Joe Rogan Experience #2058 - Elliott West

1. 0:00 – 1:08

   Welcome, Elliott West’s life’s work, and why the American West matters

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. EWElliott West0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Hello, sir.

   4. EWElliott West0:13

      Hello.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it.

   6. EWElliott West0:15

      You're quite welcome. Good to be here.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      I really enjoyed you on the Meat Eater podcast, and, uh, that's why I reached out. And, uh, I started w- uh, reading your, uh, the book on the Nez Perce.

   8. EWElliott West0:25

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:25

      And then I, I picked this up as well, Continental Reckoning. That is ... That's a hell of a book.

   10. EWElliott West0:31

       (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       That's-

   12. EWElliott West0:31

       It's a big book. (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       That's a big book. How long did it take you to write this?

   14. EWElliott West0:35

       The writing, probably, uh, eight to 10 years. The, uh, research and so forth, more than, more than 20 years, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Wow.

   16. EWElliott West0:42

       Yeah, long time.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       So this is a lifetime of work.

   18. EWElliott West0:45

       It is.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. One of the most fascinating subjects, I think, in the history of the human race. I mean, it is just such ... It's such an amazing story and such a tragic story and such a crazy story of the amount of change that took place over a relatively short period of time.

   20. EWElliott West1:06

       Yeah, 30 years.

2. 1:08 – 5:26

   Native Americans in Paris: early diplomacy, travel, and cross-cultural exchange

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:08

      Yeah. And how little most people really understand about the actual history of the Native Americans and, and that. One of the things that was most fascinating about the Meat Eater podcast was that at the time that Lewis and Clark had come to America, a hundred years before that, there had been Native Americans that had traveled to France.

   2. EWElliott West1:31

      That's right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:32

      And met with the king.

   4. EWElliott West1:33

      That's right. Yep, yep. Yep. Um, that's right. Uh, 18- or 1720s, uh, there was a group of, of native people from Kansas, Missouri area, and they had been courted by the French because the French wanted to expand their fur trade into, uh, into that area, up the Missouri River. So they, uh ... And the Spanish had recently suffered a terrible military defeat there, in sort of what's today Eastern, Eastern Nebraska. So, so the French sent this guy named, uh, Etienne Bourgmont to make contact. Now, he already had contact there. In fact, he had a son by one of the women in the Missouria tribe. Uh, made contact, made some friends, made some allies, uh, courted them, and then to sort of seal the deal, he took back a delegation of about six Indians. Now, this is from Eastern Nebraska. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:25

      Which tribe was this?

   6. EWElliott West2:26

      There were several tribes, the Missouria tribe, the Illinois tribe, uh, I think some Osage. Uh, and they were, uh ... And he, he then took them back from there down the Mississippi, down to New Orleans, uh, and then over across the Atlantic, uh, to Le Havre, and then they went by coach from there to Paris. Uh, and they spent several months there, uh, in Paris being fêted by King Louis XV, uh, visiting the Paris Opera, which they said was a great place full of sorcerers. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:57

      (laughs) Sorcerers.

   8. EWElliott West2:59

      Sorcerers. Uh-

   9. JRJoe Rogan2:59

      Why did they describe it as sorcerers?

   10. EWElliott West3:01

       I don't ... I think they figured, uh, these people were just sort of transformed before their eyes, you know. They just became somebody else. They're great actors, of course.

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:08

       Ah.

   12. EWElliott West3:08

       I think that was it. Uh, they saw this famous, uh, puppet show on the Pont Neuf, uh, bridge, and they said it was, uh, this place was inhabited by small dwarfs.

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:17

       (laughs)

   14. EWElliott West3:20

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:20

       Wow.

   16. EWElliott West3:20

       And they loved, they loved it. Yeah, they were taken to the, um, Cour des Fontaines. Uh, they ex- ... They showed their, uh, expertise at hunting by riding bareback in the Bois de Boulogne, you know, the royal woods, naked and bareback, uh, shooting, uh, pheasants. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan3:37

       Wow.

   18. EWElliott West3:37

       Had a great time. One of the m- ... A woman who was in fact the, the woman who had borne Bourgmont's child, uh, she married a, a sergeant, uh, at Notre Dame. Um, they had a, they had a wonderful time, and the, the men liked just about everything except, uh, except the men. The other men, the French men. Uh, they said they were sort of effeminate and sissy, and, and, and, uh-

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:59

       (laughs)

   20. EWElliott West3:59

       They said they, they said they smelled like alligators. (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan4:02

       Alligators?

   22. EWElliott West4:03

       Yeah. (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan4:04

       Interesting.

   24. EWElliott West4:05

       Yeah. But this was, uh ... You know, this was 1720s, so that's, uh, that's, what, 80 years or something before, before Lewis and Clark even made it out to that area.

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:14

       That is so fascinating.

   26. EWElliott West4:15

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:15

       Now, what was the language barrier? How did they communicate?

   28. EWElliott West4:19

       Well, uh, there were ... Bourgmont himself, uh, had, uh, lived for years, uh, among the Indians and, uh, was a expert on the Missouri River. So he was a, he was a Frenchman who came over, uh, enlisted in the army, deserted, uh, sort of went native and became a, uh, you know, coureur des bois, a, a French mountain man. Uh, took up with the Indians, uh, had this child by this woman, so he knew, he knew the languages quite well. Uh, and there were other, uh ... Remember, these, these Indians, as you can tell in this story, uh, were very cosmopolitan, you know, very sophisticated. They knew English, or some, some of them did. Uh, so yeah. I think the point to remember is that this ... Long before our image of Americans, you know- (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan5:06

       Mm.

   30. EWElliott West5:06

       ... uh, coming into this area, there was all sorts of contact, uh, between, uh, native peoples and Europeans, all sorts of exchanges. Um, it was really a mixed world, a world that was far more complex, uh, far more interesting, in my opinion, uh, than the, than the usual way that we, that we remember it.

3. 5:26 – 8:12

   Before Lewis & Clark: centuries of European expansion and information as power

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:26

      To put it into perspective, it's, it's hard to ... It's hard for us in 2023 to look back at this time period and, and really have a context for it. But to put it into perspective, so first Europeans arrive here essentially in the 1400s, right?

   2. EWElliott West5:46

      Oh, yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:47

      The very, very first.

   4. EWElliott West5:48

      Well, very first. Late, very late 1400s, yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:50

      So this is 200-plus years after that.

   6. EWElliott West5:53

      That's right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:54

      So we're essentially talking about us thinking about the 1820s.

   8. EWElliott West6:00

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:00

      Right?

   10. EWElliott West6:01

       That's right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:01

       So there was hundreds of years of Europeans slowly making their way across-... the continental United States.

   12. EWElliott West6:11

       That's right. The Spanish coming up from the south, of course.

   13. JRJoe Rogan6:13

       Cabeza de Vaca.

   14. EWElliott West6:14

       Cabeza de Vaca, uh, 1520s. Uh, the French coming in quite early up to the, what's today the Northeast, uh, Eastern Canada. Uh, that had been going on across a long time, uh, before the English began their very slow and timid expansion into the, uh, beyond the Appalachians, so-

   15. JRJoe Rogan6:32

       It's interesting because if you ask the general public about the expansion, they, they seem to put it into the time period of the 1800s.

   16. EWElliott West6:40

       That's right.

   17. JRJoe Rogan6:42

       But there was so much more going on-

   18. EWElliott West6:44

       For sure. (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan6:44

       ... hundreds of years of that, which is hard for us to imagine. Again, it's like us thinking that the 1800s, like 1823 was just yesterday. It wasn't.

   20. EWElliott West6:53

       Right, right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan6:54

       It was a long time ago, so there's hundreds of years...

   22. EWElliott West6:58

       Before that, but that-

   23. JRJoe Rogan6:59

       Yeah.

   24. EWElliott West6:59

       ... that's right. And that had been going on slowly. It was sort of a slow simmer are these two, are these cultures, three cultures coming together. You know, uh, and so, um, in many ways, you know, which the Indians were far more sophisticated and well-traveled, far-traveled, uh, than the, uh, than the Americans who were, who were coming in there. We think, you know, our, our national myth has it that when Lewis and Clark, this is in, you know, 1804, 1806, Lewis and Clark make their way up the Missouri River into the West, that that's sort of the start of the history of the West. Before that-

   25. JRJoe Rogan7:32

       Right.

   26. EWElliott West7:32

       ... uh, Lewis's famous quote as they left the Mandan villages, uh, in 1805 says, "We are, uh, heading up..." He compared himself to Columbus. He said-

   27. JRJoe Rogan7:42

       Mm.

   28. EWElliott West7:42

       ... "We're heading into this place where the, the foot of civilized man has never trodden." (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan7:48

       (laughs)

   30. EWElliott West7:49

       Not true, not true. (laughs)
4. 8:12 – 20:31

   Disease as a world-shaper: smallpox dynamics, mortality cascades, and syphilis folklore

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:12

      So, uh, have you read, uh, the, uh, Cabeza de Vaca book, uh, A Strange New Land?

   2. EWElliott West8:18

      Yes, I have.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:18

      A Land So Strange?

   4. EWElliott West8:19

      A Land So Strange.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:19

      A Land So Strange.

   6. EWElliott West8:20

      Yeah, yeah, Andres Resendiz, yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:21

      Which is a fascinating book because they essentially document the spread of disease without meaning to do it 'cause that, that is really where it all started from.

   8. EWElliott West8:32

      A lot of it did, yeah. It's a wonderful book, yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:35

      It's an amazing book. And, you know, they talk about culture. They, like, they talk about the Mayas and, you know, there's always been this confusion as to what happened to the Mayas, but it's probably the same exact thing that happened to 90-plus percent of the Native Americans that contracted smallpox.

   10. EWElliott West8:51

       Maybe. Uh, the Mayas declined a, a good bit before that, but, but who knows? It's, it's very hard to say, but certainly disease, uh, was a very important factor, uh, in the conquest of native peoples in the, in the, uh, conquest by Europeans of, of North America and South America, yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:07

       Is it clearly established that Cabeza de Vaca was one of the first Europeans to make it to the, to the continental United States or was, was it possible that others had m- made it before that but we-

   12. EWElliott West9:18

       (sighs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:18

       ... we don't have record of it?

   14. EWElliott West9:20

       He was the first to move in, to encounter what we know today as Southwest. Uh, he was part of a shipwrecked expedition on the Texas coast, uh, and he and a few others, including a Black, uh, sla- African slave, Esteban, Stephen, uh, they were the ones who made their way, first enslaved by the Indians, uh, and then they gradually made their way across the Southwest up to, you know, what is today Arizona, like the Zunis, uh, and then made their way southward into Mexico. Fabulous journey, what a story.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:50

       It's an insane story. And if you look at the history of the human race across the cont- uh, across the, the planet rather, it's one of the most transformative stories in such a short amount of time where everything changed so rapidly 'cause it, it coincides with the Industrial Revolution-

   16. EWElliott West10:05

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:06

       ... and all these things happen, uh, and, and then you have massive cities appearing in these places where there was nothing before.

   18. EWElliott West10:14

       Yeah. Uh, that's a bit later, of course, but it's, uh-

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:16

       Yeah, but it's, it's all over this period of a few hundred years, which is such a transformative time period.

   20. EWElliott West10:22

       That's right. If you think of it as sort of a, uh, I think of it as kind of a, uh, a curve of, of change or a graph, right?

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:27

       Mm-hmm.

   22. EWElliott West10:28

       Uh, now, we gotta remember, all kinds of changes, up and down, up and down, before, long before the Europeans came, you know, the rise and fall of civilizations, uh. Fantastic stories about that.

   23. JRJoe Rogan10:38

       Yeah.

   24. EWElliott West10:39

       So there's that, but then the Europeans come to, come into this area and that, that line just goes, goes straight up.

   25. JRJoe Rogan10:47

       Mm.

   26. EWElliott West10:48

       Very... And it keeps, and it keeps accelerating, keeps accelerating. So, uh, it's important to remember that, um, change has been going on for 15,000 years in what's d- (laughs) what's today, the United States.

   27. JRJoe Rogan11:01

       Sure.

   28. EWElliott West11:01

       Uh, interesting changes that I think people don't recognize nearly enough, uh, and they ought to, they ought to. Um, but the pace of that change, uh, accelerates at this, uh, really astonishing, astonishing degree once the-

   29. JRJoe Rogan11:15

       Well, they keep pushing back the date of modern humans in North America as well.

   30. EWElliott West11:21

       That's right, yeah.
5. 20:31 – 26:59

   Why Europeans came: empire-building, marketing, land hunger, and the immigrant push-pull

   1. JRJoe Rogan20:31

      So you have this kind of epidemic, and then you have this rush of human beings that have come over from Europe. And have they come over... What, what was the primary motivation for them coming over here? Was it to seek a better life? Was it gold mining, silver mining? What was the, the first initial wave?

   2. EWElliott West20:52

      There are various answers, various answers to that. Uh, keep in mind, these were all, initially, at least, imperial enterprises. You know? It wasn't just Frenchmen coming over. It was the French government trying to establish an empire there that they could profit from. Uh, the Spanish, s- same thing. Um, now when the English came over, theirs was a combination of governmental, uh, ambition, uh, and a business enterprise. But in any case, this was all being directed, you know, by others in Europe for their own ends. Not the ones who were coming over, you know, but they were there ... They were trying to do it for their own, uh, for their own purposes. Uh, then that raises the question, uh, who ... So, the ones who came over, you know, why were they there? And I think that the most common answer is the one you suggested, better lives. Right? You gotta remember, you know, in Europe, uh, especially a place like England, uh, land was very scarce. So, the possibility of somebody being born into the peasantry or being born, uh, you know, on the lower ranks, the possibility of them acquiring land was, you know, beyond remote. And then somebody says, "Okay, if you'll just go across the Atlantic, you know, we'll give you land."

   3. JRJoe Rogan22:09

      Hmm.

   4. EWElliott West22:10

      "We'll give you a new start." Right? And that's a ... That's very seductive.

   5. JRJoe Rogan22:14

      It's fascinating because that pessimism seems to still be prevalent in a lot of English people. This pe- this pessimism as far as, like, your ability to improve your lifestyle.

   6. EWElliott West22:28

      Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan22:28

      You know? I have, have many, uh, English friends that have come over here and say the attitude in, in America is that, like, you can, you can go out and you can forge your own path, you could do things. But in England-

   8. EWElliott West22:38

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan22:38

      ... there's this, like-

   10. EWElliott West22:39

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan22:40

       It's very ... They're very dismissive of that.

   12. EWElliott West22:42

       Yeah, yeah. I, I think that's right. I think there's something, something to that, yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan22:45

       Yeah.

   14. EWElliott West22:45

       There is that sort of American spirit.

   15. JRJoe Rogan22:48

       But the, but the kind of people that would take that kind of chance to get on a boat and go across the ocean with no photographs to look at?

   16. EWElliott West22:58

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan22:58

       I mean, what did they have? A sketch that someone ... A story, a tale?

   18. EWElliott West23:01

       (laughs) Oh-

   19. JRJoe Rogan23:01

       A pile of gold that someone had brought back?

   20. EWElliott West23:03

       Well, they had n- They had accounts. They had lies being told to them.

   21. JRJoe Rogan23:09

       A lot of lies, I bet.

   22. EWElliott West23:09

       A lot of lies, yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan23:10

       (laughs)

   24. EWElliott West23:11

       Those were, um ... But, you know-

   25. JRJoe Rogan23:13

       What were the big lies?

   26. EWElliott West23:15

       The big lies?

   27. JRJoe Rogan23:15

       Yeah.

   28. EWElliott West23:16

       Oh, the, you know, uh, you would, you'll pro- prosper instantly. Uh, there was a, uh, a very healthy place. Right? You would ... (laughs) Great place to raise a family, right? (laughs) Uh, the usual ones. Um, but these were ... Again, they were promoters. Uh, they were imperial promoters. Uh, they were private promoters. You know? The first English colonies, uh, Jamestown, uh, and then, uh, Plymouth, uh, and then Massachusetts Bay, those were all businesses. You know, they were corporations, you know? It was like, uh, Walmart establishing a colony on the moon or something. So, they're promoting it. They're trying to persuade people to go over there, to develop it, uh, to raise, uh, uh, tobacco, you know, and to, to give them, to give them their profits. So, a huge promotional scheme.

   29. JRJoe Rogan24:03

       Hmm.

   30. EWElliott West24:04

       Mm-hmm.
6. 26:59 – 36:16

   Remaking the living world: bison collapse, commodification, and ecological transformation (1850–1880)

   1. JRJoe Rogan26:59

      Well, it's not only by itself for human beings, but it's also by itself for native wildlife-

   2. EWElliott West27:04

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan27:04

      ... which is another incredible aspect of this story of American expansion. Um, I watched the Ken Burns documentary on the American buffalo-

   4. EWElliott West27:12

      Buffalo, that's right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan27:12

      ... and you were in that, as well.

   6. EWElliott West27:14

      Yes.

   7. JRJoe Rogan27:14

      And in that, a- as well as Steve Rinella, and that is, that is a crazy story, that no wildlife in this country can e- can survive being a commodity, and-

   8. EWElliott West27:30

      It might survive, but it's gonna have a real tough time of it.

   9. JRJoe Rogan27:32

      Barely.

   10. EWElliott West27:32

       That's right. Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan27:33

       Barely. I mean, we had to put the brakes on it in order for it to sh- survive. I mean, w- we-

   12. EWElliott West27:37

       And a big ... When it ... Uh, and we were able to put the brakes on it because it was no longer profitable.

   13. JRJoe Rogan27:43

       Hmm.

   14. EWElliott West27:43

       As long as it's a com- a, a profitable commodity, you know? (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan27:47

       Yeah.

   16. EWElliott West27:48

       ... it's in real trouble.

   17. JRJoe Rogan27:49

       But that also contributed to the d- d- demise of Native Americans-

   18. EWElliott West27:55

       Of course.

   19. JRJoe Rogan27:56

       ... particularly the ones who hunted the buffalo.

   20. EWElliott West27:58

       That's right. Well, not just the buffalo. Buffalo were just, you know ... Uh, uh, the most dramatic example of dozens, scores of species of animals, uh, in the new world, in North America, uh, that were driven to this, uh, either to extinction completely or, uh, really close to it. Uh, Dan Flores, I think he's been on your-

   21. JRJoe Rogan28:18

       Yes, a couple times.

   22. EWElliott West28:19

       ... on your show. Yeah, uh, Dan has this, uh, marvelous, uh, new book, A Wild New World, uh, that goes to that, goes into that in some detail and describes it.

   23. JRJoe Rogan28:27

       Yes.

   24. EWElliott West28:27

       And, um, as I remember from the book, Dan says that, um, at, at no point in modern history have so many different species, uh, been eradicated so quickly.

   25. JRJoe Rogan28:40

       So quickly.

   26. EWElliott West28:41

       Yeah. And of c- and, of course, you made, of co- the essential point. What that is, it's not just that they're being hunted and, uh, exploited, uh, f- for the profit of people who are coming into it. That's really part of an even larger process that is the complete transformation of a world. That's one of the things that I try to emphasize in this book, uh, between 1850 (laughs) and 1880, uh, the western th- third of North America was literally remade, ecologic ... not just culturally, uh, socially, ecologically. Ecologically it was made over into a new world, uh, and that world, of course, was not one that native peoples knew how to work.

   27. JRJoe Rogan29:26

       Hmm.

   28. EWElliott West29:27

       You know, their, (laughs) their existence relied on them being able, uh, r- relied on, you know, centuries of knowledge gained from this intricate understanding and use, this sort of choreographed life, uh, of this, of this place, of this place, relying upon its resources, animals also plants, of course, uh, crops and so forth. And the Europeans come in and they just transform it.

   29. JRJoe Rogan29:54

       Quickly.

   30. EWElliott West29:54

       Qu- very quickly, very quickly, uh, so what are you gonna do? That is what defeated the Indians. It wasn't the military, you know. It was this transformation of their world into another, uh, from one world into another in which they didn't fit, so they simply had no choice but to do what they were told if you're gonna live.
7. 36:16 – 44:28

   Deep time: humans in the Americas, megafauna extinctions, and Younger Dryas uncertainty

   1. JRJoe Rogan36:16

      Yeah. Um, w- another thing that-... Dan talks about this really fascinating, was that horses originated from North America-

   2. EWElliott West36:26

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan36:26

      ... but were wiped out.

   4. EWElliott West36:27

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan36:28

      But had already been transferred to Europe-

   6. EWElliott West36:31

      That's right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan36:31

      ... and to other parts of the world, and then were reintroduced when Europeans came here.

   8. EWElliott West36:36

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan36:36

      What year was that, when that started happening?

   10. EWElliott West36:38

       Well, uh, you're right of course. They evolved on the southern plains, uh, over 50 million years, f- from a critter called a hyracotherium, uh, which was about the size of a collie.

   11. JRJoe Rogan36:51

       Oh, wow.

   12. EWElliott West36:51

       Into the modern, into the modern horse. That took millions of years. Uh, and fairly late in that story, that is to say only two or three million years ago, uh, they migrated along with all kinds of other animal. Camels, for example, uh, evolved alongside horses-

   13. JRJoe Rogan37:07

       That's crazy.

   14. EWElliott West37:07

       ... uh, in the Southwest. Um, and they made that trip, you know, over Beringia, over the, uh, the land bridge there.

   15. JRJoe Rogan37:15

       Bering Strait.

   16. EWElliott West37:15

       Yeah. Into, um, what was the largest pasture on Earth. You know, Central Asia. And there, their population exploded, uh, and there they continued to evolve. And there became zebras, headed south into, into, into Africa, yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan37:31

       That is crazy.

   18. EWElliott West37:32

       They became, uh, you know, asses. Uh, so all the equids, uh, evolved from those horses coming out of New Mexico, (laughs) right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan37:41

       That is so crazy that zebras came out of New Mexico.

   20. EWElliott West37:45

       (laughs) That's right, right. Pushing far back enough, that's right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan37:47

       Wow.

   22. EWElliott West37:49

       Uh, uh, so they boomed over there, uh, but, uh, you know, at the, at the end of the last Ice Age, into the pla- during the Wisconsin ... at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, um, the world changes. We're going through a kind of a climate change, uh, as we have today, warming, and that changes the ecology completely, and all kinds of animals in, especially in North America became extinct. Uh, dozens of species, uh, became extinct. You know we-

   23. JRJoe Rogan38:17

       Like 65% of all, all North of American large megafauna.

   24. EWElliott West38:22

       Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yep. Uh, you know, uh, we had an American lion, you know.

   25. JRJoe Rogan38:26

       Mm.

   26. EWElliott West38:26

       We had of course the saber-toothed tiger, the Smilodon. American cheetah. The American cheetah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan38:31

       Yeah.

   28. EWElliott West38:31

       We had armadillos the size of Volkswagen Bugs.

   29. JRJoe Rogan38:37

       Really?

   30. EWElliott West38:39

       (laughs) Yeah.
8. 44:28 – 50:25

   How Native societies worked: bands, diversity, trade networks, and social regulation

   1. JRJoe Rogan44:28

      What's one of the more fascinating and horrific aspects of the story of the decline of the native population in America is that they had this incredibly unique lifestyle that really wasn't... Uh, it wasn't available anywhere else in the world at that time. Most of the rest of Europe and Asia had sort of changed and moved to agriculture and moved to cities. And these people had these immense tribes, super sophisticated hunter-gatherer civilizations that lived in symbiosis with the land. And to, uh, us, people that sort of understand how horrible it is that that's happened, we have this incredible romantic attachment to, to Native Americans.

   2. EWElliott West45:14

      Yeah. Yes, a lot of ways we do. Now, there was, of course, agriculture here.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:19

      Yes.

   4. EWElliott West45:19

      In what's today the United States, uh, in the East, uh, highly sophisticated forms of agriculture, growing a variety of crops. In the Southwest, uh, relying especially on, on corn. But you're right. A good part of what's today the United States, especially the West, uh, were hunter-gatherer peoples and fishers. Um, they had figured out these ways to, uh, these sort of, these incredibly complicated and complex, uh, uh, practiced ways of moving through their year, uh, month by month, week by week, in ways that had, they had practiced and, and learned about over the, over many generations, uh, that allowed them a really remarkably high standard of living. Um, now, there were not large tribes. One of the limitations of a hunter-gatherer society, uh, is you cannot expand in numbers beyond a certain, a certain limit. About 125. You know, that's a... Uh, get bigger than that, you really can't support it. So what you had was this extraordinary splay, this, this extraordinary, uh, variety of, of peoples. You know, hundreds, hundreds of different native groups. Um, today, there are 530 federally recognized tribes (laughs) in the United States.

   5. JRJoe Rogan46:39

      Wow.

   6. EWElliott West46:39

      Yeah. Uh, and that's just, those are the ones who have survived, uh, physically and, and culturally. So there's this remarkable, uh, array of peoples, many of them speaking different languages or different dialects, uh, all of them in contact with the, with the others, uh, that with, in this, uh, very, uh, intricate tri- uh, trade relationships.

   7. JRJoe Rogan47:03

      Mm.

   8. EWElliott West47:03

      Uh, it was quite a place, you know. And you're right, it, it, it flies, um, dramatically, uh, in the face of what we think was going on back then.

   9. JRJoe Rogan47:15

      Mm.

   10. EWElliott West47:15

       This romanticized, simplistic view of the Indian, right? They're just like this, (laughs) this one group of people, right?

   11. JRJoe Rogan47:23

       It's also so interesting that that number of 125 people aligns with we know as Dunbar's number.

   12. EWElliott West47:30

       That's exactly right. That's where it comes from.

   13. JRJoe Rogan47:32

       Yeah.

   14. EWElliott West47:32

       So you're aware of that. Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       Yeah.

   16. EWElliott West47:33

       Wonderful book. Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan47:35

       Yeah. Dunbar's number, meaning that we have in our mind the ability to hold a cer- a relationship with a certain number of people intimately, and then as it spreads out further-

   18. EWElliott West47:46

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan47:46

       ... we can know some people sort of, we kind of know of them, and, but there's just a small group that would be your family, a larger group that would be your tribe, and then there's neighboring tribes.

   20. EWElliott West47:57

       That's right. That's right. It's a fascinating idea.

   21. JRJoe Rogan47:59

       It is fascinating because-

   22. EWElliott West48:00

       He uses the, uh, he used the-

   23. JRJoe Rogan48:01

       ... it shows our hard drive.

   24. EWElliott West48:02

       Yep. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan48:03

       We have a mental hard drive-

   26. EWElliott West48:04

       (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:04

       ... that's sort of designed...

   28. EWElliott West48:05

       Yeah, we do. Yeah. He uses a... It's a great book. Uh, he uses, uh, the idea of gossip. You know, uh, the m- uh, the go- the, uh, the maximum number in which gossip really affects you, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:19

       Mm.

   30. EWElliott West48:20

       (laughs) And you can't get above about 125 before, oh, what the hell? I don't care. So...
9. 50:25 – 55:08

   Little Bighorn: temporary unity, Indigenous ‘nationalism,’ and inevitable retaliation

   1. JRJoe Rogan50:25

      Well, that's one of the things that's fascinating about things like the battle at Little Bighorn.

   2. EWElliott West50:29

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan50:30

      Because the Native American groups had figured out, "Listen, we gotta get together. There's ... The only way we're gonna stop these invaders is if we band together and form a much larger group."

   4. EWElliott West50:46

      Yeah. Uh, now those are the tribes. You know, most importantly they're the Lakota or the Western Sioux, uh, and the Northern Cheyenne. They were all, guh- again, composed of bands. There, there was no tribe in the sense that we're thinking of.

   5. JRJoe Rogan51:00

      Hm.

   6. EWElliott West51:00

      All of them broke down into, uh, in, into these smaller, these smaller units, and they recognized a kinship. Uh, they spoke the same or a common, or highly related languages, so forth. They intermarried a lot, sort of bonding them together. But, um, about that time, as you say, about the time of 1876, 1870s, uh, there was this realization. You know, "We got a real problem here. We got a real problem here." Uh, "And the best chance, the best shot we have is for us to, uh, overcome these, to, to, to forge a sense of common identity and a common purpose." Uh, it's a kind of rise of what you might call, uh, nationalism. A kind of a, a S- you know, a Sioux-Cheyenne, uh, nationalism.

   7. JRJoe Rogan51:51

      Hm.

   8. EWElliott West51:52

      Uh, and it's, that's new. That's new. That wasn't there, wasn't there before. So they're evolving. Right? They're evolving in their understanding, they're evolving in how they think about it themselves, right? It's this world in constant motion and change.

   9. JRJoe Rogan52:07

      Hm.

   10. EWElliott West52:08

       And what I, what fascinated me about this, uh, in this, in this book was, uh, how complex it was and how fast it was, and how completely w- far-reaching it was. Everything changes. You know?

   11. JRJoe Rogan52:21

       Quickly.

   12. EWElliott West52:22

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan52:23

       The ... H- one of the fascinating stories about Little Bighorn was that th- this band, this, this, uh, banding together of all these, uh, natives didn't last. They, they were very effective in this one battle, very quickly. Like, what ... They said that the battle ... What did they say the battle lasted? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes?

   14. EWElliott West52:44

       Well, the, sort of the height of it, you know, where, uh, Custer's part.

   15. JRJoe Rogan52:48

       Mm-hmm.

   16. EWElliott West52:49

       That's probably about that or maybe a little longer. Um-

   17. JRJoe Rogan52:52

       Which is crazy.

   18. EWElliott West52:53

       Now, the, the battle itself, of course, the larger battle lasted much longer. Over, over ... More than a day. About two days, uh, as he's ... Part of them, uh, part of the command under Reno retreated to this hill, you know, and was besieged and held under siege, uh, for, uh, a da- a day and a half. But you're right. Um, and then (laughs) you know, they ... That's a great victory.

   19. JRJoe Rogan53:19

       Yeah.

   20. EWElliott West53:20

       The problem is, uh, you know what's gonna happen. Right?

   21. JRJoe Rogan53:24

       Hm.

   22. EWElliott West53:24

       You know what's gonna happen.

   23. JRJoe Rogan53:25

       They knew the retaliation was coming.

   24. EWElliott West53:27

       Yep, yep. Big time. You gotta remember now, when, when did this happen? It was 1876. Uh, the battle itself was on June 25th, 1876. Like I say, they were u- under siege there for two or three days. Um, it was another few days before the first other group, uh, of the, of the, of the army, of, of the cavalry arrived. Then they had to spend a few days, uh, taking care of the wounded, doing what they can. Then they took the survivors, uh, to the Missouri River to get on a steamboat, uh, to head, to head down, uh, to Bismarck, um, and it was at that point that the news began to travel about this unprecedented defeat by American forces. (laughs) So the battle's on June 25th. Put all those days together. (laughs) When do you think the first news arrived that ... Of this catastrophe? July 4th.

   25. JRJoe Rogan54:29

       Mm.

   26. EWElliott West54:30

       July 4th, 1876.

   27. JRJoe Rogan54:32

       Independence Day.

   28. EWElliott West54:32

       The 100th, 100th anniversary of the approval of the Declaration of Independence. The ... Our 100th, on our 100th birthday, (laughs) news arrives of, of this crushing of Custer, you know?... the nation, the military was not gonna let that stand. Yeah. So this was part of the reasons that there was this, this extraordinary effort, you know, to des- to destroy these people. So they very quickly broke up into these constituent bands, uh, and tried to get away as best they could, and less than a year, they were, they were defeated.

10. 55:08 – 1:03:57

    Nez Perce War, forced removals, and boarding schools that ‘created’ pan-Indian identity

    1. JRJoe Rogan55:08

       And you talk about what happened after that in your other book on the Nez Perce.

    2. EWElliott West55:13

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan55:13

       The Last Indian War.

    4. EWElliott West55:15

       Yeah. Right.

    5. JRJoe Rogan55:16

       Yeah.

    6. EWElliott West55:17

       That was the next year, uh, 1877. Uh, the Nez Perce were this extraordinary people in the Pacific Northwest. Uh, they were from Idaho, uh, from Eastern Oregon. They, too, composed of these different bands, uh, gathered together in this, uh, this one common identity, uh, the Nimiipuu, which means the real people (laughs) . Uh, and they were completely at peace with the whites. In fact, uh, Lewis and Clark had been the first, uh, the first Americans, the first white people that they had ever seen. Lewis and Clark came over Lolo Pass, uh, down in there. They were starving. Uh, and the Ne- uh, the Nez Perce took them in, um, saved them, uh, gave them... Uh, helped them get some, uh, uh, horses, uh, and canoes to keep on their way. And on the way back, uh, Lewis and Clark stay with them more than a month, and they form... In the, in the eyes of the Nez Perce, they form this alliance with the Americans, and they swore, uh, "From this time on, we're friends, we're allies. Uh, you help us when we fight, we'll help you when you fight." Now, that was in 1806. Uh, they kept that promise from 1806, uh, until 1877.

    7. JRJoe Rogan56:45

       Wow.

    8. EWElliott West56:46

       As they were... Their land was being overrun, uh, as these, uh, uh, appalling treaties were being forced upon them, um, they kept their word. Uh, and then finally in 18-, uh, 1877, the government said, "Okay, that's enough. You gotta come into this reservation." Uh, and the ones who were living off of it, uh, had to then within one month, within a month, they had to pack up everything. They had to (laughs) leave their homeland that they had known for generations. Uh, they had to cross the Snake River at its highest point, somehow get their families, you know, women, children, kids, old folks, um, across this river to, to gather, to go into this reservation, end of a way of life. Um, even though the treaty that required them to do that was a, was a, was a, uh, was a, a fra- fraud. Uh, and on the eve of literally the day before they were to go onto the reservation to be forced onto the reservation, these young men sort of snapped. And these young men took off and killed a bunch of white folks, you know, that they had grudges against. Um, that then triggered this war, uh, triggered this larger outbreak against whites that then, of course, brought the army in, uh, and the army tried to, to put this down. Uh, but as I researched that book, uh, the question that keep, kept coming back to me was, "Why? Why did they do that?" Because at the time of the war, uh, they were completely at peace with the Americans around them. Uh, they had adapted beautifully. They were prosperous cattlemen. They were raising cattle, you know? Uh, they had silver tea sets for Pete's sake (laughs) .

    9. JRJoe Rogan58:44

       Mm.

    10. EWElliott West58:45

        They were, they were more, they were more prosperous than the whites who were, who were living r- in the ar- in the area. They threatened no one. They were living on lands that the whites didn't want. Uh, why then? Why force them in? What's the reason? Uh, and the only reason I can think of was, um, the Little Bighorn, you know?

    11. JRJoe Rogan59:07

        Mm.

    12. EWElliott West59:08

        This year before, this humiliating defeat at the hands of the, uh, of the Lakotas and the Cheyennes. Uh, with that, the government said, "Uh, okay, that's it. Everybody, even our best friends, have to give up, and they have to come in, into reservations where we will c- we will control them." Yeah. So-

    13. JRJoe Rogan59:32

        Yeah, control them, and then force Christianity on them as well.

    14. EWElliott West59:35

        Oh, yeah. Yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan59:36

        Have you seen, uh, Taylor Sheridan's, uh, series, uh, 1923? It's a, a pre- a l- a prequel to Yellowstone. Have you ever watched any of those shows?

    16. EWElliott West59:44

        No, no.

    17. JRJoe Rogan59:45

        Really good show.

    18. EWElliott West59:46

        No.

    19. JRJoe Rogan59:46

        But one of, one of the things that 1923 documents, it stars Harrison Ford, and so it was very interesting, but it, it documents these women that are forced from their tribe to go into these schools.

    20. EWElliott West59:57

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JRJoe Rogan59:57

        Where their, uh, Christianity is forced upon them.

    22. EWElliott West1:00:00

        Sure, sure.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

        They're beaten and treated horrifically, so it's v- very hard to watch-

    24. EWElliott West1:00:05

        Yeah, yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:00:06

        ... because you know that that is what happened.

    26. EWElliott West1:00:07

        Of course, yeah. That's, uh, the boarding schools.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:00:10

        Yeah.

    28. EWElliott West1:00:10

        That goes way back before 1923. By '23, it's sort of, it's sort of winding down. Um, but yeah, yeah, all sorts, of course, uh, scandalous, uh, news recently in the past year or two about the kinds of, uh, treatment that came out of those, out of those schools. Here and in Canada, the same sort of thing is being revealed in, in, uh, in Canada about the abuses under those, under those schools. Yeah.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:00:35

        Yeah.

    30. EWElliott West1:00:35

        It's not just Christianity that's being forced on. They are, uh, required, uh, to speak only English.
11. 1:03:57 – 1:17:21

    Reservations, resource pressure, and the California Gold Rush as an engine of violence

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:03:57

       That's fascinating. When they initially tried to move the Natives to reservations-

    2. EWElliott West1:04:05

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:04:05

       ... how did they... Were they doing it because where the Natives were, there was valuable resources? Were they doing it because geographically, they could control them better in these regions? Like, what was the motivation initially?

    4. EWElliott West1:04:18

       It was all of that. Yeah, uh, certainly they were, um, w- especially when they're in particular, you know, places that, uh, are very rich in resources. The g- great examples, of course, were mining rushes, um, these people who were, again, hunter-gatherers, uh, living in this someplace, this remote mountain area up in California or Arizona or wherever. Uh, suddenly, you know, they're overrun by these people coming in, overrun because they are, uh, they are, uh, living on some of the richest places, uh, in the nation. Uh, so you gotta get rid of them, right? Uh, uh, but there's also the reason this is a way to control them, uh, and to, in the eyes of the government, to transform them, right? Put them on these reservations and you can turn them into the kind of people that you want them to be, yeah, make them American.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:05:13

       Mm-hmm.

    6. EWElliott West1:05:14

       Yeah, uh, and that's what... So it was both of those things, both of those things together.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:05:19

       Which is historically, like when we look back at it now, it's, like, one of the most horrific aspects of it, that we just tried to eliminate them and just integrate them into our culture.

    8. EWElliott West1:05:28

       Right, that was always the, uh, the formal government goal, uh-

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:05:34

       It wasn't simply, give them a place to live the way they live. It was not-

    10. EWElliott West1:05:38

        No, virtually no one was saying that.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:05:41

        Geez.

    12. EWElliott West1:05:42

        Even the people who were, were called, uh, this was sort of a, a formal term, Friends of the Indians. They were organi- an organization called The Friends of The Indians, and they were, uh, honestly in their own hearts, they thought that they were doing what was necessary for the best for these people. Uh, but this was... Uh, they w- they said, "The only way we can do that, the only way that these people can be saved is to transform them into people like us, you know, to make them into our... uh, to integrate them into our, our culture." Um, and that, uh, it depended on really b- basically three things. Uh, there was- uh, it w- uh, it was- uh, they had to become farmers 'cause, you know, from the beginning in this country, you know, that's sort of the ideal life. That's how you s- that's how you begin your, your integration into the American economy, farming, you know, the Jeffersonian vision, you know, of, uh, the ideal farmer. Um, they gotta be Christian, they have to have this common, uh, common religion, um, and education. We've gotta take their young people, and we've got to put them in schools where they will be- not only learn the basics of the three R's and so forth, but they'll be...... "culturally educated." Uh, "they will be culturally transformed." So these boarding schools, uh, were meant to transform these people, uh, into Americans, we'll take it, uh, so yeah. Uh, so we, uh, you often hear the term genocide thrown around, uh, and there are times in American history when that was absolutely true, when there was an effort to simply eradicate Indian peoples. Um, but the whole reservation system was not meant for that. Sometimes it turned out that way, but the purpose of it was this c- control and transformation. That's what was supposed to happen. And then when that happened, once that was done, then they, the reservations would be done away with. Everybody would, uh, uh, live in harmony, you know?

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:07:51

        Wow. It had to be-

    14. EWElliott West1:07:53

        Didn't happen, of course, but-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:07:54

        Of course. It had to be so confusing to them what the resources were that the white man wanted too, because they're like, "Why do you want gold?" Like, what?

    16. EWElliott West1:08:06

        (laughs)

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:08:07

        You can't eat it. You can't use it as a weapon.

    18. EWElliott West1:08:10

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:08:10

        So strange.

    20. EWElliott West1:08:11

        It is, in a, a lot of ways it is, uh, you know, gold, as you said, it's, it's virtually useless. It's, it's very soft, right?

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:08:18

        Yeah.

    22. EWElliott West1:08:19

        So you can't make it into a, a, a hammer or that.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:08:20

        What a strange thing to be the most valuable of all commodities.

    24. EWElliott West1:08:26

        It's really shiny. (laughs)

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:08:28

        B- b- how bizarre that so many parts of the world had agreed upon that.

    26. EWElliott West1:08:32

        Well, that's right. Uh, it just, cross-culturally, across hundreds of years, you know, the, uh, Egyptians, you know?

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:08:38

        Yeah.

    28. EWElliott West1:08:38

        Egyptians called gold, uh, the breath of God, you know? The Aztec, uh, consider it, uh, God's scat. This was the excrement of the gods, you know, it came...

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:08:48

        (laughs)

    30. EWElliott West1:08:48

        (laughs)
12. 1:17:21 – 1:36:09

    The Grass Revolution: Comanche horse empire, frontier warfare, and the technology tipping point

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:17:21

       There's a fantastic book about Texas and about the Comanches called Empire of the Summer Moon.

    2. EWElliott West1:17:26

       Sure. Uh-huh.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:17:26

       Have you read it?

    4. EWElliott West1:17:27

       Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:17:28

       Incredible book. Uh, it, uh, it details the difficulty that they had in trying to establish colonies, uh, both in, uh, New Mexico and in Texas.

    6. EWElliott West1:17:39

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:17:39

       Because of the Comanche, and-

    8. EWElliott West1:17:41

       Sure.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:17:42

       ... that is an, uh, an absolutely amazing documentation of what took place in this area.

    10. EWElliott West1:17:48

        Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, a part of that story, uh, has to do with what you, what we were talking about earlier, and that is horses.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:18:01

        Yes.

    12. EWElliott West1:18:01

        Right?

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:18:02

        Yeah.

    14. EWElliott West1:18:02

        This was one of the great revolutions. I call it the other American revolution. (laughs) In the book, I call it the Grass Revolution. Um, 'cause remember, h- you know, horses now had, of course, started here, went to Asia, um, became extinct here, and the Europeans brought 'em back. Coronado was the first to, uh, to bring them into, uh, where they had been born, onto the South Plains.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:18:29

        And what year was this?

    16. EWElliott West1:18:31

        Coronado?

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:18:31

        Yeah.

    18. EWElliott West1:18:31

        1540s. In the 1540s, um, and then the Spanish came, uh, for good, uh, at the end of the 1500s, uh, up in establishing Santa Fe along, along the, along the Rio Grande River. They brought horses, uh, and then wasn't until around 1680, uh, with the, this rebellion of, uh, Pueblo Indians in the Santa, in the, uh, Santa Fe area in, uh, that drove the Spanish out, uh, for 12 years, that these horses began to spread-... across the West. Now, they had- had begun to spread before, and, uh, we're- we're coming to understand now that there were probably more of them out there than we realized earlier, than we realized. But the explosive growth of horses out of N- New Mexico is- comes after 1680, uh. Uh, 1780, 100 years later, uh, Indian peoples across the plains, uh, in the Southwest and into the Rocky Mountains have all developed- adapted the horse- a- adopted and adapted to that horse into what we call horse cultures that is these ways of life that depend upon the horse. Without the horse, y- you can't do what you- what you want to do. It's like we have a car culture, right? Uh, uh, and this thing- this gave them, among other things, uh, great military power, economic power, uh, but also- also, uh, military power, uh. And the key to that, Joe, was, uh, the fact that (laughs) uh, horses are herbivores, right? And they're adapted to this- the second-largest grassland on Earth, uh, the Great Plains, uh. And when you put a human on a horse (laughs) , then um, then it becomes something else.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:20:34

        Mm.

    20. EWElliott West1:20:35

        It becomes what I call a horse-man. That is horse hyphen man, right? Uh, not a horseman. It becomes- it's- it's like you take these two animals and you fuse them-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:20:46

        Mm.

    22. EWElliott West1:20:46

        ... into one thing, right? And this animal, like a centaur, right? And this animal has, uh, the power, uh, and the speed, uh, and the grace, uh, and the beauty, mm, of a running horse, and it has the brain of a human being. It has the imagination, uh, and the, uh, innovation, right? (laughs) And the arrogance of a human being. So that's a new animal.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:21:16

        Mm.

    24. EWElliott West1:21:16

        It's bad news for the bison, really bad news for the bison, because the first time you have a grass-eating predator.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:21:26

        Ah.

    26. EWElliott West1:21:26

        You have a killer. You have a killer, uh, that can draw upon the same energy in the grasses that the bison do, uh, and it's ultimately fatal, uh, for them, right? But the same time, it becomes this- uh, these horse cultures become extraordinary, you know, military machines. Uh, and that's what the Comanches were. That's what the- that b- the book is about, uh, and that's wha- that's- that was this other American revolution. The same time that our revolution in the East is going on, there is this revolution in- in life and power in the middle of what's today the United States, or the rise of these native empires, yeah?

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:22:12

        Mm.

    28. EWElliott West1:22:12

        The Comanches, uh, and the Lakotas and others. These become these sort of superpowers. They dominate. They dominate the middle of America, right? And they just kick the bejabbers out of the Spanish, uh (laughs) -

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:22:23

        Yeah.

    30. EWElliott West1:22:24

        ... and of- and of others. It's not until the Americans show up, uh, with their numbers, uh, overwhelming numbers, you know, and with their new technologies, uh-

Episode duration: 2:01:16