325: Let Me Die Fighting. The Journey of Crazy Horse. Native American Warrior.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:15 - The Journey of Crazy Horse. 3:08:04 - Final thoughts. 3:13:04 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:20:21 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 325 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  And also joining us again tonight is Jason Gardner. Good evening, Jason. Good evening.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  Chicago Times special, Camp Robinson, Nebraska, May 24th, 1877.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  Your correspondent has obtained some very valuable information in regard to the Custer massacre from Crazy Horse through Horned Horse as his spokesman, which is authentic and confirmed by other principal chiefs. I interviewed the chiefs this afternoon, Lieutenant Clark arranging for the meeting, and William Hunter acting as interpreter, a man perfectly reliable and thoroughly conversant in the Indian language. This is the Indian version and the first published. The attack was made on the village by a strong force at 11 o'clock in the morning at the upper end of the village.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  This was the force commanded by Major Reno, and very shortly afterward, the lower end of the village was attacked by another strong force that commanded by Custer. The village was divided into seven different bands of Indians, each commanded by a separate chief and extended in nearly a straight line.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  The village consisted of 1,800 lodges and at least 400 wiki-ups, a lodge made of small poles and willows for temporary shelter. Each of the wiki-ups contained four young bucks and the estimate made by Crazy Horse is that each lodge had from three to four warriors.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Estimating at three, made a fighting force of 7,000 Indians. This is the lowest estimate that can be made, for there were a good many Indians without shelter, hangers-on, who fought when called upon, and the usual number was much above 7,000. The attack was a surprise and totally unlooked for. When Custer made the charge, the women, papouses, children, and in fact, all that were not fighters, made a stampede in a northerly direction. Custer, seeing so numerous a body, mistook them for the main body of Indians, retreating and abandoning their villages, and immediately gave pursuit.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  The warriors in the village, seeing this, divided their forces into two parts, one intercepting Custer between their non-combatants and him, and the other getting in his rear. Outnumbering him as they did, they had him at their mercy, and the dreadful massacre ensued.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Horned Horse says the smoke and dust were so great, that foe could not be distinguished from friend. The horses were wild with fright and uncontrollable. The Indians were knocking each other from their steeds, and it is an absolute fact that several young bucks in their excitement and fury, killed each other, several dead Indians being found killed by arrows. Horned Horse represented this hell of fire and smoke and death, by intertwining his fingers and saying just like this, Indians and white men.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  These chiefs say they suffered a loss of 58 killed and over 60 wounded. From their way of expressing it, I should judge that about 60% of their wounded died.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  While this butchery was going on Reno was fighting in the upper part of the village, but did not get in so far as to get surrounded and managed to escape.

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  They say had he got in as far, he would have suffered the same fate as Custer, but he retreated to the bluffs and was held there until Indians fighting Custer comprising over half the village could join the northern Persian portion in besieging him.

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  These Indians claim that but for the timely arrival of General Terry, they would have certainly got Reno. They would have surrounded and stormed him out or would have besieged and eventually captured him.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  From what I know of Crazy Horse, I should say that he no doubt is capable of conducting a siege. In both the Rosebud Fight and the Custer Massacre, the Indians claim that Crazy Horse rode unarmed in the thickest of the fight, invoking the blessing of the Great Spirit on himself, that if he was right, he might be victorious and if wrong, that he might be killed.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  So that right there is a excerpt from a book called I Fought With Custer, which we covered on this podcast, podcast number 48. You might want to go check that one out. And that's from a section that we actually didn't cover on the podcast. The section of the book that's called They Fought Against Custer, and it's got a bunch of firsthand accounts from the Indians that fought against Custer.

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't cover that section because we had already covered the Native American Perspective in Podcast 45, where we discussed the book called Wooden Leg,

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  who was a northern Cheyenne Indian who fought against Custer at Little Big Horn. And that's a good podcast to listen to. I've got quite a few SEAL friends that that's one of their favorite podcasts. But this man that gets mentioned here, this warrior, he's mentioned in both those books.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  And he's mentioned pretty quickly in both the books, but he's someone that is definitely worth exploring as a warrior, as a man, and as a leader. And Jason, you sent me a great book a while back called The Journey of Crazy Horse. This book is written by a guy named Joseph M. Marshall III, who himself is a member of the Lakota Tribe. He was raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. And he, he kind of reports on or explores

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  his journey of discovering and understanding Crazy Horse and starts off with the, with a certain, a certain image of Crazy Horse and then learns more about him over time. Kind of going from a legend, you know, held aloft, sort of above being human, to being a warrior, to being a leader, and then ultimately understanding him as a man. And much of what he's, you know, I always like to do the first person accounting. That's what I'm always

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  trying to get for the podcast. And this, much of what, what Joseph talks about, Joseph Marshall talks about is stuff that was passed to him through his elders, through oral history. And that's, I think, what, what allows this book to come to life so well. So I guess we dive in, dive into the journey of, the journey of Crazy Horse by Joseph M. Marshall III. Where'd you find this book originally?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  So I got a buddy that lives in Iowa, Chris Anderson, and he sent me this book to read. He was like, hey, you need to check this out. So about two years ago. I knocked it out on Audible and then as we started to do the, you know, we're doing the battlefield at Little Big Horn, I'm like, well, I want to understand more about the, for everything that Custer did wrong, there was stuff that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were doing right, and I want to try to understand more of that. So I hit this book up and then it made sense for something that we could talk about here, especially because it's from the Lakota perspective and brought down from their oral history.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, so the battlefield that you're talking about, this is an event that we do at Echelon Front where we go and look, we go and walk the battlefield and there's all these leaders to learn from. I mean, we do Gettysburg and this will be the first one that, the first series that we're going to do up at, up at Little Big Horn. So going out there, understanding the personalities of these individuals gives you so much more depth into understanding their leadership decisions and the decisions that they made. You can start to identify how their personalities impacted their decisions and then you can look at yourself and say, what part of my personality is impacting my decision? And

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  we, I haven't been to, have you been to Little Big Horn yet?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  Same kind of spiritual impact as Gettysburg?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yes, and it's incredible because you can, you can sit, you can sit in the gully where Reno had hit, they, well, they came across, came across the river and attacked the south end of the camp because initially they could only see a portion of it and thought it was much smaller and then they, the morons didn't listen to their Crow Scouts who said, whoa, that's a much bigger encampment than you think it is. And you, you can see all these spots and, and it's just, it's, it's, it's really humbling to be able to see it and talk about it and discuss what's going on and, and feel the energy that was there.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm looking forward to, when are we doing that, August?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  It's August.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so let's get into this book. Um, here we go, Crazy Horse has been my hero since I was a boy. He was arguably the best-known Lakota leader in the latter half of the 19th century, a turbulent time on the northern plains. At first, I knew Crazy Horse only as a fighting man. The warrior. I didn't know or care what he felt, what he thought. I cared only that he was a Lakota and that he was brave and performed deeds that fired my imagination. But as time went on, there were more stories. I now know Crazy Horse as a man. First, and a legend second, a very distant second. In fact, he is much like my father and my uncles and my, all my grandfathers.

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  He walks straight, he is polite, and he speaks softly. But there is also an aura of mystery about him, as though sometimes I am seeing him in a mist that blends legend and reality. It's that aura that seems to appeal to most people, and I'm convinced that many want to connect with the mystery more than they want to identify with the man. I can remember consciously hearing his name for the first time, the summer I was six years old. My grandfather Albert and a man I knew as Grandpa Isaac and I had just crossed the Little White River and stopped to rest.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  As they both fashioned their "roll your own cigarettes", one of them compared the slow, the slow-moving Little White to the Greasy Grass River. I learned later that the Greasy Grass was in south-central Montana and was also known as the Little Big Horn. In the shade of a thick grove of sandbar willow, the two old men spoke about a battle. And names that I had never heard before. Or at least, that I couldn't remember hearing before. Rolled off their tongues that day along the river. One name was repeated more often than the others in the story of that battle.

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  The name His Crazy Horse. He was a leader of fighting men and his mere appearance on the battlefield was apparently enough to inspire others to fight. Crazy Horse had led a charge of warriors against the soldiers in the second engagement of that battle. A leader commented on that particular action when recounting the battle years later by saying, "I have never seen anything so brave."

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  By the age of six, I'd already listened to many stories from these two grandfathers. I was well aware that being a fighting man was one way of being a man in the Lakota ways of old. I knew that men were often injured or wounded in battle and sometimes killed. And I knew that in a battle, a man could prove himself. For one man to obviously evoke such reverence and respect from two grandfathers, who told the story of 1876 Greasy Grass Fight, the Battle of Little Big Horn, was of some consequence. In my six-year-old world, I could think of only two or three other old men in the same category as these two grandfathers. So when they respected someone, it was no small thing.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  That day by the Little White River, Crazy Horse became a part of my life.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  We were having this conversation, I think, yesterday.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  This idea, and I think I had brought it up on some other podcast, but the idea that this, if you're gonna go out and fight, is that programmed into us? Is that just what we're raised with, that we think, hey, going out and fighting and being heroic, being a warrior is a cool thing, is a good thing? Or is there some sort of genetic component to it? Because as a human being in a group of other human beings that are trying to survive 10,000 years ago, and we're part of a gang, we're part of a tribe, and if Jason is the kind of guy that goes out and,

• 14:30Jocko Willink?

  you know, kills a buffalo or defends our tribe, then you help us all survive. And so we're naturally, we naturally intuitively, instinctively, elevate the people that are ready to fight, and we can't even control it. I don't know. What do you think?

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's interesting because the good hunters also translate to their good warriors, right? But then in in their society, in the Lakota society, the medicine men were also revered as well. So I guess people were elevated based on whatever they brought to the community with large. And then oftentimes with either the medicine men or the warriors, eventually you age out of it. And then then they're looking at you for for your wisdom.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, uh,

• 15:22Speaker 02

  So like Chamberlain, that guy comes over from like the intellectual side of the house because he's a college professor when he joins the army. So it's kind of like, he wasn't really that's what makes him so interesting and so cool is he's like, good at everything, every side of the Rubik's Cube you examine with that guy. He's squared away.

• 15:41Jocko Willink?

  Solid colors.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  The thing is, though, you have all these different societies around the world.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 15:47Jocko Willink?

  That are some of them are totally disconnected from other societies. And there's like always a warrior tradition.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  It leads me to believe that at least at some level, human beings, look at the person that's ready to stand up and fight and defend. And they have an instinctual inherent elevation, elevated attitude towards that person. Here, this guy's six years old, you know, I'm thinking, and he's hearing these stories and thinks it's cool. In the parlance of our time, right? Like, hey, that's wow, this sounds cool. What was I doing when I was eight years old? Watching Apocalypse Now, thinking, that's cool. That guy, he's special forces. He's going on

• 16:34Jocko Willink?

  this mission up the river. That's cool. I don't know. I mean, my dad wasn't in the military. There was no, my grandfather was, but he wasn't super influential in my life. And all of a sudden, as just instinct, that looks cool.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it doesn't appear to be generational. Even in this case, Crazy Horse's dad is a medicine man. He's not a fighter. Um, and so, you know, you look at how we revere sports figures. In a lot of ways, they're warriors. You choose a sporting team and they're the ones that are going out and doing battle with other sporting teams or rooting for them and there's who are putting up on a pedestal. For the most part.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  It's not that different than than combat, which isn't going that on. It's an interesting thing to discuss.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Feels like there's an element of risk there too. Like so skill and then risk.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep, and sacrifice actually. Sacrifice for everybody else.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And there there lies in why we hold up like that courage as being a value that we or something that we value, right, is courage.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, like if you if you're, let's say I'm a six year old or whatever, and you think of some guy who goes out and kills a buffalo and then brings it back or whatever, right? You think, man, if I want him to try to kill a buffalo, that thing's gonna kill me, you know? So he's like good at what he does. He's risked dying. And then when he brings it back, it's for all of us. He's a hero, you know? So kind of it's, I mean, that's obviously like a metaphor or the sporting teams and stuff. That's a metaphor essentially.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a big metaphor.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  But it's the same thing though. Yeah, exactly.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  But I and I think this is so obvious what we're saying. I ask my actual question is, is it instinctual? Is it like part of our nature? That we, you know, it may or may not get, you know, expanded upon as we grow up and some people, you know, being a warrior is stupid. Why would you go out and sacrifice yourself for other people? Like, that's an attitude. So you can overcome this instinct. But it is kind of crazy to to think, hey, this is the way many different societies from all different backgrounds all kind of elevate this warrior. Is it an in isn't a natural animal instinct?

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  To think this person's going to protect the tribe. This person's going to help the tribe. This person's going to feed the tribe. This person's possibly going to sacrifice for themselves for the tribe. And that's a positive thing and we're going to elevate them.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Because they're. Putting the tribe before themselves. They're putting themselves at risk in order to save the tribe. And that's why it's very likely instinctual. And I don't, I don't, I think that's, no matter where you look, if you examine closely, that's still revered today.

• 19:33Jocko Willink?

  This individual human overcame the, the instinct of self-preservation to look out for me. And look out for my family. We're gonna elevate that individual.

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  All right. Going back to the book here. Every Lakota baby was born with thick shiny black hair that stayed black for most of adulthood. But the hair of the son of Crazy Horse seemed to grow lighter even as he lost his baby fat, which happened to him quicker than most children. To his mother and the other women in his life, it was an endearing characteristic. Although they worried that it would prove to be troublesome for him later in life. Outside the reach of sharp ears, he was referred to as the light-haired one. To his face, he was simply called Gigi.

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  Or light hair.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  So he's got a distinctive characteristic out of the gate, which is also kind of interesting. You know, you gotta, uh, uh, my name is Jaco, which is a weird name and I've had that. It's a nickname, but it's been my nickname since I was born, which meant when I met someone when I was five years old. And seven years old and four years old and 10 years old, they would say, what's your name? And I had to say this weird name, you know, my name is Jaco. Like that's a, I didn't really know that that was just a nickname until I was a little older. So you kind of have to contend with this, right? It's kind of like, oh, you gotta contend with this. What, having a weird name? Having a weird name. Yes, I know that. Do you know that? Yes, sir, I do.

• 21:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you feel that a little bit like when you were six years old? Yes. You did. Now, Jason was, hey, I'm Jason. Good. You don't have to spell it. You don't have to mispronounce it. You're just good to go.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  So I think these kind of distinctive characteristic can sometimes help. They can also sometimes, I think, hurt kids. Uh, when you're young, you got some weird, like, sometimes happens, kids grow really tall quickly.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  And they don't, they don't like it, you know, they feel like awkward or people are looking at them or when you get glasses, right? That's another thing. Maybe it's not that big of a deal. When I was a kid, like when someone had glasses. They had to contend with that.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  You had to deal with it.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  But they're tempering them. It's making, I mean, that's the metaphor he uses in here, that the teasing tempers crazy horse to make him hard and, and.

• 21:58Jocko Willink?

  It's a boy named Sue.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking about. And his metaphor is like hanging the staff in the TP for five years. To slowly temper it and make it harder. And then you're going to carve that ash dive into a bow. Um, we were talking about buds earlier and amazed that there's still a huge attrition rate. And, and our thoughts are it's because a lot of the, some of the folks that are there are such good athletes. They've never failed at anything. Whereas opposed, when I got there and, and I'd already failed at a bunch of stuff and I was used to getting beat up and getting knocked down. It's like, okay, I'm just going to dust myself up and get moving again.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You and I were saying that when they, when the instructors looked at us and said, you suck. We were like, yeah, I know, obviously. But if you're like the star athlete and you get told you suck. And you, and then you lose the race. Cause by the way, because you're so athletic, they make you do a bunch of jump squats before you do the sprint race. And then you lose. And then they call you a loser. And it's never happened before. And all of a sudden you're like, I, I, this isn't for me. I can't win in this arena or I'm not good enough. And meanwhile, you got Joe, slightly below average athlete, which is me. Just like, well, I'll keep going. I suck. Yeah, I know, but I'm going to keep going.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  I'm used to this.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, the other thing, and he, he mentioned it in the book, I'm not gonna highlight it, but the, they called him, the women decided to call him light hair to just get it over with. It was like, hey, you know, oh, you got, you look a little bit funky, cool. We're just gonna, we're just gonna break, make it, we're just gonna call you that. Just get it out in the open. Get, get the elephant in the room out.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Isn't that what all the psychology does? It's like, oh, you're afraid of elevators, so let's make you look at a bunch of pictures of elevators and eventually maybe you get in one. And then later you just do graduated exposure. And that's what they did here, appears to work.

• 23:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  It's okay to be offended, everybody. Make it harder.

• 24:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh, there came a day when someone handed light hair, a bow and a quiver of arrows to suited to his size and strength. It was the first tangible sign of life that lay ahead. And his mother smiled because she was proud her son would follow the path of a hunter and warrior. Hey, uh, the caveat, obviously not reading the whole book. It's an awesome book. If you, if it sounds a little stilted when I'm reading it, like, wait, what's, what's going on? It's because I'm not reading the whole book. Get it? And, and the audio book you mentioned, I think the audio book is read by the author. So that makes it cool too. Change came into light hair's life, this is fast forward, change came into light hair's life in yet another way. She who gave him life, lost her own. In the perception of the child at the time,

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  the perception, perception of time for a child can be, often be irrelevant, especially in a culture that was not given to measuring it. He was too young to understand that death is a part of life. Later he would realize his mother's time on earth had been much too short. So, his mother dies when he's young. Um, fast forward a little bit, more seasons turned. And I just, just FYI, uh, you know, being a guy that's into language and stuff, there's a whole section that this thing starts off talking about the, the language, the Lakota language, really cool to read. I'm not gonna read it for two reasons. The primary reason being just me sitting here trying to pronounce these words would be a disaster.

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  But they add a lot to the story when you, when you read the story. So another reason to get the book. One, one day, Light Hair and his sister were given new mothers. They were sisters, quiet and polite as they walked into the circle of their new life as the wives of Crazy Horse. So, the Crazy Horse that we're talking about in this particular moment is the dad. The dad that you mentioned, Jason, is a medicine man. So, the dad is named Crazy Horse at this time, and that's who they're talking about when they refer to Crazy Horse. Not Light Hair, the son, who is the Crazy Horse that we all know about. And their mothers and daughters of his own son.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  Um, going forward a little bit more, the boy didn't completely understand all about his father. But he did know that Crazy Horse didn't hunt like the other men or go to war. A father who was a medicine man and didn't do the things men did caused the boy to feel all the more different. He wondered most of all why he looked different than the other boys. So that's another thing in his childhood. Everyone's talking about, "My dad's in the teams," or "My dad's going to war." And he's like, "Well, my dad's gonna go, uh, you know, move smoke around and stuff." So he feels awkward about that.

• 26:43Jocko Willink?

  Hunting was the Lakota lifeblood. Like the wolf, fox, eagle, mountain lion, and hawk, the Lakota were hunters. At age seven, Light Hair realized more and more that hunting was the way to have fresh meat, and deer, and elk hides for clothing, and buffalo hide for lodge coverings. He also sensed that he would be part of the process somehow. Like all boys, Light Hair was becoming skilled with his bow. He had progressed to a stout, a stouter bow, stronger than the first he was given. One made in proportion to his size and strength. His favorite game had changed as well. Shooting arrows through a rolling willow hoop had become too easy and boring. So his uncle Little Hawk and a few other men introduced him to a new game: shooting at grasshoppers.

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  The rules were simple. Walk along the prairie with an arrow on the bowstring and shoot at a grasshopper when it flew. Rolling hoop was a much easier target. A grasshopper was about the size of his little finger and flew erratically and fast. The men would suppress smiles when at first the boy was unable to get off a shot. Before he could pull back the string, the insect was back in the grass. But as he learned to hold his bow ready, he could send an arrow in the general direction of the flitting grasshopper. Shooting at grasshoppers was not boring. It was, he learned, a very humbling experience. As the summer wore on, his reaction became faster and more and more, his arrows only narrowly missed.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  "Grasshoppers," an old man told him, "have much to teach."

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, awesome. Just awesome stuff. You're going out to see Dudley, aren't you?

• 28:21Speaker 02

  I am.

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  And you're getting...

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I was just thinking that. I wonder if Dudley does that or is gonna start doing that, walking around zapping grasshoppers.

• 28:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, you're gonna get dialed in. Um, freaking awesome.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  What a, what a way to grow up and what a way to get good. You're just, that's what you do. That's what you do.

• 28:47Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, important character comes into play. As the days passed, he unknowingly attracted the interest of and curiosity of a man called High Backbone. The mini-con Jew with the Ogala wife, Ogallala wife, and he liked what he saw in the shy, light hair. And I might, I might, I don't think I've mentioned that yet. So, Marshall mentioned it, um, that Crazy Horse is quiet and he doesn't talk a lot, but they, they do give some examples in the book of when he's a kid, they're playing games and he's not saying anything. You know, he just, he's a quiet, he's a quiet, the term he used here is shy. Perhaps it was the boy's quiet determination or his innate humility.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  High Backbone himself was a quiet man, not given to pursuing the path of glory, but he was deeply committed to achieving the status of Wika, the complete man. The complete man embodied the best qualities of the hunter and the fighting man. Though all men necessarily filled the roles of both provider and protector, the hunter warrior, not everyone could achieve the highest ideals for both callings. High Backbone was one of the few. High Backbone was a leader of fighting men, muscular and broad-shouldered, exuding the confidence of a man who not only had physical strength, but also a lifetime of experience and accomplishment.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  So this guy, High Backbone, kind of becomes a mentor to, to Lighthair. And this idea, this idea of being good in multiple phases, you know, it's a, what were you, who are you saying about the Rubik's Cube? Chamberlain.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Chamberlain.

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Cause it's like, you know, he's good on every side that you examine him.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, that's what High Backbone has that same quality.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  They lay out these, these virtues of the week of which I thought was, was really interesting.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, go.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  And it's, it's in the foreword, but it says the, the virtues are generosity, courage, fortitude and wisdom.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Those, and the very first thing they're saying for a warrior and a man is, is generosity, which is pretty cool, courage and fortitude and wisdom.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit. Like most Lakota boys approaching the age of 12, Lighthair was a proficient hunter. Like all hunters, Lighthair learned to sit motionless in the driftwood, blind along a creek for the better part of an afternoon, waiting for a white, whitetail to move within effective killing range of his bow, which is as far as he could throw a stone with all his might. It's pretty cool. That's a pretty good, uh, I'm thinking he's probably able to go.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  Sixty yards. What's your estimation?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't think he-

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, he's twelve years old.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  He's throwing a rock.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  He's twelve years old, he's throwing a rock. What do you think he could throw a rock?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  I think he's probably at fifteen or twenty yards.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:53Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, assessment.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Thirty-five, forty.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Cause think about it, what's his draw, what's his? His draw weight? At twelve, it's, it's probably not that far.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  Pretty small.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  That's a good point. But dude, we're talking about a kid that's just walking around freaking shooting grasshoppers all day long. So, and have you heard about like the, um, the, the, the old British? Longbow archers that had like a draw weight of a hundred and twenty pounds or something? And they weren't compound bows, they were just drawing back that much weight.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  The Mongols had eighty pound bows, I think. That's insane.

• 32:31Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Be interesting to hear what their.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Their, what they, some, someone will know or put in the comments.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, someone will tell us, somebody will tell us what the, uh, what that range was.

• 32:46Jocko Willink?

  So he's hunting, um. Here's another, he's got another friend. Another friend named Lone Bear. Fast forward a little bit. Lone Bear and Light Hair rode straight to a slight rise north of the fort. And this is, so now there's, they're, they're doing exploring, kinda like kid stuff.

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  And they go to look at Fort Laramie. Warned by Crazy Horse, that's the dad, and High Backbone not to go nearer.

• 33:14Jocko Willink?

  But it was a good enough vantage point to see buildings in the surrounding area. A wide trail led to the fort from the southeast and away to the west. On the other side of the main area of activity, which was among the light colored buildings and along the trail.

• 33:30Jocko Willink?

  What were what they could only assume to be abandoned wagons? They resembled skeletons, most of them stripped down to the frames. Whites were everywhere. Along with their horses, mules, oxen and cattle, the occasional barking of dogs reached the boys' ears. South of the buildings, they could see the tops of several Lakota lodges. A few Lakota stayed near the fort from the days before the soldiers had taken over in the days when it was only a tra- trading town. Now, the rumors were the soldiers had come to protect the travelers along the Shell River Trail. And again, um, there's, he gives a lot of good detail about all the way this settlement is happening.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  The whites are coming, how they're doing it, what it looks like to, to the Indians. Um.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I'm trying to give enough that you can understand the story.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  There's a real bad smallpox outbreak prior to this happening. A lot of them are just like, just I'm, I'm staying away from white people, period.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  Yep, it wiped out entire groups of people.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're scared of that. They don't want any of that. The Lakota called it the Council at Horse Creek. The white peace talkers called it the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851. The whites wanted three things. First, they wanted no more fighting among the people gathered. The black fleet, the Blackfeet and the Crow were called upon to live in peace with the Lakota. And the Lakota were in turn to live in peace with the snakes and so on. Tell the wind to stop blowing, some reacted, or the rivers to stop flowing. Second, the whites seemed to want to say where the land ended and where it began by drawing a picture on a parched hide.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  Beyond a certain line was Crowland and behind it was Blackfeet. But who could find that line on the earth, someone wondered. Third, the travelers on the Shell River Trail must not be molested, they said, for they were traveling under the protection of the Great Father, who lived in some city far to the east of the Grandfather River. The Great Father would know if his people on the trail were harmed. The trail must be holy in some fashion suggested an old Lakota man Riley. Thereafter, the Shell River Trail became known as the Holy Road.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  For agreeing to these three things, the peace talker said, "The great father was empowering them to pay annuities that amounted to many thousands of their money in dollars. The annuities would be in the form of food, beef, cattle, flour and beans for starters, and various other goods such as plows, hose and other farm implements.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  There were many raised eyebrows and helpless shrugs at the listing of other goods, but in the end, they were accepted.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  Very, very strange, you know, like it's just a complete, it's a culture just totally separate. Even as you're hearing this deal, you're thinking, wait, you're going to say this land is mine. That's like if you came into me right now and said, "Hey, Jock, I'll give you money for your, for the air." I'd say, "Uh, you want to give me money for air? Cool. Okay. You give me money." I, then all of a sudden you had some contraption that like sucked the air away.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I was trying to wrap my head around this whole thing and you're, that's exactly what's, what's,

• 37:14Speaker 02

  what's going on. And it's, it's clear that like, the whites there, they, they, they obviously weren't organized and sound kind of screwed up too, because they had their stuff. They were trying to muddle their way, things through this, this, this whole mess on. Like, "Hey, yeah, we've got annuities coming." And then they don't show up and they're like, "Oh,

• 37:34Speaker 02

  what's up?"

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  The annuities too is a real good, you can see, and we're going to see it throughout this story.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Just the way that we as people, if you become reliant on someone else, if you're given stuff, you become reliant and you forget how to do things for yourself.

• 37:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, I don't know if the grand plan of the whites was to get them hooked on these annuities and then we can just kind of take advantage of it. I don't know if that was their grand plan, but that's what happens.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  It definitely like it part, part of a three-pronged strategy. One, the annuities, which I bet you they were just doing to kind of like calm things down, but then it wound up being like, what actually screwed everybody over. And it's so relevant to today, right? Because these annuities are like the algorithms on social media, or they're like fast food, or all kinds of other real easy stuff. That's like, oh, cool. I'll, I'll, I'll just swing through McDonald's because I'm kind of hungry and not order something healthy off their menu. And then, then you're messed up.

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anytime this is, you know, from a greater perspective communism, right? Hey, look, I'm going to pay you regardless if you do your job well or not. Well, okay, cool. I'm not going to do my job well and you're going to pay me. Right? That's great. It happens with, you know, certain positions, certain government positions. Like, oh, you're going to get that, you're going to get that paycheck regardless. If you're at the DMV, no offense, DMV, but if you work at the DMV, it doesn't matter if you process four license applications today or 29.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  What's your motivation to produce any more stuff if it's all going to get taken from you and redistributed? Then you're just going to do the minimum. And I think that's what, one of the reasons why communism has kind of fallen on its face in a lot of places.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  It's very disturbing.

• 39:40Jocko Willink?

  So, fast forward a little bit, each summer's lines and lines of wagons were not the same as those that had come the summer before. They carried a different group of whites who had never seen a Lakota, or a Kiowa, or a blue cow cloud, but who had been filled with stories about the dangers from the brown-skinned marauders. So wide-eyed and fearful were the whites who arrived at the fort, not comforted by the sights of scowling Lakota men. But the Lakota were likewise troubled at the sight of so many white men. Some of the old ones would shake their gray heads and speak a warning. In any land, among any kind of people, three

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  human weaknesses are at the root of trouble: fear, anger, and arrogance.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Oh my goodness, say that again. Right? How relevant is that to us today?

• 40:32Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Fear, anger, and arrogance. Those weaknesses were about to be mixed.

• 40:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Fear, anger, and arrogance. By the way, root cause of those, obviously arrogance is ego, but anger, often also ego, and a lot of these circumstances are very egotistical in this book, that the anger is triggered from ego.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the hatred, which I think kinda is a little bit different, but you can attach it to anger, and usually it's rooted in some kind of fear.

• 41:10Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. Yep.

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  Life has a way of creating strange circumstances that often lead to a bad end, or an unexpected turn.

• 41:28Jocko Willink?

  When I read that, I was like, "Damn it." You know? Because you don't want to admit that. Don't want to admit it. You don't want to say, "You know what? Sometimes things happen that result to a bad end." It's such a sad thing to think about, but it's the freaking reality of life.

• 41:53Jocko Willink?

  So he goes on to this um section here.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  That speaking of anger and fear and arrogance, there's a, there's a cow. That wanders into this camp and it says it was into conquering bear's camp that an old foot sore cow wandered on an especially hot afternoon.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  The Lakota didn't own any cattle, of course, so it was correctly assumed that she had been lost or abandoned by some white man. Trying to escape the barking dogs, she was running between lodges, knocking over meat racks. After the laughter stop, someone realized that although old and thin, she was fresh meat.

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  So they, you know, they kill the cow.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  Word of the predicament spread quickly through the camps. Cause now someone's mad. And if they believe it was a Mormon, they call, they keep calling him the Mormon man, Mormon man. Wanted the cow. He's complaining to the soldiers that his cow had been stolen.

• 43:01Jocko Willink?

  So word of the predicament quickly spread through the camps. The next afternoon, the soldiers started from the fort in two wagons and with two wagon guns. But the man leading them was not Fleming. This is one of the soldiers that they had worked with or knew it was one called Grattan. A new officer lately come from the east. With him was a man married to a Lakota woman, a speaks white. Brought along to translate. Grattan, it was later learned had been loud about his disdain for the Lakota. So you got now an arrogant guy that's also afraid.

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  And when the soldiers reached his camp conquering bear left his lodge to meet them. Even as they jumped from the wagons and formed two lines facing the camp, the old man was still trying to stop the trouble. But his efforts were ignored. Meanwhile, the speaks white rode up and down the line of soldiers shouting threats in Lakota.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  South of the camp, hidden in low shrubbery, Light Hair and Lone Bear, so you got Young Crazy Horse and his little buddy, watched the old man and strained to hear him but couldn't. Grattan stepped down from his horse and helped load one of the wagon guns aimed into the camp. The officer shouted, the wagon gun blasted, and all movement seemed to come to a stop but for a heartbeat. The tops of a lodge's poles splintered into many pieces. Then the soldiers aimed their rifles and fired before the echo from the wagon gun had faded. Astonished and unable to immediately perceive the reality unfolding before their eyes,

• 44:39Jocko Willink?

  the two boys watched Conquering Bear fall back, struck in the chest and stomach. The second wagon gun boomed, and then the Lakota men reacted. Before the soldiers could reload their rifles to fire again, a few Lakota guns boomed. Arrows flew, and then angry men ran toward the scattering soldiers. Grattan was one of the first to fall.

• 45:05Jocko Willink?

  So like, that's how things kind of start to go bad in the world. It's like a little misunderstanding, then you have that anger, that fear, that arrogance, and...

• 45:15Speaker 02

  And initially, they tried at some point prior to this whole thing breaking out. He's like, "Hey, we're gonna give you, sorry about the cow. We're gonna give you a couple of good horses, way better than a cow in our estimation, in trade for that." And they're like, "Oh, no, no.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  That's not gonna work."

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Show up and start shooting, which obviously does not work, doesn't work out well for Grattan.

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't work out well for Grattan, doesn't work out well for anybody.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 45:48Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there's certain sections in this book. So there's books, there's part of the book, he's telling the story of Crazy Horse, and he's got sections, Marshall's got sections in here called...

• 46:00Jocko Willink?

  Called Reflections and he's got this one section where he kind of gives his perspective on what he on the events that he's kind of written about. He says, and I'm not going to read the whole thing. There's a whole bunch of incredible points that he makes. He says, Crazy Horse came into the world at least four generations ahead of mine. He was born in the early 1840s, perhaps as late as 1845. I was born in 1945. As Lakota males, he and I have much in common. Enough Lakota culture has survived through changes during those four generations fortunately to allow my generation to identify strongly with his. So he has like things in common. He says this, by the time light hair was

• 46:44Jocko Willink?

  10 or 11, Euro Americans were a consistent presence and an increasing annoyance. The Oregon Trail had been cut across the southern part of the territory, beginning in the late 1840s. It became a steady stream of white immigrants moving east to west from late spring to mid summer. Tens of thousands of people, thousands of oxen, mules, and horses, and hundreds of wagons passed through every summer for 20 years. Those people carried with them many things new to the Lakota. Some beneficial, such as iron knives and cooking pots, and some destructive, such as liquor and disease. Most of all, they brought change.

• 47:26Jocko Willink?

  My grandparents and their generation were not too different from light hair's parents and grandparents. The elderly Lakota of the 1850s in the face of the white incursion and changes brought to them were telling stories and reminding their children and grandchildren to remember the remember the trails they had walked. Hand crafting a bow out of ash is almost a lost art for the Lakota. My grandfather taught me because his father, White Tailfeather, and second father, which is his stepfather, Henry Two Hawk, taught him to make bows and arrows. They learned it from their fathers and grandfathers. And the methods and process are the same as those that were taught to light hair, exactly the

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  same. Each time I've had the opportunity to make a bow, a thought invariably passes through my mind. This is the way it has been done for hundreds of generations. I make my bows the same way Crazy Horse did. That is only one of the many connections I have with him as Lakota Boys.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  There's a great discussion somewhere in this book where they're talking about the elders and they're talking specifically about change. And they're like, hey,

• 48:41Speaker 02

  we used to use lances to hunt the buffalo before we came up with bows and arrows and we transitioned over that. So we've got to be ready to change as things, as things come along and they give that historical example. And that's a struggle, isn't it? When, when we think of valued traditions that we have in our culture, like what, what do we strive to hold on to and, and, and what do we let go of as we grow?

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And there's, I, I don't remember if I'm going to cover this or not, but I'll bring it up right now. One of those same just types of discussions. They're talking about, there's a time when it's time to get on a new horse. And like the old horse isn't working anymore. You've got to get on a new horse. And, and that's a good expression to keep in your mind because you're riding that horse and it's starting to fade or it's not able to do its job anymore. You got to get on a new horse, even though you're comfortable with your old horse, even though you, that old horse has been good to you. It's not going to work out anymore. You've got to be ready to transition to the new horse.

• 49:42Jocko Willink?

  Getting now back into the, the story. Out of the reflections and back into the story. Light Hair had been in the camp, but a few days when a raiding party prepared to go against the Pawnee and Omaha. Who had become too daring of late, coming north well past the running water. He accepted the invitation to go along. The Raiders in the, the Raiders went east toward the Loop River. An area of rolling hills and tall grass and many deer. There they separated into two groups. One turned south to probe into Pawnee country and the other with Spotted Tail and Iron Shell leading had spotted an Omaha camp in the breaks of the east, in the breaks east of the Loop.

• 50:24Jocko Willink?

  A small number of the group crept clo- crept close to the camp while the rest hid and waited. Light Hair was one, staying close to his uncle. They crawled in among the horse herd and slowly cut the hobbles from the horse's legs and chased them out of the camp. Though the Omaha didn't immediately respond, a large contingent soon started out to recover their horses. Spotted Tail's group waited a little longer, then attacked the camp. The few Omaha men left in camp fought hard, but so did the Lakota. Spotted Tail charged several times on horseback alone, and Light Hair claimed his first victory as a fighting man. And Omaha tried to attack through some tall grass, but Light Hair stopped him with a well-placed arrow.

• 51:10Jocko Willink?

  The confusion and chaos delayed his reaction to what he had just done, though he was vaguely aware of the man's death throes. Seized by a sudden bravado, he crawled through the grass to take the scalp of his first kill.

• 51:25Jocko Willink?

  A wave of sickness swept through him. The dead Omaha was a young woman. He turned away. The fighting was over. The raid had been successful, though the Omaha had recovered some of their horses. Spotted Tail's daring and courage was the talk around the fire. Light Hair sat quietly, wrestling with the reality of taking a human life. Like all newcomers to it, he had learned something about the unfettered violence of combat. Ordinary perception did not exist, and senses became confused. The Omaha who attacked him seemed to move so swiftly, too swiftly for a deliberate reaction. On the other hand, when he had let go of her head

• 52:10Jocko Willink?

  because he didn't want her scalp, everything around him seemed to move very, very slowly. Her hair was soft, thick, and very long. Light Hair said nothing, although he knew the overall outcome of the raid had been good. They had no... they had new horses, and no one had been hurt, but the face of the dead girl stayed in his mind.

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  It's a humbling experience for him.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  It's just absolutely awful. Yeah.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  And they go into it, and we'll get to some of these parts, but you know, when they get done with a battle, they go back and kind of tell stories. And that's the norm. And he's already a quiet kid. And this just solidifies the fact that he's not gonna talk about what he's doing.

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  A man from the fort came looking for Iron Shell with a message from the French trader Bordeaux. The long knives, and it's a, the long knives, what they call the soldiers, because they have long swords. So they call them long knives. They call the soldiers long knives.

• 53:20Jocko Willink?

  The long knives had received word that the great father, which is basically when they say that they're talking about the president, or at least some form of the supreme government of America. The great father was very angry over the killing of Gratton and his soldiers. More soldiers were being sent and their purpose was to punish those who had done the killing. It was an ominous message, but not one totally unexpected. Had the great father been told that the soldier Gratton had opened fire first? Had the great father been told that more than adequate payment had been offered several times for the worthless cow of the Mormon white man? Why should the great father care about such facts, someone asked? That was the problem. Everyone agreed.

• 54:06Jocko Willink?

  The whites had one truth and the Lakota another.

• 54:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I haven't talked about that quite a bit, especially on the academy.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  I haven't used those terms, you know, I have one truth and you have another, but I always say, I have one perspective and you have another perspective. And if you think that your perspective is the right one, you're, you're not correct. I mean, it's literally not, if you can't say that. You can't look at something, you can't look at a situation, you can't look at a plan, you can't look at an idea. You can't look at a scenario and say, oh, I see everything and I understand it. The, the old saying, there's two sides to every story. Actually, there's 48 sides to a story. Yeah. Right? There's all these different sides. And when these things break down,

• 55:01Jocko Willink?

  it's because you're not listening to other sides of the story. It's not, you're believing your own story, your own side of the story. And you can't let that happen. And you have to, you have to put into your calculus that other people see things differently. If you don't put that in your calculus, you're not going to get the right answer.

• 55:21Jocko Willink?

  So many of these wars, so many wars are just misunderstanding. Start with just a straight up misunderstanding or a little incident that could be deescalated and it just turns into a freaking disaster.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  Summer passed, light hair grew taller, his voice deepened, and he walked with a surer step. When there was dancing, he stayed in the shadows, satisfied only to watch.

• 55:52Jocko Willink?

  Light hair, fast forward a little bit, light hair remounted and put his horse into a gallop. From another and higher vantage point, he could see that smoke was rising from the encampment. So he's out on like a little personal patrol of his own, which is, that's another thing I haven't done a good job indicating. He likes to be by himself. So he goes out and hunts by himself, he goes out in the woods and just sits by himself. He likes, he's kind of a loner.

• 56:17Jocko Willink?

  So he's out on one of these sort of solo operations. And he says, "From another and higher vantage point, he could see that smoke was rising from the encampment. A few horses were scattered about, watching to the north, but there was nothing else. No children playing, no dogs running about. Leaving his horse hobbled, he ran toward the camp. Light was fading, a dog barked tentatively, and a stench hung in the air.

• 56:46Jocko Willink?

  Among the smoking lodges and collapsed poles were objects scattered over the ground. Whatever had happened was over. An eerie silence hung over the camp, nothing was moving. The horses he had spotted earlier had not moved, they were still gazing intently at something toward the north. Light hair entered the camp, the objects seen from a distance now took distinct shapes. They were rawhide meat containers, willow chairs, clothing containers, robes and cradle boards scattered indiscriminately as if by a sudden angry wind."

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  But it hadn't been a wind. Someone had attacked the encampment. The horses had been telling him something, looking north as they had. He walked over to a hobbled mare. She appeared unharmed, so he fashioned a jaw rope, untied the hobbles, swung onto her back and urged her into a lope toward the north, where there had been movement earlier. If the people in the camp were running away, they would be moving as fast as possible. In a bare patch of ground, he saw the grooves left by a pair of drag poles. Pausing to look, he saw other signs of drag poles.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  Then he saw something else. Even in the fading light, the distinctive prints of the metal shoes worn by long-knife horses.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  Unless soldiers had taken to pulling dragging poles, something wasn't right. Throwing caution aside, Light Hair galloped in the direction of the signs. And at the second or third hill, he saw them. People were walking and leading a few horses, pulling loaded drag poles, though it was difficult to count how many they were. But on either side was a column of mounted soldiers. They were heading northwest.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  Most of the men from Little Thunder's camp had been away hunting. Some of them were bound to return sooner or later, but for the time being, Light Hair was alone. He returned for his own horse so he could take two along to follow his relatives, who were captives of the longknives. Back at the burned-out camp, he retrieved his gelding and gathered stones from several cooking fires and built a marker pointing it to the northwest. Anyone would know to go in that direction, especially given the condition of the camp. He had only been in the south end of the camp, so he led his horse through it to the north end. The mare snorted in apprehension and shied away from a long, dark object on the ground.

• 59:25Jocko Willink?

  Light Hair bent to it and felt the leg. It was a woman. She was dead.

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  He discerned other shapes in the growing darkness and went to them. They were all dead.

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  He retched after he bent low over a woman and realized that both her breasts had been cut off. Searching in the growing darkness, he found one dead body after another, all of them scalped or mutilated in some fashion.

• 59:57Jocko Willink?

  He retched again and sat for some time before he pulled a robe back from the next body, a child this time, perhaps ten.

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  Gathering his horses, he walked out of the camp. He'd covered every body he found, covering the shame of the insults they had suffered after the pain of death.

• 1:00:20Jocko Willink?

  With the shock and the grief came another feeling, starting like a small cloud growing over the horizon.

• 1:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Anger.

• 1:00:47Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  That's gonna leave a mark.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get to a point where there's a trajectory where it's it's almost impossible to stop the direction that things are going and when stuff happens like that.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do?

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  I I mean, you you you.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  Through this book, you you have a problem because there's this clash of cultures and the Lakota have a culture that that they're involved with raiding, they're they're going up and raiding the crow, they're they're raiding the um the snakes, the snakes and the crow are raiding them back. And it's just what they kind of do and there's an equilibrium there because they're not industrial and they can't like mechanize death the way.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  The Europeans are capable at the time.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  And they don't understand it.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  And there's like a, he doesn't say this at all, but you can assemble it. There's an ROE, like a legit rules of engagement that they're following. And you don't, you know, there's just things that you don't do. And there's times where he mentions in the book, they're going to, they're going on a raid to like to stay sharp. Like, hey, we just, hey, look, this is like a training op.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Jocko Willink?

  But it's real. And they're gonna go do it. And, and the other, the other tribes kind of know that's, hey, this is part of what we do. Oh, this is, oh, they're gonna run a training op. We're gonna have to get some. But there's rules of engagement. And there's, there's like, um, hey, we're gonna go in, we got some horses from you. Cool. We're not slaughtering your people. We got, we, we needed horses, so we got some horses from you. Right? That's what we're doing. Oh, we want, we wanna, you know, some of the meat that you, that you hunted. Okay, cool. We didn't get enough, so we're gonna go take some of yours. It's a, it's like there's rules of engagement that they're all operating on.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  They were, I think it was fairly common too, when you raid, like, they mentioned in here, and he leaves out, like, we attacked the village and there were no men left in the village, or very few of them. Well, what, what did you do exactly? And I, I don't think it was uncommon for them to snatch slaves up at a minimum from other villages. Uh, I think, you know, the Empire of the Summer Moon, which is another great book of the Comanche, were grabbing people from everywhere, and then they would just assimilate them, kind of in the tribe, but they also did a lot of slave trading and other things at the time, so, um,

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  there's no one that's completely clean in this whole situation. And I, yeah, it's just, it's, it's an interesting study.

• 1:03:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  On, on all this stuff, and, and how do you stop it? Once, once that boulder's rolling downhill, and like you, he comes in and he finds all these mutilated women, like, how do you put that fire out now?

• 1:03:46Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be rough.

• 1:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Um, there's a guy named Harney. I think he's a Colonel, maybe a general. General, General Harney.

• 1:04:04Jocko Willink?

  Early in the morning, the soldiers had been seen moving up Blue Water, spotted tail and iron shell, and a few warrior leaders rode out under a white banner of truce to talk. The leader of the soldiers was a white-haired man and bearded older man who said his name was General Harney. And they eventually put two and two together that this is the guy that led this raid. Word did come Harney had stopped at Fort Laramie. Since he was the leader of the soldiers, he declared an end to trading with the Lakota, still demanding the surrender of the killers of Grattan. When the story of the attack on Little Thunder's camp on the, on the Blue Water was carried north to the other Lakota camps, General Harney was given a new name to the Lakota. He would always be known as Woman Killer.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  So, the fact that they're giving him that specific name probably is an indicator that it's not common practice for them to kill women.

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  No, that's what I'm saying. There's ROEs, man, that were violated big time.

• 1:05:04Jocko Willink?

  One evening, he returned from a long outing with high backbone and waited for his father in the lodge. When Crazy Horse, that's the dad, returned, the boy held out a bundle of tobacco. It was a gift, an offering to a holy man when one needed to speak from one's heart. Light hair needed to tell of a dream, a dream that had come to him the second night he had spent alone on a sandstone bluff. It had been with him every day and night for these many months, he told his father. Dreams were important, Crazy Horse said, as he, as he took the offering of tobacco from his oldest son. So now we get into this dream. The dream was not difficult to remember, and this dream is like the central theme of this book.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  So, "The dream was not difficult to remember, only to tell." "It had been a part of the boy since the late summer night near the sand hill country, "when old conquering bear, bear, lay dying in camp after the incident with the soldiers, "with the soldier Grattan and his men." "He was almost embarrassed to describe it." "The dream began at a lake, a small, still lake. "Bursting upward from the blue calmness, a horse and its rider broke through the surface "and rode out across the land." "The rider was a man, a slender man, who wore his hair loose. "A stone was tied behind his left ear, a reddish-brown stone. "A lightning mark was painted across one side of his face.

• 1:06:33Jocko Willink?

  "On his bare chest were blue hailstones. "Behind him, behind them to the west, as they galloped, was a dark, rolling cloud, "rising higher and higher. "From it came the deep rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning. "The horse was strong and swift, and changed its colors, red, yellow, black, white, and "blue. "Bullets and arrows suddenly filled the air, flying at the horse and rider, but they "all passed without touching them. "Close above them flew a red-tailed hawk, sending out its shrill cry. "People, his own kind, suddenly rose up all around and grabbed the rider, pulling him

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  "down from behind." "The dream ended." "There seemed to be a warning in the dream. "The glorious warrior in the dream was grown, but still young. "The faces of the enemies that had sent bullets and arrows at him were not visible, "but the people who had pulled him down were like the rider himself. "They were easily seen, as was the horse, the hawk, and the thunders."

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  The Thunders, they were the powerful beings that lived in the west, perhaps the most powerful of all beings ever anywhere. Rarely did anyone dream of the Thunders. And anyone who did had a special calling to be a sacred clown. The one who did the opposite of what was expected. Light Herod described the lightning mark on the dream rider's face, as well as blue hailstones painted across his chest. Lightning and hail were both strongly associated with the Thunders. Crazy Horse, the door, Crazy Horse closed the door and began singing again. And another gathering song to call in the spirits.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  He poured water on the stones, sending steam and new waves of heat rolling inside the tiny enclosure. Light Herod endured the heat, even as he had held the dream in his mind's eye as his father had instructed him to do.

• 1:08:46Jocko Willink?

  Dying gloriously, making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the people was the secret dream of every Lakota fighting man. It was the warrior code, repeated in all the honoring songs. The dream seemed to suggest that the dreamer would gain honor and immortality by living and dying as a warrior. But perhaps there was more to the dream. Perhaps there was a warning of a path that could not be avoided.

• 1:09:21Jocko Willink?

  So, there's a lot of foreshadowing in that dream of his life, that he's not gonna live very long. He's not gonna live to old age, and the scariest thing, I guess, is the fact that people, his own kind, are the people that kind of drag him down

• 1:09:39Jocko Willink?

  from behind.

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  And you know, this, this got me to thinking, you know, when I had, when I had Micah Fink on the podcast, and I started off by reading some stuff that he's either said or written. And there was that one quote, this Native American quote, and I don't know which tribe it came from, and I didn't research it, but the quote is, "A diagnosis becomes a curse." Basically, when you diagnose someone with something, it can become a curse, a self fulfilling

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  prophecy, you know, and that's, um, something to look out for, you know, it's something to look out for.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, um, I think it's better, as we go through the story, to just discuss it later, the struggle that the tribe has between the folks that are going to the, take the free annuities, and the folks that are deciding to live wild, and then that friction, and that friction corrodes them from the inside out.

• 1:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and man, the egos that come into play are just very disturbing.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  Mention, a few more characters come into play. "Even in the company of He-Dog and Lone Bear, Light Hair laughed and smiled less often, and didn't participate in their banter as much as he usually did." This is after he kind of reports his dream to his dad. "His friends knew that Crazy Horse had taken Light Hair off somewhere for several days, and that since returning, their light haired friend was less communicative. But they also knew that he always tried harder to win the games the boys played to emulate warriors. In fact, he rarely lost. He was not always the fastest, or the quickest, or the best shot, but he simply kept trying. And though he didn't tell them what to do, they still

• 1:11:50Jocko Willink?

  followed him, because he didn't hesitate to take the lead. He seemed to know instinctively the best trail to follow, or the best way to do something."

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  Word of Light Hair's dream had quietly spread among the fighting men. Sooner or later, some said the boy would have to put his medicine to the test. There was only one way to see if the enemy's bullets and arrows would not strike him. So preparations were made for a raid north into Crowlands. Crazy Horse and Little Hawk had found a reddish brown stone for Light Hair to wear behind his left ear and taught him how to paint lightning and hailstone marks from his dream. Then a bullet gone astray while someone was practicing grazed Light Hair's knee. It's like a friendly fire scenario. Someone's out just training and gets and crazy and Light

• 1:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Hair gets shot. Though Crazy Horse's dad treated the wound carefully, to him it was a sign, a worrisome sign directly related to the people in the dream pulling the writer down. For the dreamer, there would be danger or harm from his own kind.

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  Um, we get into the love story part of this scenario. It's also tragic in many ways. News was buzzing about a prominent family planning a coming out ceremony for a favored daughter. There would be much feasting and dancing. Red Cloud was an impressive figure of a man and had a reputation as an orator. He was the head of a large family and some would say he would be an important man for years to come. So it was only natural that the people were excited that his niece, Black Buffalo Woman, was to be honored. As a tiny doe-eyed girl, she'd crossed Light Hair's path now and then. Now she was a beautiful willowy girl with long, glistening black hair.

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  Light Hair hung back as the crowd moved away and managed to catch a glimpse of her dressed in a finely beaded dress. Her hair in two long braids hanging down over her breasts signifying she was now a woman. That evening, Light Hair stayed in the back of the crowd during the dancing. Black Buffalo Woman's brothers, her father, and her uncle stayed close to her as a reminder that any would-be suitor could count on having to prove his worth in order to become part of that family. So...

• 1:14:19Jocko Willink?

  He's got little love interest, Black Buffalo Woman.

• 1:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, waiting for his first test of battle, Light Hair watched for the signal from High Backbone, a stone's throw to his right. He had stripped to his breechcloth and moccasins, his hair loose in the manner of his dream, and the lightning mark and hailstones painted on his chest. At the back of his head, he wore the tail feathers from a red-tailed hawk, pointing down as when the hawk was about to strike his prey. Behind his left ear was the reddish-brown stone. In his right hand, he held the bow, two arrows against his palm and a thorn clamped in his teeth. His quiver, bristling with arrows, was tied to the front of his waist to be in easy reach.

• 1:15:08Jocko Willink?

  A shout came from High Backbone as he urged his mount into a gallop to take him up the slope. Light Hair and others did the same. Strangely, each rider had only a vague awareness of the others, though they could hear clearly dozens of hooves clattering on the rocky slope. Low, angry-sounded, humming noises buzzed past their ears. The experienced fighting men knew it was the sound of passing balls from enemy muzzle loaders. The gunshots could be heard less than a heartbeat later. A man with a gun stepped out from behind a rock. Light Hair's shot was pure instinct, and he didn't see if the arrow had hit his target. His horse pitched forward.

• 1:15:52Jocko Willink?

  The enemy who stepped from behind the rock had managed to shoot the animal in the chest. Light Hair rolled across the rocky slope. His horse was dead. His bow was gone. He quickly sliced the drag rope from his horse and ran down the slope, first in one direction, then another. A loose horse came out of nowhere, and he managed to grab a handful of mane and swing on. There was gunfire from below, and answering fire from the rocks at the top of the hill. The horse was rushing up the slope in a blind panic and took his new rider among the rocks. You got any commentary on grabbing a horse by the mane and just...

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  It's freaking nuts. It's so... Like, that is so cool. That... And it's not his horse. It's just the guy's so good, he's grabbing any horse that comes by.

• 1:16:39Jocko Willink?

  By the mane. And just hopping on.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Slinging back up, back into the fight.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  The pistol he snapped off a shot, with his pistol he snapped off a shot at a man who doubled over from the impact of the bullet. Gaining control of the horse, he raced down the slope, stopping to recover his bow. His quiver was still tied to his waist. Highbackbone joined him, his horse winded. Together they charged up the slope again, in and among the rocks. This time, Lighthair used his bow, and put an arrow through an enemy's chest. Gunshots rang out from among the rocks, and up from the slope. Bullets splattered against the boulders, or shattered on small rocks on the ground. Unable to load another arrow, Lighthair used his pistol again, and another of the enemy went down. Lighthair jumped from his horse to grab the hair of the dead enemy. A quick swipe with his knife separated a patch of scalp.

• 1:17:28Jocko Willink?

  As he ran toward a second body, and grabbed another handful of hair, a sharp smashing blow to his leg knocked him over. He went down in a heap, but hurriedly got to his feet. Shouts and gunfire continued, bouncing off the boulders all around. Lighthair went from boulder to boulder as gunfire waned, and then he hobbled down the slope. The fight was over. Every one of the enemies had been killed. The Lakota rode among the rocks on the hill to make certain, and then came down to gather around Lighthair. Most of them had seen him in the fight. The bullets and arrows had not touched him, except when he tried to take a second scalp.

• 1:18:12Jocko Willink?

  His dream was true, they decided. Highbackbone took the scalps from him, and cleaned the wound in his lower leg. Someone rounded up Lighthair's new horse, and they all rode away from the hill, a few scalps, dangling from lances or belts. Horses and guns were the prize, as well as the emergence of a new warrior among them. That night around the fire, the full impact of the battle settled in, like an uninvited and unwelcome history.

• 1:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Men had been killed. Light-haired killed two men. The second and third human beings he had ever killed. The first was the Omaha girl in the country far to the east, three years past. Ghosts, the old warriors say, were the price of fighting man paid to follow the path of the warrior. Somewhere behind the noble and espoused traditions, somewhere behind the achievements and the glory, the ghosts waited.

• 1:19:21Jocko Willink?

  And they would always be there. Their dying would forever be a part of the path of the man who took their lives, whether the act was honorable or justified or not. Their faces, and often their dying moments, could not be forgotten, unless the heart of the warrior was made of stone, and few could boast of that, though many might have secretly wished it to be so. Somewhere people they didn't know, wives and daughters, mothers and granddaughters, would mourn. They would wail and gash themselves, their hearts torn in anguish.

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  The path of the warrior was indeed strewn with broken hearts like so many stones on a long and winding trail.

• 1:20:10Jocko Willink?

  The victory dances honored the warrior, and the victory stories reaffirmed the tradition of the warrior, but very little, if anything, could chase away the dark memories that always lurked.

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  The ghost would always dole the edge of arrogance and bring a cold feeling at the most unexpected moments. Such was the price of being a warrior.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  You know, as you're reading that,

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  and you think about,

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  he gets dressed up for battle. You know, they're doing their war paint and it's part of a ritual that they're going through

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  before they go into that. And I think the ritual is probably really important to the human psyche to help you set aside some of the fear and the other things. And maybe it might even help you with those ghosts a little bit. I remember on one of the early podcasts, somebody asked if you had a ritual before you went out on ops. And I think there is one that a lot of people practice and it was like, "I'm gonna change out all my batteries. I'm gonna get all the old battle maps out of my gear and I'm gonna put the new battle map and the new com plan. Then I'm gonna go check my radio." And then we have this ritual that develops. It's like reinforcing that we're all getting ready to go out on the battlefield. Because like, one of the last things we do before we get in the vehicles

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  or get in helicopters is we get together and we do com checks. We're saying to each other, "Hey, I want to make sure that you know that I can talk to you and then I know that you can talk to me. And when you need help, I'll hear you and I'll come." Right? And that, it's a different kind of ritual, but it's actually kind of the same where we present ourselves for inspection from each other, like, "Hey, check my gear out." And all of us, sometimes some platoons run differently where they'll have one guy check it out. But every platoon has a system where you present yourself and you do all these, this ritual to get ready to go into combat. And then you present yourself to your teammate, like, "Hey, check me out. Make sure I'm squared away."

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  And then I'll check you out. And then in that, we're kind of reaffirming all of our bonds and getting ready to go into the belly of the beast.

• 1:22:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's probably worth noting as a leader to make that a little bit more ritualistic. Right? So what can you do to make it a little bit more ritualistic? And I, I, I did this my first deployment to Iraq where we would, before we'd get in the vehicles, it was roll call. Like we would stand, like we'd all stand around the board with the vehicles, magnet board with vehicles on it. And it was, you know, Gardner, yep, you're willing, you know, just going through that roll call that yep, we're all here. We all know what vehicles we're in. This is who's going out tonight. And we, for some reason, in, in Ramadi, we didn't do quite

• 1:23:27Jocko Willink?

  that ritualistic roll call. We had come up with a more decentralized system for yep, everyone's good to go, you know, probably just the vehicles, you know, one, you know, six up, five's up, four's up, three's up, two's up, one, yep, we're good to go. We don't need to have everyone standing around. But as you're talking through this, that little, nice little ritual was a good thing. And it gives you a, you know, and I've talked about this before, the fact that in America, we don't really have a ritualistic, solid ritualistic way to deal with death. There's not a protocol to follow of what you're supposed to do. And it, and it can,

• 1:24:09Jocko Willink?

  I think, leave a lot of open ends and a lot of loose strings because other cultures have, hey, this day, we're going to do this kind of celebration. We're going to say this prayer. We're going to go to this place. We're going to do this thing. And then it's over.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  It doesn't make any sense, does it? Because dying is as natural as being born.

• 1:24:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  And why don't we, like, it's just like this weird gap that we have where we haven't set up this way for us to just cope with it.

• 1:24:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And, and, and even, you know, we have some rituals, like in the SEAL teams, like, okay, we're going to go to the funeral. We're gonna, we're gonna put the trident, you know, we're gonna pound our tridents into the casket. Like, those are awesome things. But it's almost like the ritual needs to have completion where you say, hey, once you put that trident in the casket.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  And you bury that casket. You know, now you've, you've let that part of, of that warrior go and now you can move forward. Whatever the saying should be, or whatever the, the ritual. Cause you don't really know that, you know, no one said like, hey, man, once you do that, it's okay. You've given, you've given that warrior the, the most respect you can give him. You've given him the most meaningful thing to you, which is your trident. You've given it to him. You're going to bury him with your trident. You're going to be with him forever. And now you go back to doing your job. I kind of feel that way. You know, I felt some level of closure when I've done that.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  But if it was a little bit more, if it was a little bit more codified, it might be even more healthy for guys. So I think the idea of rituals are so helpful in everyday life, you know, if you've got some rituals to follow. I mean, people have all kinds of little rituals they follow in everyday life, right? I get up, I brush my teeth, you know, I do a certain, I put on, like I wear the same clothes all the time to work out. You know what I mean? I have these little rituals and I pretty much wear the same clothes every day, by the way. But you've got these rituals, like this is what I'm going to do. And it makes things easier and, and it allows your mind to sort of follow a, of a path that, that is already known.

• 1:26:30Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's really healthy and I think that would help people a lot.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  You know, it, it's what's, what's so cool. What's so cool is getting these windows and what's really cool about the story of, of Crazy Horses. It was written by a Lakota and then we get a window into their culture. It's not that much different than ours.

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  Good grief, they're talking about that their virtues are generosity and courage. I think we see that as a virtue too, right?

• 1:26:57Jocko Willink?

  They come back from war and they have PTSD, by the way.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  Yes. And, and so.

• 1:27:02Jocko Willink?

  As they're talking about.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  The, the things that these are holding up as high standards are things that we hold up as high standards as well. Um.

• 1:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's worth if you're in a, if you're, if you're in a leadership position, the more ritual you can establish without getting crazy, you know, without getting crazy. We don't want to create rituals for no reason. We also want to create rituals that become, um, constrictive. But putting some rituals in place is a positive thing. Definitely.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of rituals, that night, there was a victory dance. High backbone and the others described the battle and their parts in it. Four enemy warriors had been killed. And by the way, they were fighting, I didn't, I did a bad job. They were fighting against, uh, some snakes. It was snakes that they were fighting against, snake tribe. Four enemy warriors had been killed, guns and horses had been captured. Everyone waited for the son of Crazy Horse to tell of his deeds, since according to the other men, he had turned the flow of the battle. But the boy hung back reluctant to talk. Winning with humility.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  He goes to sleep, um. Fast forward a little bit. The sun was high when he finally roused himself. The pain in his leg had diminished somewhat, and he managed to doze off a little. He sipped tea from the horn cup someone had left by the fire pit and finally dressed. He stepped out from the lodge and was surprised to see a crowd gathered in the camp circle. At the edge of it stood his father, wearing his best medicine robe decorated with long strands of horse hair.

• 1:28:43Jocko Willink?

  A trilling arose among the women.

• 1:28:47Jocko Willink?

  His mothers stood behind his father, gentle smiles on their faces and unmasked pride as well. Crazy Horse lifted his voice in a warrior's honoring song, joined by his wives and light haired sister. After the song came more shouts and war hoops and trilling. Crazy Horse lifted his hand and walked forward and faced the crowd. "I give my first son a new name this day," he said, raising his voice. "I have heard the story of the brave things he did. I am proud. His mothers are proud. All of his family and friends are proud of our young man. So this day, I give him a new name. I give him the name of his father and his fathers before him. From this day forward, I call him Crazy Horse."

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  From somewhere in the crowd, a drum pounded and another honoring song was raised and the crowd surged forward. High Backbone, Little Hawk, He-Dog, and Lone Bear were among the many who came forward smiling.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse. The name flowed like water over the rocks.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  There's a little ritual activity going on.

• 1:30:03Speaker 02

  That was a cool scene.

• 1:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Freaking outstanding.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  They're welcoming him to the club, man.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  And this is equally awesome, or at least getting close. So the father passed on the name and took for himself another Worm. A name of utmost humility. In time, even that name would have meaning for he would be known as Worm, the father of Crazy Horse. It's a little like epic. You just, hey, just call me Worm. That's where we're at. That's the humility level happening around here.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  Hey Echo, can I ask you about a movie?

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir. Of course.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  Um, Goodfellas.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  There's that scene where the main character goes to jail and he's just locked up for a little time, but he doesn't say anything. And then when he gets let out, everybody's cheering.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  And they're like, yeah.

• 1:30:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, when he was a kid. That's when he was a kid, yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  You popped your cherry.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Good, good scene.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's something about that. Uh, this is another thing we don't do great in America. Um, you're a man now type thing, that ceremony, that thing. Uh, you're a woman now. You can see they did it for, for both, uh, Black Buffalo Woman and, you know, like, okay, this is it. You're, you're responsible now. We don't do a great job of that.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  I went through something like that in the Catholic Church where I did confirmation and and so different cultures have got it, but as as we've kind of morphed away from that, it's something that we've lost. So how do we, how do we replace it? And it, and in a way, it's got to be something that you earn, right? It's so much better if you're earning it.

• 1:31:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure. For sure. It shouldn't just be like, okay, time and rate. You turned, you turned seven, you're a man now.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Isn't graduating high school is kind of like that, though?

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, true.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess in certain families, right? But you graduate high school, they give you like a bunch of stuff and then your uncle or whoever gives you like advice. It's like an actual thing.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  Dude, will you do a podcast on the advice you got from your uncle when you graduated high school and became a man, bro? That might be a whole podcast series.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, you know, you, well.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you didn't get advice from your uncle?

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  No, sir. Not me. I'm just saying.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  Did you have a lot of extended family around growing up?

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Uh, no, no, not really.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  I didn't either. But that's like some people do, and that's a great benefit because then there's all these adults putting good stuff into the kids' ears. And like they, you, you read in this book where there's everybody's talking. So everything's kind of common knowledge and everybody's involved in developing.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Well, one of the good things, uh, in Hawaii, it's, it's very common to call like, if you have a respected family friend or friends that come around, you call them uncle or auntie. Hundred percent. Like, I didn't even know uncle was my mom and dad's brother, sister. I didn't know that. And so like, yeah, but it's, it, it feels more solidified in Hawaii because like I said, I was like 10, maybe 11 before I realized, oh, wait, like uncle is like, if you're actually related to them, you just call it. There's people now even that I still call uncle Jill, uncle whatever, like you can't help it. But, um.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, it's in a way, it's kinda the same thing. Yeah, when you go great, when you graduate, they're all there and they give you, you know, all the stuff.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  I got put, I got put in check on that stuff by my wife, but cause when my son was like six. And I was treating him like a team guy. And my wife's like, he's freaking six, idiot. I was like, well, still, he should still be up with the freaking. She just had to like crush me and I said, oh yeah, sorry about that. I mean, you know.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  You have to be smart enough to listen.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  I had to think through it. I had to think through it and I was like, well, wait a second. When I was seven, I realized I was like, oh my God, I'm an idiot. Cause I was thinking, well, you know, why would you not just do, you know, why would you not get up at four in the morning?

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  And I'm like, bro, was I, when I was seven, I didn't even have any concept of any of that, you know, I was a little boy. And there I was looking at my kid like, better get up to speed. Yeah. Don't you wanna jerk still? What? This kettlebell's for you, son. And he can't respond because he can't talk yet.

• 1:34:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, little kids have blankets.

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:37Jocko Willink?

  Did any of your, do you know your kids have a blankie?

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, my mom, that's a big thing with my mom. So she got the kids their special blankie and, and, but it, it wasn't like a security thing or not.

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So one of my kids, I think my, um, second daughter had like a blanket that went with her everywhere. My first daughter, not so much. I didn't know what was gonna happen with my son, so.

• 1:35:03Jocko Willink?

  So I got him like this, uh, old school, like SAS freaking scarf thing. And I was like, well, if he needs a blanket, it's gonna be freaking tactical. And you know what? He rejected. He never had a, he never had like that, that, that, uh, he never utilized it.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Too early.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, well, no, no, he was my. One of my daughter that had the blanket that really carried it everywhere. It was, what is it called knitted? It was knitted and it had kind of like big knots. It had big knots. So you could kind of, she would constantly be uh fumbling with them, right? Yeah. So but then the SAS thing kind of had some little things. I say, you know, that'll be, you know, help the dexterity. We're working on dexterity, young age. You want to be working your grip strength. So and my wife's like, you are such a freaking idiot. So there you go.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  He, yeah, but he was definitely your son from straight away. Cause I remember him coming over early on and I had like a hatchet laying around and you're like, I, you can't have that hatchet. He, he'd already grabbed it. You got it from him real quick. Right before our pot belly pig tried to eat him.

• 1:36:13Jocko Willink?

  My neighbor came over. We, we saw one of our, our old neighbors, uh great friends of the family, great people. And they were like, yeah, we were looking through pictures the other day. And he had a picture of my kid at, he had walked over to their house and he's like six and he's got a naked Barbie, a hammer and a nail. And he says, can Shane come and play? And Darren goes, yeah, he can. Hold on a second. Went and took a picture. This is just too awesome. Some freaking poor little Barbie doll is about to get crucified. Uh twisted times.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Going back to the book, there, there's a, they're doing a raid. Once again on the snakes. Do you know, to your point, Jason, this is what they were doing.

• 1:37:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  It's not like all the, all the, the Indians were out there kumbaya, just, you know, living in peace and harmony. They were killing each other. And that's what's going on here. Um they got a raid. They're on a raid on the snakes. It's going sideways. Crazy Horse found good cover but was soon surrounded and his horse had been captured. Incoming fire prevented him from reloading his rifle. Without a horse, his odds of survival were greatly greatly reduced. His best chance was to move out of harm's way, but he knew he had to act quickly. The sound of distant gunfire was growing fainter, meaning the herd of new Lakota horses and most of the raiders were now well to the north. He and a few of the other Lakotas in the trees were left on their own with more snakes arriving. Moving

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  from tree to tree, he waited for a snake warrior to pass close and jump behind him onto the horse, dispatching the man with one swing of his stone-headed war club.

• 1:37:59Jocko Willink?

  Any commentary on that besides us? Yeah.

• 1:38:04Jocko Willink?

  How are you jumping onto the horse? That's just like athletic prowess as well.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Pulling out his pistol, he opened fire to distract the snakes circling outside the trees and shouted for the Lakota to make their escape. Making the break from the trees, Crazy Horse and his companions gained a good head start before the snakes could regroup. The snakes continued to pursue the herd and at one point managed to recover a few of their horses, but they had lost several more men and soon disengaged. Never in recent memory had the Ogallala Lakota taken so many horses in one raid, but they had suffered losses as well, with at least five men killed. Victory stories abounded and the dances went far into the night. The Lakota learned that one of the snake casualties was the son of their head man. The young man had been one of the first to pursue the Lakota.

• 1:38:55Jocko Willink?

  Once more, young Crazy Horse did not participate in the dancing. In fact, he said nothing even to his father about the new horse he was riding or the new muzzle-loaded loading rifle he had brought back. Worm could only guess how his son had acquired them until one of Crazy Horse's companions, who had been in the trees surrounded by snakes, told him what he had witnessed, that the young man had unhorsed a snake and captured the gun in one daring moment. His action had saved them all. The man was certain.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  This is just a good methodology for life. If you talk about how awesome you are, you're degrading your level of respect as a human. So just don't do it. It's just better just to not say anything. How much more awesome is that is this situation? Because Crazy Horse just rolls back in with a brand new horse, a brand new rifle and doesn't even tell his dad that he did this thing and he has to hear it secondhand. 12 years of one-on-one instruction provided by, provided any Lakota male,

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  the basic physical skills to be a fighting man. By the age of 15 or 16, any boy was proficient with all of his weapons. But unseen factors determined how each would-be warrior would handle live combat. After the first few encounters with enemies on the battlefield, young Crazy Horse had demonstrated qualities that eluded many men for an entire lifetime. Older, experienced men, while initially impressed, waited to pass judgment, however. It wasn't unusual for young men to perform well in their first face-to-face encounters with enemies, if for no other reason than that their inexperience made them less cautious. Then the daunting realities of combat became part of their thinking and the same young men

• 1:40:59Jocko Willink?

  who seemed so daring and reckless in their first few outings hesitated, taking stock before taking action. Caution was good. It turned reckless boys into thinking men and a thinking man was overall more valuable on the battlefield than one who placed others in danger because he took unnecessary risks. So the old man who heard, so the old men who heard of the first exploits of young Crazy Horse, nodded knowingly, remembering that such-and-such had started the same way. And now he was a man with a family because there was more to life than glory on the battlefield. Some wisdom from these, from these folks. They know what's up.

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  The reckless die young, the old men advised, and their only legacy is a brief moment of glory, but it's over time, it's forgotten. It is the steady and the steadfast that prevail, the old ones say. So while it stirred the heart and the imagination to hear of the exploits of a new young warrior, one whose quiet ways in camp contradicted the stories of daring on the battlefield, the old men puffed on their pipes as they sat around the evening fires and nodded knowingly. Over time, young Crazy Horse would give up his reckless ways, they said. Everyone does.

• 1:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Not quite everyone.

• 1:42:23Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, the lines of suitors at the lodge of Black Buffalo Woman were as long as ever. She's squared away.

• 1:42:35Jocko Willink?

  And the town or the village is kind of taking notice as time went by. Even the staunchest skeptics agreed that Black Buffalo Woman and the stalwart young Crazy Horse were a good match and that she would do well to bring such a man into her family.

• 1:42:50Jocko Willink?

  But there were still many whispers behind the hand that her family had plans that didn't take the girl's own feelings into consideration. One of the suitors was No Water, who of his own accord was by no comparison to Crazy Horse. But No Water's older brother, Black Twin, was a skilled orator and a man of growing influence, and he held many opinions solidly in line with those of Red Cloud. So No Water was suddenly a valuable man. There was nothing for anyone to do but wait and watch with great interest as to what would happen.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  So you've got Crazy Horse, he's sort of the warrior in this scenario, and then No Water, who has a little bit of prestige, some family connections, and there's a mystery as to what's going to happen and who's going to end up

• 1:43:47Jocko Willink?

  getting Black Buffalo Woman.

• 1:43:52Jocko Willink?

  Going out in the field again. Scouts from one of the camps along the Powder River met the returning warriors and were quickly sent back to spread the news of success. But before he left, one of the scouts let slip a bit of news from the Red Cloud Camp that was like an arrow into the heart of young Crazy Horse. No water, the younger brother of Black Twin, had become the husband of Black Buffalo Woman. Out on deployment.

• 1:44:21Speaker 02

  And he was supposed to go on that deployment and suddenly got a toothache.

• 1:44:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he got a toothache.

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  And they're like, "Oh, go back to the camp!" And then he would marry Black Buffalo Woman. Dirty trick.

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  Jody, always there, staying in camp.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  The grain of hope that Light Hair dared to allow himself to hold in his heart, had grown into distinct possibility when, as Crazy Horse, he joined the line of hopeful young men waiting outside the girls lodge. That grain of hope had grown even more each time she stood with him under his courting robe and seemed reluctant to leave his embrace. Or perhaps it was only his imagination. This would not be the first time imagination totally ignored, his imagination totally ignored the boundaries and limits of reality. So he gets heartbroken. Half a month later he returned. Fast forward a little bit.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse said nothing of the trail he had traveled for nearly a month, for nearly half a month. Worm knew that the broken heart was not completely healed and perhaps never would be, but he knew, as all fathers do, that sometimes the best medicine for such a wound was life itself. Some good advice right there. Yeah, because he'd left, he'd gone out kind of just on his own for a few weeks to get, get over the, the heartbreak.

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  He does a little bit of raiding all on his own too, which is something that he gets into.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Just, just solo operations.

• 1:45:56Jocko Willink?

  More good comments here. "A wound on the outside can be watched to see that it heals well, as everyone knew. Wounds on the inside could not be seen but for pain in the eyes. Several months had passed since Black Buffalo Woman had taken No Water as her husband. Soon after they had moved away, for as everyone knew, No Water was afraid of Crazy Horse. The old women knew that best of all. But if their young man, as they called Crazy Horse, bore any ill will, it could not be seen in the way he conducted himself or heard in any words he had spoken. So they hoped that the wound inflicted by Black Buffalo Woman was healed, though some didn't blame her. She was, after all, only sixteen, and how could

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  one so young stand up to the powerful ambitions of her father and uncle?"

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Um, rolling into the, back into one of the reflections sections here, and, and again, I'm skipping a bunch of stuff, um, but wanted to talk about this part where he says, where Marshall says, "The seeking of a vision is a serious, highly ritualized process undertaken respectfully, prayerfully, and under the guidance of a medicine man. To seek a vision is to seek guidance for one's life or to answer a problem or predicament. Young Lighthair was probably afraid that the dream he had that night, he spent atop a sandstone, but Butte would not be taken seriously because he had not followed all the rules, but it

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  came nonetheless. The dream, that vision, has been told and retold thousands of times since. The fact of the matter is that we cannot be certain of the exact description of Lighthair, that Lighthair later gave to his father. Furthermore, it is critical to understand that much of the discussion and interpretation of the vision has occurred and is still occurring since Crazy Horse's death." There are those who see the vision as a foretelling, almost a blow-by-blow revelation of what lay ahead for Light Hair. It depicted a powerful Lakota warrior rising out of the lake during a thunderstorm on a horse that changes colors, riding unscathed through a hail of arrows and bullets until he's eventually pulled down by his own kind, grabbing and holding back his arms.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  The vision might have been as much a consequence of wishful thinking as it is a glimpse into the future. For every Lakota boy grew up with dreams of being a warrior and winning glory and honor on the battlefield. Light Hair was no different. One elderly Lakota storyteller was the opinion that Light Hair and his father chose not to tell everything about the vision, speculating that a warning was part of it, a warning that the boy would die as a young man in his prime. Such a warning could explain Crazy Horse's daring and often reckless exploits in combat as a younger fighting man. Perhaps he believed each time he was about to perform the last act of his life and wanted to be powerful and meaningful.

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, the guy's got a broken heart at this point. And essentially, like they're talking about these other warriors, get a family and now they got something to lose. And Crazy Horse doesn't.

• 1:49:07Jocko Willink?

  It's like the classic.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  But I don't want to take that, take that away from his courage or bravery or anything else either.

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the classic, you know, team guy on the ragged edge with nothing to lose. That's like, hey, ready to go.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  Uh, getting back into the story. Crazy Horse decided to see for himself how things were at Fort Laramie. He found a loafer camp, which is, these are like Indian camps that are right outside and they're friendly with the whites and make deals with the whites and they kind of live off the whites, they call them loafers. He found a loafer camp a short way from the fort and stayed with them a few days to hear what they knew. Annuities were laid again, they complained, and the longhorn cattle were skinnier every year. They noticed, not without some degree of envy, that while Crazy Horse carried a rifle and a pistol and a far-seen glass, he was not dressed in white man's clothes, as they were. He reminded them he was a hunter. Though some of them took this remark as an insult,

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  others knew that living off the promises of the Annuities was not really living.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  A white man named Burdo could speak Lakota very well and he was surprised to see someone from the northern camps among the loafers. He told Crazy Horse that more soldiers were coming to be posted at Laramie. He knew this because the whites had a way of talking over great distances that was much faster than the letters carried by stagecoaches and the pony riders. They had a tapping language which by which they sent messages along a wire faster than even the prairie falcon could fly.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  Um, now what starts happening is there's, there's, they start to find gold, look for gold, discover gold. And there's people heading north of Elk River to find gold, north of the Shell River, and these are super intrusive, right?

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  Um, and here we go. After several days' travel north of Shell River, the people in the gold-seeking train woke, awoke to an unexpected sight. They were surrounded by hundreds of mounted Lakota and Sayyala fighting men positioned on the hills and ridges around them. The trail north and south was blocked. The blockaders stayed out of rifle range and didn't make any aggressive moves, simply maintaining their positions as the day wore on, a ring of men and horses seeming to have risen out of the rocks. After nightfall, a ring of small fires burned. Morning light revealed the blockaders were still in place.

• 1:51:57Jocko Willink?

  Days and nights passed into five and then six. So, these, these, this big, uh, train, wagon train is up looking for gold and the, the Indians team up. They team up and they surround them.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Super strategic what they're doing too.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Super strategic.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  Because they're not, they're not, but they're not killing all the women and children, which is going to commit everybody to something. They're just like, hey.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  And I'm sure those people must have been horrified.

• 1:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Horrified, horrified.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  He says here, "There were only two ways for the whites to go, continue north or return south. If the soldiers came and tried to take gold seekers north, the Lakota and Sayyala would attack. It was decided. If they turned back south, they would be allowed to return, hopefully with knowledge that Powder River Country would not be another trail for the whites, whatever their purpose or destination." And then some soldiers come, and thankfully, they turned, they turned the train south. And this is what I think is an important piece. Crazy Horse would always remember the strange episode on the snake-staked trail, especially in light of all that was to follow. He carried a lesson from it that he would use as a measure every time he looked to

• 1:53:18Jocko Willink?

  the trail as a fighting man. All the warriors on the ridges surrounding the gold seekers had invoked a feeling of virtue, of simply coming together, a feeling of strength that comes from pursuing the same purpose. Several hundred had responded, some from the Sahelia and perhaps a few blue clouds married into Lakota families. He knew several by name, but most were unknown to him. On those windswept ridges, for six days, however, they had shared the kinship of purpose." So incredibly important lesson for him, unifying people and working together towards a common goal, that's an opportunity.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and so when people feel like they're part of the group, um, they're, they're, they're capable of so much more, and so that means that no matter what you do, make sure that everybody feels included on the team. It's that easy.

• 1:54:20Jocko Willink?

  I have a simple statement about this. Together we are stronger. And if you can keep that in mind, it's, it actually is like, it's cover and move, because with cover and move, if you get too far apart, now we can't cover and move for each other. Together we are stronger. If you keep that in mind, whenever things are happening, think, hey, together we're stronger. That's the way you want to go. And that's the lesson he learned here. Fast forward a little bit, summer passed lazily and people talked about making presents to the Buffalo Scouts and sending them out looking. So the, so the planning for the autumn hunts could be made as the first heavy snows fell. Troubling news came from far south, from the Saheliers who lived along the southern fork of the Shell River.

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  Soldiers, it was always the soldiers. Three hundred people had been killed at a place called Sand Creek, most of them Sahila and some blue clouds led by Black Kettle and White Antelope. Both leaders were regarded as wise and always working for peace. The killing was bad enough because those killed were mostly women and children, but the soldiers who attacked did more than kill. The white agent trusted by Black Kettle and White Antelope had advised them to find a place to pitch their lodges that was away from the main trails, it was told. There were many whites in that part of the country, many living in a large town called

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  Denver, and there was a hatred among them for the Sahila and people of the earth. The camp was to fly the white banner of peace as well as the striped banner of the long knives to signify they were peaceful. But the soldiers found them and the banners meant nothing. The messengers could barely tell the story, trying to keep back the anger and the tears as well as the bile that rose in the throat for remembering. Women and children were butchered after they were killed, it was told. Parts of their bodies were cut away, such as a woman's breasts and genitalias, a child's hand or fingers, and boys' genitalias.

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  Brains were bashed out with gun stocks and eyes were gouged out. Some babies not yet born were cut from their mothers' stomachs. The final insult came when the soldiers attached body parts to their blue coats and rode in a victory march through the streets of the large town as the other whites cheered. The Lakota did not want to believe the news, not because they wanted to deny the truth of it, but because it was much too difficult to believe that anyone could do such unspeakable deeds.

• 1:57:08Jocko Willink?

  Sand Creek massacre.

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  I did a podcast about that with

• 1:57:15Jocko Willink?

  Daniele Bilelli and Daryl Cooper. We talked about the Mila massacre and the Sand Creek massacre and it's just a freaking nightmare.

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  "All the whites were the enemy now." "And that thought was carried with guns, lances, war clubs and bows as angry men rode out from the great camp." "The Lakota swept to the northeast, the Sahelias "to the northwest and the blue clouds swirled like hornets in between."

• 1:57:51Jocko Willink?

  "Way stations, soldier posts and any travelers along the holy road or any frequented by whites were the objectives." "Young men took admonitions of their elders to heart "as they hardened themselves to mercy and remembered Sand Creek." "The spirit of revenge rolled with the thunder from hooves of war horses across the frozen prairies." "Crazy Horse joined the second attack on Julesburg, "but the whites were reluctant to meet them face to face in the open so there was no fighting to speak of." "They left the post ablaze after taking all they could carry from the storehouses."

• 1:58:36Jocko Willink?

  So they go and they're just out

• 1:58:40Jocko Willink?

  doing these raids and just getting after it.

• 1:58:44Speaker 02

  Essentially, right now, we're at total war.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  We're at total war and yes, we are and here's the disturbing thing is

• 1:58:52Jocko Willink?

  those soldiers at Sand Creek, they were

• 1:58:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, not connected to the soldiers that were in Montana, not connected to the soldiers that these other force. They didn't know what had happened and or maybe they knew what happened, but they, I'm sure some of them said, oh, what the hell's going on with that? Just and so now you had, you have the whites that are, that have been looking at all the Indians as the same. I mean, I guess maybe not because they, they are, they are have some, uh, like the crows, they work with the crows directly. But you're starting to see the two sides divide and it's you're either on this side or that side and that's it. And we're going to take vengeance on, if you're white, you're, you're getting attacked.

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and rightly so. And that's if you're a defender of the people, then that, that's what you, you have to do and it just turned, it's attrition warfare.

• 1:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And it's just, uh, it's not, it's just escalation and it's not going to stop.

• 1:59:57Jocko Willink?

  So they're out doing these raids, going in these battles, crazy horse continues to distinguish himself.

• 2:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here, so here's something that occurs. They had not succeeded in wiping out the soldiers because a few impetuous young men couldn't hold themselves back for the right moment. This was on a, uh, an ambush. And some of the young guys went hard early.

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  And so it was a problem that had, had to be corrected if they were to defeat the whites, they all agreed. And one way to solve the problem was to find strong, young men to lead the others. For that, they said, perhaps they should renew the tradition of the shirt wearers. Some people scoffed at such talk. No shirt wearers had been selected for a generation because the purpose behind the tradition had been forgotten. A shirt wearer was to be a young man of strong action and good ways, one to set the example for others. Instead, the tradition had become the father choosing his son to wear the shirt next. Better to let it be, some said, instead of dishonoring a good thing.

• 2:01:03Jocko Willink?

  So they, they used to have, hey, if you were a badass, you'd get this shirt, but then eventually became, you know, oh, it's my son, I'm going to get him, hook him up.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  Little Hawk was growing into a daring fighter, already winning several war honors. But the most perplexing and heavy change was symbolized in the shirt made from the hide of a bighorn sheep, now rolled in a decorated case and waiting in his parents lodge. Also waiting were the duties and responsibilities that came with it. The old man leaders had indeed decided to revive the old tradition of shirt wearers. And as expected, the shirts were given to young men of important families. So they do end up saying, alright, we're gonna make some shirt wearers. The choice of young men, the choice of young man whose enemies are afraid of his horses, sword or long knife horse, aka an American horse, surprised no one.

• 2:01:57Jocko Willink?

  So that's a bunch of guys that were, you know, from important families. But when the name of Crazy Horse was announced, a gasp went through the crowd. And the shouts, the whoops, and the trilling that followed were the loudest of all. He felt truly honored, yet was uncertain that he was a good choice. Later, two more shirt wearers were chosen, and he was pleased that his friend He-Dog was one. The other was Big Road, a good, strong, and honorable man. "To wear shirts, you must be men above all others," said an old man chosen to speak. "You must help others before you think of yourselves.

• 2:02:42Jocko Willink?

  Help the widows, and those who have little to wear and to eat, and have no one to help them or speak for them. Do not look down on others, or see those who look down on you. And do not let anger guide your mind or your heart. Be generous, be wise, and show fortitude so that the people can follow what you do, and then what you say. Above all, have courage and be the first to charge the enemy, for it is better to lie a warrior naked in death, than to be wrapped up well with the heart of water inside."

• 2:03:26Jocko Willink?

  So that's an expanded version of what you were talking about earlier when they talked about the we the weeta, this idea of the short words. And again, what do they talk about? I mean, they open it up with think of others before you think of yourselves. That's the, that's the, that's the opener.

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  You know, and essentially they're choosing their officers, right?

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  And it's pretty cool because, well, I guess part of it, they're doing it by birth because they're like, oh, you're from an important family, kind of like we did it.

• 2:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  And then they're like, you know, where it was like college degree or landowners are going to be officers and everybody else is enlisted. And then, um, and then by actual prowess.

• 2:04:14Jocko Willink?

  Merit.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  Merit for crazy horse.

• 2:04:18Speaker 02

  You know, and then, then you, you serve others before you serve yourself. And

• 2:04:24Speaker 02

  there's a tradition the Marine Corps has that's freaking awesome. And that's that the officer eats last. That is, is similar in that.

• 2:04:35Jocko Willink?

  Leaders eat last.

• 2:04:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  That's as it should be, you know, as it should be.

• 2:04:44Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, calling the young men together high backbone scolded them for causing the ambush to fail. This is after they'd obviously just failed on an ambush. The young men listened without protest as he reminded them that fighting the whites was not a war for glory, but a war for survival.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  He reminded them of Sand Creek. When he finished, there was a loud affirmation, but an even louder one came after he announced his plan for another ambush. Most of the fighting men would hide themselves and their horses in the ridges and gullies on either side of the wagon trail from Prairie Dog Creek to Lodge Trail Ridge. A small group would attack the wood gatherers who always went out from the fort by wagon in the morning. When the soldiers came out to drive the attackers away, 10 decoys would show themselves and lead them toward Lodge Trail Ridge and then north down us down to a slope, ending in a meadow before Prairie Dog Creek. When the signal was given, the hiding warriors would attack and not before or. And not before, or the ambush would be spoiled.

• 2:05:43Jocko Willink?

  The soldiers had to believe that only ten decoys were fighting them. Most important to the plan were the decoys. If they failed, several hundred fighting men would be denied the opportunity for victory. Therefore, the decoys needed a strong leader, one skilled in warfare with proven judgment in battle. The leader of the decoys would be Crazy Horse. The cries and shouts of affirmation rang through camp, and fighting men, young and old, crowded around to put their names in as one of the other nine.

• 2:06:20Jocko Willink?

  They do some preparation, then the attack came well away from the fort, but still within sight. So the Lakota could be seen surrounding the wagons. So these are the decoys going into action. After initial charge, the attackers kept the wagon men and escort riders engaged. The gunfire sounded especially sharp in the frigid mountain air. Soon, the western gates swung open and a column of mounted and walking soldiers appeared. The Lakota attackers kept up the firing, making sure the rescue column was well out of the fort. As the soldiers passed their thicket, Crazy Horse and his decoys charged. So this is like going as perfect to plan as it could go.

• 2:07:01Jocko Willink?

  Fortunately, enough of the decoys had a few bullets that they could fire several shots to make it seem like an all-out attack. Crazy Horse shot a few arrows when he was close enough to see the hairy faces of some of the soldiers. For some moments, the soldiers seemed confused. Then, they finally opened fire. Uneven snow covered over the frozen ground, and dangerously frigid air were the decoy warriors' first obstacles. And bullets humming past them like angry bees reminded them that they had a daunting task ahead and a long way to finish it. The first few mounted soldiers turned off the trail to pursue them, and the rest of the column fell in slowly behind them.

• 2:07:44Jocko Willink?

  Fainting head-on charges, the decoys would swerve at the last moment, well within range of the soldier guns. They took the soldiers north, over the frozen snowfields. At one point, some of the decoys, including Crazy Horse, had to ride down a treacherously steep frozen slope. The soldiers took the gentler slope of the south face and kept pursuing. An open valley with thick stand of trees on either side of the creek lay ahead with no serious obstacles to impede the soldiers' advance. Once across the creek, the warriors turned straight north and came in sight of lodged trail ridge. The walking soldiers were slowing down the column. Crazy Horse dismounted, well within rifle range, pulled out a knife and calmly scraped the ice from the bottom of his horse's

• 2:08:29Jocko Willink?

  hooves. When bullets began to ricochet closer and closer, he remounted and loped away. The other decoys, to infuriate the soldiers, used similar tactics.

• 2:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, on the ridge, I think, I want to say I read that this was about a multi-mile, like a five-mile trail.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, five miles.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  They had to make a move five miles. They had to get pursued for five miles. On the ridge, the soldiers hesitated, perhaps waiting for some to catch up. The decoys renewed their efforts, coaxing their tired horses partway up the slope, moving dangerously close. One pretended to be shot off his horse and immediately bounced up, running behind the horse, before skillfully remounting from the back. Crazy Horse had picked the right men for the task at hand. For Crazy Horse and the decoys, this was the decisive moment. If the waiting ambushers attacked prematurely, soldiers could still escape. The decoys looked left and right as they proceeded north along a very narrow part of the ridge, but could see no movement.

• 2:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Below the slope of the ridge falling away before them was the winding Prairie Dog Creek and the end of their task. Now the soldiers were pressing harder, increasing their gunfire, obviously certain that the decoys comprised the entire enemy force. Crazy Horse formed his men into a skirmish line, and those with bullets had spit, with bullets to spare, fired at the oncoming soldiers. Drawing into heavy, drawing in heavy return fire, the decoys raced their horses down the slippery slope, forming two lines as they rode. They crossed the flats to Prairie Dog Creek. Each line of riders swinging out wide and then crossing each other on the opposite side of the creek.

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  This was the signal to attack. From out of the very earth itself came the awaiting ambushers. Horses and men burst from the gullies, cutbacks, and what little winter shrubbery was there. In a heartbeat, several hundred fighting men rose, rode south, some from the east and some from the west. Those closest to Lodge Trail Ridge quickly shut the soldiers' escape route back to the fort. The soldiers' advance stopped. Then they instinctively began to fight their, to fight to reach the safety of the fort. The walking soldiers were strung out to the back, closer to Lodge Trail Ridge.

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  They were the first to fall as gunfire blasted up the slopes below them. There was no end to the guns firing. The soldiers fought hard as they retreated up the ridge, but there was nothing to be gained. They were cut off with nowhere to go. Wave after wave of the mounted warriors fought their way up the treacherous slopes. Those with guns used up their bullets and then resorted to their bows. Some had only bows and arrows. Arrows flew up from the east slope and from the west. The sky was dark with them, and some found their mark in the body of a Lakota or Sahila. Toward the end, the warriors waited in among the dead and dying soldiers, killing them

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  with a pistol shot, or a hard, skillful swing of a war club, or the deadly thrust of a lance. And then all was quiet. All the soldiers were dead.

• 2:11:58Jocko Willink?

  It began with the Saheliers as they remembered Sand Creek and what had been done to their relatives. When the frenzy ended, the soldiers were stripped naked, fingers were chopped off, bellies slashed open, eyes gouged out.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Many warriors were wounded, but fewer than fifteen had been killed.

• 2:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Kind of a, kind of a perfect operation, really. I mean, it sounds just like a textbook operation. And those soldiers got lured out. I think there ended up being eighty of them. Um, then they were all killed and then mutilated.

• 2:12:47Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, snows came and winter passed.

• 2:12:52Jocko Willink?

  A loafer brought word from the peace talkers. They had come with more presents, kettles, blankets, knives, and now guns. And they were asking for Red Cloud to come and sign the papers that all the Lakota could share in these gifts. So there could be peace in the Powder River County. The peace talkers had come with a new offer as well. All the country from the great muddy river to the shining mountains would be Lakota land. So long as the rivers shall flow and the grass grows. Where the whites, where did the whites get the power to give the Lakota lands they already controlled? Crazy Horse heard many old men ask.

• 2:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse rode north to raid the crows. He returned with new horses. And to news that his uncle Spotted Tail had his own lands to live on, given to him by the whites. Agency, it was called.

• 2:13:48Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse pondered this news even as Red Cloud rode south to Fort Laramie with a new power of his own. He made a mark next to his name on the white man's piece of paper. And that was the Fort Laramie Treaty of eighteen sixty-eight.

• 2:14:10Jocko Willink?

  It's, you know, if you can get some people to compromise and you can make some people, you can win some people over and you can divide people.

• 2:14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, right there, there's, there, it's just done.

• 2:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  There, there's a funny discussion in there where they're like, how, how is Red Cloud signing away our land?

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  Oh, he is? Well, hey, I'm gonna sign away my brother-in-law's lodge.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're, it doesn't make sense to them, right? Doesn't, it's just, again, it's like, hey, Jason, I'll give you money for your, for your heir. And you go, well, okay, what about, oh, do you want to buy Echo's heir too? I can sign for Echo's heir. Yeah, I'll buy that too. Or, or you know, I look at Echo and say, I already got your heir, you know? Jason sold it to me. You're like, what, what just happened?

• 2:15:03Speaker 02

  You know, I, I, it, but at the end of the day,

• 2:15:08Speaker 02

  those guys, whatever their motivations were,

• 2:15:14Speaker 02

  they kind of saw the writing on the wall and they got on the winning side. And so they were trying to carve themselves out, even though, you know, they're, maybe they're, they're betrayers or they are betraying the other Lakota, but um,

• 2:15:29Speaker 02

  it's that change thing again. Who likes it?

• 2:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:33Jocko Willink?

  You sometimes gotta change that horse.

• 2:15:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:15:38Jocko Willink?

  Uh, returning from a hunt, Crazy Horse stopped in the camp of No Water to Rest. Since the great gathering below Elk Mountain two years past, he had spoken to Black Buffalo Woman several times. Whatever had been between them had long passed. She was the mother of three now and seemed entirely proper for him to ask about her children. But each time they talked, they lingered longer. Something that did not go unnoticed by someone who knew what had happened before. So now Black Buffalo Woman waited discreetly for the gift of Elk Teeth. Crazy Horse had lately been leaving for her with someone. But as he was preparing to leave, she approached openly and brought him food.

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  And they stood together talking. He left not lingering too long, but as he rode away, some noticed that she watched until he was out of sight.

• 2:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Worm spoke and there was, there was some,

• 2:16:40Jocko Willink?

  some talk about what was gonna happen with Black Buffalo Woman. There was obviously a rekindling of this thing, of this relationship, of this, this, uh, this love at first sight that they had had. Worm spoke nonetheless because much rode on the shoulders of his son, much that was important to the people. "They will not let her go," he said quietly.

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. "One morning after the victory dances, whispers flew through camp. Black Buffalo Woman had left her children with relatives and rode out beside the light-haired one.

• 2:17:19Jocko Willink?

  No two people could agree over this new turn. Some said it was a coming for a long time since her father had made the choice of a husband for her when her heart belonged to the shy, quiet young man who is now the most powerful warrior among them. Others said there would be trouble. Though she was a good Lakota woman, free to choose, her husband was not one to let her have that choice. Besides, the reasons her father and uncle had influenced her choice of a husband were even more important now," some said cautiously. And they were right.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  The couple and their friends came to a small camp in a narrow little valley, and there they rested. Little Shield, He Dog's brother, and Little Big Man were among, were along, and made a feast. As night fell, there came a commotion and a man tore into the lodge where Crazy Horse and Black Buffalo Woman were guests. A man warned from a hard trail and driven by anger of a jealous heart. No water stood above them, a pistol in hand. As Crazy Horse leaped to his feet, the pistol boomed.

• 2:18:32Jocko Willink?

  So, got a little, uh, love triangle going on. No water's not happy. And, uh, maybe I didn't cover it, but the tradition was if the woman wanted a divorce, she could do that. It was up to her. And, and the man was supposed to respect it, but everyone kinda knew that No Water was not the kinda guy that was gonna let this slide.

• 2:18:54Speaker 02

  It appears that there's, like, there's, there's a lot of politics involved with this marriage, and it was an arranged marriage, which is kind of outside the norm, too. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah, what an incredibly tragic story.

• 2:19:07Jocko Willink?

  So, luckily enough, back to the book. "He awoke in a lodge unfamiliar to him, but knew the strong old face that appeared as his eye cleared and he could see. One eye was still swollen along with the left side of his face. Old spotted crow, his uncle, the brother of long face, nodded a greeting and held him down as he tried to sit up. 'She is back with her people,' the old man said in answer to the question on his face. 'My cousin Bad Heart Bull made it so. No one will harm her.' He'd been in and out of sleep for three days, he was told. The swelling on his face had gone down a little, but he would have a scar where the bullet had opened his face from the corner of his nose down

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  to the jawline. 'There will be black powder in the scar from the pistol,' Worm had indicated. Two very fine horses were tied outside his uncle's lodge, sent by No Water as a gesture of peace. 'Take them,' his father advised, 'to soften the anger of those who would take revenge in your name.' So he did. And the young men, who wanted No Water, turned over to them, set aside their anger, and put away their bows and guns."

• 2:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Then one night, the young men who had gone into snake country with little hawk slipped back into camp. Sorry, I'm fast forwarding a little bit. The raiding, so before we go there, he

• 2:20:35Jocko Willink?

  he humbles himself, basically. He humbles himself. The guy comes to kill him, shoots him in the face. He happens to live. And instead of starting a freaking war, he says, alright, you know what? I accept the horses.

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  There's just for some forgiveness and acceptance and everybody can move on.

• 2:20:55Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:21:01Jocko Willink?

  So, fast forward a little bit now. Then one night, the young men who had gone into snake country with little hawk slipped back into camp. The raiding against the snakes did not go well. On the way home, little hawk was killed by whites in an unexpected attack. The news was like a war club to the stomach. As his mothers began to weep softly, crazy horse went out to stand alone in the night. His brother had been killed while he had been chasing after his own selfish needs.

• 2:21:35Jocko Willink?

  So, I don't know, probably failed to make that clear, but little hawk, who we've mentioned a few times, was his, was crazy horse's little brother. And so while crazy horse is going through this drama and injury and recovery, they go out on a raid and his little brother out with, I think is out with him, out without his older brother for the first time, dies.

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  The next day, he saw no water unloading meat at the lodge of a relative. Seeming to sense crazy horse's anger, no water jumped on his horse and galloped out of camp. Perhaps unable to contain his anguish over both the loss of the only woman he wanted and the death of his brother, crazy horse grabbed the nearest horse and gave chase. Across broken land, he kept up the chase until no water plunged his horse into the Elk River and escaped on the other side. Not many days after that, the council of old men met influenced by the relatives of Red Cloud and No Water. Crazy Horse was to return the shirt, they decided.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  His actions over the woman endangered the peace of the Ogallala and no one outside like no one, like no outside enemy could. And this could not be overlooked. Though there was anger in his own lodge and from the young men at this trickery,

• 2:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse gave back the shirt.

• 2:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Soon after that, the Lodge of No Water moved far south to another camp and whispers were made behind the hand that Red Cloud was to be given the shirt.

• 2:23:25Jocko Willink?

  This is, like you said, there's just a trajectory that gains, gets gaining speed. You know, you lose.

• 2:23:34Jocko Willink?

  You, you, now you lose your woman, now you lose your brother, now you learn, lose your placement with the shirt as a shirt wearer.

• 2:23:44Speaker 02

  And the friction points are, you know, him and Red Cloud.

• 2:23:51Jocko Willink?

  And so what is he doing? He's still fighting. And who's he fighting?

• 2:23:57Jocko Willink?

  I guess unfortunately, he's fighting snakes. He's fighting other, other Indian tribes. Going to this section here, they attacked, but the snakes were too many. The two Lakota groups were too far apart to regroup and the mud was too deep. Their horses tired. Somehow they managed to hold back the determined counterattack. Crazy Horse, High Backbone and Good Weasel with their rifles were rear guard as others retreated. First one fell back, then another managing to keep the snakes at bay. But several snakes on fresh horses suddenly were able to surround High Backbone.

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  And Crazy Horse saw his old friend take a bullet in the chest. Still, the old warrior pulled out his pistol and emptied it at the onrushing enemy until they overran him. Crazy Horse ran in to rescue him, but his horse was too tired from pulling himself out of the mud. And the enemy fire was too much. Good Weasel finally intervened, grabbing the rein to his horse. The rain turned into snow as they rode toward home. Sometime in the night, they found a sheltered place and built a warming fire with their horses, while their horses rested. Crazy Horse sat huddled beneath his robe, alone with the thoughts of his old friend and teacher.

• 2:25:17Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, this is, again, it's just, it's just a downward spiral at this point.

• 2:25:26Jocko Willink?

  They get back to camp. Crazy Horse smoked his pipe and pondered all that had happened since he and He-Dog had carried their lances against the crow.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Much had been taken away, it seemed. First, Black Buffalo Woman, then his place as a shirt wearer. Now, his younger brother and his oldest friend were gone.

• 2:25:47Jocko Willink?

  He took little comfort in knowing they had died on the path they had chosen. There was only emptiness where they had been. Perhaps these things had come to pass because he had not fully honored the calling to be a Thunder Dreamer. Though he had learned the importance of honoring the old ways from his fathers, and from his father and uncles, and his mothers. He was not one for ceremonies, or standing in front of the people.

• 2:26:15Jocko Willink?

  But if he must live the life of sacrifice, he would. As a Thunder Dreamer, he did not belong to himself, he belonged to the people. It was not what he wanted for his life, but it was what life wanted from him.

• 2:26:41Jocko Willink?

  As going forward a little bit, this sort of collaboration with the whites continues and it continues to escalate.

• 2:26:50Jocko Willink?

  And finally, at some point, Crazy Horse returned home to resurgent rumors that miners were going into the Black Hills in violation of the rules set down in the Horse Creek Treaty. Gold was the reason. Ah, yes, gold, the white man's god. The whites were willing to risk their own lives to get gold. Gold was the reason for their interest in the Black Hills, the heart of everything that was to the Lakota.

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  So they got the sacred, the sacred Black Hills and the whites want to get gold.

• 2:27:25Jocko Willink?

  This is, um, this is going, breaking away from the story for a second and going into the, one of the reflections sections from, from Marshall in this point.

• 2:27:41Jocko Willink?

  "Most boys therefore basically learned the same lessons and were given the same opportunities to perform as fighting men. So how does a crazy horse emerge from a broad cultural blueprint and set himself apart? Perhaps he is testimony to the premise that some things cannot be taught. Perhaps there is something innate that some have and others don't. Men and women who coach young athletes point out that while skill and methodology can be taught to any athlete, the physical attributes of speed and quickness are frequently the difference between a good athlete and an outstanding one. Many people dream of becoming leaders, while others shun the opportunity even when it falls into their laps. General George Patton of World War II fame certainly sought the responsibilities of

• 2:28:26Jocko Willink?

  leadership and revelled in its rewards and prestige when he was successful. Crazy Horse, on the other hand, was not as quick to grab the opportunity when it came and literally had no desire to talk about his exploits. But both were exceptional leaders and their accomplishments could not have been achieved without a certain amount of basic ability as well as the experience of winning and losing. What is less obvious is that both of them also had inherent characteristics only a few of us have. Those characteristics enabled them to perform daring and reckless deeds and make bold decisions and to inspire others to follow them." What those characteristics are by name or label is often difficult to identify,

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  but the consequences they enable are not difficult to see.

• 2:29:18Jocko Willink?

  You guys had some attributes, you know, and that that question comes up a lot. Are leaders born or made? And I always, my answer, which I wrote about leadership, strategy and tactics is you're gonna have some strengths and some weaknesses, all of us are. Are you gonna be lucky enough to have, you know, the full, the full catalog of great leadership assets? Chances are about zero. Could you be a George Patton? That has your articulate and you're smart and you're calm and you're, you have control of emotions, you can read people, like all those things? I guess, but it's gonna be very rare. We're gonna have strengths and weaknesses and occasionally some people are gonna get

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  that level of charisma and, and influence over other people.

• 2:30:10Jocko Willink?

  That's gonna come from a place, maybe not, maybe you can't teach that. There's parts of leadership that you can absolutely teach. There's parts of even, you know, the way you carry yourself that you can improve.

• 2:30:25Jocko Willink?

  But what we, what we always teach people is you gotta build a team of leaders that help you with your areas of weakness. So if there's something you're not, maybe not that great at, find someone on your team that is.

• 2:30:41Speaker 02

  Boy, and if you wanna find, step one to success, hey, start treating everybody with respect.

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  And, and, and like they said with their leaders, their, their, their deal is, is your job is to teach, is to take care of the people. And then people will do almost anything for you.

• 2:31:05Speaker 02

  Which is one of the lessons that you just you you you could take away from this and and see that like Crazy Horse is doing all these things, but he's not really bragging about it. But everybody sees it and everyone else is talking about it, which makes it seem even greater.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:24Speaker 02

  And then, um, you know, when he comes back from a raid, the first thing he does, he's like, I got all these horses. Let me go give them to the widows and let me divide up all this stuff and give it and take care of.

• 2:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Take care of everyone.

• 2:31:36Speaker 02

  Which is a job.

• 2:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Put others before yourself. Step one.

• 2:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, Black Buffalo Woman, Red Cloud's niece, was the love of his life. Politics, however, influenced her choice for a husband. She married No Water only because he was of an influential family and their union enabled a broader influence and a stronger political base. Crazy Horse was, of course, heartbroken. In time, the wound would heal, but as is often the case, a true love is never completely forgotten. A few years later, when the opportunity arose, Black Buffalo Woman followed her heart and left her husband. Lakota women can make a choice because societal norms allowed it, but in her case, a jealous husband did not. And this is him just kind of debriefing this.

• 2:32:22Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse had put himself in harm's way many times as a fighting man, but he probably never came as close to dying as he did when No Water showed up with a borrowed pistol and shot him in the face. It was No Water's intention to kill Crazy Horse, and he thought he did. The subsequent furor brought several factions on the brink of bloodshed. On one side, some wanted to defend No Water, and on the other, some wanted to avenge Crazy Horse. To prevent any violence, Crazy Horse gave up the love of his life for a second time. Those who were jealous of him were quick to influence the old men leaders to strip them of the position of shirt wearer. Crazy Horse willingly gave up the shirt, but the status he had achieved circumvented the loss of influence.

• 2:33:04Jocko Willink?

  Many people, though not totally overlooking his mistakes, still regarded him as a strong leader and remain loyal to him. It was a lesson not lost on him. Never again did he put his own desires above the needs of the people. That was yet another example for others to follow. True leadership is rarely the consequence of election, appointment, dictatorship, or inheritance. Good leadership overall is much too critical to be left to elected politicians, monarchs, managers, administrators, supervisors, and directors. Having authority does not make anyone a leader. True leadership is exercised when someone performs a necessary or critical task and accomplishes an objective, thereby setting an example.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Most of us will never face the daunting task of leading men and women into combat, but we will likely have an opportunity to set an example. We may not carry titles such as president, governor, mayor, general, or even chief, but we can be leaders simply by demonstrating that effort can be made, tasks can be accomplished.

• 2:34:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what's interesting? You look at a SEAL platoon and there's gonna be between one and five leaders in there. Hopefully, there might be zero, but that's chances are very small of that. There's gonna be one to five, and they might be anyone in the platoon. And you can just see, and if they're well balanced, you know, like there's some young guy or, you know, one Cruz wonder that's just has good natural leadership ability, smart, and he's has his ego in check, and he can make things happen. And it doesn't matter that he's not the chief. It doesn't matter he's not the lieutenant. And as long as the chief and lieutenant are humble enough, guy, hey, he's a good leader. Hey, you want to run this thing? It's gonna be fine. Occasionally, those guys get mad, they get scared, they get intimidated, they don't

• 2:35:00Jocko Willink?

  want someone running things they think they should be, and yeah.

• 2:35:06Speaker 02

  I've seen it where you get like a new guy in a platoon, and he isn't necessarily calling any shots, but because his demeanor, he's like had a good demeanor, he's never bummed out. It's like, yeah, yeah, everything's really terrible. And it's like, yeah, this, whatever. And you'll watch that, like, his, his influence, because he's got a good attitude, even in a worse situation, will bleed over to the rest of the platoons. The guys are kicking rocks and saying, this warrior, this is dumb.

• 2:35:36Speaker 02

  That, that, that, that great attitude is, is contagious. So that leadership kind of by example, even when they're not really influencing people what to do, they're influencing the overall effectiveness of the unit by bringing its morale up a little bit.

• 2:35:50Jocko Willink?

  Raise the morale. Man, it's freaking priceless. Priceless.

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  The hits just keep on coming.

• 2:36:00Jocko Willink?

  Um, Crazy Horse, who, who now has a different wife, uh, he, he has a daughter with, she dies.

• 2:36:09Jocko Willink?

  Death was not new to him. Men died in battle sometimes and he was not surprised by that. They were gone or that, or the way that they had died as fighting men. But the bundle atop his scaffold was harder reality. It was a reality that challenged the goodness in life. He fell across it and wept uncontrollably. Days passed. There was thunder, some wind and a little rain. When he could no longer stay awake, he slept beneath the scaffold curled, curled up under a robe. He ignored hunger and thirst. Worm had told him a kind of coughing sickness unknown before the whites came had taken her. Though he had tried, he could find no medicine to help her. Finally, when no more tears would come, Crazy Horse took his leave.

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  The news that awaited him fanned his anger even more. Soldiers had gone into the Black Hills, a large contingent, according to the sketchy reports from the few, from a few Lakota who had, who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A group friendly to the whites had been watching the column of wagons and the soldiers, when they, when they were attacked, one Lakota was killed and another wounded. They somehow managed to escape to tell their story. So now you're, you know, you're blaming the death of your daughter on the whites as well.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  And now they're going into your holy land.

• 2:37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:34Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so now they go out and start just basically killing whites where they can find them. The most vulnerable at this time is the miners, people that are out in these little mining camps. And so they start initiating more of a, more of a guerrilla warfare. And this is something that, you know, knowing what we know now about insurgencies, that would have been the call because they couldn't get people to unite. But that fighting like insurgent war would have been the, well, would have been another possibility. And that's what he kinda ends up doing here. He says, "The tactics Crazy Horse and his companions were simple yet effective.

• 2:38:15Jocko Willink?

  After observing isolated miners camps to determine their numbers and weapons, they positioned themselves and swept in. If the terrain was rough and offered good cover, they sneaked in close on foot before they attacked. In open areas with little cover, they charged in on horses." That's kinda crazy because that's exactly what we would do. Like if we had, if we could sneak into a target on foot, we'd do that. If we couldn't, we'd just drive the vehicles right up to the target. And that's what the exact same thing they would do.

• 2:38:44Speaker 02

  Massive explosive breach, lots of noise.

• 2:38:46Jocko Willink?

  We're coming in. "In either situation, they used their lances and war clubs and the silent bow. Quite effectively, rarely did any miner react quickly enough to fire a gun, which worked in Lakota's favor. Without gunshots to warn anyone else in the area, the miners in the next valley or watershed remained oblivious and thus vulnerable to attack."

• 2:39:08Jocko Willink?

  Says this, "It was necessary to attack the miners and kill them. They were trespassers and thieves, not honorable enemies. The tactics they used were the only way to fight them, especially in the Black Hills. Strike hard and fast, inflict as much chaos and as many casualties as possible, and then withdraw swiftly. That kind of fighting could play to Lakota's strengths and skills as fighters, good at close combat. Crazy Horse spoke these thoughts to his companions as they rode home, and they listened and agreed. They'd seen firsthand what could be done. If enough Lakota fighting men could be persuaded to fight in the same way, and if enough bullets and powder could be obtained, the whites could be driven away."

• 2:39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's the only strategy they got, right? Because the miners have got all these things they need. They got guns and they got bullets. They're not getting those from anybody else. And so they just sneak in, pick them out, sneak in, pick them out.

• 2:40:07Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, Red Cloud, it was learned, was making the trip to persuade the powers in Washington to remove the little agent from his agency. When all is said and done, it didn't matter who the agent was on Spotted Tail Agency or on the Red Cloud Agency, as long as there was an agent and the Lakota accepted annuities, the whites were in control. But when Red Cloud and the others returned, and there were many supposed head men who made the trip, the news they brought back incensed the wild Lakota. And you made this distinction, I haven't pulled it out yet, but there's basically the ones that are living in the agencies, and then there's the Lakota that are wild, that are still living in the traditional way to the best of their ability.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  And I say the best of their ability because they relied heavily on Buffalo, and the Buffalo were being wiped out. And so, this is, this makes living in their traditional way much more difficult, in some cases probably impossible. The great father wanted to buy the Black Hills. Sell the heart of everything that is, sell the dust of the ancestors. Not looking, not, there's Lakota that were just, we're not doing it. The day now there's more politics take place, and eventually they're supposed to all come and report.

• 2:41:32Jocko Willink?

  The day when all Lakota had to report to the agencies had come and gone, the northern camps were nervous, watching the horizons for the first sign of soldiers that they had heard had been gathering at Fort Fetterman. Winter relaxed its grip, and a span of warm days had melted the snow and thawed the ice on the creeks and rivers. He-Dog took advantage of the opportunity to head for the agency. His contingent of eight Lakota families were mostly women and children, in no condition to outrun mounted soldiers. Before he left, Crazy Horse had ridden up into the hills, unable to watch his closest friend give in to the agency, though he understood all too painfully He-Dog's reasons.

• 2:42:11Jocko Willink?

  The spaces vacated by eight lodges were not as big as the holes left in the hearts of the relatives who watched their loved ones riding away slowly and uncertainly, looking back frequently. I mean, you know, the guy's got a bunch of women and kids and he knows he's going to do so much. Sitting Bull sent out his carefully chosen messengers to announce that the people should gather near Chalk Buttes in late spring and treating them to speak wisely and clearly to the leaders among the Lakota as well as the Dakota and Nakota. He wanted his messengers to appeal to their sense of pride, especially to those who were surely disenchanted with life on the agencies.

• 2:42:56Jocko Willink?

  So Sitting Bull's another wild, one of the Indians, and he's very, I mean, obviously we've all heard of Sitting Bull, and so he has incredible amount of influence and he's starting to try and gather people up and unite them a little bit. So that starts to take place. More and more people arrived almost every day. The horse herd was growing and eating down the sparse grass around the Buttes. Some of the men said perhaps there was many as 7,000 head. Sitting Bull was already at work inviting the older leaders to his lodge. He was an impressive and charismatic man, a slight limp from a gunshot wound to his hip during his days as a young fighting man, served only to give him more credibility.

• 2:43:38Jocko Willink?

  He had earned nearly 70 battle honors, more than any man at the gathering except Crazy Horse. Now past the age of 50, he had a solid reputation as a wise leader and counselor enhanced by his status as a medicine man. He was immensely pleased at the response to his message and announced he would conduct a sundance. Spiritually as well as psychologically, it was the right thing at the right time. It could only serve to unify the people and add to the feelings of strength and pride that seemed to be growing as quickly as the horse herd. It was that kind of insight that made him an influential leader. The encampment moved west across the Powder and the Tongue into the Valley of the Rosebud

• 2:44:23Jocko Willink?

  and across it as well, turning at the northern slopes of the Wolf Mountains into the Broken Country near the Greasy Grass River.

• 2:44:35Jocko Willink?

  While sitting Bull was hard at work for the hearts and minds of the people, Crazy Horse sent scouts in all directions. Feeling among the military leaders was that the biggest threat lay to the south from Three Stars Army.

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  And this book does not have a ton of detail about the Battle at Rosebud, or really the Battle at Little Big Horn.

• 2:45:05Jocko Willink?

  Those are detailed pretty well in the book I Fought with Custer, and also in the book Wooden Leg.

• 2:45:12Jocko Willink?

  But there is sort of a debriefing here on some of the things that went down. Going to the book, "The Rosebud Bud Fight", as the battle came to be known, was the toughest combat Crazy Horse had seen. "The Battle of Hundred in Hand, ten years earlier", that was when they surrounded those soldiers and killed them. They lured them out. Yep. "The Battle of the Hundred in the Hand, ten years earlier, had had its own set of circumstances that made it tough. But at the Rosebud, Lakota faced a larger and more heavily armed enemy force. Three Stars soldiers were both infantry and cavalry, forcing Lakota to adjust to different tactics as the fighting progressed. Attack was met with counterattack as the day wore on.

• 2:45:56Jocko Willink?

  The Valley of the Rosebud thundered with gunfire and dust hung in the air. Late in the afternoon it was evident that the soldiers were disorganized, fighting in scattered units. Their effectiveness significantly reduced. Crazy Horse was notified, even though nearly a hundred had arrived at mid-morning, the Lakota and Sahelha were critically low on ammunition. Sensing that Three Stars wouldn't be able to mount any pursuit, Crazy Horse sent the word to withdraw. Crazy Horse rode with He-Dog, Big Road, and Good Weasel, among others, as they once again chased dusk into night. There was no pursuit from the soldiers to speak of. The feverish aftermath of combat slowly faded as the reality of the day began to take hold.

• 2:46:41Jocko Willink?

  Ten good men had been killed and many wounded. In a day or two, the scouts Crazy Horse had left behind would report on the soldiers."

• 2:46:51Jocko Willink?

  So that's the first big battle that they engage is that battle at Rosebud. And then six days had passed since the Rosebud fight. Victory dances still went far into the night and the fighting men were asked to tell the stories of their involvement. The mood of the encampment had changed from initial uncertainty to one of comfortable sense of strength. Hardly anyone, no matter how old, could remember the Lakota ever gathering in such numbers for any purpose. At midday, Sitting Bull sent criers to announce the move to the greasy grass valley. And by mid afternoon, the first lodges were taken down and the families began moving.

• 2:47:33Jocko Willink?

  By sundown, most of the encampment was gone, except for a few lodges and the Sundance Arbor.

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward up a little bit more. They're in their kind of camp now. And we'll go to the book, the sides of the council lodge had been rolled up to allow cross ventilation. A few men were waiting in anticipation, meeting with Sitting Bull. Women had already brought food. Sitting Bull had been busy through most of the night, attending to a gravely ill woman. He arrived at the council lodge just as a slight din of commotion came from the south end of the encampment where he had just been. A lone Lakota rider splashed across the greasy grass, filled bank to bank with the heavy spring runoff from the mountain snows. Gaining the west bank, he began to shout, "Prepare yourselves. The soldiers are coming. The soldiers are coming."

• 2:48:32Jocko Willink?

  And this is when we get into the Little Big Horn Battle.

• 2:48:37Jocko Willink?

  The soldiers had crossed the river far to the south, near the mouth of Ash Creek and tried to gallop, tried galloping their horses across the long, open flood plain toward the south end of the encampment. They had been quickly driven back and then chased across the river. Many were killed at the water crossing after heavy fighting in some trees near the river. As far as Crazy Horse and the other leaders were concerned, that was the first fight. Gaul of the Hunk Papa and Ogla La battle leaders, Black Moon and Big Road, were among those who had courageously led 200 fighting men in that action. The second fight started at Medicine Tail Cooley.

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  More soldiers had tried to cross into the encampment from the north end but were stopped by a small determined group of boys and old men armed mostly with old single-shot rifles. By then, many of the women, children, and old people were fleeing to the northwest. Somehow, word had reached Crazy Horse and Gaul of the second attempted incursion. Gaul immediately disengaged from the first fight and led a hundred men to Medicine Tail and crossed. The soldiers galloped away up a long slope to the north. Crazy Horse had hurried to his lodge and found Black Shaw, that's his wife, waiting with his second warhorse. The camp was in total confusion. Not only were women and children running away to safety, men were galloping through to hurry to the second fight.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Shouts and screams filled the air. Gunshots could be heard to the south and now thinly to the north. He took his second warhorse and gathered as many men to him as he could. If a second group of soldiers was heading north, they could be circling to attack from another direction. It made sense to try and flank them, so he led the men who were with him to an old crossing. Guessing the soldiers would stay on the high ground, he had crossed the river and raced to meet them if they came off the end of the high north-south ridge where he knew they lay to the east. On the slopes across the river, they circled to the east and encountered twenty or so soldiers whom they chased back to the main body. The gunfire never stopped.

• 2:50:47Jocko Willink?

  He heard it as they crossed the river, a continuous sound, rather like someone tearing canvas. Gaul and his men, Crazy Horse heard later, stayed in pursuit of the running soldiers even though they did not gain a ridge. At first, the soldiers were organized, even managing to dismount and form skirmish lines to fire at the oncoming Lakota, but Gaul's relentless pursuit broke their lines, and after that, they were running away and their fire was no longer effective. Crazy Horse led a charge when the soldiers tried to push north off their ridge. By then, gunfire was thinning. It was sporadic, and then there was silence. The second fight was over as he rode through the dust, and he could see how it had unfolded.

• 2:51:32Jocko Willink?

  Dead horses and dead soldiers were strewn along the path they had taken.

• 2:51:41Speaker 02

  What's what's different about Little Big Horn Battlefield than Gettysburg is because the scale of it's much smaller. They actually, they have markers for where these soldiers were dying and they went back and they could find all the skirmish lines and everything. So you can see it in real, you know, laid out where bodies fell. They came up from the river then across and then just the disaster that happened. I mean, you can, the way it's laid out and the bodies are laid out, you can see that the guys were just, the last couple of guys were just trying to get away and get mauled. Meanwhile, the guys down at the other position, they're surrounded up on that hill. They're waiting for their turn. They're wondering where,

• 2:52:22Speaker 02

  because Custer splits forces all these times and they're wondering, where did he go? Did he leave us? And some guys kind of push out and they can see this big swirling thing and they can see the Lakota shooting down at the ground. They're like, oh, he's done. And then they wind up getting there under siege.

• 2:52:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Looking forward to walking that battlefield myself. Going back to the story here, after that, the, you know, Sitting Bull's trying to keep people there, but they, they kind of start to, like, it's, the fighting's over and kind of people got stuff to do, right?

• 2:53:10Speaker 02

  Well, there's another element coming toward him too. And they're like, hey, we gotta move everybody.

• 2:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I'm even going past that. So that happens. And eventually he says this, "What was left of the largest gathering ever of Lakota separated into several encampments, moving along the eastern foothills of the Shining Mountains. Soon after the departure from greasy grass, small groups began breaking away to head for the agencies. Sitting Bull, like Crazy Horse, was deeply disappointed because they were losing the strength of numbers. Despite the best efforts of Sitting Bull, the people scattered. Some made excuses, saying it was time to hunt and make meat for the coming winter, which was more difficult now because of the scarcity of buffalo. Others unabashedly headed for the agencies. Sitting Bull finally headed north to more familiar territory. Crazy Horse took his people east to the Black Hills, finding a sheltered valley northwest

• 2:53:59Jocko Willink?

  of the mountains to hide the camps. From there, he led raids into the Black Hills."

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  That continues for a while. And this is all, he does a great job in the book of just this kind of torment and anguish that Crazy Horse is going through as he sees what's happening. At some point, Dull Knife, another one of his friends, informed Crazy Horse that he was forced to consider giving in to life on the agency if it meant his people would be safe from facing continual conflict with the Long Knives.

• 2:54:43Jocko Willink?

  "The idea was debated long and frequently. Strangely, an opportunity presented itself when messengers arrived, bringing word from three stars who had been given assurance that the wild Lakota would be allowed to select the location for their own agencies if they signed a peace agreement. The only drawback was that it included an agreement to the sale of the Black Hills. In spite of the deep-seated suspicions, Crazy Horse agreed that this important issue should be discussed face-to-face with the Long Knives."

• 2:55:17Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse and a large detachment of warriors escorted the delegation north to the fort on the Elk River. A group of Crow Scouts met the emissaries just outside the walls of the fort, making friendly gestures to indicate their peacefulness. As the eight Lakota rode past them toward the gate, weapons were drawn suddenly and the Crow opened fire at point-blank range on the unarmed Lakota and then fled on horseback. Crazy Horse charged down from the bluff but stopped when mounted soldiers emerged from the fort. Instinctively, the Lakota emissaries turned their horses and galloped for the safety of the bluffs and protection of the escort warriors. Only three rejoined the warriors; five lay dead on the ground near the gates of the fort."

• 2:56:05Jocko Willink?

  So the chance for peace and the crow.

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  This gets gets like completely fumbled. Fumbled and um. Yeah, you know, and the crow had motivations to do what they did.

• 2:56:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:56:21Speaker 02

  Um, and you know that. I think the guys come out of the thing there and try and hunt them down because they realize, oh dang it.

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep, this is.

• 2:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit more, the harsh winter should have been a deterrent, at least providing a brief respite from worrying about the long knives, but that was not to be. Two agency Lakota carrying a bold message from bear coat found the crazy horse camp. If the wild Lakota moved into the agencies, they would be given food, but would have to give up their weapons and horses.

• 2:57:04Jocko Willink?

  Sword graciously as ever assured Crazy Horse's people that it was his idea to intervene because he didn't want his friends and relatives dying when peace and a good life could be had so easily. If Crazy Horse would come in, meaning surrender, his people would be given food, clothing and blankets, and then he would be allowed to return to Powder River area to claim it as his agency. So like, oh, you want, we'll give you peace, we'll give you food, you can have your own area. Only he and Sitting Bull were stubborn or perhaps foolish. How could anyone continue resisting when even a brief battle used up the bullets that took several days of scrounging?

• 2:57:47Jocko Willink?

  Half the people who followed him wanted to go into the agency. They were tired of running from the soldiers, tired of being hungry, tired of seeing relatives die. They stayed because they believed he had an answer of some kind, something that would solve the problem of the soldiers.

• 2:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can.

• 2:58:17Jocko Willink?

  It's just closing in.

• 2:58:20Jocko Willink?

  And there's really not much of an option.

• 2:58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, these essentially are glaciers, glacier

• 2:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:27Speaker 02

  forces.

• 2:58:29Jocko Willink?

  Just

• 2:58:30Speaker 02

  coming towards him and he's gonna get crushed and squeezed in one direction.

• 2:58:35Jocko Willink?

  So they end up, uh, going to Camp Robinson.

• 2:58:45Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit here, nearly four months had passed since Crazy Horse people had arrived at Camp Robinson, nine hundred and all with over fifteen hundred horses. The soldiers had taken their horses first, and then their guns, and then their hope. In four months, the promise of an agency of their own in the north had turned into an impossible dream. He blamed himself partly because he could do nothing. Perhaps if he had learned to be an agency Lakota and put on the defeated smile in the presence of three stars and other soldier leaders, none of this would be happening.

• 2:59:22Jocko Willink?

  But the soldiers were not the only ones to cause the turmoil of the past four months. The finger of blame could be pointed at many Lakota as well. In fact, they were mostly to blame. The white agents and the army officers fanned the flames of jealousy and let little minds that could not think beyond the moment and little men who yearned for recognition and power do the rest. There was no other way to look at it. In the end, the Lakota defeated themselves. They had the whites outnumbered and outmanned and did nothing.

• 2:59:58Jocko Willink?

  The entire garrison could have been overrun by the, by enough determined Lakota fighting men with a good plan if they truly wanted to return to living the old way in control of their lands and their lives.

• 3:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Instead, men stepped over each other to betray their own relatives in order to obtain the power handed out by the whites, a power they couldn't get on their own.

• 3:00:26Jocko Willink?

  And he details some of this just ego drama that's going on and they have the opportunity, you know, if I'm, if I'm in camp and you know, Jason, Crazy Horse, Jason's out there still being a wild Lakota and I want more power in the camp, maybe I say, hey, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to deal with that Jason Crazy Horse, he's too crazy out there. You don't want to put him in a power position. You don't want to get like all these things. This happens. A buffalo hunt had been promised, but there'd been no hunt and Crazy Horse understood why. First, someone with more power than Three Stars had to say that the Lakota could go chasing buffalo. If given the opportunity, Three Stars reasoned, the hunters would keep going, perhaps all the way to grandmother's land to join Sitting Bull, which is Canada, by the way.

• 3:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Adding to that, some among the Lakota complained to Three Stars that if Crazy Horse and his young men were allowed to hunt buffalo, then everyone must be allowed. And it was a Lakota who warned that it was dangerous to put guns in the hands of Crazy Horse. So he's just getting stabbed in the back by, you know, as his dream pointed out, by some of his own people.

• 3:01:40Jocko Willink?

  After many of the soldier leaders at Camp Robinson came to Crazy Horse with questions about the greasy grass fight and the defeat of the long hair, which is Custer, two agency chiefs sent messages complaining to Three Star. Perhaps there was no place for another agency chief. Crazy Horse thought to reassure his uncle Red Cloud that he had no wish to be made a chief of any kind, but he knew anything he had to say to them would not be regarded as truth. But eventually the rumors did fly. It was said Three Star would make Crazy Horse chief over everyone, including Spotted Tail and Red Cloud. So you can see this is just like political drama. To make matters worse, many of the lesser soldier leaders were themselves saying that

• 3:02:23Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse could influence the younger men better than the two older leaders could. Through it all, he had tried to talk to Three Stars about the promise of a northern agency, day after day, traveling to Robinson from Cottonwood Creek.

• 3:02:37Jocko Willink?

  If you want your agency, some of Crazy Horse's friends said carefully in low voices, for it was hard to know who might be listening, you will have to travel to their place of power where the Great Father lives and speak to him face to face. Of course, they warned, if Three Star sends you ahead of Red Cloud or Spotted Tail, they will find a way to make it difficult for us while you're gone. They will find a way to take you down when you return.

• 3:03:05Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse had no wish to travel to the Great Father in curry favor from a man he didn't know. He would be out of place and only something for show, someone to perform for the powerful. Crazy Horse did not wish to be a thing of curiosity.

• 3:03:26Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit more, and now, he's trying to make a deal, man. He's trying to like, get it done. He knows what, what, where these things are going. He's late in the game, but he's trying to make it happen.

• 3:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he's got, he's got to think about the women and the children at this point. And he's like, well, you know, I could keep fighting, but then who's going to protect them? And that, that's where, this is where the guy's just so honorable, because he just, he knows where the responsibility is. It's not like, how many soldiers I can kill, because he can kill quite a few more. And he can probably, you know, inspire a bunch of the young men on the thing to, to, to rise up, but to what end? And at the end of the day, it's the women and children that are going to suffer. So then he's like, I gotta try and fix this and negotiate the best deal that he can at that point.

• 3:04:24Jocko Willink?

  So, he starts to put the deal together.

• 3:04:29Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Lee, the soldier leader in charge at Spotted Tails Agency, sent word that Crazy Horse must come to the Soldier House. Crazy Horse rode out with Touch the Clouds and White Thunder. Spotted Tail and over a hundred of his young men met them on the trail. Lee arrived with Black Crow and Louis Bordeaux and was frightened seeing that he was between the Mini Conju and Aglala on one side and Spotted Tails on the other. There were shouts and threats hurled back and forth and weapons brandished until Crazy Horse raised a hand and silence slowly fell over the gathering. Lee, now very frightened, told Crazy Horse that he must return to Robinson and make it good with the soldier leaders there.

• 3:05:16Jocko Willink?

  So the night passed, the morning came, when the sun arose, he hurried to the Soldier House to speak to Lieutenant Lee, to assure him that he had not changed his mind, he was ready to speak with Randall, he was one of the leaders, to make things good. So with Touch the Clouds, Swift Bear and Black Crow along, they started out for Camp Robinson.

• 3:05:36Jocko Willink?

  The first group of blue-coated Lakota men met them along the trail. They said nothing and formed a wide half-circle around Crazy Horse and the others. Further on, more blue-coated Lakota arrived and now they became a mob of more than sixty. It was then that Crazy Horse knew he was in trouble. So now you have Lakotas that are wearing the military, the American military jacket.

• 3:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Fast thunder was lost in the crowds, so too were He-Dog and Touch the Clouds. All around was noise of running and scuffling as if men were pushing together. Crazy Horse was pushed toward a square house made of logs, a strange place for Randall to be. Before he could help himself, he was through the open doorway. There was a bad smell. A man with dark hair and braids rose from the corner. Then he saw the iron bars. He spun on a heel and saw a man, Little Big Man, blocking the opening. Crazy Horse shoved the shorter man aside and tried to push past, but almost immediately felt Little Big Man grab both of his arms from behind.

• 3:06:48Jocko Willink?

  With a great effort, he pulled himself free and reached into the opening of his blanket for the knife. Outside, there were shouts of both soldiers and the Lakota. "Let me go," he said to Little Big Man. "Let me go." The man, the Oglala warrior who had ridden into battle with him, stood fast. Perhaps it was the blue coat of the soldier that had turned his heart.

• 3:07:15Jocko Willink?

  With a sudden swipe, Crazy Horse slashed the arm of the coat, and immediately, blood flowed, and Little Big Man jumped back. With a step, Crazy Horse was outside, and there was movement everywhere. More hands grabbed at him from either side, brown hands holding him fast. The strident voice of a soldier yelled. From the middle of the confusion came a soldier, thrusting with the knife at the end of his rifle.

• 3:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Those near him heard Crazy Horse gasp, and saw his knees begin to wobble. Brown Hand still holding his arms, even as the soldier withdrew the long knife.

• 3:07:56Jocko Willink?

  "Let me go," they heard him say quietly. "You've gotten me hurt."

• 3:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Then, he fell.

• 3:08:13Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 3:08:16Jocko Willink?

  Crazy Horse died a few hours later. Um, it details that in the book.

• 3:08:25Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 3:08:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and his dream, the dream that he had, became fulfilled. And...

• 3:08:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, again, it, it, it makes me think about that, that quote, that Native American quote from that podcast with, with Micah Fink, that the diagnosis is a curse.

• 3:08:51Jocko Willink?

  And this seems to be something similar when you know that thing when we're driving go through that driving course and they warn you when you're going through like a tactical driving course and you're driving around the track or you're driving in and out of traffic you're doing these things and they warn you they give you a warning they say when you're driving if you look at something you need what you need to look at is the opening you need to look at the part of the track that you can drive you need to look at the part of this this the road that you can go through that you can make it through because if you look at another car or you look at a guardrail or you look at a ditch that's where you're going that's where you're gonna end up we go where we aim

• 3:09:35Jocko Willink?

  and I don't know this is a self fulfilling prophecy here

• 3:09:40Jocko Willink?

  but it might be and I I think it's a good idea to try and set yourselves your sights on a positive outcome

• 3:09:54Jocko Willink?

  another thought I had about this is you know BH Liddell Hart who go listen to some podcasts that I've done on BH Liddell Hart and the indirect approach but he also talked about the fact that

• 3:10:12Jocko Willink?

  what happens to prophets you have prophets and you have leaders what happens to prophets prophets die

• 3:10:19Jocko Willink?

  when you go out you profit you you make statements and you don't compromise you die

• 3:10:27Jocko Willink?

  and your your message will get traction later on

• 3:10:33Jocko Willink?

  and and it's usually the leaders that take the message from the prophet and turn it into something that can be brought to fruition

• 3:10:42Jocko Willink?

  you know they they use compromise they use understanding and they use relationships to to move an idea forward in a more practicable way

• 3:10:52Jocko Willink?

  but the prophets the believers that don't compromise oftentimes they're crucified they're killed

• 3:11:03Jocko Willink?

  and

• 3:11:05Jocko Willink?

  pretty clear where Crazy Horse fell in that category which category he fell into

• 3:11:18Jocko Willink?

  Powerful lessons to be learned. If you want to join us on the battlefield, Little Big Horn, we're going to be up there in August, August 16th and 17th and then August 18th and 19th. We're doing back to back. We'll go out there, you'll learn, we'll learn, we'll explore so many characters. Custer is a leadership lesson after leadership lesson about what not to do.

• 3:11:46Jocko Willink?

  So much, so much incredible stuff. So if you want to join us up there, we'll see you go to echelonfront.com, check out events and you can find it.

• 3:11:59Jocko Willink?

  We're also going to Gettysburg. Past couple podcasts were about Gettysburg. We're doing that. May 11th and 12th, and then again on May 13th and 14th. Then there's a dinner before both those the night before. So if you want to come to those, check them out. And look, go anyways. You don't have to go with us. Go and, and learn.

• 3:12:22Speaker 02

  This, as Americans, all of this is part of our shared history. All these lessons at both these battlefields, there's so much for us to, to learn from and we can learn from, you know, in the case of a lot of the things that we heard the soldiers were doing were not good to like, hey, this is what I'm not going to do. This is not an honorable way to behave. And then we can see when the Lakota are talking about generosity being the, a virtue of a warrior and then considering that and saying that is a virtue that I want to strive to as an American.

• 3:13:05Speaker 02

  And that the, this is such a great way to learn these lessons.

• 3:13:11Jocko Willink?

  It is. Thanks for listening. If you want to support yourself while you're supporting us, you go to jockofuel.com, get some, get some medicine.

• 3:13:26Jocko Willink?

  Is that am I allowed to say that?

• 3:13:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:13:28Jocko Willink?

  Probably, I don't know. In the context that we've got, right? Get some medicine, get some Molk. Molk's good medicine for you.

• 3:13:34Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 3:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Get some stuff for your joints. Get some stuff for your immunity.

• 3:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Get some stuff for your energy levels.

• 3:13:46Speaker 01

  Sure, energy.

• 3:13:48Jocko Willink?

  We got an energy drink. That is not a typical energy drink. It's good for you.

• 3:13:54Speaker 01

  Yep, it's good for, so, and it, it does seem kind of like a rough transition a little bit.

• 3:14:00Jocko Willink?

  It's totally rough, I don't know what else to do.

• 3:14:02Speaker 01

  Man, like, a lot of these, these, like, Native American stories or whatever, for whatever reason, I, I don't know, we were talking earlier where I kind of get a little bit more into them. I don't know why. Maybe because a lot of times it starts with, in, just right at the beginning, how they start with how they're raised. Like, how the kids are raised. And then, you know, I have young kids, so I'm like, man, I want my kid to be like Crazy Horse. Or, what was his name before Crazy Horse?

• 3:14:28Jocko Willink?

  Light Hair.

• 3:14:29Speaker 01

  Light Hair. Yeah, so, so, just from the beginning, you're into it, you know? And then you kind of, you know, you kind of cheering for him and rooting for him, then at the end, it's all tragic. And then now I gotta tell everybody how Jaco Discipline goes, so healthy for you.

• 3:14:42Jocko Willink?

  It's hard.

• 3:14:43Speaker 01

  How dope it is, it is hard transition.

• 3:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, we, if you want to support, that's a good way to do it. Origin, originusa.com, we're making a bunch of stuff in America. JacoStore.com, we got some t-shirts for you. Some others, some other stuff.

• 3:15:01Jocko Willink?

  We've got JacoUnderground.com in case we get shut down for whatever reason. You can go there and help us out. We got a YouTube channel, so that's cool. Bunch of books, Echelon Front, our, our leadership consultant. You can check that out. We got an online training platform, which is, which is awesome. The, the, these, these leadership lessons that we're talking about, they're not, they're skills that you can learn. Look, is there some charismatic thing that Crazy Horse had that maybe we can't give you? Yes, but there's an-

• 3:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable number of ways that you can improve your leadership. And that's what we teach in the academy.

• 3:15:37Speaker 02

  You know, at the academy, when we do our live sessions, every single one of them now, someone gives a sit rep. We're like, hey, I've been practicing this stuff. I've been checking my ego. I've been working with the other teams on our group and here's all these massive successes. And they just compile every week. So you can hear from other leaders that are putting effort into leadership instead of just not really paying attention to it. And then you can quantify their successes. It's so cool.

• 3:16:06Speaker 01

  Also, too, you mentioned like leaders, say other leaders, whatever. I think a lot of times we talk about this from time to time where some a lot of people, I think, don't hear the word leader. And then it's like, that's me, which kind of they're talking about that where it's like, hey, you don't got to be the general. You don't got to be the manager. You know, everyone's kind of like a leader for different reasons than the title.

• 3:16:29Speaker 02

  That is a great point.

• 3:16:31Speaker 01

  Man, and so when you kind of, and you know, I hang around this group a lot, you know, I'm not leading, no, I'm not, I'm no manager. You know, nothing like that.

• 3:16:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm a little team now.

• 3:16:42Speaker 01

  I do have a team now, yes. But

• 3:16:45Jocko Willink?

  Team of one.

• 3:16:46Speaker 01

  I'm over here reaping massive, you know, rewards from you guys. And it's just me, you know, from the beginning. So I think that's like a good thing to bring up and a good distinction where it's like, yeah, sure, you're talking to quote unquote leaders, but it's not just the boss. You know, it's like everybody's on there.

• 3:17:04Speaker 02

  No, there's and there's individuals, whether they're maybe they're running their own business or they're just working somewhere. And they're, they're leading themselves and they're part of the mission.

• 3:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17:14Speaker 02

  And you get, we get great feedback from them too.

• 3:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 3:17:18Speaker 02

  You know, and here's another thing. This translates everywhere. So in the last couple I've been in, people have talked about.

• 3:17:28Speaker 02

  Parenting issues.

• 3:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 3:17:30Speaker 02

  Parenting is the leadership straight up, right?

• 3:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's the lifetime leadership.

• 3:17:35Speaker 02

  And they're like, hey, I had, you know, I had this issue and I've been having this issue with my son and then I realized, wait a minute, it's not my son, it's something that I'm doing wrong and I've adjusted the way that I interact with them and now things are great, you know, and they're looking at themselves first and taking ownership.

• 3:17:51Jocko Willink?

  And if that, what you just said, hits you, if you're listening to this right now, you just heard Jason say that, like, oh, it's something wrong with me as a parent and you go, oh, that's bullshit. I'm, that's my kid, you better do what I tell, if that's what your attitude is, I'm telling you, you got a rude awakening coming your way. It is leadership, it's the same, you want to impose stuff on your children, it's not gonna go well for you. It's not. So be careful.

• 3:18:18Speaker 01

  That thing you just said about the example or whatever where it's like, oh yeah, I used like this lesson, I looked at myself or whatever.

• 3:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:18:27Speaker 01

  Anytime where I looked at it as, no, it's not them not doing the right thing, it's me not doing the right thing, every single time, 100% now.

• 3:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 3:18:35Speaker 01

  Not the guy 99 to me that one time. You know, kind of what, no, 100% of the time, it worked.

• 3:18:40Speaker 02

  When, when, when I have a discipline issue with my kids and then I do run the internal debrief, or Iris gives me the debrief, it's like, hey, just like Alan, like, what are you doing?

• 3:18:51Jocko Willink?

  How's it going, jackass?

• 3:18:52Speaker 02

  Then, then it gets fixed and I'm like, well, this is what I did wrong and this is what I need to do better. Next time, I do those things next time and then there ain't an issue.

• 3:19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like that.

• 3:19:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's the, that's Extreme Ownership, extremeownership.com if you want to come and join us and a bunch of other people on that, we're doing it all the time. If, if you want to help out some service members, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org where Mark Lee's mom set up an incredible organization and, and also check out Heroes and Horses, heroesandhorses.com. Micah Fink, we're talking Sweat Lodge, there's some ancient rituals, we're talking about rituals being brought back, that's one, that, that he's doing that to help out a bunch of veterans that need it. So, look at that as well, if you can help out. If you need more of us, we're on social media. Watch out for the algorithm warning. Jason's Jason and Gardner.

• 3:19:50Jocko Willink?

  Jason dot N dot Gardner on Instagram and Jason and Gardner on Twitter. And Echo is at Echo Charles on everything. I'm at Jocko Willink and thanks to all of our military personnel out there, especially today, the Native Americans. The Native Americans from our military that have served in every conflict America has been involved in, starting with the Revolutionary War and in the Civil War, in the Civil War, in the Civil War where General Eli Parker, member of the Seneca Tribe, he was the Military Secretary to Ulysses S. Grant.

• 3:20:30Jocko Willink?

  He was there when General Lee surrendered and General Lee looked at Eli Parker, a Native American, and said, "I'm glad to see one real American here," to which Parker replied, "We are all Americans." That's a righteous attitude. And the Native Americans continued to serve the code talkers in World War II. Ira Hayes raising the flag on Iwo Jima, he was from the Pima people. 10,000 Native Americans fought in Korea, 42,000 fought in Vietnam.

• 3:21:10Jocko Willink?

  19% of Native Americans have served since 9/11. Including one named Michael Kenneth Bell, who was a member of the Fort Peck tribes and a SEAL who I worked with briefly in 2005, was a complete warrior. And who was murdered in 2006 when he was home on leave. But a salute to him and all the Native American warriors that serve our country.

• 3:21:43Jocko Willink?

  And thanks also to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for your service here at home. And to everyone else, there is another account.

• 3:22:02Jocko Willink?

  There's another account of Crazy Horse's death. From a man named Charles A. Eastman, who is a member of the Santee Dakota Tribe. And he was the first Native American to be certified in Western medicine. He wrote a book called, "Indian Heroes and Great Chiefs." And in that book, he reported that Crazy Horse. And that book was written maybe 1915, 1920. In that book, he reported that Crazy Horse after he was stabbed with the bayonet. He didn't say, "Let me go. You've hurt me."

• 3:22:42Jocko Willink?

  What he said was, "Let me go. Let me die fighting."

• 3:22:51Jocko Willink?

  And I don't know which one of those is more historically accurate, but that sounds like a good plan. Let me die fighting.

• 3:23:02Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Jason and Echo and Jaco.