45: Wooden Leg, Native American Warrior

0:00:00 - "Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer" - Book Review. 1:57:35 - Lessons Learned. 2:05:37 - Additional Thoughts. Capable VS Comfortable. 2:17:05 - Dope Internet, Amazon, Onnit, and JockoStore stuff. 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 forty-five, with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  I often think that if I were an Indian, I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people who adhered to the free, open planes, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed gifts of civilization, with its vices thrown in, without stint or measure.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  And that is a quote from a book called "My Life on the Plains", published in eighteen seventy-six, by a guy named General Custer, who wrote that book, or was published a few months before he died at the Battle of Little Big Horn. But, we're not going to look at that book today, even though that battle, the Battle of Little Big Horn, is something we will definitely delve into, there's a ton of lessons learned there, you know, a whole, all the American soldiers were killed in this one

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  unit of General Custer's. There was no survivors from it, he lost like two-hundred guys, all of them, himself included. And it was, there was some survivors from some of the other companies that were along with him, um, this guy named Major Reno, and another guy named Captain Benteen, and they had people that survived in their company, actually a lot of their companies survived, but none of, none of Colonel Custer's, or General Custer, Colonel Custer's troops survived. And, as I was thinking about doing that battle, because there's so many good lessons to learn about, a lot of lessons to learn about arrogance, and overconfidence, and splitting forces, there's a really bunch of good tactical lessons to learn from it.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  And as I dove into it, I ended up coming across another firsthand account from an Indian.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  Now, I use the term Indian because instead of the term Native American, which is probably the, which is the correct nomenclature, but in this book that, that we're gonna go over tonight, it's from a Native American who, name is Wooden Leg. And throughout the book, he calls himself an Indian, he calls all of his fellow Native Americans, calls them all Indians. So you're gonna hear me call them Indians throughout this evening. Now, what, what I found though is as I wanted to learn more about the battle, I started getting into the whole Native American, what, what they went through, what they were like,

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  and that culture. And so this book did a great job of kind of exploring that. And this, this Cheyenne warrior, like I said, named Wooden Leg. And the name of the book is Wooden Leg. A warrior who fought Custer. But like I said, that's actually a small portion of the book, but it gives us some good insight as to what life was like for these Native Americans back on the plains in that transitional period, where they were going from being, living open on the plains to getting moved on to reservations and some of the fighting that they did and how they grew up.

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  Now, where this came from, there was the author of this book, who was a guy that was a doctor and served a few months as a, as an agency physician for the Northern Cheyennes. So, that's the tribe that was allied with the Sioux Indians and, and they were around and part of the annihilation of, of Custer. And this doctor, Dr. Marquis, actually learned the language. And so, when he was up there living on the reservation, he would constantly ask, you know, "Hey, did anyone fight Custer? Was anyone around for these battles?" I mean, just, just, not just Custer, but he's, you

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  know, specifically interested in that one, since it was no eyewitness survivors from the American side. He wanted to find out what happened. And as he interviewed all these different Indians, he eventually got to this guy Wooden Leg. And I'll go to the book here, it says Wooden Leg became the author's favorite narrator. It seemed that his lifetime biography should surround his special battle story so that readers might learn what kind of people were the hostile Indians of that day. So this is, again, Markey, was a doctor, living up on the reservation and working on people,

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  and learned the language, communicated with them, and one of his favorite old-time warriors that he talked to was this guy by the name of Wooden Leg. And I'll start with how he ended up with that name Wooden Leg. And I'm going to the book. "This Crow Cheyenne Indian man was a wonderful traveler on foot. Even as a boy, he could outwalk and wear down most of the young men who journeyed with him. His capabilities in this regard were so noticeable that people said, 'His legs must be made of wood, since he never becomes tired.'" Then they fixed upon the name Wooden Leg.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  "I was also a youthful wonder in the matter of walking." By the ti- and this is Wooden Leg himself talking, so he was describing someone else who was actually a relative of his, and here he's talking about himself. "By the time I was fifteen years old, I could go all day following in the footsteps of my Uncle Wooden Leg. I was tall and gaunt, and I grew taller in young manhood. Friends began jokingly to apply me the name of this endearing, of during, enduring uncle, who then had become a middle-aged or elderly man. I liked the name. I liked the man who bore it, and I liked the honor of comparison with him. I told my father I wished to be known as Wooden Leg.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  It was a common custom to pass down names to junior relatives. My father told me that when the time was right, he would confer that new name upon me. The time came when I was about seventeen years old."

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  So, that's where the origin, the origin of his name comes from and we're gonna get to the part where he actually takes the full name and that becomes his name, Wooden Leg. It's after an eventful, we'll say an eventful time period. So here's some, a little bit about being raised out there in Cheyenne country. "When I was six years old, I asked my father, 'Will you give me a horse?' 'Yes, you may have any horse of mine that you want, but you must catch him.' He gave me a rawhide lariat rope." So there you go, "Yo, you want a horse? Cool, here's a rope, go catch one."

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  "He and my mother and some other people laughed about it, but I took the matter seriously. With the lariat looped and coiled, I went out among the herd to search for horses belonging to my father." So he goes out, he finds a small pony, and eventually, he got it, he gets it, he captures it, "And when it quieted down, I followed carefully along the line, talking soothingly until it allowed me to pat its neck. After a while, I got its mouth around the lower jaw, the loop of the rawhide, according to the old Indian way of making a bridle. When it had calmed after this new advance, I began to make strokes on its back. Then I tucked the long coil into my belt, the same as I had seen men do, and I climbed

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  quickly upon the animal. It shied, and I fell off, but I still had my rope, this uncoiling from my belt as the pony moved away. I seized the tether and followed again its guidance to the coveted mount. More petting and soothing talk, another attempt at riding, off again. Before making a third try, I spent a long time at the gentle taming procedures. Nevertheless, the pony shied and then bucked after I had mounted it, but I grabbed its mane and stuck to my seat. Within a few minutes, I had control. I rode to my father's lodge. 'Yes, that is your pony to keep,' he told me."

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  Bands of us boys went out at times on horseback to hunt wolves. We had only bows and arrows. We killed many wolves with arrows. My father had given me a good bow and a supply of arrows when I was nine or 10 years old. We were then in Black Hills countries, country. So, I mean, this is a, I know we have, we have people in America definitely that still are hunting at a very young age. But it's pretty cool that you're six years old, breaking horses and then out hunting. With bows and arrows, by the way, hunting wolves. It's awesome. So, back to the book, my mother said to me, "We have no meat." Another boy and I set off to hunt. We were about the same age, 15 years old.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  We each had on a shirt, leggings and moccasins, all of buckskin or other skin. The leggings had no seat in them, as was the Indian way of clothing the lower limbs. We had no head coverings, nor any mittens for our hands. Although we were accustomed to hardship, this was a cold day for us. We waited and wallowed through snow up to our knees and thighs. So, again, nowadays, we got smart wool hats and Gore-Tex jackets. We just got it so easy. And here you go, you're in moccasins. And you got bare ass, you got a bare ass and you're just out with some leggings on. Just getting after it in knee-deep snow. Just hardcore, you know?

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  Hardcore. Goes a little, they continue this hunt. And then back to the book, a deer jumped out and stood looking at us. The first shot from my rifle brought it down. We rushed it and cut its throat. We hurriedly cut open the body and jammed our hands inside to get warm. Yeah.

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  The Shoshones, the Crows, and the Pawnees were tribes we fought most during my time of growing up to manhood. So this is another thing that he talks about a lot in this book is that the Native Americans were fighting each other all the time. They were at war. They were at war with each other. And he talks about that a lot. Back to the book. "My own youthful warrior experiences were mostly in combat against the Crows and the Shoshones. One incident out of many in this kind of warfare will show you how it was carried on. A band of Shoshones came at night and stole some of our horses. We were camped on a divide between the upper part of the Tongue River and the Little Bighorn. Snow deep and winter weather. I was sixteen years old.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  I went with the party of Cheyennes who took the trail of the thieves. After traveling all day and into the night, we found a small camp of Shoshones. Most of them alarmed by their dogs, had fled when we made our attack upon them. But repeated shots kept coming from a single certain lodge. We concentrated our assault on this lodge. Two Cheyennes were killed and another one mortally wounded before we could suppress this destructive defense. White Wolf, eleven years older than I was, than I was, and yet living as my neighbor on Tongue River, was the brave warrior who dealt the final blow to that Shoshone. White Wolf crept along the ground into the lodge.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  He had in his right hand a six shooter. It was totally dark in there, and he fumbled about the interior seeking whomever he might find. His gun bumped into somebody, and he pulled the trigger. Later developments re- revealed this was the only occupant of the lodge. The victim was an old man. He was the only Shoshone we killed in that fight, so far as we could learn. But we won the battle and got back on our horses. We cut up the body of the old Shoshone man. We cut off his hands, his feet, his head. We ripped open his breast and belly. I stood there and looked at his heart and liver. We tore down the lodge, built a bonfire of its contents, and piled the remnants of the dead body upon this bonfire.

• 13:21Jocko Willink?

  We stayed there until nothing was left but ashes and coals."

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  So these guys are getting after it. They're definitely, and what's really cool is like, um, I didn't want to break up this, but you know, you've got an assault happening. You've got an assault happening. This is the same, this could be a, this could be a story about, you know, American soldiers going against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan or insurgents in Iraq where you're taking down a, a small village and there's people and there's enemy in there and they're in a building and there's concentrated fire coming from there and you get a guy that local crawls up. I mean, this is, this is just, this is just straight warfare. I mean, it's, it's amazing how that story could translate into almost any modern era with, when you have guns.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Except the part where they cut off the hands and the head.

• 14:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, except for the part where they cut off the hands, cut off the feet, cut off the head, rip open the breast and the belly. Yeah. They're taking it to, to a different level right there. And, and you know, I think it's,

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  he, he put that in there. I mean, he's, he's telling these stories and it, it offers you an insight as to what their attitude was and what they were going to do. If you got captured by him or.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's on.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  It's on.

• 14:38Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Little Wolf had been a big tribal chief. The most influential one for about two years before that time. In his earlier manhood, he was for a long time chosen over and over again as the leading chief of the Elk Warrior Society. If during any time, any Cheyenne was looked upon as the bravest of man of all, he was the man. He was never afraid to speak the truth. The people all believed in him. He was a gentle and charitable man, but if insulted to anger, he was likely to hurt somebody. In either disturbed or undisturbed mood, everybody knew he meant just what he said.

• 15:23Jocko Willink?

  He was my uncle by marriage, one of his two wives being a sister of my father. He used to tell me many thrilling stories, both at his lodge and my father's lodge. I recall one in particular when he had hand-to-hand combat with a shoshone. Each had a sheath knife. They grappled and wrestled and slashed one another. Finally, Little Wolf pinioned the arms of the shoshone, threw him to the ground, plunged upon him and stabbed him to death. He gave me a great deal of good advice, both as to warfare and as to how to carry myself uprightly as a man among my own people. My conduct, all throughout my life, has been influenced by his teachings,

• 16:03Jocko Willink?

  more than by those of any other preceptor, except my own father.

• 16:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's Little Wolf. Little Wolf was the badass. Little Wolf was the big badass. And I thought it was important to kinda talk about his characteristics. He spoke the truth. People believed him. He was gentle and charitable. But if he was angered, he was gonna hurt you. So, this is the guy that they choose as their leader.

• 16:38Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. "I think my body grew more rapidly than my mind did." This is not uncommon for, for, for men and boys, right? Your body grows before your mind does, absolutely. Back to the book. "By the time I was eighteen years old, I was the tallest men of the tribe. I believe there were two who stood a little above me. Both of these were killed in the great battle against the soldiers of Custer. My friend, the white man doctor, measures me now at six feet two inches and weighs me at 235 pounds." So, we're talking about a big dude. Wooden Leg was no joke. And I don't know, like, I grew up in New England.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  And when you go to old houses in New England that were built in the seventeen hundreds, they're, I don't know if you know this, but they're, the ceilings are lower, the doors are lower, because people were shorter. Like, all people were shorter. So, can you imagine being, you know, where the average height is probably 5'5", and Wooden Leg is 6'2", monster guy?

• 17:43Jocko Willink?

  So now they're, they're, he's talking a little bit about just, again, this continuing on with his life, living in the Black Hills.

• 17:52Jocko Willink?

  Here we hunted the game and the enemy crows and shoshones. And here we lived, in every way, the life of the Plains Indians of those times. It was not an idle existence. We were busy much of the time, fighting our enemies or gathering food and clothing and sheltering skins.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  As we were camped on the Lower Tongue River, when I was about nine years old, one morning a herald started to cry out, "All of our horses are gone!" There followed a lively stir among the young men. A party of them mounted on a few horses that had been overlooked by the raiders and hurried away on the trail. A thin snow helped them. In the late afternoon, they caught up with the lost herd, apparently abandoned. But after a search of the vicinity, they discovered that somebody was in a canyon cave there. One of the Cheyennes crawled into the cave in an endeavor to verify the supposition. The verification came in the form of an arrow that hit him in the right eye. He quickly backed out. "Everybody bring wood," the Cheyenne leader ordered. They built a fire at the cave's opening.

• 18:59Jocko Willink?

  With blankets, they fanned the flames and the smoke into the hole. The prisoners fanned outward and thrust sticks at the fire heap to push it away. "Bring more wood," the leader called. The one-sided contest went on until the two Crow Indian men burst out from the cave, almost suffocated and in desperation. The first one was beaten and stabbed to death by their surrounding Cheyennes. The second one got past them, sprang upon one of their horses and dashed away. The Cheyennes pursued him. He happened to mount a slow animal, so it was not long before the chase developed into a beating by pony whips and handles. The crow suddenly jerked his mount to a sandstill.

• 19:42Jocko Willink?

  At the same moment, he flashed out his sheath knife and made a vicious sideways stab. The blade buried itself in the breast of a Cheyenne who fell dead. The other Cheyennes rushed upon the crow. In a twinkling, he had received many death blows from various weapons. Somebody scalped him, and they cut off his feet, hands, and head.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  Again, it's interesting. What do they do? They got a guy in a situation? You know, they got him trapped in a cave? How do they get him out of there? Well, what would we do nowadays? Oh, maybe we throw some tear gas in there. Well, what do they do? Build a fire, smoke him out.

• 20:28Jocko Willink?

  A little bit more about the life of the Cheyennes. Competitive sports used to interest us. Horse races, foot races, wrestling matches, target shooting with guns or arrows, tossing the arrows by hand, swimming, jumping, or other like contests were entered upon. In the tribes, such competition was usually between men representing the three warrior societies. So inside the tribe, there was three separate warrior societies. Like three different clubs, basically. Back to the book. These were the Elk Warriors, the Crazy Dog Warriors, and the Fox Warriors. If any Sioux tribe or big band camp jointly with us,

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  the matches were between representatives of the two tribes. Bets were made on every kind of contest. The stakes were of guns, ammunition, bows, arrows, blankets, horses, robes, jewelry, shirts, leggings, moccasins, everything in the line of personal property. The betting always was on even terms. Articles were piled upon a blanket, matched articles in opposition to another. The winners took all and shouted over the victory.

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  So, these guys were heavily involved in competition, because competition makes you better. This reminds me of the SEAL teams, like, everything in the SEAL teams is a competition. I don't care what you're doing. Your buddy says, "Hey, you want to go for just a mellow run on the beach?" And you go, "Yeah, sure, no problem." And then, next thing, you're throwing up at the end, because you're pushing each other so hard. Every time you get on the range, it's a shooting contest. Every time you go, everything you do is... You know, you go for a skydive? Oh, how close did you get to the tee, you know, when you land? So, everything is a contest, and that's how these guys are doing this. What keeps them sharp?

• 22:18Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. A good wrestler and general strong man was Little Hawk. And so, this, this one here, that Little Hawk and a guy named Buffalo Hump and Brave Wolf, they, they

• 22:32Jocko Willink?

  go around and they, they meet up with another tribe. And they roll in and he says, "We need meat," they announced. "Your drying poles are too full and we think our wants can be supplied here." Little Hawk wants to wrestle for it. "If anybody here can throw him, we shall not take any food from this lodge." Nobody wanted to accept this challenge. The young men took some meat and went on to another teepee. There, they made the same kind of announcement and proposition. There likewise, all the men present feared to grapple with Little Hawk. And there also the three joking robbers helped themselves from the bountiful store.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  At the next teepee, the transaction was more complex. After some exchange of talk, the spokesman of the lodge said, "Big Thigh is here. He says he will wrestle you." Now, I'll tell you right now, I don't want to wrestle Big Thigh. Right? No. Big Thigh sounds like he's got some game. "The conditions of the match were agreed upon. The two men stripped their breach cloths. A group of onlookers assembled. The group soon became a great crowd. Big Thigh and Little Hawk appeared equally confident. Both of them rushed into the grapple. They tugged and shoved and tripped. The advantage seemed to shift back and forth. The throng of spectators whooped and danced.

• 23:52Jocko Willink?

  There was some partisan cheering, but most of it was merely the expression of delight as witnessing this tribal championship battle. After several minutes of fierce and continuous struggling, Little Hawk began to weaken and wilt. Big Thigh pinioned the arms of his antagonist and bore him face downward to the ground. God is back."

• 24:14Jocko Willink?

  The victor sat astride the back of the vanquished and sprinkled handfuls of dirt upon him. He also picked up a folded blanket nearing by nearby and used this as a soft club and pretense at beating into complete submission, the defeated little hawk. That's a legit jujitsu match right there. Got the, got the back, got the back mount, got the submission.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Well, he took it a little far with the rolled up blanket.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it was still only a blanket. He was being cool about it. He didn't, you know. Didn't cut his head, hands and feet off.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's for sure.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  So, a- another thing that's, that's interesting is just how they were organized and they, and their leadership, the way they were set up. So here we go back to the book. The warrior societies were the foundation of tribal government among the Cheyennes. That is, the number, the members of the warrior societies elected the chiefs who governed the people. Every 10 years, the whole tribe would get together for the special purpose of choosing 40 big chiefs. These 40 would then select four past chiefs or old men chiefs to serve as supreme advisors to them and the tribe. There were not any hereditary chiefs among the Cheyennes. So, that's a pretty cool system. I like that system. I think I like that system better than our system right now.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  They end up, they, they, they kind of elect 40 chiefs and then from those 40 chiefs, those 40 chiefs take three more or four more to make the old men chief.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  So at one point, they decide that they're gonna move camp, which they do from time to time. And they, the, the leaders in the morning,

• 26:01Jocko Willink?

  they make an announcement and here it is. "All Cheyennes, open your ears and listen. Tomorrow morning, we move to Tongue River. Have your lodges down and yourselves and horses ready. The Fox Warriors will lead us." The next morning, as we all prepared for the move, the Fox Warriors assembled out forward in the direction of the intended movement. The old man heralded, instructed.

• 26:23Jocko Willink?

  Them. You are the leaders today. Make all the people obey you. Make them stay in their proper places. If any of them disobey our ordinary rules of travel, you may pony whip them, you may shoot their horses, you may kill their dogs, you may break their guns or their bows, you may punish them in any way that seems to you best. Except you are not allowed to kill any Cheyenne.

• 26:50Jocko Willink?

  So that's one of the rules, you're gonna hear that throughout, they're not allowed to kill each other no matter what.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, this is um, kind of an iron hand way of ruling. Hey, if you get out of line on this road march we're gonna do, you're gonna feel the pain. So they're not gonna get much resistance.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  Now, speaking of weapons, and you've heard them talking about breaking bows, and this is just kinda giving you some insight on what they use for weapons. The arrow was the preferred weapon when on a tribal hunt in buffalo herd, or when a large party were joined in pursuit. Each rider shot arrow after arrow into whatever animal was convenient to him during the tumult of the running chase. When it ended, he had one or two more arrows in various dead buffalo scattered over the area by the flight of the herd. Every man kept his own arrows and always marked in some peculiar manner, near whereby they could be identified. So when the field was reviewed after the termination of the killing, he could find out which buffalo he had killed or had helped to kill.

• 27:54Jocko Willink?

  It could be learned in such instance which arrow was the fatal one, and which were of little or no importance. Thus, the claims to the skin and meat could be settled. In case of a disagreement, the chiefs decided to question. Gun bullets could not be distinguished from one another, so the guns were used only when one man was hunting alone, or when a small party of special friends hunted together. The guns also had to have powder and lead and caps, which we did not always have on hand. We could make arrows, or we often recovered them from the dead animals. So that's, just imagine you go to these big herd of buffaloes, a bunch of, a bunch of Indians go in there, they're shooting them with all these, they just shoot every animal you see, you try and shoot it.

• 28:36Jocko Willink?

  And then eventually you find out which ones are dead, you check, hey, that, that arrow's mine, got him in the heart, I get some meat there.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cool. So other people, like me and you and, you know, you know, forty other guys were shooting.

• 28:48Jocko Willink?

  Just shooting.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Ten arrows in there. Eight different guys shot this one, we all get it, right? And then they can just, they can tell, "Oh, that one hit the heart." So you're the main guy, you know? Dang.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  You get the skin.

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, other weapons. Spears were used by the Cheyennes. The long and slender points might be of metal, or they might be of stone or bone. Great care was taken in its coloring and general design. The Sioux had knife sticks for fighting. These had long shafts, the same as a spear, but instead of the attach point at the end, there were three blades at the shaft side.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  So that's kind of a unique-looking weapon. It kinda sounds Mad Max-ish. You know, a long spear with three knives sticking on it?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, Hawaiians kinda had that too. Well, it's a little different, they put the shark, the shark teeth. So it's like, uh, yeah, it's pretty dope, actually.

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  You don't wanna get hit with the shark teeth.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  Talking about a little bit of the dress, the earrings of an Indian often indicated his tribal stock. A Cheyenne ear had but one piercing. Only one ring, and this ring was looped directly through or close up to the ear. The Sioux wore necklaces regularly in single strands. Eagle feathers stuck up from the back hair of many a Sioux. The number of such feathers worn by any one man was supposed to denote the number of enemies he had killed. The Cheyennes never adopted this custom.

• 30:23Jocko Willink?

  All the best clothing was taken along with him when any warrior were to set out in search for a conflict. The articles were put into a special bag, ordinarily a beautifully beaded buckskin pouch, but perhaps a rawhide one, and this was slung at one side of this horse. The bag also contained extra moccasins, beaded moccasins, war bonnets, paints, a mirror, special medicine projects, or anything else of this nature. If a battle seemed about to occur, the warrior's first important preparatory act was to jerk off all his Ordinary clothing. He then hurriedly got out his fine garments.

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  If he had time to do so, he rebraided his hair, painted his face in his own peculiar way, did everything needful to prepare himself for presenting his most splendid personal appearance. That is, he got himself ready to die. The idea of full dress in preparation for battle comes not from a belief that it will add to the fighting ability. The preparation is for death, in case that should be the result of the conflict. War bonnets were not worn by all warriors. In fact, there were only a few such distinguished men in each warrior society of our tribe.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  It was expected that one should be a student of the fighting art for several years, or else that he be an unusually apt learner before he should put the crown of eagle feathers. He then did so upon his own initiatives, or perhaps because of the commendary urgings of his seniors. The act meant a profession of fully acquired ability in warfare, a claim of special accomplishment in using cunning and common sense and cool calculation coupled with the bravery attributed to all warriors. So if you want to get that big badass headdress, I thought it was pretty interesting.

• 32:29Jocko Willink?

  You give it to yourself, you know, now people can tell you should, you deserve it, but you, you make the claim. You say, yup, I'm the man. And it's interesting, I'm gonna read those again. It means you have acquired ability in warfare, in using cunning, common sense, cool calculation coupled with bravery. Very, very good definition of a warrior, right?

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "The wearer was supposed never to ask mercy in battle. If some immature young man pretended to such high standing before it seemed to his companions that he ought to do so, he was twitted and shamed into awaiting his proper time. I first put on my war bonnet when I was thirty-three years old, fourteen years after I had quit the roaming life. After a man had been accepted as a war bonnet man, he remained so throughout his lifetime. War chiefs and tribal chiefs ordinarily were war bonnet men, but this was not a requirement for these positions.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  Pure modesty might keep the bravest and most capable fighter from making the claim. Also, an admittedly worthy wearer of the war bonnet might not be chosen for or might refuse all official positions. The feathered headpiece then was not a sign of public office, it was a token of individual and personal feeling as to his own fighting capabilities."

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  Interesting. Yeah. It's interesting that he obviously thought about the fact that some guys were too humble to claim the war bonnet. And he actually says, "Some of the best and bravest and most capable, I don't deserve it." Yeah. Which is in keeping with what we know about humility being the trait and the most critical trait of someone's success. Mm-hmm. And it's also interesting that some of the people that were great fighters weren't necessarily gonna be good leaders. That's a reality. It's a reality to this day.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  Here's a little bit about...

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  They way, the, the, the way they treat each other. Fighting between Cheyennes, either men or woman, women, was forbidden by lo, by the tribal laws. In case of a fight, some chief near, at hand, would call out, "Warrior, separate these fighters and whip them."

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  The warrior policeman then on duty would respond to the call. A band of them would give such punishment as seemed to them fitting. If the fighters renewed their strife, they might have punishment added. Might have their teepees torn down, their horses killed, property damage done to them in some other way, any suitable and sufficient punishment. Except, no policeman warrior, nor anyone else, could lawfully kill a Cheyenne. Pony whips, either the lashes or the heavy stick handles, were not customary attacking weapons in a personal fight. Cheyennes did not use fists as white people do.

• 35:40Jocko Willink?

  Not often, did any two women fight. If they did, they merely scratched and pulled hair. It was more of a comic show than an alarming sight to see two women clawing each other. I never heard of any Cheyenne woman killing another, nor maliciously killing a man. Nor did the men, kill women. I used to hear old people talk about a Cheyenne named Wounded Elk, who had beaten his wife, and then shot her, killing her. I never heard of any other case like that. The incident happened before I was born.

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  Suicides were not uncommon among us. Men shot themselves, women hung themselves. Foolish ones, yet do such acts.

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting he says that they, the Cheyennes did not use their fists as white people do. You think we're talking straight grappling?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, no strikes, just all pinning them and...

• 36:44Jocko Willink?

  Or is he, is he saying that they struck in a different way?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Open hand or something?

• 36:48Jocko Willink?

  Like open hand or something?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Maybe they didn't want to break their hands, it's a pretty smart move.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  Again, a little bit more culture, and this is one as in wrapped in a little story. Two youths, brothers, found one time a wolf's den. One of them took his lariat and crawled into the hillside cave to get pups. He felt about in the darkness, got the rope about a pup's hind feet and dragged it out. They knocked it in the head, and he went in after another one. This time, either a pup or an old wolf bit his hand. He retreated. Outside, he got a forked stick. With this projecting out in front of him, he returned to attack upon the wolves. The forked end, the forked end got engaged in the hair and skin of the wolf.

• 37:40Jocko Willink?

  The youth twisted and tugged, backing out and dragging after him the snarling and snapping animal. The brother stood with his rifle poised and ready to shoot. Limbs of brush diverted his arm, and the bullet crashed into the head of the other boy.

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  The shocked and weeping brother put the dead body on a horse and took it to their home lodge. People flocked to see and hear. "You killed him in anger!" somebody accused. "No, it was an accident," he sobbed out. And he explained how it had occurred. A group of warrior policemen went with him out to the wolf's den. And there he rehearsed, for their observation, all the incidents of the happening. They became fully satisfied that he had no intention to kill his brother, that it was truly accidental. The youth was released with no penalty whatsoever.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  Got a little blue on blue there. Mm-hmm. Even the Native Americans experienced the blue on blue situations in the chaos and confusion. It's pretty, you know, you think about the two little kids crawling into a cave to kill wolves? Into a wolf's den? That's awesome.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  Warrior culture, pure warrior culture. I love it.

• 39:03Jocko Willink?

  Now we get into,

• 39:07Jocko Willink?

  I guess, I guess you'd call it their religion. Right? And they call it the great medicine is what, is what Wooden Leg refers to. And I, and I think the best, as I looked up and tried to research what they mean by the word medicine. I think the closest thing I got is, is sort of like spirit, spirituality, spirit, that, that's kind of the word that it means to me as I tried to figure out exactly what it meant. I don't know if there's a great, but you can see from the context what he means by it.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  So here we go back to the book. "I made medicine for the first time when I was seventeen years old in eighteen seventy-five.

• 39:47Jocko Willink?

  To make medicine is to engage upon a special period of fasting, thanksgiving, prayer, and self-denial, even of self-torture. The procedure is an entirely devotional exercise. The purpose is to subdue the passions of the flesh and to improve the spiritual self. The bodily abstinence and the mental concentration upon lofty thoughts cleanses both the body and the soul and puts them into or keeps them in health.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  Then the individual mind gets closer toward conformity with the mind of the great medicine above us." So tha- that's just awesome. You know, he's talking about fasting, he's talking about focusing on, on larger things, he's talking about punishing yourself and, and, you know, he's the term self-torture. This is discipline.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  So he goes to his medicine man. A guy named Red Haired Bear. Red Haired Bear. "I want to make medicine." "I told him. How?" he responded encouragingly. And tha- that's not a question, it's like the statement of how. "How?" he responded encouragingly. "What number of days do you think you can endure?" "The whole four days," I replied confidently. "How?" he glowed. "I will help you." So he's gonna, I guess that's the, I guess that's the max limit that they go is four straight days.

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  So it's four straight days, by the way, on your own, no food, no water.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  That's what the deal is. And you bear the, the elements, you can have like a little tent, uh, but you're gonna bear the elements.

• 41:38Jocko Willink?

  As he's preparing to do it, here we go back to the book. "The medicine man painted my whole body. Red clay mixed into water and a dish was used for most of the painting. With the black paint, he made first a circle about my face, including the forehead, the chin, and the cheeks. Black wristlets and black anklets were next form. On the middle of my breast, he painted a black sun. On my left shoulder blade, he put a black moon."

• 42:07Jocko Willink?

  "This is going to be a hard trial for you, the hardest trial you've ever had. Throughout the four days, you will have neither food nor water. Your desires will distress you. Other distresses may be piled upon these. You may retreat now and postpone it for another time if you want to do so. What say you?" "I dread it," I confessed, "but I know it will not kill me. I do not want to wait. I want to go on right now. I shall keep my courage from failing by fixing my thoughts upon being a good man."

• 42:43Jocko Willink?

  Legit.

• 42:47Jocko Willink?

  Going into the, into the ceremony a little bit, here he is. "Hot, thirsty, yet more hot and more thirsty. I prayed particularly for the strength of body and firmness of heart to carry me through to the end of the trial. I loaded my pipe for a solacing smoke. But it was not a solace. The heat burned my already parching tongue. I tried to sleep. Maybe I did sleep, I do not know. I made attempts to meditate quietly. I do not know whether I was actually thinking or was following dreams racing through my minds, mind. All I could be sure about was that I was either sitting down or lying down all the time."

• 43:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and by the way, when they smoke the pipe, from what I could figure out, eh, they're pretty much smoking generally tobacco with sometimes other herbs that they sometimes would mix with the tobacco. Willow bark, sumac, white sage, just kind of other plants and herbs. Back to the book. "Oh, how lonely I was. I loaded and lit my pipe. No, it was not good. My mouth and throat were burning. Water, water."

• 44:08Jocko Willink?

  "But the great medicine seized me," I kept thinking. My thoughts whirled and chased each other rapidly in circles. I dreamt that I heard the footsteps of a horse. "Hey, wooden leg! Hey! This is the day." Happiness almost filled my heart. The only hindrance was in the thirst and the hot body. After I'd been let out, we smoked together. It was a torture to my tongue, but I did not complain. We went then to my father's lodge in the camp. My father called out an invitation to old men friends. They came and sat in a circle upon the robe spread over the lodge's floor. I sat with them by the side of my father.

• 44:52Jocko Willink?

  My mother brought a bucket full of water and set it off a little distance from me. I suppressed a strong desire to plunge my face into it, but I could not keep my eyes from staring at it. "Wooden leg, you have been four days without water. Now you may drink four sips." I seized the sides of the bucket. The four sips were four long-drawn mouthfuls.

• 45:20Jocko Willink?

  I waited for more advice.

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  Wooden leg, you have been four days without meat. Take four sliced off bites, one for each day of the fast. I selected a chunk from the plate, I stuck the end of it far into my mouth, and with a sheath knife I cut it off. I was, the chewing was vigorous, and I soon had it swallowed. The chunk was pushed a second time into my mouth, and its end cut off there. A third and fourth mouthful were taken in the same manner. After a few minutes, more meat was allowed to me. Then still more, all I cared to eat. It was the best meat I ever tasted.

• 46:02Jocko Willink?

  And I talked about that the other day, is like the recalibration of knowing what it's like to actually feel hungry, and then how good food tastes when you haven't eaten for a while. Tastes good. And that's what he's feeling, the best meat he ever tasted. Right there, boom.

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  Now that's one little ceremony that he went through. And he did, he does some more of that. The second medicine experience he does was about a month after that one, and he did two days instead of four. So it's something that you kind of, that these warriors would kind of continually keep up with. And back to the book here, for his third season of warrior discipline. "I went one morning at dawn to the top of a hill. There I fasted, prayed, meditated, and dreamed all day. Another disciplinary means for subduing the flesh was to stand upright all day from sunrise to sunset on a hill.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  The devotee did not move during that time except to keep his face turned at all times towards the sun. He might keep his eyes closed or shaded, but his countenance had to be presented ever towards the venerated token of the great medicine's existence. He prayed or otherwise kept his thoughts fixed on a high plane. This system of self-denial was varied by attitude taken. One might stand all day, Or sit in one position all day, or lie down during all the time, but the attitude assumed at the beginning must be kept to the end. My all-day supplications were made while sitting down.

• 47:42Jocko Willink?

  Standing upright in water from sunrise to sunset was one way of putting the body under the rule of the spirit.

• 47:50Jocko Willink?

  The water had to be into the, up to the neck or the upper breast. Not any drink of it was taken. It was not permissible to move the body except for keeping the face towards the sun.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  So, just go get in the water and you know, these guys are in, you know, these guys are in Montana, right? Right, they're in Montana, just FYI. I don't care if it's the middle of the summer, the water in Montana is cold.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not Kauai.

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not Kauai. And it's, it's also interesting that, you know, all different military units do this kind of stuff. You know, just going out and standing at attention, which they make you do in the military, which is when you're standing, you know, erect with your hands at your side, you're not allowed to move. You do that for hours and hours and hours. It's interesting. It's like, that's, that's not just a coincidence, is it? You know what I mean? There is a discipline there. There's a discipline of the body in doing that, and it puts you in touch with your soul.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:48Jocko Willink?

  You stand there long enough and then like, I, going through SEAL training.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:52Jocko Willink?

  You don't think you spend some time neck deep in water, just, just waiting and being cold and enduring? Absolutely.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. I mean, yoga can kind of be that, you know, like certain poses. I mean, to compare the, as far as the magnitude is different, but.

• 49:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's different.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  They do that. You ever did like wall sits?

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Like, that's another one, man, where it feels physical, but at the end of the day, it's mental.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Like, you just want to be, okay, I'm done. But here's the thing, you don't, you, you can endure it, but it's just gonna take a lot.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the waltzes are painful after a while. And then he goes on to say, "The bodily torture incident to the full standard Great Medicine Dance, what the white people call the Sundance, was the most severe test of hardihood. So it was looked upon as the highest form of self-scurging. I never undertook this extreme step." So, the Sundance, if you don't know anything about that, it's like a, a multi-day fast with physical exertion with like borderline self-torture, like they do piercings and slay the skin open. I mean, it's hardcore. And it got banned for a while and it wasn't, no one, uh, the natives

• 50:08Jocko Willink?

  don't want people to like watch it or record it because it's their own personal thing. So anyways, you could probably do more research on it. It's called the Sundance, but they do all kinds of really, really hardcore stuff. It's just, you know, some devastating, hard stuff to go through that hardens your soul up.

• 50:29Jocko Willink?

  Here's one more interesting thing here. Back to the book. "The face painting, as it was done for me by red-haired bear, at my first medicine making, was adopted as my fixed mode of battle preparation in this regard. It was a black ring about my face, including lower forehead, chin, and cheeks in its circle. All of the surface enclosed in that circle was painted yellow. I kept at all times, right at hand, a supply of charcoal and yellow clay paint. It did not take long for me to apply them when an occasion for their need might come. With this preparation, with my best clothing, my shield, my eagle wing bone whistle,

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  myself and my horse protected by the grass seed medicine, I was almost fearless. I was not entirely so, but almost. In every time of danger, I tried to keep myself thinking, 'The great medicine sees me.'" Now, um, there's a, there's a note.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  Historical note that's written, now it's going out of the, out of Wooden Legs' voice, and it's going into a Dr. Marquis, the translator, and he's gonna put a little note here, and I'm gonna read it back to the book. "In December 1875 pursuant to our governmental policy, General Sherman, then Commander in Chief of the United States Army, issued an important general order. He proclaimed that all Indians found off the reservations after the last day of January 1876 would be regarded as hostiles to be fought by military forces. It being evident that not many of the Dakota roamers in Montana would return to reservations until they were forced to do so, bodies of soldiers were set in motion for seeking out

• 52:14Jocko Willink?

  and driving these wanderers back within their assigned territorial bounds. The active military field leaders in this campaign were Brigadier General Terry, Brigadier General Crook, Colonel Gibbon, and Lieutenant Colonel Custer. Each of these four officers had been brevetted Major General of Volunteers during the Civil War." And what that brevetted means, it's like you get a temporary promotion to fill a billet, but you're not getting paid for it, and then after it, you get put back. But, the contracting of the Army after the war set each of them back to a lower ranking.

• 52:55Jocko Willink?

  Terry had infantry from Fort Rice and Custer's 7th Cavalry from Fort Lincoln, Dakota. Crook had a force of cavalry and infantry at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming. Gibbon had infantry from Fort Shaw and cavalry from Fort Ellis, Montana. From there, three basic points in Dakota, and Wyoming, and Montana, the three bodies of soldiers moved towards a common central area between Powder, between the Powder and Big Horn rivers in Montana, where the Indians being sought were roaming. The details of these military movements are too extensive for review here. The most thrilling phase of the campaign began when Custer and his 7th Cavalry set off up Rosebud Valley to follow a recent Indian trail.

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  The result of this subsidiary proceeding was the supreme tragedy in the annals of our American frontier warfare." And of course, that was the, the battle at Little Big Horn.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  Now, like I, like, like it just stated, you had these groups and they're out in the plains and they're, I guess, tracking each other, or at least the, the soldiers, the US soldiers, the cavalry are tracking the Indians.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  And here we go, back to the book, and this is back to the voice of our man, Wooden Leg. "We found the soldiers about seven or eight o'clock in the morning, I believe. We had slept only a little, our horses were very tired, so we did not hurry our attack. But always in such cases, there are eager or foolish ones who begin too soon. Not long after we arrived, there was fighting on the hillsides and on the little valley where the soldier camp. In this early fighting, one of the young Cheyenne foolishly charged too far and some Indians belonging to the soldiers got after him." So, I'm gonna read that again.

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  "In this early fighting, one young Cheyenne foolishly charged too far and some Indians belonging to the soldiers got after him." So, you have, in this whole, this whole war, is, there's, there's Indians or Native Americans that are on both sides. Yeah. There's Native Americans that are working with the, with the US cavalry and the, and the soldiers, and then they're fighting against other Native American tribes.

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  So, back to the book. "They shot and crippled his horse. I and some other Cheyennes drove back the pursuers. I took the young man behind me on my horse and we hurried away to the main body of our warriors. Jack Redcloud, the son of an, of the old Ogalala Chief Redcloud, was wearing a warbonnet."

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  His horse was killed. According to the Indian way, in such case, the warrior was supposed to stop and take off the bridle from his killed horse to show how cool he could conduct himself. But young Red Cloud forgot to do this. He went running as soon as his horse fell. Three crows on horseback followed him, lashed him with their pony whiffs, and jerked off and kept his war bonnet. They did not try to kill him. They only teased him, telling him he was a boy and ought not to be wearing a war bonnet. Some of his Sioux friends interfered and the crows went away. The Sioux told us that young Red Cloud was crying and asking for mercy from the crows. He was my same age, eighteen years old.

• 56:29Jocko Willink?

  White Wolf, a Cheyenne almost thirty years old, had a repeating rifle, and drawing his weapon from its scabbard at his left side, it was accidentally just discharged. The bullet broke his left thigh bone. He finally recovered and is yet living. This was in 1930. He still limps on account of that accidental wound. Those are two just little... First of all, you know, young Red Cloud who was wearing a war bonnet, and he's supposed to show how cool he is if his horse gets shot. Take that bridle with you. He did not do that. Yeah. And then, again, this is an accidental discharge, which it does happen occasionally. It's really bad to have accidental discharge, obviously.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  Especially when you shoot yourself in the leg. Horrible. So they stay, they continue moving around, and they start to move towards Little Big Horn, this river. And, back to the book, six Arapaho men came to the Cheyenne camp while we were at this place. They said they were afraid of soldiers as they had killed a white man on Powder River. And so now you start to get, and I'm, again, I'm kind of, uh, moving quickly right now. But there's now multiple tribes are starting to come together in this, in this location. Multiple tribes.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  Each, back to the book, each tribe operated its own internal government, the same as if it were entirely separated from the others. The chiefs of the different tribes met together as equals. There was only one who was considered as being above all others. This was Sitting Bull. He was recognized as the one old man chief of all the camps combined. Almost all of our northern Cheyenne tribe were with us on Little Big Horn. Only a few of our forty big chiefs were, were absent. And this is, this is interesting because there's a lot of controversy about how many Indians were there? And he, and some people say there wasn't that many. He's saying all, he's saying all, at least all the Cheyennes were there, and there was more than just the Cheyennes.

• 58:42Jocko Willink?

  So there had to be a bunch of them, a bunch of them there.

• 58:49Jocko Willink?

  Now we get into some of these different tribes and chiefs that were there. The principal chiefs of the various camps were, for the, for the Hunk Papas was Sitting Bull. The Ogalalas was Crazy Horse, which we all have heard of Crazy Horse. The Minicon Ju was Lame Deer. Another tribe called Arrows All Gone. And they had an important chief called Hump Nose. There was the Blackfeet, which, which Wooden Leg didn't know who was their chief. And then you had the Chi, the Cheyennes. So there's a bunch, I mean, a massive number of Native American warriors.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  Talking about their armament, back to the book, guns were not plentiful among us. Most of our hunting had been with bows and arrows. Of the Cheyennes, Two Moons and White Wolf each had a repeating rifle. Some others had single-shot breech-loading rifles, but there was not much ammunition for the good guns. So, they're mostly using bow and arrows, right? That's kinda what they have. And at one point, they kind of take their horses and they put them out to graze. And they think that they had gotten a little scrap with the soldiers and they kinda whooped them. Not bad, but they just sort of beat them and it seemed like the soldiers retreated. And so, they put their soldiers out, I mean, they put their horses out to pasture and it seems like things are going pretty mellow.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  And I'll go back to the book. "I had no thought then of any fighting to be done in the near future. We had driven away the soldiers on the Upper Rosebed seven days ago. It seemed likely they would be gone a long time before they would trouble us again. My mind was occupied mostly by such thoughts as regularly are uppermost in the minds of young men. I was eighteen years old and I liked girls. That night, we had a dance. It was an entirely social affair for young people, not a ceremonial war dance." So, here he is. They'd kinda gotten a scrap seven days ago. They feel like they're pretty safe. They put their horses out to pasture. And then he starts thinking about the ladies.

• 1:01:01Jocko Willink?

  And they basically party through the whole night. Back to the book, "At the first sign of dawn, the dance ended and then him and his brother, they kinda take off and they go down by the river and fall asleep. And that's the end of their night."

• 1:01:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "In my sleep, I dreamed that a great crowd of people were making lots of noise. Something in the noise startled me. I found myself wide awake, sitting up and listening. My brother too awakened and we both jumped to our feet. A great commotion was going on among the camps. We heard shooting. We hurried across, we hurried out from the trees so we might see as well as hear. The shooting was somewhere at the upper part of the camp circles. It looked as if all the Indians were there, there were running away toward the hills to the westward or down toward our end of the village. Women were screaming and men were letting out war cries. Through it all, we could hear old men calling, 'Soldiers are here. Young men, go out and fight them.'"

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  So there they go. They thought they were peaceful, but they're about to get it on. And as he talked about before, what does he do to prepare for battle? Here we go back to the book. "I jerked off my ordinary clothing. I jerked on a pair of new breeches that had been given to me by another Sioux. I had a good cloth shirt and I put it on. My old moccasins were kicked off and a pair of beaded moccasins substituted for them. My father strapped a blanket upon my horse and arranged my rawhide lariat into a bridle. He stood holding my mount. 'Hurry,' he urged me. I was hurrying, but I was not yet ready. I got my paints and my little mirror. The blue-black circle soon appeared around my face. The red and yellow colorings were applied on all skin

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  of the inside the circle. I combed my hair. It properly should have been oiled and braided neatly, but my father was again saying, 'Hurry,' so I just looped a buckskin thong about it and tied it up close to the back of my head to float loose from there. My bullets, caps, and powderhorn put me into full readiness. In a moment afterward, I was on my horse, going as fast as I could run, to where all the rest of the young men were going. My brother had already gone. He got his horse before I got mine, and his dressing was only a buckstring shirt fringed with Crow Indian hair. The hair had been taken from a Crow at a past battle with them. The air was so full of dust, I could not see where to go. But it was not needful that I see that far. I kept my horse headed

• 1:03:31Jocko Willink?

  in the direction of movement by the crowd of Indians on horseback. I was led out and around, and afar beyond the camp circle. Many hundreds of Indians on horseback were dashing to and fro in front of the soldiers. The soldiers were on level ground. The soldiers were on the level valley ground and were shooting with rifles. Not many bullets were being sent back at them, but thousands of arrows were falling among them. I went with a throng of Sioux until we got beyond and behind the white men." So you got a flank going on, and they're starting to surround the white men. By this time, though, they had mounted their horses and were hiding themselves in the timber. A band of Indians were there with the soldiers.

• 1:04:17Jocko Willink?

  It appeared they were Crow or Shoshones. Most of the Indians had fled back up the valley. Some were across east of the river and were riding away over beyond the hills. So, there you go. This is what happens. He wakes, gets woken up and gets his war gear on and he's going into battle. And interestingly, you know, he talks about there's other Indians that they're fighting, the Crows and Shoshones. It sounds like most of them are bailing. Back to the book. "Our Indian crowded down toward the timber where were the soldiers. More and more of our people kept coming. Almost all of them were Sioux. There were only a few Cheyennes. Arrows were showered into the timber.

• 1:04:59Jocko Willink?

  Bullets whistled out of the, out toward the Sioux and Cheyennes. But we stayed far back while we extended our curve line further and further around the big grove trees." So, they're encircling them. "Some dead soldiers had been left among the grass and sage brush where they had first fought us. It seemed to me the remainder of them would not live many hours longer. Sioux were creeping forward to set fire to the timber." They're gonna set fire to the woods that they're hiding in. Back to the book. "Suddenly, the hidden soldiers came tearing out on horseback from the wood. I was around on that side where they came out. I whirled my horse around and lashed it into a dash to escape from them.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  All, all others of my companions did the same, but we soon discovered that they were not following us. They were running away from us. They were going as fast as their tired horses could carry them across the open valley space and toward the river. We stopped, looked a moment, and then we whipped our ponies into swift pursuit. A great throng of, throng of Sioux were also coming after them. My distant position put me among the leaders in the chase. The soldiers' horses moved slowly, as if they were tired. Ours were very lively. We gained rapidly on them. I fired four shots with my six shooter. I do not know whether any of my bullets did harm. I saw Sioux put an arrow into the back of..." ...of a soldier's head. Another arrow went down into his shoulder.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  He tumbled from his horse to the ground. Others fell dead either from arrows or stabbings or jabberings from, or blows from war clubs of the Sioux. Horses limped or sta- limped or staggered or sprawled out dead or dying. Our war cries and war songs were mingled with the many jeering calls such as, "Your only boys, you ought not to be fighting. We whipped you in rosebud. You should have brought more crows or shoshones with you to do your fighting." Little Bird and I were after one certain soldier. Little Bird was wearing a trailing war bonnet. He was, he was at the right and I was at the left of the fleeing man. We were lashing him and his horse with our pony whips. It seemed not brave to shoot him.

• 1:07:13Jocko Willink?

  Besides, I did not want to waste any of my bullets. He pointed back to his revolver. He pointed back his revolver though and sent a bullet into Little Bird's thigh. Immediately, I whacked the white man fighter on his head with the heavy elk horn handle of my pony whip. The blow dazed him. I seized the rifle strapped on his back. I wrenched it to the ground. I grinched it and drag- dragged the looping strap over his head. As I was getting possession of this weapon, he fell to the ground. I did not harm him further. I do not know what became of him. The jam of oncoming Indians swept me on. But I now had a good soldier rifle, yet I had not any cartridges for it.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Three soldiers on horses got separated from the others and started up the valley in the direction from where they had come. Three Cheyennes, Sun Bear, Eagle, Tail Feather and Little Sun joined some Sioux in pursuit of the three white men. The Cheyennes told afterward about the outcome of this pursuit. One of the soldiers turned his horse eastward toward the river and escaped into the timber. The other two kept on southward. Of these two, one went off to the right up a small gulch to the top of the bench. There, he was caught and killed. The remaining one rode on toward the mouth of Reno Creek. As he neared that point, he swerved to the right. He made a circle upon the valley and returned to the timber just across west from the mouth of Reno Creek.

• 1:08:39Jocko Willink?

  Here, he dismounted from his exhausted horse and got himself into the bush. The Sioux and Cheyennes surrounded him and killed him. They told that he fought bravely till his last, making use of his six shooter.

• 1:08:54Jocko Willink?

  A warbonnet Indian belonging with soldiers was chased by Crooked Nose, a Cheyenne and some other Sioux. The chase was afoot across a wet slough and into some timber northward from where the soldiers had been hidden a few minutes. After many exchanges of shots, after much dodging and shifting of position, the enemy Indian was killed there. Just a crazy fight. Just a crazy fight. I mean, this is like stuff that you see in, in, in, uh, western movies. People pulling each other off of horses, shooting people in the head with bow and arrow from a horse, that's just crazy and brutal.

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  And it, and I'll tell you, there's some really good accounts, and I, I started to go down this road. So if anybody that's listening is a, is a student of the Battle of Little Big Horn, there's, um, you know, lots of different stories about it. And there's also some really detailed accounts. And I started trying to pull out and match up what was happening in this account with other accounts, really historically accurate documented accounts. And as I started to do that, I said, no, I, I'm not going to go down this road of trying to figure out exactly which situation he's talking about. There was multiple small battles out there.

• 1:10:16Jocko Willink?

  There was, like I said, Reno and, and, uh, Benteen who survived with their soldiers and they made maneuvers and a lot of people blame them, some people don't blame them, you know, some people say that they should have gone to help, some people say that they didn't have a chance. There's all kinds of those things. And as I started to try and figure out which was which, I said, you know what, I'm not going to go that deep into this account. What's important about this account to me is the reality of the ground combat. That's what, that's what I'm interested in, in this account. And I'm sure maybe at some point in my life, when I have more time, I would love to marry up the two and say, oh, he must've been in this situation and this must've been this person and this must've been this maneuver. He must've seen this maneuver from the, from the cavalry.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  It'd be fun to do that, especially go out and walk the ground and do it. That would be really good. But anyways, if you're a person that's fully into this, I'm not going down that road right now.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  But I will go back to the book right now.

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Another enemy Indian was behind a little sagebrush knoll and shooting at us. His shots were returned. I and some others went around and got behind him. See this, I'll tell you what, Wooden Leg is all about flanking people. You notice that? He's just flanking people all over the place.

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  I and some others went around and got behind him. We dismounted and crept toward him. As we came close upon, up to him, he fell. A bullet had hit him. He raised himself up though, and swung his rifle around toward us. We rushed upon him. I crashed a blow of my rifle barrel upon his head. Others beat and stabbed him to death. I also got his gun. It was the same as the one I had taken from the other soldier, but the Indian's gun had a longer barrel. One of the Sioux scalped the dead man. Different ones took his clothing. I took nothing except the gun.

• 1:12:16Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, somebody said to me, "Look yonder, other soldiers." I saw them on a distant hill down the river, and on our same side of it. The news of them spread quickly among us. Indians began to ride in that direction.

• 1:12:32Jocko Willink?

  And so, they're now going to, again, this is where I didn't want to try and figure out exactly what battle, but eh. Yeah, so there's another portion of the battle taking place. I know in my head where he's going, but we'll just say there's, he sees other soldiers to go after. I'm pretty sure this is him going after Custer.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  And as he's going towards this other, towards this other battle that's taking place,

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  he passes through the camp again. And he sees his dad, and he says, "My father was the only person at our lodge. I told him of the fight up in the valley. I told him of having helped in the killing of the enemy Indian and some soldiers in the river. I gave to him the tobacco I had taken. I showed him my gun and all the cartridges. You have been brave," he cheered me. "You've done enough for the day. Now you should rest." "No, I want to go and fight the other soldiers. I can fight better now with this gun." "Your horse is tired," he argued. "Yes, but I want to ride the other one." So Woodleg, he had a good morning so far. Got after it.

• 1:13:37Jocko Willink?

  But he sees fighting going on and because he's a warrior, he says, "Nope, I'm getting back in the game."

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "As we approached the place of battle, each one chose his own personal course." "All of the Indians had come out on horseback, almost all of them dismounted and crept along the gullies of foot after the arrival near the soldiers." I think that's...

• 1:14:01Jocko Willink?

  The reason I highlighted that is because you got people doing decentralized command. "Oh, you see where the battle is? Get there." Right? You're not, we don't have to line up, we don't have to march together. "You see where the battle is? Get there. On your own personal course, make it happen."

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  "Most of the Indians were working around the ridge now occupied by the soldiers. We were laying down in gullies and behind sagebrush hilllocks." "The shooting at first was at a distance, but we kept creeping in closer all around the ridge. "Bows and arrows were used more than guns. "From the hiding places of the Indians, the arrows could be shot high and long curve to fall upon the soldiers or their horses. "An Indian using a gun had to jump on up and expose himself long to shoot. "The arrows falling upon the horses stuck in their backs and caused them to go plunging here and there, knocking down the soldiers." So, this is classic. You know, you think that the rifle is the better weapon,

• 1:15:03Jocko Willink?

  but the rifle, you have to expose yourself to shoot. Well, the Indians are just hunkered down behind a knoll or behind some brush or behind a valley and they're just lobbing like a mortar rounds, thousands of mortar rounds just hitting into where the soldiers are and the soldiers can't even do anything to them.

• 1:15:26Jocko Willink?

  The long distance fighting was kept up for about an hour and a half, I believe. The Indians, all the time, could see where the soldiers were. Because the white men were mostly on a ridge and their horses were with them. But the soldiers could not see our warriors. As they had left their ponies and were crawling through the gullies and the sagebrush. A warrior would jump up, shoot, jerk himself down quickly, and then crawl a little forward. A little further forward. All around the soldier ridge, our men were doing this. So not many of them got hit by soldier bullets during this time of fighting. This is beautiful. This is beautiful, this is exactly what, you know, what we teach, what the whole, what the, what the military teaches. Individual movement, you know, you shoot, you get up, you get back down, you crawl, you get up again.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  So, the enemy might see you, right when you take a shot, then you duck. And then when you pop up again, you're not in the same place. So if you were aiming where they were, they're not there anymore. This is, this is beautiful tactics. In a few minutes, the warriors were all around these soldiers. Then lame man, lame white man, that's an Indian, lame white man called out, "Come. We can kill all of them." All around, the Indians began jumping up, running forward, dodging down, jumping up again, down again, all the time towards the soldiers. Right away, all the white men went crazy. Instead of fighting us, they turned their guns upon themselves. Almost before we could get to them, every one of them was dead.

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  They killed themselves. The Indians took the guns of these soldiers and used them for shooting at the soldiers on the high ridge. I went back and got my horse and rode around beyond the east end of the ridge. By the time I got there, all the soldiers were dead. The Indians told me they had killed only a few of those men, and that the men had shot each other and shot themselves. And this is, this is very controversial. You know, whether these guys killed themselves. And I don't even know if it's that controversial, it's like, straight up, most people don't believe that. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. But we know that, one thing we do know, they're all dead.

• 1:17:43Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. I saw one Sioux walking, and I'm sure, you know what, I'm sure that somebody that's listening to this is gonna give us the full report. The full deal, yeah. Yeah, and actually, I have books. I have books, and this is not, um, this is not the same account, right? This is different, them killing themselves. So, I know that, but, well, I'm talking about this book right now, so I'm going with it. "I saw one Sioux walking slowly toward the gulch, going away from where were the soldiers. He wobbled dizzily as he moved along. He fell down, got up, fell down, got up again. As he passed near to where I was, I saw that his whole lower jaw was shot away.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  The sight of him made me sick. I had to vomit. I did not know him, and I did not learn whether he died or not.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  The shots quit coming from the soldiers. Warriors who had crept close to them began to call out that all the white men were dead. All the Indians then jumped up and rushed forward. All the boys and the old men on their horses came tearing into the crowd. The air was full of smoke and dust. Everybody was greatly excited. It looked like thousands of dogs might look if they were mixed together in a fight. All of the Indians were saying that these soldiers went so crazy they killed themselves. I do not know. I could not see them. But I believe they did so." Again, so he doesn't even know what the, the real deal is there, but like I said, what we do know is that not one of them lived.

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  "I took one scalp. As I went walking and leading my horse among the dead, I observed one face that interested me. The dead man had a long beard growing from both sides of his face and extending several inches below the chin. He also had a full mustache. All of the bared hair was of a light yellow color, as I now recall it. Most of the soldiers had beard growing in different lengths, but this was the longest one I saw among them. I think the dead man may have been thirty or more years old." Here is a new kind of scalp, I said to a companion. I skinned one side of the face and half of the chin so as to keep the long beard yet on the part removed.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  I got an arrow shaft and tied the strange scalp to the end of it. This I carried in hand as I went looking further. Somebody told me Noisy Walking was badly wounded, that was another Indian named Noisy Walking. I went to where he was said to be.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  Down in the gulch where the band of soldiers nearest the river had been killed in the earlier part of the battle. He was my same age and often we had been companions since our small boyhood. White Bull, an important medicine man, was his father.

• 1:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Noisy Walking had been hit by three different bullets. One of them having passed through his body. He also had some stab wounds in his side. I asked the young man, "How are you?" He replied, "Good."

• 1:20:57Jocko Willink?

  But he did not look well. One young Cheyenne took something from a dead soldier just after all of them had been killed. He was puzzled by it. Some others looked at it. I was with them. It was made of white metal and had glass on one side. On this side were marks of some kind. While the Cheyenne was looking at it, he got it up towards his ear. Then he put it up close. "It's alive," he said.

• 1:21:26Jocko Willink?

  Others put it to their ears and listened. I put it to mine. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, it was saying. We talked about its use, we generally agreed that it was a soldier's special medicine. Many Indians came and wondered about it. The young man decided to keep it for his own medicine. So they, they found a watch on one of the soldiers, a little wind-up pocket watch. And to me, this was just a really good example of, of the, you know, the cultural differences. They didn't, they'd never seen a watch before. And, and so they were surprised and didn't even understand what it was or that it was not actually alive. It was just a mechanical, a watch.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "Noisy Walking" died during the night after the Great Battle. Six Cheyennes had been killed. Another man, open belly, was badly wounded and was expected to die. He was about thirty years old, but he had neither wife nor children. The six dead were lame white man, limber bones, black bear, noisy balking, hump nose, and whirlwind.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  And then after that battle, during the afternoon, it was learned that yet another band of white men were coming up the Little Big Horn Valley. All the young men wanted to fight. A council of chiefs was held. They decided we should continue in our same course and not fight any soldiers if we could get away without doing so. All of the Indians then got ready to move. Probably a smart move.

• 1:23:06Jocko Willink?

  So then, after that, they have, they go to this area that's called Greasy Grass. And there, they have a little, a little war dance, a little, sort of a, I guess you'd call it a ceremony or a celebration. Back to the book, "Charcoal Bear, our medicine chief, brought the buffalo skin from the sacred teepee and put it on top of a pole at the center of our camp circle. We danced around this pole. No women took part in the dancing. Many of them had sore legs from mourning cuts, and when they'd lose their, their husband, they would cut themselves." "Our dance was not carried very far into the night. It was mostly a short telling of experiencing, a counting of coup.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  My father told, in a few words, what his two sons had done. When he ended the telling of my warrior acts, he said, 'The name of this son of mine is Wooden Leg.'

• 1:24:01Jocko Willink?

  Up to this time, people had still used my boyhood name, 'Eats From His Hand,' but now, this old name was entirely gone." So it's after that battle of Little Big Horn is when Wooden Leg became Wooden Leg.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  Now they proceed and together all this big mass of tribes and at this point

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  they're about to separate their tribes and start going in their own directions and then they get a report soldiers are coming. The two bands of Indians began to come together again. The warrior, the warriors mingled themselves as being one tribe. The women and children and older men of both sets of people moved together up the Tongue River. The young men put themselves behind their fleeing people. Somebody said to me, "They have captured some women." "Your sister is one of them." My heart jumped when this news came to me. I lashed my horse into a run toward where it was said they had been captured. There I saw the tracks of soldier horses. The trail led me to the River of Ice.

• 1:25:13Jocko Willink?

  On the opposite side of the river, the west side were soldiers. They began shooting at me. I had to get away. I did not see any of the women, so I supposed they had been killed. My heart then became bitter toward these white men.

• 1:25:28Jocko Willink?

  I hid my horse in the brush at the foot of the ridge where some warriors were on its top. I walked up there. Many Indians were hidden behind rocks and were shooting towards the soldiers. I chose for myself a place of hiding and did the same. I had my soldier rifle and plenty of cartridges. Many soldiers were coming across the ice to fight us, but we had the advantage because our position was high and on a rocky ridge.

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  So it's interesting that he, he's, doesn't even become bitter towards the soldiers until they do something to his sister and then all of a sudden he's bitter towards the white men. And it's also important there at the end, you gotta get the high ground. Gotta get the high ground. That's literally the only reason that I put that in there. It's for, for those of you out there that are in the military that are fighting, get the high ground. It gives you a massive advantage over the enemy.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  After this, they kinda settle up the Tongue River and there, I'll go back to the book. We found plenty of buffalo there. We went on west to the, the upper Little Big Horn. After camping and hunting there, we went farther to the Big Horn at the mouth of Rotten Grass Creek. We did not stay there long. We returned to Little Big Horn. Most of the last part of the winter was spent in a camp in this valley. All the time during the next few months, we had good hunting. Soldiers did not trouble us, nor did we trouble them. All the people had good lodges. In every way, we were living yet according to our customary habits. We were not bothering any white people. We did not want to see any of them.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  We felt we were on our land. We had killed only such people as had come for, had come for driving us away from it. So, our hearts were clean from any feeling of guilt.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  So they're kinda living, they're kinda going back to just living their own, their, the way that they were used to living. And this is where, you know, this next chapter, chapter seven is called "The Surrender of the Cheyennes."

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  "Just before the grass began to show itself in the early part of spring, two visitors arrived at our camp on Little Big Horn." "One of these was our old captured, was our captured old woman, sweet woman. The other was a half-breed Sioux we called White. Each had a horse to ride and each was leading a packhorse. In their packs were tobacco and other things for gifts to the principal chiefs. The visitors said they'd been sent out from the soldier fort at the mouth of the Tongue River to invite us to come there and surrender peaceably. They brought us a promise from Bear Coat, the soldier chief there, that we should not be harmed and should be given plenty of food."

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  So they're starting to get enticed, starting to get enticed by some, by, you know, basically food, tobacco.

• 1:28:30Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The four chiefs came back to us at this Powder River camp. White Bull was not with them. They told us he had stayed with the soldiers to scout for them in hunting Indians. This news did not please us. As we looked at it, the surrendering to the soldiers was good if one felt like doing this, but an offer to help them to kill friends showed a bad heart. I was more affected though by other news the chiefs brought. It was concerning my sister Crooked Nose, one of the captives. When the chiefs were only a part of the first day out and coming back from the fort, somebody followed them to tell them about her. She had been very sad in the heart because of a belief she would never again see her people.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  She had felt better when the chiefs came, but when they went away again, she fell into a deep grief. My sorrow was so great, her sorrow was so great, that she had gotten out her hidden six shooter I had given to her, and she shot herself dead. My heart almost stopped beating when I heard about her death this way. She had been a good sister, kind to everybody.

• 1:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Seven Cheyennes from the agency came to the camp on Powder River. One of them had a teepee lodge, but no women were with them. They came only to tell us we ought to surrender at the agency. They said all the Indians there were being well fed, were being well treated in every way. Nobody was being punished in any manner for past conduct in warfare against the soldiers. So they're getting told basically, there's another group. There's they can surrender at the fort, the army fort, or they can surrender at the Indian agency, which is also controlled by the soldiers. And of course, I just read that part about wooden legged sister committing suicide. So, just a devastating blow to him.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, as this continues, the decision gets made by the chiefs to surrender. Actually, at first to find out a little bit more, gather some more intel, sorry. Little Wolf and the other principal chiefs chose to go out to the agency. And then, when they come back, they say that it's pretty good to go. And when they hear this, they hear about the food, they hear about the whiskey, they hear about the shelter, they decide that the main body of the tribe sets off towards the agency to surrender.

• 1:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "But not all the Cheyennes were ready yet to surrender at any place. Fourteen or fifteen men, six or seven of them having wives or children, separated off to go westward. White Hawk, a little chief of the Elk Warriors, was with them. I joined another band, still desiring the most freedom we considered to be ours by right. Thirty-four Cheyennes made up this band." So there's a couple of little separate groups that break off and decide they're gonna continue pushing. And as they're doing that, when they get in these smaller groups, if you can imagine, I mean, just like, uh, any, any group, if you break it down enough, you start to lose your efficiency, and that's what happened with these smaller groups, they just weren't as efficient anymore. Because they had less people, I mean, you can't catch as many, you can't work in cooperation

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  to hunt buffalo, and so, they didn't do well on their own. Back to the book, "We were having a good many days of hunger. Our horses had plenty of grass, but our own ribs were becoming thin. Our clothing was wearing out, and we could not get enough skins to renew them and keep our beds and our lodges in good order. My soldier coat and breeches were gone, and my last shirt and cloth breeches were almost in tatters. The only good article of wear I had now was my big white hat I had captured at the Rosebud Battle. A Cheyenne named Yellow Eagle..." Added himself to us.

• 1:32:39Jocko Willink?

  He had been at the agency not before, not long before. We decided to have him and Whitebird go there and spy out the conditions. They went. In a week or so, they were back among us. Good treatment, plenty of food, blankets, everything. Nobody punished, they reported. We started right away for the agency.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  So... When they split apart into these smaller groups, that was definitely problematic. And now they go from being out there, kind of on their own, hungry, running out of food, don't have good equipment anymore. And somebody, they send somebody to the agency to check it out, and they get the report back that there's plenty of food and blankets and warm, and all they're gonna do there is go ahead and give up. So now they, they move, and they start heading towards the agency, and when they get there, back to the book, it made us all feel good to see hundreds of Indian lodges as we came near to the agency.

• 1:33:53Jocko Willink?

  We galloped our horses forward, we cheered and fired gunshots into the air. Some soldiers came running out of their tents, but they soon saw we were friendly and only celebrating and notifying our people we had come.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  So here they are. And a, and a white man, married to a Cheyenne woman, was acting as an interpreter for the soldiers. His name was Roland. But White Hat did not need any interpreter in talking to us, he could make the sign talk so well. After the general handshaking, White Hat said, "Now you men must give me your guns and your horses." We were not expecting this, but we trusted him, so we began to do as he asked.

• 1:34:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm telling you gotta be careful in this situation. When you start giving up your guns. This is not a recommended course of action. You know, if you're coming in peace. Why are you not allowed to keep your weapons? This is not a, this is not a, I do not agree with this scenario.

• 1:34:58Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  The, we had one big chief, Standing Elk. Who kept saying it would be better if we should go there, so they're trying to get them to push towards the south. Like towards Oklahoma would be, would be Oklahoma. And they're kind of against it, they don't want to walk anymore, they feel like they, hey look, we came here, we, we were supposed to be here. And they're saying, oh no, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna move you guys south. And they're all saying, no, we don't want to. So that's what Standing Elk is talking about. So Standing Elk, who kept saying it would be better if we should go there. I think there were not as many as ten Cheyennes in our whole tribe who agreed with him. There was a feeling that he was talking this way only to make himself a big Indian among the white people.

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  The white men chiefs would not talk much to any Cheyenne chief but him. They gave him extra presents and treated him as if he were the only tribe, the only chief in the tribe, but he was but one of our forty tribal big chiefs. One day he went about telling everybody, alright, get ready to move, the soldiers are going to take us from here tomorrow. Lots of Cheyennes were angry. We had understood that when we surrendered, we were to live on our same White River Reservation. We had given up our guns and our horses and had quit fighting because of this promise. Now, after we had put ourselves at this great disadvantage, the promise was to be broken.

• 1:36:27Jocko Willink?

  But we could not do anything except obey him. So three sleeps after my small band had come to what we thought was to be our home. The whole tribe was on its way to what we now call Oklahoma.

• 1:36:43Jocko Willink?

  So, again, that's why we don't give up our guns.

• 1:36:50Jocko Willink?

  When you give up your guns, you give up your strength, you give up your leverage, give up your ability to fight.

• 1:36:57Jocko Willink?

  The soldier leader of our movement to the south was known as Tall White Man. He was a good man, always kind to the Indians. We had to do whatever he said we must do, but he talked good to our chiefs. So, all of us were pleased to have him guiding us. He had with him a band of soldiers. I do not know how many, but I think there may have been almost a hundred of them. Our horses that had been taken away from us at the agency were returned to us. Still, many Cheyennes did not own any. Old people who had no animal to ride were provided with them from the soldier herd. Or very old or sick people were allowed to ride in the soldier wagons. Young men who owned no horses had to walk or borrow from friends.

• 1:37:39Jocko Willink?

  I owned four. I had three of them loaned out most of the time. So, that's actually the treatment at this point by Tall White Man was fairly good. And it sounds like they kind of got along with the soldiers at this point. And here's an example of that. Soldiers hunted with the Indians. All the soldiers were friendly and good to us. They were good shooters and they killed lots of game. They gave us most of the meat. I became specifically friendly with two or three of them. I liked to be with them and they appeared to like me. I went at times to their camp in the evening and visited with them. When we were about halfway along in our journey, I asked one of them, "Let me take your gun tomorrow." "Yes, you may take it," he told me.

• 1:38:23Jocko Willink?

  So, I think the reason I wanted to bring that up is when you get, you know, soldiers and warriors and you put them together and you get rid of the politics, guess what? They get along. "Oh, we like shooting, we like hunting. We're warriors. We're gonna get along."

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  Kinda like the Germans playing soccer.

• 1:38:39Jocko Willink?

  Playing soccer, exactly. You take the politics out of it and we're just gonna, you know, have a couple cigarettes, maybe a glass of scotch and call it good.

• 1:38:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, when they get down to Oklahoma, they kinda settle in, in, in the south. And here we go back to the book. "I learned in the south the white man, name of Longhair, the soldier big chief we had killed on the Little Big Horn. I was told he was called General Custer. I had heard his name spoken at the White River Agency, but had not understand clearly who was meant by it. The southern Cheyennes knew of him because of his having fought against them before he had come into our northern country. They had surrendered to him.

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  After we'd been a year on this reservation, many of our people began to be asked to be taken back to the north. There was no game here, and we were not allowed to go off the reservation for hunting, and we were not given food as it had been promised we should be given. At times, some of our young men would violate the orders and would slip away from the reservation to get a buffalo or some other animal good to eat. Some white people said the Indians were killing their cattle. I do not know. I did not do this. I stayed all the time on the reservation. But if any Indians did kill the white men cattle, they did so because they were very hungry and could not find any wild game. We ate the beef because it was the best we could get. We always liked much better the wild game. There was

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  much sickness among the northern Cheyennes. To us, it was a new kind of sickness. Chills and fever and aching of the bones dragged down most of us to thin and weak bodies. Our people died, died, and kept following each another, following one another out of this world. Finally, Little Wolf declared that he, for one, was moving back north, whether the white people consented or not. Others said they would follow him. The agent told them that the soldiers would go on their trail and would kill them." They were promised more food. They waited for it, but it did not come. More people flocked to Little Wolf's side. Dullknife said he would go too. Late in the summer, more than half the tribe started out.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Little Wolf's last message to the agent was, "The soldiers may kill all of us, but they cannot make us stay in this country." The soldiers went after them. Other soldiers from other places were sent out to head them off. The Cheyennes were hunted from all directions. They were found many times, but each time the Cheyennes fought off their pursuers and kept moving northward. Many of our people were killed, but most of them got back to their old home country and were allowed to stay there.

• 1:41:21Jocko Willink?

  From the southern Cheyennes, I learned a great deal about General Custer's dealing with them in that country. All of them said he had smoked the peace pipe with them at that time that they had surrendered to him, seven years before he was killed. According to the custom among us, this was understood as a promise by him that never again would he fight against the Cheyennes. When they learned that he had been killed by our people in the Sioux, they considered him as having deserved that kind of death on account of his failure to keep his peace oath.

• 1:41:56Jocko Willink?

  I got a wife from the southern Cheyennes. She'd been a girl at the Cheyenne camp at the Waschita River when Custer and his soldiers came there and killed many Cheyennes and burned their lodges in November of 1868. Chief Blackpot was one of the ones killed. The women and children fled, same as ours had done at Powder River. It was winter, and there was many, and there was at that time, a deep snow for that country. Soldiers chased the women and children and killed many of them, as well as the men. My wife, at that time a girl, was barefooted, as others were also. They had been surprised in the early morning.

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  She stopped and cut off pieces of buffalo robe to tie about her feet to keep them warm as she ran. When they got to the camp of snake Indians, further down the river. My wife told me she was also with the Cheyennes when they surrendered to General Custer in 1869. After he had smoked the pipe with their chiefs, when they surrendered, some of the chiefs were put into prison and had chains upon their ankles. When I heard all of this from my wife, as well as from many of the other southern Cheyennes, it seemed the great medicine may have directed Custer to his death as punishment for having broken his promise to the Cheyennes.

• 1:43:23Jocko Willink?

  So, eventually, they do go back north and they re-establish reservations up in the north.

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, Wooden Leg proceeds up there as well. And when he gets up there, it seems like things are in a pretty bad way.

• 1:43:48Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The most sorrowful new condition we found in coming back to our Cheyenne country was in the case of Little Wolf himself.

• 1:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Some white men about the fort were selling or giving whiskey to the Indians. One night, Little Wolf got a bottle of whiskey and right away, he drank all of it. He went into the fort trader's store and leaned forward upon the counter. He was quiet, but he was dizzy and stumbling here and there. The trader said, "Little Wolf, you'd better go to your lodge." But he said, "No, I want to stay here." Some Cheyenne men and women were playing cards at a table in the store. Famished Elk, a young man, sergeant of the scouts, was with them. He talked to Little Wolf, but the old chief paid no attention to his talk. Famished Wolf took hold of Little Wolf's arm and said, "Come, I will help you to get you to your lodge."

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  He spoke and acted respectfully, but Little Wolf was angered because of the taking hold of him. He pulled himself away, his eyes blazed like fire. He stood a moment looking at the young man, then he said, "I will kill you."

• 1:44:57Jocko Willink?

  He staggered alone on out from the store. Famished Elk returned to sit in the card game. Nobody was expecting any further trouble. But not long afterward, the door was opened and Little Wolf stumbled into the room. He straightened himself out, leveled a rifle, and fired. Famished Elk sank down dead upon the floor. The old chief went back to his lodge and told his two wives what he had done. "We must go," he added. The three of them went out into the darkness of the night. Soldiers in Cheyenne searched for them. They searched during the next day and the next. The missing man and his two wives appeared in Miles City and sat themselves down at a place in plain view of the people there. A captain and some soldiers went to him.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  The captain we knew as Little Chief. He told Little Wolf what it was he had done. He said, he further told him, "You are no more a chief of the Cheyennes." "That is true and just," Little Wolf agreed. He was not punished in any other way, but he further punished himself. Before he and his wives had left their lodge, he smashed into pieces his medicine pipe. Our old tribal laws required this. It was not allowable for him afterward to smoke. It was allowable for him afterward to smoke all alone in any small and short stemmed pipe such as might be made from a deer leg bone, but he did not do this. He denied himself all smoking.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  He never made any offer even to sit in the company of other Cheyennes smoking together. White men offered him sometimes cigarettes, but he always refused them. After a time, he learned to chew tobacco, a habit never followed by the old time Cheyennes. It seemed he did this deliberately for self humiliation. He never tried to intrude himself on any tribal public affairs. The people remembered his great services in past times, but nobody consulted him on tribal matters in present times. Truly, in every way, he was never more a chief among the Cheyennes.

• 1:47:11Jocko Willink?

  So, alcohol, not good. Not good for your decision making processes.

• 1:47:23Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. When I was thirty-one years old in eighteen eighty-nine, I enlisted with other Cheyennes to form a new band of scouts for the soldiers at Fort Keough. For a long time, we did not do much except drill and work at getting out logs from the timber and building houses for ourselves. So, he joins the army. He joins the army, becomes a, becomes a scout.

• 1:47:49Jocko Willink?

  We Cheyenne scouts did not get into any battle. At one time, we were all dressed and ready, but the officers made us stop behind a hill while the soldiers went on and killed many Sioux at a camp on a little valley just over the hill. A Sioux started that fight by killing an officer who was taking all the guns from them. The soldiers began to shoot, and many women and children were killed as well. This trouble was on Wounded Knee Creek.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  At the time of our advance up the hill, I was wearing a war bonnet for the first time in any battle. So, he's talking about, they were present at the, at the massacre at Wounded, at Wounded Knee, which was a horrible massacre committed, you can hear. There was between a hundred and fifty and three hundred Sioux were killed by soldiers, and it included, probably about half of them were, were women and children.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  And later, he's talking about some dreams that he has. Back to the book. "I believe I slept, but I'm not sure whether I was sleeping and dreaming, or I was only lying there and thinking. I kept my cartridge belt buckled on me, and I hugged my rifle to my body. It seemed that angry Sioux Indians were all about me. They were searching for me, to kill me. Some of them were striking at me with war clubs and slashing at me with knives. I heard them calling my name, Wooden Leg.

• 1:49:22Jocko Willink?

  I jumped up and stood there wide awake." So he's having nightmares. His massacre happens, and he feels like, obviously, subconsciously, he's got some

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  some nightmares about that.

• 1:49:40Jocko Willink?

  Now back to the story of Little Wolf. The, the chief that, that shot the, uh, other Indian at the card game.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. "One day I saw the old man Little Wolf at the camp." This is years later. "I said to my wife, 'I see Little Wolf. He's my relative. One of his wives is a sister of my father. I think I ought to invite him to eat at our lodge." "I'm glad to hear you say that," she answered. "Tell him to come now." Right away, she began to prepare bread and meat and coffee. "When I brought Little Wolf around, I found he was partly drunk.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  He fumbled the food and he sat and ate. He ate freely as though he were very hungry. He kept quiet and kept looking downward during all the time. When he was done eating, I told him of my sympathy with him in his great trouble. He then told me all about the affair. I loved the young man and all of his people. I was crazy when I shot him." At this time in the conversation, Little Wolf was about seventy years old. This man gave away all of his horses after he'd been put out of his position as our greatest chief. After that, all of his traveling was done afoot. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes one or both of his wives accompanied him.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  They took along whatever packs they could carry and they slept in temporary shelters or with no shelter. He went at times to visit the Crows. He visited also the Arapahoe's in Wyoming, walking two hundred miles or more back and again. He died in nineteen oh four at the age of eighty-three years. His wives and close friends stood his body upright on a high hill overlooking the Rosebud Valley where many Cheyennes had their reservation homes. A great heap of stones was built to enclose him thus standing upright.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-four years later, his bones were brought to the Agency Cemetery and put into a grave there. Byrd, the old-time Indian story white man who lives in New York, had a stone put at the head of this Agency grave. Even in the nearest of relatives, of even the nearest relatives of famished elk, never kept bad hearts against Little Wolf. At different times I have heard talk of him from Bald Eagle, a brother of the young man killed. Bald Eagle said, "Little Wolf did not kill my brother. It was the white man whiskey that did it."

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  Now we fast forward.

• 1:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Thirty years after the Great Battle against Custer, there was a gathering of Indians and white people at Little Big Horn. The Cheyennes and some other Indians went with a few soldiers to Fort Custer, not far from the place where the Great Battle had been. The soldiers at the fort shook hands with all of us. We gathered together and some friendly speeches were made by the officers and Indians. All I said was, "A long time ago, we were enemies. Today, we are friends."

• 1:53:08Jocko Willink?

  And going even further into the adult.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Fifty years old now.

• 1:53:18Jocko Willink?

  Wooden Leg says, "I was baptized by the priest at Tongue River Mission when I was almost fifty years old. My wife and our two daughters were baptized too. I think the white people prayed to the same great medicine we do in our old Cheyenne way. I do not go to church often, but I do go sometimes. I think the white church people are good, but I do not believe all the stories they tell about what happened a long time ago, the way they tell us. All the good people in the old times were white people. I'm glad to have the white man churches among us, but I feel more satisfied when I make my prayers in the way I was taught to make them.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  My heart is much more contented when I sit alone with my medicine pipe and talk with the great medicine about whatever may be troubling me."

• 1:54:09Jocko Willink?

  We had good medicine men in the old times. It may be that they did not know as much about sickness as the white men doctors know, but our doctors knew more about Indians and how to talk to them.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  Our people then did not die young as they, so much as they do now."

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  Now Wooden Leg had a couple daughters.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about them here. "The younger daughter fell into an illness when she was about fourteen years old. We expected she would soon be herself again, but she grew worse instead of better. She became so weak she could not stay at school any longer. She continued to go downward after we brought her into our home. Finally, her spirit went back to the great medicine. All of our love was now fixed upon the other daughter. She advanced to full young womanhood. She could read the white man books, she could write letters to our friends far away. But she too became ill, same as her younger sister.

• 1:55:17Jocko Willink?

  During all of one winter she gradually wasted away. Every afternoon her body burned with fever, every night her bed was soaked with sweating. Every morning she coughed, almost to strangling. Neither the medicines of the agency physician nor the prayers of our own medicine men could help her. Just when the spring grass was coming up, she was buried in our mission cemetery."

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  My heart fell down to the ground. I decided then that the white man's school is not good for Indian children. I think they do not get enough of meat at the boarding school. I think that they are kept in school too much during the year. They ought to be out and free to go as they please during all the good weather of the autumn and the spring.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  And the book closes out.

• 1:56:15Jocko Willink?

  In the last years of Wooden Leg's life, and he's he's old and he's respected. And he's living safely on a reservation.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  And he says,

• 1:56:36Jocko Willink?

  "It is comfortable to live in peace on the reservation. It is pleasant to be situated where I can sleep soundly every night without fear that my horses may be stolen or that myself or my friends may be crept upon and killed."

• 1:56:55Jocko Willink?

  But I like to think about the old times.

• 1:57:01Jocko Willink?

  When every man had to be brave.

• 1:57:06Jocko Willink?

  I wish I could live again through some of the past days. When it was first thought of.

• 1:57:14Jocko Willink?

  Every prospering Indian. The first thought of every prospering Indian was to send out the call. "Oh friends, come, come, come." "I have plenty of buffalo meat, I have coffee, I have sugar, I have tobacco."

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  "Come friends, feast and smoke with me."

• 1:57:49Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you.

• 1:57:55Jocko Willink?

  That I miss those days too.

• 1:57:59Jocko Willink?

  When.

• 1:58:02Jocko Willink?

  Every man had to be brave.

• 1:58:07Jocko Willink?

  When comfort.

• 1:58:11Jocko Willink?

  Was no guarantee, when life itself wasn't a guarantee.

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  And I think that is one of the lessons.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  To be taken. From Wooden Leg is something you hear me say often is that you have to cherish it.

• 1:58:35Jocko Willink?

  Cherish. The struggle. The contest, the suffering, the risk, don't shy away from it.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  But instead.

• 1:58:49Jocko Willink?

  Cherish it.

• 1:58:53Jocko Willink?

  And another piece that I find so important, so reinforcing to what I see in the world is, "Look at how the Cheyennes were beaten."

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't, it wasn't in war. It wasn't in battle.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  They, they weren't defeated by the white man's guns or the white man's tactics.

• 1:59:21Jocko Willink?

  No. They were slowly taken apart. Convinced, convinced to take an easier path. And enticed by the comfort of the reservations.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  Where food and shelter and tobacco and alcohol were all readily available.

• 1:59:52Jocko Willink?

  They weren't defeated in some decisive battle.

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  By weapons or by war. They were defeated.

• 2:00:05Jocko Willink?

  And controlled by one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time.

• 2:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Giving up their land, and then giving up their horses, and then giving up their guns.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  And they were tricked.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  They were lied to. And the word was not kept, and the promises were not kept, but they gave up their ability to fight back.

• 2:00:47Jocko Willink?

  And it's hard to guard against that, it's hard to even see it happening because it's like trying to watch an hour hand move. You don't see it.

• 2:01:00Jocko Willink?

  You don't see it move. And then you turn around and this, this beautiful and this magnificent warrior culture

• 2:01:12Jocko Willink?

  is relegated to whiskey and dependency and entrapment from reservations.

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's an important message.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  I think that's an important message for our culture.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  This culture that we have now, the culture of creativity and of open-mindedness and of strength and of individual freedom.

• 2:01:53Jocko Willink?

  That we need to stay vigilant.

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  We need to stand guard against small infractions that may seem meaningless and insignificant, but that will chip away

• 2:02:11Jocko Willink?

  at who we are as a people

• 2:02:15Jocko Willink?

  and as a culture.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  And the Native Americans, I mean, we could go on and on about the bravery

• 2:02:27Jocko Willink?

  that those warriors showed. Even past this period in World War II, there's story upon story about the bravery that they showed in the Vietnam War, Native Americans that served with honor and courage.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  But we have to learn more than just that.

• 2:02:48Jocko Willink?

  And I think it's the same thing on an individual level as well.

• 2:02:55Jocko Willink?

  Because it's not that, it's not that we as people, it's not that we as an individual, as a person, it's not that you wake up one day and you decide, "That's it.

• 2:03:05Jocko Willink?

  I give up, I'm gonna be weak now.

• 2:03:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna just surrender everything to be comfortable." We don't do that in one day, it doesn't happen, it's not one decision, it's a slow incremental process.

• 2:03:23Jocko Willink?

  That just chips away, chips away at our will and chips away at our discipline. We wake up a little bit later and we miss a workout, then we miss another one, then we just start to eat what we shouldn't eat and we start to drink what we shouldn't drink and without even realizing it, one day you wake up and you've become something that you never would have allowed.

• 2:03:48Jocko Willink?

  And instead of being strong,

• 2:03:54Jocko Willink?

  you're weak. And instead of being disciplined, you are disorganized and you are lost.

• 2:04:02Jocko Willink?

  And instead of moving forward and progressing, you are moving backward

• 2:04:09Jocko Willink?

  and you are decaying.

• 2:04:13Jocko Willink?

  And that happens without us even seeing it, without us recognizing it.

• 2:04:26Jocko Willink?

  So you have to be vigilant.

• 2:04:31Jocko Willink?

  You have to be on guard. You have to hold the line, even on the seemingly insignificant little things, things that shouldn't matter, but those things do matter.

• 2:04:43Jocko Willink?

  And instead of going backward, instead of decaying, get stronger, get better, grow and learn and develop and live.

• 2:04:58Jocko Willink?

  And live in such a way

• 2:05:02Jocko Willink?

  that you don't remember the old days with sorrow, that they are gone, but with pride. And with gratitude that those old days led you to where you are today.

• 2:05:19Jocko Willink?

  A place of wisdom and a place of knowledge and a place of experience.

• 2:05:31Jocko Willink?

  And a place of peace.

• 2:05:34Jocko Willink?

  And I certainly hope that

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Wooden Leg found his peace

• 2:05:42Jocko Willink?

  with the Great Medicine.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  You know how in, I don't know if I, I mean, you're probably one of the few people

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  that I know anyway, that probably didn't go through high school and think about history class, think, when am I ever gonna use this? A lot of us think, thought that. And like this kind of stuff, right? Like actual stuff, history, this is history, this should have been in history class.

• 2:06:11Jocko Willink?

  And it probably was.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:12Jocko Willink?

  You had to have learned about the Battle of Little Big Horn.

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  You, you had to have, you may not remember it, I don't remember from high school, that was whatever, forty something years.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  Wounded knee rings a bell.

• 2:06:21Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  You know? Yeah, so that was probably the attitude for most of us. Like, when are we gonna use this? Why do I gotta know this, you know, seventeen seventy six? Like, why do I gotta, why, why, how is this gonna help me in my job? That I'm gonna be, you know, a doctor, whatever, even if you had, you know, high aspirations.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  So this, that last part, um, you just said, but that's, that's why. For real, the.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  What, what part?

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  What do you mean, what, the whole part?

• 2:06:56Jocko Willink?

  The whole part, okay.

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, at the end where you're like, okay, look, and here's what, how it was explained to me by my mom and dad. History is important because you have all the people that you learn about, all the events you learn about. You learn lessons out of it. Of course, as a kid, you're like, alright, well, you know, I'm just memorizing dates and events here. But they're like, no, you learn lessons, like, history, you know, wars, all the, this is, it's all the, like, settle problems. You gotta learn lessons from history, I'm like, alright, I get it.

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  This, I think, on an, in, like, on a group level, you can learn a lot of lessons, of course, from history. This on an individ- individual level, everybody, especially now, bro. Now it's like, I was thinking about this today, okay, we're, I'm driving home, I went to the pumpkin patch, right? And the pumpkin patch is, it's, uh, it's a, it's really cool, it's a, it was down in Bonita, it was, it wasn't like a built one in a parking lot that you go through, it was like a legit one, and, um, hardly anyone there, and my daughters running around, getting, and, um, you know, my wife comes from the country and stuff. So, she's like, see, this kind of pumpkin patch is great compared to the ones that built in the parking lot, and I'm thinking. That's where we are today.

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  Where, oh, not a pumpkin patch, let's go build a pumpkin patch. Like, that's how mu- how little really we have to do. We're building pumpkin patches.

• 2:08:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  So you can go experience a pumpkin patch.

• 2:08:20Jocko Willink?

  On pavement.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  Yes, on, in a parking lot.

• 2:08:22Jocko Willink?

  In a parking lot.

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we're done with this, you know, built thing. We get, you know, you have shows on TV. I always harp on reality TV, but man, this is the reality. Of it, where we have time now, the time and the inclination to sit and watch hours of just other people living their life.

• 2:08:43Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's just embarrassing.

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  That's where we are today. I'm not saying we all do it, but I'm saying we can if we want. Yeah, we can if we want. That's where we are.

• 2:08:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  So consider that. That's the opposite of this. That's like basically what you're talking about right here.

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:59Speaker 01

  Where you're like, okay, the more like, kind of, you didn't really say avoid luxury, nothing like that, but basically you're keep, keep your capability in check. You know, like, I don't wanna miss the old days when I was capable, you know, because I gave it up to be more comfortable. That's the, that's the lesson, I think, that you can learn individually.

• 2:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt. And I think e- even, you know, the, the culture, we're talking about cultures, the cultures of warriors.

• 2:09:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:30Jocko Willink?

  That, you know, they, they got overrun by the white man, right? Overrun by the white man. Now, there was brutal battles and we're gonna go, I mean, you, you could spend all day talking about, but we're talk, I'm just, I'm just speaking about one aspect of this. You had incredible warrior cultures that had lived this way for unknown amount of time, thousands of years. And in what, fifty years or something, a hundred years, it was completely different for them. And. Yeah, and what I'm saying is, you you think that they got crushed or destroyed, or there was this battle? Like, no, if you if you hear that story, it wasn't a fight to the death.

• 2:10:10Jocko Willink?

  It was a slow, just crumbling away of their of their culture, the way they had it. And, you know, and from a from a perspective of, I mean, another lesson that can be taken away from this? That's, you know, we we talk about this all the time. That was a, it's it's a form of negotiation, right? Listen, hey, don't worry about it. Just come come a little bit further. You know, just move a little bit further down the path, move a little bit further down the path, move a little bit further down the path. And, um, yeah, that's what I, that's my point, is be careful and pay attention to what you're giving up. Yeah. From your from your individual life and from your culture as a as a group, right?

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  In America, right? I'm I'm speaking now from my culture as an American. That's our culture. What are we gonna give up? Where is it going? That's what we need to look out for, because at some point, we could look around. And it's one thing if we don't have the culture anymore, we don't, we have a different culture. But the thing that I'm talking about, and and it's okay for American culture to morph and to grow, that's okay. But what I do, what we do have to watch out for is if we ever give up the strength Right. to defend ourselves and say, you know what? Okay, you crossed the line. Yeah. And we are not gonna do what you're saying right now. Yeah.

• 2:11:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's what we need to be careful of. We can never give up. You know, somebody asked me on Twitter the other day, hey, what's, you know, in 140 characters, what should our foreign policy be? And I did it in one word. Our foreign policy should be strength. Yeah. Strength should be our foreign policy. We should be strong. Yeah. And I'm telling you right now, and we've talked about this before. When you are strong and you can defend yourself and you know that you can handle any problem that comes your way, you're not gonna have many problems.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's not gonna happen. It's when you're weak. It's when you let your guard down, that's when you have problems.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, and strength, essentially, capable, capability, right? That's, and I'm not saying, I'm not talking about the foreign policy thing at all.

• 2:12:29Jocko Willink?

  You don't go down that path with me.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  No, I mean, not now, but, no, no, okay, so you know, like, like CrossFit, for example?

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:37Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:12:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, okay. Well, by strength, I don't just mean strength like that. I mean skill. I mean the ability.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  Capability is what it is, straight up.

• 2:12:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause I stand corrected.

• 2:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I didn't mean to correct you, of course. I meant like, you know, more like, you know, I'm, I'm contributing. You know, we'll say contribute. But you know how, um, okay, so I remember when CrossFit exploded onto the scene and people got real into it. And sometimes people would get criticized, like, man, you're doing this, all this crazy work, you're just getting good at working out. Like, you're trying to get into this crazy shape for nothing. Like, what are you training for? You're not training for sport, you're just training. I mean, I'm sure you could, actually, same could kind of be said about you. You're waking up every day, training all hard, like, for what? And you're like, for life.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  Right. So you're, you're training for capability. I'm capable. Are you capable? And what level of capability do you have, you know? So people who've spent like, and, and this by no means is any kind of judgment, but if you've spent your life neglecting your health or your capability, you know, you can be less well off. You're not gonna be very well off. So with that, there is that caution, like, this is the tale, a cautionary tale, one of the many probably over history where if you are capable, even if it doesn't seem like your environment is testing that capability, bro, watch out.

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes. Test the capability yourself.

• 2:14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Is what you gotta do. You gotta test the capability yourself.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  That's a good thing too, and the, and about spending too, cause the whole, the system, and the system, but especially now, like I said, like, life is luxury right now for us, where you can Back in the day, you're hunting for food, you were starvation. Here, it's like too much food. For example, one of your examples from before. So it's like, it's luxury. So even, even like consumption, right? What like, what do you spend your money on, you know? Spend money on entertainment seems not really in line with improving your capability, you know? Like, that's what I, I remember when we moved. I was like, I want to get a home gym. And it was pretty expensive, like what I wanted, but it was easily justifiable.

• 2:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 2:14:51Speaker 01

  Because, and I wasn't thinking in these specific terms, but really, basically, that's what I was thinking. Like, this is gonna help me in life. This is gonna be

• 2:14:58Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:14:59Speaker 01

  Help me be more capable, way more. And I already had a gym membership.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  But you want the home gym.

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  You want the home gym, you're gonna be even more capable overall. I'm just saying, so if, you know, like, a lot of times, that alone can justify, like, certain types of consumption.

• 2:15:15Jocko Willink?

  For sure. Yeah, if you're, yeah, absolutely. I don't even think, when it, when it comes to me to making expenditures on things that are gonna make me better.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's not even, like, I don't hesitate on those things. I pull the trigger.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:29Jocko Willink?

  I make it happen. I don't play around, you know? I do not play around. And I've been known to be pretty tight with my money.

• 2:15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:37Jocko Willink?

  But not when it comes to something that's gonna make me better.

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  Not when it's real time.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:15:42Jocko Willink?

  Well,

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  amazing book, amazing life. Pick this book up on amazon.com. The book is called Wooden Leg, A Warrior Who Fought Custer. Maybe later, we'll do some more. Maybe we'll do, do the other side of this battle. And maybe get a little bit more into the battle. Like I said, there's plenty of lessons learned from Custer. There's plenty of lessons learned there. And there's a lot of controversy around it, and that's, I, I tried to avoid the controversy. I've tried to stick with just what's being said by Wooden Leg himself. There's a lot of controversy about this battle, and who did what, and who is to blame, and what mistakes were made. And they're all, what, what, what I take from all those things? I'll learn from all of them. I'll learn from every theory. I'll learn from all of them. That's my

• 2:16:29Jocko Willink?

  But we'll definitely get into that. Um, this book is a gr- is just a great read. The mo- the more you can fill your head up with different perspectives and the more you can pay attention to Native American and learn more about their culture. Awesome culture, warrior culture. Yes, warrior culture. Love that. And like I said, uh, you know, serve with honor in all of our wars here. You know, which is, you know, we, we should probably do a whole podcast about, about Native Americans fighting in World War II and Vietnam and in the current conflicts we have.

• 2:17:04Jocko Willink?

  So you can pick that up on Amazon on the interwebs. And if you want to help the podcast, you can actually do a little click through of Amazon.

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, um, I'll put that book link on the website. Click on it, it'll take you right to the book. And as far as Amazon goes in general, there's a click through on the website. So.

• 2:17:28Jocko Willink?

  So it doesn't matter what you're gonna buy.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:17:30Jocko Willink?

  From Amazon.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  If you want to support the podcast.

• 2:17:32Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  That's, you know, that's essentially what we're talking about here.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  If you want to invest three to five seconds, opening that page and clicking through.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:40Jocko Willink?

  You want to support the podcast, that's a great way to do it. It doesn't cost anything.

• 2:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, getting in the game, making yourself, us, everyone really, more capable.

• 2:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Yes, let's improve all of our capabilities.

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, click through Amazon. Boom. Um, go to the website, click through and, and save it to your favorites. It's a little trick, little efficient trick. Support, um, actively, passively.

• 2:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, real active.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  Aggressively.

• 2:18:07Jocko Willink?

  Aggressively.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  Um, also speaking of making yourself capable supplementation.

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  Um, man, I still haven't gotten, uh, krill oil yet. I'll make that order tonight, but krill oil.

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  This is no longer on me.

• 2:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:24Jocko Willink?

  It's on you now.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we, you know, we took the steps. Yeah, we're doing it. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, well, it was always on me, let's face it. It's fun to put it on you, but nonetheless, krill oil is, would you say that's the main one?

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Man, I've been, I've been on krill oil for a long time and I dig it.

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, there it is. Uh, krill oil, warrior bars, these are just ones I'm recommending.

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Shrimp tech, just get your shrimp tech together.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  Go to Onnit, Onnit.com slash Jaco, that's for 10% off, but if you didn't know what Onnit is, it's, it's just the best supplement, we'll just say that. They have some other cool stuff on there too, but anyway.

• 2:19:02Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  That's the one, dope. I think they have some new stuff coming out too. We'll talk about that next time.

• 2:19:10Speaker 01

  I gotta do an evaluation on that one. Um, but yeah, Onnit is dope. Um, and of course, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. If you haven't already.

• 2:19:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:22Speaker 01

  That's a good one.

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  And tell your friend.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, tell your friend, and here's the-

• 2:19:25Jocko Willink?

  Tell all your friends, both of them.

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:28Jocko Willink?

  To subscribe to the podcast.

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  Here's, here's, it's, I mean, I guess it's kinda obvious for us to say, hey, tell your friends about our podcast, you know, that makes sense, but when you tell your friends about like, okay, so, I have a friend who has a friend, our friends, two of them, they listen to this podcast, oh, it's Jaco and Jaco, we knew them for a long time, they listen, then they tell their other friend, I didn't know this, but I see on Facebook,

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  "Thank you for telling me about Jocko Podcast," I, you know, all this stuff.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  So these were people that know us but didn't know about the podcast?

• 2:20:01Speaker 01

  No, two, yeah, well, no, no, two people knew us, knew the podcast, I'd be, apparently had told some people he was thanking them officially. Here's the thing, the more people who act like, I don't know, take anything you talk about, extreme ownership, we'll say. Anybody.

• 2:20:16Jocko Willink?

  Good book, by the way.

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  Good, good, but just the, the concept of extreme ownership.

• 2:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:20:21Speaker 01

  You get somebody implementing extreme ownership by a factor of 10% in their life, and they're in your life, that's an improved life.

• 2:20:30Jocko Willink?

  That is an improved life.

• 2:20:31Speaker 01

  That's why you, I would say, that's, that reason alone is a good reason to tell someone about the podcast.

• 2:20:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I hear from people that say the podcast has helped them out greatly, which is the best, it's why we're sitting here, right? Cause if I, if I didn't hear that from anybody? If we got no feedback, maybe we wouldn't be doing the podcast right now. Maybe we wouldn't have learned about a wooden leg tonight.

• 2:20:55Speaker 01

  Yup. Yeah, agree.

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, tell your friends about the podcast.

• 2:21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, get them in the game for sure.

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  And tell them about that YouTube channel. The YouTube channel, right? The YouTube channel.

• 2:21:06Speaker 01

  YouTube channel's good.

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Echo putting up videos almost on a daily rate right now. Oh wait, no we don't.

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  Bruh, I'm working on a good one. It's different.

• 2:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll let you know. I'll see if I can't get it up in the next week or so. But it'd be, it'd be good. And yes, I do promise I'll put more videos on there, but subscribe to YouTube. Yeah.

• 2:21:26Jocko Willink?

  You heard that, folks.

• 2:21:27Speaker 01

  Above and beyond just the podcast video.

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  I promise.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. There you go.

• 2:21:32Jocko Willink?

  The vague promise, by the way. I'm gonna put more videos on. That's like the one.

• 2:21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's alright, YouTube videos. And of course,

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  if you're into t-shirts, go to Jaco's store.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  Or rash guards. Here's the thing about the rash guard.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  I'm not a scientist, officially, but you know the 19% improvement of, of performance if you, if you wear the rash guard?

• 2:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  That, that we, um...

• 2:22:03Jocko Willink?

  It's starting to look like that is factual.

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, it's, what do you call it? Not proven, but what do you call it? Confirmed.

• 2:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed, yeah.

• 2:22:13Speaker 01

  UFC fighter, nine-year veteran UFC fighter, currently fighting in the UFC, confirmed it.

• 2:22:20Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed. So he can tell.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  Bro, if anyone can tell, he can tell. Measurable. Scientific, scientific.

• 2:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Why don't you say his name?

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  Cause while I'm saying this, I'm contemplating, should I say? Name is Cole Miller.

• 2:22:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we know who it is.

• 2:22:35Speaker 01

  The man.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Cole Miller did confirm

• 2:22:38Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 2:22:39Jocko Willink?

  That his jujitsu was 19% better.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  19%.

• 2:22:43Jocko Willink?

  On the mat.

• 2:22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed.

• 2:22:44Speaker 01

  Confirmed, yeah.

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  And again, that's, you know, if you were gonna be doing some kind of a scientific experiment, you'd want some kind of a doctor.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:22:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, somebody with a PhD.

• 2:22:52Speaker 01

  Expert.

• 2:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Some of them expert.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:54Jocko Willink?

  You got your expert right there.

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  Yup, there you go.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  You got Cole Miller. Sick jujitsu, by the way.

• 2:22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Jocko Willink?

  He's, he sees it, he feels 19%.

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  Yup. Proof.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  He's training with, he was training with Rowan.

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are those a few people.

• 2:23:10Jocko Willink?

  I trained with that guy. I trained with him one time in Hotlanta.

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That was like the first time I ever went into a place and I walked in, I was like, hey, man, I just want to train. And he looks at me, Rowan, Rowan Cornero, I think. And um, he's in UFC too. But I shook his hand and this was like 10 years ago or something. And I shook his hand. I was like, hey, man, good to meet you. I'm just here to train. Can I train on your mats? And he's like, yeah. Are you a black belt? He asked me that. And I was like, yeah, I am. And I don't know how he could tell.

• 2:23:39Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:23:39Jocko Willink?

  But like, you do. You do. He's like, are you a black belt? I said, yeah, man, my black belt should go on. Let's do this. But he's an awesome guy too, man. Super, super nice guy. But um, hopefully, maybe we need to get him a rash guard too, you know?

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  And that's not just for jiu jitsu. That's for um, you know, whatever, any physical activity that you need some, some, what do you call it? Range of motion. That that, if that means something to you, get the rash guard. It looks dope too. For people who have a certain level of aesthetic standard.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  For those of you that care.

• 2:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, about that kind of stuff. I know, yeah, you know, you're here to win. I dig it.

• 2:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Care about that.

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  I dig it, man. I dig it and respect for that. But in the event of you carrying what you look like, we've got many, many compliments on the look of the rash guard. So just look at it. Jaco store.com. You can look at the rash guard. Look at the shirts. If you like them, go ahead, get one. You can support that way.

• 2:24:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a good way to support. You don't need to donate money.

• 2:24:35Speaker 01

  Just look at them. If you like them, go ahead, get one. There you go. Well, if you get one, you gotta buy one, of course. But I'm just saying, I'm not saying, hey, go buy their shirt. I'm saying, check it out. Look at them. If you like how they look, then boom. If you like what they say, how they make you feel, go ahead, do that, right?

• 2:24:51Jocko Willink?

  Or if you just straight up need 19% improvement in your jiu jitsu game, then just get one.

• 2:24:55Speaker 01

  Or if you just need a t-shirt, but.

• 2:24:57Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 2:24:58Speaker 01

  Oh, we have hoodies too, by the way, coming out. One, two weeks, two more weeks, one more week, whatever.

• 2:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Run it late on the hoodies. Alright.

• 2:25:05Speaker 01

  Alright, yeah. Some patches coming out too, some Velcro stuff. Just, yeah, there, there's some good stuff on there. Check it out if you like. And, and we might have some tea, some white tea. I don't know.

• 2:25:14Jocko Willink?

  We do have, we do have Jaco white tea. And I'm gonna tell you, we didn't expect. Jaco White Tea to sell like crazy. But it's so you guys all that are listening to this, you guys got after it and all the white tea is gone.

• 2:25:30Jocko Willink?

  I apologize for that, number one. And you know what? They took it completely off of Amazon. They pulled it down. They did. I went to, because I was gonna, I was gonna tweet out some of the awesome reviews that it got. Yeah, sorry. Like people that are now deadlifting eight thousand pounds, by the way. No, this is a fact.

• 2:25:49Jocko Willink?

  He said he, his, his deadlift went from four oh five, you know, four hundred and five pounds to eight thousand pounds with Jaco White Tea. So there you have it. That's worth it in its own right. So you, you know, you always say on it supplementation is good. I don't see if, uh, uh, you know, a seven thousand five hundred pound improvement. So, uh, yeah, so Jaco White Tea is sold out right now, but by the, well, there's more coming. And depending on when you're listening to this, I'm, this is, what did it say? October fifteenth? Yes, it's October fifteenth. So right now it's sold out. It'll be back in full stock. And not only do we have the tin,

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  the deluxe tin that you can buy, but in the, in, you're gonna also be able to buy a reload, just a box with a hundred, a hundred count in there. And some people, someone wrote a bad review on Amazon. Good. And they said, hey, your price is too high, bro. I love, I love the podcast, but you can't sell me this Jaco White Tea for this amount of money. That's not cool. And so I talked to my tea people. Sure. And I said, tea people. Emily. Our, our price is too high. Wh- what are we gonna do about this? And she said, well, your price is high because you wanted to get this special hardcore tin to serve it in. And I was like, well, yeah, because we make, you know, we, we believe in quality, right? Sure.

• 2:27:11Jocko Willink?

  And so we want to have something that is like tough. So we got the tin. And she said, well, that tin costs a bunch of money to make and get sent over here and all this other stuff. And I said, okay, well, how can we make it cheaper? So. We got a box with a hundred in it. Up the volume, lower the price. So now, no, no one's gonna be able to complain about the price because it's gonna be on a par with any other white tea.

• 2:27:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:27:33Jocko Willink?

  Except for it's gonna make you be able to deadlift eight thousand pounds.

• 2:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a win-win.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Which is definitely worth it. I'd pay full, I'd pay premium price for that.

• 2:27:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, if T's gonna make you do that.

• 2:27:42Jocko Willink?

  So it's good to go.

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:27:44Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, so check out the Jocka White Tea and it's, uh, every, it's, it did sell out and the reason it sold out is because people were buying it. They bought one and then they bought five more.

• 2:27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:53Jocko Willink?

  It tastes so good and people are drinking it pre-jujitsu, drinking it in the morning, drinking it before a test. They're just drinking it all the time. It just tastes good. It replaces every other substance you need to drink.

• 2:28:07Jocko Willink?

  Pretty soon, pretty soon you're gonna be going out to a club and there's people gonna be like, oh, can I get you a drink, sir? And you go, yeah, I'll take a Jocka White Tea. They go, okay, they're gonna have it on tap. They're gonna have it on tap.

• 2:28:18Speaker 01

  Interesting how you called the tin, uh, what'd you call it? Deluxe or luxury? What did you call it? You call it something.

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Durable?

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  No, you know, I think you said like luxury or something.

• 2:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Premium.

• 2:28:27Speaker 01

  Premium, no, you said something.

• 2:28:29Jocko Willink?

  Luxury?

• 2:28:29Speaker 01

  I don't know, something like that. Nonetheless, we'll play back the tape. Nonetheless, this is like, this is like a bunker more. It's not luxury.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It's, well, we don't, we, we, we don't make things luxurious.

• 2:28:42Speaker 01

  Reinforced, reinforced. That's a reinforced.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  And what's cool is, guess what holds the pen on, the pens on my desk now?

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:47Jocko Willink?

  One of these. Guess what holds a bunch of nails out in my garage, one of these?

• 2:28:52Speaker 01

  That is hardcore.

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  Remember I told you the other day, I like things that have dual purpose?

• 2:28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:56Jocko Willink?

  This is one of those things. Dual purpose. You're gonna do something else with it.

• 2:29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, there's a little book you can get. It's called Extreme Ownership. It's about combat leadership. If you like the podcast, check out the book. And also you can check out the audio book that Leif Babin, who wrote the book with me. You, we read it. So it's just more of us talking. Check it out. That's Extreme Ownership. And also, of course, if you feel like you want to keep talking to Echo Charles and I, you, you believe it or not, you can just do it. You can talk to us. We're there and we're on the interwebs. And if you're on the interwebs and we're on the interwebs, that means we can communicate. Little thing called Twitter.

• 2:29:43Jocko Willink?

  On Twitter, Echo is at Echo Charles, I am at Jocko Willink. And remember when I said I was like gonna back off Twitter? I've been holding the line on Twitter, I'm ridiculous. But I have just hammer it. When I get, what I do is when I travel. When I travel, I gotta sit in an airport? No, I'm not gonna, I don't walk around in circles, I don't, I don't watch movies, no. I either read for the podcast, or I hammer Twitter, so.

• 2:30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's good to do, for, obviously, for obvious reasons, but, it, it kinda keeps you informed.

• 2:30:14Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 2:30:15Speaker 01

  You know how like, oh, it's getting too, too many, um, you know, a lot of people following you. You know, so if they're, if you get a certain number of people following, you can't respond to everything, you can't read. So a lot of, a lot of times, people will be like, hey, let me hire someone to do that, you know?

• 2:30:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's not.

• 2:30:31Speaker 01

  Or, or hey, you know, I'm not gonna spend more time on there, or whatever, cuz I'm too busy. So, instead of just maybe, you know, a little, they'll just be completely not be on it, you know? Yeah, they'll post stuff and then just kinda be it, that'll be it. But, well, you're, you're in touch now, you know what's going on.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I get a lot of good feedback, got a lot of good questions.

• 2:30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  Got a lot of good questions, and so that's worth it. So if you wanna, yeah, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We're both on there as well.

• 2:31:01Jocko Willink?

  And, that is, kinda where we're at with this whole gig. Now,

• 2:31:11Jocko Willink?

  I guess to close it out tonight, since we don't have time for questions,

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  you know, I just wanna say thanks to everybody for listening. Thanks for everybody, all the feedback that you're giving me. Hey, I'm hearing so much from, first of all, military guys. Military service members that are out getting after it, guys overseas right now, that are crushing the enemy. Godspeed. Keep getting after it. Stay aggressive. Absolutely. Stay safe. To police officers, which I hear a ton from back here. You guys, thanks for what you do. Thanks for keeping us safe. I, I can't even imagine having that job. To be honest with you, I can't imagine having that job. I don't have the temperament for that job. It's not, it's not, it's not for me. And for those of you that do that job.

• 2:32:03Jocko Willink?

  Stay strong. I know it's hard times right now. A lot of risk out there. A lot of aggressiveness. And you guys are in a extremely precarious position. Every single day, by the way. Every single call, every single moment. So. Thank you for what you do. Firefighters, of course, same thing. You guys getting after it and just running towards fire, right? That's overcoming an instinct. That's what you do for a living. So, thank you for what you do. Then of course, we have all the workforce out there.

• 2:32:41Jocko Willink?

  That is building and creating things and making things happen. And you are grinding and you are building your world and you're building our world.

• 2:32:53Jocko Willink?

  And so, thank you for doing that.

• 2:32:58Jocko Willink?

  And of course, and most important.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  As you roll through and as you continue.

• 2:33:10Jocko Willink?

  Think about wooden leg.

• 2:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Think about living hard. Think about holding the line. Think about being vigilant.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  And stay.

• 2:33:27Jocko Willink?

  Stay uncomfortable.

• 2:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Stay true.

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  And stay forward. Forward of the decay.

• 2:33:43Jocko Willink?

  And you do that.

• 2:33:46Jocko Willink?

  By getting out there.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Getting after it.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  So, until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.

• 2:33:59Jocko Willink?

  Out.