May 16, 2023 • 47 mins
Author Ben Thompson and professor of history Dr. Patricia Larash discuss Galvarino, an indigenous Mapuche warrior from the Andes mountains who continued leading a heroic resistance against the Conquistadors even after they severed both of his hands -- according to some versions of the story, he even strapped swords to his forearms and led his men charging into battle. Ben and Pat also discuss the Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, a warrior-queen from 19th century India who led a fierce resistance against the British Empire, fighting with a sword in each hand and her infant son strapped to her back.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. The sword came down, chopping off Galvarino's
right arm. Blood poured everywhere, but Galvarino, he showed no pain,
no emotion. With one arm severed, he calmly put his
(00:20):
left arm on the chopping block. Shocked, the Spanish conquistadors
obliged him, severing his left arm as well, leaving Galvarino
bloody and literally unarmed. They thought that was the last
they'd see of him, but at the next battle, there
was Galvarino leading the charge with a sword strapped to
(00:40):
each of his bloody stumps. Hello and welcome back to
Badass of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and
I am here as always with my co host doctor
Pat Larry Pat. We've got school starting up at the
(01:03):
time of this recording. I'm not sure when the episode
will be released, but as far as the time of
recording it as a school has just started for you.
So things is kind of crazy for you, Yes they.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Are, yeah, yeah. Lots of class prep, faculty meetings, getting
the classroom.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
In order, yeah, and researching stuff for this show. Yes yeah.
So what are you teaching this year? Is it always
kind of the same stuff. Where do you do different
classes every year?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
There's a little bit of variation, but like pretty much
every year it's some version of Latin Latin and more Latin.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
A little bit off topic here, but you teach spoken
Latin because I think that there has from my understanding,
there's a little bit of discussion among classes as to
whether the value of teaching spoken Latin versus reading and
writing it.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, I don't primarily teach spoken Latin. The idea is
to get students using the language so they can I
guess the goal is so they can read primary texts
in the language. But you don't learn a language in isolation.
You learn a language through community. And so my colleagues
and I have been really engaging with developments in Latin pedagogy,
and so we try to incorporate some spoken Latin, a
(02:08):
little bit of conversation in Latin into the classroom, and
have creative and communicative activities because that's how the human
brain actually learns language. So even if you are sitting
down to read, say a letter of Cicero, you're bringing
with it the language as a living thing, as a
language that people communicate in and say, you know, boring
(02:31):
everyday things in as well as profound insights into whatever
it is they're having profound insights.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Into mostly Carthage. Yeah. Yeah, So I guess like it's
an interesting question, right, because you see in movies everybody,
you know, Sometimes you'll see movies where they try to
stay really historically accurate and you see people speaking Latin.
You see Romans speaking in Latin. That's always really cool
to hear because you never really think of it as
(02:56):
a spoken as a spoken language. You'll only ever kind
of But when you are watching that kind of stuff,
for when you're researching ancient history stuff, do you do
you root for the Romans all the time?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Oh? Definitely, not all the time. Definitely not all the time.
I mean, okay, if it's a movie, I might, depending
on how the movie is, I might be rooting for
whoever the movie wants the audience to be sympathetic towards,
you know, But in general, I'm not necessarily rooting for
the Romans. I might be rooting for the people who
are fighting against them, Like I might be rooting for
(03:28):
the Gauls more than I'm rooting for Julius Caesar, you know.
But I do have. I do have some individual romans
that I root for. You know, they make good stories,
their badasses in their own right, you know, Horatius, Cocles, Chloyly, Mukia, Skywall,
some of these heroes of the Early Republic who kind
of develop, they become legends in their own right, and
they just make good stories.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, we should probably get to most of them at
some point as we keep going. Yeah, but I totally
get it. The leadership of the Roman Empire has historically
not always been infallible, I suppose. Well, strange transition here,
but have you seen the trailer for the new Avatar movie?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
No, I haven't you have?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I have? Yes, Well there's a little teaser for it.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, we're talking. We're talking Romans. We're talking in this episode,
we're gonna be talking some Native resistance. And you know,
of course you can't talk Native resistance without talking about
the Avatar movies. Yes, which to me is just mind blowing.
To me that Intel Avengers, that was the highest selling,
highest grossing movie of all time. Yeah, weirdly, my dad
(04:33):
loves it. My dad loved Avatar and he was just like, man,
I can't wait see the other five that they have
in production, which I think they do for real, have
like four or five planned to come out every couple
years for the rest of our foreseeable lifetimes. Oh wow,
So Avatars is back. It's coming back. It's gonna keep
going on forever, even though it's just basically Dances with
(04:55):
Wolves or Pocahontas or basically any number of the last Amara,
any number of movies that fall into this range of
some hero from an empire is captured by the local
tribespeople and then learns to befriend them and then leads
heroic leadership against the oncoming onslaughting enemy armies. It's a
(05:17):
story we've seen a bunch, but this week we're not
going to tell that story again. We're going to tell
the story of leaders who have come from the local
indigenous populations and rose up and fought against very powerful
world spanning empires and executed themselves very well and became
great heroes of their people and remained so to this day. So, Pat,
(05:42):
I think you're going to be talking about somebody who
who took on an empire that was even bigger than
the Roman Empire at its height.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
There are many statues of Ronni Lakshmibai. Picture this. There's
a large statue one you have to look up to see.
You see a woman on a horse rearing up and
she's raising a scimitar looking like a total badass. Now
imagine that this woman is doing this while leading an
(06:21):
army into battle. Not surprising given the scimitar and all.
But as you walk around this statue you see on
her back in a backpack is a young child. So yeah,
this is exciting. We get to talk about Ronnie Lakshmibai
and she is from India and the well empire is actually, well,
(06:44):
is it fair to call it an empire? It's the
British East India Company, which I guess technically is not
an empire, but they were kind of working with empire,
and they were a corporation that had their own I mean,
they had their own military, you know, and they were
I mean they were worlds banning. They had you know,
ships going all over. So this is Ronnie Lakshmi Bai.
She became a major symbol of Indian resistance in World
(07:08):
War Two. Well after her lifetime, an entire all female
fighting division was named after her. And she's not the
only one there are other female freedom fighters from different
times and places who are at least are represented as
carrying their kids into battle.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Well, you can mention that this is a kind of
a common theme of Anita Garibaldi saka Juwea has always
shown her with her baby on her back.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah. So setting the scene, you're in India and picture
yourself up in the north kind of near the Himalaya Mountains.
John C is the name of the princely state that
were that this is all taking place in. And what's
a princely state. Well, it sounds very grand, doesn't it.
In name it was autonomous, but in practice it was
(07:52):
actually a subsidiary to the British East India Company, and
things were working out okay for a Whileritish East India
Company was staying off their back kind of because they
had things worked out in a way that worked out
for them. You know, It's September eighteen fifty one and
the current ruler of the Princely State of john Cy
(08:13):
is the Maharaja Gaguan dar Rau Nuelkar and he was
actually doing a pretty good job of Maharaja. He was
improving the finances of John C. He supported culture and
the arts, and he even earned the respect of the British,
probably because he didn't overstep the boundaries that the British
East India Company thought needed to be respected anyway. So
(08:36):
this is Gangan dar Rau. He's the Maharaja and he's
married a young wife, twenty two year old Lakshmibai, and
she has given birth to a son, which means that hopefully,
you know, at some point Gagan dar Rao moves on
from this life and his son will take over and
ensures a continuity of the rain and hopefully continuity of
(08:59):
Copasitic relations with the British. And in fact, the British
East India Company had a rule that they would automatically
respect a natural born son inheriting his rule from his
father in the case of these princely states. So things
are looking good for the princely state of Johncey, and
things are looking good for Gagandhara. Things are looking good
(09:20):
for Lakshmibai. But four months later, tragically, the young baby
dies and the Maharaja and the Rani Rani. Maharaja's title
means big king, Great King. Rani is a title that
means queen the king and queen, the Maharaja and the
Rani try to have another son, but sooner rather than later,
(09:42):
it's clear that the Maharaja is at death store he's
in his forties, you know, he's got stuff going on.
And following a long established Hindu tradition, the royal couple
adopts a son. This is the son of a cousin
of the Maharaja and in the present to a British official,
so you'd think, you know, they're dotting all their i's
and crossing all their teas and whatever. They confirmed that
(10:06):
this adopted child, whom they've named Damodar Rao, is officially
Gangadar's son and everyone recognizes this and he should be
treated with respect by the British. And also with this
British official, they declare that gang gan Dar's soon to
be widow, our friend Lakshmibai will be in charge of
the government of John C for her lifetime as Queen
(10:27):
Regent or Ronnie Regent.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Right, And this isn't that weird. I mean, maybe it
doesn't really follow the medieval or even at this point
the European you know, succession of kings and queen's thing
but this is Roman, right, the oh I'm about to die.
Augustus was adopted, right, You adopt an heir and you
appoint him your heir. And he was very young at
this point. But the idea would be that Lakshmibai would
(10:52):
would regent for him, would watch over for him until
he was old enough to take over, which I think
in the cases of European kings was somewhere in the
thirteen to sixteen range. You could like kind of assert yourself,
but for that time period, she's kind of the custodian
for him. He's still going to be the maharaja, but
she's keeping an eye out for him. She's going to
(11:13):
be the queen regent for a little bit exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah. Yeah, this was an established tradition. It was an
option that was available. And you know, in India in
the Hindu tradition, people wouldn't even blink an eye. They'd
be like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, you're doing it that way. Cool.
So from the point of view of say, you know,
the good people of johncey, sure, yeah, that's your family,
(11:36):
that's how you do it. But even though they had
tried to do everything officially from the point of view
of the British, and they had roped in a British
official to give the okay to things. The British East
India Company did not actually honor this arrangement in the
way that Lakshmi Bay and her late husband had hoped,
(11:58):
because well, the Governor General of the British East India Company,
so their guy in charge on the ground, Lord Dalhouse,
he does not respect this arrangement and he and his staff,
it's probably his staff dig up some statute somewhere, the
doctrine of laps which claims that only natural born sons,
(12:18):
not adopted ones, could inherit a title. So they refuse
to recognize damodar Row's claim to the throne or even
his mother's claim as regent. So Ronnie Lakshmi Bay is
not being recognized by the British and the British East
India Company try to annex the territory of John C.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
This is also very Roman. This is also very Actually
we have a law that said that you're not allowed
to do this, so this is kind of ours now
and we're just going to come take over. Sorry, it's
just the rules. I don't know what to tell you okay,
oh oh.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
We don't make the rules, you know, we're just following
orders or falling procedure. But the Ronnie Lakshmi Bay is
having none of this. She cries famously, I shall not surrender,
my john Cy and this is this could be her motto.
This is her in a nutshell. She does not surrender.
(13:10):
She is not a surrenderer. The British try to smooth
things over. They offer her a generous pension in exchange
for leaving the palace in the fort and kind of,
you know, retiring quietly to the countryside and doing whatever
it is one does in the countryside, you know, like
a beekeeper or something. They offer her sixty thousand rupees
per year, which would get you pretty far. In eighteen
(13:32):
fifty four, they try to put their own guy in
charge to run things, and Ronni Lakshmibi does not leave.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Okay. So I'm looking at a calculator here of sixty
thousand Indian rupees, which is today worth about six hundred
and fifty pounds. And then when you do the inflation
conversion from eighteen fifty seven to twenty twenty two, six
hundred and fifty pounds is worth about eighty one thousand
(14:02):
pounds of purchasing power today. So it's not a bad deal, right, No,
not at all. Basically like somewhere in the one hundred
thousand dollars a year pension.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Hey, that's not terrible, that's not bad at all.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yes, I would take that for sure. I would quit
everything that I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Okay, so you know this pension, you know, sixty thousand
rupees per year can get you pretty far. But she
turns it down, she does not leave. And in fact
it's not just her as an individual putting her foot down,
but she also rallies her people and she leads them
in battle, and she becomes a powerful symbol of resistance
(14:38):
to British domination. And we're in the Indian Rebellion of
eighteen fifty seven now, and not just Johncey, but other areas,
other regions, other towns, other princely states, other kingdoms in
India are rebelling against the Brits.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
And it's because the British are doing this to all
of them, right, they are consolidating. And you made a
great point earlier when you said the British East India
Company is doing this, not necessarily the British Empire. The
East India Company is a functionary of this, but it
is a big evil corporation, right, This is you know,
they're sort of tangentially attached to the British Empire, but
(15:20):
this is a company that is here to exploit the
resources of this land and export them. And they are
in slaving people. They are working people to death. They
are lying and stealing and cheating and doing all of
the things that we associate with big evil corporations. And
they're screwing over all of the princely states. And at
(15:40):
some point they had enough, and in eighteen fifty seven,
most of these princely states start to rebel, and it's
not a coordinated thing for the most part. It is
different groups start to rebel and it starts to catch
fire of like somebody, some people are like, we've had
enough of this. We're tired of getting screwed over by
the Victorian Amazon, and now we're going to fight against it.
(16:03):
And then everybody else is kind of like, yeah, actually,
me too, this sucks, and the chancy kind of falls
into that.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah. So you have all of these various princely states
and they're communicating with one, another word gets around and
we'll see where this goes. So maybe let's pause for
a moment. You know, she's turned down this frankly pretty
cushy pension and she's rallying her people, rallying the people
(16:30):
of Johncy. So, who is this woman who's in her
twenties with a kid who's just a few years old,
who is leading her people against a big, scary corporation.
So she was born in the town of Varanasi in
northern India on the Ganges River. Her mom died when
she was four, so her dad raised her with actually
(16:55):
not a very demure education. He raised her with a
lot of athletics and martial arts training. She learned how
to write, horse, she learns how to shoe, She learned
how to fence. She learned a sport called malakamba, which
is a combination. I had to learn about this. It's
a combination of gymnastics, yoga, posas and wrestling with props.
So you in some forms you might use a cane,
In some forms, you might use a rope. In some
(17:15):
forms you might use a pole. And maybe the pole
is like standing fixed into the ground, or it might
be suspended from like a frame or a roof, and
it's very artful but also requires a lot of athletic prowess.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
The stories of her going into battle, she's wearing the
baby on her back, and she's in some of the
cases she's got a scimitar in each hand and she's
steering the horse by putting the reins in her teeth. Right,
this is hardcore. You don't just you don't just learn
how to do that on the fly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah. Yeah, So she's acquired many skills and she's using
apparently all of them as she leads people into battle.
So yeah, So rebellion breaks out. It's called many different names,
the Indian Rebellion of eighteen fifty seven, the Mutiny of
eighteen fifty seven, et cetera, et cetera. Lakshmi Bai is
she's the region. She's acting as the region. Who cares
(18:10):
what the British call her, but she is the regent,
She is in charge of John c. She gets her
troops together, she joins the rebellion, and as she does this,
other groups of rebels head on over to offer their
support to Ronnie Lakshmibai and in eighteen fifty eight, We've
got the siege of John C in January of eighteen
(18:32):
fifty eight. You've got British forces under General Rose heading
towards John C and they surround the fort. There's a
bitter battle. Ronnie Lakshmibai has loyal troops. She has some
big firearms, not just scimitars you some firearms too, and
they're doing as much as they can now. One of
(18:55):
the groups that's Lakshmibai's allies under a guy named Dante Tolpe.
They were coming to offer support, but they were defeated,
not completely, but had they experienced a really big setback
at the hands of the Britz. And so this support,
the support or relief that locks me By was kind
of counting on, was not coming in the way that
(19:16):
she expected. So uh oh, the Johncy troops are overwhelmed.
What does Ronnie Lockshmiby do? Does she surrender? Is it hopeless?
Do you think she surrenders?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Ben? I shall not surrender my chancey. I think that's
what she says.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Indeed, she does not surrender her Johncy. And to make
matters worse, the fort of Johncey was even betrayed by
a dirty rotten scoundrel named dulha Jou who had opened
up part of the fort to the Britz And so,
uh oh, is this the end for the Ronnie? Is
(19:52):
this the end for John c? Well? She gathers a
group of palace guards and okay, here here, I'm encountering
a few different stories, so I'm just gonna throw it
all at you. According to one story, there's one of
her beloved horses waiting for her just outside the fort.
So she purchaes on the wall and jumps onto her
horse and rides away into action. Safety and also action
(20:15):
because she's an action person. And also she's not doing
this by herself. She's also got her kid, Damodar Rao
who is I'm not sure. I think he might be
about five years old at this point. So she's carrying
her kid and I'm guessing jumping onto the horse with
her kid, maybe with scimitars also, And so Lachmi Bai,
(20:39):
her kid, Damodar, and her small but fierce band of
palace guards escape with her.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, this is They don't make baby backpacks for five
year olds generally. This is a big boy.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This is a big boy, yep, And he's in for
quite an adventure, Mom, Mom, Are we there yet? Are were?
Are we there yet?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Hang on? So hang on, I'm shooting somebody. We'll get
there when we get there.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So they do get there. Eventually, they make it to
the town of Culpi, where they do meet up with
Tatya Tope and his forces. These were the Allies that
they'd been hoping for some support from earlier and some
other forces, and the British keep attacking the Ronnie is
leading her John C troops and the Allies. They're still
(21:29):
being pummeled by the Brits. They keep going. Ronnie lakshmi
By and other leaders of these combined forces take their
troops and they flee from Kalpi and they make it
to a third place, Guali or fort Okay, like, okay,
is it truly hopeless at this point? Like? Are we like?
Is this like a sunk cost fallacy? Are we just
going to just lose lives in this battle if we
(21:50):
keep fighting without anything coming out of it? Ronnie lauschmi
By convinces them, She tries to convince them. She says, no, no, no, no,
we should keep fighting. We should defend Guala and the
British attack Ronnie Lakshmi Bay is dressed as a cavalry
officer and she rushes into the fray on a horse
(22:13):
and a British soldier raises his pistol and at this point,
not surprisingly, there are different stories. In one version, the
British soldier shoots and kills her and that's how she dies.
In another version, she's badly wounded, but she's not dead,
and she refuses to let the British have her body
because that would add insult to injury. She doesn't want
(22:37):
to suffer the indignity of this. She also knows that
she's quite a symbol to her people, so what happens
to her body afterwards is you might have a lot
of symbolic and emotional value. So she asks a hermit
who apparently is right there hanging out. As hermit stays yeah,
(22:57):
she somehow manages to ask a hermit to cremate her body.
So there actually is a report from a British soldier
saying that he had, like later after the fact, seen
the place where her cremated remains were placed with a
little marker. Okay, so maybe maybe the hermit was able
(23:17):
to come through and perform that last rite.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
For her, right and trying to dig through the legend
around this, right, Like, I mean, I love her final charge. Right,
she's dressed as a cavalry officer in the Maharajah's army,
because that's what she is. Right, She's literally leading cavalry
elements into battle against the eighth British Hussars. Right, Yes,
(23:42):
this is I mean, this is she's commanding a real
battle here. She has swords, she has guns, she is
charging into combat at the head of her men. She's
a target and she is She is shot and killed
or if not killed immediately, dies of wounds later. But
the British don't get her body, Yeah, which is big
(24:02):
because that is something that you know, that is a
symbol for her people and for the resistance and for
all of that. Right, whether this hermit was just hanging
out on the battlefield, or whether she was kind of
like rode off wounded, or was her body was carried
off by her and by her friends is not as
big of a deal as the fact that the British
never paraded her head around on a pike, right exactly.
(24:23):
They never displayed her from a wall, They never used
her as an example of what happens if you betray
the British East India Company or try to resist against us.
She leads her people into battle to the very end, outnumbered, surrounded,
everybody is coming toget her. There's no relief force coming
to save her, and she chooses to attack and charge.
I will not surrender. My chancy shot and killed, but
(24:46):
they don't get the body. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, yeah, she does not surrender. So yeah, so then
what happens, What happens afterwards? You know, was she successful?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Well?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Okay, in one sense. Her son's her Damodar. They give
him a pension, which he actually accepts, but she does
live on as a symbol. General Rose, the guy who
had led the original charge, he's actually on record commending
her for her bravery, just saying, wow, she was one
of the bravest fighters he knew.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, and sir Heroes is a big deal. This is
sir he roes. He was pretty. He becomes a very
high ranking general. But he had fought in the Crimean
War against the Russians. He had been an advisor for
the Ottomans when they were in their war. Some of
their wars against the Egyptians he'd fought French, he'd fought Russians,
he'd fought Turks and Ottomans with and against all of
(25:37):
these people, and then he fought in India, and then
afterwards he becomes the commander of British forces in Ireland.
You know, even later in his career he says, she
was one of the bravest warriors I ever fought against.
And so that's that's high praise coming from this guy,
because he knows, he knows warriors.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, he knows warriors. Yeah, yeah, And you know, I
might not necessarily agree with, you know, the decisions of
the side that he was fighting for, but yeah, he
knows warriors also.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I guess it's worth mentioning that the Indian rebellion of
eighteen fifty seven, the mutiny, whatever you want to call it,
that ends up as a failure. Right, the East India
Company asserts power and the British Empire kind of has
power over India basically until Gandhi, basically until nineteen forty
seven when India gets its independence. But even up until
(26:27):
that point and even continuing on to today, she is
a symbol of resistance. And during World War Two, like
you said, there was a movement. The British are fighting
the Japanese in India, very close to India, and there
is a movement that comes up within India itself of like, hey,
this is an opportunity for us to fight and gain
(26:48):
our own independence. And among those forces they did raise
a unit of women soldiers that they called the Rainy
Lakshmi Bai Division. So she, even at that point, one
hundred years after the mutiny, it's still considered a symbol
of heroic resistance against the Empire. When I was going
(27:08):
through and looking up some research this for this episode,
we were talking, Oh, you know, they have statues. She's
on the Rainy is on a postage stamp. There's all
of these, like very heroic equestrian statues on horseback with
the sword and the baby and the gun strapped to
the horse and stuff like that. There's a Bollywood movie.
(27:29):
I know nothing about it except that I saw screenshots
and I saw that it's being released. Okay, I don't
know if it's a musical. I'm picturing it as such,
and I don't quite know what that would look like.
But I guess it's a good example of her continuing
popularity in India that there is a some Bollywood film
based on her life, and I guess from here, I
kind of want to transition into another long running resistance,
(27:53):
right because the Rainy is picking up, the Rainy of
Chancey is picking up in eighteen fifty so eighteen fifty three,
eighteen fifty seven, and to this day she's a symbol
of resistance. But the legacy was that her people continued
to resist the British right up until they gained their
independence eventually in nineteen forty seven. And I'm going to
(28:14):
talk about I'm going to transition to a different part
of the world, but I'm going to talk about another
lasting resistance that dealt with another world spanning colonial empire
that started even earlier than the Rainy and continues even longer.
So we're going to talk about the Mapuchi people of Chile,
(28:35):
which is probably a story you've never heard of before.
There's not very much on it in English, but I
was able to find quite a few sources on it,
and actually through the website, I was contacted by a
few people from southern Chile who translated several sources for
me and sent me the translations, and I was able
to work off those when I wrote about these guys
(28:56):
in my third book. So I'm going to talk about
that guy, Alvarino from the open. So let's get into that. Okay,
we're back, and let's get back to the story.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Okay, yes, tell us about the Mapuche and tell us
about particular badasses.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
So we're gonna start with the Spanish conquistadors. I mean,
these guys were pretty tough characters. Right. We are gonna
be in the early sixteenth centuries, So her Nan Quartes
has come over and conquered the Aztec Empire, and Pizarro
is just finishing up with the overtaking the Inca in Peru.
(29:41):
And you have these this world spanning colonial empire of
the Spanish, and they are going everywhere in the New World,
and if there's some gold involved, they will do whatever
it takes to get that gold. Presumably that includes like
either destroying or colonizing the indigenous peoples that live there.
And around the time that Pizarro was finishing up with
(30:03):
the Inca, he starts hearing about this group in basically Chile,
southern Chile, and in Argentina like present day Chile and Argentina,
going into like Patagonia. But they're in the southern Andes
Mountains and they have silver and some gold, and Pizarro
is very interested in both of those.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Things because they're shiny.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Because they're shiny, and that's the only value that they have.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Well, they're shiny, and you can get a good price
for them on the open market.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yes, the only value they have is that they're pretty.
But they're worth money and people have been killing each
other for it for as long as we've existed as
a species. Yes, yes, yes, so the Arcadians. They're a
loose confederation in southern Chile and in Patagonia of Argentina
present day. Think like the Celts of South America. Right,
(30:54):
It's a bunch of tribes that are all different and
individual and autonomous, but they share a generally common culture
and language. And the biggest and the most prominent of
these tribes are the Mapuche. They're primarily in Chile.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
So in fifteen forty one, Pizarro dispatches one of his
good one of his top lieutenants, a guy named Pedro
de Valdivia. He goes down to Chile to investigate the
Concusators were very effective at what they did. They had
several things that the native populations of Central and South
America couldn't really cope with. They had guns, they had
(31:29):
steel armor, they had horses, which didn't exist in South America,
and they had all kinds of crazy, messed up diseases
that were killing everybody. And the Mapuche at this point,
they don't even have walls on their villages, right, like
they are they're not really equipped to deal with crossbows
and plate armor.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, so they didn't have walls in their villages, but
what did they have? You know, the Mapuche, they'd been
bopping along living their lives. We have archaeological evidence that
shows that they had been living in the region since
the six hundreds or five hundreds BC and around the
time of the arrival of the Spaniards. They had by
that time they developed sophisticated textile production, goldsmithing, and the
(32:08):
textiles had great importance as trade goods and status symbols.
So they were integrated into a larger trade network, and
they were very sophisticated in many ways, just maybe not
in ways that would defend them against this particular threat.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Right, And that's a thing that I don't think really
gets talked about enough when you are talking about colonization
and imperial empires moving two less developed areas, which is okay. Yeah,
these people didn't have firearms and they didn't put walls
on their cities, but they did have like a very
(32:48):
thriving culture. Right. If you go right now, you can
go to a Mapuche village. It's a tourism thing. You
can go there and walk through it and see what's
going on there. And what they had created is very
impressive and was very useful to what they were doing
for their day to day lives. Right. They have homes
that are built. They're high up in the mountains, right,
so you're in the Andes and the foothills of the Andes.
(33:10):
You know, the building homes out of bamboo and grass.
They build the fires inside of these homes.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
What that sounds like, it's that would violate fire code.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, exactly. So if you think of like a Viking longhouse,
they would do that as well. But there's a kind
of wood that is in the area and I can't
pronounce the name of it, but it doesn't spark up
or create a ton of smoke really. Yeah, So they
would have these fires inside these these larger homes. The
fire brings warmth and food, and then they can cook up.
(33:41):
They have a bunch of various different types of flowers
and grains that they produce in the region, and then
after the fire's out, they can make a mixture with
the ash to create a soap that would clean their clothes. Right,
you kind of live off the land. You live here,
you take care of it. If you're going to cut
down a tree to build your house, you're supposed to
plant for That's kind of the rule.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And it sounds like they understand how to use resources
and also how to sustain their resources exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
And they're they're not a warlike people, when certainly there
was tribal warfare as there is anywhere in the world,
of course. Yeah, but it's not a culture of like
we're going to build a wall around our fort. It
was a culture of more like, hey, you know, we'll
make some we can pull some silver out of the ground.
We can make some really pretty things with it. They
work on that, They work on some very decorative textiles.
(34:27):
They build their homes, and they make their fires and
they cook their dinners. And I love that you brought
that up, because that is a thing that tends to
get overlooked sometimes when you're talking about colonial empires and
wars of this nature. There's an incredible Mapouche warrior by
the name of Lautaro, who I'm sure we'll talk about
in another episode. But he manages to kill one of
Spain's governors and defeat a second in battle. Due to
(34:50):
Lataro's success in turning his people into an organized army
to be reckoned with, Spain became overly worried about losing
power in Chile and control over the Mapuche. They rush
a third guy, Nardicile, to take control and stomp down
all native opposition. This guy is Don Garcio Hurtado de Mendoza.
He's twenty two years old and he arrives to finish
(35:11):
the job. Right. We've lost two guys to them Mapuche.
We need to crush them, We need to crush this resistance.
He's young and ready for action and ready to make
a name for himself. And so Don Garcia Hurtado de
Mendoza raises his army and he's going to He's going
to strike while Otaro's dead and defeat them Mapuche once
and for all, and he starts attacking the towns. He's
(35:32):
more aggressive and more violent and more brutal than some
of the Spaniards had been before him. In one of
the early attacks, he attacks this town and he defeats
the warriors there, and he gathers all of the men
and of fighting age, and he orders their right hand
cut off at the wrist. Oh, that's awful, it's awful. Yes,
it's a it's a thing we've seen in the past. Yeah,
(35:55):
various other time periods. But yeah, he cuts everybody's hands
off at the wrist and the right home, so they
can't the right hand, so they can't carry a weapon.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Unless they're lefties. Okay, So this Mendoza guy is chopping
off people's right hands, and this means that, you know,
whether you're a rody or lefties.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Is not convenient, no, and so you know you could
still I guess in theory you use your left hand.
But one of the chiefs of this tribe, this town,
that was this village that is being sacked and tormented here,
he's one of the chiefs. His name is Galvarino. The
way they hadn't worked was they would cut down a
big tree. So there's this huge tree stump. All of
(36:33):
the men of the tribe would line up in front
of this stump and they would kneel down in front
of it. Mendoza would order some guy with an axe
or sword or whatever to cut off your hand. They're
going through this line and they're cutting off all of
these hands. They're putting all the hands in a pile.
It's very gruesome, it's very bloody. Galvarino kneels and he's
(36:55):
surrounded by his people, and all the eyes of his
tribe are on him. All the Spanish soldier are standing
in formation at attention, watching overseeing this. He's got a
kneel in front of this Mendoza guy. He puts his
hand on the stump. Mendoza gives the word then chop
his hand off. And Galvino is not the kind of
guy who's going to like be quieted by this. He
(37:19):
is pissed, and he is super pissed.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I would be too.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
He's very unhappy with the things that are happening, and
he channels his rage. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't cry,
he doesn't plead for anything. They cut it off. He
just looks at Mendoza with rage and he takes the
arm off with the stump, and he puts his left
hand on the tree trunk. Do this one next, and Mendoza.
(37:45):
Mendoza is one of these like sick assholes who's just like, okay, fine, whatever,
if you want to just do it. He obligeses Galvirino
and cuts off the left hand as well, and Galvino
doesn't flinch then either. He gets up and he walks off,
and he makes eye contact with Mendoza and he remembers this,
he's only thinking about vengeance.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
That's badass. I mean, okay, that's badass or foolish or something.
I mean. It kind of reminds me of the Roman
story of Mukia sky Wola. He's this Roman guy who
was captured by the enemy Etruscans, and he said, hey,
I'm a Roman. You know, yeah, you can kill me
because I tried to assassinate your king. But you know what,
(38:24):
there's a whole bunch of Roman guys lined up right
behind me waiting to take my place and keep on
trying to assassinate y'all. And he says, we are brave,
we are not afraid, and he shoves his right hand
into the fire that was just burning there and allows
his right hand to be burned off to show that, yes,
(38:44):
we're brave. And you know, the Etruscans are so impressed
by this that they let him go. But it sounds
like with Galvarino and Mendoza, it sounds like sounds like
things escalate.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
They escalate. We're not even at the good part yet. Wait, what,
well Galverino is a I'm gonna say, he's like Wolverine,
like Logan. Because Mendoza moves on, right, He's burned a
couple of these villages. He's ready to show these Mapooche
whose boss. He moves on to the next town, and
the next town, the Mapoocher are waiting for him. They
(39:13):
know he's coming, they know what he's gonna do. They're
at a renewed strength of like they're redetermined to defend
their town against this guy, because what's he gonna do
if he takes over, it's even worse than like, yeah,
than just what the Spanish had already been doing. This
guy is a problem, right, we got to deal with
this guy.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
So the Mupouche are waiting for him. They have raised
arms against him, pun totally intended, right.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yes, they have raised arms against him and they are
ready to fight him. Anybody that ken has come to
this battle to face Mendoza. And he goes to lead
his guys into battle, and the first dude that he
sees is Galvarino at the front of his men, leading
his tribe, leading his people, and he has used rope
(39:55):
to tie sword blades to the stumps of his arms,
and he is going to run into battle with stumps
for arms, but big long sword blades coming out like
Baraka from Mortal Kombat or like Wolverine. Just amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So he's just like slash slash, slash, slash slash and.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Right, yeah, just running out there with giant like double
sided meat cleavers strapped onto his I've tied probably with
some very good knots i'd imagine tied on to his stumps.
And he leads his men into battle and attacks from
the front lines. And just to show, like, I don't
know how effective this was. We don't have a great
(40:35):
details of like blow for blow like accounting of his battle,
but if nothing else, this is inspirational. Right you can
imagine the pump up pre battle speech that Galvarino gave
his people, like you know, here's here's what I'm willing
to do. What are you guys going to bring to
the table.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, the psychological effect must be astounding. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
So the war continues, right, The battle continues. Galvarino and Mendoza.
They fight very, very bloody battle. Galviino was eventually captured
and executed. Copulican is eventually captured and executed. Mendoza Well,
as much as I've been painting him as the bad guy,
he lives. I mean, this is just why history sometimes
(41:14):
is more depressing than fiction. Mendoza lives, the city of
Mendoza and Argentina is named after him. He lives to
be seventy three, dies like a rich man in his sleep.
But the spirit of Galvarino has kind of inspired these
Mapuche people and Leataro and Copulican and all of these
people who come after him. So this battle is taking
(41:35):
place in the mid fifteen fifties, and the Mapuche will
continue to fight the Spanish off and on. Anytime the
Spanish tried to impede upon Mapuche territory or build a
fort on the border, the Mapuche attack and again Celts
is a great example of kind of the relationship here
is like the Celts versus the Romans. Right, we're here,
(41:56):
we're doing our thing. Don't build any forts here, don't
try to come after We'll all come after you. We'll
all fight, and we'll all do crazy things to prevent
you from overrunning us. And it continues on for decades
and then centuries, and the Spanish would fortify a border,
they build some fortresses, and then they'd get attacked and
(42:17):
the fortress would be set on fire. The Spanish would
come into Mapouche lands and they wouldn't be able to
make any progress. And so it wasn't until seventeen twenty four,
which is one hundred and eighty three years after Pizarro
ordered the invasion of Chile.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Wait, hang on, so you said, I just want to
make clear that I heard this one hundred eighty three years. Yes,
so this is like almost two centuries.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yes, for one hundred and eighty three years, okay, Yeah,
the Spanish border with Rocao, our Canaians was in contention,
and they were technically, I guess, at war. And it
was only in seventeen twenty four that the Spanish government
eventually signed a permanent peace treaty with the Mapuche people.
They say that it's hard to gauge the thing, but
(43:00):
they say the Spanish crown spent more money on the
Racharian War than they spent in the entire conquest of
Mezso and South America combined.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Okay, that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
So the Mapuche remained independent throughout Spanish colonial era in
South America, even in the seventeen twenties, even when we're
talking like later time period, even after they've signed this
peace treaty, they still remain independent. They're one of the
only tribes in the New World to successfully resist European occupation,
and they actually stay completely autonomous until Chile becomes a country,
(43:32):
until Chile gains its independence from Spain. The first president
of Chile, whose name was Ambrosio O'Higgins, which is not
a name you would expect to the first president of
Chile to have.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Who's like a combination Spanish and Irish.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah, he was. He was Irish descent, but from Chile.
He was able to peacefully integrate the rol Coow region
into Chile at the end of the eighteen hundreds. So
from the first expedition into Mapuchles until the Mapuche became
part of a free Chile. It was three hundred and
(44:06):
fifty years.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Three hundred and fifty years, so that's like a century
longer than America's even been a country.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, and it's because they had guys like Galvarino would
rather strap swords to their bloody stumps and fight Spaniards
than submit to the will of a mendoza or a
you know, or a conquistador. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Well, and also Lautaro, who you know, he didn't last
too long, but he kicked things all off.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
He got it going.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, I mean there was a he put in place
the system that the Mapuche would use to defend their
homelands for the one hundred and eighty three years. Yeah,
and yeah, I love that they were never part of Spain. Yeah,
that's an awesome thing for South America, like a South
American tribe that was never part of the Spanish Empire ever.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yeah. And the Mupuche today, Okay, so they have, you know,
they achieved some sort of peace with Chile, and you
might suspect it's not one hundred percent smooth. There is
conflict to this day, a lot of it having to
do with self determination and autonomy over rights over ancestral
(45:14):
lands and some of the conflict is with big forestry companies.
So that's, you know, something that the Mapuchi people are
involved in today that you might hear about.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
And something they share with the Rainy of Lakshimiubai who
something they share with the Rainy of Jancy, who was
also trying to deal with a big evil corporation trying
to exploit our natural resources.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
But anyway, that's that's that's it. Yeah, that's our show.
That is too. We wanted to cover a couple of
populations who who battled big colonial empires and had some success,
and who also are people that maybe aren't household names
in English language even though they even though they're they're
(45:59):
these two people our national heroes in their own countries. Today,
there's not much about them outside of those outside of
those cultures, and I think there.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Should be definitely.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, thank you guys so much for listening, and we
will see you see you next week.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Yeah bye, stay Badass, my peeps.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, me Ben Thompson,
and my co host doctor Pat Larish. Writing by me
and Pat, story editing by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Fibbs, and
Ali Lemer, Mixing and music and sound design by Jude Brewer.
Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeartRadio.
(46:39):
Badass of the Week is based off my website badass
ofthek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out
with questions or ideas, hit me up at Badass podcast
at badass ofthek dot com. If you like the podcast,
please subscribe, follow, listen, tell your friends, tell your enemies,
and we'll be back next week with another one. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the ihart Radio app,
(47:00):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast content.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. The sword came down, chopping off Galvarino's
right arm. Blood poured everywhere, but Galvarino, he showed no pain,
no emotion. With one arm severed, he calmly put his
(00:20):
left arm on the chopping block. Shocked, the Spanish conquistadors
obliged him, severing his left arm as well, leaving Galvarino
bloody and literally unarmed. They thought that was the last
they'd see of him, but at the next battle, there
was Galvarino leading the charge with a sword strapped to
(00:40):
each of his bloody stumps. Hello and welcome back to
Badass of the Week. My name is Ben Thompson and
I am here as always with my co host doctor
Pat Larry Pat. We've got school starting up at the
(01:03):
time of this recording. I'm not sure when the episode
will be released, but as far as the time of
recording it as a school has just started for you.
So things is kind of crazy for you, Yes they.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Are, yeah, yeah. Lots of class prep, faculty meetings, getting
the classroom.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
In order, yeah, and researching stuff for this show. Yes yeah.
So what are you teaching this year? Is it always
kind of the same stuff. Where do you do different
classes every year?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
There's a little bit of variation, but like pretty much
every year it's some version of Latin Latin and more Latin.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
A little bit off topic here, but you teach spoken
Latin because I think that there has from my understanding,
there's a little bit of discussion among classes as to
whether the value of teaching spoken Latin versus reading and
writing it.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, I don't primarily teach spoken Latin. The idea is
to get students using the language so they can I
guess the goal is so they can read primary texts
in the language. But you don't learn a language in isolation.
You learn a language through community. And so my colleagues
and I have been really engaging with developments in Latin pedagogy,
and so we try to incorporate some spoken Latin, a
(02:08):
little bit of conversation in Latin into the classroom, and
have creative and communicative activities because that's how the human
brain actually learns language. So even if you are sitting
down to read, say a letter of Cicero, you're bringing
with it the language as a living thing, as a
language that people communicate in and say, you know, boring
(02:31):
everyday things in as well as profound insights into whatever
it is they're having profound insights.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Into mostly Carthage. Yeah. Yeah, So I guess like it's
an interesting question, right, because you see in movies everybody,
you know, Sometimes you'll see movies where they try to
stay really historically accurate and you see people speaking Latin.
You see Romans speaking in Latin. That's always really cool
to hear because you never really think of it as
(02:56):
a spoken as a spoken language. You'll only ever kind
of But when you are watching that kind of stuff,
for when you're researching ancient history stuff, do you do
you root for the Romans all the time?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Oh? Definitely, not all the time. Definitely not all the time.
I mean, okay, if it's a movie, I might, depending
on how the movie is, I might be rooting for
whoever the movie wants the audience to be sympathetic towards,
you know, But in general, I'm not necessarily rooting for
the Romans. I might be rooting for the people who
are fighting against them, Like I might be rooting for
(03:28):
the Gauls more than I'm rooting for Julius Caesar, you know.
But I do have. I do have some individual romans
that I root for. You know, they make good stories,
their badasses in their own right, you know, Horatius, Cocles, Chloyly, Mukia, Skywall,
some of these heroes of the Early Republic who kind
of develop, they become legends in their own right, and
they just make good stories.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, we should probably get to most of them at
some point as we keep going. Yeah, but I totally
get it. The leadership of the Roman Empire has historically
not always been infallible, I suppose. Well, strange transition here,
but have you seen the trailer for the new Avatar movie?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
No, I haven't you have?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I have? Yes, Well there's a little teaser for it.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, we're talking. We're talking Romans. We're talking in this episode,
we're gonna be talking some Native resistance. And you know,
of course you can't talk Native resistance without talking about
the Avatar movies. Yes, which to me is just mind blowing.
To me that Intel Avengers, that was the highest selling,
highest grossing movie of all time. Yeah, weirdly, my dad
(04:33):
loves it. My dad loved Avatar and he was just like, man,
I can't wait see the other five that they have
in production, which I think they do for real, have
like four or five planned to come out every couple
years for the rest of our foreseeable lifetimes. Oh wow,
So Avatars is back. It's coming back. It's gonna keep
going on forever, even though it's just basically Dances with
(04:55):
Wolves or Pocahontas or basically any number of the last Amara,
any number of movies that fall into this range of
some hero from an empire is captured by the local
tribespeople and then learns to befriend them and then leads
heroic leadership against the oncoming onslaughting enemy armies. It's a
(05:17):
story we've seen a bunch, but this week we're not
going to tell that story again. We're going to tell
the story of leaders who have come from the local
indigenous populations and rose up and fought against very powerful
world spanning empires and executed themselves very well and became
great heroes of their people and remained so to this day. So, Pat,
(05:42):
I think you're going to be talking about somebody who
who took on an empire that was even bigger than
the Roman Empire at its height.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
There are many statues of Ronni Lakshmibai. Picture this. There's
a large statue one you have to look up to see.
You see a woman on a horse rearing up and
she's raising a scimitar looking like a total badass. Now
imagine that this woman is doing this while leading an
(06:21):
army into battle. Not surprising given the scimitar and all.
But as you walk around this statue you see on
her back in a backpack is a young child. So yeah,
this is exciting. We get to talk about Ronnie Lakshmibai
and she is from India and the well empire is actually, well,
(06:44):
is it fair to call it an empire? It's the
British East India Company, which I guess technically is not
an empire, but they were kind of working with empire,
and they were a corporation that had their own I mean,
they had their own military, you know, and they were
I mean they were worlds banning. They had you know,
ships going all over. So this is Ronnie Lakshmi Bai.
She became a major symbol of Indian resistance in World
(07:08):
War Two. Well after her lifetime, an entire all female
fighting division was named after her. And she's not the
only one there are other female freedom fighters from different
times and places who are at least are represented as
carrying their kids into battle.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Well, you can mention that this is a kind of
a common theme of Anita Garibaldi saka Juwea has always
shown her with her baby on her back.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah. So setting the scene, you're in India and picture
yourself up in the north kind of near the Himalaya Mountains.
John C is the name of the princely state that
were that this is all taking place in. And what's
a princely state. Well, it sounds very grand, doesn't it.
In name it was autonomous, but in practice it was
(07:52):
actually a subsidiary to the British East India Company, and
things were working out okay for a Whileritish East India
Company was staying off their back kind of because they
had things worked out in a way that worked out
for them. You know, It's September eighteen fifty one and
the current ruler of the Princely State of john Cy
(08:13):
is the Maharaja Gaguan dar Rau Nuelkar and he was
actually doing a pretty good job of Maharaja. He was
improving the finances of John C. He supported culture and
the arts, and he even earned the respect of the British,
probably because he didn't overstep the boundaries that the British
East India Company thought needed to be respected anyway. So
(08:36):
this is Gangan dar Rau. He's the Maharaja and he's
married a young wife, twenty two year old Lakshmibai, and
she has given birth to a son, which means that hopefully,
you know, at some point Gagan dar Rao moves on
from this life and his son will take over and
ensures a continuity of the rain and hopefully continuity of
(08:59):
Copasitic relations with the British. And in fact, the British
East India Company had a rule that they would automatically
respect a natural born son inheriting his rule from his
father in the case of these princely states. So things
are looking good for the princely state of Johncey, and
things are looking good for Gagandhara. Things are looking good
(09:20):
for Lakshmibai. But four months later, tragically, the young baby
dies and the Maharaja and the Rani Rani. Maharaja's title
means big king, Great King. Rani is a title that
means queen the king and queen, the Maharaja and the
Rani try to have another son, but sooner rather than later,
(09:42):
it's clear that the Maharaja is at death store he's
in his forties, you know, he's got stuff going on.
And following a long established Hindu tradition, the royal couple
adopts a son. This is the son of a cousin
of the Maharaja and in the present to a British official,
so you'd think, you know, they're dotting all their i's
and crossing all their teas and whatever. They confirmed that
(10:06):
this adopted child, whom they've named Damodar Rao, is officially
Gangadar's son and everyone recognizes this and he should be
treated with respect by the British. And also with this
British official, they declare that gang gan Dar's soon to
be widow, our friend Lakshmibai will be in charge of
the government of John C for her lifetime as Queen
(10:27):
Regent or Ronnie Regent.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Right, And this isn't that weird. I mean, maybe it
doesn't really follow the medieval or even at this point
the European you know, succession of kings and queen's thing
but this is Roman, right, the oh I'm about to die.
Augustus was adopted, right, You adopt an heir and you
appoint him your heir. And he was very young at
this point. But the idea would be that Lakshmibai would
(10:52):
would regent for him, would watch over for him until
he was old enough to take over, which I think
in the cases of European kings was somewhere in the
thirteen to sixteen range. You could like kind of assert yourself,
but for that time period, she's kind of the custodian
for him. He's still going to be the maharaja, but
she's keeping an eye out for him. She's going to
(11:13):
be the queen regent for a little bit exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah. Yeah, this was an established tradition. It was an
option that was available. And you know, in India in
the Hindu tradition, people wouldn't even blink an eye. They'd
be like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, you're doing it that way. Cool.
So from the point of view of say, you know,
the good people of johncey, sure, yeah, that's your family,
(11:36):
that's how you do it. But even though they had
tried to do everything officially from the point of view
of the British, and they had roped in a British
official to give the okay to things. The British East
India Company did not actually honor this arrangement in the
way that Lakshmi Bay and her late husband had hoped,
(11:58):
because well, the Governor General of the British East India Company,
so their guy in charge on the ground, Lord Dalhouse,
he does not respect this arrangement and he and his staff,
it's probably his staff dig up some statute somewhere, the
doctrine of laps which claims that only natural born sons,
(12:18):
not adopted ones, could inherit a title. So they refuse
to recognize damodar Row's claim to the throne or even
his mother's claim as regent. So Ronnie Lakshmi Bay is
not being recognized by the British and the British East
India Company try to annex the territory of John C.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
This is also very Roman. This is also very Actually
we have a law that said that you're not allowed
to do this, so this is kind of ours now
and we're just going to come take over. Sorry, it's
just the rules. I don't know what to tell you okay,
oh oh.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
We don't make the rules, you know, we're just following
orders or falling procedure. But the Ronnie Lakshmi Bay is
having none of this. She cries famously, I shall not surrender,
my john Cy and this is this could be her motto.
This is her in a nutshell. She does not surrender.
(13:10):
She is not a surrenderer. The British try to smooth
things over. They offer her a generous pension in exchange
for leaving the palace in the fort and kind of,
you know, retiring quietly to the countryside and doing whatever
it is one does in the countryside, you know, like
a beekeeper or something. They offer her sixty thousand rupees
per year, which would get you pretty far. In eighteen
(13:32):
fifty four, they try to put their own guy in
charge to run things, and Ronni Lakshmibi does not leave.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Okay. So I'm looking at a calculator here of sixty
thousand Indian rupees, which is today worth about six hundred
and fifty pounds. And then when you do the inflation
conversion from eighteen fifty seven to twenty twenty two, six
hundred and fifty pounds is worth about eighty one thousand
(14:02):
pounds of purchasing power today. So it's not a bad deal, right, No,
not at all. Basically like somewhere in the one hundred
thousand dollars a year pension.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Hey, that's not terrible, that's not bad at all.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yes, I would take that for sure. I would quit
everything that I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Okay, so you know this pension, you know, sixty thousand
rupees per year can get you pretty far. But she
turns it down, she does not leave. And in fact
it's not just her as an individual putting her foot down,
but she also rallies her people and she leads them
in battle, and she becomes a powerful symbol of resistance
(14:38):
to British domination. And we're in the Indian Rebellion of
eighteen fifty seven now, and not just Johncey, but other areas,
other regions, other towns, other princely states, other kingdoms in
India are rebelling against the Brits.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
And it's because the British are doing this to all
of them, right, they are consolidating. And you made a
great point earlier when you said the British East India
Company is doing this, not necessarily the British Empire. The
East India Company is a functionary of this, but it
is a big evil corporation, right, This is you know,
they're sort of tangentially attached to the British Empire, but
(15:20):
this is a company that is here to exploit the
resources of this land and export them. And they are
in slaving people. They are working people to death. They
are lying and stealing and cheating and doing all of
the things that we associate with big evil corporations. And
they're screwing over all of the princely states. And at
(15:40):
some point they had enough, and in eighteen fifty seven,
most of these princely states start to rebel, and it's
not a coordinated thing for the most part. It is
different groups start to rebel and it starts to catch
fire of like somebody, some people are like, we've had
enough of this. We're tired of getting screwed over by
the Victorian Amazon, and now we're going to fight against it.
(16:03):
And then everybody else is kind of like, yeah, actually,
me too, this sucks, and the chancy kind of falls
into that.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah. So you have all of these various princely states
and they're communicating with one, another word gets around and
we'll see where this goes. So maybe let's pause for
a moment. You know, she's turned down this frankly pretty
cushy pension and she's rallying her people, rallying the people
(16:30):
of Johncy. So, who is this woman who's in her
twenties with a kid who's just a few years old,
who is leading her people against a big, scary corporation.
So she was born in the town of Varanasi in
northern India on the Ganges River. Her mom died when
she was four, so her dad raised her with actually
(16:55):
not a very demure education. He raised her with a
lot of athletics and martial arts training. She learned how
to write, horse, she learns how to shoe, She learned
how to fence. She learned a sport called malakamba, which
is a combination. I had to learn about this. It's
a combination of gymnastics, yoga, posas and wrestling with props.
So you in some forms you might use a cane,
In some forms, you might use a rope. In some
(17:15):
forms you might use a pole. And maybe the pole
is like standing fixed into the ground, or it might
be suspended from like a frame or a roof, and
it's very artful but also requires a lot of athletic prowess.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
The stories of her going into battle, she's wearing the
baby on her back, and she's in some of the
cases she's got a scimitar in each hand and she's
steering the horse by putting the reins in her teeth. Right,
this is hardcore. You don't just you don't just learn
how to do that on the fly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah. Yeah, So she's acquired many skills and she's using
apparently all of them as she leads people into battle.
So yeah, So rebellion breaks out. It's called many different names,
the Indian Rebellion of eighteen fifty seven, the Mutiny of
eighteen fifty seven, et cetera, et cetera. Lakshmi Bai is
she's the region. She's acting as the region. Who cares
(18:10):
what the British call her, but she is the regent,
She is in charge of John c. She gets her
troops together, she joins the rebellion, and as she does this,
other groups of rebels head on over to offer their
support to Ronnie Lakshmibai and in eighteen fifty eight, We've
got the siege of John C in January of eighteen
(18:32):
fifty eight. You've got British forces under General Rose heading
towards John C and they surround the fort. There's a
bitter battle. Ronnie Lakshmibai has loyal troops. She has some
big firearms, not just scimitars you some firearms too, and
they're doing as much as they can now. One of
(18:55):
the groups that's Lakshmibai's allies under a guy named Dante Tolpe.
They were coming to offer support, but they were defeated,
not completely, but had they experienced a really big setback
at the hands of the Britz. And so this support,
the support or relief that locks me By was kind
of counting on, was not coming in the way that
(19:16):
she expected. So uh oh, the Johncy troops are overwhelmed.
What does Ronnie Lockshmiby do? Does she surrender? Is it hopeless?
Do you think she surrenders?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Ben? I shall not surrender my chancey. I think that's
what she says.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Indeed, she does not surrender her Johncy. And to make
matters worse, the fort of Johncey was even betrayed by
a dirty rotten scoundrel named dulha Jou who had opened
up part of the fort to the Britz And so,
uh oh, is this the end for the Ronnie? Is
(19:52):
this the end for John c? Well? She gathers a
group of palace guards and okay, here here, I'm encountering
a few different stories, so I'm just gonna throw it
all at you. According to one story, there's one of
her beloved horses waiting for her just outside the fort.
So she purchaes on the wall and jumps onto her
horse and rides away into action. Safety and also action
(20:15):
because she's an action person. And also she's not doing
this by herself. She's also got her kid, Damodar Rao
who is I'm not sure. I think he might be
about five years old at this point. So she's carrying
her kid and I'm guessing jumping onto the horse with
her kid, maybe with scimitars also, And so Lachmi Bai,
(20:39):
her kid, Damodar, and her small but fierce band of
palace guards escape with her.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, this is They don't make baby backpacks for five
year olds generally. This is a big boy.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This is a big boy, yep, And he's in for
quite an adventure, Mom, Mom, Are we there yet? Are were?
Are we there yet?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Hang on? So hang on, I'm shooting somebody. We'll get
there when we get there.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So they do get there. Eventually, they make it to
the town of Culpi, where they do meet up with
Tatya Tope and his forces. These were the Allies that
they'd been hoping for some support from earlier and some
other forces, and the British keep attacking the Ronnie is
leading her John C troops and the Allies. They're still
(21:29):
being pummeled by the Brits. They keep going. Ronnie lakshmi
By and other leaders of these combined forces take their
troops and they flee from Kalpi and they make it
to a third place, Guali or fort Okay, like, okay,
is it truly hopeless at this point? Like? Are we like?
Is this like a sunk cost fallacy? Are we just
going to just lose lives in this battle if we
(21:50):
keep fighting without anything coming out of it? Ronnie lauschmi
By convinces them, She tries to convince them. She says, no, no, no, no,
we should keep fighting. We should defend Guala and the
British attack Ronnie Lakshmi Bay is dressed as a cavalry
officer and she rushes into the fray on a horse
(22:13):
and a British soldier raises his pistol and at this point,
not surprisingly, there are different stories. In one version, the
British soldier shoots and kills her and that's how she dies.
In another version, she's badly wounded, but she's not dead,
and she refuses to let the British have her body
because that would add insult to injury. She doesn't want
(22:37):
to suffer the indignity of this. She also knows that
she's quite a symbol to her people, so what happens
to her body afterwards is you might have a lot
of symbolic and emotional value. So she asks a hermit
who apparently is right there hanging out. As hermit stays yeah,
(22:57):
she somehow manages to ask a hermit to cremate her body.
So there actually is a report from a British soldier
saying that he had, like later after the fact, seen
the place where her cremated remains were placed with a
little marker. Okay, so maybe maybe the hermit was able
(23:17):
to come through and perform that last rite.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
For her, right and trying to dig through the legend
around this, right, Like, I mean, I love her final charge. Right,
she's dressed as a cavalry officer in the Maharajah's army,
because that's what she is. Right, She's literally leading cavalry
elements into battle against the eighth British Hussars. Right, Yes,
(23:42):
this is I mean, this is she's commanding a real
battle here. She has swords, she has guns, she is
charging into combat at the head of her men. She's
a target and she is She is shot and killed
or if not killed immediately, dies of wounds later. But
the British don't get her body, Yeah, which is big
(24:02):
because that is something that you know, that is a
symbol for her people and for the resistance and for
all of that. Right, whether this hermit was just hanging
out on the battlefield, or whether she was kind of
like rode off wounded, or was her body was carried
off by her and by her friends is not as
big of a deal as the fact that the British
never paraded her head around on a pike, right exactly.
(24:23):
They never displayed her from a wall, They never used
her as an example of what happens if you betray
the British East India Company or try to resist against us.
She leads her people into battle to the very end, outnumbered, surrounded,
everybody is coming toget her. There's no relief force coming
to save her, and she chooses to attack and charge.
I will not surrender. My chancy shot and killed, but
(24:46):
they don't get the body. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, yeah, she does not surrender. So yeah, so then
what happens, What happens afterwards? You know, was she successful?
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Well?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Okay, in one sense. Her son's her Damodar. They give
him a pension, which he actually accepts, but she does
live on as a symbol. General Rose, the guy who
had led the original charge, he's actually on record commending
her for her bravery, just saying, wow, she was one
of the bravest fighters he knew.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, and sir Heroes is a big deal. This is
sir he roes. He was pretty. He becomes a very
high ranking general. But he had fought in the Crimean
War against the Russians. He had been an advisor for
the Ottomans when they were in their war. Some of
their wars against the Egyptians he'd fought French, he'd fought Russians,
he'd fought Turks and Ottomans with and against all of
(25:37):
these people, and then he fought in India, and then
afterwards he becomes the commander of British forces in Ireland.
You know, even later in his career he says, she
was one of the bravest warriors I ever fought against.
And so that's that's high praise coming from this guy,
because he knows, he knows warriors.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, he knows warriors. Yeah, yeah, And you know, I
might not necessarily agree with, you know, the decisions of
the side that he was fighting for, but yeah, he
knows warriors also.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I guess it's worth mentioning that the Indian rebellion of
eighteen fifty seven, the mutiny, whatever you want to call it,
that ends up as a failure. Right, the East India
Company asserts power and the British Empire kind of has
power over India basically until Gandhi, basically until nineteen forty
seven when India gets its independence. But even up until
(26:27):
that point and even continuing on to today, she is
a symbol of resistance. And during World War Two, like
you said, there was a movement. The British are fighting
the Japanese in India, very close to India, and there
is a movement that comes up within India itself of like, hey,
this is an opportunity for us to fight and gain
(26:48):
our own independence. And among those forces they did raise
a unit of women soldiers that they called the Rainy
Lakshmi Bai Division. So she, even at that point, one
hundred years after the mutiny, it's still considered a symbol
of heroic resistance against the Empire. When I was going
(27:08):
through and looking up some research this for this episode,
we were talking, Oh, you know, they have statues. She's
on the Rainy is on a postage stamp. There's all
of these, like very heroic equestrian statues on horseback with
the sword and the baby and the gun strapped to
the horse and stuff like that. There's a Bollywood movie.
(27:29):
I know nothing about it except that I saw screenshots
and I saw that it's being released. Okay, I don't
know if it's a musical. I'm picturing it as such,
and I don't quite know what that would look like.
But I guess it's a good example of her continuing
popularity in India that there is a some Bollywood film
based on her life, and I guess from here, I
kind of want to transition into another long running resistance,
(27:53):
right because the Rainy is picking up, the Rainy of
Chancey is picking up in eighteen fifty so eighteen fifty three,
eighteen fifty seven, and to this day she's a symbol
of resistance. But the legacy was that her people continued
to resist the British right up until they gained their
independence eventually in nineteen forty seven. And I'm going to
(28:14):
talk about I'm going to transition to a different part
of the world, but I'm going to talk about another
lasting resistance that dealt with another world spanning colonial empire
that started even earlier than the Rainy and continues even longer.
So we're going to talk about the Mapuchi people of Chile,
(28:35):
which is probably a story you've never heard of before.
There's not very much on it in English, but I
was able to find quite a few sources on it,
and actually through the website, I was contacted by a
few people from southern Chile who translated several sources for
me and sent me the translations, and I was able
to work off those when I wrote about these guys
(28:56):
in my third book. So I'm going to talk about
that guy, Alvarino from the open. So let's get into that. Okay,
we're back, and let's get back to the story.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Okay, yes, tell us about the Mapuche and tell us
about particular badasses.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
So we're gonna start with the Spanish conquistadors. I mean,
these guys were pretty tough characters. Right. We are gonna
be in the early sixteenth centuries, So her Nan Quartes
has come over and conquered the Aztec Empire, and Pizarro
is just finishing up with the overtaking the Inca in Peru.
(29:41):
And you have these this world spanning colonial empire of
the Spanish, and they are going everywhere in the New World,
and if there's some gold involved, they will do whatever
it takes to get that gold. Presumably that includes like
either destroying or colonizing the indigenous peoples that live there.
And around the time that Pizarro was finishing up with
(30:03):
the Inca, he starts hearing about this group in basically Chile,
southern Chile, and in Argentina like present day Chile and Argentina,
going into like Patagonia. But they're in the southern Andes
Mountains and they have silver and some gold, and Pizarro
is very interested in both of those.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Things because they're shiny.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Because they're shiny, and that's the only value that they have.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Well, they're shiny, and you can get a good price
for them on the open market.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yes, the only value they have is that they're pretty.
But they're worth money and people have been killing each
other for it for as long as we've existed as
a species. Yes, yes, yes, so the Arcadians. They're a
loose confederation in southern Chile and in Patagonia of Argentina
present day. Think like the Celts of South America. Right,
(30:54):
It's a bunch of tribes that are all different and
individual and autonomous, but they share a generally common culture
and language. And the biggest and the most prominent of
these tribes are the Mapuche. They're primarily in Chile.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
So in fifteen forty one, Pizarro dispatches one of his
good one of his top lieutenants, a guy named Pedro
de Valdivia. He goes down to Chile to investigate the
Concusators were very effective at what they did. They had
several things that the native populations of Central and South
America couldn't really cope with. They had guns, they had
(31:29):
steel armor, they had horses, which didn't exist in South America,
and they had all kinds of crazy, messed up diseases
that were killing everybody. And the Mapuche at this point,
they don't even have walls on their villages, right, like
they are they're not really equipped to deal with crossbows
and plate armor.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, so they didn't have walls in their villages, but
what did they have? You know, the Mapuche, they'd been
bopping along living their lives. We have archaeological evidence that
shows that they had been living in the region since
the six hundreds or five hundreds BC and around the
time of the arrival of the Spaniards. They had by
that time they developed sophisticated textile production, goldsmithing, and the
(32:08):
textiles had great importance as trade goods and status symbols.
So they were integrated into a larger trade network, and
they were very sophisticated in many ways, just maybe not
in ways that would defend them against this particular threat.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Right, And that's a thing that I don't think really
gets talked about enough when you are talking about colonization
and imperial empires moving two less developed areas, which is okay. Yeah,
these people didn't have firearms and they didn't put walls
on their cities, but they did have like a very
(32:48):
thriving culture. Right. If you go right now, you can
go to a Mapuche village. It's a tourism thing. You
can go there and walk through it and see what's
going on there. And what they had created is very
impressive and was very useful to what they were doing
for their day to day lives. Right. They have homes
that are built. They're high up in the mountains, right,
so you're in the Andes and the foothills of the Andes.
(33:10):
You know, the building homes out of bamboo and grass.
They build the fires inside of these homes.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
What that sounds like, it's that would violate fire code.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, exactly. So if you think of like a Viking longhouse,
they would do that as well. But there's a kind
of wood that is in the area and I can't
pronounce the name of it, but it doesn't spark up
or create a ton of smoke really. Yeah, So they
would have these fires inside these these larger homes. The
fire brings warmth and food, and then they can cook up.
(33:41):
They have a bunch of various different types of flowers
and grains that they produce in the region, and then
after the fire's out, they can make a mixture with
the ash to create a soap that would clean their clothes. Right,
you kind of live off the land. You live here,
you take care of it. If you're going to cut
down a tree to build your house, you're supposed to
plant for That's kind of the rule.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And it sounds like they understand how to use resources
and also how to sustain their resources exactly.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
And they're they're not a warlike people, when certainly there
was tribal warfare as there is anywhere in the world,
of course. Yeah, but it's not a culture of like
we're going to build a wall around our fort. It
was a culture of more like, hey, you know, we'll
make some we can pull some silver out of the ground.
We can make some really pretty things with it. They
work on that, They work on some very decorative textiles.
(34:27):
They build their homes, and they make their fires and
they cook their dinners. And I love that you brought
that up, because that is a thing that tends to
get overlooked sometimes when you're talking about colonial empires and
wars of this nature. There's an incredible Mapouche warrior by
the name of Lautaro, who I'm sure we'll talk about
in another episode. But he manages to kill one of
Spain's governors and defeat a second in battle. Due to
(34:50):
Lataro's success in turning his people into an organized army
to be reckoned with, Spain became overly worried about losing
power in Chile and control over the Mapuche. They rush
a third guy, Nardicile, to take control and stomp down
all native opposition. This guy is Don Garcio Hurtado de Mendoza.
He's twenty two years old and he arrives to finish
(35:11):
the job. Right. We've lost two guys to them Mapuche.
We need to crush them, We need to crush this resistance.
He's young and ready for action and ready to make
a name for himself. And so Don Garcia Hurtado de
Mendoza raises his army and he's going to He's going
to strike while Otaro's dead and defeat them Mapuche once
and for all, and he starts attacking the towns. He's
(35:32):
more aggressive and more violent and more brutal than some
of the Spaniards had been before him. In one of
the early attacks, he attacks this town and he defeats
the warriors there, and he gathers all of the men
and of fighting age, and he orders their right hand
cut off at the wrist. Oh, that's awful, it's awful. Yes,
it's a it's a thing we've seen in the past. Yeah,
(35:55):
various other time periods. But yeah, he cuts everybody's hands
off at the wrist and the right home, so they
can't the right hand, so they can't carry a weapon.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Unless they're lefties. Okay, So this Mendoza guy is chopping
off people's right hands, and this means that, you know,
whether you're a rody or lefties.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Is not convenient, no, and so you know you could
still I guess in theory you use your left hand.
But one of the chiefs of this tribe, this town,
that was this village that is being sacked and tormented here,
he's one of the chiefs. His name is Galvarino. The
way they hadn't worked was they would cut down a
big tree. So there's this huge tree stump. All of
(36:33):
the men of the tribe would line up in front
of this stump and they would kneel down in front
of it. Mendoza would order some guy with an axe
or sword or whatever to cut off your hand. They're
going through this line and they're cutting off all of
these hands. They're putting all the hands in a pile.
It's very gruesome, it's very bloody. Galvarino kneels and he's
(36:55):
surrounded by his people, and all the eyes of his
tribe are on him. All the Spanish soldier are standing
in formation at attention, watching overseeing this. He's got a
kneel in front of this Mendoza guy. He puts his
hand on the stump. Mendoza gives the word then chop
his hand off. And Galvino is not the kind of
guy who's going to like be quieted by this. He
(37:19):
is pissed, and he is super pissed.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I would be too.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
He's very unhappy with the things that are happening, and
he channels his rage. He doesn't flinch, he doesn't cry,
he doesn't plead for anything. They cut it off. He
just looks at Mendoza with rage and he takes the
arm off with the stump, and he puts his left
hand on the tree trunk. Do this one next, and Mendoza.
(37:45):
Mendoza is one of these like sick assholes who's just like, okay, fine, whatever,
if you want to just do it. He obligeses Galvirino
and cuts off the left hand as well, and Galvino
doesn't flinch then either. He gets up and he walks off,
and he makes eye contact with Mendoza and he remembers this,
he's only thinking about vengeance.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
That's badass. I mean, okay, that's badass or foolish or something.
I mean. It kind of reminds me of the Roman
story of Mukia sky Wola. He's this Roman guy who
was captured by the enemy Etruscans, and he said, hey,
I'm a Roman. You know, yeah, you can kill me
because I tried to assassinate your king. But you know what,
(38:24):
there's a whole bunch of Roman guys lined up right
behind me waiting to take my place and keep on
trying to assassinate y'all. And he says, we are brave,
we are not afraid, and he shoves his right hand
into the fire that was just burning there and allows
his right hand to be burned off to show that, yes,
(38:44):
we're brave. And you know, the Etruscans are so impressed
by this that they let him go. But it sounds
like with Galvarino and Mendoza, it sounds like sounds like
things escalate.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
They escalate. We're not even at the good part yet. Wait, what,
well Galverino is a I'm gonna say, he's like Wolverine,
like Logan. Because Mendoza moves on, right, He's burned a
couple of these villages. He's ready to show these Mapooche
whose boss. He moves on to the next town, and
the next town, the Mapoocher are waiting for him. They
(39:13):
know he's coming, they know what he's gonna do. They're
at a renewed strength of like they're redetermined to defend
their town against this guy, because what's he gonna do
if he takes over, it's even worse than like, yeah,
than just what the Spanish had already been doing. This
guy is a problem, right, we got to deal with
this guy.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
So the Mupouche are waiting for him. They have raised
arms against him, pun totally intended, right.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yes, they have raised arms against him and they are
ready to fight him. Anybody that ken has come to
this battle to face Mendoza. And he goes to lead
his guys into battle, and the first dude that he
sees is Galvarino at the front of his men, leading
his tribe, leading his people, and he has used rope
(39:55):
to tie sword blades to the stumps of his arms,
and he is going to run into battle with stumps
for arms, but big long sword blades coming out like
Baraka from Mortal Kombat or like Wolverine. Just amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
So he's just like slash slash, slash, slash slash and.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Right, yeah, just running out there with giant like double
sided meat cleavers strapped onto his I've tied probably with
some very good knots i'd imagine tied on to his stumps.
And he leads his men into battle and attacks from
the front lines. And just to show, like, I don't
know how effective this was. We don't have a great
(40:35):
details of like blow for blow like accounting of his battle,
but if nothing else, this is inspirational. Right you can
imagine the pump up pre battle speech that Galvarino gave
his people, like you know, here's here's what I'm willing
to do. What are you guys going to bring to
the table.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, the psychological effect must be astounding. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
So the war continues, right, The battle continues. Galvarino and Mendoza.
They fight very, very bloody battle. Galviino was eventually captured
and executed. Copulican is eventually captured and executed. Mendoza Well,
as much as I've been painting him as the bad guy,
he lives. I mean, this is just why history sometimes
(41:14):
is more depressing than fiction. Mendoza lives, the city of
Mendoza and Argentina is named after him. He lives to
be seventy three, dies like a rich man in his sleep.
But the spirit of Galvarino has kind of inspired these
Mapuche people and Leataro and Copulican and all of these
people who come after him. So this battle is taking
(41:35):
place in the mid fifteen fifties, and the Mapuche will
continue to fight the Spanish off and on. Anytime the
Spanish tried to impede upon Mapuche territory or build a
fort on the border, the Mapuche attack and again Celts
is a great example of kind of the relationship here
is like the Celts versus the Romans. Right, we're here,
(41:56):
we're doing our thing. Don't build any forts here, don't
try to come after We'll all come after you. We'll
all fight, and we'll all do crazy things to prevent
you from overrunning us. And it continues on for decades
and then centuries, and the Spanish would fortify a border,
they build some fortresses, and then they'd get attacked and
(42:17):
the fortress would be set on fire. The Spanish would
come into Mapouche lands and they wouldn't be able to
make any progress. And so it wasn't until seventeen twenty four,
which is one hundred and eighty three years after Pizarro
ordered the invasion of Chile.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Wait, hang on, so you said, I just want to
make clear that I heard this one hundred eighty three years. Yes,
so this is like almost two centuries.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yes, for one hundred and eighty three years, okay, Yeah,
the Spanish border with Rocao, our Canaians was in contention,
and they were technically, I guess, at war. And it
was only in seventeen twenty four that the Spanish government
eventually signed a permanent peace treaty with the Mapuche people.
They say that it's hard to gauge the thing, but
(43:00):
they say the Spanish crown spent more money on the
Racharian War than they spent in the entire conquest of
Mezso and South America combined.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Okay, that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
So the Mapuche remained independent throughout Spanish colonial era in
South America, even in the seventeen twenties, even when we're
talking like later time period, even after they've signed this
peace treaty, they still remain independent. They're one of the
only tribes in the New World to successfully resist European occupation,
and they actually stay completely autonomous until Chile becomes a country,
(43:32):
until Chile gains its independence from Spain. The first president
of Chile, whose name was Ambrosio O'Higgins, which is not
a name you would expect to the first president of
Chile to have.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Who's like a combination Spanish and Irish.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah, he was. He was Irish descent, but from Chile.
He was able to peacefully integrate the rol Coow region
into Chile at the end of the eighteen hundreds. So
from the first expedition into Mapuchles until the Mapuche became
part of a free Chile. It was three hundred and
(44:06):
fifty years.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Three hundred and fifty years, so that's like a century
longer than America's even been a country.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, and it's because they had guys like Galvarino would
rather strap swords to their bloody stumps and fight Spaniards
than submit to the will of a mendoza or a
you know, or a conquistador. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Well, and also Lautaro, who you know, he didn't last
too long, but he kicked things all off.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
He got it going.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, I mean there was a he put in place
the system that the Mapuche would use to defend their
homelands for the one hundred and eighty three years. Yeah,
and yeah, I love that they were never part of Spain. Yeah,
that's an awesome thing for South America, like a South
American tribe that was never part of the Spanish Empire ever.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yeah. And the Mupuche today, Okay, so they have, you know,
they achieved some sort of peace with Chile, and you
might suspect it's not one hundred percent smooth. There is
conflict to this day, a lot of it having to
do with self determination and autonomy over rights over ancestral
(45:14):
lands and some of the conflict is with big forestry companies.
So that's, you know, something that the Mapuchi people are
involved in today that you might hear about.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
And something they share with the Rainy of Lakshimiubai who
something they share with the Rainy of Jancy, who was
also trying to deal with a big evil corporation trying
to exploit our natural resources.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
But anyway, that's that's that's it. Yeah, that's our show.
That is too. We wanted to cover a couple of
populations who who battled big colonial empires and had some success,
and who also are people that maybe aren't household names
in English language even though they even though they're they're
(45:59):
these two people our national heroes in their own countries. Today,
there's not much about them outside of those outside of
those cultures, and I think there.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Should be definitely.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, thank you guys so much for listening, and we
will see you see you next week.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Yeah bye, stay Badass, my peeps.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, me Ben Thompson,
and my co host doctor Pat Larish. Writing by me
and Pat, story editing by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Fibbs, and
Ali Lemer, Mixing and music and sound design by Jude Brewer.
Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeartRadio.
(46:39):
Badass of the Week is based off my website badass
ofthek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out
with questions or ideas, hit me up at Badass podcast
at badass ofthek dot com. If you like the podcast,
please subscribe, follow, listen, tell your friends, tell your enemies,
and we'll be back next week with another one. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the ihart Radio app,
(47:00):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast content.
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!