Little Bighorn: Crazy Horse, Reno & A Valley of Death (w/ Jocko!) | History Traveler Episode 342

[Music] right now I am in Montana at the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn and in in the last episode we were talking about the kind of the the leadup to what is going to become known as as custers Last Stand uh here with Jocko willink Le Babin and the the guys from Echelon front kind of picking this battle apart and uh in that last episode we talked about how kuster had started to divide his forces up and had sent a captain with three companies guy by the name of Frederick bentine to look for some smaller villages on this little side mission ended up being a complete waste of time uh well as kuster and and Reno are are moving to the north to uh seek glory and and Crush uh Sitting Bull and this massive uh Native American village that that he has along the Little Big Horn well bentine ends up coming back here to this area and following along you know behind kuster and Reno in what we now know as Reno Creek so he finds the lone teepee uh that kuster and Reno had already found and and somewhere here in this Valley he gets a message from Custer's Detachment that says bentin come on big Village be quick PS bring packs and what Ben teen didn't know is that to the north kuster and Reno had stuck their head right into a meat grinder and the bottom was dropping out for the men of the seventh [Music] cavalry what's up guys my name is JP Dell I uh the chief training officer here at Echelon front and we are in Montana doing a battlefield review one of the staff rides and it's really cool being able to come and just see this uh this area from an actual perspective of being like as we call boots on the ground in those different areas of the battlefield and what I've really enjoyed about this is learning the different perspectives of this history and just remembering how you know we as humans and as people we need to have an open mind to all the different perspectives and views of things that have have happened and we need to study history but we need to understand that we can't just study history from one perspective we need to get multiple perspectives from that history from what's happened so that we can learn it it's just it's been for me very eye openening to be here and you know it makes me frustrated with myself that I didn't take a more vested interest as a student in high school to learn history and at a deeper level but also to look at history with multiple perspectives to get a broader View and it's really cool that we're able to do that here at Echelon front it's one of the experiential leadership training programs that we have is being able to go to different battlefields and learn about what happened what we could have maybe have done to prevent that and what we can do in the future to to prevent some of these mistakes but then also being able to take all these lessons and apply them to our personal and professional lives in regards to our leadership abilities as humans to make things better to support the people around us and ultimately help our people just be able to learn and grow so that we can accomplish the mission to go out there and be [Music] successful of the treaty I talked about in 68 the treaty is no white person or person shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the territory or without the consent of the Indians to pass through the same that's what was told to the Native Americans in' 68 we want no might no white men here the Black Hills belong to me if the whites try to take them I will fight sitting Bowl this is a different Dynamic of anything that the United States Army has ever seen other than if you've ever been down into Texas and you've read a couple of books uh the Empire of the summer Moon highly recommend it uh you know some of those folks that are down there on the southern border uh of there kuster and these folks have never seen anything like this with this kind of individual as the leader that was quoted from sitting bow so when you look out here of what's going to take place he's now remember when I talked yesterday about the relationship between benen and kuster they got a really good relationship right they they they thoroughly love each other well he's got a log train so he's going to make a decision back there that he's going to move with himself and Reno and he's going to take bentin he's going to put him with the log train he's going to send him out and around to the South with the log train to move the log train up in just in case if he's making an approach and they try to get out South maybe he can swim out and around oh we're seeing the deer there we go you got that picked up on you what you're looking at we're not North Carolina so when you look at the aspects of of of these folks of where they're going to come into he's going to make a move and he's going to come out of the wolf mountains and Ben he's already split his Force so instead of keeping his Force together not knowing the exact numbers that are over there but knowing that is a one big [Music] herd we've made our way up into the valley now and we're basically following the same path that Reno and the three companies that he was commanding would have followed as they were moving up on Sitting Bull's Village and when they got right up to this spot you can see there's a highway behind me that basically is following the same path as Reno but when they got to this spot there's a a bend that was in the Little Big Horn River it's an oxbow lake now but uh REO gets up here and probably started realizing that he'd may be bitten off a little bit more than he can chew he's got about 160 men with them each one of those men are carrying 50 rounds of ammunition and they've just rolled up on a village of 8,000 people 2,000 of whom are these battle hardened uh Native American [Music] warriors [Music] [Music] here in this field to the the best of our ability we are looking at things from the perspective of Reno and the companies of a G and M of the seventh Cavalry and as I mentioned uh the The Little Big Horn River came out here and then it's going to curl back and uh I mean you're seeing the same thing that I am tell me what you can see uh around the bend you can't see anything uh turns out what's around that bend on the southern part of the village was Sitting Bull and the hunk Papa uh beyond that was the miniu and then the ogala and then the black feet and then the Cheyenne uh so a as they rounded this Bend I I can only imagine that Panic ensued uh Reno orders his men to Dismount now I mentioned that there were 160 guys well when they Dismount somebody has to hold the horses so that's going to reduce their fighting force even more uh the horses are going to be taken back in this direction here to a Grove of Cottonwood trees and uh something else that is making this even more of a disaster uh is that Reno is taking swigs from a flask uh throughout this entire battle so he's most likely drunk during this whole thing so companies M A and G would have deployed uh from left to right right out here and uh they are going to be fighting for their lives right here in this field so these three companies aren't doing too bad at first uh they're they're kind of holding their own as a matter of fact in in later years there was a woman who I think was in the hunk Papa camp but she was in the camp somewhere said that if Reno and his men would have just stayed mounted and rolled right through the camp it probably would have caused panic and caused you know everything to to break down but but they've dismounted they're they're holding their own but then they start hearing like the screaming in the village and they don't know what's going on uh there's also dust that's being kicked up they have these uh Native Americans that are riding their horses around so everything's kind of obscured and what they didn't know is that through the Village People were screaming Crazy Horse is coming and coming right around the Left Flank was Crazy Horse and he's going to hit them in the left they're going to try and refuse their line but it it's kind of like that uh that 72 oce steak challenge where you you think you can handle it but then you find out that you also have to eat a baked potato and you also have to eat a salad and some jumbo shrimp and like five rolls and you realize oh man we we've bitten off way more than we can chew and they start falling back and running for their lives towards the cotton Woods where the horses are you guys remember that shooting that just happened at Uvalde right you all remember that right obviously it's it's absolute it's horrible tanous right almost immediately A lot of people were like bro if I was there you know what I mean if I was there you know I'm one of those people like like oh yo if my kid was in there I'd freaking go down there myself like every every single one of my friends said that myself included like if I was there little Le we on the phone 15 minutes later like can you believe this this is why we trained guys to be able to deal with these situations like we had those conversations but in order to do what Leif said which is actually learn something I started thinking to myself okay so imagine this I show up to a building there's a bunch of police officers there there's a chief of police and he looks at me and says like hey we can't go forward right now what do I do hey shut up you know what I mean like I don't know what's going on he's been there for 38 minutes or however long already and I just walk in and just assume this guy's an idiot is that what really what I'm going to do so so it's important to say oh let me at least expand my brain so I can learn some lessons from it instead of just saying that guy's an idiot okay yeah we can look back and reflect and go that guy definitely shouldn't have had that job but okay how were they trained what made everyone else what made 250 other law enforcement officers go okay I'll stand here too think about that and we've seen it like JP me Steve Leif out on those training events where you think like seals would just be crushing the target we've seen them all sit there like hey what do you think they're over there still like we've watched them do that seals so yes open up that mind so that you can actually learn some lessons otherwise you won't get anything out of [Music] it [Music] so I've moved over a little bit to a little pocket that had a clearing in the middle of some cotton Woods where Reno's Detachment was holding their horses so again Crazy Horse uh hits company's ag&m in the Left Flank uh they they start falling back to this position to try and and get their horses and and figure out what they're going to do and it's just Mass confusion so Reno is here in in this area and he's mounted up on his horse next to him is kuster's favorite Scout and a riar Rob by the name of bloody knife and as they're standing there a bullet comes through the air and hits bloody knife right in the head completely covers Reno in Blood and bits of brain and Bone and and he just completely falls apart when you come to Little Big Horn one thing that really kind of sets this place apart is that they have markers that tell you where different individuals fell uh so a lot of these men were were buried right where they were killed so right here we have a marker for The Interpreter guide uh bloody knife who again as I mentioned uh was an orika Native American uh it says he died or fell here June 25th 1876 while defending the Ora way of life uh bloody knife was part arra and also part hunk Papa and um there's another Warrior here by the name of Gaul and Gaul just made this guy's life miserable early on and a bloody knife had got into it with him and actually stabbed him and when this raid is happening on this Camp well some of these Crow and ricaro get in into the camp and are killing people themselves like these are their enemies as well and he got it it's thought that maybe bloody knife was responsible but him and some others uh whether he was directly involved or not uh got in and and killed uh members of gaul's family uh which is really going to get him fired up but yeah right here is where bloody knife was shot in the head and then after that uh Reno is going to completely fall apart he he gives conflicting orders he he tells men to mount up and to Dismount and uh do this do that and finally just says if you want to if you want to try and get out of here uh then get out of here uh there there's no there's no clear leadership here at all and uh Reno ends up just bolting and and getting the heck out of here and making it for High Ground across the river and uh we have a few other markers here that show where some of the men from Reno's Detachment fell so you've got all these guys who are basically leaderless right now and they're all trying to make a break for it uh one was a guy by the name of George herendine and he made it out you know into the the open ground and then his horse got shot out from under him he got up was nearly overrun by about 20 mounted Warriors who just swarmed around him and then he ends up running about 50 yards to get back to the clearing and uh when he gets there there's a a guide by the name of Charlie Reynolds and Charlie Reynolds is mounting his horse and is getting ready to go out and he andan tells him he says Charlie don't go out there you know it's basically a death trap and uh Charlie Reynolds either didn't hear him or just flat ignored him and he made it out to right about here so right over there is where bloody knife gets hit and this is as far as Charlie Reynolds gets and you can see his marker here so his horse gets shot out from under him and then uh he gets up and starts firing his six shooter but uh is is overcome and dies right around this spot right here we've moved over a little bit so here's the the pocket that we were just standing in where bloody knife and Charlie Reynolds fell and uh the company commander of of G company was a guy by the name of Donald McIntosh and MacIntosh and all this confusion had lost his horse so he decided to just take the horse of a private by the name of McCormack which probably seemed a little bit rude uh the problem with McCormack's horse is that it was really slow and Macintosh hadn't bothered to take the picket out uh that that was you know keeping the horse steak to uh the ground well as he's riding out through here he's dragging this line and this Stak behind him it's picking up Sage Brush and it's spooking the horse so he can't control it and he gets right out to this point and finds himself in the middle of a swarm of these angry Native American warriors there was about 20 or 30 that over took him uh right here so yeah right here in approximately this spot is where Donald Mac fell here's another marker out here in the field to an interpreter by the name of Isaiah Dorman uh so Isaiah Dorman was the only African-American who was killed in the Battle of Little Big Horn and something that's really kind of interesting is that he was actually married to a hunk Papa woman so the people in The Hunk Papa Camp actually knew Isaiah Dorman and the the story associated with his death is about as brutal as it gets uh so Dorman is mortally wounded out here in the field and after Reno and all his men have evacuated he he's still laying here and uh there's a Woman by the name of moving robe woman whose Young Brother uh 10 year-old by the name of Deeds had been killed and she is angry and has nothing on her mind but revenge and she comes up to Dorman who who knew Sitting Bull uh and they were supposed to kind of just leave him alone but she's not having any of it and uh he he said says please don't kill me you know I'm going to die anyway and and she says if you didn't want to die why didn't you stay home where you belong and not come and attack us she pulls out a revolver her face is painted red squeezes the trigger the first round doesn't go off but the second one does shoots him right in the head and when they found dorant after the battle what had been done to him was unspeakable you can look it up for yourself because it it is it is bad they they found his uh coffee cup and and Kettle lying next to him filled with his own blood and there were some other things that they did to him that was just nasty as heck but anyway here's the the spot where Isaiah Dorman fell so for the men in Reno's Detachment who are kind of Trapped In This pocket and trying to escape they they can't really go south because they're they're being surrounded uh so there's there's just a panic and earlier in the battle uh they had looked up and they had seen kuster uh you know up top waving his hat and nobody really knows what that means uh and nobody knows exactly at what point in the battle it happened probably early and Custer was probably just like waving them on and encouraging them uh but anyway they they have one goal on their mind uh right here on June 25th and that's get out of this pocket and get to the river get across and get up to high ground and and hopefully reattach with the the larger body of the seventh [Music] cavalry [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 74,238

Keywords: battle of little big horn, little big horn, little bighorn, custer last stand, custer's last stand, custard's last stand, jocko willink, jocko, extreme ownership, echelon front, leif babin, sitting bull, crazy horse, history traveler, history underground, reno

Id: HhIoBaUI11o

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024