Badass of the Week Returns, Part One: George Rogers Clark

Summary

Ridiculous History: "Badass of the Week Returns, Part One: George Rogers Clark"

iHeartPodcasts | July 21, 2026
Guests: Ben Thompson & Dr. Pat Larish ("Badass of the Week")
Hosts: Ben Bowlin & Noel Brown

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Episode Overview

This episode launches the "Badass of the Week" theme on Ridiculous History, with Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown joined by Ben Thompson and Dr. Pat Larish of "Badass of the Week." They dive deep into the story of George Rogers Clark—an oft-overlooked figure in the American Revolution whose daring, diplomacy, and wilderness savvy led to the capture of vast Midwest territories. The episode also explores the nuanced roles of France and frontier communities in the Revolution and peels back myths about American westward expansion.

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1. Setting the Stage: Introducing "Badass of the Week" and George Rogers Clark

[06:30–08:13]

• The episode inaugurates "Badass of the Week Week" on Ridiculous History.
• Ben Thompson and Pat Larish join to spotlight historical figures whose toughness and strategy shifted the course of events.
• The focus: George Rogers Clark—a frontiersman and revolutionary who, with a ragtag band, captured a territory that would become five future U.S. states, mostly without firing a shot.

Memorable Moment:
"I was trying to think of an interesting angle... America 250 doesn't happen without France being involved. So we're going to have kind of a French flavor to these next two episodes." — Ben Thompson [07:37]

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2. The French Connection in the Revolution

[07:37–11:32]

• The American Revolution, especially on its 250th anniversary, tends to highlight familiar events on the East Coast, but the French role is underappreciated.
• Before military involvement, France supplied weapons, money, uniforms, and even smuggled arms to American forces.
• French and Spanish alliances proved decisive.
• The panel jokes about French stereotypes and sports, using levity to emphasize the depth of France's contribution.

Quote:
"Even before [France] became involved on an open military perspective, they were sending weapons and money... All the rifles that we were using were made in France legally and illegally." — Ben Thompson [10:03]

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3. The American Frontier & Clark’s Background

[13:34–19:07]

• The Revolution wasn’t just an East Coast affair; Kentucky, western Virginia, and other frontier lands were hotbeds of conflict and opportunity.
• George Rogers Clark (b. 1752 near Charlottesville, Virginia) was a land surveyor—skills essential for navigating and surviving the frontier.
• Surveyors then were wilderness adventurers, not just property markers: battling wildlife, fording unknown rivers, and encountering Native nations.
• The dangers of this life built Clark’s resilience and tactical knowledge—vital for his later exploits.

Quote:
"You're mapping uncharted mountains... making homemade rafts, you're sleeping in the trees to stay dry... you're dragging this heavy gear. You're charting uncharted land." — Ben Thompson [17:09]

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4. The British Foes: "Hair Buyer" Hamilton & Philippe DeJean

[20:40–27:46]

• Detroit was a British stronghold under the command of Henry Hamilton, dubbed "Hair Buyer Hamilton" for paying bounties for settlers’ scalps—regardless of source.
• His right-hand man was Justice Philippe DeJean, a draconian figure handing down death for petty crime.
• A grisly anecdote: DeJean forced a woman convicted of theft to hang her accomplice (botched execution), then had her hanged anyway.
• These men ran the region like a "fiefdom," oppressing both settlers and Native groups.

Notable Quotes:

• "He sends out a call that says, any warrior that brings me a scalp, I'll pay you money for it. And no questions asked... just bring me some hair and I'll give you money for it." — Ben Thompson [27:46]
• "He sentenced her and her accomplice to death by hanging, but he couldn't find a hangman... She agreed... But once she was done with that, the judge had her hanged anyway." — Dr. Pat Larish [25:25]

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5. Frontier Realities: Competing Interests and Alliances

[28:01–32:47]

• The region was ethnically, culturally, and politically complex: French settlers (recently conquered by Britain after the Seven Years War), numerous Native nations (Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, Delaware), and American settlers vying for land.
• Hamilton’s scalp bounties destabilized relationships among Native nations and between them and colonists.
• Tribes weighed alliances carefully: some elders discouraged selling scalps; intertribal rivalries and colonial expansion forced difficult choices.

Insightful Quote:
"There's a whole Game of Thrones thing happening here that is much more complicated than just like the British allies were attacking settlers." — Ben Thompson [30:46]

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6. Clark’s Mission: Outnumbered, Underequipped

[32:47–35:59]

• Clark, empowered by Virginia’s governor Patrick Henry (with little actual support), scraped together 150 militiamen from Kentucky—up against Hamilton’s garrison of 500+ British soldiers and Native/mercenary allies.
• The men cross into Illinois country in 1778—hunters and farmers with only scant military training.

Memorable Exchange:

• "He's basically an unpaid intern tasked with conquering a continent." — Ben Thompson [32:47]

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7. Winning Without Fighting: Diplomacy in Kaskaskia

[35:59–43:27]

• The first target: Kaskaskia, a French-speaking, Catholic town under nominal British control.
• Clark smartly leverages local power: partnering with Père Gibault, the Jesuit priest influential among French settlers.
• Clark promises minimal disruption, aligns on shared dislike of the British ("I kind of think the British are a bunch of pills"), and Gibault helps sway townsfolk to Clark’s side.
• Gibault also rallies the nearby town of Vincennes against British rule.
• Clark also gains support from Tobacco's Son ("Grand Door to the Wabash")—crucial among Native leaders.

Quote:
"He shows up with these 150 guys by the time they get here. Kaskaskia is not close to Kentucky... beards and stuff... He thinks, if I can win this town over... we can force these guys out of the fort without having to actually fight them." — Ben Thompson [38:32]

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8. The Siege and Survival Epic: Vincennes

[45:39–57:03]

• Hamilton, realizing his position is threatened, retreats to Vincennes and fortifies.
• Clark leads 172 men on a winter march of 180 miles through flooded, frozen "Drowned Lands," sleeping in trees to avoid the freezing mud and losing men to exposure (50:00–53:53).
• On arrival, nearly starved and spent, Clark plans a psychological assault rather than a frontal attack.
• He sends messages into town: "If you're with the British, go to the fort; if you're with us, stay home." Locals secretly aid Clark’s forces.
• Clark's men circle the fort, raise flags, and shoot warning shots, creating the illusion of a massive army and intimidating the enemy.

Funny/Striking Image:
"At one point, the water gets so deep they have this drummer boy with him, this kid, and he has to ride on his snare drum like a life raft because he can't... The water is over his head." — Ben Thompson [50:46]

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9. The Psyop and Surrender

[57:03–60:29]

• Hamilton, convinced he's surrounded by overwhelming force and abandoned by townsfolk, sues for parlay at the church.
• Clark, caked in mud and looking wild, bluffs: "If you don't surrender, I can't control what my maniacs do once we storm the fort."
• Hamilton surrenders—an entire British garrison, cannon and all, to Clark’s bedraggled, outnumbered Americans.
• Hamilton, denied officer’s privileges, is left to share a filthy cell with "felons and malefactors," moaning about the "mephitic" toilet (62:05).

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10. Aftermath: The Fortunes of War

[63:56–66:33]

• Clark’s victory—achieved through diplomacy, survival skills, and psychological warfare—results in the collapse of British control over Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
• Despite this, Clark receives little financial or political reward; he ends his life impoverished and alcoholic.
• Hamilton is paroled and promoted, living comfortably as governor in British colonies.
• Clark’s family legacy continues: his younger brother William will be the Clark in the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Quotes:
"He captures... the region that will become the states of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana." — Dr. Pat Larish [63:56]
"So in exchange for saving the securing the future of the Midwest, he just gets a stack of bills... poor guy dies in poverty." — Dr. Pat Larish [64:31]

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11. Reflection and Legacy

[66:33–68:35]

• The panel reflects on historical injustice: the "badass" who secured the Midwest died penniless, while his enemy enjoyed colonial appointments.
• They emphasize the profound impact of the Franco-American alliance and frontier alliances on the Revolution’s success.
• Next episode will continue the "French connection" with more direct French intervention stories.

Closing Exchange:

• "George walked so William could run. Or George trudged tomorrow so William could trudge." — Dr. Pat Larish [66:39]
• "We couldn't have done it without this one guy and the aid of the French people who lived in the region and the [Native] nations that helped out in the process." — Ben Thompson [68:09]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "You're mapping uncharted mountains... sleeping in trees to stay dry... It's math and science, survival at the same time."
  — Ben Thompson on surveyor life [17:09]
• "He sends out a call that says, any warrior that brings me a scalp, I'll pay you money for it. And no questions asked. Right."
  — Ben Thompson on "Hair Buyer" Hamilton [27:46]
• "There's a whole Game of Thrones thing happening here that is much more complicated than just like the British allies were attacking settlers."
  — Ben Thompson on Native alliances [30:46]
• "He's basically an unpaid intern tasked with conquering a continent."
  — Ben Thompson [32:47]
• "If you don't surrender right now, I'm going to storm the place. And once I storm the place, I won't be... My men are just wild men. They're all insane maniacs with bowie knives. I can't promise I can control them once we get into the walls."
  — George Rogers Clark's (quoted by Ben Thompson) parlay bluff [59:07]
• "He writes so much poetic complaining about how he has to... sit there with the 'felons and malefactors'... He calls it a kind of throne that is truly mephitic, which means foul smelling."
  — Ben Thompson on Hamilton’s prison experience [62:05]
• "In exchange for saving the securing the future of the Midwest, he just gets a stack of bills... poor guy dies in poverty."
  — Dr. Pat Larish on Clark [64:31]

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Key Takeaways

• George Rogers Clark's campaign west of the Appalachians combined diplomacy, grit, and cunning to deliver a blow to British power far greater than his numbers should have allowed.
• The French presence in the Midwest, and Franco-Native American alliances, were crucial to his success.
• The reality of frontier warfare and alliances was vastly more complex than the sanitized, Kumbaya mythos often seen in popular history.
• Heroism and historical impact do not always guarantee just rewards—Clark died uncelebrated and impoverished, while his British rival ended comfortably.
• Clark’s story is also that of unsung communities—French settlers, tribal negotiators, and ordinary frontiersmen—without whom U.S. expansion would not have been possible.

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Next episode promises more direct French involvement—more "Badass of the Week" to come!

Find "Badass of the Week" wherever you get podcasts.

Transcript

[A]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning. Tuning in. That's Our super producer, Mr. Max Chesapeake Cape Williams. Which will make sense later.

[B]

Will.

[A]

Will it will. It'll make.

[B]

Will it make sense as it pertains to Max's personality as a human.

[C]

Ooh.

[A]

That remains to be seen. That's Mr. Noel Brown. They call me.

[D]

I'm trusting you, second chair Ben.

[A]

They call me Ben Bollen here. For tax purposes. We won't look into that. Guys, this is very exciting week is huge for us because we are joined with a mythological phenomenal duo, the co host of Badass of the Week. So let us welcome none other than Dr. Pat Larish and the returning guest, Ben Thompson.

[D]

Hi guys. Thanks for having us back on. We are excited to be here and tell some fun badass stories from history.

[E]

Matt.

[B]

Max, I gotta take issue with you referring to Ben as chair Ben. That is unacceptable.

[D]

But we have two Ben's.

[B]

But Ben is first chair of his bendam. You know, they can each be that. We can have co first chairs where they're co chairs.

[D]

I'm. I'm Ben 3. I'm Ben 3 in my wife's phone because she numbered them in the order that she met them. Isn't that fun? One was a coworker. Ben two was her volleyball partner. I'm Ben three. I was like, I can't. We're married.

[F]

I keep.

[C]

You got to change.

[G]

You just.

[B]

Ben, you don't. I disagree. I think historical naming conventions in In Contact is delightful. I think it always stay the same. Never change a thing.

[H]

Are you sure it's a three and not like a phonetic representation of some sort of guttural sound or something?

[A]

Oh, coveted hot Pat. We love it. Because we were also talking off air. First off, huge fans of Badass of the Week. We were talking off air a little bit about your. Your earlier work on the. One of the most prominent authors in all of the English canon, James Joyce. And we kind of warned you about our. Our earlier episode regarding his quite explicit love letters.

[B]

Warned, slash enticed.

[A]

We'll see.

[B]

We'll see how that shakes out. Yeah, I think I described that as our only NSFW episode to which I was told that's not quite the case, but it's definitely our most NSFW episode. This being a family show, we had to cat. We had to. What's the word? Trigger warning the hell out of that one.

[A]

Yeah, our. We trigger warning to the heck out of that. Our beep button was working overtime. Accounting did right back.

[F]

We.

[A]

We get charged.

[D]

I had no idea James Joyce was so filthy.

[A]

You were being so sarcastic.

[B]

He was into butt stuff. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm gonna leave it at that.

[A]

He's got some poetic language about farts. So before. So Pat and you all listen to that episode and completely lose all academic respect for us.

[D]

What about James Joyce?

[H]

Oh, yeah, James Joyce.

[I]

He's.

[H]

He's serious. He's a classic.

[B]

No, I just mean you should lose some. Some academic respect for him as well once you read these letters. We didn't write the letters. We just discussed them at length.

[H]

No, I mean the thing about being an academic is that you study. What is there you do.

[B]

It's not up to you.

[A]

Oh, Pat, we don't have time for it. But gosh. We want to know your opinions about Finnegan's wake in a future conversation.

[I]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[B]

This episode of Ridiculous History is brought to you by Grainger.

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This is the story of the 1.

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[A]

For now. We are launching into two different tales this week which are entirely about people who are badasses. So Ridiculous Historians, as you're tuning in, please do check out our friend's show, Badass of the Week. There's something that was new, I think to Max Noll and myself here, a guy named George Rogers Clark. How does this one start and what makes him a badass?

[B]

And also, I just want to point out this, this is Badass of the Week week here on Ridiculous History. And I yield my Badass Badass of the Week week.

[D]

It's like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

[B]

It's sort of a who's on third kind of situation. But yes, please, do tell. Let's get right into it. When I read George Rogers Clark captures five future US States. I think of like the Dave Clark five. Like this is like describing some sort of jazz banned. That is not the case.

[D]

He's doing some jazz with, he's doing

[A]

some jazz with the military improvisation of warfare.

[D]

Got it. Yes, exactly. We are doing some of that. So yes, it is Badass Badass of the Week week here. And we're going to talk about some cool stuff. Now. We've got, you know, we've got America 250 this year. So at Badass, we've been doing a lot of, we've been doing a lot of stuff for US History, American Revolution, that sort of thing. And you know, I was trying to think of an interesting angle to bring to you guys. And one thing that I think doesn't come up as much as it should is that America 250 doesn't happen without France being involved. So we're going to have kind of a French flavor to these next two episodes.

[B]

I love a little herbes de Provence, perhaps.

[D]

That's right. Yes. So that is the plan. And we're going to talk about some French involvement in the American Revolution in some ways that don't normally get recognized, I feel like, but that are cool and badass and should be talked about. So I guess it's best deal day now. By the time we're recording this, we're both like, we're both having like collective national sadness. Probably more them than us over the World cup stuff. But, you know,

[B]

Were they ever really in the running though? Guys, are the French really known for their football skills? I don't know. I'm asking.

[A]

Yeah, they are.

[C]

Okay, good.

[D]

No, they won at two World Cups ago and they were run up.

[B]

They won before us. Had no idea. Good to know.

[D]

Clearly, sports poo. They were like the number one team in the world before the loss. It was pretty big upset.

[B]

No, I'm poo pooing. Nothing. I just, I'm just asking. I just didn't know. When I think of the French, I guess I don't think of football skills.

[D]

And just to, just to, you know, just because it bear, bears mentioning, we, you know, as much as we are going to say like, you know, the French legitimately have a lot of involvement in America gaining its independence, we're going to make a bunch of jokes about the French too.

[A]

There you go.

[D]

I mean we gotta, we gotta keep that theme going.

[B]

Low hanging fruit.

[A]

It's good, it's the whole thing. And one interesting aspect here is despite a lot of the stereotypes about French culture in the United States, which are kind of inherited from World War II, at least despite those stereotypes and those kind of fun ribbing at your buddies things that we have in this culture, you raise an excellent point, Ben, that America reaching 250 years, as he said, it wouldn't have happened without French intervention. Is that correct?

[D]

That's correct.

[G]

Yeah.

[D]

I don't think that's like, I don't think that's even up for debate. So even before they became involved on an open military perspective, they were sending weapons and money and equipment and uniforms. All the rifles that we were using were made in France legally and illegally. There were guys who were like smuggling weapons out of France to help help us fight the English. You've got Lafayette. You've got a lot of French influence even before they join the war officially. And then when France and Spain join the war, things get really wild. And that's what we're going to talk about in the next part of this next episode. So for today, we're going to kind of be in the continental U.S. current continental U.S. i do have my co host on with me, Dr. Pat Larish.

[H]

Bonjour.

[G]

Bonjour.

[D]

And one thing that will come up occasionally as well is I, as much as I, as much respect as I have for the French and their ability to help us win the American Revolution. My pronunciation of French words is absolutely unacceptable.

[B]

I would argue you should lean into it. Just really make a meal of it.

[A]

Right there with you, Ben, because. Wait, Pat, do you speak French? Ah, okay.

[D]

Yes, yes. So anytime there's a French word in our podcast, I usually just stop talking and then she just says the word, or we just record her saying it so we can just clip it in there. So it just goes over top of me.

[B]

In earlier days of this podcast, we had a producer named Casey Pegram, who we still love so well, who we always described as a Francophile and a francophone, and he was our entry point into the world of French pronunciations.

[D]

Still is the vice president of my French club in high school, and I cannot make that R sound. There'd be a head shake and a

[B]

lowering of the eyes anytime we say a French word and then give us a hand.

[A]

I'll still text Casey on the case to say, hey, man, how do you pronounce this? And he'll say, you should get someone else to do it.

[B]

He's a very busy man.

[A]

So, Ben, take us. Take us back here. Okay, so we know that there is a character named George Rogers Clark. We know that there is a huge, diplomatically put kerfuffle between various forces as the United States becomes an emergent nation.

[B]

Ben, can I just say, you pronounce the French word kerfuffle beautifully.

[A]

Oh, thank you.

[H]

You want to roll the R a little more? Kef.

[A]

Kefa flop.

[D]

Sorry, I spoke too soon.

[B]

I spoke too soon. I should have known.

[A]

So we obviously know that the horrors of the creation of the United States still reverberate today in various iterations. You talk in some of your earlier work, Ben, about how American culture for quite some time sanitized the story. Right. Of the European arrivals. So really paint the picture for us here. Take us through the revolution, tell us a little bit about France's actual involvement, and then, you know, can. Can Pat, can you and Ben introduce us to this Georgia guy?

[D]

Yes. So we are going to do that. So we are not just going to kind of deal with. We'll deal with some stuff that's a little sticky. But I. You know, we're going to try to find a good way to approach it. Mostly, we're going to tell a badass wilderness survival story. Deception, adventure, Grizzly bears, diplomacy, bowie knives. A guy that you've never heard of before who captured territory in the American Revolution that ended up being five US States almost without Firing a shot.

[B]

Fantastic.

[K]

All right.

[B]

I'm excited.

[D]

That's the story we're going to tell.

[B]

I'm primed, as is our audience.

[F]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, you kind of describe in the baddest of the week piece that you sent us about this topic, or maybe this was some of your notes, this notion of that sanitization that Ben was that Ben Prime. No, that's not fair. That ridiculous history Ben was describing of this sort of Kumbaya moment of like, we met the Native Americans, we presented them with Marshmallow Peeps, and then we all held hands in a ring and sang Kumbaya.

[D]

Yeah, It's a little more complicated and tricky than that.

[F]

No.

[B]

Are you saying it wasn't entirely above board? Are you saying that maybe there was some. Yeah. Okay, let's hear it.

[D]

So, yeah, let's kind of set the scene of where we are here. So we are talking American revolution. We're talking 1770s, and when people think revolution, they're picturing Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, this Stamp act and throwing tea into the harbor. But the colonies extend out to the Appalachian Mountains. So you have this whole western section out here. Kentucky is there. Right. Virginia extends out to the Appalachians. You have people living on the frontier here, and they've got problems that are not associated with the harboring and quartering of soldiers or whatever. They're dealing with grizzly bears. They're dealing with starvation, cold. They're living in the mountains. They're being attacked by tribes from the Native Nations. There is some crazy stuff happening out here, and it's very hard place to live. Now, George Rogers Clark enters into this area. He's born 1752 outside Charlottesville, Virginia, but he ends up moving out to the west, which at this point is the Appalachian Mountains, is kind of the border. He is a land surveyor, which sounds like a pretty chill job. We picture the guys with the yellow tripods and the high vis vests standing at the middle of the road with a tiny.

[B]

Like a tiny telescope or something. Right.

[H]

My dad worked as an assistant to a land surveyor some summers when my sister and I were growing up.

[A]

Those guys are very chill, by the way. I don't know what your experience was, Pat, but usually they're of kind. They're kind of a cool head.

[H]

Yeah, sounds fair.

[A]

Diplomatically put.

[B]

I have not had the pleasure, but I am fascinated by their vests and their gear. And I'm always kind of wondering, what are they doing? Is it like in the modern version of land survey? I guess it's about Property boundaries and

[D]

you know, property lines.

[B]

It would have been literally like, you know, identifying tracts of land that could then be, you know, sold way more.

[A]

Yes, yes. In the past because there's a, there's a note that you said here, Ben, that we cannot lose, which was you said our guy, George Rogers Clark is out in the west. And everybody needs to keep in mind that at this point in history, this is pre Lewis and Clark, right. We haven't had any official comprehensive exploration by the Europeans over to the Pacific.

[D]

You don't know what's out there. Right. You're mapping uncharted mountains. You're being attacked by wild animals, mountain lions, bears, wolves. You're fording rivers that you don't know where they go. You're making homemade rafts. You're sleeping in the trees to stay dry. It's 1770s, right. You're carrying heavy ass equipment over mountains and across rivers. You're camping out. You don't have like gore tech, you don't have like a nice tent. You're, you know, and you're dragging this heavy gear. You're charting uncharted land. You don't know what's there. You're trying to track out stuff for, you know, maybe people could settle here. Maybe we can move in here. Maybe we can. Turns out people already live there and don't want you to live there. Well, don't want you to take their land. That's a problem for you. If your land survey at this time period, it's physically exhausting, it's dangerous and it requires you to kind of be a navigator, a survivalist or cartographer. You know, it's math and science, survival at the same time.

[B]

So just to clarify, at the end of the day, these efforts would have been to map these areas. Like what, who is he working for and what would this data have been intended for? Like, is he just laying out like what's available? Kind of like getting literal lay of the land? I'm curious.

[D]

Yeah, he's kind of making maps for Virginia. He's hired by Virginia, the state of Virginia or the colony of Virginia at this time. And yeah, it's like potential settlements. Potential. You know, we still know what's out there. Right. It's here there be monsters and we've got to figure out what's there. And he's, you know, it's Star Trek, Enterprise. Right, right. Exploring worlds.

[H]

Yes.

[I]

Yeah.

[H]

To boldly go where no European has gone before. And yeah, so he's got all these skills and he's using them and this is his background. This is why he succeeds later. He doesn't need a map. He made the maps. He understands. Clark understands the geography of the frontier better than any random British soldier or bureaucrat sitting behind a desk in Detroit.

[I]

Hmm.

[B]

Well, I mean, it's sort of like you don't really. You can't really understand the land from a map alone. Like, I'm horrible at directions and a map is honestly the only thing in mapping on my phone to get me places. But when I like, ride my bike and actually, like, I'm in the streets, it just commits more to my mind and I can like, actually kind of understand the geography a little better when I've actually experienced it actively, as opposed to just like as a passive, you know, map follower.

[A]

And I love the Detroit shout out, by the way. That.

[D]

That's Detroit is going to feature prominently. Detroit is the. Is where the bad guys are.

[A]

Okay, so also, to level set here, how old is our man George?

[D]

So when the war begins? He's 25. He's got this curly red hair. He's a big, strong Virginia dude, farm boy kind of thing he goes through. When he's in his early 20s, he goes through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky to stake his claim on some lands there. Starts building a life for himself. Kind of frontier picture, like the log cabin kind of lifestyle. Right? Old school. The American Revolution kicks off and now things are even more destabilized. He was already in the middle of nowhere. Now he's in the middle of nowhere and a war. And this kind of comes home to him because speaking of Detroit, Detroit is a major British fort at this time. And there is a guy in charge when the war begins. The guy in charge of Detroit is a dude named Henry Hamilton. He's the Lieutenant governor of the area.

[J]

Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP1 you could be eligible. Eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com podcast. That's orderlymeds.com podcast. Taking care of yourself feels great. Compounded medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

[G]

Hey, everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary Massive Sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.

[L]

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.

[G]

Listen to your Save the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts These

[M]

days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent, secure any agent. Okta secures AI hey, it's Ryan Reynolds

[D]

here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it

[E]

turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial.

[D]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[J]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See, Terms.

[D]

Hamilton is kind of your classic British he would be the classic bad guy in the movie here you can picture him right already with the I don't even have to say anything else about him. You can picture what this guy like.

[A]

A lot of people are picturing the redcoats from the film the Patriot. Right?

[D]

Exactly.

[A]

Who are just cartoonishly bad for some reason.

[D]

And these guys are cartoonishly bad. That right?

[B]

Pictured him wound a little tight.

[H]

Yes. Yeah. So Picture a cartoonishly villainous British redcoat official officer. And then also he's got this right hand man who is a chief justice named Philippe De Jean Snail in the French.

[B]

That's a great name, by the way.

[H]

We've got the. You know, for a.

[B]

Could there be a more stereotypical French name than Philippe Dijon to put that out there?

[K]

Okay.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's a mustard. I would order.

[D]

Fair enough.

[H]

So we call them the Dynamic Duo of Tyranny, if we want to continue the cartoon theme. And Hamilton, he was the mastermind, and Dijon was the guy who was able to manipulate the law to work in their favor. He was a gallows judge. Sidebar. He once sentenced a local woman named Anne Wiley to death for the horrendous crime of petty theft.

[B]

Oh, boy. Sounds like a real grandstanding type fellow, using Hodges Wade to his benefit.

[D]

Okay, okay.

[B]

All right, let's get there.

[A]

Okay.

[H]

So he. He sentenced her and her accomplice to death by hanging, but he couldn't find a hangman. So Justice De Jong offered to spare Ann Wiley's life if she would act as the executioner for her accomplice. She agreed. And now keep in mind, she is a petty thief, not a career, you know, professionally trained.

[B]

Executioner, executor, hangs person.

[H]

So she did a horrible job. You know, she did a horrible job.

[D]

Really botched it real good.

[H]

She totally.

[A]

There's an art to it.

[H]

Yeah, yeah. And the crowd was absolutely horrified.

[G]

And.

[H]

Okay. And she thought, well, at least I got through that. But once she was done with that, the judge had her hanged anyway.

[B]

Oh, my God. Can we also just point out that, like, what is the alternative to the crowd watching an execution being horrified? Like, when it goes over.

[A]

When it goes over off without a hitch?

[D]

We're like, yeah, we're clutching our pearls now. Yeah.

[A]

Well, also, I don't think they sold tickets. Also fair at this case, so. But. But how? Just absolutely malevolent. Is that how Colonel Kurtz is that to say we give you a chance to live if you kill someone who is probably your friend in addition to your being your accomplice? And now, whoopsie, rug pull or I guess drop the trapdoor on you.

[B]

Yeah, but who executed her? The hang person just kind of popped up all of a sudden.

[A]

That's a good question.

[H]

That's a good. I don't know. But listeners may be pleased to know that later on. And this is well after the events of our main story today, later, he was actually indicted by his own superiors in Montreal for illegal Acts. But. But before that happened, he and Hamilton ran Detroit like their own little fiefdom.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I do love to hear that the comeuppance is coming.

[A]

Sort of proto tannin.

[D]

It will sort of come. It's history. So it's never as clean as it is in the movies, but yes. So you've got Dijon and you've got Hamilton, and Hamilton has a nickname. When the war begins, they call him Hair Buyer Hamilton, because when the war begins, he doesn't have a lot of soldiers. He's got maybe 5, 600 guys, British soldiers with him. He's managing five states worth of territory, basically the entire Midwest. He's operating out of Detroit here. And so he sends out a call that says, any warrior that brings me a scalp, I'll pay you money for it. And no questions asked. Right. So any scalp, which is.

[B]

That opens things up to a lot of. Not that the good. The normal version of that is good, but I guess he could just be scalping, taking scalps from anybody on the ballot.

[D]

Anybody you want, just bring me some hair and I'll give you money for it.

[H]

Yeah. And Hamilton, hair buyer Hamilton, on the one hand, he's actually, as we know, a talented amateur sketch artist who has drawn some nice, realistic looking, respectful sketches of a lot of the leaders of the local Native American nations, the local Shawnee, Miami and Wyandotte leaders. Some of these are still preserved at Harvard today. On the one hand, we've got that. And on the other hand, while Hamilton is drawing these nice portraits for his sketchbook, he's also taking their very real existential struggle against colonial expansionism as a cheap proxy weapon. And Hamilton, I imagine him sitting safely behind strong wooden walls, sipping his tea, offering cash and supplies to tribes to a war that he didn't want to risk his own regular British troops on. So the Shawnee, the Miami, the Delaware are sovereign nations. They're fighting a desperate war to keep aggressive American settlers off of their ancestral lands. And, you know, life is complicated. History is complicated. So even while this is going on, and even while Hair Buyer Hamilton is buying hair, as we're calling it, we do know that some of the tribal elders were actually speaking against the practice of selling scalps to Hamilton because they thought it was on many levels a bad idea, including politically. It was actually probably not a good plan in addition to other considerations. But even with a shared distrust of the Americans, Hamilton is, when you get down to it, he's a wealthy imperial bureaucrat who's exploiting their desperation for the purposes of the British Crown.

[B]

Now that's fascinating because I'm picturing, when I'm picturing people buying scalps, I'm picturing them paying for Native American scalps, you know, from troops. Like, that's sort of the version of that that I'm used to hearing about. So this is the opposite. He's paying Native Americans for scalp.

[D]

Scalp American settlers. Yeah, settlers.

[B]

Got it. Diabolical.

[A]

And add to that the interseen or inter community violence between some indigenous groups.

[B]

Oh, no. And just that influence and that monetary component potentially throwing their civilization or their society and rules.

[D]

It's a really interesting thing to keep in mind. And it's going to come up a lot once we start getting into the French involvement here. Because these are not. You know, a lot of times when you read about this in history, it gets kind of lumped in as like the British allies. Right, the model you have.

[L]

Yeah, right.

[D]

It's like the Native American tribes, but you're looking at several tribes here, right? We've got the Shawnee, we've got the Miami, the Wyandot, we've got the Delaware there. These are different tribes that are their own political units and they're trying to figure out what do I need to do, who do I need to side with to not lose my lands to the colonial invaders. But also, I don't want. These guys have complex relationships with each other. If the Delaware is going to take this guy up on all this money, suddenly they're going to become way more powerful because they're going to get all this money. And so how do we negotiate this thing? Right. So there's a whole Game of Thrones thing happening here that is much more complicated than just like the British allies were attacking settlers. And it's worth mentioning when we talk about this stuff. So for Clark, he's living in Kentucky with his friends. They're being raided. Things go nuts once the war starts and there are a lot more attacks than normal. His already difficult life is getting more difficult. So he goes to the governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, who was his boss as the surveyor, and he says, look, I want to go get this hair buyer guy. I want to go take care of him. And Patrick Henry says, yeah, go for it, man. Have fun.

[A]

That's also, by the way, fellow ridiculous historians. Ben just gave us a verbatim quote in Patrick Henry's actual accent.

[D]

Yes. Good luck. Go win the war. Can you give me some men or some gear, some money? No, no, I don't have any of that.

[A]

Oh, no, he just CO signed it and didn't help.

[D]

Yeah, go for it. Just give him a piece of paper that says, good luck, please go win the war.

[B]

We believe in you.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[D]

We believe in you.

[A]

So we know that he was a voice of relative authority right in his stomping grounds. So he was able to gather some resources of his own or some people.

[D]

Yes, yes. So he's basically an unpaid intern tasked with conquering a continent. And he goes out to his buddies at his neighborhood and he, he's like, hey, like neighborhood watch guys, like, I'm going to raise a militia. I need some people. He gets 150 guys. Remember hair Byer is in a fort with British trained British soldiers and cannons and 500 guys. Clark's like, all right, I got these 150 guys. So in June 1778, he just kind of walks into Illinois country, crosses the Ohio river into a big forest, and these guys go on the mission. They're bringing, they're bringing clothes from home and rifles that they use to hunt animals and stuff. They're leaving their families and stuff behind. These are just dudes that live in the woods. They have a bowie knife and a rifle and whatever ammo they get their hands on.

[A]

And a dream and a dream song

[B]

in their heart potentially.

[D]

So they head out, they hunt for their dinner, they sleep under the stars, they survive the elements. And they go out towards their first target is a town called Kaskaskia in Illinois country.

[B]

Yeah.

[H]

And Kaskaskia, it was in a sense, the crown jewel of Illinois country. It was a thriving French town, it was heavily fortified, and if Clark and his 150 guys had been walking into a standard British fort, they would have been toast. But instead they find themselves in this weird liminal space. Technically, it's British controlled territory, but in practice, it's a French speaking Catholic enclave.

[E]

Right.

[D]

So after the French and Indian war, right, the Seven Years War ends, the Treaty of Paris in 1763, all of this stuff, we think like Louisiana Purchase and stuff, but everything west of the Appalachians was French. And then the British and the French have the French and Indian War and the Seven Years War. And part of that treaty, the French have to cede all those territories between the Appalachians and the Mississippi river to England. So you have these French settlers who were some of them born in France and have been French for generations. They live in this little area and suddenly the French flags come down and the British flags go up. The British don't have the troops and man, they're not flooding this area with people, they just run up a new flag and put a couple hundred soldiers in town to take over the forts. So they're kind of trying to leverage these trade networks. They're trying to. These guys have to pay their taxes to the British now. But at the end of the day, these are Frenchmen, and they don't like the British.

[B]

They don't.

[D]

You have hundreds of Frenchmen here who were at war with The British, like, 15 years ago, like, in their lifetimes. They fought the British in a war.

[A]

Yeah.

[H]

And culturally, it's a very different place. So we're not talking about, like, Philadelphia here. We're not talking about London. We've got French culture, Jesuit missions, fur trading posts, independent mine and frontiersmen. A lot of mutually beneficial trade relationships, even some intermarriages. The French have been building up their network with the Native American nations over maybe a century.

[B]

Is this in the era of getting the fur trade going and the trapper?

[I]

Yes.

[D]

So that's like the main difference here is that when the British and later the Americans are coming through, they are trying to take this land and settle it. Right. They want to settle this land for people and develop it. And the tribes that are living here, the Shawnee, the Miami, the Pianka, Shaw, they don't want people to move in there and build houses. But the French have been in there, and they don't really care as much about that. They're interested in the fur trade.

[C]

Right.

[D]

They're making a lot of money off this fur trade. They're working together with the tribes.

[B]

Agreeable situation. Right. There's a mutual agreement. Yeah, that makes sense.

[D]

Everybody's benefiting from this. It's a healthy trade. The French fur traders are living with these tribes. Right. They're not setting up their own little communities. They're integrating in a way that we haven't seen. And so there is a lot of opportunity here for George Rogers Clark to find some force multipliers for his 150 guys, because he's now in this area that the tribes that live here don't love the idea of. They don't really love the idea of the Americans coming in here and doing this either. But they also don't love the idea of the British doing what they've been doing, which is more exploitative and less collaborative.

[A]

Yeah. And he's like, hey, don't worry. I'm America. We're like diet British, so we're fewer calories, I guess. But as you all pointed out, Ben and Pat, he also had the advantage our Buddy. George. He had the advantage of not going in with some crazy hard lying ideology for the people. He was not a missionary. He was not religiously extremist, at least in the way he talked about stuff. He instead just sort of told people, do what you're doing. Go about your day to day life. Also just me, George, being honest here, I kind of think the British are a bunch of pills. Do you want to help me fight them?

[D]

Right, right, Exactly. And the French, to be fair, the French don't love the Americans either because they're worried. The French are Catholic and the Americans are Protestant and they're worried about this when we come in there. But so are the British. And that's been a war that's been going on for. We know we don't like the British, you guys. Let's wait and see. And so when Clark shows up, he's like, hey, we're doing this new thing. We're gonna be our own country. We're trying to figure out our own stuff.

[A]

Stuff.

[D]

He shows up with these 150 guys by the time they get here. Kaskaskia is not close to Kentucky. They've been hiking. Their boots are falling apart. They look like wild men. They look like mountain men when they show up. Huge beards and stuff. And Kaskaskia has a British fort. And he shows up and he lines up outside the fort. He's like, I think if I can win this town over and this region over, we can force these guys out of the fort without having to actually fight them. Because I don't have. My men are too tired. And I don't have the guns or the experience or the training or any of the things I need to storm this fort. But if I could take this town, that would be like a big step.

[H]

And it's a big risk too, because if even one of the Kaskaskian inhabitants decides to alert the British at the fort, whoops, there goes the plan, Right?

[D]

Right. If there's 150 just, like, mostly unarmed guys out here trying to, like, overthrow the government, that's a problem.

[M]

Problem.

[D]

So Clark needs help. And that is where we meet a guy named, I guess, Pat. I'm just going to hand it off to you without setting you up with the guy's name.

[H]

Pierre Gibot.

[B]

Fabulous.

[D]

Yes, Father Gibot.

[B]

Not quite as good as.

[D]

Or Gibault, as I like to call him.

[B]

Quite as good as Pierre Dijon, but still equally flourishy.

[H]

In French, you'd buy a bottle of Merlot from him.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

There we go. So is. Is Per his actual, like, his Christian first name or is it his title?

[H]

It's his title. It's like Father or Padre.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Yeah, he's a Jesuit priest.

[H]

Yeah, he's a Jesuit priest. And as is sometimes the case in these smallish frontier towns, he's got a lot of roles. He's also, in effect, the mayor, the judge, the information broker of Illinois country. He's like the guy everyone goes to and kind of expects. He's the grownup in the room. So, yeah, he serves the parishes in both Kaskaskia and Vincennes. He knows all the families. He knows their secrets. And also, he hates the British. He does not like the British occupation. He sees the British as an occupying force that doesn't really understand the French Catholic culture of the region. And in addition, Pere Gibot sees the British paying for scalps, and he's absolutely appalled by that. So he wants stability. He also maybe wants that whole buying scalp thing to end. And he sees that the Americans think, yeah, okay, they're Protestant, but they're Protestants who are more likely to actually respect the way of life that we have here than the British are.

[K]

Right.

[A]

Okay, so they're Protestants, but they're not imperious about their beliefs. Right. They're not like, well, that's kind of

[D]

wait and see on this. Right? And so that's kind of why the French are kind of hanging out here. They're British citizens at this point. They don't really think of themselves as such. They think of themselves as French. They think of themselves as French Catholics. And so they know what they're going to get with the British. And when Clark shows up, he does a very wise thing, and he's like, who's the guy I need to talk to? To. Okay, Gibot. Okay, let's get him. And so they have dinner together, and he's like, look, man, I'm not going to change. Nothing's going to change here. I'm here to get this guy out of here. I'm here to get the British out. And if that sounds good to you, let's work together. And Clark is persuasive enough in this meeting that Gibot is all the way all in. And Gabot starts going around Kaskaskia, and he's like, hey, guys, like, let's help these guys out. Let's make sure that we. They're not going to raise arms against them. They're not going to, like, join the army or anything, but they are not. They're going to like, there's a lot of things that the civilian population of this town can do that will destabilize British rule here. And they start doing that.

[H]

Yeah. And this is not just in Kaskaskia. Father Gibault rides all the way to Vincennes, which was a hundred miles away, hundreds of miles away in Indiana. And he does the same thing with his parish, his parishioners there. He basically neutralizes the entire territory through winning over hearts and minds. It's this huge diplomatic whisper campaign.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

And then the. And then Clark goes one step further than that. He and Jibot together, they're like, well, we need to get the support of the local tribes as well. And so he goes and meets with the chief of the Piankasa tribe, a guy whose name is Tobacco's son, which is a complicated. Makes things complicated when you're reading about it. But his name is Tobacco's son, and he's called the Grand Door to the Wabash, which means he's like. It's the. The Wabash is the river system there. And he's kind of the guy who. He's. He's the diplomatic person you need to talk to. To. For the. The tribes in this region.

[A]

He's their version of the French priest, right?

[D]

Yes. So he's their chief, I think. So.

[A]

He.

[D]

Yeah, exactly. He's an important person to get to know. Clark sits him down and has dinner with him, and they're talking about, you know, what they're gonna do and what the American civilization is gonna look like when it shows up. And he's able to convert Tobacco's son to his cause as well. So this ends up being a big win for him. To where at some point, it becomes clear to the British in Kaskaskia that they don't have a lot of guys at the fort here. It becomes clear that the town is against them. And the Piankasa and the French are bringing food and guns and ammo and supplies and information to Clark and his guys. And so the fort and Kaskaskia, those guys leave. They leave the town to Clark without him having to fire a shot. Shot. They leave in the night, and they go to Vincennes, which is the next biggest town. So you've got Kaskaskia, you've got Vincenz, and you've got Detroit. These are the three main settlements for our story here. Clark ends up in Kaskaskia in February, 1779. Winter is here. It's a brutal Midwestern Winter. He's got 172 guys. He's actually been able to recruit a few from the locals and the British troops at Kaskaskia have gone to Vincennes. Now, while Clark is holed up here in Kaskaskia, waiting out the winter, he gets news that Herrbyer Hamilton is not just sitting around, he's on the move.

[J]

Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more more about which GLP1 you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com podcast that's orderlymeds.com podcast taking care of yourself feels great. Compounded medications are not FDA approved, eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

[G]

Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsync, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary, Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.

[L]

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.

[G]

Listen to Hearsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[M]

These days, it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent, secure any agent. Okta secures AI.

[D]

Awkward time to Ask this.

[K]

But.

[D]

Hey, did you download the trail map?

[N]

Yeah.

[H]

No, I don't need to.

[D]

I. I don't understand. You're trusting your signal out here.

[H]

I'm trusting T Mobile. They have the best network. And if we end up up in bumtots nowhere, well, we've got T satellite for backup. Whoa.

[D]

I don't trust my carrier that much.

[H]

We'll just use your phone as a flashlight.

[F]

With America's best network and T Satellite, we're keeping you connected in places you never thought possible. And if you switch today, you get free phones for zero down and only 25 bucks a month per line for four lines. Find out more@t mobile.com or visit your local

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mobile network.

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Based on analysis by OOKLAB Speed test intelligence data 2h 2025 with 24 monthly bill credits and 4 eligible port ins on essentials for well qualified customers with autopay plus taxes, fees and $35 connection charge per line credits and imbalance due if you pay off early OR Cancel Contact Us Finance Agreement example $299.99 Moto Edge 5G required T Satellite available with compatible device in most outdoor areas in the US where you can see the sky included with experience beyond. $10 a month. Audover News Monthly. Cancel anytime. Visit t mobile.com.

[D]

So Hamilton has taken 500 guys from Detroit and marched them down to Vincennes as well. So now we got trouble. They're coming for me. My thing works. I've got this town. But I actually do have to fight this guy. And he's got five times the number of people I do. And gun and cannons and weapons and food and all the things that I don't have. Okay? So he's looking at his guys and he's like, what are we gonna do here? It's the dead of winter. He's like, we gotta go. I think we gotta go now. We've gotta go to Vincennes now. Because the longer they sit there, the more they're gonna fortify it. So we've gotta go. And he's got 172 just regular dudes. These are not trained soldiers. And he's like, we have to march 180 miles to Vincennes in the dead of winter to ambush these guys when they're not expecting it.

[A]

Just imagine the pitch. Hey, guys, you know how we all like hiking, right?

[B]

Right.

[D]

Sitting by a nice campfire indoors. I think we got to go out there. The door opens, the whipping wind.

[J]

Like,

[A]

it's a great point too as well, given the Brutality of the season. And given the. The importance of not letting these British forces really entrench themselves. Right. Because it's one of those things where if you don't solve the problem as soon as you can, the problem will only exacerbate over time. Right?

[D]

Yes, yes. And so we've got to do it. But if you've ever been to Chicago in February, people are so thrilled there

[B]

when the summer hits, it's like, yeah, it's a new lease on life.

[D]

Brutal.

[H]

So this hike, when we say hike, we usually picture maybe you're having fun, maybe you're not, but we usually picture hiking on dry land. So. So this, however, this territory is known as the Drowned Lands. And the Illinois river systems have flooded over. So the entire March they have to deal with freezing, shoulder deep ice water.

[B]

The Drowned lands should be a region on the Elden Ring map. Just putting that out there, right?

[D]

Definitely. It's like that, right? It's survival horrors. 17 days. These guys hike 180 miles which is like, like, I don't know, Seattle to Portland. It's like. Yeah, this is, this is a long. This is a long hike.

[A]

That's also a great pace operation.

[D]

17 days.

[H]

Yeah.

[D]

Through the, through the water.

[B]

Right.

[D]

Through the mud and the water and the snow. At one point, the water gets so deep they have this drummer boy with him, this kid, and he has to ride on his snare drum like a life raft because he can't. It's water's too deep. It's over his head.

[A]

Before, before we chuckle at this. Can you just. It's such a vivid image and it's adorable. Can you tell us he survived? Survived?

[D]

I. I cannot confirm that, but he probably did. Otherwise, I feel. Yeah, not hardly. Like, spoiler alert. Very few members of like most of Clark's group is going to make it back. There's not a he's. So I will say yes. I will say yes with a certain degree of confidence.

[B]

I will give him the benefit of the doubt. There definitely wasn't room for jack on the snare drum. Okay. As opposed above the large floating door in the Titanic universe. Just because it out there.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

This is a miserable thing.

[D]

They're getting sick. They're hallucin. It's so cold. Guys are hallucinating at night. They have to sleep in trees because the mud freezes. And if you sleep on the ground, even with like, like, you know, pads and stuff, like the mud will freeze your stuff to the ground.

[H]

How do you sleep in a tree? I mean, wild turkeys Sleep in trees. But do you have to build a little shelf for.

[B]

Well, turkeys are also mutants and abominations. Just putting that out there.

[A]

Yeah. Pat, no offense. I know. I know both you and Ben are in the Boston, but we're fairly anti turkey on this show.

[B]

They'll come at you, man. They'll come at you.

[A]

They'll go at you. They're mad at us.

[H]

Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I am neither pro nor anti Wild Turkey. I just accept them as a force of nature.

[A]

Well said.

[B]

Don't they roam Harvard campus?

[H]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[B]

They really do. I saw them in the wild, literally, and I was like, is this acceptable?

[H]

Who greenlit these turkeys? The turkeys act like they own the place. Because actually, they kind of do.

[A]

They're a gang. I remember I've spent a lot of time in Boston, and no offense, you all, but it can be an opinionated, somewhat divisive place. And the one thing that I see all Bostonians agree on is that Wild Turkeys are kind of a gang.

[H]

Yes. Do not mess with wild Turkeys.

[A]

And so despite the fact that these guys are not actively in life or death battles with wild turkeys, they are running into a lot of dangerous wildlife. The environment is inhospitable. Sleeping in trees, if you've ever done it before, folks, just a regular tree. Not a fancy tree house, not a chiropractor. But your back's gonna hurt. It kind of sucks.

[D]

Yeah, you gotta tie yourself in so you don't fall out when you're sleeping or you gotta build a little stand there and. Yeah. I mean, 17 days. These guys do this. They have. By the time they arrive. And Clark. It's bears mentioning that this is not. Clark is not wearing an officer's uniform here and carrying a sword and sleeping in a tent. Like, he's walking at the front of the line, right? He's just walking with these guys. He's 25. Guys are all about his age. Age. They're not trained soldiers. They don't really know what they're doing. They got no food. Their clothes are falling apart. They don't have the cold weather gear they need for this to not be absolutely miserable by the time they get there, they lose two guys on the hike. And by the time they get there, they're basically skeletal. They have eaten the last of their food. They're out of food entirely. They're so tired, they can barely hold their rifles. And then they get there, and they get to Vincennes, which nobody has ever been to before. And they take one look at it, and it's like an uphill approach into a wooden fort with cannons and, like, guard positions and, like, portholes to, like, stick your gun out. There's 500 redcoats sitting there by their campfires inside, eating food with their. With their. And, yeah, and they have ammo for their rifles and for their cannons. Okay, what do we do here?

[A]

Tie ourselves to a tree and hope there aren't any turkeys around? I don't know.

[H]

Well, that's always a good move, but. Yeah.

[G]

Yeah.

[D]

So. So Clark. Clark sends a letter. He sends a messenger into the town of Vincennes. And Vincennes, you know, it's a frontier town, but it's. It's French, right? And he sends the town. He sends messengers into the town and he says, I'm going to take the town tomorrow. If you're with us, stay in the town. Don't leave your houses. If you're with the British, go to the fort now so that we know who's on our side and who's not.

[H]

And this could be a huge gamble because, again, you just need one person to tip off the British. But he knows that the French settlers in Vincennes trust the word of Father Gibot. They don't run to the fort. They stay inside. And not only do they stay inside, they also sneak food and ammo and supplies to Clark and his men.

[D]

Men, yes. So the people of the town. So word, you know, they don't. They don't rat on him. They bring stuff out to him. And then eventually Hamilton does find out. Hamilton's there. He's in Vincennes. He's there. And he gets word that's like, okay, there's something weird going on here. These guys are moving around. And then he starts asking people, and they're like, yeah, what? Somebody says it, right? And he's like, oh, shoot, there's like an American army out there. And, like, they're going to take the town. Did he say they're going to take the fort tomorrow? Is that right? Then, like, he starts hearing the drums. That drummer boy, he starts hearing the drums. He starts seeing guys. He starts seeing flags. And there's just. So they start marching around. So we're in the forest, right? There's a clearing between the forest wall and the. And the fort where the. You know, like a little area so you could shoot people when they're trying to attack the fort. But he starts walking around that tree line in a circle over and over and over again with his dudes. Waving little banners, changing the little banners around. He's got snipers up in the trees. Like he's got. These guys are marksmen right there, hunters. He's got guys up in the trees shooting rounds into the. He's trying to tell him to shoot it through the portholes of the, of the, of the fort. Not necessarily to like kill a guy standing on the other side, but just to like freak them out that like we can shoot through the hole of. We can shoot through this target here. And don't stick your head out the window because you know, we might be able, we might shoot you.

[A]

So this is like a science off.

[D]

It's a scythe.

[H]

Yeah, absolutely.

[D]

He's got 172 guys with frostbite and he's shooting basically every bullet he has as like a warning shot to scare these guys. Just ping a round off the cannon so that they know we could hit the cannon if we wanted to. They can't see where the Americans are shooting from. They can't see how many of them there are. They're hearing word that like the town is against them. They're hearing word that there was this big force in, in Kaskaskia that was on the move here. They're hearing word that the Native American tribes in the area have joined up. They're hearing word that the French have joined up. Suddenly that 500 guys in the wooden fort with 11 foot walls and cannons doesn't seem quite so stable. This is like you said, the psyop, he's tricking these guys. Hamilton panics and he's like, I've got to meet their command. This is like the old days, right. We just did this. This is like a very American Revolution thing where he's like, I would like to meet with your. I shall meet your commanding officers.

[B]

Need a little FaceTime.

[A]

Yeah, I know we've had our differences, but let's grab dinner.

[D]

Yeah, they do. They go to a church in town and they meet.

[B]

Oh, well, that's fun. Cause the church being sort of a neutral location where you're not supposed to do acts of violence. Right, right, right.

[D]

And so he meets Clark and Hamilton. I imagine with the powdered wig and the red coat and everything, Clark is just a mess. Right. This guy's wearing a buckskin shirt that's covered in mud from a 180 mile hike. And he just looks like a wild man. He looks like, I don't know, something out of a movie from the 70s. And Hamilton's like, all right, I'm lieutenant governor of Detroit. We can talk. Let's talk like gentlemen. He's expecting a very revolutionary war parlay here. And Clark is like, look, man, if you don't surrender right now, I'm going to storm the place. And once I storm the place, I won't be. My men are just wild men. They're all insane maniacs with bowie knives. I can't promise. I can't promise I can control them once we get into the walls.

[A]

Oh, that's classic diplomacy, too, because people in those parlays, people always or typically will assume that kind of moral stance where they'll go, look, I'm the guy you can talk to, okay? You and me, man, we're just hanging at the church. We can reason this through. But my boys, those folks, man, you thought you bought hair.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, that's it. Good cop, bad cop, right? He's got three, like, he's got his three craziest looking dudes standing around him just being like. Like frothing at the mouth. It's like, look, I mean, I don't know about Big Jim here. He's. He doesn't really do what I tell him to do.

[A]

Does it work?

[D]

It works, yeah. Hamilton surrenders. Hamilton signs a surrender that night, surrenders the fort. And as a last moment of like, you know, he doesn't raise. There's a. There's a very. Which I'm sure he thought was like a big diss, but, like, he doesn't. The morning he's supposed to hand the Ford over, he doesn't raise the flag that morning because he doesn't want to run it down so that they can run up the American flag.

[B]

Flag.

[D]

You would normally run a flag up at morning roll call or whatever, but he doesn't run it up because he doesn't want the disgrace of running it down. And so that was kind of his. I don't know, I feel like that probably carried a lot more weight in 1778 than it does now. It just kind of seems silly.

[A]

Yeah,

[D]

but it's mentioned in multiple places when you read about this, so I feel like Bear's mentioning here. But anyway, he surrenders and then. And he's got to hand his guys over. He hands his weapons over and pat. He's got a circle for it.

[H]

It's a womp, womp moment, a kick in the teeth moment. Hamilton looks at the massive army that beat him, and now he's got to

[D]

march through the 500 guys out of that fort. 500 unarmed men marching out through 150 guys that look like they haven't slept in a month.

[A]

Month.

[D]

Carrying like weapons. That would be a joke, right?

[A]

That's crazy because, you know, there was at least of, of the 150American dudes, there was at least one who didn't have any kind of firearm. Just had a big stick. It was like.

[D]

Ha ha, right, Exactly. Yeah. It's like surrendering Guantanamo. Guantanamo to guys with like bolt action rifles. Right. It's just like, you're like, what is.

[C]

What the.

[D]

What the hell? And so it's, you know, the hair buyer is taken prisoner, he's put in a cell and he hates it. He writes so much. You were talking about the Joyce letters. He writes so much poetic complaining about how he has to go into the. He has to sit there with the quote, felons and malefactors. They don't put him in a special cell for the gentleman. They put him in just a regular cell. There's a toilet bucket in there. He calls it a kind of throne. That is truly mephitic, which means foul smelling.

[B]

These are great words. I'm writing all of these down.

[A]

Have you no separate prison for an officer?

[B]

Right.

[D]

I wish I could do the accent. It would be so funny if I could.

[A]

Maybe just like what? He thought he was going to be pooping in first class.

[D]

No, he is not. He is. He is pooping in a wilderness prison.

[A]

That's terrible.

[D]

And yeah, so basically, without firing a shot, the British lose some guys to those snipers. But mostly that was a psyop. But they do take out a couple of his guys. So Hamilton loses a few guys to gunfire and Clark loses a couple guys to the extreme temperatures. But at the end of the day, Clark writes home to Patrick Henry who kind of gave him a pat on the back and sent him off. He says great things have been affected by a few men. Well conducted.

[H]

Huzzah.

[B]

Indeed, indeed. Well said.

[A]

And I, I imagine Clark got. Got a promotion from this, right? Maybe, yeah, sort of.

[D]

I mean he gets promoted, he gets militarily promoted.

[A]

I'm just hearing the, eh.

[D]

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, to put it in perspective, this guy with 150 men and no funding from the government, using entirely diplomacy and psychological warfare, he captures when the British. Because the British have now surrendered and they surrendered Detroit because this is the extent of their forces. Hamilton has the extent of their forces in the region. So when the war ends, Britain has to sign all this stuff over because possession's 9/10 of the law and the colonials have it. The region that George Rogers Clark has just captured through this operation will become the states of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana.

[H]

Can you imagine how many pages in your atlas that would take up? That is a not small portion of land. And to do all this, Clark was okay. He got a pat on the back from Patrick Henry, but he did not get any support from the Virginia government for expenses. So Clark was paying out of pocket to feed his men and get supplies and. And he went into a lot of debt for this. And his creditors, they just kept going after him and hounding him.

[G]

So.

[H]

Yeah. Yeah. So in exchange for saving the securing the future of the Midwest, he just gets a stack of bills and honestly, he really can't dig himself out of it. And yeah, poor guy dies in poverty.

[D]

Yeah. Becomes an alcoholic. He dies in poverty. Just really tragic end to this guy. The later years are like pretty rough for him. And that's just unjust. Penniless. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the kicker. Hamilton gets out of prison after the war. He gets paroled, he gets promoted. He becomes the governor of Bermuda and Dominica. So he.

[A]

How do you get a promotion after that?

[D]

I don't know. But he lives out the rest of his days sitting on a beach in the Dominican sipping rum cocktails and just complaining about toilets.

[A]

What went down early earlier, it just said, hey, you guys have to understand, the forest was pretty dense. We thought there were a lot more of them than there were.

[D]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Dijon ends up getting arrested and running away. So at least he gets what's coming to him. He gets indicted and spends most of his life on the run. Clark is interesting because, yeah, he struggles later in life. But one interesting way to kind of end this story is when Napoleon sells the. In 1801, when Napoleon does Louisiana Purchase and Thomas Jefferson sends the Lewis and Clark expedition out to explore the new territories that have been discovered. That Clark is George Rogers Clark's little brother. So William Clark is the younger brother of George Rogers Clark. So it's kind of like a relay race where George Rogers Clark expands west and then his brother William picks it up and goes on the Lewis and Clark expedition all the way to the Pacific Ocean. So I think that's kind of a fun way to wrap that or to tie that off.

[H]

George walked so William could run. Or George trudged tomorrow so William could trudge the.

[G]

Probably.

[A]

There we go. We had an episode not too long ago, Noel, Max and I, about how scientists were able to track the passage of the Lewis and Clark expedition through Their poop. Sorry to make this so poop centric, guys, but that's part of it. I think we can all unanimously agree the award for badass does rightly go to George. George Rogers Clark. And I'm so mad to hear that old Hamilton just got to spend time on the beach.

[D]

Just the Governor of Bermuda.

[A]

Yep. During a very difficult time for Bermuda, by the way. I think it was probably still kind of a chump during his governorship.

[D]

It's possible. It's possible he just becomes a colonial administrator, which doesn't sound like a terrible life.

[M]

Right.

[B]

That's what they call a cushy government job. Job.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Just so. And we are. We are going to wrap this exploration here. Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you so much, Pat, for joining us. I don't know. I think it's fair to say neither of us knew about George Rogers Clark.

[B]

Absolutely not. I mean, for the longest time, I was like, where's the. Where's the Lewis and Clark connection? These seem related. These seem adjacent. And we got there. So thank you.

[D]

Finally, we got there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

It's a. It's a huge expansion of the American colonies. Big. It became. Became five states, and we couldn't have done it without this one guy and the aid of the French people who lived in the region and the. The Pian nations and the other nations that. That helped out in the. In the process. So this is kind of the French connection. Next time we're going to talk about a little bit more of a direct action that the French took, which is also badass, but in a very different way.

[A]

And congratulations, by the way, to all of us, including you, Max, for not making references to the musical Hamilton. I didn't know if we would get through it. But, guys, we did it. We did it as a crew. We did it as a team. Where can people go to learn more about you all's work?

[D]

Well, we are at Badass of the Week, basically everywhere. Anywhere you find podcasts you can search for Badass and you'll see my face. Ha ha. Just kidding.

[A]

You can also check out the Wikipedia disambiguation page for Ben Thompson, which is one of my favorite parts of your bio. Pat, we can't wait to. We can't wait to hear what you think of our notorious James Joyce episode. Absolutely. Yeah.

[D]

We're gonna live stream our listening to it on our twitch. We're gonna twitch and we'll live stream us listening to it.

[B]

You can record it Like a commentary track. Yeah, yeah, like a rift track. It's worthy of that. It's pretty cringe.

[A]

Big, big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. We'll allide the credits a little bit for now, but folks please do tune in very soon. When we get to the next Badass of the Week, we've got Double Badasses

[B]

Badass of the Week week here. Of the week's weeks, that's the one. Thanks y' all so much for joining us again and we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[N]

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