who dresses like he’s cosplaying as a cowboy
at a time when there are STILL REAL COWBOYS
mostly because he is in love with these novels
written by a guy named James Fenimore Cooper
about a dude who REALLY identifies with Indians
while simultaneously killing a ton of Indians.
In real life, though
Custer knows almost diddly-shit about Indians
and makes up for this
by employing a ton of Indian scouts.
“INDIAN SCOUTS???” you say.
“But I thought the Indians hated white people?”
Well, there’s a lot of different Indians, dorkus
and they agree with each other about as much
as a flock of seagulls trying to share a bagel.
Like, before the Europeans showed up
all the Indians were happily killing each other
for land or glory or buffalo or whatever else
when all of a sudden America showed up
with all its artillery and patriotism
and they were like “Shit
now we have to deal with this.”
(This actually happened to me
the first time I played Civilization.
Abraham Lincoln just massacred me with rifles.
I never played Civilization again.)
Some tribes deal by fighting
(like the Lakota)
but some tribes deal by helping the U.S. Army
(for example, the Crow)
because they actually still hate the Lakota
plus they like fighting whoever
plus they figure if they help the U.S., they’ll get land
to which I can only say
LOL.
Anyway, Custer does an excellent job
of massacring a couple defenseless villages
having sex with his captives
and staging buffalo hunts for visiting Germans
all of which has the effect
of pushing more and more tribes north
where they join this one huge village
which is right near the Little Bighorn river
and is led (sort of) by this dude named Sitting Bull.
Not only is Sitting Bull a dope-ass warrior
he’s also wise as shit
like one day he goes up on a hill
and does a bunch of horrible stuff to his body
and then he passes out and wakes up
and he’s like “Guys
I had a dream:
A bunch of soldiers are coming from the east
we are going to totally own them
don’t take their stuff, though
that’s not cool.”
Sitting Bull is totally right about the soldiers
’cause Custer has heard that there is a big village
well within its treaty-defined borders
existing in a peaceful Edenic paradise
and he cannot abide by that shit
so he heads out with a big-ass army
and several other generals
all of whom are slightly less shitty than he
and when the time is right
he leaves all the other guys behind
refuses any reinforcements
and gallops off to find the giant village
BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HEROES DO.
So Custer’s Indian scouts get him to the village
but they’re like “Dude, don’t attack this
you will definitely die”
and Custer is like “DIE?
MORE LIKE . . . NOT DIE”
and his translators and his soldiers are like “No bro
pretty sure we will actually die if we do this”
and Custer is like “I appreciate your concerns
but I did not get this far by listening to people.
LET’S SPLIT UP, GANG
WE’LL COVER MORE GROUND THAT WAY.”
So half the troops attack head-on and get slaughtered
while Custer tries to sneak around back
and also gets slaughtered
on the same hill where Sitting Bull had his dream
and all the Lakota are like “Yay!
Let’s take everybody’s stuff!”
and Sitting Bull is like “No wait, I said don’t do that.”
But no one is listening
they are too excited about not getting massacred.
So the rest of America finds out about this
and is just like “. . . What?”
Like, they can’t believe that a bunch of savages
who don’t even know about the Bible or trains
managed to defeat Frontier Jesus
(like American Jesus, but in buckskin!)
so they’re like “I know!
Custer must have died because he WANTED TO.
SUCH NOBLE
SO SACRIFICE
WOW.”
People make all these paintings about it
and write all these poems
and this dude called Buffalo Bill
who is even better than Custer
at lying about being a cowboy
even puts on a massive theatrical production of it
featuring actual Lakota battle veterans
who are willing to participate in this stupid show
because they really, really need the money.
Because here’s the thing
after Custer dies
America is like “OH SHIT, PATRIOTISM”
and they fund the hell out of the army
which proceeds to wipe the floor with the Lakota
by systematically denying them food
so about half of them join reservations
and the other half (led by Sitting Bull)
move to Canada
thus continuing the time-honored American tradition
of moving to Canada every time something sucks.
But Canada sucks too, so Sitting Bull moves back
and alternates between touring with Buffalo Bill
and refusing to become a capitalist
much to the frustration of the Americans
until he eventually gets shot for “resisting arrest.”
And then he’s dead, and that sucks
but at least some other Indians go to school
and learn to read and write
so that future generations can better comprehend
exactly how badly they are fucked.
Also, Custer gets a monument!
So the moral of the story
is that just because someone is dead
doesn’t mean they don’t suck.
BILLY THE KID LOVES BACON, KILLING PEOPLE
So now that the Civil War is over
where are people gonna be violent?
I’ll tell you where:
THE OLD WEST
a gleaming, steaming repository
of guns, guff, and gumption
just waiting to be covered in dead bodies.
Many people contribute to the Old West body count
but few do it more effectively
than this kid named Billy.
Billy gets born in New York City
to an Irish mom and an invisible dad.
He’s a mischievous little bastard
and by the time he’s like twelve
he gets a little too mischievous
and gets thrown in jail.
But it’s okay
because in addition to being a mischievous bastard
he is also a little bastard, like I said
so he escapes from prison
by crawling out of the chimney
and then he goes WEST
where a mischievous little bastard like him
is bound to fit right in.
And FIT RIGHT IN HE DOES.
First he shoots a blacksmith
who’s trying to push him around
then he runs off
and becomes a cattle rustler/cheesemaker
and then after doing that for a while
he gets hired by this lawyer named McSween
to GUARD some cattle
because McSween doesn’t do background checks.
But maybe he did do a background check
because as a cattle guard
Billy’s job description
is to basically murder all the dudes
who work for the OTHER cattle guys
who, granted, are classic mustache-twirling villains
who do things like shoot people
and then shoot their horses
and then cut off the heads of the horses
and put them on the heads of the dudes.
Messed up, I know.
So yeah, bullets fly back and forth for a while
between these two posses of bad dudes
and both sides do things that are pretty messed up
but the guys Billy is fighting against are way richer
and know way more important government dudes
and also Billy makes the mistake
of shooting at some U.S. Cavalry
so in the end, he gets indicted
and has to make a plea bargain to get a pardon
where he sells out some of his gangbros
but when he comes in to testify
THEY TOTALLY JUST ARREST HIM
so he’s just like “Psh
you clearly have not heard about me and chimneys.”
Then he climbs out the chimney
and rides away on a horse someone brought for him.
So now Billy the Kid is widely known
as a seriously bad dude
and the governor of New Mexico
starts offering a really sweet reward for his arrest:
FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS.
DUDE.
Five hundred bucks?!
That’s barely enough to buy five hours
with a medium-classy prostitute . . .
Wait, okay, I see how this could work.
ENTER PAT GARRETT
he’s a buffalo hunter
but that doesn’t mean he cannot also hunt DUDES.
Dudes are basically the same as buffalo
except with less legs and more bullets.
Some say that Pat and Billy used to be best pals
but normally you do not form a posse
to go arrest/kill your best pal
for a measly five hundred bucks.
Usually it takes like six hundred at LEAST.
Anyway, Pat chases Billy around for a while
while Billy is rustling cattle HARDCORE
and also pranking dudes with his guns
like this one time
when he’s hanging out in a bar
this drunk jerk is like
“I AM TOTALLY GONNA KILL BILLY THE KID.”
Totally unaware of the fact that Billy
is RIGHT THERE IN THE BAR.
So Billy walks up to him
and he’s like “Nice gun. Mind if I take a look?”
So the guy gives him the gun
LIKE AN IDIOT
and then instead of just shooting the dude with it
like a normal badass
Billy goes ahead and rotates the barrel
so that the next chamber to fire will be empty
and then gives it back to him
and then he’s like “Oh, by the way
I’m Billy the Kid.”
And the guy is like “WHAAAAAAT”
and starts shooting at him
but no bullets come out of his gun, obviously
so then Billy kills him
and everyone is like “Well, that was unnecessary
and therefore TOTALLY AWESOME.”
But all awesome things must come to an end.
One morning, Pat Garrett tracks Billy and his gang
to a little house on the prairie
and he barricades the door with a dead horse
and then he starts cooking BACON.
And he’s like “Hey, Billy
how would you like to come eat some tasty bacon?”
And Billy is like “Hey, Pat
how would you like to GO TO HELL?”
And Pat is like “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way
I guess you can just starve to death inside that house.”
But no one can withstand the smell of bacon for long
so eventually Billy and his gang surrender
so they can get some breakfast.
Then Billy gets convicted, of course
for a whole bunch of murders
some of which he probably didn’t even commit
but that’s okay
because the number of murders he’s accused of
makes him a TOTAL CELEBRITY.
He gets to go to Las Vegas and do interviews!
Granted, he spends a good portion of the interviews
denying a lot of those very same murders
but whatever, he’s famous!
Less fortunately
it also means that he gets sentenced to death
and the prison where he’s being kept in the meantime
DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A CHIMNEY.
So I guess he’s just boned, right?
WRONG.
Because this is when Billy the Kid
pulls some straight-up action hero shit
like, his guards are walking him over to get executed
and he KNOCKS ONE OUT
WITH HIS MANACLES
then he steals that dude’s gun
and shoots the other one in the face
BY NAME.
He then has to put off his escape for an hour
while he chews through his leg irons.
But there is a natural law in the Old West.
It is called the Conservation of Gumption.
It states that one man
cannot hog all of the gumption for too long
before he has to die and let other people have a turn
and that’s why
three months later
Pat Garrett finally catches up with Billy
in some random house one night
and Billy goes down like a clown
from a bullet to the stomach
while yelling “Who’s there?” in Spanish.
At the time of his death
Billy is just shy of twenty-one years old
and according to some (wildly inaccurate) estimates
he has killed TWENTY-ONE MEN.
Dude
21:1 is a pretty good kill–death ratio
and even if he only killed like five guys
dude has some serious work ethic.
I mean, I’ve already lived longer than he did
and I have yet to kill anything
other than a spider and a couple goldfish.
Oh well
to each his own.
The moral of the story
is that if you’re considering a career in murder
probably just drop it.
You’re already way behind
and it’d be hell to catch up.
PECOS BILL KICKS METEOROLOGY IN THE FACE
So there are all these real cowboys in the Wild West
and they are all idolizing this fictional cowboy
called Pecos Bill
which is a problem
because Pecos Bill is an idiot.
Let’s gloss right over his troubled childhood
in which he fell out of a wagon
got adopted by coyotes
and failed to realize he was not one of them
until his brother came along and told him so.
Instead, let’s fast-forward to him at twentysomething
when he is acutely aware that he is not a coyote
but also acutely unaware
of certain basic facts of physics.
Like for example:
YOU CAN’T RIDE A TORNADO LIKE A HORSE.
TORNADOES DIFFER FROM HORSES
IN MANY DISTINCT WAYS.
SCIENCE HAS SHOWN THIS.
So Pecos Bill is up in Kansas for some reason
and he is like “Hey
you know what would be great to ride right now?
A FUCKING TORNADO.”
So he hangs out in tornado country for a while
checkin’ out the tornadoes.
He even lets a couple pass by unmolested
because they are simply not dangerous enough
but finally he sees this one tornado
tearing the bajeezus out of EVERYTHING
EVERYWHERE
turning the sky black and green
and he is like “Phew
I was worried
that I wasn’t going to get to do a dumb thing today.”
So Pecos Bill jumps on that tornado
pushes it to the ground
jumps on its . . . back?
and is like “Giddy up, you son of a bitch.”
So the tornado
obviously
is like “FIGGITY FUCK NO.”
This is not just me injecting swears into mythology
(for once)
the tornado seriously starts cursing.
Bill has pissed off this force of nature SO MUCH
it has miraculously gained the power of speech
and it is using it to say “fuck” a lot.
So the tornado flips out
(like, more than normal)
and starts tearing even more bajeezus out of things
tying rivers in knots and skull-fucking forests
killing thousands of animals
destroying vast swaths of land.
Then they get to Texas
which is pretty destroyed already because Texans
and Pecos Bill is still chilling out on this tornado