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Documentary, America s Great Indian Nations Documentary
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00:00When Christopher Columbus first encountered the peoples of the New World, he was deeply moved.
00:13For their part, the Taino Indians of the Caribbean thought that Columbus and his sailors were gods who had come from heaven.
00:21But within a single generation, the peaceful kingdom of the Taino Indians which Columbus first saw would be gone forever.
00:30Wasted by disease, slavery, torture, and war.
00:37This New World that Columbus found was, in fact, a very ancient place.
00:43And a people he called Indios had lived upon the continent for thousands of years.
00:50Their ancestors were its true discoverers.
00:53Ice Age hunters who'd followed the rising sun east across the land bridge from Asia
00:58to discover a continent ruled by glaciers and great horned bison.
01:05When the ice melted, nomadic tribes pushed southward into the green heart of the continent,
01:11following the stars, the seasons, and the herds.
01:14They peopled the mountain ranges, the verdant river valleys, and the painted desert canyons.
01:22They fashioned languages and customs as varied as the feathers of the birds,
01:27yet between them ran spiritual roots buried deep in the earth.
01:31And then, after centuries beyond number, the white man came in search of wealth and power.
01:39Two million Indians would endure four centuries of struggle before the sun finally set upon their free dominion.
01:47These European settlers came in wave upon wave to occupy Native American lands.
01:52In the bellies of their ships, the Europeans carried horses, guns, and disease.
01:59And in their hearts, they carried a belief in their destiny to rule the Americas from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
02:06As the whites pressed ever westward, they finally waged an absolute war on the Indians
02:14that would close the frontier and usher in the white man's era of railroads, telegraphs, and mining.
02:23Yet the history of America is, in many ways, the history of the American Indian,
02:30for they gave the Europeans the skills and knowledge needed to survive in the new world.
02:36These are the stories of the mightiest Indian nations.
02:43The Iroquois of upstate New York were a unique confederation of six Indian nations.
02:50Their great law of peace attracted the attention of American colonists
02:55who were forging their own new country.
02:59The Seminoles of Florida, who gathered together free Indians and black slaves fleeing the northern land.
03:07Together, they built a patchwork nation of peoples mirroring the melting pot of America.
03:14The Navajo, whose powerful spiritual link to their land inspired a courageous defense of their territory in the great southwest.
03:22The fiercely independent Cheyenne, the beautiful people of the plains,
03:30whose families were massacred by U.S. Army soldiers at Sand Creek.
03:35And their brothers, the Titan Lakota, the defiant warriors of the west,
03:40who united with the Cheyenne to hold back the tide of western expansion for 50 years.
03:46These stories tell only a part of the American Indians' history.
03:52Yet, they paint a picture of the vastness of their domain,
03:56the depth of their beliefs and hopes,
03:58and the brave defiance of these men and women
04:00as they walked into the evening of their time of freedom on this earth.
04:04In upstate New York,
04:17In upstate New York,
04:31lies a land where a hundred rivers and lakes weave through dense green forests and misty languid swamps.
04:38Towering above this lush landscape are the smoky heights of the great Adirondack Mountains.
04:47This is the land where the people of the Longhouse,
04:51the mighty Iroquois nation, took root.
04:56The Iroquois were a powerful confederacy of five separate Indian nations,
05:01and in their time were among the most feared and dominant Indians in North America.
05:06Their unique confederation was a model of democracy.
05:12Some have even said that parts of our own constitution
05:15were borrowed from the Iroquois great law of peace.
05:21But the five nations of the Iroquois didn't always live in peace.
05:26Before they came together,
05:28these nations, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca,
05:33were often at war with each other
05:35until by the 14th century their killing threatened to destroy them all.
05:41At this dreadful time,
05:43a great peacemaker came from the North proclaiming,
05:46The word that I bring is that all people shall love one another
05:49and live together in peace.
05:52Together with the great Mohawk chief Hiawatha,
05:56the peacemaker traveled to each of the five nations to proclaim his message.
06:01But within the Onondaga nation,
06:03there lived an evil chieftain named Tadadaho
06:05who terrorized his people with deadly magic.
06:09His face was cruel and his hair was matted like a mass of writhing snakes.
06:13He scorned these peacemakers.
06:16But finally, the peacemaker and Hiawatha held a council with Tadadaho
06:20and worked their own magic on him.
06:22They asked him to become the head chief of the new confederacy.
06:26Tadadaho agreed, and the great peace was begun.
06:35The establishment of the confederacy brought a newfound sense of security to the Iroquois.
06:40The times of peace were good and the creator provided the people with their three sisters,
06:45corn, beans, and squash, to sustain them.
06:49The women of each clan were the farmers,
06:52and every spring they planted the three sisters in the fertile fields
06:56while the men hunted and fished in the forests and lakes that surrounded their land.
07:01Women held great power,
07:03for the Iroquois traced their ancestry through their mother's lineage,
07:06and the head mothers, not the men, appointed the chiefs of each clan.
07:12Growing seasons ended with great festivals of thanksgiving,
07:17the gathering of maple sap,
07:18the harvest of berries and beans,
07:20and the cutting of the corn were all celebrated with feasts and religious dances.
07:26Iroquois history was recorded on wampum belts,
07:30woven with beads of shells.
07:32Every council decision and every treaty with the whites
07:35was sealed with an exchange of wampum.
07:38The dust-fanned wampum was one of the most revered,
07:41brought out whenever the Iroquois Constitution was recited.
07:44The founding of the Confederacy brought peace between the five nations
07:51and led to peace throughout the nations of the Northeast.
07:55But in the late 1600s, beaver skins were a prized commodity in Europe,
08:00rivaling the Europeans' lust for gold.
08:04Realizing this, the Iroquois sought to monopolize the trade in pelts.
08:08They played one European power against the other
08:11and dictated terms to other tribes eager to trade.
08:15They challenged their old enemies, the Mohicans,
08:18for the right to trade exclusively with the Dutch.
08:21Then they turned their attentions north,
08:24where the French were trading with the Hurons along the St. Lawrence.
08:27The Iroquois devastated the Hurons
08:30and absorbed many Hurons into their Confederacy.
08:34Next, they turned west to the Erie Nation.
08:37In a bloody three-year war,
08:39the Erie were defeated and also absorbed into the Confederacy.
08:44Now, expanding to the south,
08:46the Iroquois encountered the Tuscarora tribe in the Carolinas.
08:50The Tuscaroras were being driven from their lands by white settlers,
08:53so the Iroquois invited them into their great Confederacy.
08:58The Tuscaroras migrated north
09:00and became the sixth nation of the Iroquois.
09:05By the mid-1700s,
09:07the Iroquois great law of peace
09:09was attracting the attention
09:10of some of the most far-sighted American colonists.
09:14Benjamin Franklin,
09:15who worked as a British envoy to the Indians,
09:18was deeply impressed with the Iroquois form of government.
09:20His contributions to the U.S. Constitution
09:24may have come from the Iroquois principles.
09:28In 1763, the English beat the French
09:32and took control of all French holdings south of Canada.
09:35But trouble was brewing with the British colonies,
09:38and soon the Iroquois would be swept into the American Revolution.
09:44Formerly, the Iroquois had pledged
09:46to remain neutral in the Revolutionary War,
09:48but the Mohawk warrior Joseph Brandt
09:51convinced many of the Iroquois men
09:52to fight for the British.
09:55For the first time since the Great Peace,
09:58Iroquois fought Iroquois.
10:00The Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas
10:03fought with the British,
10:05while the Oneidas and Tuscaroras
10:06sided with the colonies.
10:09When the English finally fell in 1783,
10:12the new United States of America
10:14treated the entire Iroquois Confederacy
10:17as a conquered nation,
10:19forcing the Iroquois to surrender most of their territory.
10:24Now, much of the precious land
10:26that sustained their life for a thousand years was gone,
10:30and the scourges of reservation life appeared.
10:34Drinking and idleness led to violent fights
10:36between once-proud warriors.
10:38In their poverty,
10:40they were forced to sell even more of their land.
10:43The whites had finally robbed them
10:45of their pride and dignity.
10:49By the end of the 18th century,
10:52the spirits of the Iroquois people
10:54had fallen to new depths.
10:56At this dark hour,
10:57an unlikely prophet came to them.
11:00Handsome Lake,
11:01a Seneca chief and a notorious drunk,
11:04fell one day into a stupor
11:06so deep his pulse stopped.
11:08Moments later,
11:09Handsome Lake awoke from near death
11:11and revealed a great vision.
11:14Three messengers came
11:15with a command from the Creator.
11:17These messengers condemned whiskey,
11:19abortion, and witchcraft,
11:21and called for a return
11:22to the old ways of living
11:24before the whites came.
11:26The Iroquois people
11:27were profoundly affected,
11:29and his teachings became known far and wide
11:31as the Longhouse religion.
11:33But the displacement of the Iroquois
11:36from their land continued.
11:38Tragically, between 1830 and 1846,
11:42the U.S. government carried out
11:43the removal of Indians west of the Mississippi.
11:47In spite of a series of land swindles
11:49and broken treaties,
11:50the Iroquois managed to hold on
11:52to small parcels of their land
11:54in New York and Canada.
11:57By the mid-1800s,
11:59the Iroquois were adapting
12:00to the white man's culture.
12:01A few children attended school
12:04off the reservations,
12:05and some Iroquois were finding their way
12:07into the American mainstream.
12:10Eli S. Parker,
12:11a well-educated Seneca,
12:13enlisted in the Army during the Civil War
12:15and rose to the rank of Brigadier General.
12:19As Ulysses S. Grant's secretary,
12:21Parker wrote out the surrender document
12:23signed at Appomattox Courthouse.
12:26After the war,
12:28when Grant became president,
12:29he appointed Eli Parker
12:31as the first Native American commissioner
12:33of Indian affairs.
12:37Today, the rich legacy of the Iroquois lives on.
12:41The great confederacy of six nations
12:43not only stamped its mark on American history,
12:46but also influenced the U.S. Constitution.
12:50The Iroquois also gave the country of Canada its name,
12:53from their word meaning community.
12:57The people of the Longhouse,
12:59once the mightiest confederation of Indians in North America,
13:03continue to burn their council fire
13:05and to hold on to their sacred unity.
13:09In that council flame
13:10burns the memory of a thousand struggles
13:12and the sacrifice of countless chiefs and clan mothers
13:15who fought to keep their people free.
13:18Ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya.
13:25Ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay
13:55East by the mighty Atlantic, and on the west by the Gulf of Mexico, this is Florida, land
14:02of the great Seminole nation.
14:05It was here that the Seminoles fought the longest resistance to U.S. expansion by any
14:10Indian nation.
14:12It took three wars, half the U.S. Army, and over $30 million to subdue the proud and defiant
14:19Seminoles.
14:22To this day, the Seminoles remained the only Indian nation that never signed a document
14:27of surrender with the U.S. government.
14:32Florida's first people, the Timucua, Calusa, and other tribes, were virtually wiped out
14:37by war and disease brought by the Spanish and British in the 16th and 17th centuries.
14:43Then in the early 1700s, a wave of refugees came to Florida from the north, fleeing from
14:49the expanding British colonies.
14:51They were Creek Indians driven off their lands by settlers and African slaves and other Indians
14:56escaping slavery.
14:59In the lush grasslands of Spanish Florida, these Indians and blacks began to merge into
15:04one people known as the Seminoles.
15:07Their name came from the Creek word Seminole, meaning runaway or wild.
15:13And for many years, these runaways lived together in the untamed land of northern Florida.
15:18Blacks formed their own towns side by side with Indians, some free, some enslaved to Indian
15:24masters.
15:27Life centered around Seminole towns or Tawas.
15:30They worshiped the master of breath, embodied in the sun and took names for their clans from
15:35the world around them.
15:37Names like alligator, turtle, snake, and maize.
15:41Every summer, at harvest time, the Seminole people gathered in town squares to celebrate the new
15:47year with the green corn festival.
15:50After eight days of dancing, sweat baths, and purification, the priests swept the old ashes
15:56from the fire pits.
15:57Then they started a new fire in the town square and all past grievances were forgiven.
16:03Medicine men carried hot coals from the town fire to each home and on every hearth the people
16:08roasted green corn.
16:12In the warmer climate of Florida, Seminole farmers began to grow large groves of oranges,
16:18and many learned the ways of horse ranching and slaveholding from their European neighbors.
16:23The Seminole chief, King Payne, even owned a plantation with 20 slaves, 1,500 head of cattle,
16:30400 horses.
16:33But then, in 1776, American colonists revolted against British rule.
16:39England created chaos by proclaiming freedom for all African slaves.
16:44More and more African runaways fled south to join the Seminoles.
16:49American slaveholders grew angry and nervous about whole towns of black Indians living at
16:54their southern doorstep.
16:56After the Revolutionary War, Americans began crossing the Florida border to settle on Indian
17:01lands.
17:03Slave traders raided Seminole villages, kidnapping anyone who looked black.
17:08Infuriated, the Seminoles struck back.
17:13In 1817, the American government sent Army General Andrew Jackson down south on a mission to recapture
17:19runaway slaves.
17:22Americans' troops illegally crossed Spain's Florida border and burned Seminole villages,
17:26confiscated livestock, and destroyed food stores.
17:30The Seminole people fought back, their numbers tripled by New Creek refugees from the north.
17:37That November of 1817, the Seminoles ambushed a boat carrying women, children, and 40 soldiers
17:44on the Apalachicola River, and all but 13 whites were shot dead.
17:49This marked the beginning of the First Seminole War.
17:54Once again, Andrew Jackson marched into Florida.
17:58Jackson and his troops destroyed more Seminole towns, and the Seminoles fled further south.
18:04Jackson's victory in the First Seminole War led Spain to sign a document with the United
18:09States for the sale of Florida.
18:13The Seminoles were coerced by the U.S. government to sign a treaty and were pressed onto a large
18:18reservation in central Florida.
18:21These new lands were swampy and unfit for farming, game was scarce, and government rations
18:26in short supply.
18:28The officer in charge of the reservation reported,
18:31They are in the most miserable situation, and unless the government assists them, many of
18:36them will starve to death.
18:38During this hour of desperation, one warrior rose to lead the Seminoles in their second
18:43war of resistance.
18:45His name was Osceola, and he soon became one of the great leaders in American Indian history.
18:52In 1834, the government tried to get the Seminole chiefs to sign a treaty for their removal
18:57to Oklahoma.
18:59Government agents spread the treaty on the table and waited tensely.
19:03Suddenly, Osceola jumped up and plunged his knife into the treaty saying,
19:08The only way I will sign is with this.
19:12A government agent named Wiley Thompson arrested Osceola, and the chief shouted as he was dragged
19:17away.
19:19I will remember the hour.
19:22The agent has had his day.
19:24I will have mine.
19:27Osceola was soon released from prison, and with his great skill as a speaker, convinced
19:32his people that they must resist.
19:35In December of 1835, Osceola ambushed and murdered the Indian agent Wiley Thompson.
19:42That same day, Seminole chief Mikanopi led an attack on government troops under the command
19:47of Major Francis Dade near present-day Ocala.
19:51180 Seminole warriors ambushed Dade's infantry unit.
19:55The entire army command was soon annihilated, with only three known survivors.
20:01The Dade massacre was a shocking defeat for the U.S. Army, and brought down the full fury
20:06of the government.
20:07The Second Seminole War had now begun.
20:13To the whites, Osceola said, You have guns, and so have we.
20:18Your men will fight, and so will ours, until the last drop of the Seminole's blood has moistened
20:23the dust of our hunting grounds.
20:26At the end of a bloody and futile year of fighting, the U.S. had nearly one half of its
20:31army in Florida.
20:33General Jessop called Osceola to meet under a flag of truce, but then double-crossed him
20:38and threw the great leader into prison in St. Augustine.
20:41Three months later, broken-hearted and severely ill, Osceola died in prison in Fort Moultrie,
20:47South Carolina.
20:50Osceola's death was a horrible setback to the Seminole resistance, and the army continued
20:55its relentless war against the people, pushing the Seminoles deeper and deeper into Florida's
21:00southern swamps and Everglades.
21:03Perhaps 500 Seminoles remained in Florida, nearly invisible in the deep swamps.
21:09Their lands often covered with water, they lived by hunting and gathering, and by raising
21:14vegetables in small plots above the waterline.
21:17They built elevated homes, and they learned to avoid the deadly water moccasins that occupied
21:21their swamps.
21:25But civilization occasionally discovered isolated bands.
21:29In 1855, in an effort to agitate the remaining Seminole people, a U.S. surveying party raided
21:36the garden of Billy Bolegs, the last of the Seminole chiefs.
21:40The government agents confiscated what they could carry and burned the rest.
21:45Bolegs led his people on in resistance against the army for three years, but finally, outnumbered
21:51and out of resources, Bolegs and his followers surrendered and were sent west of the Mississippi.
21:59But several hundred Seminoles managed to stay behind in the vast, uncharted Everglades.
22:05The government finally gave up pursuit of these last free Seminole Indians, and to this day,
22:10they never formally surrendered.
22:15Like the melting pot that became America, the Seminoles are a patchwork of different peoples
22:20and cultures.
22:22They are Indians, African slaves, and other refugees united in a struggle to create a separate nation.
22:29A proud and defiant people, the Seminoles remain today the only unconquered Indian nation
22:36in the United States.
22:41A proud and defiant people, the American people, a young man, in the U.S.
22:53of the United States.
22:55Bolla music plays
22:58A proud and defiant people, the American people, a young man, in the U.S.
23:02In the mystical land of the great southwest, jagged pinnacles touch the clouds and giant
23:27sandstone buttes rise dramatically from the desert floor.
23:32It is here where the Navajo Nation carved its civilization many centuries ago.
23:38The Navajo's ancient ancestors came to this land from northwest Canada over 700 years ago
23:45and settled in the Red Rock Canyons of what is now northern Arizona and New Mexico.
23:51They invaded the homelands of the cliff-dwelling Anasazi, who they drove south towards Mexico.
23:58The Navajo created a unique culture based on raising crops, herding livestock, weaving and
24:07crafting jewelry.
24:10While white settlers avoided this dry, rugged landscape, the Navajo held it in special reverence.
24:16The land became a source of sustenance and spiritual nourishment.
24:21They learned to grow patches of corn in desert soil and planted peach orchards in canyon bottomlands.
24:28When Father Sky provided rain, Mother Earth provided fruit, grain and pasture.
24:36The most common symbol of the Navajo's spiritual link to the land was the hogan, a domed dwelling
24:41made of logs and earth.
24:43Hogan's were used for both housing and ceremonial purposes.
24:47Their entrances always faced east toward the rising sun.
24:52Almost every act of Navajo life, from the building of hogan's to the planting of crops, was ceremonial
24:58in nature, accompanied by songs and prayers.
25:03Sand paintings were part of many Navajo healing ceremonies and had the power to restore order
25:08to the world.
25:09These paintings were made by medicine men who sprinkled colored sand on the floor of a ceremonial
25:14hogan.
25:16The designs told stories from the Navajo creation myth, when the first holy people were miraculously
25:22produced from corn, rain, pollen and precious stones by the gods and the winds.
25:29In the 1600s, the Spanish introduced sheep and horses to the Navajo.
25:35They became among the Southwest's most renowned herdsmen and riders.
25:41But women played a vital role in tribal life, too.
25:44Nearly every Navajo woman was skilled at hand weaving, using sheep's wool on pueblo looms.
25:50Their decorative rugs and blankets, with patterned designs or symbolic pictures, became known
25:55the world over.
25:59At the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, English-speaking whites moved into Navajo land.
26:06The Navajo had been fighting Spanish-speaking intruders for 250 years.
26:11The Navajo stole sheep and horses from the Mexicans, who in turn captured Indians for slaves.
26:18The Navajo figured their enemies would be expelled from the new U.S. territory of New Mexico.
26:23Instead, Washington gave the Mexicans the U.S. citizenship it had denied the Navajo and allowed
26:29the slave trading to continue.
26:32The Indians could only watch in growing anger as soldiers built their first military post
26:37in 1851.
26:40In its name, the whites spoke their feelings for the Navajo, calling it Fort Defiance.
26:47The great Navajo chief Manuelito and his ally, Barbensito, were determined to sweep the fort
26:53and its people from their land.
26:55In 1860, they attacked Fort Defiance with 1,000 warriors.
27:01Though their arrows were no match for musket fire, they convinced Washington that the Navajo
27:06would defend their homeland at all costs.
27:12General James Carlton, a ruthless army veteran who'd subdued the Mescalero Apaches, soon took
27:17command of Fort Defiance.
27:20Carlton found Navajo land, a princely realm, but of the Navajo people, he said they were
27:26wolves that run through the mountains and must be cleared away if the territory was to be open
27:31to settlement.
27:33So Carlton chose a new place for the Navajos, a flat and desolate wasteland far away on the
27:39Pecos River called Basque Redondo.
27:41Here, guarded by soldiers from Fort Sumner, Carlton planned for the Navajo to become self-sufficient
27:48farmers.
27:49But Barbensito refused, saying, I will not go to the Basque.
27:53I will never leave my country, not even if it means that I will be killed.
27:59Carlton chose his old friend, Kit Carson, to head the military campaign against the Navajos.
28:05Carson was reluctant at first, not wanting to fight the Indians he had traded and lived
28:08with in the past.
28:11But the summer of 1863 found Colonel Kit Carson leading 1,000 New Mexico volunteers to wage war
28:18against the Navajo, who numbered more than 12,000.
28:23Carson knew the only way to conquer the Navajo was to scorch the very earth they lived upon and
28:28starve them into submission.
28:31Kit Carson's men destroyed most of the herds and crops between Fort Defiance and Canyon
28:35de Chez in six months' time.
28:39In January 1864, Carson led 300 soldiers into the sheer walled reaches of Canyon de Chez,
28:46the last Navajo stronghold.
28:49The soldiers burned hogans, slaughtered livestock, destroyed cornfields, took women and children
28:54captive, and killed the men with their muskets.
28:58Barbensito was captured, but Manuelito escaped with 4,000 members of his band.
29:05The 8,000 Navajo who'd surrendered set out on the Long Walk, a terrible 300-mile journey
29:11to captivity at Bosque Redondo.
29:14Hungry, homesick, and nearly naked against the cold, 200 Navajo died along the way to
29:20the wasteland that General Carlton considered a fine reservation.
29:25But Indians who escaped the reservation told of a barren, drought-stricken land where they
29:29lived like prairie dogs in burrows.
29:33Kit Carson continued to hunt those who were still free.
29:36In September 1866, Chief Manuelito and 23 hungry, ragged warriors surrendered at a military
29:44post in northwestern New Mexico.
29:47His band had resisted capture for more than three years, but now they were too exhausted
29:53to fight on.
29:54The days of a free Navajo nation were over.
30:00By 1868, horrific reports of life at Bosque Redondo had created a public outcry.
30:07The land was desolate, the water unfit to drink, and government rations almost non-existent.
30:13Two thousand Navajo people died at the Bosque due to starvation and disease.
30:18The sooner it is abandoned and the Indians removed, the better, said the reservation superintendent.
30:25And so, on June 1st, Manuelito, Barbancito, and five others met with Army Commander William
30:31Tecumseh Sherman to sign a treaty.
30:35When the Navajo leaders first saw Sherman, they were fearful of him because his face was
30:39the same as Carlton's, fierce and hairy with a cruel mouth.
30:44But his eyes were different.
30:46He had the eyes of a man who had suffered and seen much pain.
30:51And told the Navajo, my children, I will send you back to your homes.
30:56And so the government allowed the Navajo to return to a reservation in their old homelands.
31:03When we saw the top of the mountain from Albuquerque, said Manuelito, we felt like talking to the ground.
31:09We loved it so.
31:12The Navajo would never forget those four years of death and suffering at the Bosque Redondo.
31:17The Fearing Time, it was called.
31:20Over the years, the Navajo people fought countless battles to defend their territory and endured
31:26endless years of forced captivity.
31:29But they never lost their spiritual link to land.
31:33It is in this land and in the giant mountains that surround it and the sky above that the
31:39very soul of the Navajo can be found.
31:46We love it so.
31:48We love it.
31:50We love it.
31:51I'm not needed to think so.
31:54We love it.
31:56And it's here, it is.
31:57But we're in this land-wide
32:01and in this world, it's here, it's here.
32:02And we believe, if you do not believe it.
32:06Do not believe it.
32:07We believe.
32:08We believe it.
32:12But we believe in your way.
32:15It was the Cheyenne and Teton Lakota
32:30who fought the hardest for their land and lives,
32:33and these two nations would be the last
32:35to ride in freedom across the Great Plains.
32:39Here, the vast prairie stretched from Texas to Canada
32:42and from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
32:46As the mightiest of Plains tribes in the 19th century,
32:50the Cheyenne and Teton Lakota shared a similar way of life.
32:54They were horse warriors who built teepee villages,
32:57and they had many of the same ceremonies and rites.
33:00And to each of them, the American bison was life,
33:04a gift from the Great Spirit.
33:07By 1850, millions of buffalo moved
33:10like a dark living sea across the land.
33:13This was truly the buffalo's kingdom,
33:15and the Indians who followed the herds
33:17cast only a small shadow under the sky.
33:20For the Teton Lakota and Cheyenne,
33:23the bison was endowed with supernatural powers,
33:26and they took from the herds
33:27all they needed for their existence.
33:28They killed only enough animals to supply their needs for the winter.
33:35They stripped the meat carefully to dry in the sun,
33:38storing bone marrow and fat in skins,
33:41treating the sinews for bow strings and thread,
33:43and curing the hides for teepee covers, clothing, and moccasins.
33:47The Cheyenne thought of themselves as the beautiful people.
33:52For centuries, they lived as farmers and potters
33:55in the great pine forests above the source of the Mississippi.
33:58But the Lakota and Ojibwas drove them onto the high plains in the 1700s.
34:02In time, they abandoned planting and followed the roaming buffalo.
34:08The Cheyenne were fiercely independent
34:10and were among the most feared warriors in the West.
34:13Their famous Dog Soldiers Warrior Society
34:16was a powerful military organization.
34:20Half the warriors of each band were members,
34:22and they roamed at will over a large territory, hunting and raiding.
34:27The Cheyenne were known for their advanced religious beliefs.
34:31They held a life-renewing Sundance ceremony every mid-summer
34:34after the tribes left winter camps and gathered for the buffalo hunt.
34:38It was their most important religious ritual,
34:41a thanksgiving to the mysterious power
34:43and the rebirth of life on Earth,
34:46the return of the season of growth.
34:52But by the end of the Civil War,
34:54there was a force on the plains racing like a storm cloud from the east.
34:59It would soon change the century-old life of the Cheyenne people.
35:04Covered wagons streamed across the prairie,
35:07cattle grazed the grasslands,
35:09and whites began to slaughter buffalo for their hides,
35:12and sometimes just for pleasure.
35:14Soon, hundreds of buffalo bones lay scattered on the southern plains,
35:18their uneaten flesh rotting in the hot prairie sun.
35:20After the territory of Colorado was created in 1861,
35:26whites wanted to open the entire land for settlement
35:29and to force the Cheyennes into submission.
35:32Colorado Governor John Evans declared war
35:35to press the Indians onto reservations.
35:37The district military commander, Colonel John Shivington,
35:42ordered his men to burn villages and kill Cheyennes
35:45wherever and whenever found.
35:48This preacher-turned-soldier said,
35:50It is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven
35:55to kill Indians that would kill women and children.
36:00But the Cheyenne peace chief, Black Kettle, said,
36:04It is not my intention or wish to fight the whites.
36:07I want to be friendly and peaceable and keep my band so.
36:10I want to live in peace.
36:13Black Kettle had once shook the hand of President Lincoln in Washington,
36:16and he prided himself that he had never led a raid against the settlers.
36:25In fall of 1864,
36:27Black Kettle and fellow chiefs met with Evans and Shivington.
36:31They convinced the Cheyenne to move to Fort Lyon,
36:34where the Cheyenne could stay the winter under military protection.
36:38So Black Kettle led 600 of his people
36:40to a camp in the broad valley of Sand Creek in Colorado.
36:43But there, in the gray dawn of November 29, 1864,
36:49Shivington led his third cavalry
36:50on a senseless raid of murder and mutilation
36:53known as the Sand Creek Massacre.
36:57Most of Black Kettle's warriors were out hunting
37:00when 700 soldiers attacked the sleeping village.
37:04Black Kettle raised an American flag
37:06and a white banner over his teepee,
37:07but the troops shot everyone they found.
37:11Screaming Indians fled in all directions.
37:14A handful of warriors fought back,
37:16and the skirmishing continued for four hours along the creek.
37:20Then at noon, silence fell.
37:23200 Cheyenne and Arapaho were dead,
37:26two-thirds of them women and children.
37:29Nine chiefs had perished,
37:31and though Black Kettle escaped unharmed,
37:33his wife was shot nine times and left for dead.
37:37Shivington's boys, as he called them,
37:40paraded through Denver
37:41showing the scalps severed arms and legs of the Indians.
37:45But rumors of the atrocity spread,
37:48terrible enough to outrage the American public.
37:51Kit Carson, himself a battler of Indians,
37:54called it the action of a coward or a dog.
37:57Over the next three years,
38:01an alliance of Indians ravaged the South Platte Valley.
38:04They ripped down telegraph wires
38:06and pillaged stagecoach stations,
38:08ranches, military outposts, and towns.
38:12Scores of settlers were killed.
38:14Their women and children dragged away as captives.
38:17Now public opinion turned back against the Indians,
38:20and the United States launched a full-scale Indian war.
38:24Black Kettle still hoped to spare his people,
38:29and he led 80 families to a refuge
38:31south of the Arkansas River.
38:33By 1868, the Kansas military commander,
38:37Philip Sheridan,
38:38was convinced that the Cheyennes had to be punished.
38:42Sheridan ordered the brash and flamboyant
38:44Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer
38:46to proceed toward the Ouachita River,
38:49the supposed winter seat of the hostile tribes,
38:51to destroy their villages and ponies,
38:54to kill or hang all warriors,
38:57and bring back all women and children.
39:01Four years after Sand Creek,
39:03history seemed to be thrown into a cruel and endless loop.
39:07Custer's elite 7th Cavalry
39:09attacked a sleeping Cheyenne village
39:11south of the Arkansas River,
39:13where Black Kettle and his people were camped.
39:15In a matter of minutes,
39:18103 Cheyennes lay dead,
39:20including the great Black Kettle and his wife.
39:27Cheyenne prophet Sweet Madison
39:29once foretold of years of darkness for his people,
39:33the end of the buffalo
39:34and the coming of the white man.
39:37But he could not foresee
39:38how their days of roaming the prairie in freedom would end.
39:41The Cheyenne were herded onto a reservation
39:44in Western Indian Territory,
39:46where the warpath and the buffalo hunt
39:48was replaced by food rations and Christianity.
39:54But the land will always know
39:55the people who once walked its vast prairies
39:58and who hunted its sea of thundering bison.
40:01The Cheyenne were among the first
40:03to practice the concept of peaceful resistance.
40:05Their advanced religious beliefs
40:08and spiritual devotion
40:09served them well in their struggle to remain free.
40:13Among Native Americans, even today,
40:16the Cheyenne will always be known as
40:18the beautiful people of the plains.
40:19The most famous of North American Indians
40:39was the mighty Teton-Lakota Nation.
40:42They dominated the heart of the Great Plains
40:44from what is now Minnesota to Montana,
40:46from the Upper Missouri River to the Platte River.
40:50They fiercely resisted the white man's rule
40:52for 50 years,
40:54holding back the tide of western expansion
40:56until they could fight no more.
41:00The Lakota had originally come
41:02from the southeast woodlands,
41:04migrating along the Atlantic coast
41:05and then passing over the Great Lakes.
41:08They farmed and hunted
41:10in the Upper Mississippi River area of Minnesota
41:12until finally settling in the Great Plains
41:15in the early 1700s.
41:18The Lakota built a free-ranging lifestyle
41:20around two animals,
41:22the buffalo and the horse.
41:24They depended on the buffalo
41:26for food, clothing, and lodging.
41:28It was an animal endowed with supernatural powers,
41:31a gift from the wise one above.
41:36The Hesapa, called by the settlers
41:39the Black Hills,
41:40became the sacred heart of the Lakota Nation.
41:42Warriors traveled to Hesapa,
41:45sought visions,
41:46communed with the Great Spirit,
41:48and received their spiritual power or medicine.
41:52But Lakota medicine would be powerless
41:54in the face of the white man.
41:57By the early 1860s,
41:59the Lakota had lost most of their land
42:00through treaties.
42:02All that remained in their possession
42:03was the sacred Hesapa
42:05and some hunting grounds in Montana.
42:07Yet in 1866,
42:10the whites came to them again,
42:12this time for permission
42:13to make a great road
42:14through the Powder River country
42:16to the newly discovered gold fields of Montana.
42:20The great Lakota chief, Red Cloud,
42:22hated the idea of an immigrant road
42:24through the Lakota's last hunting ranges.
42:26When the white man comes in my country,
42:29he leaves a trail of blood behind him.
42:32I have two mountains in that country,
42:35the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountain.
42:37I want the Great Father
42:39to make no roads through them.
42:41The request for permission was only a sham.
42:45Soldiers were already on their way
42:47to secure the road with a line of forts.
42:50Red Cloud put steel to his threat,
42:52and for the next two years,
42:54the Lakota held the troops
42:55under virtual siege.
42:58No wagon train, civilian or military,
43:01was safe on the Bozeman Trail,
43:03and Lakota raids claimed 154 lives.
43:10In the spring of 1868,
43:13General William Tecumseh Sherman
43:14came to Fort Laramie
43:15to make a peace treaty with Red Cloud.
43:18But the Ogallala leader sent a message saying,
43:20When we see the soldiers moving away
43:23and the forts abandoned,
43:24then I will come down and talk.
43:27Reluctantly, the War Department complied.
43:30The Bozeman Trail forts were abandoned.
43:33Red Cloud rode triumphantly
43:35into Fort Laramie
43:36and signed a treaty declaring
43:38Powder River Country and the Black Hills
43:40unceded Indian territory.
43:43In return, Red Cloud promised
43:45to go on the reservation,
43:46where he would never lift his hand
43:47against the whites again.
43:50For eight years,
43:52the Lakota would try to forget the whites.
43:55But in the summer of 1874,
43:57Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer
44:00led 1,200 men
44:02on a gold-hunting expedition
44:03into the Black Hills.
44:06Custer sent reports
44:07to the eastern newspapers
44:08of gold from the grassroots down.
44:11The Indians watched a torrent
44:13of riotous prospectors
44:15pour into the sacred heart
44:16of their nation
44:16in complete disregard
44:18for the treaty the whites had made.
44:21When Washington tried
44:22to buy the Black Hills,
44:24the Ogallala war chief Crazy Horse replied,
44:27One does not sell the earth
44:29upon which the people walk.
44:31The Hunkpapa chief sitting bull warned,
44:34The Black Hills belong to me.
44:36If the whites try to take them,
44:37I will fight.
44:38Unable to buy the Black Hills,
44:44President Grant sent orders
44:45to the Lakota
44:46to report to an agency
44:47or be declared hostile by the U.S.
44:50and subject to military action.
44:53Meanwhile,
44:54the Plains tribes were gathering
44:55at Rosebud Creek
44:56for the sacred sun dance.
44:57Amidst the chanting
45:13and swirling warriors,
45:15Sitting Bull made 50 skin offerings
45:17in each of his arms
45:18until his blood flowed around him
45:20and he fell into a trance.
45:23When he awoke,
45:24he told of a vision,
45:25I saw soldiers
45:28and some Indians on horseback
45:30coming down like grasshoppers
45:32with their heads down
45:34and their hats falling off.
45:36They were falling right into our camp.
45:40Soldiers were indeed coming.
45:42General Sheridan had ordered troops
45:44to southern Montana.
45:46The invincible George Armstrong Custer
45:48drove his exhausted 7th Cavalry
45:51through the rolling hills of Montana
45:52in a relentless search for the Indians.
45:54Finally, on the morning of June 25, 1876,
45:59Custer found his prey,
46:01camped in a valley of the stream
46:03the Lakota called Greasy Grass,
46:05but which the whites would remember
46:06as the Little Bighorn.
46:09Longhair Custer charged his soldiers
46:11straight into the Indian encampment.
46:15But a thousand warriors led by Crazy Horse
46:17met Custer's troops
46:19and on a ridge now called Custer Hill,
46:22Longhair's forces were swallowed up by Indians
46:25and were lost in the dust and smoke of history.
46:31Sitting Bull's vision had been fulfilled.
46:34The Indians soon broke into small bands
46:37and scattered to the winds.
46:39Crazy Horse's Ogallala kept up their attacks
46:41and Sitting Bull led his hunkpapas to Canada.
46:45That fall,
46:46the Lakota were forced to sign away
46:48their right to the Powder River and Hesapa.
46:51The government said
46:52that they had violated the treaty
46:53by going to war with the U.S.
46:56Promised a reservation
46:57in the Powder River country,
46:59in May of 1877,
47:01Crazy Horse marched his band
47:03of starving Ogallalas to Fort Robinson.
47:06They came singing peace songs
47:07and Crazy Horse threw down three rifles,
47:10giving up the warpath forever.
47:13But as Crazy Horse was brought into Fort Robinson,
47:16a soldier bayoneted him in the back.
47:20To the north,
47:21a commission came to lure Sitting Bull
47:23back from Canada,
47:25offering to pardon his war crimes
47:27in return for surrender.
47:29The hunkpapa leader refused,
47:31asking,
47:31What have we done
47:33that you should want us to stop?
47:35It is all the people on your side
47:38who started us to making trouble.
47:40If we must die,
47:42we die defending our rights.
47:45Canada refused them a reservation,
47:47and his people were homesick
47:48and weary of cold and hunger.
47:51In July of 1881,
47:53Sitting Bull and his followers
47:54crossed the border.
47:59Over the next ten years,
48:00the last of the Lakota
48:01were brought onto the reservations.
48:04And in all the vastness
48:05of the Great Plains,
48:06not a herd of buffalo could be found.
48:10Sitting Bull joined
48:12Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show,
48:14selling autographed photos of himself
48:16to gawking children
48:17all across the continent.
48:19The show's finale
48:21was a reenactment
48:22of the Battle of the Little Bighorn,
48:23and the terrible Indian wars
48:25were now only an entertainment
48:27for the victor.
48:30On the reservation,
48:32warriors lived on rotting scraps
48:33and dreams of their past.
48:37Inevitably,
48:38a prophet came,
48:39telling of a new messiah
48:40coming to bury the whites
48:42beneath the earth
48:43and bring the Indian dead to life.
48:45The hunting grounds
48:46would be restored,
48:48and the land would once again
48:49be heavy with buffalo.
48:50This prophet
48:52was a Nevada Paiute medicine man
48:54named Wovoka,
48:56and his ghost dance religion
48:58swept across western reservations
49:00like a prairie wind,
49:02the dance lifting broken warriors
49:04into its trance.
49:06Wovoka's followers
49:07donned ghost shirts
49:09that would stop
49:09the white man's bullets.
49:13Fearing a new Indian uprising,
49:15Major General Nelson Miles
49:17ordered troops
49:17onto the Indian agencies.
49:18Though Sitting Bull
49:21was openly skeptical
49:22of the new religion,
49:24the whites thought
49:24he was to blame
49:25for disturbances
49:26and ordered his arrest.
49:29On the morning
49:29of December 15th,
49:3143 Indian police
49:32led the Hunkbapa chief
49:33from his cabin.
49:35Shots were fired,
49:36and Sitting Bull
49:37fell to the ground,
49:38dead.
49:40Another band of soldiers
49:42had gone in search
49:43of the Minikonju chief,
49:44Bigfoot,
49:45whose people had gone
49:46to the Badlands
49:47where they could perform
49:47the ghost dance
49:48without fear.
49:50The Bluecoats
49:51caught up with them,
49:52and the Indians
49:52and the soldiers
49:53camped for the night
49:54beside Wounded Knee Creek.
49:57500 soldiers stood guard
49:59over 350 men,
50:00women, and children.
50:03At sunrise,
50:04the army began
50:05disarming the Indians.
50:07Somehow,
50:07a rifle went off
50:08and a soldier fell dead,
50:10and both sides
50:11opened fire at once.
50:13The army cut down
50:14half the men
50:15with its first volley,
50:16and rapid-fire cannons
50:17rained shrapnel
50:18from the hills.
50:20Indians ran
50:21and were shot down
50:22like buffalo.
50:23When the smoke
50:24blew away,
50:25153 men,
50:27women,
50:27and children
50:28of the Lakota nation
50:29lay dead,
50:30their blood flowing
50:31together with 25 corpses
50:33from the 7th Cavalry.
50:35The ghost shirts
50:36had been powerless,
50:38and the snows
50:38fell for two days,
50:40softly muffling
50:41the moans
50:41of the dying.
50:44On New Year's Day
50:45of 1891,
50:47the frozen dead
50:47of Wounded Knee
50:48were gathered in wagons
50:49and buried
50:50in a mass grave.
50:52Lakota Shaman Black Elk
50:54said many years later,
50:56I can still see
50:57the butchered women
50:58and children
50:59lying heaped
50:59and scattered,
51:01and I can see
51:02that something else
51:03died there
51:03in the bloody mud
51:04and was buried
51:05in the blizzard.
51:07A people's dream
51:08died there.
51:10It was a beautiful dream.
51:11But the legacy
51:14of the Titan Lakota
51:16still commands
51:17deep respect
51:18and admiration today.
51:20Their fight
51:21for survival
51:21against the U.S. Army
51:22at Little Bighorn
51:23created a legend,
51:25yet ultimately
51:26led to their
51:27final defeat.
51:29The spirit
51:29of the Lakota,
51:30a proud people
51:31who poured forth
51:32their blood
51:33to preserve
51:33a way of life,
51:35will endure long
51:36after the stories
51:37of battle
51:37are forgotten.
51:38These nations
51:46each contributed
51:47a piece
51:48in the patchwork quilt
51:49that has become
51:50America.
51:51From the Iroquois
51:53great law of peace
51:54which influenced
51:55the writing
51:55of our Constitution,
51:57to the Cheyenne
51:58concept of peaceful
51:59resistance,
52:01these great Indian
52:02nations built
52:03a heritage
52:04that still inspires
52:05new generations
52:06of Native Americans.
52:08They will always
52:09be a vital part
52:11of the American
52:12adventure.
52:36American
52:39and Iroquois
52:40are a little
52:41there.
52:41So there's a
52:42whole thing
52:43about the
52:45earth
52:49and Iroquois
52:50in the South
52:51of Mexico.
52:52The Lord
52:52is not
52:52a rich time
52:54for the
52:54dream
52:55and Iroquois
52:55are faithful.
52:55It is not
52:57a rich time
52:57to the
52:58dream
52:59and Iroquois
53:00are faithful.
53:01So there's
53:01a rich time
53:02that an
53:04and Iroquois
53:04is not
53:05a rich time
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