Ep. 832: Osceola, Native American Slavery, and The Seminole Wars

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That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. Good Lord, writer Jamie Holmes is here. His third book's out. Just out. I'm holding my hand here. It's called The Free and the Dead, The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, The Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War. Released on February 3rd. So we're going to talk about the Seminole Wars. And we're going to talk about a fellow you have certainly heard about, Osceola. Jamie, I was going to tell you all about how I got interested in this. I got interested in this one. Clay on Bear Grease did a series on Osceola. And thinking to myself, how would Clay get the definitive story? There's got to be more. There's no way Clay didn't miss something that I would need to know about. Jamie Holmes is a writer and the author of the books The Free and the Dead, of course what I'm holding right here, plus 12 seconds of silence in the book Nonsense. His work has appeared in print or online in the New York Times. The New Yorker, Slate, Wired, The Atlantic, and he has slummed it over at USA Today, among other publications. He holds a master's words, not Jamie's. Well, it's just like I was, you know, really, it was like he was kicking ass. He's like, you know, he's kicking ass. And then it just. I'd be thrilled to be in USA today Is that still going concern? Remember they used to put it outside the hotel room? That was the paper they put outside all the hotel rooms It's got to be still going He holds a Masters of International Affairs From Columbia University School of International Affairs You know, Randall over there holds a PhD You have a Masters Yeah And an honorary. But it's an honorary. Okay. But it's much bigger than mine. Good, good. Yeah. Previously worked at New America as a policy analyst in international development and served as a future tense fellow. Prior to that, he was a research coordinator at Harvard University's Department of Economics, where he focused on behavioral economics. Can you very quickly tell me what that means? Yeah, sure. Behavioral economics? Behavioral economics tries to take insights from psychology and put them into policy. So, for example, there's a psychological phenomenon called, what's it called, like priming. Or like let's say if you're giving a tip in a taxi cab, right, and they say your three options are $5, $7, and $9. This is not called priming. This is called, there's another word for it. And then you say $7, $9, and $11. So it's called anchoring. So you're anchoring your expectation of what the average is based on, you know, these three things. And they show how you can move people to give more donations based on these three numbers. And you move them up and down. So then they take that and, you know, you use that for fundraising. So what they really did is there's a book by this guy, Cialdini, which was like sort of insights from the business world. and how salespeople and people making products use and discovered these psychological insights and maps them on and, you know, psychologists are discovering similar things. And then they want to basically turn that around instead of manipulating people to buy things or get them to do what you want, you know, whatever it is, raise money. You want to make positive policy changes. So that was the idea behind it. It had, you know, and there was a big push in the Obama government where he hired a lot of those people. Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, and my boss at Harvard, Senator Malnath. And they tried a bunch of stuff. Some worked, some didn't. I got lost there. Tried a bunch of stuff. I don't understand what you mean. They tried a bunch of interventions based on psychological insights. So I'll give you another example of what they actually did. So what happens to save energy if you send people a letter, and in a letter you tell them your neighbors are saving a lot of energy. They're not using a lot of water. They're keeping their electricity billed out. I've gotten so much. So this is like social pressure. When you see how much their water they're using. Yeah. And you're like, you don't have three kids. Some bitch doesn't have three kids. So why are you using it? I go over there and talk to the neighbor. I'm saying, this is a big shot. You're a nerve. So this is social pressure, and they're trying to use it to get people to use less energy. They also did stuff with the size of soda cups. Like if you want people to ingest less sugar instead of putting a 44-ounce cup out. Because they're going to drink, they're going to drink, it's not like they're going to drink 44 ounces of soda no matter how big the cup is. Understood. Yeah. Or like the size of a tray in a cafeteria. Yeah, or you go to a store and they put the, you know, all the high sugar things right near their cash register because they want you to make an impulse buy. Yeah, yeah. They say, well, what can we do with that? You know, what if we put something that's good for you there? Which doesn't necessarily work. So they brought, I don't want to spend too much time on this. It's cool. It's interesting. They brought in, on a policy basis, the administration brought in people who would, for lack of a better word, be good at manipulating the public to have behaviors that they wish they had. Absolutely. And to counteract what? I'm going to have to put the seminal words on hold. Corporations are doing this to get you to make certain choices. Sure. The idea was sort of leveling the playing field. And coffee shop people are doing it. Yeah. Because when you get the tip functions, they're like, you could be like, the tip would be like 70%, 80%, 90% or other. And you got to be like, oh, now I'm in a situation where I got to hit other, you know, getting out of control. Or there are stores in New York now, New York City, where you go and you're buying something at the counter. And they say, how much do you want to tip? At the counter. You have not had any interaction with a human. I am not tipping. I want to get into seminars. You're at the counter. but I do want to the other day when we were on we were going to take our kids to visit their grandmas we were in the restaurant and in the restaurant there's like the price of the menu I wish I'd take a picture of it very fine print in the bottom is that we don't want to because of inflation we don't want to change our menu's prices so unless you ask otherwise all of this is elevated by 14%. But you can request to have that not happen. That's wild. I am not kidding you. On the bottom of the menu, and I ate there. We were staying in a hotel. I ate there probably three times before my father-in-law noticed. That's weird. That's weird. So it says $8, but it's really whatever. You think your omelet is $12. Your omelet is, they're saying, we're putting a, unless you ask otherwise, that's actually 14% more because of inflation. But we don't want to change the menu prices. That's too weird. It's a true word. It's guys like you. It's guys like you. Man, end of the Seminole War story. Yeah. Dude, here's why I got it. I love your book. the story does two things. The book does two things. The book captures all, the book validates all of your sort of pre, not your, the book validates one's, all of one's preconceived notions about the brutality and crime of the Indian Wars. but simultaneously it turns every preconceived notion you have about the Indian Wars on its head and I'll explain it's like in getting into the story you have to come to grips with here's a group of Native Americans that kind of had slaves this story involves a Native American that was a West Point graduate that went to fight against Native Americans. It involves a person that is able to ally himself with Native American forces who is a freed slave fighting alongside Native Americans who at the same time, the same individuals that at the same time kind of have some slaves. It involves a Native American war leader who is one-eighth maybe one-eighth Native American that is mostly genetically, not culturally, not spiritually, but through weird circumstances is genetically a Western European. there is a lot a lot to like unpack in this story it's such a complex story how to set the table for it if you don't have an idea I'll tell you what I think you should do I'm curious how we go from behavioral economics to I wondered that the whole time why did you even write the book? I was wondering about that Yeah, well, The Bridge is my second book, which is 12 Seconds of Silence, which is completely within this genre, which is historical narrative nonfiction with a ton of archive work. I did a lot of original archive work. Yeah, you did. Some of the archive work I found contradicts some of the assumptions that we've had about the story. And there's a lot of things that are central to the – Zoom in on this, Phil. there's a lot of things that are this is the son of a bitch of notes so if you're one of those guys that looks at a book and he's like I can't read that it's too long don't read the notes then how attractive it is I sat down with it 24 hours ago and I thought there's no way I'm going to get through this and then I flipped to the end of the actual last chapter and I thought it's a pretty good chance I'll tell you why I did that and then I'll answer your question about how I got to it because I think one of the things that Clay said on his first podcast is like, imagine if somebody from a foreign country came and observed you and maybe they had a political agenda and almost all of the documentation about you is from these outside observers. What kind of an evidence base would you be dealing with? That's an interesting point. So that's the kind of evidence base that's, and the evidence base is messy and it's full of contradictions and it's full of biases and it's full of errors. It's the newspapers at the time are making stuff up. So there's a lot of mythology. So as I began to get my my way closer to what I thought the story was, I realized I had to kind of do a separate book in the back for the academics and say, OK, here's where I think this is. This academic says this. I don't think that's right. Here's my evidence. And I'm going to lay it all out because I wanted to keep the front of the book just the story. I came to it just as a storyteller and just wanting to enjoy the story, explore the archives myself very quickly. And then I'll return to your point. There's a great quote that says, the past is a foreign country. And it comes from a 1950s Edwardian novel. But there's a scholar named David Lowenthal who did a famous book with that title, The Past is a Foreign Country. and it's really about history and then heritage as mythologized history but the idea of a history book and and and writing and reading about history as an exploration i know you've traveled a lot i've traveled some going to a foreign place at first kind of being overwhelmed by the weirdness and the difference of it and slowly starting to pick up clues as to what these different things mean that are new to you. And then also having that experience reflect back on you. So you're exploring the world and then it's also reflecting on how you know what is normal. They do it like this. I thought this was normal. So it's changing your view of yourself as you're exploring. I think in that way it's a lot like travel writing. So I came to it with that with that goal to just selfishly explore the story that I was interested in and do as much archive work as I could. After I did this book on science, my first book, I kind of got disenamored with it a little bit for various reasons that are not very interesting. But I love writing. Disenamored with what? With psychological science. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. But I love writing and I love narrative writing. I kind of started off wanting to do fiction before I got into nonfiction. And so I thought, well, this is a genre. I really like Eric Larson's books and David Graham's stuff. Like, I love this genre. Maybe this is a place I can reinvent myself a little. So 12 Seconds of Silence is, I'm very proud of that book. It's about World War II and these group of scientists. So science was kind of the bridge from the first book to the second book. And it's about a group of scientists who, World War II, who invent this new weapon to shoot down airplanes. and they take down a Nazi superweapon with it. So I fell in love with archive work during that process. Like you're digging in the crates, you're going to these, you're going to the Library of Congress, you're going to NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration. It's kind of like a treasure hunt. And, you know, so just a couple things in here that nobody has. They didn't have Abraham's Indian name right. If you look it up online, it's going to be wrong. I mean, I haven't changed the Wikipedia. I actually think that he was born among the Seminoles and not a former slave in Pensacola. And I have good evidence for that in the back of the book. So there's a lot of things that I added, a lot of things that I discovered, new archival evidence that historians get to debate and disagree with and move forward in that way. So I fell in love with my second book, and then I just found this story and jumped in. and it was a different archival challenge because of where the archives are for this story. The last one, it was almost all in D.C., so I moved to D.C. for it. This one, all of the archives, the best archives are really written by soldiers, either in the Army or their militia or their volunteers, and all of those archives are all across America. I mean, there's some military files in D.C. There's some important people that have stuff at the Library of Congress, like Andrew Jackson, like the main general, Thomas Jessup. but all the soldiers diaries and those are really the best records. It's like state historical societies and universities. So, you know, I went poking around main historical. Oh, here's a journal that's not been cited before. So that was that was fun. And I love that part of it. And then you kind of sit with all of these contradictions and you try to distill the story that that, you know, makes sense as far as you can make sense of it. That's awesome. can you start by when I was kicking around how to get into this I thought let's start with the thing that was most confusing to me and then I'm just going to trust that it's going to be a thing that's very confusing to other people I always thought that there was a tribe and I just assumed the tribe had been in existence for a thousand years that there was a tribe of people that were the Seminole. Can you explain how that group of people came to coalesce, where that name came from, who they were? When you say Seminole, what are you saying? Sure. It's a good question. So Seminole comes from the Spanish Cimarron, which is sometimes translated as runaway or untamed. I think it was originally in reference to undomesticated cattle, horses. I think to some degree the Seminole Tribe of Florida doesn't like the runaway designation. Untamed. But just quickly, that is a thing that is very common in European nomenclature for tribal peoples. is we use, use, use a lot of words that were not their words. Yeah. But we'd be allied with or make contact with a tribe. Yeah. The tribe would be like, well, I'll tell you what I call them. And that would become the name. There's a word for that. It's called an exonym. Okay. Name given by an outside group. And then to some degree, those names can be reclaimed. Yeah. And they take them back. But to answer your question, you know, originally there's an estimate of 25,000 indigenous people in Florida. This is at Spanish contact. OK, those, including the Timuquans, like some others, those people were were wiped out. You know, those people were gone by the time the Seminoles come down from disease, from military conflicts. the people that became the Seminole and even the Mikazuki tribe, which is down there, come from the Creek Confederacy, Creek, another X and M, Muskogee people. And these are kind of loose confederations. And what happens with the Seminoles is you have Americans, settlers coming down, pressuring people in what is now Georgia and Alabama. And you have the elements of the Greek Confederacy starting to acculturate. You have some intermarrying. Tell people what that means, acculturate. Acculturate meaning they're starting to adopt the customs of the Anglos and then the Americans. And eventually you have Greek enslavers running plantations at scale. So they're growing crops and they're having slaves at that scale. I mean, that's the degree of acculturation. People of Creek descent. Yes. Okay. Creek descent. But they own deeded land? A portion of them. No, it's not deeded. No. Okay. So they're running plantain operations on open, unclaimed lands. Yes. I see. Yes. So you have this split within the Creek Confederacy, this schism. and it's sort of continuing in the 1790s. It sort of becomes even more dramatic as to are we going to adopt these new ways, which is like, okay, we've got hunting rifles. Our clothes are changing. We're buying things at markets, the things that women used to make or were now purchasing. Are we going to shift fully into agriculture? They were growing things, but also hunting. So there are all these pressures that are changing the culture. And, of course, the settlers are pushing them out, and there's military conflicts and all that. The Seminoles, the main Seminole force, the main body of the people who came to be called Seminoles, came in three phases. Would you mind tying this real quick to known American history? Just to remind, like, where are we in terms of the post-revolution? Yeah, yeah. So the first wave of people that became Seminoles is 1700, 1750. Okay. So this is pre-revolution. And they broke apart from the Greek Confederacy and decided we're going to go with the old ways. We're not going to change. So they're having this debate about do we adopt what would become American ways. But they're having this conversation before America exists. as America is coming to exist and then after the revolution as well. Okay. So one of the dramatic things that happens, so anyway, I'll quickly answer the immigration thing because you brought up an important point and then I'll get back to this Creek split. 1750, another wave around 1790, another wave around 1814. You have a bunch of groups down in Florida at this time that Americans all call Seminoles, even though the Americans knew they were not all Seminoles. So you have Seminoles. The main two to remember are Seminoles and Mikazuki. You also have some people who still identify as Creeks down there. You have some Tallahassees, some Yuchies, some Tallahassees. And in American newspapers, they're all called Seminoles. I think in part because it makes it easier to sell the treaty. If it's all one people, all one people agreed to this treaty to leave. but really it's fragmented and at the time they don't identify as one group really uh you know i have something that abraham wrote at the chief abraham wrote at the time where he's listing the different groups now later after the seminal wars those groups began to reclaim that term and identify all as seminals okay um but at the time they were not thinking of themselves that way even though it appears that way in American newspapers. And, of course, this causes a lot of confusion because if you have a split between the Seminoles and Mikazookis and you call them all Seminoles, you can't understand what's going on. You can't read the situation. So there's a lot of confusion that comes from, of course, the generals, the people closest to the story, they know very well. They're highly aware. They know they're dealing with different groups, with different leaders, with different motivations, with different objectives. but the story is we're fighting Seminoles. That's exactly right. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the Meat Eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store Milwaukee at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. The greatest schism in one of the great schisms, you know, there's a war, of course, in 13, 1814 called the Creek War. In a way, it's a civil war. But going back to the 1790s, there's a very interesting part of this story. where the creeks are allied with the british the upper creeks i think and they're attacking against they're fighting the americans during the revolution and they're attacking what's there what's there it's plantations and they're taking pow's which is the old way you would always take pow's you didn't care what skin color they were and you would either kill them adopt them into the tribe or make them servants not agricultural workers on a farm but they would be servants and their children would be free. Their children could be part of the tribe, which is important. And the Seminoles still practice that as late as 1774. Now the creeks start to change. And about 1790, okay, well, if we're going to practice the other way, then enslavement is going to be by skin color, and it's going to be transgenerational. So I'm going to own your children, and we're going to do it by skin color. And that is a radical change in Greek culture. That was a term that I had to look up. I'd seen it a thousand times. I don't even know how to pronounce it. Chattel, like. Chattel slavery. Yeah. And it was like, I'd seen that where I never looked it up. Reading your book, I look it up. And it's like this concept that I own you. Yeah. You're my servant and your child is my servant. It's dramatic. That's dramatic. Yeah. It's an interesting distinction. Yeah. And so I think a number of the people who became black Seminoles were children of POWs who escaped down to the Seminoles who had a more open view of this as Creek culture is changing. That's for sure part of the story. So, yeah, it's really it's really the pressure from the north and then these various groups coming down and identifying generally as Seminoles, even though they're not exactly that yet. where where does as these groups get pushed down oh you know there's another thing I want to talk before we get there because it's part of the pushing down can you explain the was it the red shirts or red arrows what was it the red sticks I will but you brought up something and I didn't respond to it chattel slavery and then I'll get to the red sticks so chattel slavery right I own you I own your children but it's basically you're a piece of property and what they wanted to do after, especially after 1831, when you have Nat Turner's rebellion, it was illegal to teach the slave to read. So the rules are basically I can sell you, I can split apart your family. You're not going to have any knowledge. I don't want you knowing anything. You're not going to be allowed to read, right? You're not going to be allowed to travel freely, and these rules vary on different plantations. You can't travel without a pass, and you can't accumulate wealth. and then if you look at the rights of the black seminals almost all of them worldly, they speak two or three languages they have vast wealth they're traveling freely and there's a rule according to Wiley Thompson who's Andrew Jackson's Indian agent that it is illegal to sell them and their constant promise is not to split up the families now laws get broken but that's apparently a law now when Americans take over Florida You have this population, I would say there's 500 black Seminoles estimated. I would say about 100 are servants by the old Muscogee way, which is not hard labor. And it's sort of a system of tribute where you get a portion of your of the corn that you grow, which sounds to me like a tax more than slavery. And then you have about 400 who are claiming to be slaves. The quote is they all pretended to be free, all pretended to be purchased. And if they're children of POWs from the revolution, they're not going to have any papers proving that. Of course, the Creeks can't prove that they own them. So in a way, they're more free to go down to Florida, but in a way, they're vulnerable because there's no paperwork. So, you know, you have when America takes over Florida, it becomes the territory of Florida in 1821. And it's different than the Spanish policy where you really had three groups of people and it was pretty easy to free yourself if you're an enslaved person. Florida doesn want to do that They want to have and in fact when they write their constitution it becomes a state in 1845 They try to ban all African Americans who are free from entering Florida They're not allowed to do that, but they try to do that. Because they wanted to clean it up. They wanted to clean up all the confusion about who was who. You don't, yeah, yeah. You don't want, they didn't want free black people there as a bad example to the enslaved population. That was their idea. So the black Seminoles are claiming to be slaves in an environment where you cannot have a large free black population. In a way, they're using it as protection. I'm sure there was variation. So I'd rather be these guys, quote, slave than your slave slave. And you don't want to be vulnerable to being enslaved. Exactly. If you're already someone else's property in the eyes of the outsiders, they can't take you. That's the game. So Abraham owns his son, Renty, as a slave. Yeah, I thought that was the paperwork that when they have a kid, they establish all this paperwork that their kids are owned by them. Chief Mikanopi sells the child and you go and you write it down in the record books of the local administrators. There's a family that goes and tries to write down the free status of their children in three different record books. So they're trying to protect their children. They know a day is going to come that claims are going to be made on them, and they want to be able to say, look at the record books at Palaka, at Fort Brook, or, you know, Tampa Bay. So that's what's happening mostly. And you have historians in the past who have said, oh, they say they're all slaves. They're all slaves. It's more complicated. Yeah. Yeah. I still want to get to the red sticks, but I want to talk about the slavery thing for a minute. Yeah, yeah. because this becomes a big part. Yeah. You had mentioned that there's almost like a reverse, there's like a southern railroad. Yeah. Where if you, in the deep south, if you're an escaping slave, it's understood among slave communities that an option, if you can't get north, an option is to get south. Yeah. That's such, yeah. So as early as I want to say something like 816, It's in it's the late 17th century. The Spanish adopt a policy in which an escaped slave can come down, say that they're Catholic, join the army and they will back up their rights. So there's this deal that's going down. If you can get down there, if you're willing to fight, the authorities down there will recognize your status. I mean, we do this in in the United States military today. Right. You get you can get a fast track to citizenship if you serve in the armed forces and the American armed forces. This is a very old deal going back to antiquity, soldiery for civil rights. And then some people are coming down to Florida and leaving. You know, you can get you can get down to the Caribbean. You can get down to Spanish Cuba. So that's happening as well. yeah yeah it's it's you know the interior of Florida and then we'll get back to the rest the interior of Florida is not settled it's there's no minerals to extract and the Spanish don't try to settle it and neither do the British I mean there are some Spanish missions but it's really the coasts it's kind of a strategic buffer you know no Spain Spain comes they settle St. Augustine, I think it's 1565 or 63, something like that. And they lose it to Britain very quickly because they side with the French in the French and Indian War. French lose, Britain takes over, and the Spanish side with us in the American Revolution. They attack British Florida, both from Spanish Louisiana and from Cuba. They take it back over. But it's still a strategic buffer. It's like you don't really want to live there. It's like Greenland. It's the Greenland of its day. So to the Red Sticks. I got a comment about how in your description of Florida it's funny because you hear you have these like if you look at a map now you'd be like oh it's the eastern US. And you have in your head that there's like Boston and Philadelphia and Charleston. You're like, that's the whole settled part by these dates. And it made me think of MacArthur had this approach in World War II where he would just shoot through areas and just pass everybody up and grab cities. And he'd be like, we'll sort that out later. Like instead of rolling along on a unified front, he would now and then just bust through it. Sounds like a blitzkrieg. And then, yeah, and then be like, no, I know we drove past tons of people, but we'll just get them later. Like, I just want to keep moving. And you think of, in a little bit like, when you imagine your mind's eye, the settlement in United States vacation of the continent, you imagine it being this line. Yes. But it has all these, like, misses. Yes. Like, it misses Florida for a while. It misses the Mississippi Delta. And they just kind of go like, we'll get to that later. then the great plains you know san francisco is a big city so like oh they're done they're done conquering the thing like oh no we left off a huge we left off the great plains we'll come back and get to that later you know yeah but by 1835 you have everything up to the mississippi except maybe parts of like what is i don't know what the mississippi does when it gets super far north it may go into minnesota or something but basically it's michigan and florida are the only places that are not states um and florida is the least settled and it's the most sparsely populated you have 15 million people in the u.s at that time you have almost all of it is rural really small cities new york's like 200 000 70 70 percent of people are working on farms and it's like most the country is is farming and hunting and fishing um and And Florida is really these cities. And you have, you know, in 20, we take it over. We take over Florida. It becomes the territory of Florida in 1821. One of the first things they do is they move the tribes into an Indian reservation in the center of Florida. But we don't, it's unmapped. The middle of Florida is unmapped. We have maps for less than half of it. There's, you know, there's a quote, we know less about the interior of Florida than the interior of China. At some point in the war, there's a general who has to go to a bookstore to buy a map of Florida. That's the best map he can get of the territory. So Florida is lagging. And, you know, the bottom half, a lot of it's because it's not good for farming. You know, the bottom half of it, you've been to Lake Okeechobee, I think. Below that, the natural Everglades, like, you're not farming there. Yeah. Yeah. So the red sticks is, you know, there's this is about the split in the Creek Confederacy. And Osceola comes from a comes from the red sticks. And they fought against Andrew Jackson. They're the upper creeks. The lower creeks were called the white sticks. By the way, red sticks, baton rouge, the red sticks. Oh, yeah. And they fight and Jackson fights with the white sticks against the red sticks. There's the are these colors related to skin color. Totally coincidental. Coincidental. Okay. It's the Red War Club that they had. I guess it was painted red. Got it. Yeah, baton, the stick, red stick. Okay. Yeah. And so there's the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. I want to say it's 1814, where Jackson and the White Sticks have a resounding defeat, and they kill 800 red sticks. There's reportedly 20 or so survivors. and, you know, widows and orphans come down in Florida and Osceola is part of that group. So, you know, he's in Florida. Then Jackson, you know, the guy who killed his people becomes president and he's got to sit in these meetings where Jackson's representative says, you know, please leave. I'm your friend. I'm trying to help you. And so, you know, he comes out of this deep scar of seeing real violence when he's young. He comes down to Florida when he's 10. so he's carrying this profound trauma of seeing his people split in two yeah um and he starts to see it again happen in florida and you know he won't he won't stand for it one thing that clay got right in his series on the seminal wars in osceola is clay starts it out with john lee anderson's seminal wind tell me um the famous song blow blow seminal wind yeah yeah and clay's favorite part of Seminole Wind is when the guy sits on a Cypress stump and he can hear the voice of Osceola cry. And this was a huge, like huge country song. And it would be probably, my guess would be that that would be the same way we recently interviewed an individual about the Edmund Fitzgerald. and like this Gordon Lightfoot's the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is many people's passageway into knowing that there is a thing a shipwreck called the Edmund Fitzgerald I would say Seminole Wind for many people was probably their introduction to these terms for people far away from Florida yeah and Osceola too he's still the icon of the Florida Seminole football team Yeah. So explain his background, Osceola, because he's going to as we're going to get into the wars, he emerges as a primary figure and you focus on you might as well do this. Yeah. You focus on Osceola. Yeah. You focus on Abraham. So can you give us some biographical sketch of these two like really different folks? Sure. Yeah. So so I broke down a little what he came out of as a as a boy. he's creek he allies himself with a powerful mikazuki chief named sam jones uh or abyaka we called him sam jones and he's a military enforcer figure for him uh he's one of the most famous native americans in american history i mean he's everywhere in the press he's in european papers he becomes in his day in his day yeah in his day he becomes this mythologized figure his character is how would i describe his character he's an angry young man when we meet him in the book is when he's in prison for five or six i mean that's a vivid yeah anecdote i could start there It's a memorable introduction. Yeah. So Andrew Jackson sends down this Indian agent, Wiley Thompson, down to Florida, down to this place called Fort King, which is present day Ocala. And Thompson's job is really to convince them to leave without a war because they don't want to spend the money on a war. So it's cheaper to send someone down and kind of try to convince them I'm your friend. And if not, we'll fight a war. But we're really friends. And I'm a nice federal guy. And these locals, geez, these locals, they're kind of corrupt. Actually, at one point he says, you've been cheated in the past by these locals, but, you know, all bad men are not yet dead, which I wanted for the title. All bad men, they wouldn't let me have it. All bad men are not yet dead. So anyway, he sends him down here and Osceola, who knows who Jackson is, who knows American intentions, has to sit in these council meetings and listen to letters written by Jackson. Killed his family. Yeah. So he's like, I got to sit here and listen to this. So he storms into Wiley Thompson's office in, I want to say, April 1835. It's before the war begins, by eight months. And he cusses him out. And he says, you know, you say that we have to leave like you have to leave. You say that it's going to be bad for us, it's going to be bad for you. you know there's a quote I'm not sure if it's true because there's so much mythologized but I put it in but it appears a little later after the war 1853 and he says I'm going to kill you and I'm going to leave your body out in the rain and the sun is going to turn your skin black and the vultures are going to pick the flesh off of you and yeah which was as we're getting to is oddly prophetic that's what happens It's not oddly prophetic. It's what happens. So this is the second time, or at least in Thompson's records, he says, I had warned him before. You can't talk to me that way. And so Asiola, he doesn't do anything when I see him. Thompson says, I've told you before, don't come and say this to me. In his records, when he's explaining this incident, he said, I had warned him before. You can't insult me this way. You can't threaten me in this way. And then he said, he did it again. So this had happened before. I see. He doesn't do anything when. Yeah, so on this big, well-known tirade. Yes. And Thompson says, this isn't the first time. It's not the first time this has happened. Okay. And so he locks him up. Now, he doesn't personally do it. He waits until Asiola leaves and 200 yards outside of the agency house. He has four guards wrestle him to the ground, and they struggle, and they lock him up for six days. and a seo is stewing in what passes for a prison they call it the guard house and the next day he says okay i've changed my mind yeah yeah right well he's let's jump in but yeah he he can't convince him that he's calmed down so he's like send this other guy yeah i'll convince him that i've calmed down and then he'll convince you that i've calmed down because this is all just so yeah that's a good correction i don't know because that actually becomes important this is a very memorable uh story for me yeah that becomes important so there's a there's a there's a creek cattleman who's a chief whose name is charlie amathla and he's faced with the same decision everyone else is which is you know leave or it's war more or less do you want to put your family through that he's got two daughters he's got a seven-year-old kid he's creek he knows what happened in present-day Alabama and Georgia. You know, what do you want to risk? Do you want to risk it? Are you going to put your – you know. So he decides to leave. Now, some literatures call him a friendly chief. It's not the correct word. But he's decided to leave. And so Osceola says, bring Charlie Amathala. You trust him. He's leaving. And I'll talk to him, and he does. He convinces – there's no record of what they said, but Charlie Amathala goes to Thompson, And he says, you know, I'm sure he gets it. He just had he just lost his temper, but he understands that he's going to go and you should release him. And he'll come back with 80 of his people and they'll they'll, you know, true to their professions. They will pledge that they're going to go west. They're going to immigrate with the rest of us. And that's what happens. And not to jump, not to jump ahead, but Asiola kills Imahdala in front of at least one of his daughters as a warning to other leaders. not to break off, not to leave, because he doesn't want to happen what happened in Alabama and Georgia, what happened to the Creek Confederates. How does he kill them? There are a few different stories. Some of them seem to me to be clearly made up. The famous version, so he goes with Abraham, Chief Abraham, who's the chief of the Black Seminoles. All the stories put them together. They go to Amathla. One story is they meet him at Amathla's house. And Abraham says, you really shouldn't go. you want to stay fight with us keep your army with us you can't have the army size cut in half which is what would have happened um and eight of the 13 chiefs you know at first agreed to go so you're going to have your fighting force cut in half so abraham says don't go he's trying to convince him asciola tries to convince him he's not going to change his mind by one version asciola raises a rifle to him and Abraham hits the rifle in the air, preventing his murder. I don't know if that's true. Another version is he killed Imathla on the road. So one of the things that they were going to do before the immigration is they agreed to buy all the seminal cattle. So they arranged an auction and I think it was going to be December 1st and we're going to have an auction of all your cattle because you can't bring that with you. So the story goes... Who would be... Sorry. Not at all. Who's going to buy the cattle? Locals. White folks. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You have 16,000 white settlers there. Since we're making you all leave and you can't bring your cattle, your new neighbors, these white folk will buy your cattle. At a reasonable price. At an auction. And these people have been sitting there for a decade or more, kind of rubbing their hands, waiting for the government to do something about the tribes. Yes, they have. That's right. They're certainly ready for this, and they're ready to become a state, and they want to settle the state. So in their minds, that means the native population has to go. So one of the stories is Ematha was paid for his cattle. He's taking gold back away from the auction, and Abraham is with Osceola and Osceola shoots him and takes the gold and scatters the gold over his body and he goes to Abraham, who's in danger of being enslaved. And he says, see this as the price of your blood. In a way, see this as the price of your freedom. The problem with that story is it happens five days before the auction. I love details like that. That's a problem. Good story. Yeah. So the story that I believe in, it's a very mundane story, and it circulates, I want to say, in Jacksonville right afterwards, primary source. And it says that he shot him while he was gathering his cattle for the auction in front of one of his dogs. That lines up with the calendar. Yeah. It's more plausible. It's not as dramatic. Guns him down. Guns him down. And this becomes controversial. And I think it's to some extent controversial to this day in the Seminole tribe of Florida. You know, Imatla has ancestors, too, as descendants, too. How are we supposed to look at this? On one hand, you understand where Osceola is coming from. He's trying. You know, he wants to fight. On the other hand, you're going to kill a guy in front of his daughter who's trying to avoid war. It's tough. But that's what happened. hey if you're in or around milwaukee wisconsin and you live for hunting season you need to swing by the meat eater store in milwaukee we're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field first light fhf gear phelps game calls and more you'll find us at the corners of brookfield whether you're gearing up for the season dialing in a setup or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store Milwaukee at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. Should we take this up to, let's finish up with Thompson. Sure. Before we tell the story of Abraham. Yeah. Do you want me to kill Thompson? Sure. Yeah, so. We already kind of broke it by saying that he says here's what's going to happen. Yeah. So Osceola gets out of jail. As soon as Thompson hears about Imathla's murder, he knows it's game over. And he writes Washington and he says, military force is going to be needed. More or less, I failed. Like these guys aren't going to leave willfully. Not happening. And now that he did that, it has the result that they – no, Osceola didn't do this alone. I'm sure that superiors to him told him, kill Imathla. In any case, this wasn't a rogue action. I don't think he had complete consensus, but it's not him out on his own. So, yeah, and so you have a number of the people who are going to leave, who are going to immigrate, they stay. So it does have the effect that he wants. So Thompson says, okay, I failed, and he's kind of waiting around to go back home to Georgia. and that's when you have a few of the most dramatic events of the war and in the book happen at the same time, one of which is the assassination of Wiley Thompson by Osceola and 40 Mikuzuki warriors or the killing at Fort King. They have a war council and you have troops coming up from Tampa Bay, from Fort Brook. You have 100 troops that are marching up what's called the Fort King Road. It's right through the heart of the Indian Reservation, and they're planning to attack the Seminoles and the black Seminoles, and they have a date for the attack, December 31st. And so they meet in council. They say, okay, we've got two priorities. We've got to get Thompson out of the way, and we've got to handle Dade and these 108 men who are marching up towards our reservation. And Osceola says, I'll take Thompson. He's my friend, and I will see to him. Mm hmm. And so he goes up to, you know, he's ordered to attack the fort. The fort only has 50 soldiers at the time, but he waits in ambush. He waits for over a day. He later says he lured Thompson's spirit to him. Hmm. He waits in the woods near. So there's the agency house where Thompson lives and works. And then there's a little subtler store, which is a civilian like storekeeper guy. and he's got some clerks and that's uh some yards maybe 800 yards or away from down away from the fort so thompson and a companion i think an officer they're having dinner they decide to have a smoke after dinner let's have a little stroll with our cigar and he walks down near the subtler store near these woods where aseola and 40 warriors are waiting and Asiola's war cry is heard. It's apparently a distinctive shrill war cry. There's two other chiefs there who are denoted by chiefs by their attire, but nobody knows who they are. Asiola has already gotten famous for killing Imatla in the American press. He's also gotten neuriety for being loud in council. So his fame starts off because he's the most vocal. so we sort of you know the records track him because he's put a target on his back in a way in his own back and Thompson is shot 14 times I believe there's a deep knife wound to his breast he is scalped there may be a club musket to his head it's pretty gruesome the storekeeper also killed in the same manner. What about the dude he was having a smoke with? That guy dies too. No surprises in this story. Yeah, that guy dies too. And the troops think it's a feint. They think it's a distraction, and they fortify in the fort. they get one of the bodies the next day and they bury thompson at the fort temporarily and then and then his wife gets him back and his bones go back to everton georgia and she keeps his bones under her bed for a year yeah how about that's the different time period yeah man yeah and that's the start of the war and simultaneously abraham and and chief mika nopi who's the head of he's the head of, he's the seminal chief, but he's also ostensibly the head of all of the tribes and bands. Attack Dade. Tell us about, before we get into that attack, which is fascinating, what do you pick up with Osceola staking out to kill this guy? Yeah. And then the, I know some people call it the Dade massacre, the Dade fight, whatever. You gather, man, these dudes are like one with the swamp. Yeah. I mean, the The ability to just vanish and to stake up and hide and surprise people is astounding. Yeah, and there's a big parallel here, I think, to a lot of stuff that I've read about slave rebellions in the Caribbean, where it's just the landscape and the ecology of that place is just sort of used almost as a weapon against the whites, whether they're colonists or the army in this case? 100%. In fact, Colonel Taylor, who later becomes president, but he later leads the forces in Florida, and he says the climate and the terrain are much more lethal than the enemy. One of the things that he also says, he says, we try to catch them, this is later in the war, when they have fled from us, not once have we been able to overtake them. There's one of your videos where you say, I think maybe you're in South America where you're like, there's no way that I could move through the bush as quickly as some of these indigenous hunters. Some of the dudes that are from there. Yeah. No, you can't. Yeah. And the soldiers are laden down. You know, they're carrying things. They're carrying. They don't know how, you know, they've got rations. They've got heavy ammunition. They've got their heavy uniforms. And the Seminole forces are living off the land. They know where the food is. They know where the dry places are. They know where the crossings of the rivers are, which the vanish into the water, man. They like eat alligators. They catch fish. They dig roots. They find oranges. They do all of that very successfully. And, you know, it's it's General Jessup, who who is a main figure of the book. He says at one point, the nature of the country is such that an army of, you know, 500 could hold it against an army of 10,000 or something like that. You know, if we call it a war, but if you're going to use the landscape against the enemy, that's not normally how we think of a war. We think of a war where I meet you on the battlefield. We are agreeing to fight. Well, what if I don't agree to fight? Or what if I agree to fight on my terms? That is, OK, I'm here in a perfect position for me to ambush you. Come come over here. Come walk into my ambush. And so they selected the battlefields and the army was forced to go into their chosen battlefields. there's a comment someone makes in I don't know if you covered it in your book or if I heard someone mention it in Clay's piece but it would be that they would fight as long as it was going the way they wanted it to go but they were not beholden to sort of a battle plan if things look good for an ambush we'll do the ambush, if they don't we're out of here absolutely and what have you achieved if everyone gets away You know, it's it's the use of the land and and the slow, you know, they hire topographers. Like, how do we figure out where we're going? Where is everyone? And they disperse intentionally. There's a there's a general named Scott who is briefly in the head of the war in Florida. And he has like a Napoleonic handbook for like for, you know, fighting in lines and fields. And this is bushfighting. They're not used to this. They're not used to guerrilla warfare. That's what this is. There's an early event in the war in which a mailman is killed, a messenger is killed. And he going up the Fort King Road and it a hit and run It boom they take care of business and they gone And there a moment where the general realizes he says okay I have 700 troops at max That should be enough. Oh, unless they use hit and run tactics. And then he sort of writes a panicked letter like, ah, we might be in trouble here. Because if they're not going to meet us in a mass, that's a whole different kind of warfare. And one soldier calls it a hunt. hmm this has dissolved this has devolved into a hunt and and you know a lot of people quit because of that there's no glory to be had in that kind of fight yeah you quote different guys yeah soldiers that get sent down there and after a couple days you're like this ain't what i signed up for you know there's i signed up for a big gun fight that we win that's right now that's right where's my gunfight? There's a sequence in which the war has started and you have in New Orleans reports in the newspaper of things that are not happening. It's like, oh, the Indians are killing all of the settlers and they're slaughtering everyone. It's a war of extermination. This is not happening. But they're using it as recruitment. And so there's an American flag outside of the customs house and all the soldiers sign up and they take like social psychology or talk there you go there it is yes well that's what it is so i mean if somebody said that to me i would sign up like okay you know let's go those are my people when the truth is more like they're trying to get a stay away from you out in the swamps living a subsistence lifestyle they just want to be you just go away mostly yes yeah yeah they you know abraham retreats into the cove with the coochie You got to give Abraham's background. Sorry, yeah. In the Dade fight. Yeah, yeah. This is early. We got to back up to early in the war. There's, yeah. There's a lot of exposition in this story. There's a lot of context. So Abraham is a, I love it. I love Abraham. He's a diplomat. He's very poised. He is nominally Mikanopi's interpreter. So Mikanopi is the seminal chief. The whites think he's just the interpreter. He's more than that. He is also Mikanopi's sense bearer, along with his chief name jumper. The consiliers. The consiliers, like the privy counselor or the prime minister. He's the advisor. He's the keeper of the king's conscience. So he's the interpreter and the advisor. And he is the traditional story is that he escaped from an owner in Pensacola. I found evidence that from him directly, he can't say where he was born, but he was born among the Seminoles in Florida. And there's several other pieces of evidence that, to me, without a doubt, say that he was born in Memphis. Does his age line up with that potential? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe his parents were escaped slaves? It would not surprise me if his parents were POWs taken in Creek raids during the Revolutionary War. That would not surprise me. So his parents were maybe brought into Florida by the Creek And then he, because it wasn't chattel slavery, he rose to he was born among the Seminole. Yeah. Rose to a position of prominence to where he's like a right hand man. He's formally adopted and he's formally freed in 1830. There's maybe 15 of this 500 or maybe 20 who are formally free. OK. What else can I say about Abraham? He's described by the army as having a continence which none can read. He's described as a real Martin Van Buren, as a political animal. He speaks softly with a gentile emphasis. He is said to have a great deal of fun about him. He is said to be artful. He is said to have more wit in his left eye because his right eye angles inward than most men do in both. He's a real old Ben Franklin. Yeah, he's a strange character to observers. There's a role going back to at least 1802 where you have black interpreter advisors. So there's the in the core seminal line, you basically have cowkeeper and then you have King Payne and Bolek and then Mikanopi. And there's evidence tying Abraham to Payne. Now, Payne was and Payne had a black seminal advisor. I think his name was Harry. And he was involved in colonial diplomacy. So I think Abraham had black seminal mentors who acted as translators and advisors for the tribe as early as 1802. And he comes into this position. I find him again in 1822, working as an interpreter. It appears as an apprentice for another black Seminole interpreter. And then he becomes the chief interpreter of the tribe. And he is also described in 1838 in a New Orleans newspaper as the chief principal interpreter of the tribe and the chief of the isleuste, which in the Muscogee language of the Creek and Seminole means chief of the dark people or chief of the black people. And he's and he dresses according to Seminole custom. He dresses in the Seminole way. Yeah. When he when there's a trip he later takes as a as an older man to New York and they say he looks like Othello reborn. You got me kidding. No, that's what they say. He has less servility than is usually apparent in Africans south of the Potomac. Huh. You know, I want to get into a brief tactical thing before we get into the date fight in Abraham. Yeah. Because you're talking about seminal dress. As much as they're slipping up on people and tomahawking them unawares and everything, what's with the red turbans they're running around in? Are they wearing red turbans? there are a few of them not all of them yeah but what like why that like osceola is always portrayed like that with a red turban something like a like a what do you call it yeah they i mean you can look on the cover there that's a little later that's 1852 okay and you can see abraham has kind of a different style of turban and they have this kind of a hard sorry for the mic side of a hard circular thing that they've got there i don't know what it is um so but i'm going to pick this up i don't know where i picked up so they didn't wear a red head cloth no not uniformly okay no why do people use the word turban in describing them what are they talking about headdress i think it's probably the closest reference that we would have to it headdress is probably more appropriate got it so if someone had some kind of cloth wrapped around they might have described it as a turban yeah abraham's got it on right there in the picture at the top there yeah for whatever reason it strikes me as something that comes from african culture like it's a blending of yeah of traditions yeah so there's one good way to to introduce abraham and kind of give you a picture of the black seminals is this uh wonderful folk tale it's a black seminal folk tale and so in uh there's a writer named zorra near hurston she was part of the harman harlem renaissance and she goes down to florida as part of the uh the federal works project you know where they paid writers part of the new deal to go and write things and she goes down to florida and she hears this story about uncle monday which i found i have her original document uh and the story of uncle monday is in short this is a story that locals are telling her a hundred years after it happened uncle monday was a great african medicine man of the crocodile clan that practiced kinship with the fierce reptiles. Not long after he was stolen from his home and taken to America, he escaped from Georgia or South Carolina and made his way down into the Indian country, which is now Florida. He and others settled among the Seminoles. This is the 1830s, the days of that haughty Asiola. That's a quote. And when the white men attacked, he led some of the Indian African forces in battle. They fought as fiercely as they could, but were defeated in the end or succumbed by the end by greater forces and weaponry. They met Abraham and the survivors met near the Blue Sink Lake to debate and decide what to do. He told the people what the deities had told him in a vision or dream, that it would no longer it's no longer of any use to keep fighting. Still, the medicine man would not yield to death or enslavement at the hands of the invaders. he promised that he would change himself into an alligator and reunite with his reptilian kin in the Blue Sink Lake until the trouble was over. And so there is a ceremony on the banks of the Blue Sink where the people drum African and Indian beats on their instruments. As Uncle Monday danced, he began to shift in form. His skin grew rough. His face grew long and very terrible. and he cried his voice became like thunder and in response a thousand alligators bellow and come out of the blue sink and he is now the largest of the reptiles and he strodes regally into the blue sink and they disappear altogether bellowing into the lake it it was said that for many years it was said that he remained in the blue sink for many years and that every so often he would transform back into a man and roam the land and cast his spells on the people. So what does this story tell you? What is it preserved? Going back to your point about bringing African traditions in and melding them with indigenous traditions. Yeah. You know, in Zambia, they still have a crocodile clan in northern Zambia. Now, that may be too far east of the transatlantic slave trade, but Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola, Central West Africa, the Congo River full of crocodiles. You have crocodile veneration. You have societies there that are matrilineal like the Seminoles. So the royal line descends from uncle to nephew, not from father to son. you have clans you have a spiritual relationship with the land and what is this story now you you liberate yourself and you come down and you find tribes that are matrilineal that have a spiritual relationship with the land and there are alligators there and so how do you survive you transform yourself you're from the crocodile clan you transform yourself into an alligator I think that's and it's a magical act. There's something called African Seminole Ethnogenesis. There's a paper by this guy, Anthony Dixon, Ethno Ethnic Genesis Birth. And it's about how do you rebuild culture? You're stitching together your culture from various African traditions that are inherited by your parents, grandparents. And you want to meld them with native traditions. And that's what you're doing. and it's a profoundly creative, I mean, it's a magical thing to do that that's how you're going to survive. I think that's a beautiful summary of what they did. And it was all about this cultural melding. What a dude to have on the podcast, man. Thanks. Like, I mean, no, I'm sorry. Not me. Yes, you. You don't mean me. You're great. That's a ton of story. I mean, the guy. Yeah, he's the guy. But you too. You're here. We invited you on. We came and found you. Abraham would have been better. No, no, no. I'm not talking about even him. I'm talking about the dude, Uncle. Uncle Monday. Picture, okay, you're in Africa. You probably get captured by African slave traders. You get sold to whites. They send you to North America. They send you to what would become the United States. You get bought by another white guy. You get turned to plantation work. You escape. You go south. You meet up with Indian tribes. Then you turn around and start fighting the army of the people. That's a hell of a journey. What a story. And meanwhile, people are being born in the United States and not straying more than 40 miles. A lot of people, you don't stray more than 40 miles from where you were born and you die with a hoe in your hand. Yeah, that's right. There is an oral history that puts one of Abraham's fighters as coming from Africa. The transatlantic straight state is is is officially banned in 1808. But there is there is a record of this guy and he remembers what it was like to be in Africa. Oh, man. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the Meat Eater's store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall-to-wall with the gear we actually use in the field, First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the Corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater's store, Milwaukee, at the Corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. So we set up the dispersal of people out of Alabama and Georgia, the creeks, people being displaced, pushed into Florida. The United States starts eyeballing that landscape. Settlers are moving in. President Jackson's like, these guys got to go. I'll send them out to Oklahoma. they're not cooperating they send an army under the command of this dude Dade and Dade's going to go up there and straighten them all out him and a hundred guys are going to straighten them all out nicely set up nicely set up yeah so after Charlie Amathla is killed they send reinforcements we need more troops the problem is the troops are split so you have Duncan Clinch with the main force and it's to the north side of the Indian Reservation. And then you have troops gathering on the Gulf Coast in what is Tampa Bay. That's Fort Brook. And four companies, the full companies, 50 men. So they send 200 men down, not all at once, four companies down to back up the troops they have there. And the idea is they're going to march through the Indian Reservation and they're going to meet up with Clinch and they're going to attack. That's the plan. And Dade is one of those groups coming over. Got it, got it. So the intention was never that his hundred guys are going to pull this off. It's all part of bringing a bunch of guys together. It's more interesting. So what happens is they're planning for a fight on December 31st. They're waiting for the rest of the 200 troops. They only have, I think, two of the four boats. Two of the four companies are there. And you don't have many people in that garrison in Tampa Bay. So you're faced with a choice. You can march up the Fort King Road. Now, that's right in the middle of the reservation. It's a hundred mile road and you're going to go right through, you know, enemy territory. Do you want to do that with a hundred men? Do you want to wait for the other hundred men to come? But we could miss the deadline for the fight, December 31st. So Dade, bravely or foolishly, depending on how you look at it, he said, I got this. I'll march up. No problem. I'll go right through the reservation. All I need is 100 people. And there are records of there are a few native families. I think there's 300 people with 100 warriors who are who have chosen to immigrate and haven't changed their mind, who are at Tampa Bay across the Hillsborough River waiting for ships to take them up to New Orleans and then to Indian Territory, what becomes Oklahoma. And they're sure he's going to die. And they say and they say goodbye to him. I think it's December 23rd. And he's sure that they would never see him again. Huh. There's another guy there, Belton, and he says, I think you're crazy. I would rather resign if I were ordered to march up that road. There are people later who said, listen, why did you send troops down the Gulf Coast? You should have sent them down the Atlantic and you can go right down into Jacksonville. And then they already would have met up. So this is a bone of contention. why were troops sent to Tampa? Because the only way to get to clinch is to go right through the reservation. So they start this march through the reservation. And it's eerie and their camps are harassed at night by Seminoles, by scouts who are following them by gunfire. And I think it's the fifth night or the fourth night Dade has a bad dream. He fought in the War of 1812, and he says, my fallen comrades came to me in my dream, from a newspaper several years later, and they said their names. It's the most bizarre dream I've ever had in my life. Strange. And they walk. They've gone 60 miles of the 100. They're nearing a place called the Wahoo Swamp, which is a perfect place to retreat to. and they're in between Abraham's town where he lived with about a hundred maybe as many as 160 black seminoles and this swamp and his forces and Mykonopies and a chief named Alligator and Jumper is there set up an ambush and there's a lake on the right side of the road and their idea is we're going to pin them against the lake they form a semicircle and Dade walks into this ambush and Mikanopi calls out his name or yells and shoots him in the neck. Like the first guy. Yeah. Shoots him in the neck and apparently he was eating a hardtack biscuit and he yells, my God, and he falls off the horse and he dies. And then the first volley, half of the command falls to the ground. Half the command dies in the first volley. And 105 ultimately are killed that day. It's the largest loss of life on the U.S. side in any fight with native forces until Custer. The fight goes on all day. The survivors of the initial volley kind of build a triangular log breastwork, a couple logs that they cut down and they stack them three logs high or two logs high, and they try to hide behind it for some cover the seminal forces are very patient there is a little hand-to-hand fighting but generally they're very patient they're firing from concealed positions and they're not risking their lives they lose three people you know they 105 u.s forces are killed they lose three god man yeah and um you know uh they finish them off in a sort of a brutal way with knife work and there's some screaming. And it's, you know, this is fills the newspaper as a massacre and that night those forces and Abraham and Osceola meet in the Wahoo swamp and they drink all night and celebrate and party. Yeah. Because he's coming back from killing Thomas. Yeah, both missions were successful. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that confused me in your book is what was up with the guys that they, when they finally come to bury the bodies, they're not able to get there for a while. Yeah, 54 days. What was up with the guys in the little fort they built? That's the breastwork. Yeah, what was up with the guys in the breastwork, the bodies in the breastwork? Oh, goodness. So there's a description, there's a U.S. soldier, he says, it looked like the bodies looked like they were toy soldiers arranged by a child in his play. Yeah, I didn't understand what that meant. And he said something about right angles. So imagine this triangular breastwork of logs, and you've got these bodies that are in various stages of decomposition. I think he's referring to the odd ways that the bodies were positioned. Yeah, the right angles. He said something like they're at right angles. I couldn't tell what the hell he meant by that. I mean, it didn't sound, it didn't look great. I think he's saying it was weird. No, like it was not natural. Got it, got it, yeah. You know, and the jaws have dropped because the muscles are deteriorated and the fingers are kind of clawed up like this. And some say they were scops, some say they weren't. The most reliable, what I thought, one person says there's too much deterioration to know if they were scalped, which seems probable. And they didn't rob them. I think they were sending a message. Before that ambush, they set out a cow in the road, a slaughtered cow in the road, and it's split wide open in the middle of the road. It's a warning sign. Don't come in here. we don't want to do this and even Mika Nopi before he shoots him there's evidence that he was hesitant and he knows Dade Dade has been there before Dade has attacked native villages before okay we warned you now he gets a damn county name Dade County Miami right? that's him that's Dade Custer County is there? I heard that there's new research that says it wasn't exactly a last stand. Do you know anything about that? That the fighting was more spread out? It wasn't in one location? Well, I wouldn't say new, but Custer wasn't the last. His little hill area wasn't the last holdout. It was earlier in the fight. He wasn't the last guy standing there. It makes for a better story. Yeah. Okay. There was nothing that remarkable about his positioning, and it didn't build up to that moment. Right. It was just part of a broader fight. Okay. It was probably to the participants was like an unnoteworthy little spectacle in the fight. Okay. That makes sense. Now that we're in the fighting, the parallels between this conflict and Vietnam are just almost too much to get into. But on a very superficial level, between the tactics and the strategy and then the duration of the conflict and the cost of the conflict. Yeah, and a feeling from the soldiers that they were maybe betrayed by Washington or not quite, you know, this is, what are we doing here? So if you look at, there's some military organizations, veteran organizations in Florida and organizations that study the Seminole War. And a lot of the guys that were interested in it before were Vietnam vets. And then they were Iraq and Afghanistan vets. Wow. And I think they see the story as very similar. Yeah. So after this Dade fight, there aren't big definitive battles. To the point where I know that Clay had mentioned this, that if you start walking us through the conflict, the conflict never formally ended. No. No, the the so the survivors, as many as 600 in, excuse me, in 1842, when the U.S. sort of unilaterally withdraws, they never sign anything. The U.S. says, oh, it's kind of over. And, you know, we won mostly. And the few survivors, it's only 300. It's probably double that. you know we should be nice to them it's because it's just so few and it's really a noble gesture of us to to be to restrain ourselves and unilaterally withdraw but that's why they call that's why they call them the unconquered people uh because there never is a capitulation sam jones who is the mikazoki chief who really led it and they're he's really the big hero of the war uh for the for the survivors um for those who stayed in florida and aseola is kind of his one of his warriors um you know he he outwitted them he outlasted them um and he did it by setting up these villages on these little islands these hammocks in the everglades connected by canoes and when the army came he would just go to the next one and so he had this network of ref of refuges um and just let the land let the land kill them you know there's a third conflict there's a third seminal war where they try again and i think 55 soldiers die and it's a three-year war so like what do you what is that how do you describe that you're wandering around and not Fighting people. Dying in malaria. Yeah. Yeah. There are some bigger battles, but the Dade defeat, that's the largest death count. Why do they break the wars into the – why do they break it into the first Seminole War, the second Seminole War, which we've been mostly discussing. Like this Dade fight kicks off the second Seminole War. Yes. And then the third Seminole War. Why? Because they're not as clean as like World War I. World War II. Yeah. The Seminole. World War III. The Seminole tribe of Florida would agree with you. Oh, they would agree that this whole breaking it up, it's like these aren't different things. It's all the continuation of the same thing. They object to it. Okay. I didn't know that. If you go on their website, they'll say, we object to this. We call it the long war. Oh. They call it the long war. and they frame it as a you know continuing colonial aggression trying to get them off the land which it was yeah but just for people's understanding when they hear this first second third can you tell can you explain a little bit what that means I want to get into Osceola's capture and how that fits into this chronology of these wars what does it mean when someone says first second third Absolutely. So so the formal dates are 1817, 1818. That's the first Seminole War. And that's when you have Andrew Jackson coming down into Spanish Florida. There's a few fights. He burned some villages. It's nothing crazy. And then he retreats. And it's really what he's doing there. He's pressuring Spain to relinquish the territory to the United States. It's like, look, I had to go and do this police action. You've got trouble in your borders. You can't control it. And then he retreats, claiming victory. The Second Seminole War is most, as you say, the focus of this. It's 1835, 1842. What happens in 1842? That's when the U.S., I think it's Tyler, President Tyler, he declares, we're done. He says the war is over. We're not going to fight anymore. Got it. He claims victory and withdraws the truth. This is the Tippy Canoe and Tyler, too, right? Isn't that the guy? Is that him? I don't know anything about Tyler. I just remember his name. You're probably right. Tippy Canoe and Tyler, too? I'm sure you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not kind of addicted. William Henry Harrison. That would be your next book. Okay, good. I'll look into it. And then the third effort is 1855 to 1858 So 13 years goes by Yeah And then someone like we going to try again Let get into that To root them out Let try again And that when they down in the Everglades And that's the long cat and mouse. Yeah, it's cat and mouse. It's Navy, riverine warfare. In the Everglades. In the Everglades. And it's not much action. They find empty villages. They burn the villages. Because they know they're coming and they just move out of the way. Well, they find them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And they have canoes and they'll just go to another sanctuary. Okay. So that's the third Seminole War. That's the third Seminole War. And to the Seminole, it's just the long war. Yes. Yeah. Do the Seminole view, I don't want you to put you in a position where you're like, well, you don't understand how they view it. Yeah. Or their official stance. I'll tell you what I know. The Seminole, do they view that they, is their story that they withstood and won? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because they're there. Yeah. Yeah. And if you go to the, I went down to Florida to see a lot of the sites that are in there. And if you go to the Ahatiki Museum, which is a Seminole Museum in what was the Natural Everglades, but it's been drained, as you know. You'll see, it's a great museum. You should go. And actually there's a wonderful kind of Cypress swamp, Cypress dome attached to the back of it, which is sort of fun. You can go on a walkway through. But, you know, they're very rich. I think they may be the richest or they're one of the richest. They own Hard Rock Cafe. They made a lot of money from casinos. I've been on the reservation. Have you? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So all the cars in that parking lot are like, you know, like Corvette, like Porsche. and the jet the chief of the nation has a jet it's named after Sam Jones after Abiyaka it's called Arpieka that's his own personal jet so yeah I mean they're proud they should be proud they stayed and you know the 600 Mikazookis and the 1800 members of the Seminole tribe of Florida that's their heritage Do you remember, you say it in your book I don't know if you remember it off the top of your head When Jackson Was doing it, what was the name of his What was the name of his policy His The Indian Removal Act of 1830 Can you remind me what they budgeted They had a budget And it was like, it'll cost us like a buck 70, right Or whatever it was Like a buck 70 or 27 bucks Or something to move every Indian to Oklahoma They had it narrowed down to a per head cost. It's in your book. It is. It's Jessup. So Thomas Jessup, he's known as the father of the modern quartermaster corps. Yeah, he's a logistics guy. He's a logistics guy. Like a budget logistics. Yeah. It makes sense. And he comes in in the end of 1836, and in his records at the Library of Congress, I found this document in which he's laying out the mathematics of per head cost of removal. And I don't remember what it was. It was something like 9,000 a person that you need this many wagons and this many rations over this many days. And you need these boats and that sort of thing. The Indian removal. No, no, it wasn't 9,000 bucks per person. How much was it? No, it was like 20 bucks or something. It may have been less than that. It could have been. It was far less than they paid. The war effort ended up being $40 million. No, I'm sorry. I hate to hit you with like a... No, it's all good. It was like they had calculated per... For the people you move, for the people you were going to move to Oklahoma, It was going to cost you some surprisingly low amount of money, like just the trip. I know exactly what page this is on. Okay. It's not in the Indian Removal Act. I found this in Jess's files. Let's see what he says here. Transporting one, even Indian removal to him was a numbers game. By his estimate, transporting 1,000 Indians to west of the Mississippi necessitated You're right. It's not 9,000. 13 wagons for 120 days, 80,000 rations, 200 ponies, and three hired hands. He calculated the cost to American taxpayers at $26 per head. A little less than 9,000. It's amazing, man. Yeah, and it ends up being however many. It's the budget of the American government. The outlays of the American government in 1835 are $17.5 million. And this war ends up costing 30 or 40 million dollars. It's the longest. That's part of it. That's part of the debate, too. Like, it's so similar to the ill-defined wars that we've engaged in since then of at some point people like this is very costly. It's not working. There are morale issues. There are moral issues. Yeah. This was supposed to be quick. Yeah. You don't promise us that this is going to be over in a month. That's right. That's right. I mean, at one point, Joseph says that the country, the country that we are, quote unquote, conquering is not worth a tenth of the cost in lives and treasure. He said, can I quit? This was a bad idea. And also, after he starts losing, sort of, or he can't succeed, can't we just allow them to stay in the south of Florida? We're not going to plant there. and they do stay. You know, Abiyaka's people and the Seminole people who stayed, they do stay in the South. It doesn't cause anybody any problem. Jessup, what I mean, kind of right. He's like, do I have to do this? Can't we just let them stay in the South and I can go home to my farm? Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the Meat Eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall-to-wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the Corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store Milwaukee at the Corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. at what point does osceola get um there's a really gory detail about this whole thing but like how does osceola get caught osceola is captured under a white flag uh in i want to say november 1837 by jessop um there's some andrew jackson letters in there that i haven't seen cited in which he's writing he's out of office but he's writing sec the secretary of war points that he He says, Jessup should have captured Osceola. Just take him. Why didn't he take him? There's six letters in which he mentions this. And I found in Jessup's files in the Library of Congress, excerpt from Andrew Jackson, 20 days before he takes Osceola. Jessup should have captured Osceola. 20 days later, he captures him under a white flag. This is a controversial action. This is a violation of the sacred rules of war. And when you say he captured him under a white flag, you mean Jessup. jess's forces is they're flying uh i mean uh the the meeting so there's a meeting outside of i think it's near saint augustine it is near saint augustine and there's osceola and i think there's co-hajo and there's maybe 70 mikazukis there i think it's a group of around 70 people and jess had given them white fabric to be used as a white flag and he said anytime you want to talk to us and have a meeting. This flag will protect you. We won't capture you. And it's your pass. Yeah, because in this story, there are a lot of parlays. For sure. And sometimes they're talking while they're fighting at the same time. Yeah, which now, in our own current conflict, which now goes on. I mean, you'll always be reading news accounts of, you know, like, one minute, you know, you're on the, well, Maduro. One minute they're on the phone, the next minute he's in jail. Like people are there's conversations happening. That's right. So this was one of the many conversations and it was protected under a white flag. And Jessup gave the order just to seize them, as Jackson had suggested. And now I don't know if he read that letter before he did it. Now, later to lure him in, lure him in, talk and then just grab him, just grab. He gives various justifications afterwards. But those are pretenses. And they put him in the Castelo de San Marcos, which is the big Spanish fort in St. Augustine on the north side. They called it Fort Marion at the time. And Osceola becomes a prisoner in this old Spanish castle on the Atlantic. And at one point, there's a very dramatic. He's sick at this point. It's unclear what he had. uh wickman talks about this in the in the in the bear grease podcast he probably had malaria when he's in captivity he gets he gets head lice like the measles i think it's what it is breaks out people start to die it's not a great place to be i visited it and i saw the room that they were in uh and it's like you know it looks like the set of a robin hood movie or something you know stone and it's damp and there's a little tiny window called a loophole you can go to the room he was in? You can go to the room they escaped from. Now he didn't escape so he may have been in, it's called a casement. These are like little rooms that are in, kind of inside the walls. And there's a very dramatic escape of 20 including the black seminal John Horst, the Afro-Indigenous Heritus. He had a seminal father and a black seminal mother. He's there. Chief King Philip, his son Wildcat is there. Two women escape. And they escape out of the window. and Wildcat talks about it. You have a first-person account from Wildcat. You have the report of the head of the fort. The next day, he says they went out the window. You have a formal board of inquiry the next day, and they said they went out the window. So all of the sources suggest that they took the forage bags that they were sleeping on. They were using them for beds. They stuffed hay in them, and they made ropes out of them, attached them probably to one of the bars that were outside of that window. The loophole is five feet high, and at its narrowest, it's eight inches. The story is, as Wildcat tells it, because they were sick at the fort, they convinced the guards to let them go out and get these special roots as medicine. What the roots were actually for was for them to lose weight. and so they stay they fasted and they took these roots and they waited for the dark of the moon uh i guess the the moment in which the the moon has the least light and they got it wrong by like one day but they but they basically got it right and they 20 of them escaped out of that window into the ditch it did it would be a moat but there was no water in it and it's 40 feet below the window um dropped into that ditch dropped into that ditch and escaped uh but not osceola osceola was sick he tells he writes jessup or there's a letter which explains the next day he says hey by the way last night they escaped i could have but i don't feel like it um i think he's ill at this point. And they take him to Fort Moultrie in South Carolina with others. And he's sort of a national celebrity and everyone wants to come visit him and everyone wants to paint pictures of him. And there's a description, you know, the crowds outside of the window, young and old, and more especially female, come to wave at him. And we had to bring him to the window. So he's, you know, in some kind of a weird way, a star. And there's not there are equivalents to this today. Like if you go to the fact that the participants at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Yeah. So here's here's a group of people that. I mean, they kill. Right. in hand-to-hand combat, they kill U.S. soldiers. But there's such a moral element to it that participants at that fight become celebrities who go on tour with, like, Wild West shows, and you can go see and meet the people that killed the U.S. soldiers. Like, that's not around anymore. Like at the end of World War II, there weren't famous krauts that shot a bunch of Americans that you'd go and like pay money to shake their hand. Maybe Van O'Van Braun. You know what I'm saying? That went away. Yeah, that's right. We don't have like Al-Qaeda dudes that do like tours. Yeah. So how to explain this? In a way, Ascioli is a puzzle. You know, he – so part of this is just capitalism, right? Newspapers want to sell copies of their newspaper. If you're a painter, this is an important person, you want to go paint him. But there's also, to a degree, what kind of story about the war do you want to tell? Do you want to tell this story where there are many great engagements? Or do you want to tell a story where they're being diplomatic? Do you want to tell a story where they're saying they don't want to fight? Do you want to tell a story where they're, you know, at Fort Izzard, there's a meeting at Fort Izzard where they have a siege of a thousand U.S. troops and the Mikazukis and the Seminoles debate, should we kill them? And the Mikazukis say that we should and the Seminoles say that we shouldn't and the Seminoles win and they spare them. They say, do you want some tobacco or do you want some? But that story doesn't get through. What we get is the warrior. What we get is the fighter. so that fighter is necessary for us to recruit people and to project an idea of the war which is not exactly what i mean osceola is a real person i don't want to overstate it but to some degree he's amplifying him and i know that's not exactly what you said you said they're selling people and you can um but there's there's a way in which osceola is amplified you know i'm in touch with the Seminole tribe of Florida. And to some degree, they don't like Asiola's elevation over Sam Jones. They want Sam Jones to get more of the credit. Asiola worked for him. He's the one who outwitted him. He's the one who outfoxed him. But we get this warrior, not to take anything away from Asiola. But part of the puzzle of his story was me trying to grapple this question, why is he this famous. And even when he's dying, he's confused as to why the president doesn't want to wants to paint his picture. And on his deathbed, he says, all I did was kill General Thompson. He has a sense of his fame being disproportioned to his actions, which is interesting in itself. Yeah, he just. The press grabbed that name and he became a symbol of that conflict to people People involved in the conflict wouldn't have named him as the primary. To take nothing away from him. Yeah. He's one of 15 people who that could have happened to. Does he die of his sickness? He dies violently. He dies of sickness at Fort Moultrie, I think in January 1838. And he asks the doctor, this doctor named Whedon, I would like my bones to be buried in Florida. and there's some account that they were friends and he dies he double crosses and he cuts his head off and takes his head home uh to i think saint augustine what a piece of shit man you know i agree with that yeah yeah there's a there's a story you can find if you google it i think it's called the mystery of osceola's head or something like that there's a pdf you can find in which there's a description of how Whedon, this is even worse. When his kids misbehaved, he would hang Asiola's embalmed head or preserved head on the bedstead of his children to punish them. Imagine that. Yeah. But it was normal for people to take prizes. I think Asiola's missing a few fingers. Both sides took kind of, you know, that happened. The past is a foreign country. Past is a foreign country. I know. But the point is that they had this rapport. Yeah. He had a request. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It's kind of, you know, come on, man. The past is a foreign country. Yeah. Is that the quote? Country? The past is a foreign. The original is the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Really? Yeah. That's my new favorite quote. Yeah. That's even better than skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. Oh, I like that. I'll trade you. Okay. You're welcome to it. You can have it. It's a famous line. Oh, man. And it's never been found. It's never been found. At some point, it's, and this document lays out, he sends it maybe to a phrenologist at some point, you know, where you're measuring like the divots in the skull, you know. this person has a very big bravery bump okay there's actually a great story about Mark Twain visiting a phrenologist and he goes once like in disguise and they say he's like the least funny person that they've ever imagined like a great humor deficit and then he goes later as Mark Twain oh you've got a great sense of humor, so great you can tell, look at this what is the what is Abraham's what is Abraham's death? Abraham dies as an old man. I found, or there are locals in Oklahoma who knew of his grave. It's never been published in a history before. I found one of them, and I found his grave. He dies in Oklahoma. Dies in Oklahoma. Why did he go to Oklahoma? When? Indian Territory, where they shipped them west of Arkansas, became Oklahoma. Yeah, but I mean, when did he go? Most black Seminoles go in 1838. He still has to finish some service with the army. They let him go in 1839. Yeah, so he's there. And then there's a trip, the last chapter in the book, he kind of comes back to Florida and with the chief or the soon-to-be chief of the nation in Oklahoma, who's Jumper's son, who's like his friend, and William Bowlegs, who's one of the most powerful people in Florida with Sam Jones, with the Bianca. And they go up to New York and kind of have a junket together and see New York. You know, it's sort of how do they see us? But he dies on April 10th, 1874. As an old man, he's, you know, he sees the Emancipation Proclamation. His son fights with the Union. Really? Yeah. And they celebrate a day, August 4th, which they call Emancipation Day, which is the day in which their Creek rivals admitted all people of color as full citizenships. And their Creek rivals ended slavery in 1865. And they would celebrate that day and have a barbecue and invite all the white people and invite the Indians. And they would ride on horseback down to a flag and a cannon would go off and they would circle the flag and then have a party. So his life is a success. He shepherds his people to the West successfully. They build a new life. He's got a big family. You know, I think dying as an old man surrounded by loved ones, like, that's as good as you can get. You know. How old was Osceola when he died? Young. 30s? Mid-30s. You know, I think he's, depending on when you have, if you have his birthday at like 1804, then, yeah, he's early 30s. 33 34 yeah dude it's a great story man thank you yeah appreciate it I'm pretty far now I don't know halfway in I had so much fun writing it it was such a journey it was like traveling it was like going somewhere else what are you going to work on next I'm toying around with a few ideas I'm thinking of doing you know there's this cool Bill Bryson book. Maybe I'll stay in this genre. Maybe I won't. There's this cool Bill Bryson book called A Short History of Nearly Everything. I thought that could be fun to do if I could find a cool twist. A short history of everything else? Like a big history, but do it differently. If there was a new way to do it differently, that could be fun. You know, I'm interested in everything. You know, like what were the Neanderthals like? What was it like before agriculture? You know, Homo sapiens go back to 300,000 years up until the Neolithic agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago. They're hunting, they're fishing. And so there's just so many great stories. I don't know. I'm toying around with a few ideas. You know, the thing that has evaded us for years is a guest to come on and talk about the Neanderthals. You can't find them, dude. Can you not? No. I've even gone on other podcasts trying to find them. I'll give you a suggestion. I know of one. There's a book that's called Kindred. Kindred. Does that ring a bell? I didn't read it, but it came across my radar. All due respect, I'll do a writer. I didn't want a writer. I wanted a researcher. But I'll take a writer. Yeah, yeah. You made me like writers. Okay, cool. I'll take a writer. I did a little research. I did a little research. You know, I was on Theo Vaughn's podcast. I was like, hey, he's got a huge audience. And I'll say, hey, just by the way, if you're a great Neanderthal guest, let me know. Nothing. Nothing? No, we've found other ones and gone to try to get them. Yeah. I mean, an actual Neanderthal guest would be good. That would be ideal. Yeah. What do you all think about? Maybe we should find them all. We need to phrase this as very precisely. No, we need to get with the genetic testing companies companies and see if anyone has like by outsized proportion come in with a higher percentage of right we know that but like is there anyone i think the red hair is a marker do you have do you have heavy duty no i've never stuck my i've never i've never uh dipped my toe into the water of genetic it's you know what there's there's a book about this and it's a very very sore subject in academia to talk about what parts of the globe have people that have much greater representation of neanderthal genomics or whatever yeah is it sore why is it sore it's just it's like this guy in this book i think it was in the seven daughters of you know i don't want i don't want to say what book it was maybe the seven daughters of eve i can't remember what book not Forget that. I don't know that that's the book. There's a book about human history. Yeah. And he talks in there. He's like, this is a thing you do not discuss. I think just the implications of certain, you know, being underdeveloped. Like the Geico commercial. Yeah, exactly. You don't talk about what parts. Like when you look at how it worked with the human diaspora, as the diaspora was occurring, certain branches and arms carried heavy Neanderthal representation. Yes. And it's just become a taboo subject. Yeah, it's not normal. Because there's the old idea that it was bad, but then the reason I'm interested in the subject is everything we find out about them makes them seem smarter. Yeah, they were advanced. Oh, they liked art. They liked the fire and things. And then there's the Denisovans. it's like i think i read maybe there's two percent what is it neanderthal two percent of people have neanderthal dna no it's more i think it's more is it more uh then there's a trace of it yeah and then there's like a ghost species that i was reading about where like there's this you know it's it's not normal to be the only uh species left in your genus yeah like for most animals it wouldn't prong horns and us right so it's so it's weird that we're the only ones that I made it. It's kind of a mystery, a mystery to itself. But there's a ghost. Go ahead. There's a point I make. I think it's in our in our outdoor cookbook. Weird place to make at this point. And then forward the introduction to our outdoor cookbook. I talk about there was a time when you could be in Spain. You could be in northern Israel, all kinds of places, and you would see a fire. Yeah. OK. Yeah. 50,000 years ago, 60,000 years ago, you would see a fire burning. And you would have to ask yourself, what kind of people, not what tribe, what kind of, what human species might that be up there at that fire? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The same way like a mule deer can roll up on a whitetail? and you're like for to a like an outside eye they're like oh yeah they are a little different you there would be dudes running around yeah that some like an outsider might be like oh yeah they are kind of different yeah and there's like you know and then there's interspecies like love affairs right and they know when that was happening ad mixing they call it because mule deer would get it on with whitetails there you go and so oh i want to get a great neanderthal person on man Yeah, I guess a writer. I don't know. Let's see. Come back in three, four years. Yeah, well, how long is it going to take you to do the book? I'm game. I don't know. Three years. When did you get into your personal life? What's going on? Are you married or anything like that? I'm single. You're single? Yeah. How old are you? I'm 45. Oh. Yeah. Huh. All right, ladies. Yeah. Tell me if you got any ideas. I don't, but I mean, you just baited the trap. Cool. Let's go. Well, if you're watching on YouTube. Yeah, right. You can write to the Mace their podcast. Which I don't have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, if someone wanted to meet them, they need to wait, like us, for his Neanderthal book to come out. And you go to the book event. Perfect. Oh, no, go to the book event for this. Yeah, February 3rd, The Free and the Dead. And then ask them about the dinner. The Free and the Dead, the untold story of the black seminal chief, the indigenous rebel in America's forgotten war by Jamie Holmes. Thanks for coming on. Can't wait to have you back on with your next book. That was so much fun. Thanks. Appreciate it. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the Meat Eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the Corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store Milwaukee at the Corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.