Little Bighorn: Prelude to the Last Stand w/ Jocko & Leif | History Traveler Episode 341 

Wow, are you serious? Totally sad to hear.

@37BopCity Totelly serious. Can't tell you how many of my students did not know the capitol of NJ or the ocean that bordered the east coast of the state.

Funny I had been aware of the battle when I was probably 8. It wouldn’t surprise if most of the parents of your students probably didn’t know about the Last Stand either.

Last Stand of American History ! Refer to “1984” for Concept ? 😢

I'm not surprised in the least.

Thanks! Appreciate that. Got a few more following this one.

Thank you! I really appreciate that.

This comment was very helpful. Thank you

Wow! Thank you.

I guess you've read the fantastic "Son of the Morning Star" by Evan S.Connell then?

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Many thanks.

That means a lot to hear you say that. Thank you.

Wow! Thanks!

And that's quite a high bar.

@@stflaw you ain't lying

When you've got Jocko in your video.....yes.

@@J14702 Jocko is the closet thing we have. To captain america

Wow!

Funny, I don’t see that our leaders learn anything from history warfare, they just keep repeating the same blunders ever since WWII.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks!

Quite the place.

Next episode. 🙂

That is awesome!

@@TheHistoryUnderground Your work has sparked many father-son conversations about various historically significant topics ranging from the Revolutionary War to WWII and everything in between. There is something about the on-site footage that captures his attention. A 20 minute video takes 2 hours by the time we're done pausing / discussing / digging deeper. Truly great work JD. We love it!

Thank you for the kind words.

Thanks!

Extremely doubtful Lizzie. There were just way, way too many Indians for the 7th Cavalry, which numbered less than 700 men. There may have been as many as 2000 warriors there and Custer didn't realize he had bitten off way more than he could chew. It was a disaster for a reason.

I believe that the 7th would have been able to hold off the Sioux if they were all together, but the fact custer Split his 700 +/- men into 3 groups with his detachment of 270 or so facing the majority of those 2000 warriors Meant he was out numbered and outgunned irretrievably

@@Defender78 Yes, I agree. Custer never really knew how many Indians were actually on the Little Bighorn, and he simply did not know how big the village was physically. As far as I know, when he rode 4 miles or so up the river and then turned and attacked he was apparently surprised that he had not reached the northern end of the village and was attacking into a concentrated clump of warriors. He was just very badly outnumbered, and so was Reno back at the south end. It is a wonder Reno's force was not annihilated, as well.

@@ToddSauve I guess I should have made my response a little bit more plainly had they not been spotted when they went after the drop load from the pack animals I believe once they saw and were told by the scouts that there were over 10,000 ponies that he would have waited for reinforcements. But he was a very prideful person anyway.

​@@LizzieWestBathandBodyfrom a native perspective, Long Hair and his men were destined to die that day. A few weeks before the battle, wicasa wakan (holy man) Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers falling upside down into a Lakota camp. It was taken as a foreshadowing of a major victory. Few weeks later, Battle of Greasy Grass and Custer's demise.

Wow, thank you!

Thanks!

Great book.

Grant did try to buy the hills and offer a peaceful resolution which would compensate the Sioux, which is more than almost anyone else would do at that time. When the Sioux wanted something tho, they simply took it.....they didn't offer compensation for the horses they rated from the Crow, or the women they stole and.made sex slaves. They simply took it and offered no mercy to those not of their tribe. History does not tell you this tho. Progress was coming and it was unstoppable. Red Cloud was the wisest of all as he went to New York City and saw just how advanced the white man was and that the Native Americans had no shot in the face of such a superior enemy. Crazy Horse refused to even look at the white man's city, he did not want to understand the opposition as Sun Tzu tells you is the most important thing in a war ("know thy enemy"). This battle could have been avoided had Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and others actually saw the imminent force that was coming. Crazy Horse eventually lost his life over this too, same with Red Cloud. Adapting to reality and seeing the facts was the proper response, not war against an enemy you simply could not beat. And inevitably, it was the white man that saved the Sioux who eventually would have starved out....another thing the history books don't tell you as the bison herds were vanishing even without the white man.

I don't know where you get your historical facts from but some of them are absurd. The ONLY peaceful solution Grant could and should have offered was to have honored the Fort Laramie Treaty. Period. Native American tribes and the US government made over 300 treaties and the government broke every one of them, every one. And a lot of these broken Treaties resulted in the "Indian wars" of the old west including the battle of the greasy grass (Little Bighorn). I'll tell you some REAL facts: all the Sioux chiefs of the seven camp fires turned down the governments land offer because they wanted the government to honor the Treaty of the great Sioux nation. There was no majority vote amongst the seven chiefs to accept the governments offer. It was the government agents who lied to the relatives of the Chiefs to sign in the chief's behalf. That's how the territory of the Sioux was taken - which led to the government creating of the Indian reservations that we have today. It took over a hundred years for the case to go to court. And in 1980 the Supreme Court of the United States voted in favor of the Sioux and ruled that the Fort Lararmie Treaty was broken and their land was taken illegally. A compensation offer was made but the Sioux today refuse it and want the land returned to the tribes. This brings me back to my original point: the ONLY peaceful solution was for Grant to have honored the Fort Laramie Treaty. If he had done that this battle would have never happened. And as far as your comment about women were sex slaves. Do you have any facts to back up this statement? I'll tell you some facts about women in Native American society. Within the Sioux tribes women had more rights and freedom than white women in white society. They were equal to the men. It was the women who took care of the camps. They could marry and divorce whenever they wanted. They even owned the property they shared with their husbands. The men were the protectors, hunters, co-parents and leaders. Native women were important and depended on, they not looked down upon like women in white society in the 1700s and 1880s. Red Cloud became a wise man in his old age but he was also jealous of Tasunke Witko (Crazy Horse) especially when he was chosen to be a shirt wearer and Red Cloud wasn't. Crazy Horse was a great leader AND also a lot younger than Red Cloud. By the 1860-70s bison herds were still in abundance on the northern plains of the US AND in Canada. There was no bison census taken at the time so how would anyone know if they were vanishing? Natural Predation came and went for centuries. The majority of the bison population still vanished because of people hunting them for their hides.

@@stewiedog01 so are you denying that if "the white man " chose to make the Sioux go totally extinct they could not have? They made the choice to bring about a peaceful resolution tho, which is more than would have been done had the Sioux been the one with the technology and man power. If the United States so chose to use whatever resources necessary, withstand whatever loss of life, and withstand any bad press and public relations, they easily could have taken out every single tribe. But they chose not to and they chose to be diplomatic and incorporate the Sioux into the country. THAT is my point, even tho post world war 2 history has been rewritten to cast Custer and all European colonialism as wholly bad. As far as Sioux and Natives using women as sex slaves, that is simply what they did. There are countless cases of women being abducted, including Matilda Lockhart who had her nose burnt off her face and was raped and abused so badly she died years after she was captured. In Libby Custer's book she explains how even when she would go out she would be accompanied by a soldier who was instructed to kill the woman vs let them fall in to Sioux hands - why would Custer ask his wife be shot to death vs fall in Sioux hands? Sounds to me like you have totally gobbled up this post World War 2 Wikipedia revisionist history version of 'the Noble Savage'. The Sioux would kill, scalp and torture men they captured, mutilate their dead bodies (see Fredrick Wyllyams), they would use the woman as slaves, rape them or just kill them, and if they couldn't use children they simply mutilated them - and let's not get started on how they treated and were trying to wipe out the Crow. Why else would Curly, Run By The White Man and other Crow be working with Custer? Did the US break treaties? Yes. Did the Native break treaties? Yes. The whole reason the troops were even sent out there was to ensure the Sioux stopped attacking travelers, settlers and obeyed their agreement. History is not black and white, but we should all be thankful that it was Christian Europeans that had the technology and power vs say the Saudis who ran the slave trade and castrated every slave, Muslims who forced you to convert or be killed, the Sioux or virtually anyone else at that time in history. The entire reason any Native American even exists today is because "the white man" chose it so.....they chose peace, they didn't choose war and total domination despite being vastly superior. They could have easily dedicated millons of troops for decades and just genocided the Indians off, given them no casinos, given no reparation, kill all the men as the Sioux did to their beaten enemies, but they chose to be peaceful which is in keeping with the tenets of Christianity. We should all count are blessings for that.

@@stewiedog01 and as far as Red Cloud being jealous of Crazy Horse, I don't buy that at all. There are so many tall tales and different renditions when it comes to this event that we do not even know how Custer died or if there was a true survivor. Every tribe and every chief had a different rendition of what took place. No doubt it would suit somes interest to paint Red Cloud as a weak jealous traitor and Crazy Horse (who remained combative and defiant to the end) as the one to be looked up to. The reality is no soldiers had to be lost that day. The Bighorn was a waste of life and Sioux ended up on their reservation anyways. Westward Expansion was IMMINENT and as I stated before, thank God it was. If the Sioux had ruled the world we are still living in the stone age, no iPhones, no internet, no grocery stores to prevent starvation. We should count our blessings that things unfolded as they did and Christians had the power.

​And sooner or later One Nation or another would have taken over ​@@mikerelva6915

Thanks!

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Appreciate that. Thank you.

Thanks!

Thank you!

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Not the first time that I’ve been accused of that. 😅

Got some stuff coming up soon that you may like.

@TheHistoryUnderground looking very much forward to that! Hopefully Civil War as well. 😀Thanks J.D!

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