Listen to the episode here.

Apparently, Angie can’t stop thinking about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and today tackles the specific incidents that directly led to its collapse. So if you want to hear how Russian middle managers muff the punt and how that triggers some real drama…

Theresa shifts the focus of history in a dramatic way when she shares the story of Apache warrior, healer, and holy woman, Lozen. She shares her mystical powers of tracking her enemy, her missions with her brother Victorio, and how she joined Geronimo’s forces.

These stories pair well with:
David Bowie’s Concert in Berlin
The Great Balloon Escape
George “Skeeter” Vaughan and the Moccasin Rangers – WWII

Transcript

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhand History Podcast, a podcast where two friends are great friends and they do this thing where they troll each other nonstop and they tell each other history stories they’ve only recently learned or uncovered new facts about and then verbally assault their friend with that story. I’m host one, I’m Teresa and that I’m host two.

Angie: I’m never going to figure it out. I’m Angie and I have something to say. First of all, if you’re not trolling your best friend, are they even your best friend?

Theresa: No, they’re not at least not the way I friend. Like if I’m nice to you, I either don’t know you don’t like you. Oh, dude. Yeah, same.

Angie: Same. If I’m not trying to bug the crap out of you, we’re not friends. No. I am very uncomfortable with the fact that you just said stories we’ve either just learned or things about stories we’ve just uncovered because that is what my story is about today.

Theresa: So, what are you talking about today?

Theresa: I’m going to be telling the same story you tell, but I’m going to do different details because Ian’s already shared it with me. I know he hasn’t.

Angie: I don’t need any idea. Good try though. I tried to ask him the other week if he wouldn’t mind texting you and finding something out and he was like, no, I’m not getting in the middle of that. I was like, well, you’re lame. Like, you’ll do it for her, but you won’t help me and he’s like, yeah, pretty much.

Theresa: Okay, cool. Yeah, if she’s not worried about it, it’s not a threat. Evidently. Yeah. Okay. Rude.

Angie: I guess I’ll just start then.

Theresa: Yeah, I mean, would you please? Sorry.

Angie: I didn’t write down the author of my article’s name. I am going to tell you part two of the opening of the Berlin Wall. Oh, so this day last year, I told you about how the Berlin Wall was built, you know, all of that.

I’m going to give you a recap in just a minute, but I’m going to tell you about part two. Okay, so my source is a NPR article called The Man Who Disobeyed His Boss and Opened the Berlin Wall. This is from November 16th of 2024 by Soria Nelson. And then my other is the fall of the Berlin Wall, an independent article written by Toti Patterson, November 9th of 2014.

So with that said, I’m just going to give you a little recap. When World War II ended in 1945, Germany was carved up into four occupation zones, right? Each one’s overseen by one of the Allied powers.

You have the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, right? Now, Berlin, though, sits deep inside the Soviet controlled territory, and it itself is also divided into four sections. And initially, people could move between East and West Berlin with relatives, like you could live in one side and work in the other, and you really didn’t have much of an issue, right? But by 1948, tensions are rising, things are sharpening, and the Soviets, angered by the West’s economic reforms, they block all roads and railways into West Berlin in response. The Allies launched the Berlin Airlift, where they fly in food, fuel, and hope, and this is like a symbolic stand against tyranny, and this totally worked. But also deepens the divide. In response, the Allies launched the Berlin Airlift, where they’re flying in food, fuel, and hope.

It’s this super symbolic stand against tyranny, and it works. But the other side to that is it also deepens the divide. By 1949, the two Germanies have formed, you have West Germany, that’s backed by the Allies, and East Germany, which is under Soviet control. In 1961, the East German authorities, wow, that’s a hard word for me to say, East German authorities build what they call the anti-fascist protection barrier. We know it as the Berlin Wall. Now, officially, it’s meant to keep fascists out. In truth, it’s built to keep people in. Now, behind the wall, I described this in last year’s episode, but I’ll give you a recap. Life continues, and sometimes competition takes surprising forms. You have East and West Berliners, and they begin what is called the Animal Arms Race. Do you remember this?

Theresa: The Zoological… Oh yeah, yeah, no, I was already taking notes to attach this to the David Bowie, Berlin Zoo, competing zoo episode.

Angie: So we have competing zoos with competing animals that are submitted by their out-each allies from across the world. And then, of course, because you can’t have a competing zoo on a Berlin Wall without espionage, we have espionage. In 1954, the CIA and MI6 joined forces for what would be one of the boldest operations yet called Operation Gold, where beneath the streets of Berlin, they build a 1476 foot-long tunnel to tap Soviet phone lines. And for nearly a year, they gather priceless intelligence. Then the Soviets, quote, unquote, discover the tunnel, but not by chance.

They’d known about it all along, thanks to a British double agent by the name of George Blake. This doesn’t really embarrass the West. If anything, the world marvels at the audacity of the plans. And it’s kind of like this reminder that even underground, the Cold War is basically a contest of wit and nerve.

And then comes the music. In the late 1970s, David Bowie had lived in West Berlin sharing a small apartment with Iggy Pop, and it was here that he recorded the song Heroes, and then the album, which was very haunted by the Cold War isolation. Right. The title track Heroes talks about being heroes just for one day while they dream of freedom, blah, blah, blah, right?

Theresa: We remember all that. I mean, it was brilliant. I loved when you covered that.

Angie: That was actually still probably one of my favorite stories to tell you. A decade later, in 87, Bowie returns to Berlin for a concert that staged right near the right stage, which is just yards from the wall itself. For all of those playing at home that didn’t listen to this episode, his voice can the concert carry across from West Berlin into East Berlin, and you have East Berliners like gathering at the wall to listen to him sing his songs. They’re divided by concrete, but totally united by the sound, and the East German police panic. They attack young listeners with water cannons and arrests and all sorts of things.

But it’s too late, right? The music has done its work and the moment exposes the cruelty and division, but it also changes how people, especially young East Berliners, see their government. A week later, Ronald Reagan stands at the Bannonburg Gate and demands Mr. Gorbachev tear the wall down. Two years after that, the wall falls. In 2016, when David Bowie dies, Jeremy’s foreign ministry writes, goodbye, David Bowie, you are now among heroes. Thank you for helping bring down the wall.

Okay. So after I told you that story, I was reminded that I had some very sweet friends that were in Berlin when the wall fell. One was our former pastor. He was a young pastor at the time, a young minister at the time, doing his ministry.

And one was his young wife, who they hadn’t, she was a teenager. But she is a West Berliner. So I called her and I was like, hey, would you mind sharing with me like your firsthand account of what it was like for Berlin and for your family when the Berlin wall came down? Because to me, I think we miss so much of history by not hearing every day story.

Right? Like we hear these big grand stories, like all these great, you know, women of World War II, espionage and all their stories, but we don’t hear what it was like for just mom and pop. So it’s like, hey, what, you know, what was your life for you?

And she left me a really great voicemail detailing her experience. Basically, in her case, she believes that her family didn’t suffer the same sort of separation that many other families of the time did that were torn apart by the wall. Rather, her grandmother had some foresight and she got as many of her children to the West as possible. Like she takes her three, she had like six or seven kids, but the older ones were older and like married.

So she takes the children that she can with her to the West. Wow. In like the 50s. Her, my friend, her name is Allie, her mom was born just after World War II and her father just before the war had ended, like a couple of months before. So by the time the wall is established, her family is already firmly established in the West.

Okay. So like they’re not separated by this whole fight to get back to my grandmother sort of thing. Grandmothers are already there. There are some family members still residing in the East though. One of her uncles, who she absolutely adores, had actually been raised in the West but fell in love with a girl from the East.

So he moved there, which she thought was totally wild. Like why would you leave freedom for the Iron Curtain? Because love. Right. Because love. Because love.

Right. Now she says she was still able to visit him often, like throughout the summer, she could go and stay with him for the duration of the summer. So she has like these really, um, ideal like memories of her childhood being there. And visiting was allowed for family members under the right circumstances.

Like for example, that favorite uncle was allowed to come visit her family when her grandmother turned like 85, because by then he was old enough to be retired. So he wasn’t considered like a flight risk, but his wife couldn’t leave. So he would be forced to come back.

Right. So there’s circumstances that keep you wanting to come home, but giving the opportunity for her to still go into East willing to visit him. Now she makes a joke to him, August of 1989.

She says, the next time you visit, the next time we get to visit, you’re going to come see me, having no idea that we’re just months away. Right. She’s 16. What is like, she’s not paying attention to the news. Right.

Theresa: Yeah. No, she’s just some 16 year old punk and just talking to her uncle.

Angie: Right. Like, right. And so she has no clue that she is like really speaking to sort of into existence. Now, of course, according to her, she is not paying attention to the news. She is aware of some things that are going on in the late 80s, though. She will admit to having not known the wall came down for like a couple of days, because again, we’re 16. We’re not paying attention to the news, but I definitely know something’s going on. I’m just not sure what.

Also, it’s 1989. We don’t have social media. So what do we know?

Now she told me some really interesting things at this point that I did not formally know. One is that obviously all along the border, there are guard stations. Right.

They’re obviously manned. The other thing that she points out is that Gorbachev knew keeping the wall up and maintained is incredibly expensive. East Germany has no money to contribute to this. And so Gorbachev basically really does nothing after Reagan tells them to tear down the wall.

Like, he doesn’t put out any official orders or anything like that of like what to do. So the wall is just kind of there and they’re kind of just doing what they’ve always been doing. But there’s a lot of maybe tension is the right word in the air for some change, especially after the David Bowie concert.

Right. Now, because Gorbachev doesn’t give out any particular orders, there is a lot of confusion and a lack of real orders for any of the guards along the wall to follow, which leads this moment I didn’t previously know about. On the night of November 9th, 1989, a stasi guard by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Harold Yeager opens the gates to his section of the wall. His section is called the Bromhüllerstrasse crossing point, which basically separates the Communist East Berlin neighborhood of Prenzelauer Berg from the free West Berlin area of wedding. And I can’t recall if I didn’t make this clear in any of my previous episodes about this, which is weird that I have previous episodes, but free West Berlin is literally walled off like an island in East Germany. So the whole area is surrounded by this wall, right?

Theresa: Yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve been led to imagine.

Angie: So, right. So you can visualize how these neighborhoods, how you could have this free Western neighborhood lined up right against this Communist blockade, right? Okay. So I might have mentioned it actually in episode 46, you brought up by Potato King about the family that flies their hot air balloon. Yeah, the Great Balloon Escape.

Yeah, I couldn’t remember if I did or not, but I might have. Anyway, so the night of November 9th, 1989, Yeager is in command of his station, but he has no real orders. Like the other problem is there is no lack of people wanting to get across. In fact, by 1130 that night, he’s looking at over 20,000 East Berliners who are chanting Open the Gate. Now, there’s a ton of confusion. He lacks clear orders.

They basically don’t do what you have to do, but like don’t really say what they mean. He’s looking around and he’s got this ever-growing concern of a stampede or a bloodbath or both. So he makes the audible to open his gate. Now, what we need to know about Yeager is that he is a career border guard. Like he is fully behind this operation and fully believes in it, just like his father was, well, like actually one of the first border guards in the East. So this is like a big deal for him. In fact, he helped build the wall in 1961. So like this plan to literally trigger the reunification of Germany is not what he’s thinking of. Right.

Theresa: But he is, this is what you do. You stand guard. Right.

Angie: And so he’s like, oh my God, but he opens the gates anyway. And as things are progressing, further down the wall, other guards are seeing what happens. He does not see himself a hero that night. In fact, he tells the independent quote, after I gave the order, I and the other guards couldn’t believe what we were seeing. We were shell shocked. We felt the world was collapsing around us. He goes on to say, we stood there and watched our citizens leaving en masse. These were our people. We cried. We felt betrayed by our peers. It was a terrible, the terrible realization that not only did the system and our leaders had failed, we had to. He goes on.

Theresa: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you’re saying that the wall fell basically on accident and simultaneously multiple points of failure. Pretty much.

Angie: Like they saw him open his gate and I’ll get to just stick with me for a second because I’ll get to his, what he says happens in just a moment. He basically goes on to say that about half hour later, this vast group of East Berliners, they’re clapping and cheering and crying these tears of joy as they pass through the gates. And then he realizes what he’s done. And like what’s happened. And he says, quote, the crowds won us over with their euphoria. We realized that they were overjoyed and our tears of frustration turned to those of joy. At that point, one of the guards came up to me and said, Harold, I guess this was it with East Germany.

And it suddenly dawned on me that it was now. This is what he says happened. So what I just told you is like the brief overview of what the world saw. Jaeger, the guard says earlier, he is watching the news or some sort of news brief in the canteen. When the East Berlin, I’m going to jack this word up.

I’m going to try so hard. Polit Borough member says this is like a like the political representative of the East Berlin government. Günther Schwabowski gives a murky and garbled statement to the East Germans that they can now travel west, providing they have the current documents from the authorities.

But then, all of a sudden, Schwabowski says they can do so, quote, immediately and without delay. Now, what we need to know about him is he is totally buckling under pressure. Just five days before, there’s a huge anti-communist demonstration in Berlin, as well as an exodus of East Germans across the now open iron curtain into Hungary’s borders with Austria. So he is like, crap, the only way things are going to work out for me in my like, administration or regime is if I lift the travel ban. This probably doesn’t work out the way he plans. So Jaeger sees this news brief that I mentioned, then goes to his post to find all these curious East Berliners who are like, Hey, can we like cross the border? What’s going on?

Right? But he doesn’t really, he doesn’t know. He just saw the same news brief and he was like, uh, let me call my boss. So mind you, as the hours progress, the number of East Berliners is also growing. And so is the agitation.

You can imagine. Oh, this makes sense. Yeah. Right. So he calls his boss, the Stasi Colonel Rudy Ziegenhorn, who is like, don’t bug me with this. They got to have the right documents and pretty much hangs up on them. And our guys like, cool.

Okay. By 8pm, West German news, so the West German news now already has this statement from the East and they’re interpreting the statement saying that East Germany has opened its borders to the West. So the independence says, quote, by 9pm, the crowd had become so big that Mr. Jaeger was beginning to panic.

We have to do something. He shouted down the phone. He was then ordered to diffuse the situation by letting the noisiest East Germans leave the crossing point for West Berlin. The aim was to make it impossible for them to return by rendering their passports invalid with a special stamp. I realized then that I was doing something which was illegal, even in East Germany, he said, the tactics backfired. The crowd seeing that the noisy were allowed in the West started to get noisier.

I mean, shocking. The other guards along the wall, they know they’re armed, but they’re seeing their command like lose control big time and big Jaeger to take some sort of action because they’re fearing also the blood bath should they try to do anything. And this basically leaves Jaeger with one option. In 1130, that night, he orders to open the barrier. The independence said, quote, the human tide flowed West until dawn. That’s a lot of hours of people just walking across the border.

Theresa: Yeah, no, that honestly feels like a lot. It feels like 300 when he’s talking about how his army is going to march for miles and miles.

Angie: Yeah, that’s exactly, I didn’t see him in that costume, but yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. He calls his sister when he shifts over and he tells her what he did. Her response, you did well. So that’s how the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Holy cow. I know. Thanks, David Bowie.

Theresa: Wow. Okay. Well, that’s going to be a hard pivot from where I’m going. You’re welcome.

Angie: I just loved that there was not one single action that like, to me, it’s so fascinating to see the hair trigger moments that cause these major historical events. And this was just that my boss couldn’t tell me what to do.

Theresa: Yeah, my boss was just overwhelmed watching his show and just didn’t want to deal with having to wait for a rerun.

Angie: Yeah, which is what it feels like. I can’t pause. I can’t pause what’s going on here. Can you just wait till my episode’s over and then I’ll figure it out?

Theresa: Yeah. So the Berlin Wall failed basically because middle management can’t middle manage.

Angie: Pretty much, but like simultaneously, I personally, and this is just my personal opinion, Gorbachev probably wanted it to. And so he didn’t put out any specific orders near the rest of his administration. So really, what’s anybody going to do?

Theresa: I mean, I don’t see that you’re wrong.

Angie: I feel like it’s the cheapest way to get the ball down because either way, you’re going to have to pay if you did intend to take the wall down. You’re going to have to pay to remove a bit. But if you let the citizens do it, it’s done.

Theresa: You know, did you ever hear the story? I think it was somewhere in, I want to say Eastern Europe, where this municipal government needed to build a dam. They had spent years designing it, allocating funds for it.

And then as they went to go break ground, they realized a family of beavers had gone in, built the dam better than they could have and did it for free. No. But this is kind of what that feels like.

Angie: I mean, yeah, pretty much because we’ve seen the photos, we watched them take the rocks, like the concrete bricks right out of the wall.

Theresa: Yeah. And they became mementos.

Angie: Right. The other thing that I didn’t mention earlier that she said that really sparked my imagination is she said on her side of the wall, like that her home, my friend Allie, her home was just like a few blocks from the wall, I guess. And her side was all graffiti.

The other side of the wall in the same spot still had the feet and feet and feet of sand for the death zone. Wow. And that’s such a wild thing to like, even comprehend, I guess, today in my mind, right? But like, that was just life. She’s like, yeah, our side was graffiti. Their side was like spotless because nobody’s allowed to get near it. Right. Like, whoa, that’s nuts.

Theresa: Yeah, good luck with your pivot. Yeah. Mine’s gonna be a wild pivot. I decided to honor the indigenous history. And so I am going to tell you the story of Los Angeles. Okay. That means you don’t understand. Off the top of my head, I’m here for it. I don’t think I do. My sources, Reviewed Work, Women of the Apache Nation, Voices of Truth by H. Henrietta Stockle, Reviewed by June Nella Hayes, American Indian Quarterly, Volume 18, Number 4, Autumn of 1994, Women and the American Story, Life Story, Lozen, circa 1840 to 1889, History.com, The Apache Woman Warrior Who Helped Lead Resistance to European Invaders by Tony Takaran Aiki Williams.

Lozen, she’s born in 1840 to the Chahani Apache Band near Ojo-Keliente in New Mexico. Okay, that’s already fun. I mean, it means hot eye, which, you know, for those of you like me who use Google Translate to get through anything with Spanish other than ordering your tacos, you know. Speak menu. Yeah, I speak menu.

I can order a beer. Thank you so much. At the time, there’s at least seven Apache bands. There’s numerous clans that are spread throughout the vast area, and this is known as Apacharia, and that’s now in northern Mexico, eastern Arizona, and then southwestern New Mexico. So really, the great American Southwest.

Okay. Now, her band is also known as the Red Paint People, and they’re recognized by red bands of clay worn across their faces during ceremony. Now, you can picture them. It has been in pop culture.

We have seen them in movies. This group is led by her father. They’re known for raiding. And Apache bands, they tend to war with one another, and they tend to always be on the move. So a very nomadic lifestyle.

Angie: Oh my gosh. So you’re telling the story of the American Mongolians? Yeah, basically.

Theresa: Now, Joey Padilla, he’s a medicine man and a museum curator at the Mesquero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. He goes on to say that they never stayed in one place. So nomadic, nomadic, nomadic. And then we get our main character here, Lozen. Lozen, her name means dexterous horse thief. Oh, love that for her. Yep. And this really reflects the skill that she acquired that enabled her to sneak behind enemy lines undetected, round up horses and steal them away.

Now, her stealth and courage, these are going to become the qualities that she’s known by, and she’s going to basically be in constant conflict. Okay. So, horses. Yeah. When she’s seven years old, she learns how to ride horses.

Angie: And it’s like how to walk and then I learned how to ride. Basically.

Theresa: Now, her parents realize that she’s extremely talented as a horseback rider. And even though she’s a child, she’s one of the best riders in the band. Okay. Like this. Now, the Apache apparently they’ve got some fairly strict gender roles. The men are warriors and the women gathered prepared food and performed household tasks. When enemies attacked, it appears that women were responsible for collecting the most important items of the house, the household and then running to safety. Because of this, Apache women are in great physical shape.

Angie: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. Because we are and that’s why we’re always on the move. Yep.

Theresa: Now, Apache girls, they tend to start intense physical training around age eight. So this feels very Sparta, a gogi. Mm-hmm. Every morning, they woke before sunrise and ran to the top of a nearby mountain.

Angie: Oh, okay. Yeah, no, no, thank you.

Theresa: Now, they are a matriarchal culture with a deity called the white painted woman at the center of the creation story. And lozen understood from a very young age that women play a very important role. As you. So all of this is spinning up, right?

Mm-hmm. When she’s a child, there’s an ambush of her people by Mexicans and the Mexican men, they lured the Apache band with promises of gifts and then they start to shoot at them. Lozen and her brother, Victoria, escaped, but many Apache men, women and children died. And lozen never forgets this.

Yeah, I wouldn’t either. Now, she grows up as a typical Apache girl. She’s learning how to prepare food, sewing. She’s completing basically all the tasks that you would need to learn to be a successful wife and mom. Now, her path changes during her coming of age ceremony. And this ceremony marked a girl’s first period and celebrated her entrance into womanhood. Okay, yeah, this makes sense. It’s during this time she receives a spiritual calling during the ceremony and that gave her, this is crazy, a power to sense location of their enemies.

Angie: Oh, okay, okay. You know who I’m talking about now. I think so, yeah. I don’t think I know much, but it’s ringing bells.

Theresa: This indicated that she’s basically on the wrong path, wife and mom is not her, she needs to become a warrior.

Theresa: Get it, get it, mom, get it.

Theresa: So her brother, Victoria, he becomes the new leader of the band and lozen joins the men on raids and she’s quickly gaining respect from all of the other male warriors. She eventually becomes her brother’s trusted partner and she’s got some incredible talent as a hunter and horseback rider. And then this ability that she has to locate enemies made her a highly respected warrior. Yeah.

And she never marries or has kids. Oh, wow. Now, I don’t know if I put it in my notes, but one of the things they said that she would do is she would hold her arms up and, oh, you know, I have it in the next line. I’m going to keep it on check. 1848.

Okay, carry on. New Mexico became a territory in the U.S. under the Treaty of Hildago. And then we have the California Gold Rush that’s kicking off and this is bringing tons of miners through a patria. And when lozen’s 12, she goes through these puberty rides, so she’s still a wee one, right? And she, basically, were zooming back and kind of going more into those special power bits. She’s 12. She goes alone into the mountains and according to oral history, she gains this ability to track down her enemies.

Now, Harlan Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo that you know of, he said that lozen would lift her hands and walk in a circle until the veins in her arms turn dark blue, indicating the direction from which her enemies would approach.

Angie: How the heck do you decide you know that that’s what it’s doing?

Theresa: Look, I don’t know. I wasn’t there to A-B test this. Okay. I’m not worth it though. Let’s go. I mean, hot diggity dam. Could you imagine some pre-team coming down going, my arm is blue. We’re going that way.

Speaker 4: I was playing high like that. I was going high like that. I threw my arms up and that arm’s blue, so Victoria was that way. And I’m never wrong. I mean, that’s kind of how it sounds, right?

Theresa: Yeah, that’s what I’m hearing. So, mind you, 12, she began fighting Mexican soldiers, scalping hunters, and the eternal enemies of her band. Now, 1849, the Americans arrive and they start laying claim to her homeland and she battles with them as well. In the book, Warrior Woman, the story of lozen, Apache warrior, and shaman, Peter Alsher really goes through and really defines this. Her brother, Victoria, he says that lozen is my right hand. She is as strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. She is the shield to her people. Oh, I love you, Victoria. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And then Padilla, the curator of the museum, he said that she was a warrior woman in her time. And as the Apaches always had women with them, and she stood right behind the man with a knife or gun. And if a man went down, you had to deal with the woman too. Women also hid children from the enemies.

Yes. So, you just get this very strong, cohesive community that knows how to lock arms and go to war. After the Mexican-American war ends in 19- or in 1848, the lands in Southwest become a part of the United States and then we get more white people coming in and settling. And the government wants to grant even more land to white citizens. Shocking. And this is when the U.S. forces the Apache groups into reservations. They hate that.

Yeah, this isn’t exactly what they want to do. Now, we have in 1861 the Chacoan. We have a chief who’s falsely accused of kidnapping a rancher’s son. I don’t want to butcher it much more than I just did. Okay. And this sparks a series of conflicts that embroils the U.S. and various Apache nations and conflicts for a measly 24 years.

Angie: Just a small couple of decades. Yep.

Theresa: 1862, the chief, and another chief, they go to battle at the Apache Pass. They bring 200 warriors with them, but they get pushed into retreat and then scattered by howitzer cannons because we’ve got more firepower.

This checks. Now, Lozen, she’s at the Apache Pass and she’s welcomed into the council as a warrior and she fought for years next to her brother, Victoria, as they struggle for their homeland. And then she’s likely involved at horse rate in a horse rate at Fort Craig. And this is where Apaches are armed with bows and arrows and they are taking horses from the soldiers. 1869, she joined Victoria and other Apache leaders for a meeting to establish a reservation at Oho Calliente, but instead they’re moved to harsher conditions on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona.

So bait and switch. Now, 1870, the Warm Spring Apaches, they agreed to move to Oho Calliente. However, the government reneged, they go back on their agreement and they force all of the Apaches. Surprise, surprise.

I bet you didn’t see that coming. They force all Apache to go to San Carlos Reservation in 75. And then San Carlos is pretty far away from Oho Calliente and the conditions garbage, absolutely deplorable.

The Apache members, they’re struggling with hunger and disease and the government forced members from various Apache groups to live together on the reservation. I see this going so well. Yeah, I mean, look, we’ve done it before and it’s failed that time. So maybe it’ll work this time. If at first you don’t succeed.

Try, try again. Now, Lowe’s and Victoria and some others from their band, they flee. They’re like San Carlos, deuces were out of here. They eventually decide that they’re going to, it’s war over return. Fair. I feel is a cooler phrase than death before dishonor.

Yeah, okay. Now they end up disbanding to evade capture and Lozen later escaped or Lola. Lozen later escorted a group of women and children to Mexico. They ended up crossing the raging Rio Grande and there’s a dude named James.

Kawekala. He’s a child at the time. He remembered writing behind his grandmother as this band fled American forces. Kawekala, he says that he saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse holding a rifle over her head.

And after the group reached Mexico, they were cold, wet, but alive. And then Lozen rides back across the Rio Grande and she returns right back to the fight. I love her.

I mean, she can’t stop won’t stop. Now, many who escape are caught or killed by the US military and then we get those like the group that Lozen led. They make it to Mexico.

Victoria, he decides to lead his group back to Oho Calliente and he tries to pressure the government to honor their initial agreement to let them live there. And when they returned to the Oho Calliente reservation, they find the military had just shut it down. Just, you know, bye, you don’t live there no more. Bye, yes, this checks. We already forwarded your mail.

Angie: So you pass will deliver.

Theresa: Yeah, you know, if it fits, it ships. There we go. That’s right. It ships. So back at San Carlos, the government arrested the leaders of that band, including Geronimo. Now the great, great grandson. The original Geronimo, the Geronimo that you would know from the Indian side.

Angie: Oh, okay. I misplaced my timeframe. And then I was thinking that she was in the same timeframe as the grandson.

Theresa: No, no, no, she is, she is with the historic Geronimo. Gotcha. Okay, that’s awesome. Okay, so they go when the warm spring Apache has heard the rumors that there were plans to also arrest Victoria, they flee to the mountains. They’re like deuces and they get, they attack a small group of American soldiers and then this starts a war between their band and the US military. Shocking. Right. I mean, it’s basically just guns and blazing over here. Now, Lozen’s group, they’re on the lam. And when they’re under attack, women and children that are traveled small groups are separate from the warriors because they’re trying to downplay casualties. During one attack, a group of women and children had to cross the river to escape American soldiers. The water’s rising and this makes the crossing it safely very difficult.

Lozen had left the group of warriors to help them get past, to just get past the river. Now, 1880, she goes on to continue being her badass self because the warm spring Apache, they’re on their way to Mexico through Texas. And one of the women in their group is pregnant. She starts going into labor.

The American soldiers are like right on their heels. So Lozen left the group to help the woman give birth. Okay. And they’re separated from the group and that alone is dangerous. And a birthing woman is not typically quiet. Yeah. Now. I’m going to need you to shh. Yeah. Royal women don’t cry out in pain.

Angie: We know this, honey. We talked about this. Yeah.

Theresa: Now Lozen, she had to leave her horse behind to avoid being noticed by the military. Now there’s two women and a new baby and new mom isn’t necessarily in any move to like walk. Like this is not what she, her body’s designed for at the moment. No. Neither is horse riding if we’re being honest. Look, you got to do what you got to do, you know, like your vulva may be the size of a grapefruit, but there are things that have to occur at this point.

Angie: I’m just thinking of our lioness of Brittany who’s like, oh, you’re in my house. I just gave birth. Do you go? Yeah, basically.

Theresa: Yeah. Now Lozen also realizes that they have no food or water. Oh, so to say they’re in the hurt locker is a bit of an understatement. Just a bit. Now. Yeah. She notices that there’s a Mexican camp and she’s like, you know what?

I’m just going to steal one of their horses. So she waits until the minute or asleep. She uses her super good skill and her dexterity at stealing horses and skirts across the river, takes the horse, evades bullets from the guard and makes it safely back to women and her child and the three of them flee together. Okay. Now she lozen tries to reunite with the main group and then she discovered that the American soldiers are guarding every water source on the route. Which makes sense.

Super smart. You know, you’re in the desert. You know they’re going to come to water. Do what you got to do. Yeah. Okay.

I hate that. Now she’s able to find her way back, taking this very long and dangerous route, but this takes weeks. And it’s this long herring event that exemplifies how Lozen blurred these gender lines because she’s the skilled warrior who’s able to steal a horse and evade capture. But she’s also trained in family care. So she is helping deliver a baby and then take care of it postpartum.

Angie: I was going to ask that when you said she left the group to take care for the baby because so I’m assuming that while she is a warrior and while she is clearly the commander in the forces, right? Like her first duty as female is to protect the females and the children. Right.

Theresa: And like there was, there’s a documentary I saw about her years ago. I didn’t put it in here because I couldn’t remember where it was, but it was something along the lines of she realized as a healer, as a midwife, that bringing life into the world is more sacred than taking life out. Yeah, I would agree.

And so she made that choice to leave the warriors when they needed her the most because there was a duty that was greater than that. Yeah. Okay.

I like this. Now, she ends up getting back to the main group at the Mescalera Reservation and that’s when she learned that Mexican troops had ambushed the Apaches. Around 80 members of her band were killed, including her brother, Victoria. So she’s the leader now?

No. But she left her brother knowing she had this special skill that would allow her to detect her enemy. And because she wasn’t there, because she was ushering in life, he died. Oh, yeah. Okay. So she’s devastated. Yeah, there. And she ends up leaving mom and new baby in Mescalero and she goes to look for other members of her band and eventually she rejoined the survivors of that band at the Sierra Madre Mountains. Okay. And then it’s now 1880 after her brother’s death, she joins the new chief, Nana, and they eventually joined Geronimo’s forces and rode with him to the end.

Angie: You know what I’m thinking? This is so dumb. I’m thinking this the entire time. She did all of this without Google Maps telling her where to go.

Theresa: I mean, look, you’re not wrong.

Angie: I’m like, I can make it from Antica home. I can make it from San Jose home. That’s it. Right? I get confused with some of the neighborhoods in my own town where I was raised.

Theresa: But you know what? That’s the thing. There’s other things we can do because of the technology we got and were used to that they could never, right? Yeah, I guess that’s true.

Angie: Our ancestors rode horses and traveled by night stars so we could have Google Maps.

Theresa: Yeah, they also took so much longer at getting everything done. These are things. There’s also that. So, okay. The Apaches that remained at San Carlos, they flee under the leadership of Geronimo in 1885. Lozen, she buddies up with Geronimo and uses her power to evade capture by the Americans and Mexican soldiers because now it’s two nations against this Indian nation.

Now we get Lozen and Dateste, she’s another female warrior. They enter into peace negotiations with the Americans. However, as a surprise to nobody, the Americans aren’t taking the negotiations seriously. And they’re like, you know what? We’re just going to take you all and relocate you to Florida because same, same.

Angie: That checks. Yeah, cool. We’ve been living in the American South for, I don’t know, the entirety of our existence. But Florida sounds great. Yeah.

Theresa: Alligators make a lot of sense to what we’re used to dealing with. Yeah, let’s go. Now Lozen and the other leaders decided to surrender and join the force relocation of Florida. They kind of are just resolute to the state. It’s in Florida that she contracts tuberculosis.

Okay, put that on your bingo card. Yeah, I mean, yeah, basically it was either that or syphilis, but Geronimo, like Lozen, surrenders to the U.S. government and they’re, they imprisoned Lozen at her Mount Vernon barracks in Alabama. So from Florida and then they ship her back up to Alabama. And she dies there June 17th, 1889 and is buried in an unmarked grave. Now, in an interview, an old Apache, Charlie Smith described her as, to us, she was a holy woman and she was regarded and treated as such. White painted woman herself was not more respected.

Angie: I was wondering when you said that the young person saw her crossing the river with her arms up in the rifle of like, she’s their white painted woman.

Theresa: Yeah, but that is the story of the Apache woman warrior Lozen.

Angie: I love her. I’m sad it was tuberculosis. None of us make it out alive, Angie. I know. I just wanted a blazing glory for her. I feel like that’s what she probably would have been aiming for.

Theresa: I mean, to be fair, I think the moment she paused to usher life into the world rather than ushering life out. Yeah, I think, you know, she just wanted the best for her family and yeah, at the end of the day. Yeah. I would agree with you on that.

Angie: Wow, that was a wildly different story.

Theresa: I feel like that’s what you can expect from me, though, no matter what you like. Apparently the Berlin Wall is your room.

Angie: It is. And it’s the weirdest of my realms because it’s the least expected one, I think. Yeah, it is. But I think it’s right. I think, though, it’s fascinating to me because it happened in our lifetime. Like, we were too young to remember it, right? But like, we can watch the news about it. Like, I watched a portion of the YouTube from the East German official when he muffed the plot and told everybody they could go West.

It was in German, so I didn’t understand any of it. But like, we have access to that sort of footage, I guess. Yeah, it is definitely the weirdest of my realms. I’m going to go ask Ian and he’s going to tell you something very different, though, on what your realm is.

Theresa: Yeah, I’m now curious to hear what he would think.

Theresa: If you’ve got your own Roman Empire and you want to know if we talk about it, right in. It’s unhinged.historypod at gmail.com. Give us something to talk about. If you really want to do something cool, rate, review, subscribe, do those things. They really help us out. They allow other humans just like you to find their tribe. And on that note, share this with your favorite person who would probably inadvertently tear down a Berlin Wall.

Angie: Or raise your arm and wait for the vessels to turn blue.

Theresa: Yeah, whatever. And on that note, goodbye.

Theresa: Music