pop up because of course it did. Farmers and ranchers destroyed the land that the Nez Perce forged and on order survive faced with the deprivations and without any kind of legal resource many young nez perce men sometimes called warriors i'll use the term warriors during this but these guys are

not seasoned warriors like you'd expect they've never fought anyone before i mean some incidental band on band fighting did occur, but these guys are not hardened warriors. But they grabbed their guns and resorted to violence. Yeah, it's kind of like, even like the leadership, it's, you know, titled by circumstance.

Yeah. Rather than actually enforce the treaty that they already had, i.e. get rid of the white people squatting on the land, the U.S. government instead demanded a new treaty from the Nez Perce. Remember how I said that the Nez Perce didn't have one leader?

Well, the U.S. government, for the ease of themselves, demanded that they needed to have one so they could talk to one guy that could be in charge of the entire tribe. The tribe themselves, of course, didn't actually get to pick who this guy was. There was no voting here in the land of democracy. Instead, the government picked someone that they knew would represent their interests. This was a guy that went by the name Chief Lawyer,

a name given to him not because he was an actual lawyer, but because some white guy met him once and thought he acted like one and called him a lawyer. I'll let you decide if that's a good or a bad thing. Yeah. Once again, Chief Sharks. Yeah. Now, he was the son of a leader who had greeted Lewis and Clark some 50 odd

years before. And he was, the government knew he tended to be agreeable to the demands of the government. So the U S insisted that this guy could unanimously act for the entire Nez Perce behalf. The deal presented to them was hardly a deal at all. Give up everything other than a small piece of land east of Lewiston,

a town that was illegal and in their territory, and this would require the complete and utter relocation of the entire tribe under the barrels of the Americans' guns. They even lost the right to the use of public land. They were being put in a camp. Yeah, like how many people is this? What population size would it be? It would have been several thousand, yeah. Okay. they were being put in a camp yeah like how like how many people is this like what's what population size would it be it would have been several thousand yeah okay um now the tribe fractured

they broke roughly along two lines because remember the tribe is several different bands of people yeah um now they roughly broke between the pro and anti-treaty factions so those lines still are still separated along individual bands and even families amongst their own leaders. The pro-treaty faction was led by chief lawyer, and these guys tended to be overwhelmingly Christian. The anti-treaty faction were mostly faithful to traditional religions and something called the Dreamer cult, which we'll talk about in a little bit,

and were led kind of by a guy that went by the name Tuitecas, or more commonly, Old Chief Joseph. Old Chief Joseph was actually also a Christian, and he was one of the earliest tribal converts and an avid supporter with peace with the whites. However, he believed that they had finally pushed him too goddamn far

and they were asking too much now the anti-treaty faction refused the sign and remain on their ancestral lands while the treaty faction packed up and left for the reservation yeah i i will i kind of think about obviously the pro-treaty faction it wasn't necessarily like oh yeah you can take our land i it it probably was a case of theory maybe since the consequences of not moving i think everybody knew the consequences of not moving that they're going to come into violent conflict at some point yeah um and to be fair old chief joseph made sure that you know they he kept his people out of the immediate way of settlers. He told them no matter what, are you supposed to greet them with violence? Protect yourselves, defend yourselves, whatever, but no revenge.

And there was plenty of violence, mostly settler on Nez Perce violence. mostly settler on Nez Perce violence and there was a lot of young warriors, angry men, like fuck this we need to fight back, old chief Joseph kept them all in line pointing out that look I understand but

if we do this we'll be facing the army and we cannot win it's creating an excuse for an escalation of violence that like you cannot really defend against. Yeah. And he was smart enough to know that no matter how long they kept this up, the inevitable was eventually going to happen. By 1871, he was on his deathbed and he told his son, also Chief Joseph,

quote, you are the chief of these people now. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. A few years more and the white men will be all around you. This country will soon hold your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother. I have a feeling it's about to get

worse. Yeah. Now, Joseph was the chief Joseph, this new one, the most popular Joseph. Unlike his father, was not Christian. He was a follower of the so-called Dreamers cult. Now, this cult was mostly based on traditional beliefs as well as the

divinings of a guy who could talk to the spirits of the earth and stuff like that. And it was a cult with some fun beliefs. For example, the native Americans alone were real people. The first created and the whites, the blacks and the Chinese for some reason, I were later created by God to punish the indigenous Americans for leaving

their ancient ways. Now they believed if they lived as their fathers had done, most importantly, above all else, never plow the land or sign papers for land which they consider to be against the laws of nature they believed if they did this and followed the old ways an army of ghosts would come back to the world of the living aided by the powers of mother nature and chase the white men from the lands i'm just wondering why did the chinese have to catch some strays, you know?

I assume it's because at this point Chinese labor was a pretty important part of American westward expansion. Yeah, I suppose if this whole thing is predicated on the building of the railway and obviously the railway was predominantly built by Chinese immigrant labor, makes sense. Yep.

So all the old ways. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree predominantly built by Chinese immigrant labor. Makes sense. Yep. So follow the old ways. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with the weird Hotep-esque beliefs here, but I fully understand why they would believe this. They invented Yacoub. Yeah, exactly. They kind of did.

Cat Williams is just there saying they send the white devil after you. So follow the old ways. Never plow the land. Don't sign paperwork. And an army of ghosts will rise up like the scene from Lord of the Rings and chase the U.S. military for off your land. Though my personal favorite part was that they had a special hairstyle, which is I don't know what this looks like because I cannot find a picture. But it is described as, quote, a rearing pompadour which fucking whips oh yeah rocking around looking

like greasers in the 50s hell yeah now joseph was in charge for about five years before things really blew up but things have been escalating for a long time a white rancher gunned down a Nez Perce man who was out forging for herbs in 1876. And Joseph, like his father, had a strict no-violence rule towards the revenge towards the white settlers for fear of the army.

In fact, in one situation, a group of armed settlers moved into where they lived. So Joseph led a group of men out to surround them. Now Joseph's men were also armed, but they made sure they kept their weapons slung across their backs to show they didn't mean them any violence and simply told them, please leave. You're not welcome here. And they did. However, he couldn't control everybody.

However, he couldn't control everybody. A group of Nez Perce men from Joseph Faction said, fuck this shit, grab their guns and shot a white man in revenge. Which, you know, I get it. Fair enough. You've been pushed and pushed and pushed for, at this point, decades. Someone's going to get clapped, you know? Yeah. Territorial authorities in Washington use this as a chance to pressure the federal government to send more troops into the area and make with the genocide. Now, the US government did not immediately pull the trigger on this. Instead, they reverted back to negotiations. It's easier

for the government to get to convince these guys, just go on the reservation and die a long ways so we don't have to actually deploy soldiers and spend money on this they sent a special presidential commission led by oliver otis howard he's a veteran of the seminal wars in florida so he they sent him for a reason yeah he was sent to meet with joseph according to army records howard was shocked to finally talk to joseph assumed, because he's racist, he would be dumb and not know how to negotiate or be diplomatic. And he found out that Joseph was not only very, very intelligent, but was pretty good at negotiations and diplomacy. He found him a very agreeable man. However, because Joseph was agreeable did not mean the US government was.

Howard tried to convince him that turning towards an agricultural life, again on the reservation, made up of land that was entirely worthless for everything, including agriculture, was the future of his people, and he should lead him that way. Now, like we point out, this is literally sacrilege to Joseph and the members of the Dreamers cult, which there were a lot of in his faction. The founder of the Dreamers cult compared pl were a lot of in his faction the founder of the dreamers compared plowing the fields to stabbing your own mother so yeah he's not gonna go for that yeah that's that's a that's a pretty hard line to take yeah now after losing the debate on the

battlefield of ideas with joseph howard simply pointed out that if you refuse to go onto the reservation, you're going to face the full force of the US Army. Joseph, again, refused. Now, knowing that conflict was probably coming, Joseph called together all of the anti-treaty bands to pick a man that would lead them into this coming conflict because Joseph was by no means a warrior, despite the fact he's framed as one in popular history and narrative. Now, he was a great political leader and people liked him, but the man was not a military leader. There's not even any evidence he actually fought during this entire point. One person pointed out that his most important job during this entire saga we're going to talk about was that he cared for horses as other people went and fought not everybody's a soldier it's fine yep um sometimes you got sometimes you need a guy

who's gonna look after the horses sharpen the axes pick the berries you know like organize things at a civilian level you know yeah life goes on during a war now the man they picked was a was a guy named two hool hzote, the oldest warrior from amongst the gathering, which translates as either noise or growler, which is what I'm going to call him for the sake of the Nez Perce language. Now, he was the opposite of Joseph. He was a bit aggressive and confrontational, which I guess are two things you want in a guy who's your elder warrior. However, he was also very practical. Not previously fighting the U.S. government either, his band had taken the same course of self-restraint as Joseph's.

Though, when Howard pointed out that whether he liked it or not, his band was going to be under the authority of the U.S., Growler answered, quote, As long as the earth keeps me, I want to be left alone. I am not going on the reservation. I just have this creeping sense of dread of what's about to happen. You should. Even with all of this, the anti-treaty factions were given a one month time frame to pack their shit and get ready to go on the reservation.

And they did Growler and Joseph were like we don't have any we can't fight them what else are we going to do so they grabbed everything they could and you know they this included hundreds and hundreds of

head of cattle and horses they also had another anti-treaty band leader named white bird they all packed up and on june 14th they had gathered in a camping spot just south of the reservation for preparations to cross into it right oh fuck you just set a date no no fuck then three young men from one of the bands rode down to a nearby river and shot four settlers dead. Then they returned to the camp to brag about the fact

they just killed some white men. So more young men pissed off about all of this, of course. Like, they've been pushed to the fucking edge. Rode off and shot a few more settlers. Joseph and the other band leaders tried to keep all the young men in line, but they just couldn't. More and more men fed

the fuck up, killed at least 14 people over the next few days. Up until this point, this is the largest confrontation the Nez Perce have ever had with the settlers. Now, Howard wasn't expecting any problems, so he had some soldiers there, but they were not great,

and immediately requested reinforcements and deployed the forces he had available to crush the anti-treaty faction. In response, the various bands moved into a place called White Bird Canyon in the south. This is a perfect place to ambush and defend. The canyon was five miles long and one mile wide and only one possible approach for the U.S. Army to take. It was an ambushers paradise. Thankfully for the Nez Perce, the army was dumb as hell. They numbered about 106 men commanded in two companies, which were obviously much better armed than the Nez Perce. However, these men were all completely green. They had not seen combat in any single way. And all of the soldiers, which is very common for the u.s military back

then were recent immigrants to the u.s and had a very tenuous grasp on english most of them were irish and italian no like as we have talked about in multiple episodes over the past while you know being able to communicate efficiently is very important yeah yeah yeah we're learning how the irish became white now people yeah uh getting press ganged into the the civil and post-civil war militaries like a lot of times these guys would get off the boats and say like new york and because recruiters had like effectively like a bounty for people they could get to sign up they would make money and they would just like trick these people into signing paperwork they couldn't read or or really know they'd get them to sign and they just like shove them into a box uh like well you're in the army now son oh god

someone get paulie shore on the line and obviously irish people speak english surprise surprise i wonder why that happened but obviously a lot of the immigrants coming in were very, very poor and illiterate. Yeah. Also, at that stage, the majority of Irish people didn't speak English. Yeah. And so if they're getting the true poorest of the poor, the chance of them having a solid grasp on the English language, not to mention the kind of terminology used in the United States and the United States military. Quite thin. Yeah. Like that and being like not able to read English as well.

Not a good combination. You just have some like big mustached fucking US guy saying gibberish to you and you're just like, okay, I'll sign it. I learned a valuable lesson from my time in Ireland when an angry man speaking English at me is armed and pushing paperwork in my face, I should probably sign it. Now, the various ranks of the unit couldn't really speak to one another. And most importantly, their officers, who are all American. Furthermore, they are, like I said, completely green, no experience really, and on horseback, but they could barely qualify as cavalry.

So after riding their horses for two days and covering 70 miles, by the time they got to the canyon, their men and animals were just about dead on their feet. The Nez Perce spotted the soldiers on June 17th and Frog, Joseph's brother, wanted to launch an all-out attack on them immediately. The Nez Perce had never fought a war against the army, but had the element of surprise, terrain, and riding ability in their favor.

Their forces were about equal, but they did seriously lack firepower. They only had about 40 guns between them, and some of which were ancient muskets, and the rest were armed with bows and arrows. Though, there's a very specific skill that they had in using firearms. Accuracy, because they hunted with them. You know, if you're hunting and you miss a shot, you can't shoot again. Yeah, you ain't eating. Pretty much all of them are better than any shots of anybody in the u.s military in comparison to the u.s military who are still taught to fire in volleys yeah then 30 warriors got shit-faced on some stolen whiskey which left

the des purse about 70 men to use in the attack now outnumbered quite a bit whoops happens to the best of us boys uh now again again, Joseph wanted to avoid fighting if they could, so he sent a delegation under a white flag to discuss a truce with the soldiers that allowed both sides to leave the canyon without anybody getting ventilated by a lever action rifle bullet. Of course, a forward contingent of soldiers immediately shot at them, starting the battle. Now, the Nez Perce were not stupid. They had pre-possessioned their warriors before the fighting had begun, while the army had not. So, after starting the battle by randomly shooting, the advanced position of the soldiers was immediately isolated, and the one advantage

that they had is, despite the fact there was no common language amongst them, they had a trumpeter. Soldiers are taught to listen to the sound of the trumpet which is you know crosses language barriers and like oh fuck four toots means i need to run or whatever you know rizzle kicks was so prescient yeah uh so the the trumpeter got the fucking trumpet shot out of his hand uh that's some tactical shooting right there i would like to think someone did it on purpose rather than just shooting the trumpeter like fuck that guy in particular fuck his hand now at this point the forward position tries to run they get ambushed all this gunfire scares the army's horses which were as green as the men riding them and we talked about this a little bit before in our uh battle little bighorn series back then army doctrine was to dismount the horses before firing like they weren't like riding and now they they did do

cavalry charges on horseback with like revolvers and stuff yeah so like they would charge forward with um like revolvers and stuff when they didn't expect there to be resistance. If it was an actual battle, you get off and shoot. Soldiers tried to do that. Their horses took off because they weren't conditioned to hear gunfire and ran. Good call on the horses part. The other guys running into the battle

couldn't dismount and they couldn't shoot from the horse's back. They just got fucking annihilated um and captain perry one of the company commanders had to resort to using runners but he passed orders by word leading rather than writing them down leading to a battlefield game of telephone oh no one of his runners uh ran out to uh like tell someone hey we need to get up that hill and form a defense and somehow it got passed as a general retreat okay so soon captain perry is

like seeing his soldiers running for it and has to like hurry to keep up uh so the nez the nez purse carry the day taking the battlefield and leave 34 dead soldiers behind the Nez Perce carry the day, taking the battlefield and leave 34 dead soldiers behind. The Nez Perce do not lose a single person dead. They had like four wounded. After this battle, the anti-treaty bands finally make up a plan. We're going to Canada. Now, Canada is over a thousand miles away from where they're currently standing. And this might sound weird to some people, but Canada had allowed so-called outlaw tribes to seek refuge across the northern border. Famously, a year after the Battle of Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull led a contingent of his

people across into Canada to safety. Now, this is not to say anything nice about the Canadian authorities and their attitude towards indigenous people. Of course not. However, in comparison to how the US government treated people, it was a relief, which is a low bar, I know. However, in order to get to Canada, the anti-treaty bands would have to conduct one of the longest fighting retreats in American military history, all while massively outgunned and outmanned. Now, they dedicated themselves to this and started making their way there, fighting the U.S. military the entire way. The first of these battles was the Battle of Cottonwood, which lasts two days in July of 1877.

After their first victory, they crossed the Salmon River, and Howard, who was now chasing them with a reinforced attachment of 400 soldiers, rapidly closed in. The Nez Perce numbered about 600 people total. However, only about 150 of those people you could consider warriors, and most had never fought a day in their lives until the last battle. Knowing that the entire group couldn't get away from the soldiers, they decided that they would fight the whites only long enough so their slower moving civilian contingent could get away and keep their path to Canada open. Then the warriors would break contact and keep up. Trapped in the confines of the Bitterroot Mountains, the soldiers dug in and the Nez Perce launched delaying attacks against their positions, buying them enough time, and it worked. One Nez Perce warrior was killed, which is their first death of the war, but they did get away. They broke contact and made another 25 miles to the Clearwater

River, where they met up with another anti-treaty leader, Lookingglass, who had brought with him about 50 warriors and another several hundred civilians. It was there they decided they need to build a camp and rest. Two days later, Howard and his army caught up with them, starting the Battle of Clearwater. This battle is fun to think of as being the Battle of Clearwater, Florida, and it's just a bunch of Scientologists getting murked, but this time, Howard came prepared, armed with artillery and Gatling guns. He positioned them on a ridge that overlooked the band's camp and opened fire, expecting to break the camp and send them running in disorder, at which point he would send in his

cavalry to kill them. Instead, Growler, along with a man named Yellow Wolf and about 30 warriors, mind you, they're outnumbered by hundreds. It took about 30 warriors, jumped on their horses, and led a counter charge up the ridge. This worked somehow. This fucking

worked. It's a big change for our recent track record of uphill charges. Now, we talked a little bit about this during the Battle of Little Bighorn series, but American military tactics against indigenous people at the time did not factor in what you'd call actual fighting. It was like their idea was you shock them with a charge of cavalry or artillery. And then because Americans are so strong and brave, they would send the indigenous people leaving their villages and camps running away, at which point they would be ran down and murdered as they fled. This is what they depended on. So when Howard opened fire, he sent in his cavalry to do this.

But instead of running, the cavalry ran into this counter charge of 30 dudes and stalled out the entire US Army attack. They bottled them up and pinned them down with their superior marksmanship. And they didn't know how to fight them back. They're like, oh God, every time I stick my head up, I get fucking my dome ventilated get a head piercing courtesy of winchester yeah and this did work the warriors but you know it only works for a time because there's only 30 of them you

have 600 odd dudes it's quite easy to eventually surround this person, this group of people. So that's exactly what happened. But they did manage to break off their charge and get back to the camp before they were completely cut off. And they bought enough time for the men in the camp to dig in and prepare. Now, this is the plains or whatever.

It's a wide open prairie directly into prepared native defenses which also shocks the u.s because like what do you mean they dug fighting positions why do they know how to do that so over the next two days soldiers charge at the nez perce lines over open prairie and each time we're thrown back and because they didn't fucking prepare for this battle to last any more than 10 minutes, they didn't bring any food or water. They left their

supply train behind in July in the middle of an open fucking canyon in Idaho. Absolutely bodied. Yeah. I'm tapping the sign that says logistics again. Yeah. Wagon manifests. Wagon manifests. Though in this situation

I am happy they did not bring them. Now the warriors in the camp were well supplied by their own civilians. Mostly women and old men who ran water and food back and forth to their forward defensive lines so they could keep them fighting. And this defense worked.

Eventually on the morning of the 12th of July the Nez Perce slipped out of the battlefield to cross the Clearwater River and continued their ongoing retreat towards Canada another 17 soldiers were dead while the Nez Perce lost four ratio plus L

as they crossed into the territory that belonged to the Crow tribe they'd hoped that they'd be like, you know, some camaraderie or brotherhood. They're like, hey, we're kind of running from the army. Can we hang out here? The Crow told them to fuck off. Don't bring that shit around here. Yeah.

So they kept marching, telling any white people they saw that, hey, we don't want any problems. We're just passing through. And the reception was actually pretty good, neutral at worst. Local settlers ate and traded with them. And this led the Nez Perce to believe that they were safe and very far away from Howard. So they didn't even bother to send out scouting parties, plan defense, set up a fortified camp. So when they did set up a camp, they didn't think they were in any danger and they planned to continue their journey the next day. What they didn't know is they actually didn't have to worry about Howard. Another command under Colonel John Gibbon was also chasing them

and was rapidly closing in on where they had camped in an area called the Big Hole. They're posting hole on the plains. Yeah, it's in Western Montana. It's known as the battle of the big hole which is a joke where i say i see i believe your mom took part in this battle at a drum like i'm not proud wait wait wait wait thank you um gibbon gave explicit orders to his men

no quarter was to be given they were taking no prisoners everyone was to be killed I feel like that was the last time I'm going to laugh for the next like 20 minutes yep that's true that is very true there are rumors though never confirmed

that Gibbon discovered the Nez Perce's location due to the Crow tribe selling them out. We don't know if they narked them out to the cops or not, but it seems likely. Now, his attack began on the morning of August 9th and caught the camp by complete and total surprise. Most of the Nez Perce were sleeping in their tents and this attack was part and parcel of what they normally do. Charge the camp,

break them and make them run, and then ride them down. And that worked. They were firing indiscriminately as they went. However, after clearing out about half of the camp, they paused to set fire to half of the tents, or teepees. This took so long because the teepees weren't burning, that Lookingglass and Whitebird were able to rally warriors on the other side of the tents or teepees. This took so long because the teepees weren't burning that Lookingglass

and Whitebird were able to rally warriors on the other side of the camp and finally establish a defense. They shot Gibbon in the leg and killed his horse. I'm just imagining some Irish dude who just speaks no English at all trying to

put a torch to a tent. It's like, it's not burning. Why is it not burning? And then you just hear a horse screaming. Your commander gets his kneecap blown off. Rawr! And the soldiers who were so busy trying to burn down this camp got cut down pretty

fast by the defender's fire. And the attack was halted after only 20 minutes. Gib gibbon his leg probably turned the other way from a musket ball or something had to pull his men back before everything devolved into a sniper duel which he knew he would lose uh the nez pers were still unquestionably better shots even better than these seasoned men and after bogging them down with the revolutionary concept of good aim the warriors withdrew on the 10th of august leaving behind 90 dead most of whom were women and children so many as part

the nez purse got the native american version of captain price yeah pretty much so many people were were killed from the nez Perce during this attack. There wasn't a single family of the anti-treaty bands. I didn't lose someone that day. Gibbon continued chasing them as they passed through the Yellowstone National Park, which had been established. They managed to outmaneuver the soldiers once again, but not before exacting some revenge. Previous to this, Joseph thought he might be able to negotiate an end to this war that left something of his tribe intact and on lands favorable to them.

After the Battle of the Big Hole, he was convinced that this was never going to happen. There was no quarter to be given and none to be expected. They shot any white person they found along the way, because after the last battle, they considered anyone, any white person that they saw to be on the side of the soldiers that were trying to exterminate them. At this point, the stress of the retreat had begun to break the anti-treaty band leadership, which was never quite unified in the first place. Joseph and another prominent leader, Poker Joe, advocated for the bands to keep going towards Canada. They cannot rest. We have to keep going. Looking Glass, who's now the most important military leader of the group, said they need to stop and rest because they're running their people

and horses into the ground. And if they kept going, they'd be too tired to make it to the safety of Canada. Eventually, Joseph and Poker Joe caved with Poker Joe saying, quote, Looking Glass, you can lead. I'm trying to save the people doing my best to cross into Canada before the soldiers find us. You can take command, but I think we'll all be caught and killed. So with Looking Glass in charge, they set up camp for the last time near Snake Creek at the foothills of the Bear Paw Mountains, only 40 miles from the Canadian border. They would never cross that border. They knew they had shaken off Howard and Gibbon, but were unaware of a third commander,

General Nelson Miles, who commanded elements of the 5th Cavalry, the 7th Cavalry, famously Custer's old unit, and the 2nd Cavalry. As well as Lakota and Cheyenne Scouts. Who had been fighting the soldiers just a year before. Oooh. They found the Nez Perce camp on September 30th. Encircled it and began laying siege with their artillery. The Nez Perce had scraped out fighting positions. Which, you know, winter is closing in now. So the ground is mostly frozen.

But they manage to scrape out fighting and fighting positions as well as like shelters for civilians because they're firing artillery at them yeah um and they were no longer under armed they were awash with more rifles and they had men to shoot them as they captured them all from the dead soldiers in fact they had so many rifles that every single warrior in a fighting position had three different repeating rifles alongside him along with another guy or woman who'd reload them in

between so he could fire literally continuously forever. They had thousands of rounds of ammunition. However, Miles was worried. He knew that he could win this battle militarily for sure, there's no question. But he was worried if the siege continued and went on and on, because they have the weapons and the means to resist, that Sitting Bull might ride down from Canada with a native

army at his back and relieve them. So at some point, someone opened negotiations. So no one is entirely sure if it was miles or one of his indigenous scouts they managed to broker a temporary truce which was immediately broken by soldiers who ran out and kidnapped chief joseph looking glass i assume said fuck you ran out and captured a lieutenant who had gotten too close to their camp who then exchanged him to get joseph back this is definitely the work of like some absolute greenhorn private who thought it was a great idea showed up to miles and miles like

what the fuck you after doing yeah we have a deal um now afterwards uh the soldiers began shelling the camp once again now during this phase uh there, there's sniping duels, there's artillery, there's small skirmishes. Looking Glass, Frog, and Poker Joe are all killed. This leads leadership to Joseph and White Bird only. And they're running out of food. It's getting very cold. People are getting sick. They can continue to fight, but both of them are realistic enough to know that we aren't getting out of this one. They begin to discuss if they should surrender. Joseph was in favor of surrendering, while White Bird didn't want to stay and fight, but he wanted to organize a breakout to make for Canada. And Joseph contended that we could have made a breakout if we leave behind the old, the sick, and the wounded, which I'm not willing to do.

Yeah. And, you know, the children, and like, you know, they remember the last battle they had just fought. They saw what the army did to all these people. Yeah, yeah, so they're not, yeah. Eventually two Nez Perce men who were pro-treaty members and had been with the army were sent

into the camp to try to convince them to surrender, promising that nobody's going to be executed or otherwise punished. They would be given blankets and food and be brought back to the reservation in Idaho. Yeah, I really believe that. Now the thing is Howard and miles meant it, but we'll get to that point.

Joseph with white bird, just like, you know, I fine. Joseph accepted the surrender, sending a message that is now famous or rather infamous to Howard. He related orally, which was then written down by one of the Nez Perce men. It said, quote, tell Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have in my heart. I'm tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed.

Looking Glass is dead. Growler is dead. The old men are all dead. It's the young men who say yes and no. He who lead the young men are all dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of whom have run away to the hills, have no blankets, no food, and no one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I'm tired.

My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. The government then immediately went back under word under the order of William Tecumseh Sherman, the absolute genocidal psychopath who arguably took a more active part in the genocide of America's indigenous people than anyone else and civil war hero isn't that fun

yeah rather than be sent back home to Idaho home in quotations there the survivors were marched to Bismarck stuffed into a train and taken to Kansas from there they were exiled to Oklahoma for seven years to die of exposure on the plane. You can do it, Joe.

Most of them would die there, a purposeful act of genocide committed by the U.S. government. Chief Joseph later said, I believe General Miles or I never would have surrendered. said, I believe General Miles, or I never would have surrendered. Joseph and the last 268 surviving Nez Perce were allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest almost 10 years after the end of the war. But even then, they were not allowed to return to their land and instead were sent to the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington. Joseph spent the rest of his life demanding and advocating for his people to be allowed to go back to their homeland but each time he was refused he died on september 21st 1904 and even his corpse was not allowed to return to his ancestral lands to be buried alongside of his father the end that

was miserable yeah i mean it's like um this happened a lot. William Tecumseh Sherman was a fucking psychopath. He hated Native people. He was key to the campaign to murder all of the buffalo in the United States so the Indians had nothing to eat. He has more blood on his hands, possibly, than any other American military leader in history. I'm sure we'll do a series about him at some point. Oh, we'll certainly talk about a lot of the shit that he did like the march to the sea uh during the civil war is

obviously what is famous what he's famous for um but yeah he was there's a reason why the government liked him after the civil war he was very good at quote-unquote controlling indigenous people and by that i mean killing them killing them and coming up with you know an environment that would not be proficient enough for them to survive like that is out out and out bullet point by bullet point an act of genocide by william tecumseh sherman the u.s military and the u.s government i feel like i need a drink and a cigarette after that paybacks up I feel like I need a drink and a cigarette after that. Payback's up, bitch, Tom.

Yeah. You got about 50% of the way there. You got one more episode in you, then we're even. Oh, boy, do I have so many. Tom, to lighten the mood a bit, we have a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you want to ask us a question, Legion, support us on Patreon. You can ask us in the Discord.

You can ask us through a legion support us on patreon you can ask us in the discord you can ask us through a dm or message on patreon um you can load it into a cannon and fire it directly at london where nate or tom will receive it editors note do not fire a cannon at london um i feel like that's probably against the law slightly uh This question comes to us from the Patreon. You guys are athletic. What is one sport you've always wanted to try but have never had the opportunity? Tom? Either Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu because I am a man approaching his 30s

and need something to base my personality on or I really want to try fencing. I would be super interested in in like I guess it's like western sword fighting like Hema fencing or like any I want to hit a guy with a sword so fencing Hema or Kendo I'd be super interested in myself for me it's hurling I've always been really interested in hurling yeah hell yeah come come to London I'll show you how to play hurling i've always been really interested in hurling yeah hell yeah come come to london i'll show you how to play hurling like for those of you who don't know hurling is the one of the two well technically three uh national sports of ireland it's what are the other two uh gaelic

football and handball what is gaelic football so imagine soccer but you can pick the ball up and you can kick it and like rather than just pick the ball up and you can kick it. And rather than just kicking it into the goal, you can kick it over the bar. Google it. Wikipedia exists. So Irish rugby? Yeah.

So there's a combination between Australian rugby and Gaelic football that is played in between Ireland and Australia. And it's actually quite interesting. It's called Aussie Rules. Oh, Australian Rules football is a sport that I've always wanted to understand because I'm so interested that it's like that weird Italian festival game where it's more of like an MMA fight than a fucking ball game.

I love it. I watched a documentary about that. It looks so cool. I did as well. Yeah, yeah. It's almost entirely populated by insane fascists, something they have in common with the Italian government now. But it's super interesting, because these guys do not make a

living doing this whatsoever. It's just like, once a year, time to get together and murder the guys on the other side of the city. Yep, yep. Hurling, for anyone who's interested, is also the world's fastest field game. year like time to get together and murder the guys on the other side of the city yeah yeah um hurling uh for anyone who's interested also the world's fastest field game so like the the pace that it's played on is just like it's faster than ice hockey faster than like well definitely american football or basketball but i think it's faster than american football everything but it's like incredible to watch um i hope i'm gonna hurling

pill some people who listen to this show we're gonna have like a lot of americans are getting into uh hurling the way that like some irish people are really into american football yeah i mean hurling has always interested me because like i've never liked lacrosse growing up where i grew up lacrosse is a rich guy's sport so i. So I just grew to fucking hate it because I hated the people who played it. And hurling looks like a cooler version of lacrosse. So I've always wanted to try. Obviously, not exactly a lot of pickup hurling going on in Yerevan. Unless you play football or wrestle or box here, the sporting world is quite thin.

But yeah, i've always wanted to try sure i'll never find a place to try unless i go to the uk again um or hit a guy with a sword i think ever there's some there's something primal in every human that one that you want to hit a dude with a sword or a stick that looks like a sword you want to hit someone with something i feel like i could probably find a fencing place here, though. I could probably look for that. You can end up like Scorsese and just get that scar. Yeah, I'm going to do German fencing, which is blocking swords with my face.

I mean, I have what is known as a face for radio, and you can now call it a face for catching swords. Tom, use this space to plug your stuff uh listen to beneath the skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing um me and my co-host matt lauder we talk about like interesting historical ephemera that connects tattooing to history in general so we've got some interesting stuff we did a hit a four-part series on the history of japan and how that affected uh japanese tattooing a lot of other stuff like that also um i don't know when this episode is coming out but depending on the timing you can now pre-order

new lions led by donkeys merch a hong christ t-shirt that says live fast eat grass yeah and i'll make sure i put the the links for all of our new merch store that we're working on will be not only in the show notes i'll put on our twitter um and you know i'll have to redo the the bumper in the beginning of the show which has been in place for about four and a half years now for our new merch store. But yeah, if you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like this early. You get five

years of back bonus content. You get Discord access. Our Discord rules. It's a lot of fun. We're all yelling at each other live during Eurovision. Sporting events, wrestling. Everybody hangs out,

plays games together, talks about pretty much anything to do with anything other than those podcasts, quite honestly, but it's a lot of fun. It's a cool community. And our Patreon goal. If we hit 5,000 supporters on Patreon, we will read Saddam Hussein's romance novel and talk about it during the show. We're

not going to read it line by line because unlike the T-Rex novel, it's a proper length book. But we will read it. I'm an author. Nate is a writer and has a master's in fine arts. I feel like we are qualified to roast the ghost writers who wrote Saddam Hussein's book on their merit. So I look forward to doing that. So support us on Patreon. Maybe we'll get there. We're like 400-ish off now. So consider doing that. Only a dollar a month gets you a lot. And again, Tom, thank you so much for joining me here to talk about this very not uplifting story. Not that our last one was either. We were talking about dudes getting imploded in a submarine,

but this one is worse. Yeah. Maybe next time our show will be happier, but probably not. That's the Joe Kasabian promise. That is the lines led by Donkey's promise. It'll be worse. And until next time, fuck William Tecumseh Sherman.