Joe Rogan Experience #1397 - S.C. Gwynne

1. 0:00 – 2:27

   Book discovery & why “Empire of the Summer Moon” suddenly spiked

   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?

2. 2:27 – 5:33

   Why Gwynne wrote about Texas, the Plains, and the Comanche empire

   1. 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.

   2. 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.

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne4:50

      (laughs) On your wall.

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:50

      (laughs) We have a, a giant-

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne4:52

      (laughs)

   6. 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-

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne5:03

      So Quanah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:03

      ... Quanah?

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne5:04

      Uh, Quanah w- was his... Uh, the name he was given-

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:06

       This is on the cover of the book.

   11. SGS.C. Gwynne5:07

       Right. He be-... Uh, because his mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, which was not... That didn't become... That didn't come out, and no one found out that until he was much older, so he was born Quanah as a Comanche. Later, in the reservation period, when people found out who he was, he identified as part of the Parker family also.

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:25

       Oh, wow.

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne5:26

       Yeah, so he, he, th-... He... As a famous Comanche war chief, and he was one of the most famous and, and feared, he was Quanah.

3. 5:33 – 7:36

   Captives, adoption, and the harsh rules of raiding culture

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:33

      It's such a crazy story that they killed so many people, but occasionally, they would keep people and bring them into the tribe.

   2. SGS.C. Gwynne5:42

      Right. So, th- there were rules at the frontier at the time, and we're talking about how savage it was, and the rules of the, at least of the Plains Indians, of which Comanches were one, that if you were captured as an adult male, you were killed, e- tortured to death, either quickly or slowly depending on how much time they had. Um, if you were a baby, you were killed-... um, they, they couldn't deal with a baby. A baby was, they, they were nomads and they were on their horse and they were probably escaping from whatever raid they had just done. They couldn't deal with babies. Um, a teenage, uh, girl or a young woman would possibly be killed, but likely turned into a sort of a s- a slave. Um, the ones who had a chance of being adopted into the tribe were the, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 year olds, um, 'cause Comanches had trouble keeping their numbers up. And so they instinctively kind of, they would take these captives, and not just from, uh, you know, white people, uh, from the Apaches and the Utes and the Navajos and whoever they might take them from. Um, and so what was interesting about the frontier though is that those rules applied to ... So long, forget, forget about white people arriving in the early 18th century for the moment. Those rules had applied to Indian tribes since forever. You know, that was the assumption of a raid. They all had ... It was, it was almost like the golden rule in reverse or, or the golden rule, do unto others, they all expected that kind of treatment. None of them were shocked when a baby was killed or a pregnant woman was killed. It took the kind of, the, you know, the Anglo-European civilization of, you know, Newton and Leibniz and the, um, biblical tradition to arrive on the Texas frontier in 1830 and be shocked-

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:25

      Hmm.

   4. SGS.C. Gwynne7:25

      ... at what they saw. Very interesting, very savage, very brutal. Uh, it was a, it was a culture of raiding, essentially.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:32

      And th- this is the Comanche culture in particular, or-

   6. SGS.C. Gwynne7:35

      The, the Comanches-

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:35

      ... Native Americans in general?

4. 7:36 – 11:31

   Horses change everything: Spanish introduction and the Comanche advantage

   1. SGS.C. Gwynne7:36

      Y- uh, well, N- uh, Native Americans in general, Plains Indians in general. Um, and, uh, you know, so Plains Indians, we could kind of start, you know, you, you would know the names of the l- of a lot of them, sh- uh, Arapaho and Cheyenne and Sioux, and these were people who operated out in the great wide open. They were all masters of the horse. What made the Comanche special was that they, um, they became the preeminent horse tribe. Now people forget that there weren't any horses in this, in, in, in the continent until the Spanish brought them in the 16th century. And so the h- the, um, the tribes that got the horse and mastered the horse basically altered the entire balance of power on the plains. And the tribe that got the horse better than anybody else in terms of breaking and breeding and saddling and riding and stealing and hunting on the back of and fighting with were the Comanches and nobody was their peer. And so this was a, this was not just a plains tribe, it was the preeminent power on the southern plains.

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:36

      Did you know that horses e- originally evolved here in North America?

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne8:40

      No.

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:40

      And then they went extinct here.

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne8:41

      And then they went extinct. I didn't know that.

   6. JRJoe Rogan8:42

      But then they reintroduced them.

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne8:44

      Really?

   8. JRJoe Rogan8:44

      The Europeans did, yeah. There's a guy named Dan Flores, he's got a bunch of great books and one of them is, uh, called Coyote America. He's got another one ... What, what is his other book about the, the various large land animals that went extinct here in North America? But that the wolf and, uh, a, a lot of the other ones ... What is it? Kansariongady. That's it. The Naturalist also. Yeah.

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne9:08

      Oh, yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan9:08

       Um, he, he's fantastic. And y- essentially, they all went extinct, all the horses went extinct here and then they were reintroduced by Europeans. But they had originally evolved here-

   11. SGS.C. Gwynne9:19

       And flourished here.

   12. JRJoe Rogan9:19

       ... in North America.

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne9:20

       I didn't know that.

   14. JRJoe Rogan9:21

       Yeah. So there's no, but there's no evidence that any of the native people here really used them until Europeans came, whether it was Cortés or whoever, you know, when Cortés with the Aztecs or whoever else came across.

   15. SGS.C. Gwynne9:35

       Horses, a horse is so much a part of this story.

   16. JRJoe Rogan9:38

       Yeah.

   17. SGS.C. Gwynne9:38

       Um, the, uh, you know, by the ... So they, they come over with the Spanish. The Spanish are acutely aware of what is going to happen if the horse technology gets out, and they take m- great pains to not let it get out. They don't wanna teach the Indians in Mexico or the Indians in North America, um, how to use them. But inevitably, the technology does get out. And then there's a few moments, there's a great moment in time in 1680 in Santa Fe when there's a great Pueblo revolt and they kick the Spanish out and, like, tens of thousands of horses get out. It's the great horse dispersal and s- and, and these are the horses that come into the hands of the pl- these plains tribes. Um, and-

   18. JRJoe Rogan10:16

       So it was in the 1600s that their power and their dominance started to assert itself?

   19. SGS.C. Gwynne10:20

       S- begins, yes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan10:21

       So how do the Comanches figure out how to have all these horses and how, how valuable that was, where some of the other tribes just hadn't kind of caught on?

   21. SGS.C. Gwynne10:31

       No one knows and, and it's, it's interesting. N- no one knows that because y- it was only seen in flashes by the Spanish through their kind of northern outposts. No one exactly knows what it was, you know, in the heart and soul of a Comanche that could do that better than anybody else. But, and, and in fact, Comanches by, by all descriptions of the time were not, I don't know, uh, pre-horse in a way, graceful people. They were kind of short and kind of, you know, um, bowlegged and they, they weren't especially graceful and, and they didn't, they didn't look like perhaps you were to think of the, uh, the, the northern Sioux Indians of the nick- on the nickel. I mean, that kind of tall and, you know, with the bone structure. That wasn't the Comanches. And then they got on a horse and then everything changed. And, um, and, and f- ... Even though the Apaches were the first ones to actually get that technology from the Spanish, and they crazed- they raised havoc with it. But the tribe that got it the best and the most, um, were the Comanches. They were the tribe that

5. 11:31 – 14:31

   Building a Comanche ‘empire’: buffalo, territory, and a Spartan war society

   1. SGS.C. Gwynne11:31

      actually ended up supplying horses to a lot of the northern plains tribes that we just talked about. Um, and what they did with ... Once they had this incredible mastery of the horse and this ability to hunt like they never had and fight like they never had, they did what you would, I guess, expect the great new power in the plains. And the plains are a big place by the way. I mean, the great new power in the plains is gonna challenge for the greatest food source out in Mid-America, and that was the buffalo herds, and they were in the southern plains. So the Comanches, over a period of 150 years of sustained combat, moved south from the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming essentially into this 250,000 square mile empire. Think of kind of headquartered in the Te- Texas Panhandle.... um, which is where the buffalo were.

   2. JRJoe Rogan12:18

      And this tribe, they, they were known for being buffalo hunters, and they were also known, they, they weren't really like making artwork or doing a lot of the things that we sort of associate with other Native American tribes. They were mostly just hunting-

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne12:34

      They... Right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:34

      ... and raiding.

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne12:35

      And, and the things that we all would associate with Native Americans, you know, this, uh, w- wonderful abilities in dance and music, um, complex religion, um, and complex religious s- social structures to go along with it, and all these different things, music and dance and all these things. The Comanches, by the time that the kind of Anglo-Europeans run into them, they are a stripped-down culture that looks more like Sparta. And one of the reasons they are is be- because they've been fighting this long war, primarily against the Apaches, but against other tribes over decades. And during that time, as they became ascendant militarily, they became less interested in those things. They became interested in war-conveyed status, right? War conveyed numbers of ponies and status and the thing. And so yes, they were, uh, they were a stripped-down war culture. I guess, to, to whatever extent we go- we know or something about Sparta, it would remind you of Sparta.

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:29

      That's what's so interesting about it, is it's such a s- unique tribe, just a, a very unique branch of Native Americans that was specifically like this.

   7. SGS.C. Gwynne13:39

      The- they, they made war, and they, and they conquered. And when, you know, when you think about what they got themselves finally, it's about, I said 250,000 square miles. This probably doesn't mean anything, but think of West Texas, Western Oklahoma, Western Kansas, Eastern Colorado, and Eastern New Mexico, gigantic chunks of that, that was theirs. And, and when you think also of the numbers of them that were there when, when, say, the Anglo-Europeans and the Americans came through in the 1830s, there was probably 25,000 or 30 thou- thousand of them out there, of which 5,000 or 6,000 warriors. Now, I don't know what 5,000 or 6,000 suggests to you, but it suggests to me like the third baseline at Yankee Stadium or something. It's not very many people-

   8. JRJoe Rogan14:20

      Hmm.

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne14:21

      ... you know, occupying this gigantic area, um, that, th- that became, as we were, I was saying earlier, determinative everything that happened around it.

6. 14:31 – 18:31

   The Parkers’ settlement gamble and the collision of two empires

   1. JRJoe Rogan14:31

      Well, your depictions of how the raid happened where Cynthia An- th- Parker got kidnapped, and how all, all these oth- other various raids happened was so terrifying 'cause these people, the initial ones really kinda had no idea what they were in for.

   2. SGS.C. Gwynne14:48

      Th- these are the Parkers?

   3. JRJoe Rogan14:49

      Yeah.

   4. SGS.C. Gwynne14:49

      Yes. So, so the, the core... So as I say, the, my book's about the, um, you know, the rise and fall of the Comanches as a tribe, which, uh, we've been talking about. But then there's this little family, the Parkers. 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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:17

      Yeah.

   6. 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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:24

      Jesus.

   8. 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-

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:54

      Hmm.

   10. 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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan17:49

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

   12. SGS.C. Gwynne17:51

       (laughs) It's-

   13. JRJoe Rogan17:52

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

   14. SGS.C. Gwynne17:54

       Yeah.

   15. 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-

   16. SGS.C. Gwynne18:08

       (laughs)

   17. 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.

7. 18:31 – 19:54

   How recent it all was: living memory of Comanches in Texas

   1. 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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:14

      Yeah.

   3. SGS.C. Gwynne19:15

      So-

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:15

      140 plus years ago, not that much.

   5. SGS.C. Gwynne19:16

      Yeah. So we're talking w-

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:18

      Yeah.

   7. 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?

   8. JRJoe Rogan19:25

      Boston.

   9. SGS.C. Gwynne19:25

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

   10. JRJoe Rogan19:27

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

   11. 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-

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:45

       Really?

   13. SGS.C. Gwynne19:46

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

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:48

       Wow.

   15. SGS.C. Gwynne19:49

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

8. 19:54 – 23:07

   Beyond the victim-only narrative: power, brutality, and the full historical picture

   1. 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.

   2. SGS.C. Gwynne20:30

      One of the things that surprised people when I wrote this book, and, and I didn't know that I was gonna be surprising people, 'cause I was just reporting what I found, was, th- was, was that, that very thing, that, that this was... I think people are, are often used to the Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee narrative of the, of Native Americans, which is as victims.

   3. JRJoe Rogan20:50

      Yeah.

   4. SGS.C. Gwynne20:50

      And there's no question that they were victims of-

   5. JRJoe Rogan20:53

      Yeah.

   6. SGS.C. Gwynne20:53

      ... a westward rolling empire and 378 broken treaties, and we can just go on. We know what that narrative is like. But the narrative that I told was a narrative of power, o- dominance, of power, uh, whi- which came with brutality too, and I think it surprised... It, it was a fact. It was a fact that, that if you go back in time, these Indi- these Native American tribes... that eventually got crushed, as the Comanches did, and put on a reservation somewhere and had their livelihood taken away from them. Um, but, you know, it, it really... Anyway, it, it's this, it's a, it's a huge deal, um, and, and a narrative that I, I think, to me, that doesn't take into account the enormous power and dominance and behavior of, of Comanches. It's just missing, you know, half the, half the narrative.

   7. JRJoe Rogan21:42

      Well, it's so fascinating, because it's essentially they were living like Stone Age people, and they were doing it very recently. They were, they were doing it, like, i- in, in terms of w- the way Europe is, you could go and see buildings in Italy that were built long before any of this stuff happened, long before the settlers started encountering them, and they were living like this, in this sort of w- I mean, it's very romantic. The, the, the way they lived just chasing the buffalo and, and, and-

   8. SGS.C. Gwynne22:11

      Yeah, extremely.

   9. JRJoe Rogan22:11

      ... and killing them, and then eating only buffalo meat, and then v- doing very little farming, picking some berries and nuts, and that's about it. I mean, it was just eating meat and raiding and killing. So-

   10. SGS.C. Gwynne22:23

       They, they were hunter-gatherers.

   11. JRJoe Rogan22:25

       Yeah.

   12. SGS.C. Gwynne22:25

       They were nomadic hunter-gatherers-

   13. JRJoe Rogan22:27

       Yeah.

   14. SGS.C. Gwynne22:28

       ... which is what they were. And, and what the horse allowed them to do was to... which is what they had been before. The horse allowed them to do that, only just really, really, really well. In other words, they weren't, they weren't in a position of b- becoming agricultural Indians. The horse gave them this ability to, and as you said, the, the, they got everything from the buffalo: clothing, and, and lodging, and, and tools, and saddles, and bridles, and food. I mean, everything came from the buffalo. So the horse just enabled them to do this on an incredibly sophisticated level.

   15. JRJoe Rogan22:58

       It's the most sad part of the story, is the extirpating of the buffalo. I mean, that's, uh, not the most sad, but one of the... that their-

   16. SGS.C. Gwynne23:07

       Yeah.

9. 23:07 – 25:38

   Cynthia Ann Parker’s assimilation—and her tragedy after ‘rescue’

   1. JRJoe Rogan23:07

      ... way of life... It's almost like you know what happened, but I'm rooting for them in some weird way.

   2. SGS.C. Gwynne23:13

      Yeah. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan23:13

      You know? I mean, I know that they're not gonna win, but there's something about the way they lived that seems so exciting. It's... And the other thing is the way you described Cynthia Ann Parker post being, air quote, "rescued." Like, how badly she wanted to go back to the Comanche, and how she missed the way they looked at the world, that the world was... in, in many ways there was so much magic involved in the way the Comanche viewed the sky and the ground, and that there was gods that were looking out for them, and that they could literally have magic going into battle. Like, all this r- the, the romance of this nomadic lifestyle was... I mean, that's what she wanted. And, like, when you talked about that one guy that spoke Comanche, and that she-

   4. SGS.C. Gwynne23:59

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan23:59

      ... she meets him and she's like, "Please take me."

   6. SGS.C. Gwynne24:01

      "Take me back."

   7. JRJoe Rogan24:01

      "Take me with you."

   8. SGS.C. Gwynne24:02

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan24:02

      It's crazy.

   10. SGS.C. Gwynne24:04

       It, it was, um... So she was, she was taken up at the age of, I guess it was nine, and then she was hu- with the Comanches for 24 years. She completely assimilated. She married a war chief. She had three children. She, they tr- you know, uh, at two different times they knew where she was. Indian agents figured out where she was, and they, they, they made a push to get her back, 'cause the idea generally was to get captives back. She wouldn't go. Um, and then suddenly in a raid, uh-Purely by accident, she's captured in 1860 and is dragged back.

   11. JRJoe Rogan24:34

       And she has to show that she's white so that they don't kill her, right?

   12. SGS.C. Gwynne24:37

       Right. She has to show that what, she's a, a woman and, and white, uh, so that they don't kill her. She bare- she, she barely escapes from that. Um, but she ends up being, you know, forcibly re-assimilated. So here's someone who completely assimilated once, um, with great success, and then in, in her 30s now, she's taken back into this white culture. And in fact, they put her up on a... They were so astounded to see her, 'cause she was... Indians weren't the cleanest people in the world. I mean, her, her job was to kind of, you know, tan buffalo hides, so she, her... kind of greasy looking, and, um, you know, didn't look like a white farm, you know, white, um, God-fearing farm woman from, from Dallas. But they put her up on a, uh, you know, on a, on a pedestal with her daughter, and they kind of looked at her and stared at her as this kind of, um, this, this strange object, the white squaw who wouldn't return, this kind of object of curiosity. And then she gets kind of shuffled, um, ever deeper into the East Texas piney woods

10. 25:38 – 29:36

    Comanche freedom, flat hierarchy, and a world ‘suffused with magic’

    1. SGS.C. Gwynne25:38

       and ever farther away from her, um, uh, her people. Uh, and she never assimilated. It was interesting. She was, she, having assimilated once brilliantly, she was asked, in effect, to do it again, and, and she couldn't, and she never did. But going back for just one moment to something you said was this idea of this kind of freedom and magic. There was, in Comanche, a- a- and it was, it was all there. It was this, it was this world that was suffused with magic everywhere you looked. There was magic in everything. Um, and, but one of the things that also was, and this was, this was relayed by actually male, uh, captives of the Comanches... Now, the Comanches had a very flat hierarchical organization, or a very flat hierarchy. There was like maybe a war chief and a civil chief, but there was really no, there were no priest clans and hierarchies. There was, it was just flat. And if you were a Quanah Parker, a young warrior, and you wanted to get together a raid on the Utes, you could just do it. It was just, you could do what you wanted to do. And so you look at these, th- this one particular captive was talking about this, and he was talking about being 15 years old, and this is before the Comanche men had to fight and really hunt. They could, they could do some hunting, but they, they weren't yet w- in the full responsibility of men. There they are, sitting there. They've got no responsibilities except to go hunt and have fun and go swimming and learn how to become the greatest riders in the world. They've got no institution around them of any kind. They've got... And you start to think of, why did people go west, you know, away from institutions-

    2. JRJoe Rogan27:15

       Yeah.

    3. SGS.C. Gwynne27:16

       ... away from things that were gonna make them less free? And so you, I, I looked at it and I describe it this way. A, a 15-year-old Comanche boy may have been like the freest thing that ever existed in, in America, and I, I can feel the pull, you know?

    4. JRJoe Rogan27:28

       Yeah. I mean, I think we all can. I mean, when we were kids growing up, you know, you didn't... We played cowboys and Indians, you know?

    5. SGS.C. Gwynne27:36

       (laughs) Exactly.

    6. JRJoe Rogan27:37

       And a lot of people wanted to be Indians, you know.

    7. SGS.C. Gwynne27:39

       (coughs)

    8. JRJoe Rogan27:39

       They wanted to wear those kind of Native American jackets with the frill, and there was so, so much of that that was attractive to us, and that was a big part of it, was that they were free. You know, Dances with Wolves, obviously.

    9. SGS.C. Gwynne27:54

       Yes.

    10. JRJoe Rogan27:54

        You know, when Kevin Costner gets assimilated into that tribe, there's something exciting about it. Like, it's more noble. It's thought to be like a, a more powerful alternative to this Western grind.

    11. SGS.C. Gwynne28:09

        And, and, and again, you're just, you're out there and, and, and you are beyond the reach of any of the normal institutions that we think about, school and work and job-

    12. JRJoe Rogan28:19

        Yeah.

    13. SGS.C. Gwynne28:19

        ... and government and religion and church and all the things that bind people in. And most people are happy to be bound by them, but, but many people aren't. And I thought that this, there was an idea of the West, um, of kind of limitless freedom, this West of, that predates barbed wire and private property and, and-

    14. JRJoe Rogan28:38

        Mm.

    15. SGS.C. Gwynne28:38

        ... that just seemed... I don't know, I still find it just one of the most appealing things to think about.

    16. JRJoe Rogan28:43

        There, and just the fact that it's so recent. That's what's really crazy-

    17. SGS.C. Gwynne28:46

        Really recent.

    18. JRJoe Rogan28:46

        ... talking about the in- urban sprawl and barbed wire and things along those lines. I mean, and it's particularly in Texas, where everything's almost private property. I mean, there's giant ranches everywhere, and this was all run by the Comanche.

    19. SGS.C. Gwynne28:59

        98% of Texas is... Uh, unlike if you go one, one state to the west, and you're, you're at the, you're in the big land, pub- public land, government land states. Texas is 98% private now.

    20. JRJoe Rogan29:11

        That's a weird thing, isn't it?

    21. SGS.C. Gwynne29:12

        It is. It's very strange.

    22. JRJoe Rogan29:13

        How'd that happen?

    23. SGS.C. Gwynne29:15

        Well, it w- it, it happened because that's the way it settled. Um, and, and, uh, the, the public land states just, there was j- for one thing, there was a lot more of apparently, sort of useless land in, in the, in the Western states. But anyway, yeah, it, it happened. And in Texas, you're lucky to get yourself a state park here and there.

11. 29:36 – 34:40

    Reservations, Oklahoma’s different system, and tribal ‘parallel governments’ today

    1. JRJoe Rogan29:36

       When you were doing research for this, did you meet with any current Comanches?

    2. SGS.C. Gwynne29:41

       I met with some of them, uh, th- and I know some of them. Um, some of them are on my, on my website. Um, but as far as interviewing them for things that happened 200 or 300 years ago, that's not really a, um, that's sort of a nonstarter as a historian. Although, although the book itself is based on lots and lots of interviews with Comanches, 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.

    3. JRJoe Rogan30:10

       Hmm.

    4. 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-

    5. JRJoe Rogan30:26

       Yeah.

    6. SGS.C. Gwynne30:26

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

    7. 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.

    8. 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.

    9. JRJoe Rogan31:20

       You all right?

    10. 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-

    11. JRJoe Rogan31:46

        Yeah.

    12. 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.

    13. JRJoe Rogan31:51

        Yeah.

    14. 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-

    15. JRJoe Rogan32:04

        Urban centers.

    16. 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.

    17. JRJoe Rogan32:52

        So do Comanches have a reservation today?

    18. SGS.C. Gwynne32:55

        No.

    19. JRJoe Rogan32:55

        No reservation at all?

    20. 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.

    21. JRJoe Rogan33:09

        Mm.

    22. SGS.C. Gwynne33:10

        Um...

    23. JRJoe Rogan33:10

        And had them assimilated.

    24. 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.

    25. JRJoe Rogan33:25

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

    26. 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.

    27. JRJoe Rogan33:49

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

    28. SGS.C. Gwynne33:55

        No, no, they actually do.

    29. JRJoe Rogan33:56

        They do?

    30. 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-
12. 34:40 – 36:05

    From 1875 to barbed wire: the breathtaking speed of transformation

    1. JRJoe Rogan34:40

       It's just such a stunning amount of change that happened to this continent over a short, relatively short period of time.

    2. SGS.C. Gwynne34:48

       Yeah. I mean, really astounding. And- and if you look at what... From- from the moment that the last Comanche surrendered with Quan... When Quanah and the last of the starving have... All the buffalo have been killed now, and so they're- they're coming in and it's 1875. You know, that very year, their old kind of main, I guess, camping ground would be Palo Duro Canyon, one of the biggest canyons in the American West up in the Texas Panhandle and that's kind of where their- their sanctuary was, or one of their big sanctuaries were. Within that very year, white men already owned Palo Duro Canyon. There was already a ranch on it. Um, it was already private property. Within a few years, there's barbed wire going all the way up. I mean, this is happening... I mean, so in other words, you have, you have the transfer of ownership, suddenly white people own the land that the Indians just used to... That used to be theirs, right? The second thing that happens is now we have the cattle drives just before barbed wire, and then there's only a few years of cattle drives and then the barbed wire goes up and this happens with just breathtaking speed. And I mean, from really the moment that they started killing the buffalo off in the, what? 1870 or something? 1871 to, I mean, full barbed wire is just... It's less than a couple decades.

13. 36:05 – 50:50

    Quanah Parker in the modern world: politics, testimony, peyote, and Star House

    1. JRJoe Rogan36:05

       It's such a great story. And the- the- the fact that this young girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, gets kidnapped and gives birth to this man who eventually becomes the last great Comanche chief and literally watches the entire empire change and shift into this, what we now call Western world.

    2. SGS.C. Gwynne36:25

       Yep. He- he- he rides in Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade.

    3. JRJoe Rogan36:28

       (laughs)

    4. SGS.C. Gwynne36:29

       That's what we're talking about.

    5. JRJoe Rogan36:30

       But that was also what's crazy about the book, like that he meets Teddy and he has a speech with him on stage.

    6. SGS.C. Gwynne36:36

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan36:37

       And this is all ... I mean, he had killed a lot of white people too, right? A lot of settlers.

    8. SGS.C. Gwynne36:42

       He, he, he didn't talk about it, but yes, he had. He-

    9. JRJoe Rogan36:44

       What's the-

    10. SGS.C. Gwynne36:44

        Because that's what Comanches did.

    11. JRJoe Rogan36:46

        Yeah. Well, so wise of him also to not talk about it.

    12. SGS.C. Gwynne36:49

        Right. And not only Comanches, he wa- he was ... He, he fought Indians, he fought anybody-

    13. JRJoe Rogan36:52

        Yes.

    14. SGS.C. Gwynne36:52

        ... who was out there. But yes, he didn't, he didn't spend a long ti- a lot of time bragging about that.

    15. JRJoe Rogan36:57

        Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just the way they felt about war. What is this Jaime?

    16. SGS.C. Gwynne37:02

        It's, uh, the parade.

    17. JRJoe Rogan37:03

        Oh, here's the parade. There's an image of it.

    18. SGS.C. Gwynne37:04

        I don't know which one he is, but there's six of them in the parade.

    19. JRJoe Rogan37:08

        Wow. And what year is this?

    20. SGS.C. Gwynne37:11

        19... Probably 1908. Sure. Somewhere around there.

    21. JRJoe Rogan37:14

        '08, I think.

    22. SGS.C. Gwynne37:15

        Yeah. '08, yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan37:16

        So what a insane relationship that must have been for those people to be experiencing, first of all, these enormous cities, going through Washington DC on horseback-

    24. SGS.C. Gwynne37:27

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan37:27

        ... and knowing what you had come from and what a catastrophic, titanic change had taken place inside of your lifetime. And now you're experiencing something that you didn't even think was possible-

    26. SGS.C. Gwynne37:38

        Yeah.

    27. JRJoe Rogan37:39

        ... and it's the, the new law of the land. Is that Quanah there?

    28. SGS.C. Gwynne37:41

        And, and Quanah was ... It does look like Quanah, doesn't it, in the middle? Yeah. Um, but I mean, he ... And he was, you know, he was not just ceremonial Indian. I mean, he, he, he was a brilliant man. Uh, and he ... One of the things he did is he went to New York. I mean, went to Washington, and he testified and there were all these, there were all these hearings, um, trying to figure out how much land Indians were gonna get. Um, and Quanah, of course, testified this and actually is quite brilliant. I put his testimony in my book. He, he's just flat brilliant. He, he, he sort of runs circles around the senator who's questioning him, so ... But he would ... So he played an active role too. But there he is, as you say, he's sitting in a, a committee room in Congress.

    29. JRJoe Rogan38:20

        (laughs)

    30. SGS.C. Gwynne38:21

        I mean, this guy who was this great free warrior on the plains.
14. 50:50 – 57:27

    Texas Rangers vs. Comanches: Jack Hays, Colt revolvers, and mounted warfare

    1. JRJoe Rogan50:50

       Yeah, that was another part that I wanted to get to, was Jack Hays and the creation of the Texas Rangers, who we, we think of the Texas Rangers today, we think of, like, Chuck Norris.

    2. SGS.C. Gwynne50:58

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan50:58

       You know? (laughs) You, you know, you really don't realize that they were essentially a, a group that was created to effectively combat the Comanche.

    4. SGS.C. Gwynne51:08

       Exactly. That's where they came from.

    5. JRJoe Rogan51:09

       And it's amazing, the story ... When you, when you talk about how it took, like, s- sort of several iterations of these guys with- before they figured out how to do it right. And the, the guys that came out, they're, they're essentially a lot like, like a lot of depictions of Navy SEALs, like renegades.

    6. SGS.C. Gwynne51:27

       (laughs) Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan51:28

       Like wild, rugged rebels, and there they are. There's the original Texas Rangers. Is that Jack Hays in there?

    8. SGS.C. Gwynne51:35

       It ... I don't see him. If he is- Google his name, and this is a group of-

    9. JRJoe Rogan51:37

       San Antonio's military-

    10. SGS.C. Gwynne51:38

        There he is. There's J- ... Jack Hays is, uh, um ... Well, the, the, the lightest picture, that's him. That's Hays.

    11. JRJoe Rogan51:44

        That's him right there, huh? Wow.

    12. SGS.C. Gwynne51:45

        Yeah, so Hays ... So, so the thing was of ... Okay, San Antonio in the 1830s, late 1830s, you have, you have about 2,000 residents. It's the kind of the out- ... The final outpost on the frontier. And what, what's happening is, um, Texas, which now owns the ... Texas, which now owns Texas, having won its independence, is giving out what they call head rights. So if you wanna get a head right, meaning free land, so all you had to do to get your free land outside of San Antonio was go, uh, survey the land. It's all you had to do, and you had it, you know?

    13. JRJoe Rogan52:18

        Whoa.

    14. SGS.C. Gwynne52:19

        And so the surveyors would go out and survey it, and the Comanches would kill them in ever more imaginative ways because the Comanches understood exactly that the instruments did steal the land. The instruments were the mechanism of the theft of the land from them.

    15. JRJoe Rogan52:36

        Hmm.

    16. SGS.C. Gwynne52:36

        And so part ... The deal was to keep ... How can you keep your ... the surveyors alive? And Hays was originally a surveyor, but he eventually just got good at keeping other surveyors alive. And these guys who could do that eventually became known as Rangers. And they evolved as Comanche fighters, you know, fighting like Comanches did. I mean, they learned bird signs to track people. They would, you know, make cold camps. I mean, you never made a warm ... You never made a campfire if you were around Comanches. I mean, they would, they would ... They learned these, these techniques, um, techniques of warfare, um, and they got really good at it. Um, they just had this one problem, and the problem was that they had three shots. They had Kentucky long rifle, bang, uh, a, uh ... and two single-shot pistols. And that's all they had against the Comanches, who, um ... I would encourage, uh, all, all of your listeners to go, um, and, uh, and look up this guy Lars Anderson on the internet.

    17. JRJoe Rogan53:35

        Yeah.

    18. SGS.C. Gwynne53:35

        He's the d- ... He's the bow guy.

    19. JRJoe Rogan53:37

        Yeah.

    20. SGS.C. Gwynne53:38

        Okay. So when-

    21. JRJoe Rogan53:38

        Yeah, I've seen him before.

    22. SGS.C. Gwynne53:39

        ... what he, what he proved, among other thi- ... I mean, he went back, and he just researched it. And, and a lot of the things that I, frankly, found hard to believe about Comanches, once I saw the Anderson videos, you believe them.

    23. JRJoe Rogan53:50

        Yes.

    24. SGS.C. Gwynne53:51

        Anderson can ... I think it's, uh, 10 arrows in five seconds. Um, he ... There's no such thing as a quiver. You're holding it as a bunch in your arm. Your ... I mean, but all these things that we, you know, we heard that Comanches could do, underneath the horse's neck and rapidity of fire and c- and you ... and no one's ever ... Comanches never stood in one place and closed one eye and shot. They never once did that. They were moving, both eyes open. Anyway, look at the Anderson video. It's really cool. But what that meant was that Jack Hays and the Rangers were at an enormous disadvantage, you know? And then lo and behold, he ... Uh, well, cut to the East Coast. This inventor named Samuel Colt had come up in the, in the early 1830s with a prototype of a ... It was a, it was a, uh, a really ingenious little pistol. It was a five-shot pistol made in ... well, eventually made in Paterson, New Jersey.

    25. JRJoe Rogan54:43

        There it is right there.

    26. SGS.C. Gwynne54:44

        Yeah. Is that the Paterson Colt? I hope so. This is a five-shot chamber that was popping up with the same guy, so- Yeah. ... Jack Hays. It doesn't look like the Paterson Colt, but anyway- Okay. ... it's, it's a five-shot-

    27. JRJoe Rogan54:54

        Just cool, uh-

    28. SGS.C. Gwynne54:54

        It's a five-shot thing with, with, uh, revolving cylinders. And it was a great idea, right? Absolutely nobody wanted it. I mean, it was a ... It was like a sidearm for cavalry, but the US didn't have a cavalry, so it-

    29. JRJoe Rogan55:06

        Mm-hmm.

    30. SGS.C. Gwynne55:06

        ... didn't really work out.... for some reason, Mirabeau Lamar, the president of Texas, ordered a hundred and 80 of these things, and they ca-... and they found their way to Texas, the five-shot Patterson Colts. And somehow, Jack Hays and his guys found out about them. And they got ahold of them, they trained with them, and, and they immediately understood what it meant. It meant equalizing the warfare against the Comanches. It meant... Because now, they've, they had, they had, uh, five shots, inter- one interchangeable cylinder, now 10. 10 shots in each pistol now. So in close-hand combat, the world changed. And i- and not only did that world change, but, um, eventually everybody was so stunned by what th-... by this development that, um, the US government ordered a lot of, well, what ended up being Walker Colt's six-shooters for the Mexican War. Colt becomes one of the richest men in America. And basically, Jack Hays and the Rangers redefine warfare, which is, which is... And people said this about Jack Hays, and it, it's broadly speaking true. Before Jack Hays, you know, people came into the West on foot carrying a Kentucky long rifle, and after Jack Hays, they came mounted and carrying a six-shooter.
15. 57:27 – 1:12:33

    Lars Andersen, historical archery debate, and why the story deserves a film

    1. JRJoe Rogan57:27

       Do we know the history of the bow and arrow amongst the Native Americans? Do we know when it was first implemented?

    2. SGS.C. Gwynne57:34

       I'm not an expert on it. Um, I mean, I- m-... I don't know.

    3. JRJoe Rogan57:39

       Because I don't know if other... if the way the Lars Anderson style of shooting, of keeping all the, the arrows in the fingers that he researched... Did he research that from Native Americans, or was that ever u- utilized in Europe or anywhere else?

    4. SGS.C. Gwynne57:52

       He... His research is... I think he started, a- and I don't... I'm not an expert on him either, but I think he started with other... I mean, he started reading about, uh, you know, a- anybody who were, you know, eh, who were archers and famous for it-

    5. JRJoe Rogan58:04

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SGS.C. Gwynne58:04

       ... and descriptions of them. And I believe... I'm sure that in-... that did include Native Americans, but it was... No, it was a whole... H- he looked at the whole world.

    7. JRJoe Rogan58:11

       And so do you think Native American... Well, we don't know, but I'm just speculating. Did Native Americans develop this ability independently or did they, uh, did they learn it from anyone else? Like, it seems interesting that they were living, s- particularly the Comanches, this incredible nomadic life and didn't really have a lot of interaction with other people from other places.

    8. SGS.C. Gwynne58:33

       The... For the first interaction from, from anywhere else w-... is 16th century Spain. I mean, that's, that's... There's no-

    9. JRJoe Rogan58:39

       And they had already had bow and arrows by then.

    10. SGS.C. Gwynne58:39

        Yeah, yeah. And there's, there's no... That, that's the, that's the first interaction with Europeans. So, um, the question is did the bow come over on the land bridge?

    11. JRJoe Rogan58:48

        Right.

    12. SGS.C. Gwynne58:48

        Did it... I mean, I d-... I don't know the... I really... Not my field, but-

    13. JRJoe Rogan58:52

        No, of course. It's just, uh, it's so interesting because I don't know if that style of multiple shooting, of being able to shoot so many arrows in a row had been imp-... I don't think it was implemented by the Europeans. Maybe the Mongols? Did they have-

    14. SGS.C. Gwynne59:04

        I don't know. A- and, and, uh, the w-... The question, though, the more... The, the question you're getting at is how did Comanches in particular... Because when, when these Dodge and Catlin and these various people saw Comanches in Texas in 1830s, they just flat couldn't believe what they were looking at.

    15. JRJoe Rogan59:21

        Mm-hmm.

    16. SGS.C. Gwynne59:21

        They, they couldn't believe their abilities with horses, breaking them.

    17. JRJoe Rogan59:25

        Yeah.

    18. SGS.C. Gwynne59:25

        Uh, "Never seen anything like it before. Never seen anything like it before."

    19. JRJoe Rogan59:28

        No saddle either, right?

    20. SGS.C. Gwynne59:30

        The-... Uh, yeah, they did have a saddle, yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan59:31

        Did they?

    22. SGS.C. Gwynne59:31

        That, that was part of the Spanish technology.

    23. JRJoe Rogan59:33

        Oh.

    24. SGS.C. Gwynne59:33

        Very, very, very minimal. You'll see it, uh, i- uh, in museums, but, uh-

    25. JRJoe Rogan59:38

        Can you see if you can find one of those, uh, saddles?

    26. SGS.C. Gwynne59:39

        Yeah, I mean, uh, min-... c- see how... Right, minimal.

    27. JRJoe Rogan59:53

        Mm-hmm.

    28. SGS.C. Gwynne59:53

        Yes. Mm-hmm. And one of the ways they could shoot underneath the, uh, the, the, uh, the neck of the horse was to hang a thong off side of one of the saddles. But, um-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:00:04

        A thong?

    30. SGS.C. Gwynne1:00:04

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

Episode duration: 1:18:00