April 9, 2026 • 38 mins
As the gang gets ever closer to finally completing their mission to do an episode on every state in the United States, they arrive at North Dakota. While North Dakota remains one of the nation's least populated states, it's still chock-full of Ridiculous History. And, as Ben, Noel and Max discover in today's episode, the bizarre tale of Fort Sauerkraut may be one of the strangest ones out there.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning it. Let's hear it for the Man,
the Myth, the Demi God, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Max Kroutman Williams, Max Kroudrock Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There we go, and those funds are coming to us
from none other than the one and only mister Noel
Brown right.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Noel croud Rock Brown Right.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
They call me Ben Bullen for tax.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Purpose, Croudrock Bully. If anybody think I'm being slurry. Kroud
rock is a widely accepted genre of music.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's a real thing.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's a real thing, like the band can or Noy.
A lot of they use what Alex Williams often loves
to refer to as motoric beats, very repetitive and kind
of trancy, really really great stuff, huge can fam Yeah,
the encounter what.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I would call similar to semantic satiation, a kind of
rhythmic satiation. It'g strd to get lost in the beat.
We're not talking about kroud rock today. We are talking
about sour kraut, but perhaps not in the way you
imagine this is one. In our continuing conversation with Souf
John Stevens, we are so close to doing one episode
(01:50):
of at least one episode about every state in the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I thought we'd done done that. Okay, I guess we're
not yet.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
We're very first. Where As the first for North Dakota,
there's pen ultimates one. This is the second to last.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
We have one left. And what is it? Oh no, okay, yeah,
I don't know the answer, so we'll be surprised together.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So our second to last one is North Dakota. Uh,
most of us in the audience tonight, statistically speaking, have
not visited North Dakota. It is one of the most
sparsely populated states in the Union County in Alaska.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Is that where Fargo is?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Fargo is in North.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Dakota, okay, okay. Famously depicted in the Coen Brothers film
of the same name, where everyone talks like they're from
Minnesota because it was the closest accents, most recognizable and
quirky accent that they could they could come up with. Yeah,
which great, Yeah, people don't really talk that in North Dakota.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Phenomenal phenomenal series yeah, for the for the few series
is living North Dakota. In's in the crowd tonight you
should you already know Fargo is by far the most
populous city in North.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Dakota, and justin I have been just to give us.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
All a sense of how how few people were talking
about the population of Fargo was estimated to be a
little bit north of one hundred and thirty six thousand
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Okay, watch out for wood shippers, That's all I'll say about.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Sure, yeah, and watch out for you know if in
the if you're in a Fargo series and you meet
anybody who looks remotely like Billy Bob Thornton, do not
trust them. Cass right, man, what North Dakota. So we
said what we say, a little bit, a little bit
south of one hundred and forty thousand for Fargo. This
(04:02):
is the thing I almost say country. It is a
land to itself. The population of the state entire as
of last year was still less than eight hundred thousand people.
And it's a very big place. It's a place that
often gets ignored in a lot of conversations. Here's how
(04:27):
we get to today's episode. Our North Dakota episode courtesy
of our research associate Max Williams, because of racism, paranoia,
and as Max puts it, an able supply of fermented cabbage,
which we'll get to. Or the German originated homesteaders of Hebron,
(04:48):
North Dakota have brought us this episode about the thirty
ninth state in the country.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
They brought it to us in a series of Mason jars.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Right, just like Alex Williams, and is infamous homage to
George Washington's nog so all right, nog and crowd noging
krout classic Alex. So if we go to our friends
at Britannica, we'll see that Europeans are largely acknowledged to
(05:22):
have reached the territory of what we call present day
North Dakota in the mid seventeen hundreds. That might surprise
some people because it's pretty far west. But when they
went there, this place was already around. It was already
well populated by various indigenous or tribes or first peoples.
(05:43):
The Mandon, the Hidasa, the Arakawa were settled along the
Missouri River.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
The Ojibwa, who were locally referred to as the Chippewa
or Anishinabe as well as the Cree, not to be
confused with the the adverse serial race of aliens from
the Marvel Universe.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right yeah, and are they adversarial or are they looking
out for themselves?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Good car? Are they the ones from the Secret War?
The Creed?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
There are? The three are a famous cosmic cosmic empire
in the Marvel Universe.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I just remember them from the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yes, yeah, and there they were sort of coded as
fundamentalist or religious extremist, like.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Bor they want to assimilate. They were very aggressive conquerors
kind of right.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Well, the thing that bothered me about the way the
Kreer represents did not intend for this to happen today,
we're all The way the Cree are represented in the
Guardians of the Galaxy is problematic because one of the
prime antagonists, a guy named Ronan the Accuser. Uh you'll
see leap is, yes, you'll an actor. You will see
(07:01):
him being prepared for his day as a villain in
a way that is a very similar to the way
the royalty in Gulf countries are are dressed up for
the day like people. He has attendants who are perfuming
him and putting yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. They are
(07:30):
for there's a better word for it, but they are
baptizing him a little bit in precious oils and sprayed
aromatics and powders support him anyway. The cree Are decree
in Marvel Covicdom is not what we're talking about there.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's not. But that was a very respectable aside.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
If it's a phenomenal franchise to please check it out
if you haven't had a chance to watch. Alongside these
groups we've named earlier, there were other civilizations groups of Sioux,
the Sinebon, the Yanktoneton, the Teton. They inhabited areas in
the north, southeast and west of this region. Again we're
(08:11):
getting that from Britannica. The first encounters were largely meet
and greets, mercantile things, French Canadian fur traders, and then
folks like Lewis and Clark. They passed through what would
become Dakota in eighteen oh four.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Oh and if you I think we mentioned before, if
you want to fun sci fi spin on that, do
check out Manifest Destiny, the comic book series.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Oh yes, man, I love that. Have you checked that
one out?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I've only read the first handful of issues, but I
need to get back to it. It's very very cool.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
It's so cool. Do check it out, and remember it's
a work of fiction, but it is very loosely based
on fact, and.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
It's commenting on a lot of the things that we're
talking about right here in terms of the like the
ick of it all very much so.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And as the story goes, our pals Lewis and Clark
are really impressed with how friendly the locals are. They
end up constructing Fort Mandan a n d An pardon
any accidental Mandarin on my part, and there they spent
(09:23):
the winter of eighteen oh four to eighteen oh five.
But manifest destiny, to your point, Noel was very much
a priority of the American experiment, So these newly minted
Americans started getting more and more into the territory. They
(09:46):
were invaders who called themselves settlers. If that sounds familiar,
yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And we're not here to rag on the conquering Europeans
too too much, but I mean it's hard to talk
about it without at least giving it a mention. I know,
people give us flax some time, a being like, oh,
back in the day, things are so problematic. Well they were,
they were, but that's.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Not what we're Everybody smelled bad. Disease was rampant, people
with hungry. Your favorite beat me here, Max, your favorite
world leaders got punked by groups of rabbits. Okay, that's
how history is.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I know, and and and I know how history repeats itself.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, to jump in here, future historians are probably gonna
be talking about these current times like that as well.
Oh yeah, somebody off me saying that.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I hear
that people have feelings, but I'm not familiar with that
on a personal level. We know that. Look, we know
that again, as you were saying, old tale as old
as time. These new invasions or these new encroaching populations
bring in new culture. They bring in unfamiliar technology, unfamiliar
(10:52):
diseases and vices. When the eighteen twenties and the eighteen thirties,
these American traders t r a d Ers are bringing
in guns, kettles, manufactured goods like axes, blankets. They're also
bringing manufactured goods like liquor, and they're accidentally bringing things
(11:14):
like disease.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah. Yeah, accidentally, for sure, but also you know the
old theory, there's that, for sure, but at the very
least not really given to flips about who would get
hurt by their presence and behavior.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Right because for the most part, outside of a few missionaries,
these folks aren't thinking of the existing population as fellow
human beings. And there's an economic sea change, a paradigm shift.
Native Americans become dependent upon these traders in their trade
(11:53):
networks for supplies, and in the process of exposure to disease,
exposure to hard alcohol, things like that, a lot of
people who are totally innocent die. The smallpox epidemic in
eighteen thirty seven, just this initial exposure reduced the Mandan
population of North Dakota from about eighteen hundred to one
(12:17):
hundred and twenty five in less than a year, in
just a few months. And these folks who were previously
you know it, lived there for thousands of years. These
folks previously welcomed newcomers, but they began to grow more
hostile when they said, hey, maybe the new guys don't
have our best interest at heart, maybe their vibe is
(12:40):
fake or manufactured. And steamboat traffic increases because gold is
discovered in Montana in eighteen sixty two, and so the
US Army, again still kind of newly minted, starts building
forts along the river to protect these resources, that's right.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And in eighteen seventy six, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer,
who you may have heard of, along with the seventh Cavalry,
set out from Fort Abraham Lincoln just a little bit
south of present day Mandan. And this is again coming
from our pals over a Britannica. I'm paraphrasing loosely here,
(13:22):
So in order to set out for a very very
very fortuitous encounter with the Sioux and the Cheyenne at
a pretty famous altercation called the Battle of Little Bighorn
be one of my favorite oxymorons, by the way, which
was fought in present day Montana.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, and as we know, things didn't work out for George,
but one dead colonel doesn't stop the show, and it
definitely never stopped Uncle Sam. So the westward expansion continues.
The fur trade is starting to decline by the eighteen sixties,
you know, well, for the Fateful days of Custer and
(14:03):
Anglo's settlement begins in earnest in eighteen seventy one, partially
due to the fact that railroads have reached the Red
River from Saint Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. So we get
a bunch of pioneers who are not rich people, but
they have been favored by this new growing government under
(14:25):
something called the Homestead Act of eighteen sixty two. So
they show up en Mass and they say, hey, you know,
the folks back east said that this land is my land, this.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Little bit of a land your land. Right.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We're farming wheat here, and this is where we go
to something historians called the Dakota Boom. From eighteen seventy
eight to eighteen eighty six, giant farms or are running
across the land North Dakota. Wheat became the primary a
mover for the milling industry of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I'm picturing one of those progress montages from movies where
it's just like a fast motion animation of like dip dip, dip,
dip dip, deep dip di just popping up all over
the landscape, you know, farms and wheat fields.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
I'm picturing, Yeah, I'm picturing similar to that when you
when you make a world wonder in the Civilization game series.
You get that quick montage of people building the pyramid
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, but now it's just people farming in North Dakota
and railways, of course being built. The railways are government supported,
private interests with a lot of corruption, but they are
not friends. So the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern
Railway for in for instance, they're Pepsi and Coke. There
(15:49):
are two companies that are very similar but hate each other.
So they were fighting with one another to lay track
towards the richest centers. The farmers were united by their
dependence on the wheat crop and this led to just
a side note here, what we call the populist movement.
(16:12):
It's not until eighteen sixty one that the Dakota Territory
is established, and then it gets divided in eighteen eighty
nine to North and South Dakota. In that same year,
this former territory that is now two states, gets official
(16:32):
recognition and becomes part of the Union. It's November two,
eighteen eighty nine. Congratulations to you guys.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Good job, good, Yes, you did it. You did something.
That's right, you did do something. Then it was something,
all right. So now that we've set the scene. Let's
talk a little bit about the panic. You know, we
love a moral panic bend that led to the crowd.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Ah. Yes, And to get to this part of the story,
we're going to lean on our pal Mary Helm from
Prairie Public Newsroom, a subsidiary of PBS. I don't know
about you, guys, but I'm a fan of Public.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Broadcasting also known as Prairie Mary.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
That ravery Mary Helm.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
It's fun. Yeah, No, huge, huge PBS fans over here.
And I think didn't we just discuss that there was
a court decision that overturned the defunding.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
We haven't talked about it, but yes, the news just
came out.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I would say, that's so. We talked about it on
stuff they don't want you to know, strange news.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Last time we were Ah, you got to take the
winds where you can get them.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You know, truly do man, you truly do so. The
Dakota Territory Indian Wars ended when Sitting Bull surrendered at
Fort Buford in eighteen seventy five, and that is when
the tribes were essentially, you know, kicked off their land
officially and placed in reservations, which is basically the also
(18:03):
ran land, the land that you know, the settlers didn't want.
Also areas where wild game that they relied on, of
course for their way of life as hunter gatherers had
been hunted to near extinction. Not good.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, this did not end well obviously.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
The this is trail of tears, right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
This is similar to those systemic extermination programs. There's no
reason to call them anything else. The US government promised
these again innocent people, rations and supplies, but the Bureau
of Indian Affairs was Russian level corrupt, so we don't
(18:45):
know if these items actually made it to the reservations.
If they did, they were remnants because so many people
were taking their little vigoroush on the path from east
to west. By eighteen ninety, as a result of this,
there was I get a little choked up talking about this.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Human created famine. This did not have to happen, but
due to Uncle Sam's actions, there was widespread starvation on reservations,
where again, as you said, the Native American populations were
pushed under threat of torture and death. This where we
see folks like the Payuti Wovoca who proclaimed that hey,
(19:29):
we were here first, we can arise. We can lean
on our old traditions. We have been here for thousands
of years. We can conduct a great ritual called the
Ghost Dance, and people traveled from Indian communities in the
Dakota Territory to learn more. This movement is peaceful, to
(19:52):
be clear, It's not like a religious fundamentalist thing. The
idea is that the Ghost Dance promises a Messiah and
a return of the Buffalo through songs, dances, and visions.
This did get politically weaponized. We also have to keep
in mind that the buffalo was almost driven extinct by
(20:13):
the European powers at the.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Time over hunting and without any sense of the continuum,
you know, of the ecosystem, and of course the First
nation folks were very aware of and we're just the
conservation was sort of part of the equation as far
as they were concerned. But then you have these forces
coming in from outside, not thinking about the big picture
at all. Surprise, surprise, and just kind of willy nilly,
(20:35):
you know, hunting as they saw fit, without any forward thinking,
you know, plans for how that would affect others or
even themselves.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, and some of the we could call them activists,
Some of the people were a little bit more militant
and saw the ghost Dance as as a threat to
the increasingly normalize European culture, right, a threat to take
back all those lands that were, we'll be honest, stolen
(21:08):
from them. And as a result, journalists latch onto this
European journalist and they say the ghost Dance is reaching
Standing Rock. There's a Standing Rock agent named James McLaughlin
who assures settlers everything's under control. These newspaper stories are rumors,
(21:29):
but by November fifteenth, rumors had Mandan, which at this
point was a town sixty miles east of Aribron, North Dakota,
where a story takes place. The rumors in November fifteenth
had people in a widespread panic. We're talking women and
children fleeing across the river to Bismarck. Volunteer militias springing
(21:51):
up to fight for our land, and news spreads to
other towns in the areas. People who are in political
office or people who are good faith authorities of law
are trying to protect friendly tribes from random violence. You know.
It's it's very troublingly similar in some ways to the
(22:15):
great discrimination against people of the Islamic Faith Post nine
to eleven. You know, where we saw people getting beat
up and assaulted just because they go to a mosque.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Right or even you know, for praying in public or
what have you like, that that very innocuous and sacred
activity was associated with violence because of you know, bad
faith reporting. Frankly, you know, and and and and folks
that were going out of their way to connect that
type of thing, like the idea of Allah akbar, you know,
(22:53):
with terrorist activities very similar here. This is a religious,
peaceful religious practice, this ghost dance, and it seems that
it was painted as some sort of warring ritual or
something like that, right.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Right, It was propagandized. Yeah, and we can see this
in books like the Indian Scare of eighteen ninety by
father Lewis Faller, who writes, quote, one of the most
unique of the stories coming out of the Scare was
that of Hebron and its famous Fort souer Kraut. So
as soon as Hebron starts to panic around November seventeenth,
(23:33):
thanks to telegraph warnings about the ghost dance movement and passage,
a bunch of young guys in the area jump on
their horses they ride across the prairie. In their minds,
they're like Paul Revere. They're warning settlers, but this time
it's the Indians, not the British, who are coming. And
Fuller says, look, these wagons rattle over rough terrain toward Hebron.
(23:57):
One guy was in such haste that he went several
miles before he discovered his family. Bounced out of the wagon.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Great, great, shut up, Okay, bounce right on out of
the wagon. I think I heard mention of Fort Sauerkraut.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Ah. Yes, yeah, let's explain that, all right, let's go
to Atlas Obscure. Courtesy of the journalist Ian.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Lefkowitz Lefkowitz Rights. In late November eighteen ninety, the town
of Hebron, North Dakota, was not yet a decade old,
and yet it was seized by fear. Rumors had been
spreading across the region that a group of hostile Lakota
people had fled the Standing Rock Reservation to the south
and were attacking towns on their way. When the mostly
(24:42):
German homesteaders who lived in Hebron received telegram warnings of
an impending attack, they were gripped with terror.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Right yeah, because they were functioning under what we call
information a symmetry. They did not again think of indigital
or native peoples as people. They thought of them as
somehow monstrous or subhuman, despite the fact that clearly the
Europeans were the aggressors and all these conflicts. So these
(25:14):
German homesteaders send women and children to Bismarck and they
rush to build a fort to protect themselves. However, these
are generally going to be agrarian populations, right, These are
not military populations, so they don't have a ton of
the supplies that you would ordinarily need when constructing a fort.
(25:37):
They have to get creative with their fort construction. They
have to maguiver it a little bit. So what they
do is, since they don't have lumber and they don't
have guns, they create essentially a makeshift shelter on the
tallest hilltop they can find, and they use saw it
for walls, these railroad ties for a roof. They shelter
(25:59):
in place, they bunker down. This fort is one hundred
feet long, seven feet high, and it is stocked with
the other stuff that they have in abundance, which is frankly,
kegs of sour kraut.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, I mean it's a similar story to what we hear. Oftentimes,
the way kind of culturally significant food stuffs are created
is usually out of necessity, fermenting things to keep them
from going bad. Stuff like that. And that's exactly what's
going on here, because we have these barrels of sauer kraut,
which is a way of preserving the copious amounts of
(26:42):
cabbage that they had and keep them from spoiling.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, and brief aside about sauer kraut for anybody who's
not aware, sauer kraut is the German word for sour cabbage.
It is, as you said, no fermented to finely cut
raw white cabbage. It has a couple of different spins
you can put on it, but the sour flavor is
(27:08):
due to the fermenting bacteria and the lactic acid that
it forms. A side note, if you want to cook
cabbage for yourself at home, folks, make sure to get
some caraway seeds. That's going to help with the smell.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Is that right? Yeah? Oh wow, what a cool kitchen hack.
I didn't know about that. Man, I've never messed with
a caraway seed before. Well, have you messed with the
sour krout. I do you know, it's not my favorite
thing in the whole white world. I do like it
on a dog. It's like it's like a relish. I
like it as a condiment. I certainly wouldn't like eat
it on its own, but I think of it as
a bit of a condiment. Our buddy Frank, friend of
(27:44):
the show, when we used to live together back in
the day, he would make his own crowd. He was
a huge fan of the crowd, and he would just
eat that stuff, you know by the Fistfiicazell.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, it's something in the eyes so actly. So. The
Manda Pioneer publishes this account on November thirtieth of the
same year about a guy named doctor Coe Coe visiting
the fort, and he says, look, these folks are showing
a vast amount of pluck and energy preparing against the
(28:17):
possible danger from an attack Fort Sauerkraut, as we're calling it.
Their first line of defense was a bunch of wires.
They were strung to trip enemies who might be sneaking
around in the dark during a new moon. And inside
that there was a five strand barbed wire fence, and
(28:38):
then there were rifle pits, which are kind of like
the underground version of siege windows on a castle, where
it's narrow enough that you can shoot an arrow without
maybe getting shot yourself. So these rifle pits connect to
underground tunnels that lead to the inside of the fort,
(29:00):
and the sawed walls are you know, stretching hundreds of
feet across. Inside there we have the actual fortification, one
hundred feet long, gate feet deep. This is to house
the women and children who didn't get away.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, and as our buddy Max points out, history it
often leaves some things up to the imagination because it's
not always one hundred percent accurate. And typically the version
of events that we get are you know, reported by
the victors or you know, folks in power, often with
political motivations.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Right, aren't all the women and children sent to Bismarck?
Why why do we have this fortification to protect them?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
For sure? And speaking of fifth figures of authority telling
the tale, we've got this this religious figure, father Foller,
who was writing. One day, the Scouts were aroused by
an ominous cloud of dust, which sent the people scurrying
to the fort. Alarm grew when they could see the
cloud razors were Indians bedecked in feathers. Fortunately, Swensen, which
(30:05):
is a fantastic name, recognized them as friendly Indians from
the Fort Berthold Reservation, probably gross venturos under sitting Owl.
The visiting Indians put the beleaguered settlers at ease by
volunteering to help them fight the Sioux and mingled freely
with the fort builders.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right, which is a great observation from old father Foller.
There because a lot of people got caught up in
this anti native propaganda and they forgot that these are
very complex, very long lived communities who are not monolithic.
They don't all like each other. So maybe our pals
(30:45):
who are under sitting Owl already we're looking for a
reason to hate the Sioux, you know what I mean?
An enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least temporarily.
And so for weeks on end, these groups were preparing
for this supposedly impending doom, right, this inescapable danger. At
(31:07):
night in the evening, the townspeople hunkered down inside the
local church, But the attacks that they were convinced were
on the way never actually happened. Instead, they spent months
and months in fear and Eventually they realized that they
(31:28):
had been hoaxed.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
So the ghost dance movement that created this satanic panic
was officially and tragically annihilated at the Wounded Knee massacre. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, And as our pel Max points out, this is
dark but also souerkrap which I would I would argue
in responses a bit of a struggle food itself.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
No, it's true, it's a little darker than maybe one
might expect an episode about a delightful condiment.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
That that statement right there with more of me just
standing out loud. How I'm like, oh, for souerkraut, this
sounds interesting.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Are you a sower crowd guy?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Uh? Precondition?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yes, uh pre cond You can't have toer craft because
of the condition.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Oh yeah, it's the whole aging and brining it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Now that that's.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
One day, we're going to do an episode on like
the Three Things You Can Eat, Max.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Uh, my brother wants to do a chronic hives podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
It's very niche.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
That is alex fullyam circumposer for for this. For this show,
we do want to take it to the present because
it is informed by the past. If you go to
the town that we're mentioning here, you'll see it is
still alive and well, if you go to hebron nd
dot org and get in pardon my pronunciation, you'll see
(32:55):
it is calling itself the Brick City. A perfect typical
old town US, A rich in amenities, a location convenient
to larger cities like Bismarck and Dickinson. So they're fine.
It's rural. It's about two miles from Interstate ninety four.
It's on the Old Red Ten Old ten Scenic Byway.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And love it, you know it, well, know it?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Well, yeah, where would we be without it? The original
fort is obviously not there anymore, but you can visit
a recreation of the fort to day. And we love
seeing recreations of things. I love. They're very big throughout
the Southeast. I love going to the recreation, the recreated,
(33:44):
like old famous Guys Home and old Fort and so on.
Did you ever go to one of those re enactment villages,
you know, I never have been, but I did go to.
I want to say it was Woodrow Wilson's house in
(34:06):
New York City, his apartment, and it was you know,
quite realistically recreated like it's the actual building. But I
think it was actually a lot of it was damaged
in a fire. So some really eagle eyed historians used
all the historical context clues they could to make it
as accurate as possible, and you can totally take a
walk through it and it really is like, you know,
(34:28):
going traveling back in time. Nice. I also want to
give a special shout out to our pal Mark Kendall,
who years and years ago before he became as famous
as he is now, Mark had a gig as a
re enactor at an old school Georgia plantation and Mark
(34:49):
is a black man is He's hung out with us
on several different shows and so on, and to hear
his story of his experience as a reenactor there, it's
worth a listen. So check out Eddie show that you
see his name attached to. We also know if you
(35:09):
find yourself in North Dakota, this recreation of the fort
is family friendly, self guided towards free admission. You can
just rock up and check out a little bit of
history for yourself. You do have to byos bring your
own sour kraut for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
With that, big, big thanks to you fellow ridiculous historians.
Most importantly and most eternally for tuning in. Big thanks
to our super producer and research associate for this episode,
mister Max Williams. Big thanks to crowd rock fan Alex.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Williams one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Do you think Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter eats sauer Kraut?
Speaker 2 (35:57):
No? Oh, surely not for surely so I'm not sure
which one is more villains?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
How does he fit into how does sour kraut fit into?
Our mean profile of it?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
TBD TV that I know a lot of people like
sour kraut, but it also you know, it is often
depicted as sort of like a funky food that might
yield some bad breath, or like you know, Dickensian character
who eats raw onions or something like that. That's how
I'm using it in this in this context.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Mm hmm, Well, we could definitely say that Jonathan Strickland
ak the Quist is nothing more than awesome dude, but
very much a sour crout.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Oh and also, real quick, y'all, when I mentioned the
presidential historic home that I visited in New York City,
wasn't Woodrow Wilson got myself confused there? It was Theodore
Roosevelt's birthplace National Historic Site, and then it was recreated,
you know, again to be completely period accurate as much
as they possibly could. And it is a it is
a really cool hang and it is under gosh, who
(36:55):
knows if that's the case anymore, how that works. But
when I went, it was under the National Parks Service,
so you literally had a park ranger in a New
York City kind of Brownstone giving you a tour, which
I thought was kind of meat.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I'm a huge fan of MPs. Also, if you happen
to find yourself in Georgia looking for something to do,
take a day trip with us to Warm Springs, Georgia.
That's a pretty fascinating bit of presidential history as well.
Big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacob's Ak the Puzzler, Big
thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance. Of course, the
(37:29):
Brew Dude's a ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll
love them.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Who else? Christopher hasiotis cush, Yes, Eve, Jeff Coates here
in spirit.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
And thanks also to everybody who's snarfing some Sauer kraut
right now, And thanks to.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
You all you crowd snarfers out there. Thanks to you
as well. Ben, We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning it. Let's hear it for the Man,
the Myth, the Demi God, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Max Kroutman Williams, Max Kroudrock Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There we go, and those funds are coming to us
from none other than the one and only mister Noel
Brown right.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Noel croud Rock Brown Right.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
They call me Ben Bullen for tax.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Purpose, Croudrock Bully. If anybody think I'm being slurry. Kroud
rock is a widely accepted genre of music.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's a real thing.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's a real thing, like the band can or Noy.
A lot of they use what Alex Williams often loves
to refer to as motoric beats, very repetitive and kind
of trancy, really really great stuff, huge can fam Yeah,
the encounter what.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I would call similar to semantic satiation, a kind of
rhythmic satiation. It'g strd to get lost in the beat.
We're not talking about kroud rock today. We are talking
about sour kraut, but perhaps not in the way you
imagine this is one. In our continuing conversation with Souf
John Stevens, we are so close to doing one episode
(01:50):
of at least one episode about every state in the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I thought we'd done done that. Okay, I guess we're
not yet.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
We're very first. Where As the first for North Dakota,
there's pen ultimates one. This is the second to last.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
We have one left. And what is it? Oh no, okay, yeah,
I don't know the answer, so we'll be surprised together.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So our second to last one is North Dakota. Uh,
most of us in the audience tonight, statistically speaking, have
not visited North Dakota. It is one of the most
sparsely populated states in the Union County in Alaska.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Is that where Fargo is?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Fargo is in North.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Dakota, okay, okay. Famously depicted in the Coen Brothers film
of the same name, where everyone talks like they're from
Minnesota because it was the closest accents, most recognizable and
quirky accent that they could they could come up with. Yeah,
which great, Yeah, people don't really talk that in North Dakota.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Phenomenal phenomenal series yeah, for the for the few series
is living North Dakota. In's in the crowd tonight you
should you already know Fargo is by far the most
populous city in North.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Dakota, and justin I have been just to give us.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
All a sense of how how few people were talking
about the population of Fargo was estimated to be a
little bit north of one hundred and thirty six thousand
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Okay, watch out for wood shippers, That's all I'll say about.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Sure, yeah, and watch out for you know if in
the if you're in a Fargo series and you meet
anybody who looks remotely like Billy Bob Thornton, do not
trust them. Cass right, man, what North Dakota. So we
said what we say, a little bit, a little bit
south of one hundred and forty thousand for Fargo. This
(04:02):
is the thing I almost say country. It is a
land to itself. The population of the state entire as
of last year was still less than eight hundred thousand people.
And it's a very big place. It's a place that
often gets ignored in a lot of conversations. Here's how
(04:27):
we get to today's episode. Our North Dakota episode courtesy
of our research associate Max Williams, because of racism, paranoia,
and as Max puts it, an able supply of fermented cabbage,
which we'll get to. Or the German originated homesteaders of Hebron,
(04:48):
North Dakota have brought us this episode about the thirty
ninth state in the country.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
They brought it to us in a series of Mason jars.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Right, just like Alex Williams, and is infamous homage to
George Washington's nog so all right, nog and crowd noging
krout classic Alex. So if we go to our friends
at Britannica, we'll see that Europeans are largely acknowledged to
(05:22):
have reached the territory of what we call present day
North Dakota in the mid seventeen hundreds. That might surprise
some people because it's pretty far west. But when they
went there, this place was already around. It was already
well populated by various indigenous or tribes or first peoples.
(05:43):
The Mandon, the Hidasa, the Arakawa were settled along the
Missouri River.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
The Ojibwa, who were locally referred to as the Chippewa
or Anishinabe as well as the Cree, not to be
confused with the the adverse serial race of aliens from
the Marvel Universe.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right yeah, and are they adversarial or are they looking
out for themselves?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Good car? Are they the ones from the Secret War?
The Creed?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
There are? The three are a famous cosmic cosmic empire
in the Marvel Universe.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I just remember them from the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yes, yeah, and there they were sort of coded as
fundamentalist or religious extremist, like.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Bor they want to assimilate. They were very aggressive conquerors
kind of right.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Well, the thing that bothered me about the way the
Kreer represents did not intend for this to happen today,
we're all The way the Cree are represented in the
Guardians of the Galaxy is problematic because one of the
prime antagonists, a guy named Ronan the Accuser. Uh you'll
see leap is, yes, you'll an actor. You will see
(07:01):
him being prepared for his day as a villain in
a way that is a very similar to the way
the royalty in Gulf countries are are dressed up for
the day like people. He has attendants who are perfuming
him and putting yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. They are
(07:30):
for there's a better word for it, but they are
baptizing him a little bit in precious oils and sprayed
aromatics and powders support him anyway. The cree Are decree
in Marvel Covicdom is not what we're talking about there.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's not. But that was a very respectable aside.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
If it's a phenomenal franchise to please check it out
if you haven't had a chance to watch. Alongside these
groups we've named earlier, there were other civilizations groups of Sioux,
the Sinebon, the Yanktoneton, the Teton. They inhabited areas in
the north, southeast and west of this region. Again we're
(08:11):
getting that from Britannica. The first encounters were largely meet
and greets, mercantile things, French Canadian fur traders, and then
folks like Lewis and Clark. They passed through what would
become Dakota in eighteen oh four.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Oh and if you I think we mentioned before, if
you want to fun sci fi spin on that, do
check out Manifest Destiny, the comic book series.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Oh yes, man, I love that. Have you checked that
one out?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I've only read the first handful of issues, but I
need to get back to it. It's very very cool.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
It's so cool. Do check it out, and remember it's
a work of fiction, but it is very loosely based
on fact, and.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
It's commenting on a lot of the things that we're
talking about right here in terms of the like the
ick of it all very much so.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And as the story goes, our pals Lewis and Clark
are really impressed with how friendly the locals are. They
end up constructing Fort Mandan a n d An pardon
any accidental Mandarin on my part, and there they spent
(09:23):
the winter of eighteen oh four to eighteen oh five.
But manifest destiny, to your point, Noel was very much
a priority of the American experiment, So these newly minted
Americans started getting more and more into the territory. They
(09:46):
were invaders who called themselves settlers. If that sounds familiar,
yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And we're not here to rag on the conquering Europeans
too too much, but I mean it's hard to talk
about it without at least giving it a mention. I know,
people give us flax some time, a being like, oh,
back in the day, things are so problematic. Well they were,
they were, but that's.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Not what we're Everybody smelled bad. Disease was rampant, people
with hungry. Your favorite beat me here, Max, your favorite
world leaders got punked by groups of rabbits. Okay, that's
how history is.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I know, and and and I know how history repeats itself.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, to jump in here, future historians are probably gonna
be talking about these current times like that as well.
Oh yeah, somebody off me saying that.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I hear
that people have feelings, but I'm not familiar with that
on a personal level. We know that. Look, we know
that again, as you were saying, old tale as old
as time. These new invasions or these new encroaching populations
bring in new culture. They bring in unfamiliar technology, unfamiliar
(10:52):
diseases and vices. When the eighteen twenties and the eighteen thirties,
these American traders t r a d Ers are bringing
in guns, kettles, manufactured goods like axes, blankets. They're also
bringing manufactured goods like liquor, and they're accidentally bringing things
(11:14):
like disease.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah. Yeah, accidentally, for sure, but also you know the
old theory, there's that, for sure, but at the very
least not really given to flips about who would get
hurt by their presence and behavior.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Right because for the most part, outside of a few missionaries,
these folks aren't thinking of the existing population as fellow
human beings. And there's an economic sea change, a paradigm shift.
Native Americans become dependent upon these traders in their trade
(11:53):
networks for supplies, and in the process of exposure to disease,
exposure to hard alcohol, things like that, a lot of
people who are totally innocent die. The smallpox epidemic in
eighteen thirty seven, just this initial exposure reduced the Mandan
population of North Dakota from about eighteen hundred to one
(12:17):
hundred and twenty five in less than a year, in
just a few months. And these folks who were previously
you know it, lived there for thousands of years. These
folks previously welcomed newcomers, but they began to grow more
hostile when they said, hey, maybe the new guys don't
have our best interest at heart, maybe their vibe is
(12:40):
fake or manufactured. And steamboat traffic increases because gold is
discovered in Montana in eighteen sixty two, and so the
US Army, again still kind of newly minted, starts building
forts along the river to protect these resources, that's right.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And in eighteen seventy six, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer,
who you may have heard of, along with the seventh Cavalry,
set out from Fort Abraham Lincoln just a little bit
south of present day Mandan. And this is again coming
from our pals over a Britannica. I'm paraphrasing loosely here,
(13:22):
So in order to set out for a very very
very fortuitous encounter with the Sioux and the Cheyenne at
a pretty famous altercation called the Battle of Little Bighorn
be one of my favorite oxymorons, by the way, which
was fought in present day Montana.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, and as we know, things didn't work out for George,
but one dead colonel doesn't stop the show, and it
definitely never stopped Uncle Sam. So the westward expansion continues.
The fur trade is starting to decline by the eighteen sixties,
you know, well, for the Fateful days of Custer and
(14:03):
Anglo's settlement begins in earnest in eighteen seventy one, partially
due to the fact that railroads have reached the Red
River from Saint Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. So we get
a bunch of pioneers who are not rich people, but
they have been favored by this new growing government under
(14:25):
something called the Homestead Act of eighteen sixty two. So
they show up en Mass and they say, hey, you know,
the folks back east said that this land is my land, this.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Little bit of a land your land. Right.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We're farming wheat here, and this is where we go
to something historians called the Dakota Boom. From eighteen seventy
eight to eighteen eighty six, giant farms or are running
across the land North Dakota. Wheat became the primary a
mover for the milling industry of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I'm picturing one of those progress montages from movies where
it's just like a fast motion animation of like dip dip, dip,
dip dip, deep dip di just popping up all over
the landscape, you know, farms and wheat fields.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
I'm picturing, Yeah, I'm picturing similar to that when you
when you make a world wonder in the Civilization game series.
You get that quick montage of people building the pyramid
or whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, but now it's just people farming in North Dakota
and railways, of course being built. The railways are government supported,
private interests with a lot of corruption, but they are
not friends. So the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern
Railway for in for instance, they're Pepsi and Coke. There
(15:49):
are two companies that are very similar but hate each other.
So they were fighting with one another to lay track
towards the richest centers. The farmers were united by their
dependence on the wheat crop and this led to just
a side note here, what we call the populist movement.
(16:12):
It's not until eighteen sixty one that the Dakota Territory
is established, and then it gets divided in eighteen eighty
nine to North and South Dakota. In that same year,
this former territory that is now two states, gets official
(16:32):
recognition and becomes part of the Union. It's November two,
eighteen eighty nine. Congratulations to you guys.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Good job, good, Yes, you did it. You did something.
That's right, you did do something. Then it was something,
all right. So now that we've set the scene. Let's
talk a little bit about the panic. You know, we
love a moral panic bend that led to the crowd.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Ah. Yes, And to get to this part of the story,
we're going to lean on our pal Mary Helm from
Prairie Public Newsroom, a subsidiary of PBS. I don't know
about you, guys, but I'm a fan of Public.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Broadcasting also known as Prairie Mary.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
That ravery Mary Helm.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
It's fun. Yeah, No, huge, huge PBS fans over here.
And I think didn't we just discuss that there was
a court decision that overturned the defunding.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
We haven't talked about it, but yes, the news just
came out.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I would say, that's so. We talked about it on
stuff they don't want you to know, strange news.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Last time we were Ah, you got to take the
winds where you can get them.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You know, truly do man, you truly do so. The
Dakota Territory Indian Wars ended when Sitting Bull surrendered at
Fort Buford in eighteen seventy five, and that is when
the tribes were essentially, you know, kicked off their land
officially and placed in reservations, which is basically the also
(18:03):
ran land, the land that you know, the settlers didn't want.
Also areas where wild game that they relied on, of
course for their way of life as hunter gatherers had
been hunted to near extinction. Not good.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, this did not end well obviously.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
The this is trail of tears, right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
This is similar to those systemic extermination programs. There's no
reason to call them anything else. The US government promised
these again innocent people, rations and supplies, but the Bureau
of Indian Affairs was Russian level corrupt, so we don't
(18:45):
know if these items actually made it to the reservations.
If they did, they were remnants because so many people
were taking their little vigoroush on the path from east
to west. By eighteen ninety, as a result of this,
there was I get a little choked up talking about this.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Human created famine. This did not have to happen, but
due to Uncle Sam's actions, there was widespread starvation on reservations,
where again, as you said, the Native American populations were
pushed under threat of torture and death. This where we
see folks like the Payuti Wovoca who proclaimed that hey,
(19:29):
we were here first, we can arise. We can lean
on our old traditions. We have been here for thousands
of years. We can conduct a great ritual called the
Ghost Dance, and people traveled from Indian communities in the
Dakota Territory to learn more. This movement is peaceful, to
(19:52):
be clear, It's not like a religious fundamentalist thing. The
idea is that the Ghost Dance promises a Messiah and
a return of the Buffalo through songs, dances, and visions.
This did get politically weaponized. We also have to keep
in mind that the buffalo was almost driven extinct by
(20:13):
the European powers at the.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Time over hunting and without any sense of the continuum,
you know, of the ecosystem, and of course the First
nation folks were very aware of and we're just the
conservation was sort of part of the equation as far
as they were concerned. But then you have these forces
coming in from outside, not thinking about the big picture
at all. Surprise, surprise, and just kind of willy nilly,
(20:35):
you know, hunting as they saw fit, without any forward thinking,
you know, plans for how that would affect others or
even themselves.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, and some of the we could call them activists,
Some of the people were a little bit more militant
and saw the ghost Dance as as a threat to
the increasingly normalize European culture, right, a threat to take
back all those lands that were, we'll be honest, stolen
(21:08):
from them. And as a result, journalists latch onto this
European journalist and they say the ghost Dance is reaching
Standing Rock. There's a Standing Rock agent named James McLaughlin
who assures settlers everything's under control. These newspaper stories are rumors,
(21:29):
but by November fifteenth, rumors had Mandan, which at this
point was a town sixty miles east of Aribron, North Dakota,
where a story takes place. The rumors in November fifteenth
had people in a widespread panic. We're talking women and
children fleeing across the river to Bismarck. Volunteer militias springing
(21:51):
up to fight for our land, and news spreads to
other towns in the areas. People who are in political
office or people who are good faith authorities of law
are trying to protect friendly tribes from random violence. You know.
It's it's very troublingly similar in some ways to the
(22:15):
great discrimination against people of the Islamic Faith Post nine
to eleven. You know, where we saw people getting beat
up and assaulted just because they go to a mosque.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Right or even you know, for praying in public or
what have you like, that that very innocuous and sacred
activity was associated with violence because of you know, bad
faith reporting. Frankly, you know, and and and and folks
that were going out of their way to connect that
type of thing, like the idea of Allah akbar, you know,
(22:53):
with terrorist activities very similar here. This is a religious,
peaceful religious practice, this ghost dance, and it seems that
it was painted as some sort of warring ritual or
something like that, right.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Right, It was propagandized. Yeah, and we can see this
in books like the Indian Scare of eighteen ninety by
father Lewis Faller, who writes, quote, one of the most
unique of the stories coming out of the Scare was
that of Hebron and its famous Fort souer Kraut. So
as soon as Hebron starts to panic around November seventeenth,
(23:33):
thanks to telegraph warnings about the ghost dance movement and passage,
a bunch of young guys in the area jump on
their horses they ride across the prairie. In their minds,
they're like Paul Revere. They're warning settlers, but this time
it's the Indians, not the British, who are coming. And
Fuller says, look, these wagons rattle over rough terrain toward Hebron.
(23:57):
One guy was in such haste that he went several
miles before he discovered his family. Bounced out of the wagon.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Great, great, shut up, Okay, bounce right on out of
the wagon. I think I heard mention of Fort Sauerkraut.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Ah. Yes, yeah, let's explain that, all right, let's go
to Atlas Obscure. Courtesy of the journalist Ian.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Lefkowitz Lefkowitz Rights. In late November eighteen ninety, the town
of Hebron, North Dakota, was not yet a decade old,
and yet it was seized by fear. Rumors had been
spreading across the region that a group of hostile Lakota
people had fled the Standing Rock Reservation to the south
and were attacking towns on their way. When the mostly
(24:42):
German homesteaders who lived in Hebron received telegram warnings of
an impending attack, they were gripped with terror.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Right yeah, because they were functioning under what we call
information a symmetry. They did not again think of indigital
or native peoples as people. They thought of them as
somehow monstrous or subhuman, despite the fact that clearly the
Europeans were the aggressors and all these conflicts. So these
(25:14):
German homesteaders send women and children to Bismarck and they
rush to build a fort to protect themselves. However, these
are generally going to be agrarian populations, right, These are
not military populations, so they don't have a ton of
the supplies that you would ordinarily need when constructing a fort.
(25:37):
They have to get creative with their fort construction. They
have to maguiver it a little bit. So what they
do is, since they don't have lumber and they don't
have guns, they create essentially a makeshift shelter on the
tallest hilltop they can find, and they use saw it
for walls, these railroad ties for a roof. They shelter
(25:59):
in place, they bunker down. This fort is one hundred
feet long, seven feet high, and it is stocked with
the other stuff that they have in abundance, which is frankly,
kegs of sour kraut.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, I mean it's a similar story to what we hear. Oftentimes,
the way kind of culturally significant food stuffs are created
is usually out of necessity, fermenting things to keep them
from going bad. Stuff like that. And that's exactly what's
going on here, because we have these barrels of sauer kraut,
which is a way of preserving the copious amounts of
(26:42):
cabbage that they had and keep them from spoiling.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, and brief aside about sauer kraut for anybody who's
not aware, sauer kraut is the German word for sour cabbage.
It is, as you said, no fermented to finely cut
raw white cabbage. It has a couple of different spins
you can put on it, but the sour flavor is
(27:08):
due to the fermenting bacteria and the lactic acid that
it forms. A side note, if you want to cook
cabbage for yourself at home, folks, make sure to get
some caraway seeds. That's going to help with the smell.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Is that right? Yeah? Oh wow, what a cool kitchen hack.
I didn't know about that. Man, I've never messed with
a caraway seed before. Well, have you messed with the
sour krout. I do you know, it's not my favorite
thing in the whole white world. I do like it
on a dog. It's like it's like a relish. I
like it as a condiment. I certainly wouldn't like eat
it on its own, but I think of it as
a bit of a condiment. Our buddy Frank, friend of
(27:44):
the show, when we used to live together back in
the day, he would make his own crowd. He was
a huge fan of the crowd, and he would just
eat that stuff, you know by the Fistfiicazell.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, it's something in the eyes so actly. So. The
Manda Pioneer publishes this account on November thirtieth of the
same year about a guy named doctor Coe Coe visiting
the fort, and he says, look, these folks are showing
a vast amount of pluck and energy preparing against the
(28:17):
possible danger from an attack Fort Sauerkraut, as we're calling it.
Their first line of defense was a bunch of wires.
They were strung to trip enemies who might be sneaking
around in the dark during a new moon. And inside
that there was a five strand barbed wire fence, and
(28:38):
then there were rifle pits, which are kind of like
the underground version of siege windows on a castle, where
it's narrow enough that you can shoot an arrow without
maybe getting shot yourself. So these rifle pits connect to
underground tunnels that lead to the inside of the fort,
(29:00):
and the sawed walls are you know, stretching hundreds of
feet across. Inside there we have the actual fortification, one
hundred feet long, gate feet deep. This is to house
the women and children who didn't get away.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, and as our buddy Max points out, history it
often leaves some things up to the imagination because it's
not always one hundred percent accurate. And typically the version
of events that we get are you know, reported by
the victors or you know, folks in power, often with
political motivations.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Right, aren't all the women and children sent to Bismarck?
Why why do we have this fortification to protect them?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
For sure? And speaking of fifth figures of authority telling
the tale, we've got this this religious figure, father Foller,
who was writing. One day, the Scouts were aroused by
an ominous cloud of dust, which sent the people scurrying
to the fort. Alarm grew when they could see the
cloud razors were Indians bedecked in feathers. Fortunately, Swensen, which
(30:05):
is a fantastic name, recognized them as friendly Indians from
the Fort Berthold Reservation, probably gross venturos under sitting Owl.
The visiting Indians put the beleaguered settlers at ease by
volunteering to help them fight the Sioux and mingled freely
with the fort builders.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right, which is a great observation from old father Foller.
There because a lot of people got caught up in
this anti native propaganda and they forgot that these are
very complex, very long lived communities who are not monolithic.
They don't all like each other. So maybe our pals
(30:45):
who are under sitting Owl already we're looking for a
reason to hate the Sioux, you know what I mean?
An enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least temporarily.
And so for weeks on end, these groups were preparing
for this supposedly impending doom, right, this inescapable danger. At
(31:07):
night in the evening, the townspeople hunkered down inside the
local church, But the attacks that they were convinced were
on the way never actually happened. Instead, they spent months
and months in fear and Eventually they realized that they
(31:28):
had been hoaxed.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
So the ghost dance movement that created this satanic panic
was officially and tragically annihilated at the Wounded Knee massacre. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, And as our pel Max points out, this is
dark but also souerkrap which I would I would argue
in responses a bit of a struggle food itself.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
No, it's true, it's a little darker than maybe one
might expect an episode about a delightful condiment.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
That that statement right there with more of me just
standing out loud. How I'm like, oh, for souerkraut, this
sounds interesting.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Are you a sower crowd guy?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Uh? Precondition?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yes, uh pre cond You can't have toer craft because
of the condition.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Oh yeah, it's the whole aging and brining it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Now that that's.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
One day, we're going to do an episode on like
the Three Things You Can Eat, Max.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Uh, my brother wants to do a chronic hives podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
It's very niche.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
That is alex fullyam circumposer for for this. For this show,
we do want to take it to the present because
it is informed by the past. If you go to
the town that we're mentioning here, you'll see it is
still alive and well, if you go to hebron nd
dot org and get in pardon my pronunciation, you'll see
(32:55):
it is calling itself the Brick City. A perfect typical
old town US, A rich in amenities, a location convenient
to larger cities like Bismarck and Dickinson. So they're fine.
It's rural. It's about two miles from Interstate ninety four.
It's on the Old Red Ten Old ten Scenic Byway.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And love it, you know it, well, know it?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Well, yeah, where would we be without it? The original
fort is obviously not there anymore, but you can visit
a recreation of the fort to day. And we love
seeing recreations of things. I love. They're very big throughout
the Southeast. I love going to the recreation, the recreated,
(33:44):
like old famous Guys Home and old Fort and so on.
Did you ever go to one of those re enactment villages,
you know, I never have been, but I did go to.
I want to say it was Woodrow Wilson's house in
(34:06):
New York City, his apartment, and it was you know,
quite realistically recreated like it's the actual building. But I
think it was actually a lot of it was damaged
in a fire. So some really eagle eyed historians used
all the historical context clues they could to make it
as accurate as possible, and you can totally take a
walk through it and it really is like, you know,
(34:28):
going traveling back in time. Nice. I also want to
give a special shout out to our pal Mark Kendall,
who years and years ago before he became as famous
as he is now, Mark had a gig as a
re enactor at an old school Georgia plantation and Mark
(34:49):
is a black man is He's hung out with us
on several different shows and so on, and to hear
his story of his experience as a reenactor there, it's
worth a listen. So check out Eddie show that you
see his name attached to. We also know if you
(35:09):
find yourself in North Dakota, this recreation of the fort
is family friendly, self guided towards free admission. You can
just rock up and check out a little bit of
history for yourself. You do have to byos bring your
own sour kraut for sure.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
With that, big, big thanks to you fellow ridiculous historians.
Most importantly and most eternally for tuning in. Big thanks
to our super producer and research associate for this episode,
mister Max Williams. Big thanks to crowd rock fan Alex.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Williams one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Do you think Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter eats sauer Kraut?
Speaker 2 (35:57):
No? Oh, surely not for surely so I'm not sure
which one is more villains?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
How does he fit into how does sour kraut fit into?
Our mean profile of it?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
TBD TV that I know a lot of people like
sour kraut, but it also you know, it is often
depicted as sort of like a funky food that might
yield some bad breath, or like you know, Dickensian character
who eats raw onions or something like that. That's how
I'm using it in this in this context.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Mm hmm, Well, we could definitely say that Jonathan Strickland
ak the Quist is nothing more than awesome dude, but
very much a sour crout.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Oh and also, real quick, y'all, when I mentioned the
presidential historic home that I visited in New York City,
wasn't Woodrow Wilson got myself confused there? It was Theodore
Roosevelt's birthplace National Historic Site, and then it was recreated,
you know, again to be completely period accurate as much
as they possibly could. And it is a it is
a really cool hang and it is under gosh, who
(36:55):
knows if that's the case anymore, how that works. But
when I went, it was under the National Parks Service,
so you literally had a park ranger in a New
York City kind of Brownstone giving you a tour, which
I thought was kind of meat.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I'm a huge fan of MPs. Also, if you happen
to find yourself in Georgia looking for something to do,
take a day trip with us to Warm Springs, Georgia.
That's a pretty fascinating bit of presidential history as well.
Big thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacob's Ak the Puzzler, Big
thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance. Of course, the
(37:29):
Brew Dude's a ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll
love them.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Who else? Christopher hasiotis cush, Yes, Eve, Jeff Coates here
in spirit.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
And thanks also to everybody who's snarfing some Sauer kraut
right now, And thanks to.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
You all you crowd snarfers out there. Thanks to you
as well. Ben, We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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