Joe Rogan Experience #1397 - S.C. Gwynne

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Three, two... (claps) Okay.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      Three, two... (claps) Okay. So, uh, very nice to meet you. And v- very... Your book is fantastic. I really-

   2. SGS.C. Gwynne0:09

      Thank you.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:09

      ... really loved it. And-

   4. SGS.C. Gwynne0:09

      Thanks.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      ... it's kinda hilarious how this conversation came about. You said you got o- a call from your publicist because your audiobook spiked out of nowhere.

   6. SGS.C. Gwynne0:17

      It spiked like crazy. It was like, wh- what, what cosmic dust in the ba- outer bands of Jupiter just did that? 'Cause we didn't figure out what it was. It just spiked like crazy, went nuts. Uh, I think it went to number one, uh, briefly. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:30

      (laughs)

   8. SGS.C. Gwynne0:30

      But (laughs) anyway, so we thought, "What did that?" Anyway.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:32

      And it was from an Instagram post.

   10. SGS.C. Gwynne0:34

       It was. Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       And, uh, you were... See, my friend Steve Rinella wrote a book, um, called American Buffalo, and I had put on Instagram how great the book was, and he did the audio version of it. And a friend of mine on Instagram, he goes by the name of the Jackalope, he's a, a fellow Hunter S. Thompson enthusiast, he said, "You gotta read this book." And so he, he tells me to read your book, and, uh, Empire of the Summer Moon-

   12. SGS.C. Gwynne1:01

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       ... that's how you say it?

   14. SGS.C. Gwynne1:01

       Yeah, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       Um, and, uh, it was amazing. I mean, he was absolutely right. And it was so good, and I, I made an Instagram post about that. There it is. Oh, got a copy of it. (sniffs) Look at that, ladies and gentlemen.

   16. SGS.C. Gwynne1:14

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:14

       Um, it's, it's a fantastic book. There's so much good stuff in there. And I, I just... It was, it was so sad and so gripping and so riveting. And y- y- we all know that a lot of horrific things happened in the time where the settlers started making their way across the plains and-

   18. SGS.C. Gwynne1:36

       Right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:37

       ... headed west, but God, you just did such a fantastic job of, uh, of sorta bringing it to life.

   20. SGS.C. Gwynne1:43

       It's all those things. It's brutal, it's sad, it's incredibly dramatic, it's, it's... I mean, I just think people forget about w- what the frontier was. Uh, it's kind of a nice idea that you get on d- on, on TV or something, but it was, it was a savage place. Um, anyway, that was j-... I was trying to convey it with this, uh, with the minimum possible of people being stanked out on ant hills with their eyelids cut off and things like that, so... (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:07

       (laughs) There was a lot of that, though, right?

   22. SGS.C. Gwynne2:08

       There was a lot of it. (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan2:09

       Yeah, I mean, the, the, the horrors of it all, it's like, whuff. You know, um, and I'd never seen... I had no... I knew that that kinda stuff had taken place, but I'd n- really never read it so graphically depicted before, before this book. What, what motivated you to write about all this?

   24. SGS.C. Gwynne2:27

       So what, what... This is a book about me. I'm a Connecticut Yankee, Massachusetts, Connecticut guy. I moved to Texas 25 years ago, and, uh, and I've been there ever since. And I didn't know anything about Texas history, um, um, nothing, um, beyond whatever you might know about the Alamo or something or Sam Houston or somebody like that. And, um, uh, I got there, and I just started to, you know... I started to hear about w- one, the Great Plains and what they were, which was an alien concept to me. I wasn't sure what the Plains were or why they were different than some other part of the country, um, the High Plains. Um, and I came into this idea, I came upon this idea that the last frontier was there, that this is where it all went down, this is where, like, the end of freedom and limitlessness. This... It wasn't... It didn't happen... The frontier didn't push forward till it got to California and then hit the ocean. California settled, the East settled, and then there was this one last place that did not. And it went on for a v-... And there were reasons for that, one of which was the most hostile Indian tribes in the country. Another was that it was... there was no water, wood or, you know, um, uh, there was basically only land, no water or, or timber. But, so I got into this... And then, you know, lo and behold, there's this... I find out, because I live in Texas, that there is this principle that lives on this, that lived on this land, the Comanches, that determined everything that happened in the American West around them. And that's not an exaggeration. They w-... They were... Because until... You know, the West wasn't won until they lost it, and that was for sure. And so there were two things. One, this arc of the rise and fall of the most powerful tribe, most influential tribe in American history, the Comanches, which was very cool, from the Spanish and the horse and all sorts of big stuff that goes on. And then in the middle of that story was this little story of this little nine-year-old girl with, you know, blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes who gets taken in a Comanche raid in 1836, who ends up becoming the, you know, mother of the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. And in fact, her kidnapping and his surrender at the very end of the Comanches', you know, sort of bookend a 40-year war. We never fought a 40-year against war, uh, war against anybody except them. So I ran into this story, and I'm, I'm just a kid from Connecticut, and it just seemed like the most obvious book in the world. It was just the coolest history.

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:44

       It's a crazy story, and I'd, uh, never heard of Cynthia Ann Parker before. Now, she's... We have her on the wall.

   26. SGS.C. Gwynne4:50

       (laughs) On your wall.

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:50

       (laughs) We have a, a giant-

   28. SGS.C. Gwynne4:52

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:52

       ... metal picture of her on the wall. It was... 'Cause it was so powerful, uh, your depiction of it too, I wanted to, uh, I wanted to find out what she looks like. And what i- what is his name again? Quan, Quan-

   30. SGS.C. Gwynne5:03

       So Quanah.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yeah. …

   1. SGS.C. Gwynne15:01

      And the Parkers did what so many other Texans did, and i- and this was the crazy Americans who, who moved across their frontiers in ways that just were... They were beyond brave and t- foolhardy. I mean, people... If you look at, say, what, what happened in Canada or what the Spanish did, there was always the, you know, the s- the soldiers would ride in first and set up the presidio, and then the, then the priests would come in and, you know, the, the mission would be set up. And then the protections would be in place, and the institutions, and then the people would come. In Texas, it was just these rednecks from Tennessee and Alabama coming through with no protection of any kind. Um, you know, no... There were, there were no institutions. They were out beyond any form of security or protection or institutions. And so this is what the Parkers were in 1830s. They were about 90 miles south of Dallas, and you had s- Sp- Spanish and New Mexico but, but nothing but Comanches and Apaches between where these people were and, and that, so, you know, 800 miles of nothing. And, and so what they had done is they, they had taken these head rights, th- or grants from Mexico, which was, which owned Texas at that point. And they'd been given about, you know, like 20,000 acres' worth, which is a kingdom from their point of view.

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:17

      Yeah.

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne16:17

      And the Mexicans were giving them this so that they could provide a buffer against the Comanches, basically providing fresh meat for the Comanches.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:24

      Jesus.

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne16:24

      (laughs) And so they put this little fort out there, out right at the... And, and it was, it was so cool. It was not only out in the middle of nowhere at the absolute edge of the frontier, of the Indian frontier, where it, where it was in great danger. It was also right at a part where the rainfall drops, you know, below f- 30 inches, where we go from the, around the 98th meridian, where we go from what we think of as the east to the west, where there's no trees, right? Which, it happens-

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:54

      Hmm.

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne16:54

      ... right there too. It also happens right, that this, this raid in 1830 that started this out where the little blonde girl is taken, it, this also happens at a, a time when, when this gigantic Co- Comanche empire with 20 vassal states and, you know, diplomatic relations, touches this westward booming American empire. The w- all these guys in Washington wearing suits and running around, right? That empire is i- th- and they're touching right at this point, and neither has any idea what the other one is. The Comanches have no idea that this Parker family is sitting there attached in some way to cities in the East and the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. They would not know what that was. By the same token, the, the Americans coming west had absolutely no clue that they just hit. They just did what they shouldn't have done, which was to push into Comanche territory.

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:49

      It's so crazy that they set them up like that.

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne17:51

      (laughs) It's-

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:52

       Oh, it's so dark. I mean, but it's-

   11. SGS.C. Gwynne17:54

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:54

       ... what a, what a, it's just such a wild time too. I mean, r- but also so recent. I mean, I'm 52, so we're talking about three of my lifetimes. Three of my lifetimes ago, it was on like Donkey Kong down there, just-

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne18:08

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:09

       ... crazy. I mean, it's, it's hard to believe that that recently some unbelievably horrific, barbaric hand-to-hand combat, killing people, and slaughtering entire villages and, uh, the stuff that went back and forth between the Native Americans and between the white settlers. I mean, it was just...... y- e- it's unbelievable.

   15. SGS.C. Gwynne18:31

       I- it's one of the most... What you just said is one of the most striking things about this to me, and was when I... The, you know, the, the Connecticut kid came to Texas, was that where I grew up, you know, Indians had been... well, mo- when I say subdued, usually killed off by white man's diseases, but if not, by, you know, bullets or treaties or something. I mean, couple of hundred years before my forebearers ever got off the boat. There wasn't a frontier, uh, e- in memory anyway. I mean, there were Indian tribes around, and I played baseball with some of them in the summers and so forth. I knew of them, but this was a really distant memory. Okay. Get to Texas. 1875 is when the last of the Comanches came in, and there was a whole bunch of jostling on and off the rez after that into the 20th century.

   16. JRJoe Rogan19:14

       Yeah.

   17. SGS.C. Gwynne19:15

       So-

   18. JRJoe Rogan19:15

       140 plus years ago, not that much.

   19. SGS.C. Gwynne19:16

       Yeah. So we're talking w-

   20. JRJoe Rogan19:18

       Yeah.

   21. SGS.C. Gwynne19:18

       ... within a really close generational memory. And, and that's what's really stunning, and if you talk to... I don't know, where are you from originally, Joe?

   22. JRJoe Rogan19:25

       Boston.

   23. SGS.C. Gwynne19:25

       So Boston. Okay, you and I... Okay, Boston-

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:27

       I was born in Jersey, but did most of my growing up in Boston.

   25. SGS.C. Gwynne19:29

       Most of my family came from Boston, and so the, the difference between that and, and what... If you go to Texas, uh, there's a, there's an area west of Fort Worth, kind of Weatherford, Palo Pinto County, Parker County now, where you can talk to people and they're still talking about Comanches. It's w- I mean-

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:45

       Really?

   27. SGS.C. Gwynne19:46

       It's, it's their great-grandfather was killed by them.

   28. JRJoe Rogan19:48

       Wow.

   29. SGS.C. Gwynne19:49

       So that's Texas, and that's why it's so... Uh, I found it so striking, so really striking.

   30. JRJoe Rogan19:54

       It's also striking because you realize over the course of the book, and y- I mean just... and then more books that I've gotten into subsequently, that this was something that was going on before the white settlers even got there. That this way of life, and the, the raiding, and the, the killing, and... That's not what we associate Native Americans with. We associate w- us with taking the Native American's land and then them fighting back, and that's when things get ugly. But it turns out, this was just a wild way of life that they had, had for who knows how many years.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hmm. …

   1. SGS.C. Gwynne30:00

      but of the era. People who, this is, this was the great, there were some great projects done in the '20s and '30s with C- Comanches who talked about, you know, who had memories of the 19th century.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:10

      Hmm.

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne30:10

      Um, and so a lot of what we know, w- that's in my book, that we know about the Comanches and who they are come from all of these interviews. And there's a lot in my book that comes from Comanches, but again, of the era. So, you know, I, I, I just figure that interviewing people today about things that happened-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:26

      Yeah.

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne30:26

      ... a long time ago was probably not that efficient.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:28

      No, for sure not that efficient. But still, to me, it would be kind of fascinating to see where they are now. I mean, the, the, Native American reservations in this country have-... traditionally been pretty horrific, and it's very depressing and sad. And for the people that live there, just so- so little hope and so little opportunity. And it's- it's... As you were talking about before, the broken treaties and just to see them having gone from being this incredible war-like tribe to being resigned to these very small patches of land that are usually not very fruitful, not very resource filled.

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne31:05

      And that happened to a lot of tribes. I mean, if you look at the Comanches, uh, the Comanches are- are a pretty small tribe. They're, they, they, um, they're located in... Or their, their center, although there's no reservations, you know, in... There's no... (coughs) Excuse me.

   8. JRJoe Rogan31:20

      You all right?

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne31:21

      Yeah. They don't have a... It's the hell end of the flu. Uh, they don't have a reservation there but they, they're... I'd say, the last number I heard was 14,000 or something like that. One of the big, um, I guess ironically in some ways, determinant factors in how, um, wealthy a tribe is now is proximity to a major urban area. For example, Chickasaws and Choctaws are in range of DFW, so there are casinos there-

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:46

       Yeah.

   11. SGS.C. Gwynne31:46

       ... make a lot of money. The Seminoles in Florida. There are some tribes in California who are making a lot of money.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:51

       Yeah.

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne31:51

       If you go up to say, um, some of the Sioux reservations, you know, well up north on the plains, they're not near... They just, their- their- the lands, their traditional lands just don't happen to be close to-

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       Urban centers.

   15. SGS.C. Gwynne32:05

       Yeah, urban centers. And so there's a little bit of that going on, um, um, there but, uh, yeah. That's... They... This is just, you know, where, where we, the US government put the Indians and, um... And in terms of Plains Indians and Comanches and Arapahos and Cheyennes and Sioux and everybody else, they never wanted to be farmers. They... Farming was exactly what they never wanted to do. And even if you gave them a 160 acres, they would, they would sublet it. They would rent it out to- to usually a white farmer who would farm it and they would take a sharecropping, uh, percentage or something. But, um, uh, yeah, so they- they didn't want anything to do with that. Um, and, and above all, they didn't want to be forced into a type of life that they, that- that they had never done before and considered it just kind of unseemly.

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:52

       So do Comanches have a reservation today?

   17. SGS.C. Gwynne32:55

       No.

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:55

       No reservation at all?

   19. SGS.C. Gwynne32:57

       No. Well, the- the- the problem is the way... This is gonna get into a lot of detail, but I mean, Oklahoma, they basically... They- they... In favor of... In place of reservations, they gave out individual apportionments of land.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:09

       Mm.

   21. SGS.C. Gwynne33:10

       Um...

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:10

       And had them assimilated.

   23. SGS.C. Gwynne33:11

       Yeah, so where I... For example, where I came from in the East Coast, there are reservations. If you go to say, um, Colorado, uh, you'll go... You'll see the Ute reservation or some of the Sioux reservations. There's reservations all over the place. Not in Oklahoma.

   24. JRJoe Rogan33:25

       Wow, so they're in danger of having their culture probably get erased.

   25. SGS.C. Gwynne33:32

       They're pretty... I mean, I think they would, they would tell you... I mean, I don't wanna speak for Comanches or anybody else, but that they're, that they're, you know, they're- they're pretty strongly organized where they are. They have a nation. They do have a nation, it's just they don't have a- a- a body of a reservation, but they do have a nation.

   26. JRJoe Rogan33:49

       But if they have a nation, they don't have the same sort of laws that ones that have a reservation?

   27. SGS.C. Gwynne33:55

       No, no, they actually do.

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:56

       They do?

   29. SGS.C. Gwynne33:56

       So if you go... For example, I spent some time with the Chickasaws a few years ago. It's incredible. Now, they don't have a "reservation" either but they have, they have little pieces of- of land that is theirs, but they also have a completely parallel police system, completely parallel legislature, they have parallel healthcare systems-

   30. JRJoe Rogan34:13

       Wow.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Damn. Is that him…

   1. SGS.C. Gwynne45:00

      And so b- y- uh, to my knowledge thus far, he refuses to sell or, or to take their help.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:07

      Damn. Is that him right there?

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne45:08

      That is a video from inside. I think, I think that is. Yeah, that's him.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:11

      Wayne?

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne45:11

      I think I remember. Wayne, Wayne Gibson. Yeah, yeah. That's him.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:13

      Come on, Wayne.

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne45:14

      Hey, so... But he's a perfectly nice guy. He, he, he... It's, it's, uh, he feels the house is very special in his family, and it is indeed very special, but he won't. The last ti- the last tour I got with him, w- as you're going up the main stairwell, there was a four-foot-by-six-inch hole in the main... In, in the roof above the main stairwell. I mean, you can't really have a, a, a four-foot-by-six-inch hole-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:36

      No.

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne45:37

      Oh, uh, uh, I'm not... Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:38

       Yeah, there it is.

   11. SGS.C. Gwynne45:38

       Um, it was a rain... And the rain would just come through. And, um, but, s- so-

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:42

       What can you do to preserve a house like this while still leaving it the way it is? So it's... Y- you know what I'm saying? Like, you would have to replace the wood. Now, if you replace the wood, is it still the same house? Like, there's arguments about boats.

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne45:55

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:55

       And they, they've found some ancient boats and they've done some rebuilding of these boats. Now all of a sudden, you're looking at new wood in the shape of this old boat. Like, what is it now?

   15. SGS.C. Gwynne46:05

       Is it? What is it?

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:06

       Yeah.

   17. SGS.C. Gwynne46:06

       So I tell you, the first time I walked in there, which was 15 years ago, you wouldn't have needed to do that much work to it.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       15 years ago?

   19. SGS.C. Gwynne46:14

       Yeah. You would have not have needed to... You would have needed some bolstering for sure, and the foundation would have needed some work, but it has gone way downhill 'cause nothing's been done to it. So now-

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:23

       No.

   21. SGS.C. Gwynne46:23

       ... I, I don't know. W- but when I walked in there, you, you really could have... A good carpenter and, you know, carpenter team in a, in a month, you could have shored that thing up.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:32

       Jesus Christ.

   23. SGS.C. Gwynne46:33

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:33

       That's so sad.

   25. SGS.C. Gwynne46:34

       Yeah, and I don't know how much of it... I mean, a lot of it was... The problem was, with all those holes in it-

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:38

       Yeah.

   27. SGS.C. Gwynne46:38

       ... stuff had started to rot, and rot-

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:40

       Rot, of course.

   29. SGS.C. Gwynne46:40

       ... 'cause rot is different than-

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:41

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:33

   A thong? …

   1. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:00

      a thong off side of one of the saddles. But, um-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:04

      A thong?

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:04

      Well, well, uh, a loop, a leather loop. A leather loop-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

      Okay.

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:08

      ... that would allow them... Because otherwise, they, they would need to be supported as they-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      Right.

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:11

      ... as they came down underneath the-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:13

      And they were fairly small people, right?

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:15

      They were, they were fairly small people.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

       So their... Like, they would kinda climb off the saddle and hang on the side?

   11. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:21

       Hang on the side, full gallop.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:22

       And then-

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:22

       Full gallop, shooting-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

       Under the neck.

   15. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:24

       Accurately, uh, uh, eh, arrows that would kill a man 30 yards underneath the neck.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:28

       Wow.

   17. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:29

       But people... So the question there, I don't know the answer to that, b- and I don't know that anyone does. W- what the white men saw just absolutely floored them-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:39

       Mmm.

   19. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:39

       ... um, w- with the abilities with arrows. And among other things, they would, you know, they would make the In-... They would ask the Indian boys, uh... They'd set up a dime in a tree or a coin and they'd go, "Okay now, here. You stand here and, like, close your eyes and aim and hit that." And the Comanche boy would miss it by, uh, a foot.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

       Mmm. Look at that picture right there of them do- doing the action.

   21. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:57

       There you go. There's-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       That's incredible.

   23. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:58

       ... underneath the...Um-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:00

       So they're basically using the horse as a shield.

   25. SGS.C. Gwynne1:01:02

       Yeah. Yeah, no, that's the whole idea.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:03

       Wow.

   27. SGS.C. Gwynne1:01:04

       A- and they're... And, and if you see them from the other side... I've seen trick riders do this, you can't even see them-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:09

       Hmm.

   29. SGS.C. Gwynne1:01:10

       ... from the other side of the horse.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:11

       Wow.

Episode duration: 1:18:00