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That's survey.empirepoduk.com, survey.empirepoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Turnbull. I think we're in one of the most fascinating chapters of American history and one that is so frequently passed over or just misrepresented if you, like me, have grown up with Westerns.
The people who were there first, the Native American Indians, are really unimportant or they're the backdrop or they're the savages. These are the only stories that I certainly was brought up on. There's a fantastic historian of this period, Pekka Hamalianet, and he uses this amazing phrase, which I'm just very anxious to put to our very, very special guest today because she's got so many great stories. Welcome to Empire, the brilliant Katie Hickman. Welcome back.
Thank you, thank you. It's so nice to be here. Last time she was a not-coliticus in the Ottoman Empire. Yes, I was. And do you know how many people have written to me about Skeffington? Oh, have they? Brilliant. Claiming to be relatives of old Skeffington. If you haven't heard that, Clotworthy Skeffington, the best name in history. I don't think we've had a better name since, it's true. No, and arguably nor will we. But Katie Hickman is a guest today because she's written this amazing book called Bravehearted, the dramatic story of the women of the American West.
And I'm sort of acutely aware that you also come from that sensibility, that this is almost like discovering a new land because we've been fed such horse droppings for so long about what it was actually like. Yes. I mean, if you were brought up on a diet of Westerns, as I was, and as so many people were, you could be forgiven for thinking that there just weren't any women in the West or
Or if they were, they were just peeping shyly, you know, out of the windows of a wagon and never engaging very much. Or in some of the racier Westerns, peeping out of a bordello. Peeping out of a bordello, exactly. On the corner of a Clint Eastwood set. Precisely. This was always the moment my mother used to walk in when I was watching Clint Eastwood films. Yes, vaguely pornographic.
So but of course, in order to settle the land, it couldn't just be men. You needed to have women and you needed to have families. So that was the impetus for my book, really, was thinking, well, we never really hear about these women. Where were they and what was their experience? Well, quite. I mean, but you've managed to do two things in this book, which I think are really important and interesting. First of all, you go sister, putting women back in the story. Thank God.
But also, I mentioned this Pekka Hamelainen phrase where he refers to the indigenous communities as the dark matter of American history. Fantastic phrase. Absolutely brilliant phrase. You just can't see them. You look through them. It's what's beyond them. Except when they bounce off the other matter, exactly. And also, of course, in all the Westerns, they are...
horribly portrayed merely as savages, you know, and often they were white actors with their faces blacked out. Often Ronald Reagan, it turns out. Well, at least once, certainly Ronald Reagan. We can come on to him later. So they were sort of almost cartoonish figures, really.
who were the backdrop to this incredibly noble endeavour, which was to go west and to basically conquer this enormous landmass. Shall I give a little tiny bit of background to this, the geography of it? The geography and the timing that we're talking about, because we're talking about sort of the 1840s, 1850s, when this really starts taking off. So the westward expansion, as it's known in American history, began in about 1840.
And at that time, the United States of America, there were only 26 states. And the geographical land mass of those states only covered a third of what is now we've come to known as America.
The Great Plains were known as Indian Territory and they were kind of notionally part of America. America had bought it from Napoleon Bonaparte. Go figure, how did that one work? So it was kind of notionally part of America, but no whites had really ever been there. It was this enormously huge, great area. Then you had the Rocky Mountains, which were about two thirds of the way down, looking from right to left on a map.
And beyond that, the whole of the South and the West, so
So from California right through to Texas wasn't American. It was Mexican, belonged to Mexico. And the Pacific Northwest, the areas that now Oregon and Washington State and bits of Idaho, and I'm using heavy quotation marks because obviously there were a whole lot of Native Americans there, but it was disputed terrain between the United States of America and Great Britain. So when the first pioneers or past settlers, first colonists, however you want to describe them,
made this journey from the Mississippi River. The Mississippi and the Missouri River was considered the frontier, so about a third of the way across America. When the first people set off, the first overlanders set off, they were going to a foreign country. It didn't belong to America. You know, I hadn't realized that beforehand. When you see these westerns, there is no proper geographical location for it. You don't really know where it is that they're talking about. It's almost like a sort of fantasy land.
And so as well as the history of the indigenous, there's also history, which is not part of our education at all, of a Hispanic California, of a whole period when these cities are born. Absolutely. And as we discovered last time, a Russian colony in part of it. Yes. About a third of American territory as it is now belonged to Mexico. And then there was the Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848. Under the treaty that was signed, America basically took control
this huge land mass for itself. But at the beginning of this, and this is a story that's just starting to be told in popular culture from a very specific prism. I don't know whether any of you have seen Yellowstone, which is this huge, great series of Kevin Costner in it. They keep skipping back in time for some specials. And they've got one of Kevin Costner's forebears who are crossing the West or trying to make a life for themselves.
And there are places which come up, which are going to be very important to your story, like Fort Laramie, for example, which is going to be the prism through which we look at this idea of settlement, immigrants and immigrants and refugees from lands that belong to them for thousands of years. So let's focus in, if we can, and just use Fort Laramie as our touchstone. When did it suddenly happen?
exist and what did it look like right at the beginning? So Fort Laramie was originally a fur trading stockade that belonged to the American fur company. So the only whites really who visited this huge landmass
beyond the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers were fur traders and trappers and the odd missionary. In popular culture, this is revenant territory, isn't it? This is Leonardo DiCaprio. Exactly. In fact, I was going to say, if any of your listeners have seen that film, The Revenant,
which is sort of loosely historical, I'd say. The stockade that you see in that, I thought, was a completely brilliant reimagining of what stockades such as Fort Laramie must have looked like. In fact, Fort Laramie was the biggest and it became a settlement for these fur traders, all of whom, by the way, married Native American women. For a brief period before the emigrations began in 1840,
It was a locus, pretty much the only place in this enormous landmass where Native Americans and whites lived together in relative harmony. So Fort Laramie itself, though, was named after a man who came to this part of the world even earlier. I was fascinated to see that it's named after a man called Jacques Laramie. Yes. This French trapper who apparently got to this part of the world earlier.
and was taken by Arapaho Indians. We're talking about 1819, 1820-ish. They were accused of killing him and burying his body in a beaver dam. And it's in recognition of him that this fort or this fortification was named Laramie, which I'm just very fascinated by. So it was dangerous territory. It was dangerous territory where people could die. It was on the rim of the known world. I mean, funnily enough, I was in Fort Laramie a
back in September. And it's in order to get there, if you lived in that period, you would have travelled for 500 miles across the Great Plains, arrived at Fort Laramie having not seen any other... What state is it in today, just to place it geographically? It's in Wyoming within sight of the Rocky Mountains. So when you get to Fort Laramie, travellers across the plains knew that they weren't nearly at the Rockies. The Rockies are like a kind of smudge on the horizon.
So it was these fur trappers and traders who used it as part of their fur trading endeavors. But other people went there too. I mean, we're talking about tiny numbers. So there were various sportsmen, for example, who went to hunt the bison who would turn up there. And then when the emigration proper started, which was in 1840, 1841, it became a kind of a way station for traveling along that route.
Kind of like a roadhouse where you restock, you have a little nap, you have some water and then you go on your way. Is that what you mean, a way station? Not exactly, no. It was more a landmark. It was very small. Sometimes people stayed there, but the emigrants tended not to. They might perhaps try to trade. They might try to buy new supplies. And as the emigration progressed...
Because I should mention, it started very, very slowly. So in 1840, there was one family who left the Missouri-Mississippi frontier and traveled to Oregon. Just one family. That was the first non-missionary woman who went. In 1841,
100 people left the Missouri River. In 1842, it was 200 people. In 1843, it was 1,000 people. In 1844, the numbers doubled. So these are still really small numbers of people. Katie, you mentioned earlier the date 1848 as the date which the Treaty with Mexico is signed at the end of the war with Mexico.
and the absorption of this area into the United States. But it's also the date of an important discovery. Tell us about that. Yes, well, gold was discovered at a place called Sutter's Mill in California.
And if you were Mexican, it would be incredibly unlucky. If you were American, it would be incredibly lucky. Because until 1848, the whole of California was Mexican. The Americans had fought a war with the Mexicans and some of these American colonists who'd gone over there to get new land and start new lives. And I think that gold was discovered in January 1848.
And the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was the treaty between the Americans and the Mexicans, was signed in February. So literally within a week, within a week of gold being discovered, the Americans signed this treaty. I don't think it was ratified until a bit later on, until about July. They signed the treaty and suddenly this incredible wealth emerged.
belonged categorically without any dispute, belonged to America. You write so beautifully about this as well and about this sort of notion that goes out that the rivers are running with gold. Talk about gold rush and gold fever. There's a lovely line you have, you say that
you could get your hands on the wealth of Croesus merely by, quotes, dipping one's hand into the sparkling mountain stream. It's a lovely idea. Yes, and it created literally a fever. You know, before that, it had been Oregon fever when everyone was crazy to go to Oregon, what was then called Oregon Country before it became part of the United States. But it's,
I think it's really important to understand how much the numbers increase because it would have such a huge impact on the Native Americans and what happened subsequently. So in 1848, I think about 4,000 people had done this yearly emigration. Everyone went together for protection. They started at a particular time. So 4,000 people is not very many. But of course, the gold was discovered and then news got back
In fact, news spread all around the world. And the following year, 1849, which is why you talk about 49ers, in 1849, the numbers jumped from 4,000 people to 30,000 people left the Missouri frontiers and traveled overland. The year after that,
It was 50,000 people who left. So all of a sudden, the numbers were just insanely large. And, of course, people were coming in by ship. So they weren't only going overland. They were also going to San Francisco, which was then it was called Yerba Buena. You know, when it was under Metz, it was just it was nothing. It was like a little tiny village there.
Suddenly, there was this huge influx of people by ship. Settlers were coming down from Oregon. Everyone just flooded to California, all thinking that they were going to get rich quick. You just said something which maybe some of the younger people won't know, that Miners 49ers. I mean, what is the song that that's in? It's a very famous song, isn't it? Miner 49er. It was a Miner 49er, da-da-da.
No, something came in 49. Isn't it Clementine? I think it might be. It was a minor 49er, I think. But what about the people who were there already, who was living in these places already, who suddenly have to witness this? You mean the Native American people? Yes. Exactly that. There may be a sudden... And I think your numbers are fascinating, by the way, how quickly and exponentially the numbers start growing. It's essential to understand...
How destructive this influx of people was. There's a wonderful woman, a biracial woman called Susan Bordeaux. Her name sounds very sort of white American, but actually her mother was a Lakota Native American called Red Cormorant Woman, and her father was Indian.
a French-American fur trapper. Their family was one of about 300 mixed marriages who all centred on the area around Fort Laramie. It's one of the reasons why Fort Laramie is so important in this period of history. And Katie, how rare was this coexistence? You painted a picture in your book of these many mixed marriages between indigenous women and fur trapping men.
How rare was this, this sort of state of coexistence?
These fur trappers, I'm fascinated by them. You know, they were called fur trappers in the Rocky Mountains. They were known as mountain men. And they were men who went out to trap anything with fur, anything that moved. Beaver particularly was what they were after because men's hats were made of a kind of felted beaver. And it was like going to the moon.
I mean, they were in a terrain that was utterly unknown to them. And they were just a very few of them, maybe a few hundred of them. So in order to be able to live alongside the Native American tribes, who mostly but not always nomadic, who roamed around this area, they made these strategic marriages with Native American women.
And sometimes they were just marriages of convenience. Actually, Willie, not unlike the BBs in East India Company traders, it reminded me so much of that period of history. They were often strategic marriages. If you wanted to be able to roam freely around the terrain of a particular tribe, you married a woman and then you were kin.
And another important point you bring out, Katie, is that there was an economic reason why there was coexistence. The indigenous peoples had access to furs, which the trappers wanted to buy. And the trappers wanted to buy them and the indigenous were happy to sell because they brought in money. Principally, really, it was to give a degree of safety and an degree of belonging to these fur trappers who were totally isolated in this immense
immense terrain. So they married into various different tribes. Yes, which tribes were there? Give us a picture of the indigenous tribes of that area. So the tribes on the Great Plains were the very powerful warrior tribes of the various bands belonging to the Lakota people.
Then the Cheyenne, the Shoshone, the Arapaho, these were the big powerful warrior tribes that were different to the sort of more hunter-gatherer tribes who existed, for example, in California.
who didn't have guns and didn't have horses. And did they get on with each other? No, they absolutely fought one another. Like anyone else, in Europe, they had allies and they had enemies. So in order to, for their own protection, these white trappers married into a particular tribe. And then
the areas that were roamed over and sort of controlled, if you can put it like that, by various tribes, they would have free reign, you know, pink ticket to go and trap these animals, which was a hugely valuable, lucrative trade. I don't think that the emigration could really have happened without the fur trade because these men had made the first sort of incursions into this enormous terrain.
overlanders were following the Native American trails that had then been picked up by the fire trappers. So they provided a roadmap of where to go apart from anything else. You mentioned one really very important name, and I'm so glad you did, the Bordeaux family, because I want to know much more about them. Because thanks to one of the Bordeaux's, we have a wonderful history of the
time period as well. But just, you know, when I said 49, I can't get that out of my head, Katie, because I haven't heard that for such a long time. He's a niner, 49er. It's Clementine. I've looked it up. I didn't know it was from that tune. In a cabin, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, 49er, and his daughter Clementine.
There is now a regular Anita Singsong slot on this podcast. We had rap last week. I don't mean to be, but I'm following Tom Holland's footsteps. But also, I think in Scooby-Doo there was a character called Minor 49er. Anyway, that was just a little aside. Minor 49er, had a big beard, big shaggy beard. But yes, the Bordeaux family. Tell us more about the Bordeaux family. So they are also these fur traders, American French. I mean, the name sounds French. Susan Bordeaux, who left this wonderful account behind,
you know, firsthand account, which is extremely rare because she gave a Native American perspective. And of course, most of the histories that we have are written from a white American point of view. So Susan Bordeaux wrote this extraordinary account of the various things that happened. And she was biracial. So her father was James Bordeaux, who was a French American fur trapper. Her mother was a Brulee Lakota. So the Lakota had various
that came under the kind of general banner of Lakota. With the best name ever, Red Cormorant Woman. Red Cormorant Woman. And so they were very typical of this small, I'm not sure if you could really call it a community, but there were about 300 families all living within the vicinity of Fort Laramie, which was like the kind of hub for everybody. And they all had these large families. And I'm very fascinated by the...
the idea of this because this is a period before the emigration happened and indeed into the sort of very first early years when the overlanders, you know, the settlers, posed no threat to the Native Americans because their numbers were so few. The Native Americans actually welcomed them as a trading opportunity.
They lived in this area. And the way that Susan Bordeaux describes it is that it was a period of relative racial harmony between these white men and their Native American wives who were from various different tribes. In Susan Bordeaux's case, her mother was a Lakota, but they married into all sorts of different tribes depending on where they were. They married Shoshone women quite frequently, for example, who were more towards the Rocky Mountains tribes.
They lived together and there was no sense of racial prejudice between the whites and the Native Americans. Or hostility. I mean, you write about the good times really well. I mean, through her words, you quote from her original source material, which I always find is really helpful. But she talks about that period that you've just been talking about and the immigrants start to flood in.
They sort of come in great numbers and they eat together, which is a huge sort of level of people. You know, they're coming in, they're eating all this. Supper was dished out, a pie plate. Meat and bread was billed, a fare. Sorghum, molasses, a luxury. And she described how all these different people gathered around this enormous big plate.
sharing not just food, but also music, impromptu dances and things that happen between races. Tell us more about that, because I love those stories. Well, her father was a very good musician. A lot of these fire trappers, you know, they carried their fiddles around with them into the wilderness, which is quite a wonderful thought. And so her father and a lot of his friends
could make music and they would have these impromptu dances at Fort Laramie that Susan Bordeaux as a little girl remembers. And so she describes, as you say, all the little girls would put ribbons in their hair and they'd all get dressed up and they would watch the old timers, as she calls them, so the older settlers who were coming over dancing these jigs. There's a lovely quote you've got here.
Many times some of the older men were called out to the centre to step off a jig to fast music and they could be sure to do it to perfection. Yes, exactly. And I like how she describes her father, you know, what you say about sort of all these people with their families and loves and lives. You sort of bring life to it and she brings life to it, you know, talking about her father. Yeah.
saying that he was a man who was born for gaiety in music. She says it is life with them. They are never as happy as when the music was on the air and a crowd of people were moving to its rhythm. It seemed like a happy place for a while. I think it was. It was certainly a peaceful place where everybody, Native American and white Americans, all rubbed along very harmoniously.
But partly the reason for that, these men had their families and often they were marriages of real attachment. You know, they weren't just strategic. These men really loved their families and they brought up their children and they had no intention of returning home east. Sometimes they had white families, a bit like the
situation in India, they sometimes did have white families back at home, but often they didn't. They'd thrown in their lot with these Native American communities on the Great Plains. And so it seems to me like there was this moment when the relationship between the white Americans and the Native Americans could, and indeed was, very different to how it became
And then you present this picture after the gold rush with gold-crazed emigrants coming like a living avalanche, sweeping before it all that the Indians prized. That's Susan Bordeaux's own words. Susan Bordeaux's own words. And she witnessed this.
And of course, the principal thing, you know, the Indian War so-called hadn't really begun at this point. So there was no conflict. You know, all the settlers were terrified of what they called Indian attacks. Actually, it was extremely rare for that to happen. Something like only 4% of deaths during these migrations were from enemy fire, so to speak. You're much more likely to die from disease or actually shooting yourself. A lot of accidents happened there.
And cholera was also in 1949. But the main damage really was environmental. So these settlers followed the Platte River. So the Platte River was like the highway, the motorway that cut right the way across the Great Plains. It was in the absence of any maps, they would follow the banks of this river. The main detrimental effect was
environmental effect that these larger, huge numbers of people had was they polluted the water, they took all the pasture, and they had a very, very bad effect on the migration patterns of the bison. So before 1840, there were vast numbers of bison migrating
roaming around in these huge herds on the Great Prairies. There was 30 million of these animals and the herds that they roamed in were as many as 100,000 strong. So they were absolute, they were like one of the wonders of nature. Just this huge travelling cloud of dust travelling across the plain, which will sustain thousands of people. You know, they use the meat, they use the fur, they travel with these herds. It's a migrationary pattern. You upend that
you're destroying countless lives. You destroy everything. That was the main sort of flashpoint of trouble, was the fact that very soon these plain tribes realised that
What a bad effect these large numbers were having on the bison. And they totally depend, you know, they were a hunting people. They depended on the bison for everything, for their food, for the clothes that they wore, the buffalo robes. They would sometimes trade these buffalo robes that were very valuable. They made their teepees out of them.
All their spiritual beliefs centred around stories about the buffalo, also known as bison, by the way. And so it didn't occur to anybody that there could ever be an end to this vast natural resource. Well, it's an apocalypse, really, if you're watching it with the numbers and the growing numbers that you just highlighted.
This is happening within years. So somebody will be seeing their life collapsing like an entire city being detonated around you. And I just want to go back to one of the figures again, you said only 4% of all deaths on the emigrant trail.
were down to Indian attacks where people fought back against this apocalypse that's starting to go on around them. Within 1840 and 1860, yes. And yet, between 1840 and 1860, you also have that very strong pervasive narrative of the savage, the
the women killer, the rapey Indians, you know, all of that starts also being promulgated. Now, is that as a result of fear from people who are going into the unknown? Or is it a deliberate propaganda to tell people you go, you go tooled up and you clean these people out? Is it a mandate for giving people, you know, that sense of right that it's okay for you to go and detonate this entire civilization? I mean, where does that savage thing come from? Old as America itself.
I mean, from the first Puritans arriving on the East Coast, Native Americans were portrayed as these savages, you know, who wanted to kill and destroy them. And of course, in some instances, that was true. But I think it was a lot to do with sort of folk history.
So on dark winter nights, you'd gather around the fire and your granny would tell you stories about someone she knew who knew someone who knew someone else, you know, who was attacked by the savages and taken captive. They were like the boogeyman. There's a sense in which they were always portrayed as subhumans. You know, the very fact that they're referred to as savages. Even the missionaries who went, were going west to allegedly convert slaves
Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, they were savages, they were heathens, they were benighted heathens. There was no sense in which they were human beings like you and me. Which left it possible in
in that mindset. To do the things they did. To commit a genocide. They simply did not count. And you give a picture in your book of when the gold rush takes place, all the stereotypes we have of the gold rush is of emigrants going and panning for gold. But we never hear that 16,000 indigenous Californians are enslaved, kidnapped and killed. Oh my God. I mean, that was the least of it. It was a, you know, in California, it was technically a genocide. So,
So there is a figure. Before the gold rush, there were 150,000 Native Americans in many, many different tribes and bands. And these were very different from the warrior-like horse-riding plains tribes, you know, like the Comanche and the Lakota, for example, who could give as good as they got and who indeed fought back against white incursion and won for quite a long time, which is something...
Certainly, I didn't know. But in California, they were very different. They tended to be hunter-gatherers. They'd already been weakened by Western diseases brought in by the Mexicans.
Within something like five years of the gold rush from 150,000 Native Americans in these various different tribes, there were only 30,000 remaining. Thank you for bringing Susan Bordeaux as well because thanks to her, we actually get an idea of how sometimes these enormous numbers of killings occur.
because you said that she was one of the Brulee Indians. Her mother was a Brulee Lakota, yes. So the first flashpoint of proper fighting was something called the Grattan Massacre. This was after the Fort Laramie Treaty when there had been a brief moment of...
to the US government that their resources were being taken and that their bison were being affected. And so there was a treaty, Fort Laramie Treaty, which happened very, very close to where Susan Bordeaux lived, which was going to set out various terms and conditions of how the two sides were going to get along. And Lakota agreed to confine themselves to certain geographical area, but they were still allowed to hunt wherever they wanted. And they were paid by the US government? They were
paid annuities, yes, every year there was supposed to be $50,000 worth of annuity. Within a year of this happening, the US government changed its mind and said, oh, sorry, we can't afford $50,000 worth of annuities. We're going to just pay for 10 years. And so the Native Americans were pretty fed up.
It also was the period in which the military came into the picture. So Fort Laramie, which had been a fur trading fort, was bought by the US Army. And from then on, from 1849, I think, it became a US military post. And of course, the minute you start introducing soldiers and guns into
it becomes a much more friable situation. And this cow wanders off. The cow was pretty much dead on its feet. The cow wanders off, doesn't it? And then it's killed. This is a Mormon cow. I mean, it's definitely a Mormon cow. A cow that belonged to a Mormon group of people.
This Native American shot it and took it for its skin. The Mormons complained. And a young firebrand officer called Grattan, Lieutenant John Grattan, decided he was going to go. And as he put it, he was going to crack it to the Sioux. Sioux is another word for Lakota. And he went into this village and the chief was called Chief Scattering Bear.
Brilliant name. Turned his back to walk away from Grattan and Grattan shot him in the back. Right. This was a party of 30 young soldiers in a Lakota village, moving village of many thousands of people. And so this was the most dishonorable, terrible thing that the soldiers could have done. You don't shoot someone in the back. Yeah. And they slaughtered this group of soldiers. You know, Grattan's body is...
was so badly mutilated that he was only recognizable by his pocket watch. Can I just also point out that the chieftain who took the lame Mormon cow, you know, the skinny Mormon cow, did offer a horse as compensation, but none of that helped. You just have this downward slide into, well, we'll find out into what. Join us after the break.
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Welcome back. Still with us, Katie Hickman, who left us on a cliff edge with this, I mean, this cow incident. It's really hard to think that something as mundane as a skinny cow could spiral into such an orgy of violence, but it does. So you left us just before the break with the killing of Grattan and his men after this shooting of a warrior in the back. But what is the retaliation to this? Because there must be one. These things don't go unanswered, do they? Absolutely no, definitely not.
And, you know, the military by now was totally involved because they wanted to protect this golden cord, which was linking the United States to California, which was the richest place on earth at that point.
And so the government sent a general called Harney with a whole load of troops across the plains to try to track down and punish this Lakota group who'd killed Grattan. And they came to a place called Ash Hollow, which is in Nebraska, to a peaceful village. That had nothing at all to do with the killing of...
That band had ridden off to the north, were completely out of anyone's reach. And so Harney, in fact, the chief there, high forehead, said that he wasn't going to fight because he could see that he was totally outnumbered and he decided he wasn't going to fight. They had no chance to prepare themselves. And so Harney,
They went out with white flags to this general saying that they were going to surrender. And the Harni said, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fight you. And so they said, well, give us an hour to remove our women and children at the very least.
And according to Susan Bordeaux, who spoke to survivors of this, that didn't happen. Harney just attacked straight away and it was complete mayhem. He goes with the intent. I mean, he calls it a day of retribution is what he's after. And when, you know, one of these people with the white flags comes out, an elder of the tribe and tries to shake his hand, he refuses to shake his hand. He's there with one purpose and one purpose alone, which is to punish Harney.
and caused terror. It doesn't matter that these people were not the ones responsible for shooting Grattan and his men. They're still going to get them. The women and children, are they hiding in caves at the time? Is that right? The women and children scattered. This is Nebraska. It's a very open plain. There was not really many places to hide. And there's an extraordinary account of
by this woman called Corcarwin, who Susan Bordeaux later got to know and talked to, who described, it's a first-hand description by this woman of what it was like to be in this, what was effectively a rout, but a massacre by the American army on this otherwise totally peaceful group of people.
that she was running away, and she turned around at a certain point, and she saw this soldier who was about to shoot her in the back. This is this woman, Kukarwin. And because she happened to turn at that exact moment, the bullet didn't go into her back, but it perforated her stomach. It literally disemboweled her. And this woman was running along with half her guts hanging out, and she managed to hide herself.
in a washout, so in a little dry stream bed. And she lay there all day waiting for the fighting to die down, getting a sleeve of her dress, making a temporary bandage, stuffing her guts back in. Covered herself with tumbleweed. Covered herself with tumbleweed and finally saw a little skunk.
And somehow, I don't know how she managed to do this, managed to kill and eat this skunk and took a strip of skunk skin and used the skunk skin to bandage herself up. That's no small feat when you've got your guts hanging out. No small feat with your guts hanging out. I mean, they were extremely powerful.
extremely resilient and strong, these people. And finally, she was left on this battlefield, surrounded by dead people and dead horses, and she decided she was going to go and give herself up. And so there's an incredibly moving account by this woman of how
she went towards the American troops singing her own death song, which is the chant that you might sing if you know that you're going to your certain death. And what happens? Well, in fact, she was just taken prisoner. Harney took about 70 or 80 prisoners, mostly women and children, but having killed Harney,
nearly 100 people of these completely innocent people in revenge. Many of those 100 women and children. And so forever after, you know, the name of Harney was, as you can imagine, like...
mud to the Native Americans. They called him Harney the Woman Killer, he was known as. Because in the Native American societies, you would never... Warriors were the ones who went to war. You would never set out deliberately to slaughter women and children. But Harney did that. Partly, it was a terror campaign. They wanted to show their strength and
show what would happen if any Native American tribe tried to push back against them. But it doesn't work. It doesn't work with the Lakota Indians, with the Sioux Indians, because they are outraged by this terrible massacre of their women and children. So it sparks off a long-running battle, which historically was known as the Sioux Battles. The Sioux Wars, yes. Just to think it starts with a cow, a cow that could have been swapped with a horse, which could have all just been sorted out at the time. Yes, and then a horse would have been...
more than enough of a compensation to this Mormon. But I think there was, by this time, there is a sense in which white Americans were beginning to realize that they were not going to be able to settle these huge amounts of land. You know, the Native Americans were an impediment to them. And as the decades roll on, 1860s and 1870s, there's a definite sea change in the attitude of
particularly the US government, towards the Native Americans. You know, this whole rather wonderful sounding, very diverse society of these fur traders and trappers with their Native American wives, that is absolutely blown up. After that, it wasn't safe, even for Susan Bordeaux's father, who was kin to half these people. It was not safe for him to be in that area anymore. So where does the Lakota Nation and the Sioux Nation go? Where is left for them to hide? They went north.
to their heartland, which was the area, the Powder River Country, it's called, which is between, if you can imagine, directly north from Fort Laramie, between the Black Mountains and the Bighorn Mountains. There's a whole huge area. They all went north to regroup and to strategize and to think how they were going. They realized that the whites did not mean them
well and that they were going to have to fight back. It was an existential threat to their existence, just like it was to the buffalo and the bison. And it was the bison and the terrible environmental destruction done by these enormous numbers of people. But also, I think that by then, they had a sense that if ever there were any minerals found, so there was the California gold rush. Gold was discovered in Colorado.
And gold was also discovered in Montana. So basically, whatever gold or minerals, mostly gold, but sometimes silver, were discovered in
That was the beginning of the end for the Native American people. You and I met last autumn in Boulder, Colorado, in this very area. And there's a big massacre site there, isn't there, where another massacre took place? Yes, I think you're referring to the Sand River Massacre, which was later on. I think that was much later. That was during the Civil War.
So that was a man, was part of a militia who again attacked a completely peaceful village. Of women and children and just gunned them down. Yes, women and children. But, you know, not only that, it was brutally cruel what they did. So they didn't just mow these people down themselves.
They scalped them. This shows you what the attitude of not all whites, but of many whites, particularly the ones who were interested in settling or who just wanted the land. You wanted to terrorize the Native Americans. So at the Sand Creek Massacre, these militia soldiers took
gruesome souvenirs. You know, scalping, we always think of scalping, but if you've been brought up on Westerns, you think of scalping as being something that Native Americans did to whites. Actually, it was much more prevalent that whites did it to Native Americans and people would collect scalps as souvenirs to take home.
not just scalps, but other body parts as well, including women's genitalia. They would cut it off and they would string it up on their saddles. The commander responsible for this, Colonel John Chivington, himself estimated killing six men.
100 warriors, most of whom, two thirds of whom were women and children. It was butchery. We're going to have you back because you're sort of ending, or we are ending this episode with this huge division now, a bloody divide between the Native American tribes and the Americans and these people who are following this lust for gold and land who are sort of travelling through Africa
historic Native American lands. And you talked about the Bordeaux family itself being ripped apart by this because you've got the father who was once of the people who's now being sort of almost outcast.
The next episode, we're going to talk about a young girl who's taken in by the Native Americans and counted as one of their own. So there's a rather lovely story coming up, so stay with us. But just one final thought to end on this one, Katie. There was divided opinion at the time on Harney's actions, you know, Harney's massacre of women and children.
near Fort Laramie. You had the New York Times calling it a massacre, just straight out saying it was butchery, what he did. But then a lot of other Americans saying it was a victory, it was heroism, he did the right thing, this is how we treat the savages. So you do have a really rather intriguing divide in America itself. That's completely true. And there were definitely people
on the East Coast and on those Eastern states who thought it was appalling what was happening to Native Americans and pushed back and wrote about it and campaigned for them. Interestingly, a lot of the time, these were Quakers. The Quakers were very active, had always been very active. They were active abolitionists as well, but they were also people who campaigned in favour or who tried to point out that the barbarism was on the side of the whites rather than
on the side of the Native Americans. Although I have to say, Native Americans were incredible warriors themselves.
And as I said before, they fought back against the US Army and bested them for quite a number of years before finally, actually, the thing that really did for them was that the railway was built. And so once the railway was built, which was in 1869, so incredibly in the twinkling of an eye after these first little wagon trains went, then the army was able to move large numbers of troops across
And once that was possible, then it was much easier for them to follow the Native Americans and fight them in sufficient numbers. Right. Well, look, thank you so much for now. But we're going to have you back, Katie Hickman. Till the next time we meet then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnott. And goodbye from me, William Durand-Poole.
And there you have it. Dr Al Bamawe is not responsible for the death of Lord Harmsen. British Podcast Award nominee for Best New Podcast. We simply must ask ourselves who planted the idea in Lord Harmsen's head that he was stung by a bee? Who was in the hospital garden that very morning to do so? And who was sleeping with his wife? British Podcast Award nominee for Best Fiction.
British Podcast Award nominee for the Listener's Choice Award. He's been a busy little bee.
Oh, please. Okay. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What? It wasn't recording. Oh, what? Stupid, stupid mic. Everything okay? No. Why not? The adventure didn't record. We only have the end. But that was the best adventure yet. Yeah, I know that.
From Goalhanger. The breakneck series Gen Z is hooked on, says the Times. Oh, OK. Got it. Let me hold your weight. OK, I'm going to do No Carb November, so I might be a little heavier than usual. Shut up and get on with it. Very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular, says the Guardian. OK, OK. I'm on. Excellent. All right. Not that bad. Not at all.
Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Red Circle begins Tuesday the 20th of August. Catch up with the show now wherever you get your podcasts.