Understand the history of mississippi and share the history of mississippi. Thank you so much. Im chris. Good luck with the Mississippi Department of archives and history. Our session is titled uniquely American History. And in one way or another, these three books touch on nearly every state in the union, as well as our neighbors to the north and the south. Well hear from each of our authors about the stories that they tell in your books. And then ill ask a few questions before opening it up for questions and comments from you all. Please remember. That since we are on cspan and the viewers wont be able to hear your question unless you go to the microphone and ask it. There. So all comments and questions take it to the podium. Jeff lynne has chronicled the Southwestern United States in such american undesirable roles as bonnie and clyde. Charles manson and jim jones. Lives in fort worth, texas, and is a member of the texas literary hall of fame for such bestselling books as go down together the last gunfight, manson the road, the jonestown town and waco. Today, hell tell us about his new book, war on the border, via pershing, the Texas Rangers and an american invasion. Brian castner is a former explosive Ordnance Disposal officer who received a bronze star for his service in the iraq war. He and his family live in buffalo, new york, and hes the author of the books the long walk and all the ways we kill and die and the coeditor of the 2017 anthology, the road ahead. His journalism and essays have appeared in esquire wire, vice, the new york times, the washington post, the atlantic and other publications. Hell talk to us about his most recent book, stampede, gold, fever and disaster in the klondike. And read your book began his career in journalism at the Berkshire Eagle and was a longtime staff writer for the hartford courant. Hes written for vanity fair, new york life and many other publications, and his work has won the pen new england award. The eugene as pulliam National Journalism writing award and the society of professional journalists, sigma delta car. Buck is the bestselling author of the oregon trail flight passage. And first, joe. Hes traveled from his home in tennessee. Be with us today and talk about his book, life on the mississippi an epic american adventure. Although incorrect. Regret to inform you that you did not survive this fools errand of a safari traveling down the Mississippi River. Or at least thats what everyone said as a team down the river. My technique is used in the last couple of books. If i want to tell about your betrayal, i look at a team of mules to a genuine 1883 wagon, and i ride the trail. Took us four months and for this book ive built this lifeboat up in tennessee seven all the way from pittsburgh to new orleans to see the conditions of it. Im not a reenactor, but see the conditions of 3 million americans who cant go at that original frontier pass how they saw the country from the water. And hes referring to the fact that in all these river states, people are terrified of river, of lost family homes on the river. And they have brothers, nephews, whatever, who work on the tugboats pushing the largest. And there are accidents. And there are deaths. So the big scene was, you know, the pull of somewhere really nice tipped anvil matches or whatever, at least a we used to come down. You guys die. You know, and theyre just below here. Theres a whirlpools in this river. And when you get that boat stuck in that pool, youll pass out. Because as it started going round and round, like i said, your future, you passed out and thats looking. Then youre going to capsize and a boat in you is going to be dragged along the bottom of the river and youd better prepare your family for this cause. Youre going to come back up here, youre going to have your underwear on. So that was the big thing. We cant fear. We had a lot of fear. There were deputy sheriffs of southern of southern southern indiana. Southern illinoiss as deep south as you can get, really. And they come over, we talk about it for come down to the bow. We talk for a while. Maybe they have a beer or two more and then they go, all right, now what kind of weapons you guys carry . But we didnt know. Weve been off three weeks now. Everybody slept all their guns. And its good to look at constant motion on this, these guys faces, you know, it even yells, come coming down this river and you dont have it. Let you know. And the reason they thought we needed weapons was. The kids park in cincinnati and paducah and places like that. And the kids were going to come out of the inner cities and they said, did physical storming out of the ghettos kill you and burn your boat you need to be armed and nothing could be further the truth all the way down the road. But what we did was we, you know wonderful inner city kids who came on a boat. But then we got to baton rouge and this africanamerican kids from that part of town, they spent a lot of time on a river because they catch fish. And, of course, the highway and sell it. So they saw some fish and we said, well, why dont you stay . Well make dinner together. And then after dinner, the one kids will look hysterical. And you know, this northern guy you know about that we find a pretty, pretty hot down here on Mississippi River during the summer. We dont have any we dont need any heaters, you know, and the kids go land adults, white man. Oh, 50 miles downriver from here, youre going to change your country. And then cajuns is going to come storming out of the swamps, kill us and burn your boat. You need heaters. Anyway, there do a number of other things that i learned, but im going to keep this brief. I go to sleep in tennessee. So from a pennsylvanian, by the way, that your wants to rediscover a period of American History that is completely forgotten but was actually probably the most influential period which was the flat stone era from between the revolution and the civil war, when millions and tons of cargo and 3 million americans traveled down the river and created really the first frontier here and conquering fear, anything else fears the fears that people along the river had for us. You know. Do you know how to time us . Im not picking licenses. Youre going to die. So editing out the fear was really what the book was about. What we learned, how to get down the river and get around all the tugs and everything like that. So. Im not sure. Oh, thats god. Oh, i do. I did write a blog for, this one about taking a commuter, the mackenzie river, on the far north of canada goes into the arctic ocean. I got some strange looks. I did not. And there were some reports. No one told me i was going to die on that trip until the very end. But something that we were talking about before this, before we got out here is to the kind of history of time, school and the history youre not taught in school, which think all of time to talk about. You know, some of this material history that youre not told from school thats what drew me to the story of the klondike gold rush in the klondike. It was a word i knew of, but it was not a story that i knew. And so and once started once i started researching it, i thought, you know, this is really you know, this story is one of those thats like, you know you cant make it up stranger than fiction. And so i went to write a book about it, just a little bit of the background for you as well. Klondike is just a word, not a sort of a story. The you know, the story really begins with the panic of 1893. Also probably not over the panic of 1893. At the time it was the worst depression that the United States had ever had never suffered through. And some of the things that went wrong are going to sound familiar. It was the means of communication, kind of like the dark calm bubble were far overbuilt, too many telegraphs, too many businesses start to fail. People lose their jobs they cant pay their mortgages. All their mortgages go under water. Housing values drop the banks go out of business. One thing after another. And on top of all of those normal hardships you had in additional one, which was there was a big fight over gold, a gold and silver was this should dollars be backed by by or should it be backed by silver . And this was William Jennings bryan and the cross of gold speech. And the start of populism and all sorts of stuff like that, without im not an economist economics professor, and if i went into it, i would be sorry to death. But ill just say that the way that the money worked was if you had gold backed dollars, they were worth more than silver back dollars. And so rich people, the gold backed dollars, everybody else, the silver backed. And so, you know, in this long depression in 1897, you have these at the same time that people are on strike and the coal miners are getting into fights with police and men are being shot in the streets and nobody pay for their mortgage. Theyre on the newspapers is like the saloon and everybodys problem. And thats the gold has been discovered in the klondike. And not only was there gold there was so much gold. Its like 70 million in plain sight, like easter eggs on the ground is what the newspaper said. And you could just go up there if you just anyone who went up there would just find all this gold laying about. And so the dust starts of the stampede of 1897, it was very different than the california rush. The California Gold rush in the late forties. You know, everybody just kind of wanted to move to california. It was a nice place to. Be there was lots of reasons to settle in san francisco, to start a farm, to do lots of other things. And when they were getting gold out of the ground and spraying it with these big hoses and it would kind of melt down and they would pan it out, a real good pan in the California Gold rush was 0. 40 of gold in a pan when the klondike gold rush started, an average pan was not 0. 40. It was more like 4, and it could be 40 or 400. There was just an incredible amount of gold. Nobody wanted to move to alaska in, the yukon to, you know start a farm or anything like that. They just went for the gold and it was really packed in between when gold was discovered with between. 1896 and not to give away the end of the book, but theres a cataclysm that ends the gold rush. In 1899. Its like a thousand days and all in the whole story happens within time. So about hundred thousand people went on the gold rush that, to put it in perspective, thats about the combined population of los angeles and seattle at the time. That huge number of people. And i think the thing that i you know, that made me want once i started to read a little bit about and make me want to write, it is if i had learned anything about the klondike, it was like smiling prospectors with long beards and dancing girls that are happy and like, you know, just this, you know, bonanza of and everybody got rich and everything and thats not what happened at all. Of course, 100,000 people went up about. 30 to 40000 made it to dawson city, which means 60 or 70,000 did not make it. And a lot of them turned around. Sure. But thousands and thousands of them died. And we have no idea how many. If you just add up the number of people in shipwrecks and you know that, were reported in the papers, you get over 10,000 pretty quickly. And so its just its a horrific bloodbath in a way. And and thats what i think my you know, the way i wanted to write the and kind of what i saw in it may be different than a historian. So im not a historian is just that it it was a disaster movie people died in shipwrecks and famine and murder and you know scurvy. And there was an expedition out of brooklyn where they all identical costumes and some railroads which youll hear about in that it perhaps they were sombrero. And 19 of them went and only four of them lived through it and they died. One by one on a glacier because they decided to cross instead of doing the normal route they tried to cross the malaspina glacier. So, so seeing it as a disaster movie and trying to just tell, you know, tell that is a narrative, is is really what drew me to the story. You know, as far as like how to tell it, like everyone saw the whole gold rush. And so i try to pull out. Ive got about 12 main characters. I know its an ensemble cast, but its the archetypes, right . Its its the the prospector and the head of the northwest police and the gambler and the newspaper man and some of these people youve heard of, like jack london. Jack london was a nobody he was he worked in a pickle factory where he made 0. 10 putting pickles in a jar and he was desperate to get out of it. And so he went up as a very young on the stampede, but mostly its people that youve never heard of. And really benefited from the fact that theres been a lot of scholarship in the last 50 years where, a lot of these smaller stories have come out and i was able to combine them. And so i think that i dont know hopefully something we can talk more about here, but the thing that links the work that done, i was in the military wrote a number of books about afghanistan and iraq. I, i wrote about this, you know, canoe trip to the arctic. The thing that i think connects the work for me is that i have this, this allergy glorification. I like to just getting like the myth version of the story. And i my books about iraq and afghanistan are not theres no glorification in those, for sure. And so i wanted to write the kind of the raw story that i could speaking which has to offer for another one of these you know, its kind of hard when you go through and the first guy talks about theyre going to come and theyre going to kill you and burn your bone. The second guy bloodbath on the glacier. Obviously, i wrote child friendly book. This boy in the border is my 21st book. I come from texas. And in texas, we say, if you cant write, write a lot. So thats what ive always tried do i write about American History and i try to write about subjects where i can learn a lot. I cant think anything worse than writing a book where you think you already know everything, and all youre doing is just trying to prove youre and anybody who disagrees is wrong. So i always to pick subjects that i very little about and since i know very little about a lot of things, i imagine ill write another 25 books before im done least. But the inspiration for war in the border came because i realized ive lived in texas most of my adult life, and all of a sudden were talking about border walls and floods of immigrants, invasions and things and i realized i didnt. The history of the usMexican Border and i thought it be useful for me to try to find out what that history was and get it in the book. So if anyone else was interested, could they could learn it to. Theres an editor, simon and schuster, who always says if youre going to write a book, make sure its got 60 drugs and rock and roll. If you can get those three things, people will read your book. I thought this might be a challenge with this subject, but there is six general pershing is trying to court lieutenant patton whose sister and he makes patton be the chaperon on their car date around beautiful el paso. Yeah. A romance thats going to work. Um, drugs and rock and roll in the same place pancho villa is the yeast wrote a song called la cucaracha, which all of us can sort of hum. But we dont know. Most of us. The real version, which is all about the cockroach eating some marijuana. I was surprised that. But i was surprised by a lot of things in this book. And again, i hope we talk about how in our we try to look at maybe the portions of history that are coming knowledge. We try to push back a little bit further. I started to write this book because wondered about wall and the border invasion by hordes dangerous mexicans and i found out that the first time the United States decided to build a wall along the border to keep out the mexicans we didnt want was in 1903 and then it was announced again in 1909. We were going to build that border wall. And then in 1910, the government said, we it this time were going to build that border wall. And they tried and it didnt work. People would go over it or under it and in a lot of places, the soil couldnt take the weight of the wall. The wall would just crumble. After 1910, it was pretty much decided all that idea is not going to work and all of a sudden its big campaign issue. And i wondered how come in this big 2016 campaign, nobody is saying, but didnt we try this three times already. And heres what i think happened. I dont think the government was trying to fool americans. I think nobody just wanted to check and find out whether somebody had tried this before or a little element of history. But its there if you want to do the work that i found lots of other things, some times it reflected badly on the American Government. Sometimes it reflected badly on the Mexican Government. A lot of people died on the border who didnt have because you had to countries and to governments that distrust each other and wouldnt talk to each other much. Finally, we get in 1916, pancho. And about 400 of his followers crossing the border and attacking an american town in new mexico. Columbus, new mexico. Their purpose was to enrage the American Military and have army chase them back into mexico because the mexican people would be so appalled at the gringos that they dont trust way or coming to invade them again. Did you know that in 1914 we actually went into mexico and captured the sea city of santa cruz . Derek cruz, and held it for months. Went in and took it because we thought the Mexican Government was getting arms it shouldnt get from germany. All these things. And when i turned my book in to my publisher i got a lot of are you sure all this. Well, yes. Im so today to be up here with these gentlemen who do the same thing. And its exciting to be able to talk to some people who might really want to know history, the facts not the alternative facts. This is an odd time, america, to be writing nonfiction, but will tell you this. The one lesson ive learned from all my books writing about American History is the problems that claim us today, that obsessives have been problems that have been going on for centuries. Everything from gun control to taxes, the proper limited role of government refugees coming in, take american jobs. This is all happened before. And if there is one lesson in history that all of us write about is if we dont face problems and try to solve them in a common sense way with everybody working together, were going to keep on facing them. The thats why books these guys. Right, are important. And the fact that people read them is also important. So thank of you to as well. Lets come back and start reading. So lets go ahead and do some of what weve about sort of addressing areas of history that that have been overlooked for you. It comes early in the book and you just amaze at the significance of the flat boat era and how little discussed it is in history books certainly are critical. It was, yeah, 50, 60 years before the covered wagons crossing the dusty plains. It was the ohio river basin and river that created modern america, the economy and the multicultural entity that we became because of masses of immigrants coming down the river. It also followed economic depression of well there were several but the panic of 1837 was pretty severe to so this the book for me into an agenda because what happens is you study history and you see history issued from on high by a few influential professors and then trickles down to the middle school and whatnot. But it started right typically right at the beginning with all the revolutionary founders washington, madison, monroe jefferson, particularly even Benjamin Franklin were, heavily invested in western lands, they wanted all that land west of the appalachian because in america, at that time wealth was in your land holdings. And George Washington died. The wealthiest man in america was 80,000 acres and instead we get you know, skipper neal Silver Dollar across a river or something and so that kind of seed that we really discuss the actual history that happens we teach the myths so. Yes they were very, very effective at backing this revolution and giving a justification for this revolution with the high sounding ideals of the declaration of independence, of the constitution. But in fact, they were they were investors. Theyre businessmen who wanted as much of the western alliance as they could get. And then you start going through all the rest of American History and examining it from that perspective. So thats i guess i answered the question yeah, yeah. And, and we get back to jeff because of that. I mean so much i was amazed. I was embarrassed at how little of contemporary mexican history i knew. I thought i had a fair grounding in it, but it turns out that really is mesoamerican and precolumbian stuff was what i knew a lot more about. Its a great book, a fascinating book you talk a lot about the fluid nature of the borders early on and in youre talking about the investors who you know want to expand westward and it was wealthy u. S. Citizens who really drove a lot of the in the Mexican Government formed a democracy in 1821 and because mexico and america were proximate really the same size the government hoped that there would be some from america. How how do we bring democracy to such a large, sprawling area . But america did not send the ambassadors to mexico for another four years because they didnt think the country was probably going to last. And in 1825, when First American ambassadors showed in mexico, they brought a request. From the president , please us all your land that west and northwest into. Our country. You know, mexico extends it all the way up into wyoming at this time and. The Mexican Government had formed a Foreign Bureau to advise the president , mexico and. The bureau reported to the mexican that america intends to overthrow us within. 75 years, almost two thirds of what was mexico now becomes part of the United States. The mexican citizens who are living in what is now america are told that now you have to pay taxes to the u. S. Government. If you cant pay them in time, youre off your land in a series of land were formed the United States because investors would claim they had the title this land that mexican families in what was now american might have lived on for generations. Things obviously did not improve much from there. By the time we have vs raid in all of mexico. 95 of the arable land for farming or for mining or for fishing is owned by either the horse and dodos. The rich mexican families or american investors. Peasants working. The land make up 80 of the mexican population in all of mexico. This 80 of the people, 2 of the land. The things were going to combust and, they did eventually. And the funny thing is, when i wrote this book, i was that i would see the American Government doing terrible things and i didnt want to see their and the American Government did do some terrible things, folks. Gadsden purchase the negotiators agreed. America would pay 15 million for those little portions of arizona and new mexico. Everybody shook hands on it. Then it went to the senate to be ratified in the u. S. Senate just said no, were only going to give them 10 million. They may not like it, but they have to take it anyway. 5 million was a lot of money crucial to mexico, and it was arbitrarily taken away. But its also true that with the plan, san diego, mexico can militants had a plan to cross the border and take over much of the land that had been part of mexico of time and every white man in america 16 or over would be murdered. And they tried to do it and the Mexican Government was actually supporting a lot of this. There was their intention on both sides. And this is going on all these years. And what happened, just as youre talking about the mississippi. These things shape and they form and maybe it happened 100 years ago, 150 years ago, but its still resonates. It still affects us today. We are all of our history as much as were in the present. And thats why books like these guys write are so important. And its its a pleasure being on the with them. We cant just say were going to look at history and the stuff we like will be true and the things we wish hadnt happened didnt happen. Because otherwise were going to keep on fighting these same problems and its going to keep frustrating everybody and were just going to get madder and madder. Long speech, sorry. This quote of, brian, you had talked about the thousands of deaths in to all the human deaths there was slaughter of animals along the way as well and you tied the the the the the need try to better themselves directly to the failure of the gilded age and the excess is of that time. Yeah thats i guess is a structure here you just talk how you know the influence of frontier is both like a true economic thing but then also as a as a philosophical thing and how america saw itself and. The klondike gold rush happened 30 years after the civil war, and of course, a lot of the violence in the American West, in the westward movement, postcivil war, had to do with civil war veterans that were moving in and, you know, theres as a veteran myself, i guess you start to see some of the you know posttraumatic stress that was on you know, we didnt have a name for at the time. Right. But like theres there is like, you know, this has a huge influence on it. And i mentioned because a lot of people that went to alaska at the time saw it as the end of that push. One of the characters in my book. So patti smith was a gangster and a card cheat and etc. , etc. , had kind of bopped around the American West would get kicked out of a town for scamming people. Move on to the next one. He was a bunco man and he moved to alaska because he called it the last west. It was the last place without a telegraph line and the last place without, a railroad. And it was just going to be like the culmination of a lot of the things these gentlemen are talking about and the i mean, another one of the characters in the book, colonel samuel steele, whos hes the commander of the northwest mounted police at the time up there, you know, northwest mounted police were, not the mounties that we think of now, like Smiley People in red jackets or whatever they were like calvary. They had cannons and they had mortars and such, and they were fighting Indigenous People across canada. He gets sent there to do two things. One is to is to stop the stampeders from killing themselves and save them from themselves. But the other thing, speaking of, you know, the Mexican Border was to establish the Canadian Border between alaska and canada there because it had been surveyed, but it wasnt guarded. And canada didnt trust that the United States wasnt going to try to claim more territory. And so sam steele and so putting maxim machine guns the border to basically keep the gangster tours on the american side and only let the perspective prospectors or the you know people coming into dawson city through if they had enough food it. Yeah im not sure im answering your question but but it is like its yeah you know, like i dont know the economic of this and the and just the overall cost you mentioned the cost of, of animals. Just one last little tidbit to wrap up on that. There were two paths out of alaska into the yukon. One was the chilkoot pass, which was the traditional walking route used by Indigenous People for of years. The other one was a trail that white people thought would be much faster, and they called it the white pass. And it was going to be where a railroad was supposed to go and everyone had heard that the railroad was going to be there and that, oh, this must be much easier and so they got horses they didnt know like they didnt know how to hitch horses like these were these were city folk. These were people were not leaving their homestead in nebraska with lots of frontier and then moving to alaska. They were they were leaving new york and chicago and seattle and, you know, they wore leather slip on shoes and suits and rode and trolley cars and a lot of them had electricity like they were a lot of people like us. And then they get up to alaska. They i mean, do you know how to hitch the, you know, a saddle on a horse . You know, how to put a load on . Do you know, like do you know how to build a boat . If you had to, which is what they had to do to go down the river, they dont know how to do any of these things because they dont know how to treat horses. The white pass up being called the Dead Horse Pass because tens of thousands of animals die as theyre essentially whipped up. The up the pass if a horse was, you know, ten or 15 or 20 at the bottom and it was 0. 10 at the top, if you were to purchase one because they absolutely werent worthless and they just killed them at the top and piled the bodies. And this is an excellent jack london himself, one of the people that writes about that. So. A yeah, like this is the cost of doing business. Yeah. I guess is, is is a theme that youre hearing. So in addition to, the, the good solid history in all of that, the books are sort of page turners too. I mean, they are interesting, exciting and fun reads. Rinker. You had a big old boat built and, you climbed on it and you went down into the Mississippi River. I had no idea what size the flat boat was. Tell us a little bit about the flat boats and then tell us how it compared to the tugs and barges that you were amongst some of the pop principles of the flat boat. Is it . The hull is exactly flat all the way across. So the displacement of the waters across a broader area then of the whole boat and so they can carry about a one ton per linear foot and my boat was 42 feet by 14 feet and that came in fully loaded compared to about up to ten tons. But my job on the river, avoiding the very large 9000 horsepower tugboats pushing sometimes as many as 45 barges at once. And i cant even calculate the weight, but its i think each can carry like 115 tons. So the guys pushing 40 barges and you had to get used to the idea that he cant turn, he cant move. You. You absolutely cannot occupy space. And you have to reassure him with the way your bow is painted. Or if he calls you on the radio that you are not going to invade his. And so that was the big challenge, especially for someone whos only boating experience up to that point was, you know, i canoed across the lake once. So that was a big challenge on the trip and that was the fun it and thats why its a page turner because you know and then every 50 miles or so you know and youre going to come up and youre not even going to have your underwear on. So it becomes the suspense of yeah. Can someone inexperienced but just interested in acquiring whatever frontier skills i needed to get to the bottom of river is going to make it you know. Run in like manner i guess had sort of what you talked about earlier a picture of strapping healthy folks with a pan in a beautiful sunny spot you know swirling until they got back its boy that that was not at all what it was like in the klondike. I mean they had the permafrost there melting down through it. I mean, tell us a little bit about what the folks who had no idea what they were getting into, what it was really like. Yeah, i mean, the actual i didnt understand, you know, before i started to do the research, i did i did go to alaska. I hope the chilkoot trail actually any of you can hike the chilkoot trail. You just need a permit half park is in the United States. Half in canada. Some of the best backpacking ive ever done. Do it in the summer, not the winter. Its an its a lovely and i did a couple. I stopped a couple in alaska at a few places to get taught how to pan for gold, which, which was great because then i could like run home, run back to the hotel and like, write down what it felt like and then just give those to one of the miners. You to talk to how it works. But yeah, so the mining is theyre not digging. Its permafrost, right . So what theyre doing is if they once they a creek where they pan and they get 0. 10 or 0. 20 worth of gold in the bottom of their pan, well then the work begins and they have to get down to bedrock. Theres all these terms that we use from the casino i was like pay streak and pay dirt that come from the klondike gold rush. So you cant dig in permafrost. Its frozen muck you cant dynamite it. It just seizes up. You cant put a spade in it. So what they would do is every night they would build a fire and would burn their way down and then in the morning they would get in there with the slush while it was still like 33 degrees. Dig it out, put it in a bucket winch it out, dump it in what they would call the dump and, then build a fire again and then do that all winter. So you would at the end of winter would end up with a hole that goes down until bedrock. And then they would try to find the pay streak. And so you end up like these galleries underneath, like you know theyre theyve been like they kind of burn their way through. Youre underneath the permafrost. Theyre and they theyve, you know, in the streak, there would be 200 a pan. But five feet over, theres 0. 10 a pan. So theyre just hunting this streak everywhere they go. And then in the spring, you would have clean up, which is where the creek was finally flowing. And now the now that the creeks flowing, your mine is flooded because waters pouring into everywhere that you had burned all winter and youre running this gravel through the sluice and pulling the gold out. And then after cleanup, thats when you finally know if you spent all winter burning for nothing or you spent the winter, and now youve got 100,000 and youre going to go back to seattle and, you know, be one of these klondike kings, you know, the made it rich out of the i mean, not to give away the end of book, but out of those 100,000 people that went on the trip it will not surprise you. Only about 1 of them got rich. And so that whole 99 , 1 thing that we talk about now, it was recreated in the klondike, you know, because the you know, very few of those claims had that kind of a pay streak. Jeff, the the last of the maneuvering that you write about really takes place. Its such an interesting time to cusp in many ways during pershings punitive expedition. Now, its the last time that the Buffalo Soldiers are engaged. But there are also mounted cavalry, automated trucks, cars and airplanes used as recon. One of the reasons the world should be grateful to mexico and even to pancho villa is on the punitive expedite. This is where america finally got its army shape to be able to go fight in world war one. The punitive expedition itself general, is given conflicting orders from his bosses in washington. Hes told youve got go into mexico and you go to capture and you have got to punish his followers and you must make sure the is never able to do anything like this again. But on the other hand, dont do anything that will upset the mexican people. And pershing after v in mexico and the United States kind naively believed that the mexicans would be just as angry at v for doing this as the americans were, and that had served to turn him to the americans. Well, in fact, the mexicans were very proud v and they werent about to give these invading gringos any help in finding him. So pershing, for the first time in our america in military history, in modern military history, yeah. Hes got some horses and mules. He also has trucks. He also has cannon and hes got a fleet of eight airplanes that, dont have guns mounted on them yet. So theyre not actually going to be able to fight, but they can fly over these miles and miles of rough desert and mountains and maybe spot the general patton, whos a lieutenant at the time. But how can we ever think of patton as anybody but a general . And he would be the first to say that led the first Mechanized Army attack in American History when he and some soldiers in jeeps ran down some of the pieces shot it out with them, killed three and just to make point to the mexican villages in the area that hey, we can do this all forever if we need to, they strap the dead bodies on the hoods of their jeeps, just like you would. A dead deer and drills them through these little villages. So america might could be seen. And by the time the punitive expedition is over, pershing is faced on three sides. East west and south, with mexican federales who are prepared to attack at any moment. War with mexico seems so imminent that American Warships are ringing the mexican coast. Mexicans. Mexico says that if pershing moves in any direction but north back into the states, theyre going to attack. The world came very close to a second war. The germans encouraging this to happen, sent the famous or infamous zimmermann telegram to mexico, saying, if you will join us to fight the americans, you will have the right to win back the territory that they took from way back in the mexican usmexican war. Not only did not happen, thank god, but pershing used this time when he could not move his troops anywhere else to train them. They had really had no training in marching in anything like this and pershing drilled them over and over. So when the punitive expedition was and we entered world war one with germany almost straight away. Pershing commands allied troops and the first troop american troops to effectively be able to go over to europe and fight, or the soldiers from the punitive expedition. So in that very clear, this was a great moment for the American Military, even though they never caught the so everything changed and yet everythings still the same isnt it odd how history to work that way. We have about 10 minutes for questions from the audience if anyone has any can make your way over there to the podium. Ill note something that occurred to me is as i was listening to all talk and looking around this beautiful space, the state capital was construct started between the time period of the klondike and pershings expedition. This was built in 1903, and so we really are in a space relates to those stories. Dont you you. First, greater surprise. And then i you know, were going to leave and were going to go home and our families are going to say to us what, was the mississippi book. First of all, like and what we want to do is we want to say right on cspan, we got the best question from that audience. So no, but the world is watching. Yes. So somebody ask a question. When you ask it. If the microphones will be good, if theres no pressure, i, i yes. Four questions as to im reading last week there came the a of terrorism, but everyone was enjoying my talk. Everything i said any questions and people literally said no. Thats really my question was dealing with idea of like manifest destiny, like going out west, the idea of like that religious divine idea. How did that play into like the klondike as well as like going down the mississippi page, although in your research and see if that way. Yeah, i think that on the klondike there was a there was a sense of it being like last opportunity. Either people that had missed out somehow before and missed out on manifest destiny and like this is their last chance for people that had been successful and wanted to reclaim lost glory. He doesnt to the klondike, he ends up going to nome, alaska on a gold rush like next year. But even like wyatt earp ends up going to alaska this time. And so its a, i dont know, like it was such a there was a poet called the of the sierras who was like very famously like decided that like he was going to be the symbol, like he was the symbol of the literary, and he was going to go to alaska to you say its a bit of a religious and he ends up he cant make it to dawson and i think like he loses a foot to frostbite and like slinks home. And so it was it was this last gasp it like in some ways it epitomized everything from taking the land from the Indigenous People that were there to like boomtowns that didnt boom in over decade or something. You know, theyve truly boomed like in a month. They went. Dawson city goes from 5000 to 40000 in about in just a couple of months. Theyre so its its kind of like all of those steams, you know, packed into one and then it truly was the last gasp, just as you know, the klondike owns. This is when mckinley shot. Hes assassinated. Teddy roosevelt becomes president in like 1901. And then very quickly like life moves on, like its the great white fleet, its the new century. And like the dawson city, like theres still mining and tourists show in like 1919 oh one because its already turning into like a tourist trap. Come see the famous klondike rush. Its like a caricature of itself by the. So its like the conglomeration of all those absurdities into one the last chance. And of course was the mexican expansion by the United States. Thats really where manifest destiny was first discussed and editorially supported by most of the big newspapers, that this is what god intends. America should bring its democracy, its form of government to, the entire American Continent and one new york city major in talking manifest destiny said that because manifest destiny, mexico must learn to love its ravagers. Hmm. So your question really nails it. Its a good one point for the mississippi book festival. I asked a question. Im sorry. So. Oh, sorry. I didnt mean to interrupt you. I was going to say with this, im just kind of more interested in what you are saying, but as well as like, well, did you have any accounts of i need to buy all of your books, but you have any accounts of like missionary is going along with these people like kind of what were their experiences with that . Yes. Oh, in my book. Oh fellow by the name of timothy flint, who was a best selling author in the 19th century and virtually forgotten today. And he was a complete failure as a minister of up in north of boston. He used to when he didnt feel like writing a sermon, he would just show up at the church, different congregational churches, people took the ministers obligations and he would just read his sermon for the week. He would just read from the list of everybody who died in massachusetts that week. You know, and but in 1815, at the age of 35, 35, he decided to reinvent himself as a missionary on the frontier, which was the ohio and Mississippi Rivers at that point. And he was just as much a failure as a missionary going down of the waters. And there were a lot of people administrative, but he just wasnt that could administer. But he found himself he found his voice as a writer and he wrote several bestselling books, which autobiography of. Davy crockett. So he it and he generated a huge amount of interest in other people following going down the river and there was a lot of other missionary efforts at the time a lot of Church Groups went down the river together. And there was also individual in those days was called porter. Cole porter. It must be poor from french. There was a bible salesman and i quote in my book, this one journey of a flat boat. And they went before they sunk actually, they managed to give away or so for Something Like 15,000 copies of the bible, you know, so so it was every step in the expansion of america. There has been either missionary who went before because they wanted to convert the tribes or whatever or no missionary groups who joined. And one of the funniest points i found on the oregon trail was a lot of church went together. The whole Baptist Church would cross together. One of my favorite diary entries, the oregon trail, was this presbyterian was going across. They they showed what they thought was a really good campsite at a place called plum island along the oregon trail, nebraska. And the guy said found a great place to camp. Everythings going to be good. And then however, we moved on when i left group of presbyterians came in in their wagon, you know, so. There was a missionary function to all the expansion of the frontier at every level. And so yes, yes, ill just give one quick antidote because i didnt that you mean like actual, you know, religious as opposed to like pseudo. There was the missionaries only alive in the klondike later, but there was a Catholic Priest father judge who was up there beforehand and would minister to the prophet the white prospectors that had been up there and was like, you know, a very thin man who looked far older. He was or looked for. Yeah, he was younger, but looked much older. And he ended up running the hospital or organize a hospital in dawson city, but refused to any care or allow nuns to come up to provide the care was simply a place for sick people to go. So there was a terrible consumption outbreak and people would go to the hospital, die in the hospital, and then as soon as a bed opened, somebody else would come in and then die. And it was just a it was like it was a rotation. Father judge on his deathbed said that that day was going to be the best day of his life. And then when the nuns finally did arrive later they discovered that the hospital and they tried provide some. They discovered it was 40,000 in debt and in a boomtown full of so was it was only later that there was actual, i guess, religious work done. Thank thank you. Yeah i think we have time for one more question. If its a quick. Okay. Ive tried my hardest to be quick. I have to thank you very much for your talk about. The klondike that has certainly answered a lot of things. We in the history of my family, im originally from little rock, but my grandmother is a product of two widow, widow, widower and a widow. And she had to have brothers. One was a doctor or resident wright lindsey, and he was the first captain of the arkansas football at the university of arkansas in 1889. So anyway, he was a doctor and his brother these were both my grandmothers half siblings was a lawyer in little rock. And they both decided to go to the klondike. Um, the one who was a lawyer came, edgar, came back when, his body came back and he is buried. But we never know what happened to his brother. They also had an uncle went to California Gold rush hour before them. Right. How do i do Research Without spending my life . Because the family really will not talk about. We have some of their books, but its sort of i guess thats why my family so small they were very optimistic. What is a source for tracking down people without spending weeks or months to wonder if. There are family members maybe somewhere. Yeah. I mean, youre around an interesting question which kind of gets at the heart of it, which is why dont we know how many people died in the gold rush. And its because of so many examples like this. So, you know, the library of congress incredible in how they have digital ized, you know, local newspapers from all over the country from far back in that time. I spent many, many hours reading the local paper from like lima, ohio, forever trying to track down who. But until theres some historian that does that in 1897, 1898, reads all those obituary ideas and itll say things like, you know, six dayton boys drowned today and all their
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