Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:634 Lakota Tribe Member Part Two

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

Tom writes "Hey Wes I just listened to episode 628. I have some stories that line right up with what that guy was saying about the little people. I'm happy to share if you'd like to hear them." Spoke to the witness and he shared with me several stories about the little people, lights and Sasquatch. The Lakota are a Native American tribe. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three tribes of the Great Sioux Nation. Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family. Tom returns tonight to discuss little people, strange cryptids and giants.

It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind. It either heard me or smelt me, and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up. That shocked me. They don't make people that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish It sounded like a language

And they were chumtering away back and forwards Back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards I know what a bear looks like And there is no way on this planet But what I saw were bears Madwin-1, what are you reporting? Get somebody out here What's going on now, sir?

That son of a bitch is about 6'9, I don't know Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right here Uh-uh. My name is Dan, and you are listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you tonight.

We're going to be talking to Tom from the Lakota tribe out there in Nebraska. And I had Tom on Friday Night Show. He originally contacted me. I did a little people show. He originally contacted me and said, you know, I can give you some insight on these little people. And I had a blast Friday night talking to him. I mean, he shared all kinds of strange stories about the little people. And he talked about the balls of light and kind of his take on the balls of light and kind of what they believe.

A lot of different accounts that he shared. And, you know, an hour and a half went by. I could have probably done a three-hour show with them. And I thought, God, I've got to have this guy back. And so Tom's agreed to come back tonight. We'll be talking a little bit more about the little people, other strange cryptids, and even giants. And so stay tuned for that. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email.

My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's actually jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Tom back to the show. Tom, thanks for coming on. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, I really appreciate you being here.

And I really enjoyed our conversation. I know the show went up on Friday on Sasquatchronicles.com. And as you and I were talking, I was like, man, we could probably do a three-hour show on some of this stuff. And it's really cool to get kind of the native perspective on different things. Because, you know, a lot of times, like little people, for example, I've had people come to me with these encounters. And I remember the first time I heard, I was like, what in the world is this guy talking about? And then as you start to research it, you start to realize this has been. going on for a while. This isn't something new and people aren't hallucinating and everything else.

But welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here. If you would, I know there was a couple more little people stories. If you would, take it away and kind of tell us more about the little people. Okay. All right. Well, there was a time where a friend of mine who lives here in town, who is also part of a group of other native people here in town who we pray with, sweat with and whatnot. He had gone out to Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, which is also another Lakota reservation. And he went to go visit this old man that he knows out there. And he was, as he went out there, he brings stuff for the family, you know, because for those who may not be familiar with res life, res life can be pretty rough. And you have to go without a lot of the time.

So he'll bring supplies up there for him, you know, food and blankets, clothes, all that kind of stuff. So he gets up there and he unloads his truck and brings all the stuff in, shuts the truck, locks it up and goes inside. And they're visiting, having coffee. Then he hears his horn going off repeatedly, like the alarm was going off. And he thought he must have accidentally hit the panic button on the keyfob in his pocket or something. know. So he pulls it out and he's trying to get it to shut off and it won't shut off. So he thinks there's, you know, some sort of wire malfunctioner or whatever. So he goes outside and that's when he notices that not only is the horn honking and the lights are flashing, which is what it's supposed to do if it's, you know, if the alarm's going off. But also the windshield wipers are going. And the windows are rolling up and down. And he's, what?

He's standing there like, what's going on? And the old man comes outside and he says, I said, oh, that's just little people. They're just in there messing around. They ain't going to hurt anything. They might take something, but they're not going to hurt anything. They probably climbed up into the engine compartment and they're pulling on the wires and stuff. they like to do that sometimes.

Don't worry. And he's just standing there with his jaw drop just like dumbfounded. Because, you know, he was like me. You know, he had heard stories about little people and this and that, but you never think about it being real until you come across it. He didn't even think. He said he didn't even think to go in there and look. He was just, it was almost like he felt like he knew better than to mess with it, you know.

And so they go back inside. And as soon as they go back and side and sit back down, it stops. And so yeah, that's just, like I was saying before, like when you go in their area, that's when they seem to be dangerous. But when they come into your area, they're just goofing around. And when they goof around, it's like, it's really bizarre because when they're dangerous, they're really dangerous. Like, they actually come after you. Like even if you're running away, but they'll chase you out of their area, you know, and they'll attack you in the process.

But when it comes time to come into your area and they're just goofing around, they really play around. I mean, like, it's almost like they become children in the way that they play. And I was saying before about how it almost always seems to be the case that when people come across them, they're in their adult state. Like, I don't know of any stories of people coming across, you know, one that appeared to be a child, you know. Like, they're always in their adult proportion, but they're just really small. But when they come to play around, it's like they play around like children. Like, they have this good old time. Like, another friend of mine who is a, he's from the Santay Res up here in, uh,

northeast corner of Nebraska and the Santee are part of the Dakwatha people so there are relatives he was telling me one time that he was out at the fire at Sundance and it's like they're playing like hide and seek

peekaboo type of games because like around the fire there's like this big like horseshoe shaped mound like surrounding three sides of the fire and they'll like poke their head up on one side and then go down and then You can hear their little feet scaring to the other end, and they'll poke their little head up and look at you, and then get back down and run to the other side, poke up.

Like, they just goof around. And he said they look like tiny little Indians. Like they have feathers, like tiny little feathers, and they have way down to tiny little braids and little moccasins and everything. And it's just really bizarre. Yeah, it is really bizarre. Tom, and, you know, one of the things I wanted to ask you about this, because I've had reports of these, you know, people who talk about them being everything from a few inches tall to, you know, two feet tall. Like the gentleman I had a couple weeks ago that was talking about seeing these two Indians come out of the bush.

And he said they looked like they were from another time and they just kind of looked at him and turned and went back the opposite direction. And it's so hard to know what these things are. I mean, do you think, do you think they're actually like a biological, like, We are just on a small level. Do you think it's more of a spirit presenting itself as a little person? Kind of what's your opinion on that? I've thought about that a lot, and it's really hard to give a definitive answer. Or I should say it's pretty much impossible, too, because I don't have enough information.

But my guess is that they are like us, but it's almost like what I was seeing before about the big foot is that it seems to be like we're all different versions of the same thing. You know, like all these two-legged beings, whether we're talking about us as humans or the bigfoot's or the little people or the giants. It almost seems like we're anatomically the same thing just on different scales. You know, like I was saying, you know, that when we talked before about how, you know, like a tiger and a lion are essentially the same animal. Anatomically, they're pretty much the same, you know.

Their social behavior is different and some of their nature is different. But as far as the way they're built and the way they're constructed, they're basically the same. But they kind of feel different roles because of their different natures, you know. Same goes for different kinds of bears and different kinds of canines, you know? And I think that we're all just different versions of the same thing as far as us being two-legged. Now, it seems that in our reality, we, it's like we exist in this physical plane, but these other things seem to be able to come and go. but and if that if that's not the case and they are just like us and they are just you know living in this physical plane as we do then where are the hell are they always hiding you know and it's i don't know i think they're more like what i was saying about bigfoot's and that they they come from another place um one of the things i've heard about them is that well for one thing like i said they they talk about all these different things kinds of them and these different kinds come from different places like there's one that came from a

planet that was way out beyond this certain um constellation and i guess there came a time on their planet where their sun burned out and so they had to leave they couldn't live there no more and i guess this planet was the next like the next like the nukes nearest most suitable place for them to come. And why it is that some of them look like Indians? Why is it that some of them look like Scandinavians? Why is it that some of them look like little bigfoot's? You know, again, it kind of makes me think that we're all just different versions of the same thing that came from different places.

And maybe this is the place that we came from and all these other things came from other places. And for whatever reason, they found this place and they like it. I mean, it starts to get into really weird wacko theories. But, I mean, I really don't know. I mean, there's other things about it. No, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm going to cut you off. You know, it just made me think of what you and I were talking about the other night on episode 419.

one of the things, you know, Anthony at the time didn't really know what questions. I think he was in shock over what he was seeing. And I know it's a controversial show I did, but I actually believe Anthony. And I told you why I believe him. I think what he said happened actually happened. Towards the end of the show, as he said, you know, the old woman told him that when they reach a certain age, they have to go off with the star people, which traditionally when, like we'll say aliens, we'll say, but if you talk to a Native American, a lot of times what they'll say star people.

They generally won't use the term aliens. I'm talking in generals right now. They'll say star people. And I thought that was a weird, kind of a weird title for her to, like a kind of a weird thing for her to say. What do you mean they go off with the star people? And he didn't even really know what that meant. And I said, I think she's talking about aliens. I could be wrong, but I think she's talking about aliens. She's just using different verbiage with you. Have you ever heard of such a thing with Sasquatch? I know you just mentioned about the little people. Yes.

Well, yes and no. Well, for one, I have heard it among our people that they refer to what most people call aliens as star people. Now, as far as the whole Bigfoot and the alien or star people connection, I've never personally heard anything from any of my people about, you know, that happening. But I will say that as much as Dukefoot comes around, like out there, around where my medicine and men live, they see UFOs just as often. I mean, they talk about UFOs all the time. They happen almost every night. the frequency with which things like that happen part of me thinks you know i mean there's a medicine

man that lives there you know that stuff is kind of be around they're drawn to them but then you hear from other people too who don't live in you know such a traditional community you know people seem to have this stereotypical thing about natives where you know they all have like the stuff that i'm talking about is i'm only talking about some of the people like a lot of our people are very secular and they're very you know well we're all Americanized we're all colonized but

they're much more accepting of the American way and they don't necessarily get involved with the traditional ways but most of the people who I hang around are very traditional so this stuff happens a lot around them but even over in the bigger villages

that are you know full-sized towns with you know gas stations and the whole lot this stuff happens over there too. I mean, the paved roads of the main town, people have seen Bigfoot walking on the street. So, I don't know. But there was, I mean,

the amount of stories and the amount of things to talk about is just like endless. But there's a couple other little people things, if you want to know. Yeah. There was, I mentioned the Santee Reservation up here in northeast corner, Nebraska. I was told by another friend who was from there that this is the only place where I've heard this. And it's these two kinds of them that live up there in this one area that's forested along the bluffs where it's basically right across from South Dakota, where the Missouri River comes between.

He talked about how there's these ones that have horns on their heads. Sometimes they look like buffalo horns. Sometimes they look like deer antlers. But they have these horns on their heads and they live in the trees. Like they don't come down. But they still look like other than the fact that they have horns in their heads, they look like people. And he said they look native. They look like Indians.

And then he said there's these other ones that this kind of connects with the lights is that they write around on balls of light. In this case, instead of the lights being their own thing that move around through the forest or whatever, these things are being ridden by, again, what if they look like Indians, and they're about two feet high. and you can see their legs straddling the light. They're riding it like a horse. And they glide around just like real smooth, like, you know, through the trees or around the prairie or up and over the hilltops. And it's just, you know, people just see them doing this stuff. And I don't really know of any stories specifically of, you know, things that have happened as a result of it. But I just know of people witnessing that.

So I don't know. It's really bizarre stuff. It is bizarre. I mentioned before about how there's like, you had mentioned that, you know, that light that you filmed, where somebody had zoomed in on it and you could see a face in there. Yeah. Somebody else also told me once that some of them aren't spirits. Some of them aren't their own things. Some of them are just a thing that is being, it's like a craft that's being piloted by a tiny little man. but in this case what I was talking about is one

it's almost like being used like a horse to cruise around on I mean I suppose it's a lot quicker and easier than running on your little feet you know yeah it's bizarre though you know going back to that for the audience what Tom's talking about is Woody and I had filmed that light and I remember a listener said hey you know there's a face in that light and I said I didn't I don't remember ever seeing any face I just remember seeing a ball of light

and he had zoomed in on it, and it looked like an old man's face. Now, it could have been peridolia. I don't know. I didn't see a face at the time. I just saw a light. But the one thing that you bring up with, you know, seeing a little person would be bizarre enough, but to see him flying around on a ball of light,

one thing I will say about those balls of light is they don't just float around aimlessly. I was telling you the other day, at least the one that I saw, It seemed to kind of take interest in us. You know, the more we were interested in it, the more it was interested in us. And it did fly around like a drone, like somebody was controlling it. It was bizarre, man. It was very bizarre, but I didn't mean to cut you off time.

No, no, that's all good. But, yeah, they do really bizarre stuff. Like, I've heard of them, like, they'll be up there in the hills at nighttime to check out the stars or whatever. and then it's almost like the stars show what should be in the sky starts happening right in front of them. They'll see like a light come down and then comes all the way down to the trees

right out in front of them, that eye level. And it'll move out in front of them. Like say it's moving from right to left. And all of a sudden, like another one will come out and stop and be perfectly still. it's almost like it's it's leaving imprints of itself

like right above the grass right in front of you it's like it's boom there's a light it keeps moving boom there's a light it keeps moving boom there's a light it keeps moving until there's like four or five lights just staying perfectly still not moving and then they'll

collect back together and then move off and disappear it's really weird stuff there's one more story I could see about the little people that always kind of makes me laugh because this happened to an uncle who's he's no longer on this side. He lives in the spirit world now. But he was talking about, I mentioned last time about Pumblycia, the Vision Quest ceremony. And one thing about this guy, and I won't say his name, but.

he uh he was always around whenever like we're there in camp like if we're out there for envision time or for out there for sundance or whatever it is we're doing he always come and sit with us and you know share coffee and and visit and just tell stories just just unload all this old traditional knowledge on you you know and I learned so many things from this from this guy. And so one time he was, we were there for Humblecha camp and whenever it's humblecha time, he always talks about his experiences going on the hill. What's Hamblecha? What does that mean? Humblecha is, um, it translated it basically means to cry for a vision.

Oh, I got you. It's part of the vision quest. Yeah, yeah, it's just what we call it in our traditional way. I got you. And they call it that because to cry for it because, like, kind of like what I was saying before about, you know, our ceremonies are pretty involved. And like the spirits want to see how much you mean it, you know. It's a bit, like when we say, like, say it like if you go to church, they ask for a donation in the collection plate, you know. But this is, this is sacrificing way beyond. anything that's of any monetary value, you know.

Because the only thing that you truly have in this world, and the way we see it anyway, the only thing that you truly have in this world is what you're born with. That's your physical body, your flesh and your bones and your guts. That's all you have. Like, everything else is an add-on. Are your clothes, your cars, your money, everything else is an add-on.

None of it is stuff that you need. To give, to sacrifice truly is to give of yourself, you know. So that might be, you know, going through the heat in a sweat lodge. That might be going through three or four days of no food and water while sitting on the hill, praying for vision. Because whatever you do in these ceremonies, like I say, cry for a vision, you're going to go through something that's going to hurt. You know, it's going to make you cry, whether it's physical. emotional, spiritual, mental. There's going to be something that you're going to have to

encounter, deal with, and move through in order for the spirits to say, okay, you're ready now. We'll help you out. We're going to make that go away. So at any rate, you know, this, it takes a lot of mental and spiritual preparation to get ready for something like this, you know? so usually when you're there in camp for this you're there for you know a couple of days getting your stuff together there's a lot of there's a lot of involvement with it like you got to make a lot of stuff and

because when you get up there you have to set up this altar that you'll be inside of and uh and this all of this stuff is we could spend a whole other day just talking about the intricacy of the ceremonies alone but uh anyway um He's there in camp with us, you know, telling us stories, partly to prepare us for what to expect, but also to kind of distract us a bit and entertain us a bit and kind of calm us. Because he's one of those people who could be, well, from what he said and what other people have said about him is that he, he was offered once to be a medicine person, like the spirits came to him. and he he was one of the people who could actually see him and hear him but he he didn't want to do that and that's one of the things about our ways is that you're never really forced to do anything there's no judgment or you know there's no that fire and brimstone type of stuff you know it's the choice is yours you know they offer it to you you can deny it if

you want so but he was one of those people who definitely had the gift and so he can read it in our faces or you know that we were we're having a lot of anxiety you know thinking about going up there on the hill all this time no you don't you can't eat anything you can't drink anything and the no food thing isn't really that big of a deal but it's the no water the no water will definitely get you and um so that you know it stresses on the mind and you can see that you know so he tells his stories you know and the thing about his stories is though that he never makes one up it's always something that happened to him. And he said that one time he was on the hill at Bear Butte.

There's this place in South Dakota called Bear Butte. It's right out on the, just past the edge of the Black Hills. It's right outside of that big motorcycle town called Sturgis. And this place is a very sacred place. And I could talk about the weird stories about Bear Bute alone and what it actually is. It's not a mountain, they say. They say it's actually. the grave of a giant bear.

But anyway, he's out there on top of Bear Butte to seek vision. And when you're in this altar, they call it Hochoka. Hochoka just is an altar. And when you're inside this thing, when you're on the hill, you sit there with what we call it Chanupa. Okay. Most people know of this as a piece pipe. but um those anybody who's listening to this if you ever do come across this type of thing or if you hear it come up please um do us a favor and please don't refer to it as peace by because that's not what we call it

that's just the kind of hokey american name given to it that doesn't really speak to what it is we call it chanupa in our language and this is basically it's a prayer tool okay this pipe that you use to when you're loading this thing with the tobacco you're praying as you do so and each little pinch of tobacco is a prayer so you're putting these prayers in there when you eventually at the end of the ceremony you're going to smoke it and then that smoke going up that's your prayers going up okay so you take this Chinupa packed full of prayers and you sit inside your Ho-Choka. So you have your, I'll say it in English, you have your pipe and you're sitting in your altar.

And you're not supposed to let it go the whole time you're in there, two, three, four days, however long it's going to be. You're not supposed to set it down. You're supposed to hold onto it the whole time, okay, which may not seem like that big of a deal, but two days, of no sleep and you're trying to hold on to something or even if you try to lay down, you can't let go of it. So you kind of have to cradle it with you like it's a baby, you know. And really that's all you're supposed to treat it anyway because it's, it's a sacred item. So he's, you know, two, three days into this struggling to stay awake and he's got his

chenupa. And he's like, I got to, I got to lay down. You know, I just can't keep my eyes open. So he lays down and he kind of tucks his chenupa. in with him to protect it. And then, you know, like when you're asleep and if somebody comes into the room, you can kind of hear what's going on and it starts to work its way into your dream. Yeah.

So he said he was laying there sleeping. As he's like in the dream world or whatever, he starts hearing these two little voices having a conversation with one another, like interrupting his dream basically. and they're saying, hey, I think he's asleep. Look at him. I think he's asleep. And then he starts moving his eyes underneath his eyelids, you know,

like starting to come to. And then just as he's about to open his eyes, he fills this tug on his chenupa. And he opens his eyes in these, and then there's nothing there. But he sees like, like surrounding your, Hochoka is what we call prayer ties, these tiny little bundles of tobacco and that kind of make a tiny little

barrier or fence I guess he could call around you and it's real low to the ground. But he could see those things moving as if something just went through there. And he thought, maybe I just jerked in my sleep, you know, and I hit it or something, you know. and he kind of nods back off and then same thing happens again hey I think he's asleep let's try to take the Chinope away from him

then he felt this hard tug on it and then he woke up with a like it was he just instinctively knew he said rather than he realized what was happening he said he woke up with a growl because he just felt like he knew he had to be intimidating to get whatever this was to go

away and right then he opened his eyes and he sees these two little men about six inches high looking up at him with their eyes wide open like they're like oh shit we woke up the giant and they dove out and took off into the woods and he said that's the last he saw him and he said he was awake for the whole rest of the time because that like freaked him out you know but it's it's kind of comical because like I said they like to goof around like what are they going to do with that you know? Yeah. Like just,

just to steal it and hide it from you. Yeah. You know, and there's lots of stories like that where things just go missing or you, you wake up with your hair braided and it's this teeny tiny little braids like teeny tiny little hands did him. You know, just, just weird stuff. It is bizarre, Tom. I mean, it is bizarre.

And it's what's strange is when, um, well, a couple things. This part isn't strange, but I was just in there thinking that the first time you and I talked, you were saying there's no word for a lie in your culture and that kind of makes sense, especially since, and forgive me for this, but Native Americans generally don't write things down

in the past, I mean, it was all oral. Traditionally. Yeah, it was oral tradition, is what they would give you. So I can see why there wouldn't be a word for a lie. But the strange part is when you, I can't even tell you how many weird stories I've heard about little people. I was telling you on the first episode about the guy in Texas,

and his son kept saying these little people are, they weren't really hurting him. They were just kind of screwing with them every time he went out. And his dad thought he was full of it until he saw it climbing up, he saw them climbing up the side of the house. And it makes me wonder if something like that could be killed. Right. Yeah. It's weird because they certainly seem to be able to inflict physical damage on us. right when you know the stories of them attacking people like that i think that kid in texas said that it cut the back of his leg or something yeah yeah yeah um yeah so obviously they can do that to us and if like the story i just told they can be afraid of us so they're afraid of being hurt right like if you

knew that like if they knew that he couldn't hurt them there would be no reason for them to be afraid it's it would seem as though it's at least possible now I don't know of any stories of anybody well I mean except for the one I told last time where they had that big battle with that whole tribe of them but that's really the only occasion I know of of you know them

being killed there could be others that I just don't know about but it's so strange though you know what I mean to have and maybe it's from the culture, the American culture of, you know, like when you look at like Asian culture, there's a lot of things they believe in that for the longest time, we would go, that's nonsense. Or I'll give you even a simple example, acupuncture. I remember when I was a kid, they would laugh about acupuncture.

It seemed like the most bizarre thing, like, oh, you're going to get your tea in line? or are you going to, you know, and but now we know that acupuncture is a real thing, that there is an actual real medical benefit to acupuncture. And so it's strange when you look at other cultures and you go, man, they're nuts. Maybe they're not so nuts. Maybe they're not, you know, and even people who are non-native Americans, people who aren't any of the, they're seeing the same thing, you know, and it's so hard to know, is it physical? trying to, you know, because we can only wrap our minds around certain things based on what we believe and what we've been told to believe.

There's really no, you know, I'll give you another example. Like I had a guy one time, I think it was out near the badlands, out where you're at. And he was telling me about, he was out there and he saw a pterodactyl. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I, and for me, I was sitting there thinking, like, what do you? Teradactyl. And you know from growing up, you know this, you know, in America, you grew up, dinosaurs died millions of years ago and they don't exist today. But this guy's describing a freaking teradactyl, the size of a small plane flying above him near the badlands. And I asked him, I said, what did it do? And he said, it just flew off. And he described it. And the way he described it was a huge teradactyl. And if he's going to make something up, why would he make that up? You know what I mean? Like, oh, you saw a teradactyl. on it. But what's weird is you see a lot of that in the southwest. Yeah. Yeah. And it's weird because the badlands aren't, I mean, we're not southwest.

You're like, we're right in the middle. Right. And so it's like this stuff happens all over, it seems like. And speaking of dinosaurs, I mean, I can tell these stories about dinosaurs too if you want. There's rivers here that have names that are, I mean, they're named after dinosaurs. Like they say that one of the the main rivers here in Nebraska is the Niagara River. It's almost entirely contained within the state. The headwaters, it starts as this trickling little underwater, this underground spring that bubbles up just outside of Nebraska in Wyoming. And then it comes all the way across the northern portion of Nebraska.

and then it turns north and dumps into the Missouri. This river, like our old name for it, is the same as the word for the triceratops. And they have names, like in Lakota language, they have names for perinosaurus rex. They have names for bronchosaurus. They have names for stegosaurus. They have names for all these things.

And it's like how, how do they already have names in their language for these things before talientology you know how do they already know about it and then I got to hear stories that were just and this is where I mean accepting Bigfoot is one thing accepting aliens is another thing excepting little people is another thing but this is where stories begin to get really bizarre

and one time I was sitting my medicine man's trailer and he's just talking you know telling stories about the old days when he was kid stuff and he said that up north to him

where the Shirene River is and personally the first time I went through the Shine River Valley. Like I was telling you before, it's like a forgotten place. It's like the, you know, land that time forgot or whatever. It's just completely old school. Like there's no farming, there's no tilling of the land.

There's no ranching in it. There's, if the road wasn't there, it would look exactly like it did in crazy horses time. And it's like, man, you can, you can just imagine how it used to be, you know, if you could take that image and expand it, you know, across the rest of the prairie for thousands of miles. You know, that's how it used to be all over. And so, you know, I'm there and I'm just like, you, like, I get tears well and open my eyes just looking at the beauty of it, you know, and thinking about, like I described that, the old way that people, that people lived, you know, it was a beautiful way of life.

And so anyway, he's telling me about that he used to go up there when he was a kid for the purpose of like climbing up to the edge of the beutes that are over the valley and look down into the river valley and watch the dinosaurs. And I said, what? Come on. I mean, because he's told me a lot of stuff. You know, I mean, I've seen him do a lot of stuff. And, you know, so many things that seem unbelievable, but it, you know, like the story I told last time, I can't deny it.

And sometimes, you know, he's one of those people that will say something that just makes no sense. And then a long time will go by. Like, he may have even forgot about what he said. And then something will happen. And then instantly you remember what he said. And then it all makes sense. And you're like, that's what he was talking about. You know, so he tells me that they used to see Triceratops, like multiple Triceratops, walking around in the valley down there, just grazing away like you see him on Jurassic Park, you know.

And I said, really? And he said, yeah. And he said, you know, asked my cousin and asked, you know, ask this guy. I say, you know, we all saw him. We used to go up there all the time. and so i mean it's like what do you do with that and there i mean i've heard other people talk about seeing a t-rex you know um and there's one story that like they talk there's a place in the black hills where like you can you can jump off of a cliff into a into a big pool where the where there's

like a waterfall there and right at the edge of the cliff over to the side there's this big giant three-toed footprint I mean it looks like you know some sort of dinosaur footprint and it's right next to and it's like deep in the rock you know it's like a fossilized footprint

okay then right next to it is what's very clearly the footprint of a human there's not a big foot track you know it has the arch in it and everything it looks like a human's footprint right next to each other

and they're just as deep as one another and they're the same age. And they're both like, I think they's, somebody said that they're well over a million years old. But so wait a minute. That would mean that there were dinosaurs and humans at the same time. But at this, you know, some people, you know, I don't want to offend anybody, but some people believe that the earth is only something like,

6,000 years old or what have you. And that if there ever were dinosaurs, they lived all at the same time as humans and all that. Or they just don't even believe that dinosaurs ever existed. And, you know, it's just a trick of the devil or something. And I've heard stories of people, like among our people, I've heard them talking about ancient animals that no longer exist. And so I started thinking that, oh, they must be influenced by, you know, that biblical stuff. and then I started hearing them getting more detail

and then I realized that they're talking about something that's way older there's this term in Lakota they say oh honey oh honey means a long time ago but it's not just like a long time ago in your lifetime it's way long ago like ancient so far that nobody knows and they talk about how

basically the people are that old. Like the human race is way older than whatever the 200,000 years or 50,000 years ago when we left Africa or whatever. We're way older than that, apparently, is what they see. So there's stuff about dinosaurs.

You mentioned the badlands. There's supposedly a giant rattlesnake out there that, is as big as an anaconda. There's a giant tarantula, like in the Lord of the Rings movie. It's like as big as a Volkswagen. One of my best friends out there,

he told me that his uncle says that he came across, you know when a spider will shed its skin or whatever. Yeah. And it leaves basically just a shell of itself behind. he found one of those crumpled up and

you know like the legs will be all crinkled up you know and all that like folded in he said he found one of those and like he said if you were to stretch it out and stand it up it would be almost as big as a car he said he thought it was like a big he thought some you know like one of those big canvas tarts

oh yeah you can use to throw over a structure or whatever he said he thought somebody left one of those out there so he's like what I'm gonna drive this back I'm trying to keep it, you know? But when you got up on it, he realized that's not what it was at all. And he said it was like this giant shell of a spider. So it looked just like the ones that you might see around, you know, that of normal size spiders, but it was huge.

And out there in the badlands, man, there don't let the National Park Service fool you. There are places in the badlands that they don't know how to get into and they don't know how to get out of if you were in there. like there's places that they have it mapped on foot you know like you can fly over in a plane if you want you can send a drone over there and look down in there but as far as the park service

knows like they can't get in there on foot I mean the place is a maze it's huge and it's intricate it's extremely easy to get lost in there I mean it is not hard at all and there are caves in

there that, well, there's caves underneath the Black Hills, and the Black Hills and the Badlands are right near each other, okay? And there are caves. If you enter into the Black Hills, they go for hundreds and hundreds of miles. It's one of the biggest cave networks in the world. And they go right underneath the Badlands and connect to the cave openings and the Badlands. Who's to say that there's not some hole in the land? And, they go right underneath the badlands and there somewhere where a rattlesnake that big that slither into you know now how would it get that big to begin with who knows and people talk about there's a giant snake being that you know it exists a lot of the plains cultures there's a story i could tell you about that too that happened right

here if you want but yeah if you would i i find it fascinating i really do and it's one of those sayings before you tell the snake story. It's like, I guess it all comes down to your worldview on what you think. It's not so much what these things are. It's that people are seeing them. And that's a bizarre part, like dog man or anything else. It's like dog man, like your snake, dog man makes no sense. I can bring you several people. I've seen it. And they're all describing the exact same thing and they don't know each other. So I guess it all depends on your worldview. It wouldn't shock me one bit if something like that was going on, especially in

the bad lands. But yeah, tell me the giant snake story. Yeah. Okay. So this is like it's kind of like the dog band thing. It involves a creature or like the giant rattlesnake or the giant tarantula. You know, like it involves a creature that isn't supposed

to exist, you know? And when I, what really makes me think when something is like not just a normal animal and is actually a spirit being is when it seems to be a combination of things, you know, like the dog man. One thing I'll point out before I get into the story about the snake, if I could, one thing I've always thought about the dog man is that dogs don't have collarbones.

They don't have an open chest. That's why their shoulder blades are parallel to one another. You know, when they're standing up on their four legs, their shoulder blades, you know, they run up and down and they're, you know, they're parallel with each other. When we stand up on our two legs, our shoulder blades are, you know, on our actual, they're basically on our backside, and they're, they both face the same way, right? Because of our collarbone, which separates our shoulders and gives us an open chest. Dogs and cats don't have that. They don't have a collarbone. and the dog man seems to have a collarbone.

He has an open chest, a broad-shouldered chest. Right. So that, I mean, the whole, that whole thing is like a combination of different animals that, as far as I know, they're not supposed to, humans and canines are supposed to be able to interbreed genetically. But this story involves something kind of like that. So this is a story that was told to me by a Omaha woman who told me to other stories as well about weird things that she saw up there in Omaha country. So she, well, first I'll say the Omaha reservation, as I described it last time, it's up kind of in the northeast area of Nebraska. And it goes right up against the river. And on the other side of the river, on the east side is Iowa.

and they have a small piece of their reservation on the Iowa side of the river because when the reservation lines were first drawn, the river was at a certain place and then, you know, a subsequent flood happened. The river changed course and part of their land ended up on the other side of the river. So now part of their land is in Iowa. She was living on the Iowa side of the river, which is, you know, that portion of the reservation is a very small area. There's only like one little community over there. And she's living in a house that had belonged to, I think it was her aunt, but nobody had been living in it for a while. And, of course, when she moved in, it's just like the other stories that you hear from your other guests. You know, she starts getting these weird smells around at nighttime. Something's looking at her windows, pounding on the house. It's all this big foot stuff. And that's a whole other bunch of stories. But Cisa, one time she had a day off, and she went down to the river, and she was going to,

fish and she walks down there with her little cooler and whatnot and fish and pull sets up a little chair and then across the river is the Nebraska side of the reservation and the river at that point isn't very wide you know it's like um i would say maybe 50 yards wide at that point and um on the Nebraska side of the river that's the area where I was talking before that they called down bottom where most Omaha's don't go especially at nighttime and you know you're not supposed to go by yourself

because of the weird stuff that happens down there this is the same you know this is I mean right I mean as the crow flies I mean probably not even a mahaler so from where I told you about the the story with the woman in the car wreck so she's sitting there on the Iowa side of the river on the other side, on the Nebraska side, after she'd been there for a while,

she hears a vehicle coming through the woods over there. And a truck pulls up, and it turns out to be her cousin and her uncle. Okay? And they see her. She sees them. They wave at each other. And the distance is just

far enough to where if he screamed at each other, you could probably hear each other, but with the movement of the water, you know, it's just, easier to communicate with hand gestures, right? So they don't even bother talking. And as far as she can tell, they're just down there basically do the same thing she's doing.

They start getting out fishing poles and whatnot. But then she said where she started to see a turn or when she started to get a bad feeling about something happening, something wasn't right, she said that what it happened. She started getting this bad feeling in her gut when they, cracked out a radio and turned on loud music.

And then started, she said, apparently she said, she began to notice that it appeared that they had already been drinking. By the way, they were moving around. And then they start, you know, they'd crack out more beers and they're drinking. And they're just, you know, having a good old time with some loud music and some beers fishing, right? No big deal. But again, this is one of those areas. is where they say you don't

mess around down there because the things that live down there don't take kindly to disturbance. And so she's just like, oh, these guys are gonna, you know, she's worried that one of them's going to get drunk and fall in the river.

You know, she's thinking of practical things. As they're sitting there at the edge of the river, there's like these, along the bank of the river there in certain places, they put all these big rocks to help to keep the bank from eroding away. And you can kind of climb down on these rocks to get closer to the water.

So that's what they're doing as they're fishing, you know. The uncle, I don't remember if she did, she said that he did something, like, I don't know if he threw a beer can or he tossed some trash, or he did something that, you know, supposedly these spirit beans they don't, Like that you know you're supposed to be respectful so right after that happened

Whatever it was they did as he's standing there on these rocks right at the edge of the water She sees this giant Snake emerge from the water She said it was she likened it to That movie Anaconda with Ice Cube back in the day. Yeah, where um And when that movie came out, I was a kid, you know, I was a huge ice cube fan at the time. So I went right to the theater to see that movie. Yeah, so.

Yeah, right. But, uh, so she said she likened it to the snake in that movie in terms of its size. And it come up out of the water, grabbed him, wrapped around him, and took him into the water. Now she's, now, before I go further with what happens in the story, this is what I'm saying. about the thing being a spirit being and not just being some freakishly large snake is that she said the face of it she's because she said when it appeared out of the water it was about in the middle of the river so you know that's 25 30 yards from her so she got a good look at the head and the face of this thing and she said it did not have the face of a snake

Like it looked like a snake all the way, you know, the whole body, the stretch of it was a snake all the way up to the base of the head. Like the top of the head, it was still shaped like a snake's head. But the face, it didn't have snake eyes. It had human eyes. It had a human's nose. I mean, it stuck out like a human's nose. And it had a mouth that opened like a human's mouth. She really struggled.

She sat there for a while as she was telling me this, like kind of in silence, trying to articulate it, you know. And so me having not seen it and telling it secondhand, I can't do any better than she did. But she said it looked like the face of an old native man. And to top it off,

it had, you know, if a native man, at least here, in this part of the country the way traditional Native men, if they have two braids, say if they're dressing up for something, you know, they're trying to look

good or what have you, there will be a very nice even, like, perfect part of the hair right down the middle. And then on either side of the head, the hair will be pulled very tight into these perfect braids. And the braids will be at the base of the of either side of the head

and the braids will come down over the shoulders in front of the chest. She said it had exactly that type of braids. It had a feather, like an eagle feather sticking out of one of the braids. Like it was you know, some

Indian from back in the day who transformed into a giant snake. So that's what she said it looked like. And so it grabs this guy, her uncle, the older one, wraps around him,

just like a constricting snake would do, like an anaconda or what have you, pulls him into the water, and there's all sorts of thrashing and whatnot. And the cousin, he's on the bank freaking out, like,

you know, he doesn't know what to do. He's like pacing back and forth, yelling for his dad, you know? And there's all this thrashing in the water and she's just sitting there just completely

shocked, you know, just watching this happen she's frozen, she doesn't know what to do. And when the calm, the water returned to its normal, I mean, it's not calm because it's a current, it's a river moving, but when it returns to

its kind of normal state, the snake is nowhere to be seen but his body is laying there. Like, you know, floating and you know it's almost about to head down stream and he uh the the sun jumps in after him and pulls him back and pulls him back up onto the rocks and his body is just like it's like he was crushed like he's all swollen and battered and bruised and you know his his bones are obviously broken and he's barely alive

and he was barely conscious. He drags him and gets him up into the truck, takes off. And so she's left sitting there, you know, thinking where is that thing? Where did it go? Is it coming over to my side of the river? You know, she just takes herself and leaves. Later, she finds out that when he got back into town with him and took him, like, to the clinic or whatever, he's going off on this big story about what happened.

And it's very clear that he's drunk, right? So the people there at the clinic are more concerned with calming him down and treating the one who's all beat up or whatever, then, you know, investigating what's going on, at least right at the moment. So they get, you know, then they get the older guy, the father of the taken care of he ends up surviving as far as I know I never heard that he died

so I don't so as far as I know he did survive this but later the son went down there with tribal police to show him

or to show them you know where it was what happened all that stuff being that they were drunk and being that there were all these large rocks there at the river, they concluded that he was drunk, he fell in the river,

and the rocks rolled on to him and crushed him. And that's what caused all the injuries. Nobody would believe it. Well, I shouldn't say nobody would believe it. I think some of the tribal cops, one of them in particular, who was another cousin related to the scene, these same individuals said that he believed it because he had heard of other people seeing this thing before.

But they can't say that, you know, because even though they're tribal police, they're still a police department. And, you know, they're like a lot of other cops, you know, like as individuals, they're probably much more open to this stuff because of what they were raised around. But as far as operating professionally, they're just like other cops. So they're not going to write that up. They're not going to talk about it. It's just done. Do you think that the snake was physical, or do you think it was more of a spiritual being? Do you think that, you know, because obviously it was physical.

It did attack the guy, but it seems like such a bizarre cryptid to look for. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I would regard that as a cryptid in the sense that it's an animal that is yet to be undiscovered. Like one might regard Bigfoot if they don't acknowledge all the weird stuff about Bigfoot. I would venture to guess that this thing is some sort of spirit being. And again, it's another one of those things that can come and go in and out of our world for whatever reason.

It's, you know, a snake and a human don't combine. But apparently, with other rules of nature from other worlds, apparently they can do that. And then after that, come into our world. I don't know. It's weird. It is weird. And, you know, the other thing you had brought up was the fact that, like in the Lakota, they don't really think it's odd. that something can be physical and something can be spiritual.

Right, yeah, it's, we don't really make much of a distinction, you know, it's, because everything, and you'll find it a lot in a lot of Native cultures, this concept of duality that applies to all things. like there seems to be a whole other second nature to things. Like I said, my medicine man talks about there being a physical and a non-physical component to everything. Like even simple things like stones, you know, there is a non-physical spirit matter in the stone. Like people, they'll look at it like a rock or a stick. or anything like that as being an inanimate object, which is true, but there's another nature to it that is unseen.

It's that non-physical portion to it. I mean, there are stories I can tell you about just regular animals doing things that they're not supposed to be able to do. and it's definitely never been documented in any wildlife show I've ever saw. It's just weird. Yeah, it is. And I guess, you know, like for Christians and you and I've talked about this before, but, you know, they, what is the whole mind, body, and spirit, or, you know, that saying

to where there is a spirit component to just about everything. Yeah, they acknowledge it. Yeah, they acknowledge it. You know, and it's like you and I were just talking about the Bible. Even in what most Christians believe, you know, Abraham sat down to eat with three angels. And how does a spirit sit down and eat? How does a spirit? That makes no sense.

Or Jacob, for example, in the Bible, he wrestled an angel. Well, how do you wrestle a spirit? You know, it has to be physical for that to happen. But that is a very, and I find that all cultures kind of, of they believe in a lot of the same things, but they use different verbiage for, you know, what I might say a demon, you might call it a bad spirit. We're still kind of talking about the same thing, I think anyway. We're just using different language to describe it. But I don't want to keep it too long. I want to ask you real quick about giants. You know, I've had these

weird reports of giants, mainly in Alaska is where I get them. I've had a, and I say not a lot. I think I've had like two in Alaska, and I think I had one in Montana. And every time I talk to these people, you know, they'll say, I'll ask them, well, how tall was it? And they'll say it was as tall as a trees. And I remember one hunter he was describing it because he was watching it from the ridgeline. I mean, and he said it looked like a man. And it was carrying a club. And I think even he said the canines were kind of coming out of the mouth.

But he said it looked like a human. You know, like kind of what we were talking about with little people. He said it looked very human-like. Right. And I know in Christian culture, they'll call him the Nephilim. But is there anything like that? Did the Lakotas talk about giants? Oh, yeah.

Well, you know about how there's the whole thing with the giant red-haired people who lived here, and that, you know, there's like all these battles between some of the tribes and these giants you know what Sarah Winamukkah wrote about you know in the Lovelock caves and all that stuff

you know those aren't big foots those are giants and not that bigfoot isn't giant you know compared to our scale but these things are what the bigfoots are afraid of um

there's a I've only heard a couple of references in like modern day of people saying that they had seen them and again the badlands is and is the setting again um but that was just a brief thing that i heard somebody to say that they saw it you know from a distance walking so i don't there's not much of a story there but um there's a there's a story about uh again the term oh honey comes into play here is a really, really, really long time ago. They say it was before there was horses. So this is before whites came. And by the way, like, I've heard people, you know, try to dismiss the notion that native people have been here for so long or that there were so many of us or that

we inhabited the Great Plains or that we didn't have any life on the Great Plains before the horse. There was already millions of us there. I mean, The oldest human remains in North America have been found in the prairie in Montana. So we were definitely on the prairie. But our life was just more difficult before the horse. But we still made it work because we embraced all the gifts that creator gave us to live with. So at any rate, this is a real long time ago. I won't say the names of the people in the story.

I could, but again, I prefer not to mention names if I don't have to, especially. Yeah, and that's okay. You don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. And also, like, in the old way, like, you're not really supposed to say people's names after they've gone on. You know, it's part of the letting them rest thing. But anyway, the name I will say, though, is that there was a giant that,

They say at the time that this happened in our region, there was still one giant left in our area. That's not to say that there weren't still other giants also in other areas, but as far as we know, there was only this one left. And his name was Ion, is what they call him. And that means stone, like a rock. So, Ian is, they called him that because his, you know, because he was so basically like a mountain of a man, you know, and he was, if somebody's that big and they're that rough and rugged living like this thing did, even though they're human-like an appearance, their skin is going to be calloused and hard

and, you know, difficult for the average man's arrows to penetrate, you know, so that's part of how he got his name is because he was like stone. but they say that he was he was as tall as five grown men standing on top of one another okay and and so for us to say grown men Lakota people as far as Native people are concerned in general were pretty tall I personally aren't I'm not that tall but generally speaking Lakota men

more taller than most other Native men So, you know, we're talking men that are average six feet, you know, when most natives, you know, are close to five and a half, especially back in traditional times. So it's the average Lakota man at the time is six feet high and there's five of them. That's, like, 30 feet. There's a story where it's basically the end of this. It's the last days of this giant. There's a story where there's a village. And the way we lived, we didn't live together as one giant community.

You know, like at the height of our population before, you know, before we were colonized and all the wars, you know, the reservations and all that stuff before our population was so dramatically decreased, we were upwards towards 100,000 people. We were a big nation, spread over a huge area, you know, parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. huge area and that 100,000 people was broken up into several small villages. And each of us is basically, you know, independent to our own, you know, we're up to our own thing. But if there's trouble, you know, we can depend on the other people in our nation to come to help us, you know. Because not only are we politically allied, but we are related because you typically. marry outside your own setting. You marry outside your village

or you marry outside what they call your band. So that way the entire nation all occult the people are essentially interwoven into one huge family group. Basically all occultive people

are related to each other in one way or another. And the reason that we married outside of your band or what have you is that You know, you can't marry the person right next door because they're probably too closely related to you. You know, you need to keep your jean pool strong. So you have to marry outside, you know, to keep the...

So anyway, this one small village is, you know, doing its thing. It's camped. And it's a nice summer evening farm. And all of a sudden, the sky erupts with, like, they described it as thunder. but it was the groaning of this, you know, Eon comes in, they said he came in like a tornado and that tepees are flying everywhere and, you know, there's debris getting smashed up.

Horses are flying through, or sorry not horses, but dogs are flying through the air. You know, like crazy stuff is going on and people wake up in the middle of the night. And, you know, the scouts in the village who were keeping watch, you know, they didn't even hear him coming. You know, he was like he, he was crawling or something up on them. And all of a sudden he came smashing in. And so they're hauling to wake everybody up, you know, everybody's frantically trying to, you know, keep a hold of their children or, you know, just try to protect their loved ones and so forth. Well, he ended up snatching up four to five women and swallowing them whole.

That's how big he was. swallow a grown woman whole and he takes off after he got his fill this is well into the night so they only have to wait a little bit for daylight

and it's decided amongst one of the men who's he was his wife who was gobbled up he along with seven other men eight of them set out

to finally put an end of this thing. And so they're following him, tracking him with his giant footprints and stuff. They catch up to him late, late in the day. And they see where he is. And so they decide what to do from this point is six of these eight guys will stay and dig and dig as fast and furiously as they can the biggest trench that they can possibly dig

and these other two out of the eight will continue to track him keep following them and when they look back to where they had left their brothers they will

and I say brothers is you know like we regard each other as brothers whether we're actually biologically or not they left their brothers over there you know they're going to look back over there and wait for they're going to send up a

and I hate to sound stereotypical but they're going to send up a smoke signal to let these two know okay the trench is ready and they so basically they made themselves clear to him

they instead of following him cautiously they you know got out in the open got his attention and so he turned after them and started chasing him and they run all the way back to this this french and remember this is a trench big enough to fit a 30 foot tall man so this took another day or two you know and they're digging non-stop basically through the night and i mean I mean, that sounds like quite a task, but I mean, if you're inspired to do so because, you know, it just ate your wife or it just ate your mother or whatever, you know, you probably get the job done, you know. So finally they get his attention. And so this is, you know, at least two whole days, three whole days since the initial event of him attacking the village. and he's chasing them back and it takes everything they have of course because his strides are enormous and they're taking off towards this trench

and he is that he's so close behind them to the point where he knocked one of them down as he tried to swing out to grab them knocked him down and the final one gets right up to this trench

and they had piled up a whole bunch of timber right along right at the i guess the because the way they were coming at the trench you know it's like a they were facing it like long way you know so that he could go into it basically and they set up all this timber right at that one end of it so that he would trip go down into it okay so he the last of the runners he dies out of the way he on trips over these timbers and down into this huge trench. And immediately those other six guys were waiting with large rocks and boulders that they had

set in place and start piling him in on top of him and then pushing the, you know, all the dirt that they had excavated, piling it in on top of him. And they made the trench just so that when he fell in there, like he fell in kind of at an angle. And so that he's like one of his shoulders is wedged down into the trench. and his head is stuck down in there, but he could still reach one arm out, right? And so these,

but before he can, you know, really move and get himself unwedged, because they made it narrow so that it would wedge, his weight would cause him to be wedged down in there so that he couldn't, you know, free himself immediately. You know, like if they were to leave him like that,

he could struggle and get himself free, but they wanted him to be just, trapped enough to where he would be, you know, struggling to get out, but it would, that struggle would be made increasingly difficult by the fact that they're piling on all this earth and rocks and everything to keep him way down. Now, as he's doing this, of course, he's struggling to breathe. Every time he breathes, he's breathing in these huge dust clouds, right? Making his breathing more difficult. They're piling it on and piling it on. And he suffocates. He's finally dead. Then they have to unburied, at least a portion of him where his belly is at. And they climb down and cut open his belly. And they dragged the women out.

And as the story goes, at least one of them was still alive. Now, I don't know how you survive in the stomach of a giant with no fresh air for two or three days, but maybe the stomach was just big enough that there was a pocket of air. I don't know because I mean, I've been in some sweat lodges for a really, really, really long time. I didn't think I could breathe, but I made it. So they cut them out and apparently at least one of these women survived.

And she lived like, it was like the main guy of the group, you know, it was his wife and they went on to have kids. And their descendants still live today. So it's, um, this, this spot is, it's on the Rosebud Reservation in Tripp County, South Dakota. And as you're driving along on the highway, you're surrounded by the normal looking flat prairie and, you know, the mild rolling hills here and there. Then all of a sudden, there's this one big long, you know, it's like op-long shape. and it's just there. And it doesn't,

it's, you know, it kind of stands on its own. It's out of place. And people drive by it every day, not knowing what it is, but the traditional Lakota knowledge is that that's actually the grave of a giant. And there's trees growing on it now and all that.

That's an amazing account, man. That really is. I mean, it's very, um, I'll have to play someday. the story I told in Vietnam about the colonel that killed giants. I told it on the paranormal podcast.

But it's very similar. He said they would, he shot this thing several times and it would not go down. And they had to call an air support to basically finish it. But what's fascinating is it as it came through the village, it was grabbing people. And he said it would bite their heads off. There was a female one.

And she would rip men apart. She'd rip their legs off, ripped their arms off and they were eating people. And last question for you, in your culture, did they ever describe where like Eon came from? I mean, did he come from somewhere? I've never heard of it. I mean, that knowledge might be in somebody's head,

but I have never heard of it. And as far as I know, They don't necessarily regard it as like a, like a spirit being. They were, they were what they were. Like they didn't go anywhere. You know, like they didn't seem to have the disappearing qualities like Bigfoot does or nothing like that. Like, I mean, they, because if I remember writing the story when they finally caught up to him to get his attention, he was asleep, you know. So they found him sleeping, you know.

But you hear stories of supposedly people find Bigfoot sleeping too, you know. and they eat and they they poop and they pee and they do everything else but um you don't hear anything about at least in my um i've never heard of this eon or you know any of these other giants having that i don't know mystical if you want to say quality to them um it just seemed like there was a race of giants that lived here and he was the last one that lived in our country in lecocta country and we gave it to him, man. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah.

We gave it to him like Custer. He got Custard. He got custard. Yeah. Or as they say, Custer got sued. Yeah. S-I-O-U-S. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah, and he did. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, good riddens. I'm with you on that one, yeah. If you read the history of it, he sounds like a hero and stuff. But when you start hearing the reality of Custer, he really wasn't. He was kind of a dick and kind of a scumbag.

I'm sure a lot of people are going to be upset at that I said that. But it's true. Look up the history of Custer. I mean, the same is true for, you know, I mean, you're afraid you're going to piss somebody off. I'll probably piss a lot of people off here with this. And so I won't go too detailed with it. But I will say briefly that Custer is just one of many heroes in American history that if you know, you don't have to read a whole lot about them to find out.

that these people were terrorists I mean they were terrorists they were either slave owners or they were Indian killers and we're not talking about just you know a handful of small occasions we're talking about like as a as a matter of a way of life this is how they were and yeah so the invasion of our land was nothing short of terrorism as far we're concerned but um and I can understand that I can understand why they They would, you know, people would feel that way. And I love, you know, the culture of most Native Americans when they, like yourself, you know,

you start telling the stories of what happened and things that you ran into. And it's fascinating. Like, even the, I'm sure some people might roll their eyes at the Eon story. I don't know if I'm saying his name right, but I guess it's irrelevant anyway. He was the scumbag. You know what I'm talking about. But, you know, even in like Christians, the Nephilim, you know, the giants. And you start really, and every culture has a giant story.

Like every culture has a flood story. Every culture has a giant story. Oh, yeah, we have a flood story too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Was it, is it similar to what we, what I would know as a flood story where Noah got on the ark and, or is it different than that?

I suppose there's some similarities. Okay, so what we call, most people know this is North America, right? But that's a very recent name, you know, that's only come about in the past few hundred years. Before all that, we have always called this place fertile island. And I'm sure you've probably heard that. So the reason we call it Turtle Island. is because as the old story goes, actually some of the tribes explicitly say in their,

like their stories of their origins and where they came to be, they specifically say that the, like, Earth was essentially a turtle. Like the landmass that we lived on was the giant shell of a huge turtle. And some people even go so far as to say, you know, look at the shape of North America. It almost looks like a turtle all sprawled out with his legs stretched out or whatever, you know. And, I mean, that takes some abstract thinking. But one of the things about it being Turtle Island is the fact that if you were a tiny, tiny, tiny little thing and you could stand on the back of a turtle while it's surfacing in the water.

and you know like a turtle there are basically two ways that a turtle will surface they'll either just poke their head straight up and their body will kind of be just hanging down directly beneath them or they'll level their body out so that their head is poking up and you can see the top of their shell right so if this is the shell of a turtle

and turtles do what turtles have to do they surface for a while and then they submerge and then they surface and then they submerge and then they surface and then they submerge. So here, right now, in this time and place, the turtle is surfaced.

Long time ago, the turtle submerged. And this happened more than once. You know, people talk about, quote, the flood. We talk about floods. And each flood, like I talked about how old the people are and how long the people have been here. And we were talking about thousands of years

between each flood. you know we're talking about eye sages haven't come and gone and this is one of the this is where like the one of the special things about the black hills ties in is that supposedly during one of the floods as far as I know the most recent or I should say the submergent of the turtle the only points sticking up was the mountain tops and one of those mountains or mountain ranges was the Black Hills. And so that's where we fled to. Like I mentioned, the cave networks, they go underneath the Black Hills. There's a place there called Wind Cave. It's actually a National Park.

You can walk right up to this hole in the rock where there's constantly wind blowing out. You stick your face into it, and you can feel the wind blowing right in your face. And this little hole is, I mean, now it's all touristy, and there's a paved sidewalk, walking right up to it, you know, and all that.

But back in the day, before all that pavement was there, before that little visitor center building was there, before all the tour guides were there, all that stuff, this was a hole in the ground on the side of a prairie hill within the Black Hills. And it's, I mean, it's as big around as like a, like you could stuff a couple of basketballs in there and wedge them in there and get them stuck. Like, it's a small hole. but they say that that is the birth canal of the Lakota people. They say that we came from the underworld,

that the Black Hills is actually our birthplace. And, you know, like I talked before about how Native people don't really jive with all that anthropological talk about how we came across the Beringland Bridge from Siberia into Alaska and then trickled on down through the rest of the Americas. for one, there are settlements in South America that are over a thousand years older than what would make sense for us coming across the Beringland language. So how did they get there before all that, you know, a whole other continent away? And I mean, it doesn't explain the intricacy and complexity of, I'm talking just North America alone, nearly 500 indigenous languages. and some of them are as different as English is for Mandarin. And then that's not counting South America with just as many. And then the Caribbean with, I think, four or five different native languages prior to colonization.

So when Native people say they came from the land, like this land literally birthed us, this is one of those examples. They say that we came out of that hole. and this is true for at least this last time of now that the turtle has surfaced because while it was submerged everybody had fled there and lived inside the caves of the black hills and my medicine man was actually telling me that there was uh he he was over there you know doing some talks or whatever and there was a um uh an archaeologist there. And he was what we call one of the good ones. He primarily sought the native

perspective on things before he would go with the basically the textbook version of what most of Americans want to hear. He would promote the native view more than anything else. So my medicine man would talk to him

and this guy told my medicine man that they recently and when I say recently, my men's men told me this like five years ago, but they had recently found remnants of human campfires 80 miles deep into the Black Hills, into the caves, 80 miles into the caves. And there's campfires in there.

And not just like one campfire, but like communities. And so when the turtle surfaced again, again, this earth, this land gave birth to us. We came out and lived upon this world again. So we lived in the underworld, literally and physically, as flesh and blood humans, not just in a spiritual sense. So when they talk about this stuff, they're not talking about, I mean, some of it sounds like poetic and spiritual or whatever. but more often than not, the stuff that a lot of people regard as legends and myths, they're talking about real stuff that happened.

You know, so, so I don't know, it's just pretty wild. It's fascinating. You know, it's, I guess it goes back to why the Black Hills are so sacred, why, you know, when people go up there and start, I don't know that they do it now, but back in the day when they would just go up there and start, you know, getting gold and all the minerals. It would piss off the locals. And it is fascinating. The whole thing is really fascinating to me,

especially talking to different cultures. And I really appreciate you coming back, Tom, for part two. Yeah. Talking about the Lakotas. And I know the members loved part one. And I was getting emails from people. They're like, you got to have this guy back. So I really appreciate you coming back on.

And I'd love to have you back on in the future, ma'am. Yeah, no problem. There's plenty of other stories to talk about. Like, I haven't even told you at all about, like, some of the Bigfoot stuff that's happened to me. Like, I told you, I've never seen the thing, but, you know, you've had people on in the past who have had stories where they never saw the thing, but pretty much everything else that could happen in an encounter took place. Like, you know, rock drawings, weird sounds, tracks, structures, like, I've experienced all that. And I can tell you some of those stories of, a number of. other time if you want. I would love to have you back. Would you come back for a part three? Let's do a part three. Why not? Yeah, there's no problem, man. No problem. Yeah, and I appreciate your time again,

Tom. Cool. Yeah, I really appreciate you having me and be safe, man. You too. Thanks again, Tom. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquotronicles.com. If you get a chance to check out Sasquotronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional. shows. Until next time, everyone. Sports betting is sweeping across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week

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