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Where to next? Goodbye. My favorite murder tea time of the podcast. Okay. You have something to show me? Okay. Hi. I forgot how to do this.
00:02:34
Oh, well, the thing I was going to show you is, so in episode 533, An Exercise in Frustration,
00:02:42
I told a story that featured many, many chinstrap beards. Right. And it was about Elizabeth Packard,
00:02:48
who was the woman who was institutionalized, but her husband sent her to an insane asylum. Right.
00:02:53
And then she got out and fought for everybody's rights. But talking about her husband, it was this man, Theodopolis Packard.
00:03:03
Theodopolis Theopolis. So one of the best things I've ever said. Theopolis, you're truly the most proud of that one.
00:03:08
It was pretty great. It's pretty great in the moment. But we were really enjoying his chinstrap years.
00:03:13
They also came up in the Henderson-Leweling story, the Quaker sex cult story that I recently told.
00:03:19
They've just been around us recently. recently. You've been sprinkling some neck beard into these stories here and there.
00:03:25
And the listeners have responded. That's right. Did we get chin strap hate mail?
00:03:29
Yes, but no, it was essentially just people in the comments section talking about it. And so
00:03:36
basically Jenny Scram on Instagram says it looks like John C. Reilly is dressed up and doing a bit,
00:03:42
which is very true. It does. Dressed up, but just in the bottom half of the beard.
00:03:46
Yeah. Erin Jalisa on Instagram says, the chin strap beard was as bad as I imagined.
00:03:52
Thank you. What in the Hellsby says, how is this episode not called Beards Abound?
00:03:58
Great question. Baseball Girl 247 says, I needed to see that chin strap beard to really get that story.
00:04:06
Yeah. It's terrifying. It's like, is that worse or a mullet worse? It's like an old timey mullet party in the front.
00:04:13
I think this is worse, though, because this makes no goddamn sense. No. Shin is bare.
00:04:18
Yeah, but they can eat soup. And I bet there was a lot of soup going around then.
00:04:22
And stews. And stews. And porridges. Which is so hard to do when you have a beard.
00:04:26
I've heard, my husband says. I just love that people got into that as well. Yeah.
00:04:31
So then it gave me this idea when you gave me the assignment of watching the drama.
00:04:36
Right. Oh, no. Are you going to make me grow a neckbeard? Yes. And you have to do it in one week.
00:04:41
I want to give you the assignment of you watch a movie called Witness, which has so many neckbeards in it, you wouldn't believe it.
00:04:50
Okay. And then we're going to talk about that movie. Which one is that? Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lucas Haas.
00:04:56
Harrison Ford goes undercover in an Amish settlement. I don't know. What do they call themselves?
00:05:02
What year is it from? It's from like 89. Okay. So Lucas Haas is a little boy. He's the best child actor ever.
00:05:08
I had the biggest crush on him. He is so good. legend. He's so good in this movie. It's so real. I think you're going to really...
00:05:18
Should I text Vince and see if I've already seen it and just totally forgot? But I feel like if I said Harrison Ford goes undercover with the Amish, you would have gone,
00:05:26
oh yeah, I've seen that. I haven't seen it. Also, and that's very much tied to... So Witness is your assignment just in honor of the chinstrap
00:05:33
beard. Got it. But then also after that, we might do a Harrison Ford assignment of, I must have you watch The
00:05:40
fugitive. Right. My assignment for you is you just want a fake beard and try and eat some stew
00:05:44
with it on. No. I'm like, wait, that's not a, here's the thing. All you have to do is watch
00:05:51
a movie Okay Witness And I wrote 1989 Why did I don need that Was I right No it 85 Damn it 85 I changing it so I don watch the wrong one Yeah I don watch the one from 89 89 Witness is so dirty Dude that is like a made for Cinemax
00:06:07
But I had a lot of fun watching the drama and then being like, I'm going to make up an opinion about this and we're going to discuss it on the fan call.
00:06:14
I'll do it. Hell yeah. Okay, great. It's going to happen. It's a deal. I love assigning each other things to watch.
00:06:19
Assignments. Assignments. Assignments. I was provided some information just to convince you more.
00:06:23
Witness has 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Oh, then I'll watch it. Because you know how I live by the RT rating.
00:06:31
You will only. That's all I ever talk about. Is this RT approved? Georgia's constantly saying.
00:06:36
What did RT say about this? Because I got to check into my RT. Speaking of Rotten, we have a podcast network.
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That's right. Called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights. Please listen to these other podcasts for us.
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Thank you. We have roughly 16 incredible podcasts. Handpicked by us. Chosen. That's right.
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And then performed by some of the greats in the biz. That's right. A series of hit podcasts.
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Yeah. Can't be denied. For example, our most recent hit, Disgraceland with Jake Brennan that's here on the network.
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That is a rad story. Yeah. And then over on Ghosted, Roz celebrates Pride Month by featuring queer creators all June long, including this week's guest, the one and only Tammy Brown.
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Doing it. Epic. Also, not to be gross, but this is a reminder to join the fan cult.
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You get access to all episodes of this podcast, My Favorite Murder, ad-free. You get merch store discounts on our merch.
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You get exclusive video and audio content and so much more. So stop complaining and go to fancult.supercast.com.
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Yay. Yay. You're off. I'm off the hook. You're on a three day weekend right now.
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Yes. Okay. Karen's going to do a solo. It's my solo story. I saw a TikTok. Okay. I need a t-shirt
00:11:46
that said I saw TikTok. You do. Because it's all I say and kind of all I do. But it's great because
00:11:52
as we all know we getting into an era where experts are finally speaking and getting up on camera and getting on mic and being like hey you don have to be I don know Sydney Sweeney to get here and perform and speak publicly
00:12:07
It's not that big of a deal. I thought you were going to talk about peptides. Oh, I will because I'm the expert on peptides. Okay. The copper peptides are what you want these
00:12:14
days. Sure. Just found out about that. But it's basically like there's more and more people come
00:12:18
forward to talk about stuff. So I find that on TikTok, I'm finding so many more people who are
00:12:24
the source of the information. The researchers themselves, the authors themselves, the investigative
00:12:30
journalists. Exactly. All those people that are now the ones telling the story, which I love.
00:12:35
Yeah. So I don't know if this person is any of those things, but they're the reason that I learned
00:12:41
about this story I'm about to tell you. And they inspired me to want to tell the story as well.
00:12:47
Love it. So it's a TikTok from a woman named Mary Kate Teske. Okay. So that's her name on TikTok.
00:12:53
If you want to go follow her, this is how I first found out about this story. So if you are listening to this the day this episode comes out, which is June 25th, 2026,
00:13:03
hi, your first day of, listener, I want you to know today is the 150th anniversary of one of
00:13:10
the most infamous battles in American history, the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as
00:13:15
Custer's Last Stand. Okay. On this day in 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his men were wiped out
00:13:22
by Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors who are under the command of legendary Native
00:13:28
leaders like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Of course, the history lesson we got about this
00:13:34
battle presents Custer as some kind of noble martyr to our expanding nation and completely
00:13:40
ignores the Native American experience and perspective and version of the story. But that
00:13:45
changed around 2005 when Montana's tribal colleges began to spearhead a push to preserve the state
00:13:52
native histories and storytelling. And so they gather a group of northern Cheyenne storytellers
00:13:58
in Billings, Montana, so that they can share their oral history of the Battle of Little
00:14:03
Bighorn, which the Cheyenne and other Plains tribes actually called the Battle of the Greasy
00:14:09
Grass. So for many people outside the Cheyenne community, they will be hearing for the first
00:14:16
time that day the truth about what happened. And what those storytellers in Billings describe
00:14:22
ends up capturing headlines across the country because for the first time, we hear about the Cheyenne warrior responsible for Custer's death.
00:14:30
So today, in honor of the 150th anniversary, I'm going to tell you the story of that warrior.
00:14:37
Her name is Buffalo Calf Road Woman. That's right. Our sources for today's story are articles from the Independent Record and the Billings Gazette
00:14:47
Archives and the work of writers Rosemary and Joseph Aganito. And the rest of the sources are
00:14:54
in our show notes. Okay, so everything in this is going to be very condensed and very like
00:15:00
our version of things. This is the Karen Georgia Wikipedia version of things. Called My Favorite Murder.
00:15:07
No offense, Maren McClashen, my brilliant researcher, but to tell stories like this,
00:15:11
I will assume people know as little as I do about American history, about Native American history, about all these things that are really important that
00:15:20
I just feel fully uneducated about. So by the 1800s in America, the Cheyenne are a powerful
00:15:27
nation spread across the Great Plains with a population in the thousands. They are a vibrant
00:15:33
horse-centric culture with a highly organized military system. And while Cheyenne warrior
00:15:39
culture is largely associated with men, gender norms are not cut and dried with this tribe.
00:15:45
Authors Rosemary and Joseph Vanganito write about the Cheyenne, quote, We have numerous accounts of women taking up weapons and risking their lives when attacked.
00:15:54
Women were adept at using a variety of weapons, including the gun, end quote. So by the 1840s, what's going on in the United States is that we are aggressively expanding under the banner of Manifest Destiny,
00:16:08
which is basically the belief that white Americans are ordained by God to spread across the North American continent.
00:16:14
and to take whatever they want, essentially. So while the Cheyenne have long had to defend themselves against rival tribes,
00:16:22
the defense is now needed to fight the encroachment of white settlers and the army.
00:16:28
So as tensions ramp up, some Cheyenne leaders seek peace with the United States.
00:16:33
At this point, the Cheyenne nation is broadly divided into northern and southern Cheyenne.
00:16:39
So Buffalo Calf Road Woman is born into the northern Cheyenne tribe in what is now Montana.
00:16:44
Her birth year is believed to be 1844. But unfortunately, we have almost no personal details about Buffalo Calf Road Woman or her life because Cheyenne oral history is heavily disrupted by forced assimilation onto reservations and into places like Native American boarding schools, which that story also needs to be told.
00:17:08
And I have been trying to work on a story about that Maren and I have for literally years to get it told correctly, concisely.
00:17:17
It's so expansive. It's so horrific. Yeah. And it's colonization. It's basically how do you tell the story of colonization in this country?
00:17:25
Totally. So what we do know about the life of Buffalo Calf Road Woman is that her childhood is shaped by an ever escalating tension with these white pioneers in the U.S. military.
00:17:35
in 1851 when she's about seven years old, the Treaty of Fort Laramie is signed in Wyoming.
00:17:43
So it formally recognizes a large stretch of the Great Plains as belonging to seven different tribes that include the Cheyenne.
00:17:50
But just a few years after that signing in 1858, gold is discovered in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado And so white miners flood the area in what now remembered as the Pikes Peak Gold Rush So even though this is supposed to be protected land
00:18:05
the United States does nothing to stop them. Then in 1861, the betrayal multiplies when the
00:18:11
U.S. signs a new treaty that shrinks Cheyenne territory down to a 13th, roughly a 13th of its
00:18:18
previous size, so that it can open more land to white settlement and mining operations.
00:18:25
Many Cheyennes simply refuse to comply, continuing to hunt and live on land that is now suddenly declared off limits to them, even though they have lived there for literally thousands of years.
00:18:35
Buffalo Calf Road Woman is around 15 years old when all of this starts taking place.
00:18:41
She's coming of age as this violence begins to intensify across the plains. And as writer Catherine S. Gardner puts it, quote,
00:18:48
She never experienced the Cheyenne life of her elders. From birth until her death, her tribe and culture were continuously under threat of extermination. End quote.
00:18:58
And it's kind of fascinating because she has, and it'll come up a little bit later, but she has a brother.
00:19:05
And imagining the life of a young woman who absolutely had to know how to fight, absolutely had to be good at it.
00:19:14
And in their culture, which is a militaristic culture, that was a big thing for the Cheyenne.
00:19:20
I just can't imagine that she didn't absolutely go get right into the training and the fray and everything else.
00:19:27
She's a teenager watching her people being massacred. So in stark contrast to Buffalo Calf Road Woman's story and the fact that we barely know anything about it, we know a lot about the early life of George Armstrong Custer.
00:19:42
He was born in Ohio in 1839, just a few years before Buffalo Calf Road Woman was born.
00:19:48
Custer is largely raised in Michigan. He develops an early knack for getting into trouble.
00:19:53
He does very badly in school. He graduates last in his class at West Point in 1861.
00:19:59
Last. That's kind of impressive. It's fucking nutso that he's one of the most famous military entities of this time.
00:20:09
And he was the worst student in his class in 1861. He had an unbelievable 726 demerits.
00:20:17
Jesus. Which I guess is like, you're in trouble. Yeah. It happened that many times.
00:20:22
But the Civil War starts the same year that he graduates, so the U.S. Army is desperate to fill ranks, and Custer quickly becomes an officer.
00:20:31
But his blatant disobedience is what helps him arguably rise so quickly through the ranks.
00:20:36
He shoots up the chain of command while in his early 20s and becomes the subject of glowing Union newspaper coverage, earning him the nickname, the Boy General.
00:20:44
And some of that reputation is earned. Custer is known for charging straight into battle and relentlessly pushing his men while they're under fire, with he himself often riding in the front of the cavalry instead of the back. He is seemingly unfazed by the threat of death.
00:21:02
Any of that sound familiar to a certain personality type that you've heard of over the years?
00:21:07
Narcissist? Sociopath. Sociopath. Right? Yep. He's just like, no rules apply to me.
00:21:15
I do what I want. And, oh, it's something horribly dangerous. Let's all go over there.
00:21:21
Let's do it. But he's also very smart, and he's keenly aware of the power of self-mythology.
00:21:26
So his public image is very calculated. As Time Magazine points out, quote, Custer ghostwrote newspaper dispatches in which he pretended to be a correspondent
00:21:36
and inflated his own roles in battles and military exploits. Wow. Yeah. It's like he left comments in his own section.
00:21:44
Yeah. Like, I love this guy. He's so brave. What a great leader. He's also very flashy.
00:21:51
He perfumes his flowing blonde hair with cinnamon oil, and he wears a custom blue velveteen jacket and a wide-brimmed hat and a bright red tie into battle.
00:22:01
None of those are standard issue. That was his costume. Custer clearly wants to stand out.
00:22:07
It works. He's famous before the war is through. So meanwhile, the situation on the plains between the Cheyenne and the United States remains volatile. In November of 1864, these tensions boil over in a horrific way when an army colonel named John Shivington approaches the Cheyenne and Arapaho camp at Sand Creek in eastern Colorado.
00:22:28
There's about 700 people at this camp, and it's led by Southern Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle, who's repeatedly sought peace with the United States.
00:22:36
So this is one of the many tribal leaders of the Native people who constantly were like, yeah, let's agree that, you know, let's do this.
00:22:47
Let's divide up this land. There's plenty of it. We've been here a long time. And every single time it'd be like, sure, sure.
00:22:55
Here's some pox-filled blankets. Massacre. To the point where at this camp, there's a white flag and an American flag flying.
00:23:03
But Colorado's then-Governor John Evans does not seem to care. He wants the Cheyenne removed from this area.
00:23:10
So Chivington and some 700 volunteer soldiers attack the camp, and they kill around 150 people.
00:23:18
And most of them are women and children. The survivors are traumatized by memories of their loved ones being mutilated in front of them.
00:23:25
News of the massacre spreads quickly across the plains, provoking fury, despair, and the end of whatever hope was left that the U.S. could be trusted by the Cheyenne and the Native people.
00:23:38
And even some white Americans are outraged at the time. And Chivington ends up resigning in disgrace.
00:23:45
Still, neither he nor any of his men are criminally prosecuted for the massacre at Sand Creek.
00:23:50
Now it's 1865. The Confederacy has been defeated. The civil war comes to an end.
00:23:56
So a now 25-year-old Custer is sent to the frontier. He swaps his blue velveteen for buckskins, which again are not standard issue.
00:24:06
So he's got his new costume, his new personality, and his next assignment is to help force the
00:24:12
Plains tribes onto U.S. designated reservations. These are very difficult campaigns for the United
00:24:17
States. They are usually very much outmatched by the Native warriors. Meanwhile, in 1867,
00:24:24
Custer ditches his post to visit his wife in Kansas, which results in a court-martial.
00:24:30
his suspension from rank, and the loss of his paycheck for a year. Despite his insubordination, though, the U.S. Army is convinced that they need someone as aggressive as Custer
00:24:39
to fight against these resisting Plains tribes. So less than a year after being court-martialed, he's reinstated, and the newspapers refer to it as, quote, Custer's luck.
00:24:50
The system is beyond rigged. Right. So the next year in 1868, the now 29-year-old Custer is brought to Black Kettle's village, now sitting on the Washita River in modern Oklahoma. Four years after the Sand Creek massacre, Black Kettle is still trying to broker peace with the United States. But the U.S. military increasingly classifies any Native communities living outside the reservations to be, quote, hostile adversaries.
00:25:17
So Custer's men carry out another brutal attack. They kill dozens of Native people, including Black Kettle himself. They kill the chief. Hundreds of horses are slaughtered and lodges are burned to the ground.
00:25:29
So news of these attacks again spread rapidly across the plains. And again, even among white settlers, the brutality and violence of this attack instantly makes Custer a controversial leader. But it also cements him as one of the United States most well-known so-called quote-unquote Indian fighters.
00:25:49
Around the same time in 1868, a second treaty of Fort Laramie is signed. The treaties have the same name because they're signed at Fort Laramie at both times.
00:25:59
But this treaty establishes the Great Sioux Reservation and recognizes the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory as belonging to the Lakota.
00:26:07
But the same situation plays out here like it did before. In 1874, gold is discovered in the Black Hills.
00:26:14
White miners come flooding in. The U.S. Army, for its part, sends Custer to investigate the reports of gold.
00:26:20
He confirms them. And then that leads the U.S. government to try to purchase the Black Hills back from the Lakota.
00:26:27
Can you imagine? The Lakotas say no, which begins to fuel tensions with the U.S., but then strengthens resistance among the Plains tribes.
00:26:36
So it's the Lakota, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne. So the U.S. seizes the Black Hills from the Lakota in 1877.
00:26:43
And just FYI, a century later in 1980, the Supreme Court rules this seizure was unjust and they awarded the Sioux Nation monetary compensation.
00:26:56
But the Sioux Nation refused to take the money, insisting they just want the land back.
00:27:03
The fight to return this land continues to this day. It's believed that land is now worth more than a billion dollars.
00:27:10
By 1876, the conflict between the United States Army and a coalition of Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota warriors has boiled over into the Great Sioux War.
00:27:21
Buffalo Calf Road Woman is now in her early 30s, and she's living in the Rosebud Valley of Montana along Rosebud Creek with Lakota and Arapaho allies.
00:27:31
And here, in June of 1876, a U.S. general named George Crook arrives outside of her camp with 1,300 of his men, and the Native coalition fights them in a battle that lasts several hours.
00:27:45
According to tribal oral tradition, Buffalo Calf Road Woman's brother, a warrior named Comes in Sight, is among the thousands of Native men who charge the U.S. soldiers.
00:27:57
But during the fighting, Comes in Sight is knocked off his horse and he gets trapped under fire.
00:28:03
So essentially in these battles, if you get knocked off your horse, it's basically you're dead because someone just comes by and shoots you.
00:28:10
So he's on the ground. His death is all but ensured until his sister, Buffalo Calf Road Woman, jumps onto her horse and charges directly into battle.
00:28:20
She rides so fast, no bullets can strike her. And per the oral account, she pulls her brother up onto her horse and she gets him to safety.
00:28:32
In the middle of a full-on war. In the end, the Native coalition forces the U.S. troops to retreat.
00:28:38
Today, United States history remembers this event as the Battle of the Rosebud, but the Cheyenne remember it as the fight where the girl saved her brother.
00:28:49
Buffalo Calf Road Woman is believed to be the only female warrior who rides into this battle.
00:28:54
So this Native victory is extremely important because just eight days later, Custer arrives at another encampment belonging to the same Native coalition.
00:29:03
But this time they're in the Little Bighorn Valley in southeastern Montana. And this time, crucially, Custer does not have the amount of troops like reinforcements that General Crook had.
00:29:16
They have all retreated after the loss at the Battle of the Rosebud at the fight where the girl saved her brother.
00:29:22
But on top of that, Custer badly underestimates the size of the coalition that he is about to attack and probably the talent of it.
00:29:30
So on June 25th, 1876, Custer and around 600 soldiers arrive near the Little Bighorn encampment.
00:29:38
His forces are split into several battalions intended to attack the camp from different directions.
00:29:44
Custer himself heads north with about 200 men. But what they don't know is that word of this impending attack is spreading quickly among the tribes.
00:29:53
They know it. They have lookouts They know how to use this land and protect their camps And so immediately they know that it happening and thousands of warriors rise up and ride into battle
00:30:06
Many of the same who had just fought the Battle of the Rosebud days earlier. The Battle of Little Bighorn is hard, fast, and totally chaotic.
00:30:17
One U.S. battalion attacks only to immediately retreat after realizing how incredibly outnumbered they are.
00:30:23
Then a second battalion retreats. And so Custer looks around, all his men are leaving, but he makes himself and his 200 men push forward anyway. And they're completely overwhelmed. In less than an hour, every single soldier riding with Custer is killed, including Custer himself.
00:30:42
Holy shit. And because there's no survivors who can report back to the army officially what happened or to newspaper reporters, the historical record around Custer's last moments are very murky, which, of course, then sets the stage for the folk hero treatment that he ends up getting.
00:30:58
What we do know is that Custer's body is found among dozens of his men with two bullet wounds.
00:31:04
One is in his heart and the other is in his head. It's not until 2005 in Billings, Montana, when those northern Cheyenne storytellers
00:31:12
finally share their oral history of Little Bighorn that we learn what really happened.
00:31:18
They say that Colonel Custer was shot to death on the ground because he got knocked off his horse by a Warriors club.
00:31:24
and that day they reveal that the same woman who saved her brother from certain death in the battle
00:31:33
days before is the one who knocked custer off his horse it's buffalo calf road woman oh my god
00:31:40
and the oral accounts describe her as being quote out in the open during this intense battle wasn't
00:31:46
like she was off to the side or whatever she was in the fray and they also confirmed that quote
00:31:52
she stayed on her horse the entire time. So the Battle of Little Bighorn is arguably the most famous native victory of the Plains Wars
00:32:00
and one of the most infamous defeats in the U.S. Army's history. The Northern Cheyennes say that's the reason they kept the story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman a secret for so long.
00:32:11
They were afraid that when the Army heard that a Cheyenne woman is basically the one who got Custer killed,
00:32:17
it would result in even harsher assaults by the army on their tribes. Retalliation.
00:32:23
Yeah. The U.S. still seeks retribution for the defeat, and Buffalo Calf Road Woman, like many Cheyenne,
00:32:29
remain under constant pressure from the military to submit to U.S. authority or be killed.
00:32:35
In 1877, she and her family will be forced onto an Oklahoma reservation. She spends about a year there enduring brutal living conditions,
00:32:44
and it's believed there she gives birth to her second child. Not long after, in 1878, she and her family joined what's known as the Northern Cheyenne Exodus, which was a desperate, defiant, and ultimately successful push led by the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs Morningstar and Little Wolf to leave the reservation and return to its Montana homeland.
00:33:06
So Buffalo Calf Road Woman is one of the 300 women, men, and children who escaped the Oklahoma
00:33:12
reservation. They set out on a dangerous, exhausting journey spanning hundreds of miles.
00:33:18
Along the way, members of the group are captured by American troops or they're killed in skirmishes.
00:33:23
Others die of exhaustion or of illness. And Buffalo Calf Road Woman is among those. She dies in 1879
00:33:30
in her mid-30s, likely of diphtheria. We're not sure. She's believed to be buried somewhere near
00:33:37
present-day Miles City, Montana, but her grave has never been identified. It's unclear how many
00:33:43
members of this group ultimately made it to Montana. Sources suggest it's less than half
00:33:48
the original number, so around 150 people. But this exodus puts enough political pressure on
00:33:54
the U.S. government that the northern Cheyenne, who do make it to Montana, are not forced back
00:33:59
to Oklahoma. This is how the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana is
00:34:05
established in 1884. And of course, in death, General Custer and Buffalo Calf Road Woman could
00:34:12
not have been treated more differently. Custer is the subject of countless history books,
00:34:17
biographies, paintings, photographs, yet there isn't a single confirmed portrait of Buffalo Calf
00:34:23
Road Woman to be found. And most of the images that you see online of her use either misidentified
00:34:29
photos of other Native women, or Slop.ai, where it's just Slop.ai. So in February of 2026,
00:34:36
the Trump administration issues an executive order calling for a review of signs and exhibits
00:34:41
at national parks and monuments that could be seen as critical of the U.S. government.
00:34:46
That includes signage at the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn. The Washington Post reported
00:34:51
earlier this year that, quote, at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana,
00:34:56
exhibit text that described the United States being, quote, hungry for golden land and breaking promises to Native Americans was ordered changed or removed.
00:35:07
Just fucking rewrite history, why don't you? And erase it. Yeah. Worked before. Another text describing how U.S.-run boarding schools for indigenous children violently erased cultural identities and language was also deemed not to comply with Trump's policy.
00:35:23
If the facts don't comply with your policy, you're feeling who's wrong with your fucking policy.
00:35:30
It's not an option. No. It's not a choice to say it didn't happen. Well, not for fucking people who aren't psychotic.
00:35:39
So the Northern Cheyenne leadership is actively opposing this administration's efforts.
00:35:45
Tribal leaders issued a press release this past February saying, quote, This attempt to change or remove tribal markers and monuments dims the light of the healing and progress we have all made End quote Which is a very generous thing to say in the light of Native American progress and how little any government has ever given them or made for them
00:36:07
Yeah. And you're trying to take that away as well. But that goes too. While there's never been a monument for Buffalo Calf Road Woman, she has always been memorialized
00:36:17
by her people who have carried the story of her courage, her strength, and her valor in
00:36:21
two bloody battles for more than a century. When telling Buffalo Calf Road Woman's story,
00:36:26
a Northern Cheyenne saying is often shared, and it says, quote, A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done,
00:36:35
no matter how brave its warriors or how strong its weapons. Buffalo Calf Road Woman's heart
00:36:40
was never on the ground. She stayed on her horse the whole time. And that's what we're gonna do.
00:36:47
Hell yeah. And that's what we're going to do. Tonight we ride. Tonight we ride. And that's the story of the Cheyenne warrior, the one who defeated Custer, Buffalo Calf Roadwoman.
00:36:59
Wow. I wish we could have the actual historical story because I bet it's even more badass.
00:37:07
And there's even more fucking incredible things she did and other women and her tribe that we just don't know about.
00:37:14
And in thinking about that, how many stories have been lost of people just like her because of the annihilation of the genocide of the Native American people in this country.
00:37:26
It is a gigantic tragedy, the effects of which continue to this day. Yeah. Yeah. Well, great job. I had never heard that. I'm so glad I did.
00:37:34
Right? Me too. I wish we could know more. Do you want to make a donation? Definitely.
00:37:40
Let's donate to the Native American Rights Fund. Here's their quote about themselves.
00:37:44
They hold governments accountable. They fight to protect Native American rights, resources, and lifeways through litigation, legal advocacy, and legal expertise.
00:37:53
Hell yeah. So we'll give them $10,000. If you want to donate to the Native American Rights Fund, go to narf.org and give them what you can give them.
00:38:03
Amazing. Well, great job. Thank you. Excellent solo episode. Thank you, right? Yeah.
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Thanks, Hyundai. Thanks, Hyundai. This one, it's from Brittany A. And she wrote in the fan cult, it says,
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My 97-year-old cowboy grandpa and long-standing conservative Mormon aunt told me they didn't vote for the current administration
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happy hour at our local wine bar. Hashtag TGIF. I hope she went to TGIF. That's her local wine bar.
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She gets the best wine at TGIF. They have a Josh Cellars. It is. It's all yellow.
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Top to tail yellow. I get four cubes of ice and a shot of Dr. Pepper. Well, I mean like happy hour.
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Happy hour is, there's nothing like it. What a reward. If you're at happy hour, your life is going well.
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Yeah, and don't forget, you don't have to drink at happy hour. You can eat their weird hors d'oeuvres.
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Totally. Get those happy hour sliders. Get in there. very similar, but on the other end of the spectrum. This is from Eat, Shoot, Some Travels
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over on Instagram. And they say, I paid off my mortgage at 43 by myself. I'm not rich. I just
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Yes. And we love it. I love the water and was frustrated by the lack of swimming in adulthood.
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That's so true. Yeah. There's not enough. I dive in every class and the older ladies are always
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shocked and slightly offended, but they're sweet and have added me to their swim sisters email
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chain. Oh my God. So much shit is talked on the email chain. Betty, you're not going to believe
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you should have seen the way she looked in her three piece suit. We talk about books. We were
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sandals with carrots and bunnies on them in Chinatown. That is such a good past time kind
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of like way to fill your time. Yeah. Cause it's very social, you know, shoulders and head above
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water almost the whole time. It's not going to get fucked up. You can chat, chat, chat. I really
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love an alt workout routine is my favorite thing. I'm not going to do it. Right. I love it knowing
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