00:00:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, all the stuff written about him that is pure hogwash. These are nineteenth century stuff that gets associated with him sort of to build him up, and he doesn't need it. He stands on his own. It's a remarkable man. We're on our third and final episode in our series on the Shawnee Leader two COMPSA. He's been called the greatest Native leader in American history, but we've found ourselves backed against the bedrock of inevitability. On this side of mortality, all great men and their stories must come to an end. This episode is titled two Comes his Death. We'll talk about that fateful day in October eighteen thirteen, but perhaps more relevant to us today, will explore the ways in which we remember history and sometimes play tricks with our conscience to console an uncomfortable past. Was the image of the Shawnee reflected back to America really him at all? And will contrast the way different cultures view their great men. Not everybody does it the same. And lastly, on the wild Meter of Interest, which is penned in The Red Shawnee, Chief Ben Barnes tells us the vision and mission of the modern day Shawnee Nation. I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. Really giving American Indians their place in history, American history. You've got to argue that they were two of the most influential siblings in American history period. Who can you compare them to? My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Thank you very much. Listen up fund evening. This song is called the Last Days of Tecumsa by American songwriter Grant Lee Buffalo Yeah, j Yeah, and the song's lyrics are mysterious and short. In one minute and six seconds, it talks about spacemen and airplanes, but at the heart of the song, he says he couldn't believe all that he knew would fade. The song ends, and you wish it was longer. In many ways, it's like two comes his life like a dagger piercing your soul. Two comes. His plight for the traditional Indian way of life and lands leaves me gasping for a breath of justice or a hint of fairness, and a scenario stacked with an almost undeniable inevitability. It's hard to reconcile. It does not escape me that if t Comes his vision had prevailed, these United States, which I've become fond of, would look much different than they do today, which leaves me searching deep to evaluate if I really wanted that justice or does it just make me feel good to look back and cast well wishes on this warrior's vision. We're gonna dive right into that faithful day in eighteen thirteen when two comes to his men and a meager British force found themselves pushed into Ontario, Canada, after fighting near Detroit, Michigan. They're in the middle of what would become known as the War of eighteen twelve, a fight between Great Britain and the young United States. The war started because of British interference with US trade routes, but America wanted to own Indian lands and Canada, and both sides had Indian allies fighting with them, But the most influential group was led by the Shawnee two Cumpsa and his Pan Indian gang fighting with the British. Two comes to his legacy is that he garnered the largest fighting force of Native Americans to stand against America. Some believe upwards of six thousand warriors at its peak. He gathered fighters from at least twelve different tribes to fight for Indian lands through a religious, military and political revolution. Uniting warriors from the tribes was a feat in and of itself, as they carried the burden of generations of internal conflict themselves over land, and most of the tribes rejected to comes his radical vision of standing against the United States, demanding and Indian nation. Their reasons are as elusive as a clouded sunrise. You know exactly what's happening, but you just can't see it clearly. Some of the tribes were being paid by the United States, many had already fled west to the Mississippi, and some just knew that this plan wouldn't succeed. It comes to wasn't a chief, but he rose to power in the Shawnee world because of his visionary ideology, his personal charisma, his success as a war leader, and his incredible oratory skill, and his striking good looks didn't hurt either, or at least that's what they say about him. However, he wasn't alone. His Brotherton's Squattawa, known as the Prophet, led the religious side of this revolution and stands as one of the most influential Native American prophets in known history. These boys were fighting for a diying way of life which was rapidly being choked out by American encroachment. If you listen to the last two episodes, you know all this stuff already. Here's author and historian Peter Cozens on two comes his death, So two comes A. He basically prophesies his own death. He has an intuition that this is going to be his last battle that he's going into. Tell me what happens. Yeah, he um t Coomsa and tanks Ottawa, and they're greatly reduced alliance of now just five hundred warriors down from again nearly six thousand at the high point. They're retreating deeper and deeper into Ontario with various this very small British force, and they're being pursued by a vastly superior American force under William Henry Harrison, and they're fighting skirmishes all along the way as they're falling back day by day from Detroit deeper into Ontario. And on the night of October four, eight thirteen, to come sitting around the fire with his closest followers, and suddenly two come. So just has a revelation that he's going to be killed in battle the next day. And uh, one of the Indians to whom he tells us his name is Shabona. And there's the fact that a town in Illinois name for him. Now, he who went on to live into the eighteen forties, at least, you know, we called this, as did others that you know, he was he was going to die the next day. Now, whether that's apocryphal or not, that's what happened. And the next morning, on Cobra fifth, eighteen thirteen, the British commander, a guy named Proctor, finally decides to stand and fight the Americans. Here's Cornell professor and author Robert Morgan, very good British general, very close to t Compsey, named General Brock, has been recalled and replaced by General Procter, who is incompetent. Basically, he don't know how to talk to these men. He certainly doesn't know how to talk to Indians. They're marching away from the Americans, going up towards the River Thames, and Procter does such a bad job that he divides his men and he doesn't communicate well with the Indians. And when Harrison arrives, he just essentially runs away and leaves Tcmpsey to fight the battle. That all the fighting is really done by the Indians. But Harrison is really good. I mean, whatever his reputation he is among revisionists, this guy is really smart and he defeats that group. Of the hero the Battle of the Thams. Two other heroes, a colonel named Richard Mentor Johnson, is the one who actually kills Tacpsy. He's wounded by Decompy and he goes in and shoots him at close range and kills him. The supernatural nature of two comes his revelation about his death, and the evidence from the natural realm seemed to be converging together. Almost every male figure in his life had been killed in battle. Two comes to was now forty five years old in the age when the freshwater River of Youth begins to fade into the overwhelming volume of the salty sea at the coast of middle age, and for the lifespan of his time older age. This time in a man's life brings more wisdom, but in hand to hand combat, in months and even years of constant motion, living on war rations and throwing his broken leg from the bison hunt, his physical body wasn't at its peak. A professional sports player whose career goes beyond forty is an outlier. But I'm not suggesting two comes To died because of his age. It's just an interesting thought. But I wonder if two comes To all ways knew he'd die on the battlefield. The sheer volume of exposure to potential death and the nobility in his family associated with death for this cause are interesting factors. His father, pucks and Waw, died at the Battle of Point Pleasant and was buried in a shallow grave in the forest. But before he died, he tasked his son chis Aqua two Comes, his big brother, to fight for Indian lands at all costs. Chis Aqua would later declare he'd rather the fouls of the air pick his bones than be buried back at camp. And that's exactly what happened. Many like to throw around that they're involved in a cause they die for, but for most of us those words are a cheap verbal thrill, a joy ride, and counterfeit valor two comes to paid in full in the currency of blood. Here's Dr Dave Edmonds of the University of Texas, Dallas. When the fight is over, and then after his death in resistance, just sort of they crumble and they begin to run. They go back towards Detroit when the war. When the battle is over, his body is identified, initially by some people who knew him. It's on the ground there. They go to get Harrison and a guy named Simon Kenton who's an American Scouts kind of like Boon. By the time they get there, many of the bodies are mutilated horribly, and that they cut strips to make razor straps. They cut strips to all kinds of trophies, and his body who they think, his body is so mutilated they really stuff off. They can't even tell who it is. So the question is then what happens to the body. That's that's hard to say. I personally think there was a mass grave and they put a lot of the bodies in there. Personally, I think he lies with a lot of the men that fell at the battle. Other people said no, that they carried him off and buried his bones in the body. I don't really know. I'm sure if Tacompsa would have had his way, he would probably have wanted to be buried there amidst the warriors who fought with him. But then some people said, oh, no, he escaped, and so no, no, no, no, but he's killed there. The man's years old, yeah, prom and the man had killed him was a uh, there's probably a nine chance that was Richard M. Johnson, a colonel from Kentucky would then later go on to become Vice president. And he ran on the he used the horrible, horrible slogan Rumsey Dumpsey, Rumsey Dumpsey. I'm Colonel Johnson, and I killed the Kumpsey. Well. Um wow. That so that that would be equivalent to like a political leader today running off that they killed Osama bin Laden. Yeah. Yeah, except yeah, except everybody hated some have been ladden and nobody really to come. But the American people would have been really threatened by him though something but like he was an enemy of Yah. In eighteen thirty six, Richard Mentor Johnson ran for vice president. It was a peak time for Tacumsas fame in America. It was twenty three years after his death, and he ran on the Democratic ticket with Martin van Buren, touting that he had killed two Cumsa. And notice that his rhyme makes it sound like they pronounced two cumpsa to come see, which my friend Robert Morgan does. And we all know already that we're all pronouncing it wrong because it was actually two come fifth, which is an odd pronunciation for our ear. Anyway. Another name that just came up with Simon Kenton, who's believed to have identified the mutilated body of Tecumsa. Some say it was because one leg was shorter than the other from the bison wreck. Kenton was an influential American scout, hunter and tiersman. He was a friend of Daniel Boone, credited with saving his life once. The exploits of Kenton's life on the frontier are only slightly overshadowed by his contemporary Boon. He was captured by the Shawnee, ran the gauntlet multiple times, was adopted as a Shawnee, and they named him Cutahota, which means the condemned man. The American frontier was a small world. Lastly, the mutilation of enemy bodies during this time was common for both sides of this warfare, from scalping to the Americans cutting long strips of skin off the backs of enemies to make leather goods. It was a wildly brutal time and was normalized in the culture of war. Scalping has long been seen as a historical Indian practice, but some revisionists are now saying that Europeans started it in North America as a mechanism of a bounty system. However, there is substantial evidence from the records of your Appean's earliest contact with Indigenous people that it was happening before they got here. Interesting stuff. Here's Robert Morgan defining the turning point catalyzed by two comps's death. But once their great leader is killed, the morale of the Indians kind of evaporates. It's a total victory, and the British army has fled, and the Indians disperse and never gather in that kind of forth again, ever again, never again. Even a little big horn. There was a large group of Indians, but they were there not to fight Americans, but to fight the crows, to drive them out of s After his death, never again would Native American forces be rallied in such great numbers against America. If nothing else, this shows Two comes to strength as a leader. And if you remember, on the last episode, Peter Cozen's told us how t comes to save the lives of prisoners of war from the Kentucky militia. Before Two comes to his men killed them all. This was told to America, and we loved him for it. Here's an interesting consideration. I mean, his corps was flayed, his skin was slaid off his corpse by, if not some of the very same Kentuckians whose lives he spared at Fort Meigs, at least by Kentuckians who knew some of those Kentuckians. That isn't a tragic tragedy. Yeah, I marveled at his restraint, just as I marvel at tanks Wattawa's ability to hold fast to his religious beliefs even in the wake of defeat. And he went on to live until eighteen thirty five. And yeah, he died. The prophet died on the outskirts of modern day Kansas City, Kansas, on the Shawnee Reservation in eighteen thirty five. I mean, he was a broken man. He was I think sixty one when he died, but he still up stamious, still meditated to the Master of Life, still held true to his beliefs. So they're both remarkable men in their own right. And then together, you know, you have to and there's note, there's no disputing the fact that they were the two most influential Indian siblings in American Indian history. I mean to come so, I think we've shown conclusively was the most influential political military leader, Thanks Fatawa was clearly the most influential Indian prophet in American Indian history. So together they're clearly the most influential Indian siblings. But really giving American Indians their place in history, American history, You've got to argue that they were two of the most influential siblings in American history period. Who can you compare them to? And you know, Tanks Flatawa was able to cope with life afterwards. He eventually actually became an occasional house guest of the Governor of Michigan Territory who fought against the Kumps and Flatawa to Harrison, became a house guest and visitor in Detroit, helped lead the Shawnee west to Kansas. You eventually, in a manner of speaking, he made his peace with the Americans. It come. So I don't think you ever could have. I don't think it was in his makeup. I mean, he was so dedicated to that, you know, that idea of a Panni Indian alliance and homeland. I don't know if he could have adapted to the change circumstances. Could he have adapted to what was going to happen to his people, or would it have happened at all if he'd lived a full life. We're tiptoeing around a grand assumption that the timing of his death was an act of mercy from this master of life that he served. It's a question no one is qualified to answer. But here's really what we're contemplating. Is there a realm beyond this one, superintending men's lives. Without a doubt, both of these brothers would have said yes, so could this master of life have protected to come? So the assumption is that he could have. I'm not suggesting for a second that I know the full scope of the doctrine of the Shawnees, not at all. But it's clear two Comesa was no fatalist, and from overwhelming evidence, he believed the wilful actions of men could bend the spirit realm, which then orchestrated the natural realm. And I can get behind that, taking out any philosophical meanderings. We don't know why he died, but the cold reality is that his corpse, absence of his spirit, lay on the banks of the Thames River on October five, eighteen thirteen. Two comes His passion for his vision of an Indian nation seemed to be so resolute it's hard to imagine him dying peacefully on a Kansas reservation. Here's Dr Edmonds, and we're about to be set up for a sucker punch. He is an irremarkable man in American history. He is a man who has epitomizes want it within the broaderst film of American culture, what an ideal Indian person should be. Wait a minute, what an ideal Indian person should be? Is that what he said as in an American being the judge of what an ideal person from another culture should be based on the things favorable to our worldview. Yeah, I think we do that all the time. It would be like Russia elizing an American because they exemplified what Russia thinks an American should be. Like, it's a mind twister, But really, what I'm learning is how complex of a story this is to tell. And I'm certain that my own biases have clouded the truth even on this here Burgary's podcast. If you remember, I've been asking from the beginning why to Come so was an American hero. We're about to be served a hot plate of gotcha. Now, Dr Edmunds is going to tell us all the fables created about two Come to his legacy that made him more palatable to the Americans, and that in some ways it was hard to do biography of him because there's so much stuff associated with him. For example, there's the myth that he fell in love with a white woman, Rebecca Galloway supposedly, and he set at her feet and she read Shakespeare to him. You can see this throughout the nineteenth century. All the stuff written about him talks about this Rebecca Galloway. That is pure hogwash, but it's it's sort of adds to this image of a man and two come to from what we know, was married twice. Second time he married an older woman who helped take care of his son. He has a son that will survive him. There are the other one is he's an argue's always sometimes pictured his tall, sort of light skinned. And there's some one rumor is that his his mother was a white captive. Come on, this is trying to to to lighten him. The classic one is we know, for example, he had he had a ring in his in his nose and hung down upon his lip. And the early early pictures, early portraits that we have, our sketches, have that on him. But after about ten or fifteen years, the white illustrators took it out because it didn't it was they thought that denigrated him. Oh. The other one that was very big, that he was a member of the Masonic lodge. For God's sakes, he was not a Mason. But it's but these are nineteenth century stuff that gets associated with him sort of to build him up, and he doesn't need it. He stands on his own. It's a remarkable man. In today's world, we might call this fake news except to make someone look favorable in the fakeness, But we're about to see a potential reason that we wanted him to look good. Here's Robert Morgan directly answering the question of why it comes to qualified as an American hero. If he's right, the motivations aren't as noble as they see. Now, let's see in with the speculation on why Decompsy is such a hero to Americans though he fought against Americans many times. Well, Americans do admire a great warrior. I'm an extremely brave and also a great horator. But in my opinion, the reason he's really so much admired because he was all those things. It was charismatic, handsome, smart, could be friends to Americans, and but he lost. This tremendous leader who loses so we can feel good about it. We thought he's a great man, but he lost. We beat in So you're a hero. If you can beat a hero, if you defeat somebody who's not a hero, then that's not such a great accomplishment that we defeated decom Say. You know, there are other Indian heroes, but there's nobody like Decome. Say. Sherman was named William D. Compsy Sherman. I grew up in a community where there was a cumpsy shipman. He was t cumpsy shipman that the people admired him. You could admire him so much because he was a great leader. But we beat him, which makes us seem even bigger. If you defeat a great man, then you're great. He appeals to advantage. Oh yeah, I kind of think of it like a sports in sports situation, like if you have a great rival and you're on this side, if that rival beat you, you're it's just you're gonna hate him all the worse. But if if you beat that guy all of a sudden, you might kind of be like, well, you know, they're they're pretty good guys, man, they're great competitors. There, there, this, there that. But it's you only feel good about him because you beat him. Well, Achilles defeats Hector was the greatest warrior the Trojan's ever had. I mean, don't know, that's that's really quite an accomplic. You're only as good as your opponent. In a young nation hungry for identity, beating Twokumpsa and elevating him as a national hero made us feel good about ourselves. If you look at our motivations for this admiration that we still have for him today. It makes me wonder how close that two coumes so we've described on this series really reflects the real two cumpsa. Our biases shape our stories. It also makes me wonder who is qualified to tell any story at all? And from what basis can a human even operate from a position that lacks bias. That's a big question with a tough answer. But I know just the guy to talk to about two kumsa. Here's Shawnee Chief Ben Barnes. Do you think we've kind of westernized and turned him into a hero when he wasn't? I am, but I think I think it's been hyper glamorized. And I think if you go see that play in Ohio, I think it's it's absolutely terrible because they have it up there and is a story they've since they've since turned it into public theater and they have a stage. And so we've done that with Mu Tacum. So you know, we've created a We've created a figure that's just not representative of the man who he was. Have you been to the National Portrait Gallery in d C. You should go. They have a they have a statue of two comes in marble and he's slain and he's laying there in either alabaster or marble, and it looks very Greco Roman. It's like, what you know, It's just it's that kind of you know, myth making, so out of after the Civil War, the country as a whole started dealing in myth making in eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties. You know, the some remember of the past never was. I have a book if you're somewhere Katrina Phillips uh staging indigenuity. She coins a term called postalgia, so it's a no nostalgia for things that never were. I love that phrase. Fau stylegia, fa stalgia, who pstalgia belonging for a past that didn't exist? Do I do this? Do you do that? I bet you do. I probably don't, lute. I recently read an essay from Southern history author Dan Carter. He's extensively interviewed people about race relations in the South his whole life. I want to read a single paragraph from his essay, called Shattered Pieces, Living and Writing Southern History. It startled me as I listened to my interviewees described the events of those years. I recognized the great chasm between their recollections and what I knew to be true, And with each interview I learned an important lesson about memory. It's not simply what we forget. The more fundamental problem is that we constantly recreate memory so that our past can live comfortably with the present, without the jar and dissonances that inevitably a company changed through time. Like Shakespeare's monster Caliban. We drift into reveries of the past that is so comforting that when we awake we cry to dream again, no wonder. Oliver Goldsmith called memory that fond deceiver. End of quote. Mm hmm. I want to talk for a second about my reporting on two Coomesa. I'm certain my own biases have influenced the way that I've perceived him. Maybe the lack of actual facts, whether they've disintegrated through time or whether they were just simply not recorded. Our image of the man today is certainly veiled. However, we have wrestled with the data points we have, and we've told this story to the best of our ability. It's wild to think about how in a little over two years, just two into revolutions around the sun can make history so hard to understand how much more the ancient folsome bison hunters or humans even deeper in history than that compared to them. Two comes to is a very modern man. But what an enigma he still is. Maybe Grantlee Buffalo got it right with his mysterious nonsensical lyrics in the Last Days It comes to Song. Here's more from Chief Ben Barnes described to me how two comes to in his legacy life leadership for the Shanny Nation. Would how do you view him today? Who? Who? Who is he? To you? Does he stand out? You know, he's he's this one leader that we've kind of cherry picked out to talk about in highlight? Is that the way? Would you view him as a significant leader in the shawn I definitely view him as a significant leader. I think people are a little overweight fixated on him because there's also black hoof cornstock, blue jacket, a host of others. There's an unknown woman in the pages of history, and upon Shawnee's arrival into Oklahoma and the forcing of allotments on her people, she became a prophet and that of a religious movement and nearly militarized the Shawnee people and other tribes of Oklahoma to rise up against Indian agents. So there's almost an uprising. History didn't even bother to record her name, and so here she is leading a religious movement that's as fundamental and it speaks to the heart of people as much as it comes his time. So is he important, absolutely, But he also you know, he is in a long line. He's a Shawnny heroes. He's a product of those. He's standing on the shoulders of other giants and he's not standing on that shoulder alone. He has his brother tin squad the way with him. You know, he was a man that lived within a Shawnee community that whenever his people gathered to go worship, he would have been one of those people. He wouldn't have been set apart. And if you watch those men file file in to their traditional place of worship, you wouldn't even be able to pick him out which one he was. He wouldn't be at the necessarily be at the head of the line, he wouldn't necessarily be at the back of the line. He would occupy the space that they needed him for that day. So what they needed in that day is they needed somebody to say, you know, these these policies of our past are not working. It's time to take up arms. It's time to lead this Pan Indiana revolution. That was what he believed. So that's who he was. He was a product of his time. Tell me if this is right that what I'm hearing you say about two Coomesa. It's kind of like that sentence that what's important is what happened, not who did it? Yeah, And also to put him in their context is this is their communities, the products of their communities. And also so you you don't you It's it's like you're saying, you're not saying, don't give credit to two Comesa, but you're saying it's got to be viewed inside a community. And that's a that's a bizarre thing for a Western thinker to think about. I had a friend call it radical, and so that's a radical way of thinking about things. But really it's true of all of us, isn't it. Didn't you the things your mom, dad, and uncles all do you do? These things exactly use an individual? How much that it was really you, I mean, and not them setting you up for those successes. That's a great example of the world view of the Shawnee versus even what I'm trying to do inside of telling this story, I mean, and that's why I came to you, is because I wanted to to see how you would view this guy. And every time I ask you about him, you keep bringing it back to the community and back to what he actually did and how he wouldn't have stood out. Which that's so interesting to me because when I heard about two come so, I wanted to make him like this hero that just stood above everybody. And that's not what you're saying, no very much. So he's a man, and you know the he has many He probably made as many mistakes as he does successes. He was a product of his time. Westerners typically defined great us by difference. This man was great because he was so different. He was heading shoulders above others. He stood out. The Shawnees would have been more focused on the verbs the action, rather than the noun the name the person. Remember our language lesson from episode two. What got done was more important than who did it. Westerners want a hero to make a granted statue out of, and the Shawnees wanted a homeland nation of their own, and they didn't care who stepped up to make it happen. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but that's what I'm hearing the chief say. Here's his answer of a very tough question. Do you view two Kumsa as successful and what he did? Because at an external level you would say he wasn't successful because it didn't happen the way he wanted it to. I don't. I don't know if a Canadian would say that. Okay, imagine that spine that was shown there, and that the battle attempts and when they said okay, British retreated but not us, today's the day we die? And who won the War of eighteen twelve? We don't teach that American studies for a reason. Canadians were very Canadian about it. Derect Okay, let's go back to the borders the way they were. There have been some other country. New York State would be all Canadian. So you know they won that warm So was his efforts unsuccessful? I don't know Canada one. And he threw in with Canadians in the British, so he may have died in that war, but I would think Canadians would would argue otherwise that he's certainly not a failure, and I think this entity that's become our memory of two coomes to I think that also still has some value for any people as a way to look up to. That's like, Okay, okay, this is a larger than my figure. But if I can just remember that he was just a man, that just a man or just a woman can do incredible acts. Is that individuals matter. Individuals matter. That's good. I now want to talk with him about the history of the Shawnee, and that's going to help us understand the current context of the modern Shawnee Nation. It could feel like we're going backwards, but we're not. Here's Chief Ben Barnes talking about the importance of understanding the different tribes as separate entities and an example of what makes a Shawnee a Shawnee. So I think one of the examples that I like to use is I think every American, at least intuitively that's at some level, understands that Ireland and Italians are completely different countries, completely different cultures. But if you look at the distance overland, it's really not that far. At the distance between Ireland and Italy, well, here in the United States, we're talking about tribal nations. And if I was talking about the Shawnees and Pawnees, people say, oh, those those must be similar because the names are similar. Well if they don't understand that tribes are very much different. There were as different from each other as the Italians are from the Irish. And they think that everybody living in one area is going to be very similar. Well, that's not true for Shawnee people. You know, we had very We were very peculiar in the way that our communities were formed. We didn't have like one elected big man that everybody followed, right, and that that big man terminology I think comes from anthropology. So it was a community. The community would set apart people that had had shown particular wisdom generally were older, and those older folks would guide the hands of what appeared to people on the outside of being chiefs leaders. These guys are just speakers. Speakers on behalf of those old folks of those wise and leaders. So that's one aspect. So the so the organized structure of leadership would have been different unique to the Shawnees, and that they didn't have leaders. They did have a point of leaders, but they could be torn down at a Moment's notice that if somebody tried to act unilaterally without going back to the community and having a community involved in those decisions. So would there be other Native American tribes that would have had what we would perceive as just a chief that was I don't think it's I think it's more nuanced than that, because like when we talk about Cherokees, with the modern day thing that you think of as Cherokees or Shawnee is not like it was back then, and so well, I can't speak as much about therap particular histories or any of those tribes in this region. I think we have to understand that that they're much more nuanced that some of these some of the ways that they had came together were because of incursions by Europeans into their their territories. So groups would come together and co esced into confederacies like you see amongst the Miskogeans speaking people's. But for Shawnee people, we had always kind of been scattered apart from each other. The only thing that I can compare it to for some Americans that they can relate to is like a Jewish diaspora. So I may I may live in Los Angeles. But how I go into Jewish synagogue. I'm at home, right, I know what's going on. I know how to act, know how to be people to who identify as me as you know, as Jewish, I fellow worshiper. So for Shawnee people, they can move. But we lived across twenty historic states, more than twenty US historic states. We had treaties with France, England, Spain, and later it was with Mexico or even Republic of Texas and of course United States. Groups of people of racial types don't engage in treaty making processes. Uses the Shawnee Nation is engaged in making treaties with Spain, making treaties with Europeans to carve out spaces for you know where these European activities can occur. What what does tribal sovereignty mean? Well, since you say asked that question, allow me to proselytize you into the Good Word or the United Nations Declaration the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, where we've codified what we believe, what we think is inherent to our people's that these things have pre existed, nations coming and arriving on these shores, that we believe that these principles are enshrined in our very nature of sovereignty, that we have the rights that the other nations do. I was at the United Nations Permanent Form of Indigenous People's earlier this year, and as I was walking by looking at the various nations from around the world, it was like a fifth of those nations had a lower GDP than the Cherokee Nation and the Seminole tribe. It's like, how is that? How come they have a seat there whenever check Nation and similar nations have a bigger GDP. So it just, you know, it's it's kind of baffling. It's kind of baffling that they built the United Nations not for us or for our inclusion. But it's like so it's like, okay, we see, I see how this is. But it's very strange to me that, so do you feel like you don't have the functional sovereignty that you want. I think that sovereignty will always be a push pool. I think I think that we live in a very interesting time. There's some advantages right now if I think that tribal nations can take advantage of People are watching Rutherford Falls and they're seeing messages being delivered on conversations that we've only dreamed about talking about publicly, and they're having them in the open to millions of viewers. People are excited about Reservation Dogs, and they're binging the first two episodes this very week. We have dark Winds. So we have all these native productions that are coming out, and some of these Native productions, like the one being done Stirring har Joe and Takawaiti down to craft services, it's indigenous people's making this film. The gaffers, everybody on the film set, writers all Indigenous. So we sit in this juncture where we have Native people's occupying the cultural hegemony that Americans always wanted us to have. Really, they want these stories, but now we get to be once telling them it's not Kevin Costner, it's not Avatar, because Avatar's basically dance at the Wolves. Are am I right? It's it's yeah, it dances at the Wolves in space, So it's really a West It's really think about that. One's a little bit over my head. You're watching Dances of the Wolves and then watch your Avatar, same movie, same movie. Yeah, and that's a conversation Indian people are having the rest of the world's not, but when you watch it you'll see them, right, Okay, and uh so having these conversations front and center, now people are like, I see, I get it now, I get what the issues are. Are starting to understand some of the issues. Or when an end joke happens on rather for false and you're like, what's that about? What's an in joke? And they go and they look it up on Google and oh, that's it, that's what that is. Were the one with the They burned out the owl on Reservation Dogs the prior season and I think this season two and the most recent episode, they blurred out the owl, which is a cultural joke that folks from certain certain woodland cultures house seeing an owl can be bad luck in certain instances. Okay, they blurred him out, They blurred out. They burreed him out, you know I like to do. And like if somebody's naked on the screen, they're burned out the owl that same way they pixelated, so it's an inside We're not gonna look at that. So they blurted out for television, which is hysterical. So we have an opportunity to tell native stories and you know, I'm glad that Taiko y t T used his opportunity as an indigenous person from from New Zealand, as a Maori person, to leverage that for a situation here and here in the United States and in the rest of North America to create films about us for us. So, as a child of the eighties, I remember Cool Jay in a commercial and he had foodboo gear on. So for us, by us. You know nothing about us without us or doing things with not for you know, you need to do things with us, not for so in a lot of this academic scholarship, it's being written. You know. That's why when you said you wanted to come here today, we're like, heck yeah, because a lot of people have the podcast and never never even come to visit Shawney people. I think we're all grateful for the Chief's willingness to talk to us. You know, I gave him a jar of bear grease as a token of my appreciation, and I told him with all sincerity that I would supply him with bear grease for life, which in my world is amongst the greatest gestures of friendship. And I meant it. And if for some reason in the future, I'm unable to personally feel their bear grease needs. I'll be relying on some of you to help me fulfill my vow. Here's the Chief talking about one of his biggest initiatives, preservation of the Shawnee language. We are very fortunate. For a long time, you know, we were a tribe without without much in the ways of financial means. You know, we did not have a lot of money. Was what kept us together was our language, our culture, and our religion and our sense of identity. And so we still have our ancestral religion that still exists. We're really lucky we still have language speakers. So it's not good. The situation is not good for any tribal language across the United States, just because that's the way it is across the entire planet. Every two weeks language dies. So every two weeks somewhere on the global native language dies. There's about six thousand languages has been spoken right now, and I think by the end of the century they predict will be just down to a couple of hundred. So one of those weeks will be ours if we don't do anything. So when I become chief, just right before the global pandemic. First thing we did was declare state of emergency for Shawnee language. The second thing we did is we had adopted the UNESCO's International Year of Indigenous Languages and so that we tasked our team too. We created the International Year of Shawnee Language, asked them to create a decade long plan to restore and revive our language and get more, get more fluent speakers because it was it was dying. It was the only people. The only speakers we had were elderly people. And so subsequently we adopted the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages. We adopted that and out of that we created a tenure plan to save our languages. As of a January or earlier this year, what amount of four percent of the tribes population was enrolled in a language program. So and we had created UH. We created a host of new volunteer teachers. They were there really community language activists. As for what they really are, the language is everything. And like we said before, it's believed less than two fifty people on planet Earth currently speak Shawnee. It was once the trade language of the Ohio River Valley. Indians from other tribes spoke Shawnee to maintain relevance and trade the greatest orator potentially in American history. Two Compsa spoke Shawnee as his native tongue. Boone and Simon Kenton spoke quite a bit of Shawnee. This language is important to American history. Here's a big question for the chief. What what is the big picture of what you, as the chief of the Shawnees is trying to do inside of two inside of this country. You know, we hear about the plights of these other ethnic groups inside the country that are at the forefront of media and stuff. What do you guys trying to do? So I had a seventh grade asked me that question, and it was he asked me a question, but not in that way. It was a sometimes because of COVID, we haven't done a lot outreach. And this past year, you know, he was like, we're going to have to start back our outreach into communities. So we visited a school. It was seventh grade class, and he asked, is what's your job? Wow, that's that's a stinct way to ask what you just asked? Yeah, And he said what's your job? And I was like, Wow, no one's ever put it that way, and so I actually it took me back and I thought, man, this is why I needed more of these grade school of because they asked some really no filters, and they ask really sharp questions because they don't have any assumptions, and I had to explain them and even to myself. Really, my job is to undo the effects of our removal. That's my job. So that means the wealth of the tribe, find ways to restore that land of the tribe, findal ways restore that to protect and be a warrior for our language, to make sure that our culture survives for another millennia. To make sure that you know what we are as a people. These sovereign rights, these national rights that we have that we had prior to the United States, that we prior had prior encountering the Spanish, French, and English, that those are those remain secured. So we spent a lot of time on the road at state capitals, We spent a lot of time in d C. And some of it is educational work, some of its lobbying work. Some of it is advocacy for issues to getting to legislative trying to get some legislation started on some issues, So that's part of the work, but it's also a building community and truly because of what's happened to our people, the diaspora that happened in our removal, it's finding new ways for people to connect as a community because as we talked about earlier communities, the core, it's at the center of the language. So that that removal just broke down the culture. It was damaging. It did not destroy it, because it's did that. It existed in a chrysalis of sorts because we were removed and then we were sent to Kansas. Then we're from Kansas. We were the loyal Shawnees, fought for the Union, sent it an a territory to live amongst Cherokees, who we just got done fighting. They were they were part of the Confederacy. So that was I'm sure that was interesting times. But because of that, it almost became like a rural ghetto right for Shawny people because we didn't speak Cherokee, we didn't worship Cherokee, we worked Cherokee. But we're living amongst the center Cherokees. So what did we have to do other than cleveland to each other. So you know, that community became almost I don't say an amber, but very much a cloistered community, I say, and that helped preserve it ironically and almost destroyed it once, Uh, the nineteen sixties and seventies, when you saw a lot of people, you know, moving on into moving into a lot of urban and suburban communities to take jobs. So now we've seen that revitalization. So what what does a Shawnee nation look like that you would see and would want and would be happy with. We have citizens that live in fifty states where the Shawnee Tribe of everywhere. We have sister tribes in Eastern Shawnee Tribe Oklahoma and the Absentutee Shawnee Tribe Oklahoma. But we live in fifty states. And so what I would like is I would like for them to feel like they're connecting no matter how far away they are, but they know that they know that there's a home, that there's always been a home, and it's our tradition that they're always known that it's home. So that noma and also you know, to reinstill that idea that the k Bikolita and Michael Jake, these are the traditional divisions of the Shawnee Tribe like families. Inside of a family, that idea, you know, you may feel that you're little different than those others. That you may have different political ideologies, you may have different ideas on certain types of freedoms that you think you can get, that you should do you have for the United States. But we're all part of the same community. That we're not separate, We're not a part were one. And I think that's a message that Americans can learn from the Shawnees today. I've learned a lot in this series, not just historic data about a man's life, but we've been able to peer into an ancient culture. But maybe more importantly, I feel like I have a greater understanding of the personal stress inflicted on the individuals in a society in a crisis. A story is always told from a certain point of occupancy, and I am not a Shawnee, but I've tried to lean in hard into understanding what it would have been like to be one during that time. With all our fancy technology, we can't alter the past. All we can do is look to the future with the knowledge of what happened before. Honestly, I hope we'd come away with a new understanding for how deeply complex the situation was in a genuine empathy, producing positive action towards indigenous peoples and the things they view as important to them. In modern times, when these series come to a close, I often find myself in a state of melancholy. Probably never again in my life will I be as mentally and emotionally engaged in this story. The life of this man t comes to a man who I did not know. We don't even have a real picture of him. There are no audio recordings of his voice. But I feel like I was there and saw the panther comet cross the sky when two Comsa was born about two arrow flights south of the village. I felt his depression when he broke his leg and acquired the limp that he believed would make him useless in war. I felt his courage when he toood against the trend, admonishing those around him not to torture prisoners. I felt his grief when he lost his father, his leaders, and his brother to war. I felt his anger when the treaties were broken in the boundary lines were crossed. I felt the passion of his brother's vision of the Master of life, and the inspiration that it gave to their people. I felt his strength when he spoke with articulation, power and authority on the destiny of their Indian nation and land. And I felt a sultry sadness beyond justifiable rationale when I learned how he was killed, his body desecrated and buried in a mass grave. Of these things I do not know their resolution or if it is possible to amend the wrongs of a path so long ago. Though he was a flogged man just like us, he wasn't Deity come to Earth. But in the words of Chief Ben Barnes, he is just a man who occupied the space that his people needed him for that day, and because of that, I have deep respect for the man to come. So I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece. If you've enjoyed this series, share it with a friend, save us review on iTunes, do all the silly stuff and all this podcasters asked everyone to get. I hope you have a great week, and I look forward to talking this over with the folks on the Render next week. M We well, what's the next time? M

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