Documentary, Ken Burns The West - 4 Death Runs Riot
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00:00:00The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, the American nation is doomed
00:00:21to destruction, and no power can save it. It is decreed that the measure of which they have
00:00:30meted out unto the saints shall be meted unto them, and they are hastening unto their work
00:00:37of desolation, war, bloodshed, and destruction, and woe, woe is their doom. The spirit of prophecy
00:00:49would cry, O Lord, hasten thy work. Let the wicked slay the wicked until the whole land
00:00:58is cleansed. Wilford Woodruff.
00:01:08Time after time, Congress and the people in the East saw the West as a safety valve, a place
00:01:17where you could go and escape the problems of where you were. It was part of the whole
00:01:24myth of the West. You could escape and be free. Well, we thought we could escape whatever national
00:01:34tensions and unresolved problems we had, but it came back, you know, like a big wind from
00:01:41the whole of a prairie, bigger and bigger each time.
00:02:11Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
00:02:41From the beginning, the United States had envisioned an orderly expansion into the West.
00:02:49Treaties were supposed to legitimize settlement.
00:02:52Official surveys were to map the land.
00:02:56Then Americans could spread peacefully across it,
00:02:59all under the guidance and protection of their government.
00:03:06But the California Gold Rush and the war with Mexico changed everything.
00:03:11Americans were now moving West in ever larger numbers, ahead of their government,
00:03:22searching for new treasure, clearing land, building towns and cities, starting over.
00:03:32But the new settlers brought with them their nation's oldest and most divisive issue, slavery.
00:03:41Once seen as the land of hope and new beginnings, the West became a breeding ground for the bloodshed
00:03:48that would eventually engulf the whole country.
00:03:50And when war finally came, the result in the West was chaos.
00:03:59Hatred consumed entire communities.
00:04:02Criminals led armies.
00:04:05And no one was safe.
00:04:06The federal government engaged in a struggle simply to hold the country together.
00:04:16Could do nothing to stop it.
00:04:17A pious New Hampshire woman, who moved West hoping to keep the region free of slavery,
00:04:29instead would watch as her Kansas neighbors wantonly killed one another.
00:04:33A devout Mormon who had fled West with his people to avoid persecution,
00:04:41would take part in the worst massacre of innocent pioneers in American history.
00:04:48A fanatical Methodist parson would transform himself into a celebrated soldier,
00:04:53soldier, and then try to build a political career based on murder.
00:05:00While a Cheyenne chief, who wanted nothing but peace, would find no escape,
00:05:06as time and again his unsuspecting village became a battlefield.
00:05:16What was supposed to be this wonderful dream that the West will unite the South and the North.
00:05:22The West will be the kind of new child who brings this troubled marriage together.
00:05:281850s carry a different lesson entirely, which is that this is the child that will blow up the marriage.
00:05:34That's the most consequential moment of the West for the nation.
00:05:39That's where there's no question about how central the West is to the whole story of the country.
00:06:04A great work is to be done, and Kansas is the great battlefield where a mighty conflict is to be waged with the monster slavery.
00:06:20And he will be routed and slain. Amen and amen.
00:06:28Julia Louisa Lovejoy
00:06:34In the spring of 1855, the Reverend Charles H. Lovejoy of Croydon, New Hampshire,
00:06:41his 43-year-old wife, Julia Louisa, and their children crossed the Missouri River into the newly created Kansas Territory.
00:06:48There were thousands of settlers pouring in that year to stake claims in what had recently been Indian lands.
00:06:59But the Lovejoys and others like them from New England were a different kind of American pioneer,
00:07:05not interested in gold, land, or adventure.
00:07:11They were abolitionists, part of a grassroots movement sweeping the North.
00:07:16They were outraged that in a nation founded on the ideal of freedom,
00:07:23nearly four million Americans were still owned by other Americans.
00:07:27The Lovejoys had come west, determined to keep the soil of Kansas free from slavery.
00:07:35For more than half a century, as the United States expanded westward,
00:07:44Congress had quarreled again and again over whether the new territories would be slave or free,
00:07:50each time working out a fragile compromise.
00:07:55Every time that they thought that they had hodgepodged something together,
00:07:59some new land in the West would become available that Americans were settling
00:08:04and wanting to bring into the Union.
00:08:07And it kept bringing it right back to Congress.
00:08:11Well, will it be free or slave?
00:08:13And will that upset this delicate balance that was constructed 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago?
00:08:23In 1854, Congress had created two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska,
00:08:29and proposed to hold a special election which would leave the issue of slavery up to the settlers who lived there.
00:08:37Many in Congress believed this new compromise would hold the nation together.
00:08:43Instead, it would tear it apart.
00:08:46And the West would become a battleground for the soul of the country.
00:08:56We are playing for a mighty stake.
00:08:58The game must be played boldly.
00:09:01We are organizing.
00:09:04We will be compelled to shoot, burn and hang, but the thing will soon be over.
00:09:09If we win, we can carry slavery to the Pacific Ocean.
00:09:18Senator David Acheson, Missouri.
00:09:22Come on then, gentlemen of the slave states.
00:09:26Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of freedom.
00:09:31We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas.
00:09:38And God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in the right.
00:09:44Senator William H. Sewell, New York.
00:09:46To hand the issue to Kansas is to ask for the most explosive conditions possible.
00:09:54To take the most unsettled kind of society and throw into that the issue that made congressmen want to kill each other.
00:10:03If you wanted to design the worst possible conditions to dramatize how bitter these fights were,
00:10:08you couldn't do better than what they designed for Kansas.
00:10:10On election day, nearly 5,000 armed pro-slavery men, led by Senator David Acheson, flooded in from Missouri,
00:10:23trying to influence the vote and the fate of Kansas.
00:10:29They seized polling places, cast four times as many ballots as there were voters in the territory,
00:10:35and installed a legislature that made it a crime to even criticize slavery.
00:10:44Their opponents, called Free Soilers, countered with their own election.
00:10:50They drew up a constitution that outlawed slavery, though it also barred black settlement,
00:10:55and then applied for admission to the Union as a free state.
00:10:59Kansas now had two governments, and its people were about to go to war with one another.
00:11:09Both sides were supplied from the outside.
00:11:14It was almost as if a civil war were taking place in a foreign country,
00:11:18with the South providing the arms, the money, and the men on one side,
00:11:22and the New England ideologically committed abolitionists on the other.
00:11:26By the fall of 1855, the Reverend and Mrs. Lovejoy were living in the anti-slavery stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas.
00:11:38Julia began writing a stream of letters to newspapers back east.
00:11:44The greatest trouble in this part of the territory now is about our Missourian neighbors,
00:11:49whose hearts are set on mischief.
00:11:52We are apprehending trouble, if not hard-fighting, in our quiet community.
00:12:01Imagine a man standing in a pair of long boots.
00:12:05The handle of a large bowie knife projecting from one or both boot tops.
00:12:10A leather belt buckled around his waist, on each side of which is fastened a large revolver.
00:12:17Imagine such a picture of humanity, who can swear any given number of oaths in any specified time,
00:12:26drink any quantity of bad whiskey without getting drunk,
00:12:31and boast of having stolen a half dozen horses, and killed one or more abolitionists.
00:12:38And you will have a pretty fair conception of a border ruffian,
00:12:43as he appears in Missouri and in Kansas.
00:12:48John H. Guion.
00:12:49In the spring of 1856, someone wounded a pro-slavery sheriff,
00:12:58and 800 armed men, bent on revenge, stormed into Lawrence,
00:13:03got drunk, destroyed two newspaper offices, burned down the hotel and the home of the Free Soil governor.
00:13:10I caught my darling babe from the bed, moaning as he went.
00:13:19I rushed to a place of safety out of town as fast as my feeble limbs could carry me.
00:13:26The scene that met our gaze, beggar's description.
00:13:31Women and children fleeing on every hand.
00:13:33Cattle, as though aware that danger was near, huddling together.
00:13:41It will never fade from memory's vision.
00:13:50When Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner denounced what he called this crime against Kansas,
00:13:57a South Carolina congressman strode onto the Senate floor and beat him senseless with a cane.
00:14:07Three days later, on the night of May 24th, a strange, driven man called five unarmed settlers,
00:14:15whom he believed favored slavery, out of their cabins on Pottawatomie Creek.
00:14:22With the help of his sons, he hacked them to death with broadswords.
00:14:26It was a war to the death between good and evil, John Brown said.
00:14:35We must fight fire with fire.
00:14:41During the next three months, some 200 more men would die in what would come to be known as bleeding Kansas.
00:14:53August 25th, 1856.
00:14:56We are in the midst of war, war of the most bloody kind, a war of extermination.
00:15:05Freedom and slavery are interlocked in deadly embrace, and death is certain for one or the other party.
00:15:15A crisis is just before us, and only God knoweth where it will end.
00:15:20虞
00:15:32We are gathered here to build up the kingdom of God.
00:15:36To make the wilderness blossom as the rose,
00:15:40of God, to make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and fill these mountains with cities.
00:15:49My soul feels hallelujah.
00:15:53It exalts in God that he has planted this people in a place that is not desired by the
00:15:59wicked.
00:16:01Brigham Young.
00:16:06It had been 10 years since Brigham Young led his Latter-day Saints west.
00:16:11And while the rest of the country wrestled with the question of slavery, he continued
00:16:15to build his Mormon kingdom in the deserts of Utah.
00:16:21Salt Lake City, with nearly 10,000 residents, was now the second largest city west of Missouri,
00:16:27eclipsed only by San Francisco.
00:16:32Two colonies stretched for 300 miles along the Wasatch Mountains.
00:16:38The Mormons printed their own currency, drove federal officials out of Utah, and publicly
00:16:44announced that polygamy, plural marriage, was part of church doctrine.
00:16:51Polygamy was mostly meant for important Mormon leaders.
00:16:55William Young himself had 27 wives.
00:16:59Young's chief lieutenant, Heber Kimball, had 43.
00:17:05Most polygamists had no more than two wives, and four out of five Mormon men had just one.
00:17:12Still, the practice turned many Americans against them.
00:17:17As to polygamy, I charge it to be a crying evil, sapping not only the physical constitution
00:17:26of the people practicing it, but at the same time perverting the social virtues and morals
00:17:32of its victims.
00:17:34It is a scarlet whore.
00:17:37It is a reproach to the Christian civilization, and it deserves to be blotted out.
00:17:43Congressman John A. McClernand, Illinois.
00:17:50In the election of 1856, the brand-new Republican Party ran on a platform opposed to what they
00:17:58called the twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy.
00:18:04The Republicans lost, but the issues would not go away.
00:18:09Mr. President, I believe that we can supersede the Negro mania with the almost universal excitement
00:18:17of an anti-Mormon crusade, and the pipings of abolitionism will hardly be heard amidst
00:18:24the thunders of the storm that we shall raise.
00:18:28Robert Tyler.
00:18:29And when Democrat James Buchanan won the election, to sort of take the heat off of this building
00:18:38tension over slavery, he did a very remarkable thing that's only happened a few times in
00:18:42our history.
00:18:43He sent an army out against citizens of the United States.
00:18:51In the summer of 1857, 2,500 troops headed toward Utah to reassert federal control.
00:19:00At the same time the army slowly made its way west, a lone wagon train entered the southern
00:19:06part of Mormon territory.
00:19:09They were settlers mostly, families traveling with small children on their way to California
00:19:15and a better life.
00:19:19But riding with them were a band of men who called themselves the Missouri Wildcats, and
00:19:24they were bent on causing trouble for the Latter-day Saints.
00:19:30They swore and boasted openly that Buchanan's whole army was coming right behind them and would
00:19:36kill every goddamn Mormon in Utah.
00:19:39They had two bulls, which they called one Heber and the other Brigham, and whipped them through
00:19:44every town, yelling and singing, and blaspheming oaths that would have made your hair stand
00:19:49on end.
00:19:51John D. Lee.
00:19:55On September 7th, 1857, the wagons reached a grassy area called Mountain Meadows.
00:20:03There some 200 Paiute warriors, encouraged by the Mormons, attacked.
00:20:12The immigrants drove them back.
00:20:16The Indians settled in for a siege, then asked the Mormons to join them in destroying the
00:20:21common enemy.
00:20:25Elders sent a message to Salt Lake City, asking Brigham Young what they should do.
00:20:30Young sent a courier back with orders to let the wagons go.
00:20:36But before the message arrived, the Mormons at Mountain Meadows resolved to wipe out the
00:20:41wagon train and blame it on the Paiutes.
00:20:47One of the men ordered to lead the fighting was John D. Lee, a Mormon so loyal that Brigham
00:20:53Young himself had adopted him as a spiritual son.
00:20:58Lee was used to following church orders.
00:21:01He was, as he said, as clay in the hands of the potter when it came to carrying out the
00:21:06wishes of his elders.
00:21:09But even he was stunned at what he was now being asked to do.
00:21:16The orders said to decoy the immigrants from their position and kill all of them that could
00:21:21talk.
00:21:22This order was in writing.
00:21:24I read it and then dropped it on the ground, saying, I cannot do this.
00:21:32I bowed myself in prayer before God, and my tortured soul was wrung nearly from my body
00:21:38by the great suffering.
00:21:40If I had then had a thousand worlds to command, I would have given them freely to save that
00:21:46company from death.
00:21:49But in the end, John D. Lee decided to follow orders.
00:22:00On the morning of September 11th, he rode out to the besieged wagon train under a flag
00:22:06of truce.
00:22:07John D. Lee and some others came to them and said, throw down your arms.
00:22:15We've got the Indians under control.
00:22:17You come out with us and you'll be safe.
00:22:23And they were reluctant to do it, but they finally did.
00:22:26And as they marched out, the order was given, do your duty.
00:22:32The Mormons opened fire, each man assigned to shoot the immigrant walking next to him.
00:22:39Lee's task was to kill the sick and wounded, riding in a wagon in front of the others.
00:22:44Then, the Paiute swept in and finished off the rest.
00:22:56In less than half an hour, 120 people had been butchered at Mountain Meadows.
00:23:04Only 17 children were spared, thought too young ever to tell the horrible story.
00:23:13The dead were stripped of their clothing and belongings, which the Mormons sold at auction.
00:23:20They were hastily buried in shallow graves and soon dug up again by wild animals.
00:23:26Well, I'm a great-grandson of John D. Lee.
00:23:32My middle name is Lee, and I've studied his life and his tragedies.
00:23:38I will always believe that it could only have happened at that particular moment.
00:23:45That if this wagon train had come through as they had before, two weeks earlier or two weeks later, they might have gone unscathed.
00:23:53So, it's almost a Greek tragedy.
00:23:59Two days after the massacre, Brigham Young's messenger finally arrived at Mountain Meadows with the orders to let the wagon train pass.
00:24:09John D. Lee was chosen to ride to Salt Lake City and tell Brigham Young what had happened.
00:24:17Precisely how much the Mormon leader was told of his people's role in the slaughter is unclear.
00:24:23Publicly, Young blamed it all on the Paiutes.
00:24:29Meanwhile, Winter had stopped Buchanan's army's advance, and the Mormon War ended before it really began.
00:24:38In a negotiated settlement, the president pardoned Young and his followers for inciting a rebellion.
00:24:47And Young, in turn, resigned as governor.
00:24:50But he remained in effective control of his people.
00:24:53The attempt to divert the nation's attention from slavery had failed.
00:24:59Four years later, Brigham Young stopped at Mountain Meadows.
00:25:09Federal troops, outraged at the massacre, had erected a makeshift monument to those who had been murdered.
00:25:17On it were the words,
00:25:19Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.
00:25:24Young gazed at it for a time,
00:25:27then ordered the monument torn down.
00:25:31Vengeance is mine, he muttered,
00:25:33and I have taken a little.
00:25:46Mexicans,
00:25:48it would appear that justice had fled from this world,
00:25:51leaving you to the caprice of your oppressors,
00:25:54who have become each day more furious toward you.
00:25:57My part is taken.
00:25:59The voice of revelation whispers that the Lord will enable me,
00:26:03with powerful arm,
00:26:05to fight against our enemies.
00:26:07Juan Cortina.
00:26:10The treaty that ended the Mexican War in 1848,
00:26:19had promised all the benefits of United States citizenship to Mexican Americans.
00:26:25But as Civil War neared,
00:26:28the federal government proved unable or unwilling to keep its promises.
00:26:33In California, New Mexico, and Texas,
00:26:36many Mexican Americans were denied the right to vote,
00:26:40lost their lands in court,
00:26:42and often found themselves persecuted rather than protected by officers of the law.
00:26:48On July 13th, 1859,
00:26:53a rancher named Juan Cortina rode into Brownsville, Texas to buy supplies.
00:26:59He was a member of an old, landed Mexican family
00:27:03that had seen its power and influence decline with the arrival of the Americans.
00:27:09On the main street,
00:27:11he saw the city marshal pistol whipping a Mexican laborer
00:27:14who had once worked for his family.
00:27:16When the sheriff refused to stop,
00:27:19Cortina shot him in the shoulder,
00:27:21swept the prisoner onto the back of his horse,
00:27:24and rode off with him.
00:27:30A little over two months later,
00:27:32with some 75 armed followers,
00:27:34he rode into town again,
00:27:36freed 12 prisoners from jail,
00:27:39seized arms and ammunition,
00:27:42and shot dead three Americans,
00:27:44whom he said had killed Mexicans
00:27:46while the law looked the other way.
00:27:49Then, Cortina returned to his ranch
00:27:52and issued a proclamation.
00:27:54When the state of Texas became part of the Union,
00:28:00flocks of vampires in the guise of men
00:28:03came with corrupt hearts and the most perverse intentions.
00:28:07Because your industry excited their vile avarice,
00:28:12many of you Mexicans have been robbed of your property,
00:28:15incarcerated,
00:28:17murdered,
00:28:18and hunted like wild beasts.
00:28:20Mexicans,
00:28:23is there no remedy for you?
00:28:31For several months,
00:28:32despite constant pursuit
00:28:34by American settlers
00:28:35and Mexican National Guardsmen,
00:28:37Cortina and his men
00:28:39held onto the lower Rio Grande Valley.
00:28:41Sympathetic Mexicans
00:28:43on both sides of the border
00:28:45secretly provided them
00:28:47with food and supplies.
00:28:49Our personal enemies,
00:28:51Cortina vowed,
00:28:52shall not possess our lands
00:28:54until they have fattened it
00:28:55with their gore.
00:28:59Finally,
00:29:00the state militia,
00:29:01known as the Texas Rangers,
00:29:03was sent against him.
00:29:09Well, Juan Cortina,
00:29:10he was her hero
00:29:12to the individuals
00:29:13who were the small ranchers
00:29:14and so forth.
00:29:15He was the only one that was able
00:29:16to stand up and say,
00:29:17you're taking our land
00:29:19and now you take away our dignity
00:29:21and now you mistreat us,
00:29:22you push us around.
00:29:23We've had it.
00:29:25The Texas Rangers didn't allow anyone
00:29:27to rise up as a champion of the people.
00:29:31And when you took on the law,
00:29:32you usually got lynched
00:29:33in that border region.
00:29:35And that's exactly
00:29:36what they had intended for him,
00:29:38just to catch him and lynch him
00:29:40and sort of as an example
00:29:41of how you don't defy
00:29:43the new government.
00:29:47The Rangers,
00:29:48now backed by federal troops,
00:29:50pursued Cortina's men
00:29:51to Rio Grande City
00:29:53and closed in for the kill.
00:29:57Cortina was the last
00:29:59to leave the field.
00:30:01He faced his pursuers,
00:30:03emptied his revolver
00:30:04and tried to halt
00:30:05his panic-stricken men.
00:30:07One shot struck the cantle
00:30:09of his saddle.
00:30:10One cut a lock of hair
00:30:12from his head.
00:30:13A third cut his bridle ring.
00:30:16A fourth passed
00:30:17through his horse's ear
00:30:19and a fifth struck his belt.
00:30:21But he galloped off unhurt.
00:30:24Colonel J.A.
00:30:26Ford.
00:30:30Cortina fled
00:30:31across the Rio Grande.
00:30:33For another 15 years,
00:30:35he and others
00:30:36continued to launch raids
00:30:37on American settlers
00:30:39and steal Texas cattle.
00:30:43The border region
00:30:44remained a no-man's land.
00:30:46As his legend grew,
00:30:54Anglos denounced Cortina
00:30:56as a murderous rebel.
00:30:58But to Mexican-Americans,
00:31:00he was the Robin Hood
00:31:02of the Rio Grande.
00:31:04of the Rio Grande.
00:31:07My grandfather talked
00:31:08about him,
00:31:09and my uncle claims
00:31:10him as a relative.
00:31:11And I was sort of
00:31:12struck by that.
00:31:15Through every family,
00:31:16he was part of us
00:31:17in one way or another.
00:31:18His legend has passed on.
00:31:20His life lives on.
00:31:25His life lives on the
00:31:38end.
00:31:39Our New England friends may wonder that the warlike spirit has taken such hold upon those
00:31:47who, until they came to Kansas, were as complete pacifists as the most orthodox Quaker.
00:31:53But, sir, such individuals only need a little Kansas experience to understand the matter.
00:32:04Julia Louisa Lovejoy
00:32:05On October 16, 1859, John Brown brought his Kansas brand of abolitionism east to Harpers Ferry,
00:32:19Virginia, where he tried to start a slave rebellion.
00:32:25Ten people were killed.
00:32:28Brown was captured, tried, and sentenced to hang.
00:32:33As he was led to the gallows, he handed a guard a slip of paper.
00:32:37I am now quite certain, it read, that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away,
00:32:44but by blood.
00:32:47The whole country was now beginning to experience the fear that had gripped Kansas for so long.
00:32:56In 1860, the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president,
00:33:01pledged to halt slavery's further spread in the West.
00:33:06One by one, southern slave states left the Union.
00:33:11And on April 12, 1861, rebel guns fired on Fort Sumter.
00:33:18The civil war that had already begun in the West now exploded in the East.
00:33:25July 15, 1861, wash day in camp.
00:33:35We went to Dempsey's Ranch after two cows and borrowed a small fragment of a newspaper
00:33:40that Tolman and Jackson brought from Fort Owen on the Bitter Route.
00:33:44Bad news from the states.
00:33:46The North and South are fighting.
00:33:52In Colorado, regiments of Union volunteers were recruited
00:33:56to protect the rich mining districts from the Confederates.
00:34:04One of the first to step forward was a big, bearish Methodist minister named John M. Shivington.
00:34:11He was six and a half feet tall, weighed 250 pounds,
00:34:16and sometimes delivered sermons with a revolver resting on the pulpit.
00:34:21Shivington, one acquaintance in Denver said,
00:34:24is a crazy preacher who thinks he is Napoleon Bonaparte.
00:34:30Offered a chaplain's commission, Shivington refused.
00:34:34He wanted to fight for the Union, he said, not just pray for it.
00:34:41Meanwhile, in January of 1862, a confident rebel army of 3,500 soldiers
00:34:53had marched west out of Texas into New Mexico,
00:34:56where it defeated Union forces at Val Verde,
00:34:59seized Albuquerque, plundered Santa Fe,
00:35:02and moved north toward Colorado.
00:35:04Their plan was to capture Denver and the Rocky Mountain gold fields,
00:35:10then sweep all the way west to take California
00:35:13and its mother load of mineral wealth.
00:35:17Their motto was on to San Francisco.
00:35:21But they hadn't counted on Shivington.
00:35:23Here's this army of Texans thinking they can live off the land.
00:35:30Then they move through New Mexico territory, winning their battles,
00:35:35and they get up there to northern New Mexico,
00:35:38and they have no idea that there's another army coming at them.
00:35:43Shivington was now a major with the first Colorado volunteers,
00:35:47hard-drinking miners, eager for a fight.
00:35:52They had marched 40 miles a day through ice and snow
00:35:56and freezing winds to stop the Texans.
00:36:02They met in a place called Apache Canyon.
00:36:05Shivington sent some of his men scurrying up the canyon sides.
00:36:11They were up on the walls on both sides of us,
00:36:14one Confederate remembered, shooting us down like sheep.
00:36:19Then Shivington himself led the charge.
00:36:23Major Shivington, with a pistol in each hand,
00:36:26chawed his lips with only less energy than he gave his orders.
00:36:30Of commanding presence, dressed in full regimentals,
00:36:35he was a conspicuous mark for the Texan sharpshooters.
00:36:39But as if possessed of a charmed life,
00:36:42he galloped unhurt through the storm of bullets.
00:36:46Ovando J. Hollister.
00:36:51The rebels fell back.
00:36:54The two armies met two days later at Glorietta Pass,
00:36:57and for five bloody hours they slammed away at each other
00:37:01amidst the boulders.
00:37:06But while the battle raged on,
00:37:08Shivington and some of his men slipped 16 miles
00:37:11behind the Confederate lines,
00:37:13to a cliff that overlooked the Texans' supply wagons.
00:37:18There, they lowered themselves by ropes,
00:37:21drove off the guards,
00:37:23burned 85 wagons filled with provisions,
00:37:27and bayoneted 500 horses and mules.
00:37:30The Confederates, who had seemed so close to victory,
00:37:34now face starvation and thirst,
00:37:37as well as a hostile enemy.
00:37:41And they had to turn around and retreat,
00:37:44get out of there, and they panicked.
00:37:46There they were, hundreds of miles from their base
00:37:50in San Antonio in Texas.
00:37:53Nothing but deserts and mountains between them and their homes.
00:37:58Columns got lost.
00:38:00Boots wore out.
00:38:02Men had to stagger through searing sand in bare feet.
00:38:08Soldiers abandoned their weapons,
00:38:11collapsed from exhaustion, dehydration, sunstroke.
00:38:143,500 men had marched out of Texas to conquer the Southwest.
00:38:221,500 of them never returned.
00:38:27The dream of a Confederate West was dead.
00:38:33Glorietta Pass would become known as the Gettysburg of the West.
00:38:38And John Shivington, the fighting parson, was a Union hero.
00:38:42Baldwin City, Kansas, October 8th, 1862.
00:38:52Our camp meeting in this place was a glorious success.
00:38:56Reverend Shivington, who with his command has accomplished such wonders of late in New Mexico,
00:39:02was present and preached from the stand in his regimentals.
00:39:06His persuasive eloquence and clear, ringing, stentorian voice swayed the multitude like a western tornado as it bends its massive oaks.
00:39:19The work of God is still going on.
00:39:22Julia Louisa Lovejoy.
00:39:25Julia Louisa Lovejoy.
00:39:34The federal government really didn't have much of a grasp and control of the West before the Civil War.
00:39:39But once the war started, they were concentrating on all those battles in the East, and whatever control they had, they lost it entirely.
00:39:47The Civil War does create more of a vacuum in the West, and the result is there's going to be far more violence.
00:39:57It's going to be far harder to mediate things.
00:39:59Things are going to be much more out of control in the 1860s than they ever would have been otherwise.
00:40:03By the summer of 1863, the North seemed to be winning the Civil War.
00:40:20Robert E. Lee's advance into Pennsylvania had been stopped at Gettysburg,
00:40:24and Ulysses S. Grant had split the Confederacy in two by taking the Mississippi River town of Vicksburg.
00:40:33Yet for all the fighting back East, there had been few civilian casualties.
00:40:39In the West, it was a very different war.
00:40:47Guerilla parties are making dreadful slaughter upon the Union men in Missouri,
00:40:52and stealing and destroying their property.
00:40:59The entire route across the state bears the marks of the ravages of war.
00:41:06Anarchy reigns in Missouri.
00:41:09Julia Louisa Lovejoy.
00:41:14In Kansas and Missouri, both sides waged relentless guerrilla warfare
00:41:19on innocent civilians as well as rival armies.
00:41:25Union forces were led by James H. Lane, a cadaverous former senator from Kansas,
00:41:31who wanted to see pro-slavery Missourians cast into a burning hell.
00:41:37He did his best to do just that.
00:41:40Haunting the trail of rebel armies.
00:41:42Ravaging the homes of anyone who dared help them.
00:41:47Then sacking and burning whole towns.
00:41:50Confederate guerrillas responded in kind.
00:41:54Their most celebrated leader was a former school teacher from Ohio,
00:41:59with limitless enthusiasm for looting and killing, named William Quantrell.
00:42:03Union farmers, he warned, should not bother to plant crops.
00:42:10They would not live to harvest them.
00:42:13And he swore he would burn Jim Lane at the stake.
00:42:19And of course, if you're a guerrilla fighter and you fight under the flag of the Confederacy,
00:42:24they impart to you legitimacy.
00:42:25From the Union point of view, these were sheer criminals.
00:42:32One of Quantrell's raiders was an accused horse thief known as Bloody Bill Anderson.
00:42:38He wore a necklace of Yankee scalps into battle, laughed as unarmed prisoners were gunned down,
00:42:45then ordered his men to mutilate their corpses.
00:42:47I will kill you, he wrote to the readers of one anti-slavery newspaper.
00:42:53I will hunt you down like wolves and murder you.
00:43:07On the morning of August 21st, 1863, Quantrell, Anderson and 450 men rode towards the anti-slavery stronghold of Lawrence.
00:43:13Kansas, home of Jim Lane.
00:43:20With her husband serving in the Union Army, Julia Louisa Lovejoy and her children now lived in a little house just outside of town.
00:43:32At an early hour, Friday morning, I rushed out and I could then see every house this side of Lawrence,
00:43:39with a volume of dense smoke arising from them as they advanced, firing every house in their march of death.
00:43:52The raiders surrounded a downtown hotel.
00:43:56A guest hung a white sheet from the window and asked Quantrell what he wanted.
00:44:01Plunder, he answered.
00:44:04The guests were ordered out and robbed.
00:44:07The hotel was set afire.
00:44:09Quantrell, waving two of the six pistols he carried, rose in his stirrups and shouted,
00:44:15Kill! Kill!
00:44:17Lawrence must be cleansed.
00:44:19And the only way to cleanse it is to kill.
00:44:22Then, while Quantrell demanded that the terrified staff of another hotel cook him a big breakfast,
00:44:29Anderson and his men began to carry out Quantrell's orders.
00:44:33All the business houses, banks, stores in the city were robbed and burned, save one.
00:44:46And most of the businessmen killed.
00:44:48Mrs. Reed put out the fire six times to save her house, and they would fire it anew, but she, by almost superhuman exertion, saved it.
00:45:03One lady threw her arms around her husband and begged of them to spare his life.
00:45:09They rested the pistol on her arm, as it was around his body, and shot him dead.
00:45:17And the fire from the pistol burnt the sleeve of her dress.
00:45:25One hundred and eighty-three men and boys were killed.
00:45:29Fewer than twenty had been soldiers.
00:45:32And one hundred and eighty-five homes were burned before Quantrell and his men rode out of Lawrence,
00:45:38leaving behind eighty widows, two hundred and fifty fatherless children.
00:45:45Jim Lane, the principal target of the raid, had managed to escape through a cornfield in his nightshirt.
00:45:55The fires were still glowing in the cellars.
00:45:59Here and there among the embers could be seen the bones of those who had perished.
00:46:03The sickening odor of burned flesh was oppressive.
00:46:04The sickening odor of burned flesh was oppressive.
00:46:09To avenge the Lawrence massacre, federal troops, forced from their homes every month,
00:46:10to avenge the Lawrence massacre.
00:46:11Federal troops forced from their homes every month,
00:46:12to avenge the Lawrence massacre.
00:46:13every man, woman, and child living in three Missouri border counties,
00:46:16and half of a farm, to avenge the Lawrence massacre.
00:46:18To avenge the Lawrence massacre, federal troops forced from their homes every man, woman, and child living in three Missouri border counties,
00:46:20and half of a fourth.
00:46:21They drove thousands of people onto the open prairie,
00:46:23while Union guerrillas followed them.
00:46:24They drove thousands of people onto the open prairie,
00:46:25while Union guerrillas followed them.
00:46:26the war.
00:46:31The sickening odor of the Lawrence massacre,
00:46:33To avenge the Lawrence massacre,
00:46:35Federal troops forced from their homes every man, woman, and child living in three Missouri border counties,
00:46:42and half of a fourth.
00:46:45They drove thousands of people onto the open prairie,
00:46:48while Union guerrillas followed in their wake,
00:46:51burning and looting the empty houses they left behind,
00:46:55raiding the refugee columns, stealing even wedding rings.
00:47:02The very air seems charged with blood and death.
00:47:07Pandemonium itself seems to have broken loose.
00:47:11And death runs riot over the country.
00:47:18During the course of the Civil War,
00:47:20no civilians would suffer more than the people of Kansas and Missouri.
00:47:42We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip,
00:47:45and we bowled away and left the states behind us.
00:47:48There was a freshness and breeziness,
00:47:52and an exhilarating sense of emancipation
00:47:55that almost made us feel that the years we had spent
00:47:58in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving,
00:48:01had been wasted and thrown away.
00:48:04Sam Clemens.
00:48:08Back in the spring of 1861,
00:48:0924-year-old Sam Clemens and his elder brother left Missouri
00:48:15for the newly created Nevada Territory.
00:48:19Two weeks in the Confederate militia had convinced Sam
00:48:22that he was not cut out for combat.
00:48:25Like thousands of other young men north and south,
00:48:28he preferred to go west rather than to war.
00:48:31And so he skedaddled.
00:48:35Ham and eggs and scenery.
00:48:40A downgrade, a flying coach, a fragrant pipe,
00:48:44and a contented heart.
00:48:46It is what all the ages have struggled for.
00:48:48They made eight to ten miles an hour
00:48:53through an unbroken sea of grass.
00:48:56A pony express rider galloped past.
00:48:59Coyotes howled.
00:49:01They saw buffalo,
00:49:03encountered their first Indians,
00:49:05talked with a real-life outlaw.
00:49:08Sam Clemens loved it all.
00:49:11It took them 20 days to reach Carson City,
00:49:17the small town that was the capital of Nevada Territory.
00:49:23Dear Mother,
00:49:25Our city lies in the midst of a desert
00:49:28of the purest, most unadulterated and uncompromising sand,
00:49:32in which infernal soil nothing but the fag end
00:49:35of vegetable creation, sagebrush,
00:49:38is mean enough to grow.
00:49:41Nevada Territory is fabulously rich in gold,
00:49:45silver, lead, coal, iron, quicksilver, thieves,
00:49:50murderers, desperados, lawyers, Christians, Indians,
00:49:55Chinamans, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes,
00:50:00poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits.
00:50:06Still, there was little to do in Carson City,
00:50:08so Clemens set out on his own.
00:50:13By and by, I was smitten with silver fever.
00:50:17Prospecting parties were leaving for the mountains every day.
00:50:21Plainly, this was the road to fortune.
00:50:22He spent six months with three partners in a ten-by-twelve-foot cabin,
00:50:30panning, digging, drinking, going more and more heavily into debt.
00:50:35We were stark mad with excitement, drunk with happiness,
00:50:41smothered under mountains of prospective wealth,
00:50:45arrogantly compassionate toward the plodding millions
00:50:48who knew not our marvelous canyon.
00:50:49But our credit was not good at the grocers.
00:50:53Clemens would later boast that he became a multimillionaire for just ten days,
00:50:59until 14 armed men jumped his claim.
00:51:01Next, he tried his luck in Virginia City, Nevada.
00:51:09It was a tiny mining town that had grown to a full-fledged industrial city in less than two years.
00:51:1615,000 people lived there.
00:51:20They had put in gas lights, built stock exchanges, three theaters, four churches, and 42 saloons.
00:51:29And there was a newspaper, a territorial enterprise.
00:51:33Sam Clemens talked himself into a job as a reporter.
00:51:37Dear Mother, I have just heard five pistol shots down the street.
00:51:47As such things are in my line, I will go and see about it.
00:51:51P.S. The pistol did its work well.
00:51:55One man, a Jackson County Missourian, shot two of my friends, police officers, through the heart.
00:52:00Both died within three minutes.
00:52:03The murderer's name is John Campbell.
00:52:07Soon he was covering everything from Indian attacks to theatrical performances.
00:52:13Always in his own distinctive style.
00:52:16I have had a call to literature of a low order, i.e. humorous, he told his mother.
00:52:22It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit.
00:52:27In the West, while sitting out the war, Sam Clemens had found a new calling.
00:52:33And he began to sign his articles with a new name.
00:52:37Mark Twain.
00:52:39It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things.
00:52:46Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
00:52:52Listen to me carefully.
00:52:53And truthfully follow up my instructions.
00:52:59Listen to me carefully, and truthfully follow up my instructions.
00:53:16You chiefs are peacemakers.
00:53:20Though your son might be killed in front of your teepee,
00:53:24you should take a peace pipe and smoke.
00:53:28Then you would be an honest chief, sweet medicine.
00:53:37A peace chief assumed the role of a father to all members of the tribe.
00:53:45He was selected because of his goodness, his generosity, his bravery, his courage,
00:53:50his concern for the well-being of others.
00:53:53And he never acquired wealth for himself.
00:53:56He acquired wealth to give to those less fortunate.
00:54:01So that you got a father, a spiritual leader, a true servant of the people.
00:54:07A person that had to live a morally upright life in every respect.
00:54:15One of the most respected peace chiefs of the southern Cheyenne was Black Kettle.
00:54:25As a young man, he had proved himself as a warrior.
00:54:28Now he had come to believe that maintaining peace with the whites
00:54:32was the best way for his people to survive.
00:54:34In 1861, Black Kettle and other peace chiefs had signed a treaty
00:54:43and agreed to move onto a small reservation along Sand Creek, southeast of Denver.
00:54:49But the reservation was empty of game.
00:54:52Whites trespassed on it.
00:54:54Some Cheyenne were reduced to begging settlers for food.
00:54:58Soon, even Black Kettle left for the old hunting grounds.
00:55:04And young Cheyenne warriors began attacking stagecoaches and destroying outlying ranches.
00:55:19The young men's exuberance sometimes would get out of hand.
00:55:22And some of the old chiefs just simply couldn't control him.
00:55:26You have to remember that before the coming of the white soldiers
00:55:30and before the reservation days, boys had a way to become men.
00:55:35And the way boys became men was through proving themselves in hunt
00:55:40or proving themselves in battle.
00:55:42And so when things began to change
00:55:45and some of the old chiefs began to go the peaceful way and say,
00:55:48we can't keep on with this.
00:55:49We've got to find a peaceful way of resolving differences and so on.
00:55:52Sometimes the young men felt left out.
00:55:54They felt that they were being denied manhood.
00:56:00The Denver Commonwealth, June 15th, 1864.
00:56:04The bodies were brought to town this morning.
00:56:07There was a most solemn sight indeed
00:56:10to see the mutilated corpses stretched in the stiffness of death
00:56:14upon that wagon bed.
00:56:18The general remark of the hundreds of spectators
00:56:20was that those that perpetrate such unnatural, brutal butchery as this
00:56:25ought to be hunted to the farthest bounds of these broad plains
00:56:28and burned at the stake alive.
00:56:35The governor of Colorado Territory asked Washington for troops.
00:56:39But with the Civil War still raging, there were none to spare.
00:56:43He then called for civilian volunteers and hundreds signed up.
00:56:48In command once again would be the fighting parson,
00:56:54John Shivington, the hero of Glorietta Pass.
00:56:58Now a colonel, he burned with political ambition
00:57:02and saw a winning issue in ridding his region of its Indians.
00:57:09Meanwhile, an old trader named William Bent desperately tried to make peace.
00:57:14He had been living among the Cheyenne for nearly four decades.
00:57:19Four of his children had Cheyenne mothers.
00:57:23He told Shivington that the chiefs wanted to be friendly.
00:57:27Shivington replied that he was not authorized to make peace.
00:57:35In September of 1864, Black Kettle and six other Cheyenne chiefs
00:57:40came to Fort Weld near Denver to talk.
00:57:43As evidence of their good faith, they brought with them
00:57:47four white captives they had ransomed from other bands.
00:57:52We have been traveling through a cloud.
00:57:56The sky has been dark ever since the war began.
00:58:01We want to take good tidings home to our people,
00:58:05that they may sleep in peace.
00:58:08I want all the chiefs of the soldiers here to understand
00:58:11that we are for peace and that we have made peace,
00:58:16that we may not be mistaken for enemies.
00:58:20Black Kettle.
00:58:23When Black Kettle agreed to return to Sand Creek on the reservation,
00:58:27regular army officers led him to believe his people would be safe.
00:58:32But Shivington was not an officer in the regular army.
00:58:36His new command, the Third Colorado Volunteers,
00:58:39had yet to fight a major battle.
00:58:42Scornful Denver newspapers were calling them the Bloodless Third,
00:58:47and their enlistments were about to run out.
00:58:50One way or another, Shivington was determined to have his war.
00:58:57At dawn on November 29th, 1864,
00:59:04he and 700 men reached the edge of Black Kettle's camp
00:59:09on the banks of Sand Creek.
00:59:12Many of them were drunk from the whiskey they had swallowed
00:59:16to warm them during an icy all-night ride.
00:59:20One of William Bent's sons, Robert, was riding with Shivington,
00:59:28commandeered at gunpoint to show the way to the Cheyenne camp.
00:59:32Bent's other children, Charles, Julia, and George,
00:59:36were all inside the camp.
00:59:39Some regular army officers protested that to attack the peaceable village
00:59:45would betray the army's pledge of safety.
00:59:49Shivington ignored them.
00:59:52Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians, he said.
00:59:56Kill and scalp all, big and little.
01:00:00Knits make lice.
01:00:03He ordered the attack.
01:00:06From down the creek, a large body of troops was advancing at a rapid trot.
01:00:14In the camps, all was confusion and noise.
01:00:18Men, women, and children rushing out of the lodges partly dressed.
01:00:22Women and children screaming at the sight of the troops.
01:00:26Men running back into the lodges for their arms.
01:00:31Black Kettle had a large American flag tied to the end of a long lodge pole
01:00:36and kept calling out not to be frightened,
01:00:39that the camp was under protection and there was no danger.
01:00:43Then, suddenly, the troops opened fire on this mass of men, women, and children
01:00:49and all began to scatter and run.
01:00:56White Antelope, when he saw the soldiers shooting into the lodges,
01:00:59made up his mind not to live any longer.
01:01:03He stood in front of his lodge with his arms folded across his breast,
01:01:07singing the death song.
01:01:10Nothing lives long, he sang, only the earth and the mountains.
01:01:16George Bent.
01:01:28I never saw more bravery displayed by any set of people on the face of the earth
01:01:33than by these Indians.
01:01:35They would charge on the whole company singly,
01:01:38determined to kill someone before being killed themselves.
01:01:42We, of course, took no prisoners.
01:01:51After the firing, the warriors put the squaws and children together
01:01:55and surrounded them to protect them.
01:01:57I saw five squaws under a bank for shelter.
01:02:01When the troops came up to them, they ran out and showed their persons
01:02:04to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy.
01:02:09But the soldiers shot them all.
01:02:11Robert Bent.
01:02:13My great-grandmother was in the band of Black Kettle when they were attacked.
01:02:25There was one little child that was walking up the creek bed,
01:02:28and there was a soldier there that was using the little boy as target practice.
01:02:34He took one shot, aimed and missed him.
01:02:38A second came along, tried and missed him,
01:02:40and a third said, let me kill the little devil.
01:02:43And the little boy dropped dead.
01:02:45You had pregnant women whose bodies were being cut open
01:02:52and the fetuses being taken from them.
01:02:55The private body parts of men and women were cut from them,
01:03:01and some of them used as saddle horns, hat bands, tobacco pouches,
01:03:06and put on public display in Denver City in such a way that you would begin to ask,
01:03:16who is savage in this case?
01:03:18It certainly was not the Cheyenne.
01:03:24When the killing stopped, nearly 200 Cheyenne,
01:03:27most of them women and children, lay dead at Sand Creek.
01:03:33Black Kettle was among those who had managed to get away.
01:03:38Regular army officers were appalled by what Shivington's volunteers had done.
01:03:44General Grant himself privately declared the massacre nothing less than murder.
01:03:50The Congress and the army launched separate investigations.
01:03:55The Committee on the Conduct of the War.
01:03:58As to Colonel Shivington,
01:04:00your Committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct.
01:04:05Wearing the uniform of the United States,
01:04:08which should be the emblem of justice and humanity,
01:04:11he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre,
01:04:16which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty.
01:04:23But by the time the tribunals reached their verdict,
01:04:29Shivington was a civilian again and beyond the reach of military justice.
01:04:34In the end, no one was ever punished.
01:04:38Nor did Shivington ever admit he had done anything wrong.
01:04:42Speaking before a reunion of Colorado pioneers nearly 20 years later,
01:04:48he declared,
01:04:50I stand by Sand Creek.
01:04:52One time I went to the Sand Creek site years ago to put a sign up to commemorate where that massacre happened.
01:05:07And I was alone there.
01:05:12It was about six in the morning just as the sun was coming up.
01:05:15And it was very, very quiet.
01:05:19And I swear I heard babies crying.
01:05:22And it was such a strong emotional experience for me.
01:05:25I left there.
01:05:26But I've talked to several of my cousins who have also gone there really early in the morning.
01:05:30They say the same thing.
01:05:32All of William Bent's children had survived the massacre.
01:05:38Robert, who had been forced to show Shivington the way to Black Kettle's village,
01:05:43testified against him.
01:05:45Charles joined the Dog Soldiers,
01:05:48a society made up of the Cheyenne's most feared warriors,
01:05:52and went on a rampage of torture and killing.
01:05:55All whites, he now believed, were his enemy.
01:05:59He even tried to kill his own father.
01:06:07After the massacre, there were many Cheyennes that wanted to take revenge and join the Lakota,
01:06:14and conducted raids along the plot.
01:06:18Black Kettle instead chose to take his band south into safer territory.
01:06:25Although wrongs have been done me, I live in hopes.
01:06:33I have not got two hearts.
01:06:36I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man.
01:06:42But since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else,
01:06:47it is hard for me to believe white men anymore.
01:06:53Black Kettle.
01:06:55America has no north, no south, no east, no west.
01:07:01The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains.
01:07:05The compass just points up and down.
01:07:07And we can laugh now.
01:07:09America has no north, no south, no east, no west.
01:07:16The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains.
01:07:20The compass just points up and down.
01:07:23And we can laugh now at the absurd notion
01:07:26of there being a north and a south.
01:07:29We are one and undivided.
01:07:32Sam Watkins.
01:07:39On April 9th, 1865, four bloody years of civil war finally ended
01:07:45when Robert E. Lee surrendered his army
01:07:47at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.
01:07:52Baldwin City, the state of Kansas.
01:07:55Mr. Editor, towns are starting up as by magic all along the valley,
01:08:01and the sound of the hammer is heard on every hand.
01:08:05I wish to say to our friends in New Hampshire,
01:08:08one and all, we have never regretted coming to Kansas.
01:08:14We have never wavered, never flinched,
01:08:17not even when three times in 24 hours
01:08:20we were compelled to flee from our house.
01:08:23I tell you all, though we have felt the horrors of war,
01:08:27if we were not in Kansas already,
01:08:30we would come as soon as steam could bring us.
01:08:33Yours respectfully, Julia Louisa Lovejoy.
01:08:43The newly reunited nation now turned its attention to the West as never before.
01:08:48Hundreds of thousands of settlers, many of them war veterans,
01:08:53rushed West to start new lives.
01:08:56At the end of the Civil War, most of the troops were mustered out.
01:09:02Nearly a million strong, vigorous men
01:09:05who had imbibed the somewhat erratic habits of the soldier.
01:09:09They naturally looked for new homes to the Great West.
01:09:12These men flocked to the plains and were stimulated by the danger of an Indian war.
01:09:21William Tecumseh Sherman.
01:09:26In the winter of 1866, troops of the 18th Infantry,
01:09:31the regular army unit that had suffered more casualties than any other in the Civil War,
01:09:37occupied a brand new post in Dakota territory called Fort Phil Kearney.
01:09:43But a Lakota leader named Red Cloud and other warriors
01:09:47were determined to drive the soldiers away.
01:09:51Whose voice was first sounded on this land?
01:09:54The voice of the Red People who had but bows and arrows.
01:09:59When the white man comes in my country, he leaves a trail of blood behind him.
01:10:04I have two mountains in that country.
01:10:07I want the Great Father to make no roads through them.
01:10:11Red Cloud.
01:10:19Four days before Christmas,
01:10:21the Lakota and their allies attacked a wagon train,
01:10:24bringing firewood back to the post.
01:10:28Many inside the fort feared for their lives,
01:10:31but a 33-year-old lieutenant named William J. Fetterman saw his chance.
01:10:38He asked to lead a rescue mission.
01:10:40Give me 80 good men, he boasted,
01:10:43and I can ride through the whole Sioux nation.
01:10:48Fetterman went out with 80 men,
01:10:52and there's a ridge just near.
01:10:56You can see the top.
01:10:57You can see it there from the fort.
01:11:00And his commanding officer, Carrington,
01:11:06gave him orders not to go beyond that ridge.
01:11:11What happened was that the Indians under Red Cloud
01:11:14had amassed 2,000 soldiers on the other side of the ridge.
01:11:19They were all hidden in gullies and ravines,
01:11:22the Sioux, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne.
01:11:26And from these three groups,
01:11:29two men were chosen from each to be decoys.
01:11:33This is a very dangerous but a very honorable thing.
01:11:37So the decoys rode up on the ridge in sight of the fort.
01:11:45The Indians began taunting Fetterman from horseback,
01:11:49even getting off their ponies and adjusting their bridles,
01:11:52despite the army bullets buzzing all around them.
01:11:56When they raced over the ridge,
01:11:58Fetterman hurried in pursuit and disappeared.
01:12:04A few shots were heard,
01:12:06followed up by increasing rapidity.
01:12:09A desperate fight was going on in the valley below the ridge,
01:12:12in the very place where the command was forbidden to go.
01:12:15Then followed a few quick volleys,
01:12:19then scattering shots,
01:12:21and then dead silence.
01:12:24Less than half an hour had passed,
01:12:28and the silence was dreadful.
01:12:31Mrs. Frances Grummond.
01:12:35A nervous search party found Fetterman and his command
01:12:38late that afternoon.
01:12:41They were all dead.
01:12:46We packed them on top of the ammunition boxes in the wagons.
01:12:50Could not tell cavalry from the infantry.
01:12:54All dead bodies stripped naked.
01:12:57Crushed skulls with war clubs.
01:13:00Ears, nose and legs had been cut off.
01:13:03Scalps torn away and the bodies pierced with bullets and arrows.
01:13:06Wrists, feet and ankles leaving each attached by a tendon.
01:13:15We walked on their internals and did not know it in the high grass.
01:13:21Picked them up, that is their internals.
01:13:24Did not know the soldier they belonged to.
01:13:27So you see the cavalryman got an infantryman's guts,
01:13:32and an infantryman got a cavalryman's guts.
01:13:35Private John Guthrie.
01:13:38There was a bugler whose name was Adolf Metzger,
01:13:44and he was pinned down and he expended all of his ammunition.
01:13:50And then he took his bugle and started fighting with it fiercely.
01:13:56And his body was the only one that was not defiled there.
01:14:00And indeed the Indians placed a buffalo cloak over it because he fought with such bravery.
01:14:10And they paid him homage for that.
01:14:13The ladies clustered in Mrs. Wan's cabin as night drew on,
01:14:19all speechless from absolute stagnation and terror.
01:14:23Then the crunching of wagon wheels startled us to our feet.
01:14:27The gates opened.
01:14:30Wagons were slowly driven within,
01:14:33burying their dead but precious harvest from the field of blood,
01:14:36and carrying the lifeless bodies to the hospital,
01:14:41with the heart-rending news,
01:14:43almost tenderly whispered by the soldiers themselves,
01:14:46that no more were to come in.
01:14:59Dear General Sherman,
01:15:01In taking the offensive, I have to select that season when I can catch the fiends,
01:15:05and if a village is attacked and women and children killed,
01:15:09the responsibility is not with the soldiers,
01:15:12but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack.
01:15:16General Philip Sheridan.
01:15:20Dear General Sheridan,
01:15:22I will back you with my whole authority.
01:15:25I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops
01:15:29from doing what they deem proper on the spot,
01:15:32and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity
01:15:38to tie their hands,
01:15:40but will use all the powers confided to me
01:15:43to the end that these Indians,
01:15:45the enemies of our race and of our civilization,
01:15:48shall not again be able to begin and carry out their barbarous warfare.
01:15:52General William Tecumseh Sherman.
01:16:02For three years, the federal government wavered between a policy of negotiation
01:16:07or war with the Indians of the Plains.
01:16:11But in 1868, the problem was turned over to two of the men
01:16:15whose military strategy had brought the South to its knees.
01:16:21During the Civil War, Philip Sheridan had so thoroughly stripped the bountiful Shenandoah Valley,
01:16:28he liked to claim that a crow wishing to fly over the valley had to carry its own rations.
01:16:33And William Tecumseh Sherman had cut a swath from Atlanta to the sea,
01:16:40leaving the blackened chimneys of hundreds of homes as testimony to the effectiveness of his methods.
01:16:46Together, they would try to do to the Indians what they had done to the South.
01:16:52And they would start with the Cheyenne on the Southern Plains.
01:16:56The campaign they devised would be waged in the winter, when the Indians were most vulnerable.
01:17:04It called for three separate columns to force the Cheyenne back onto their reservation.
01:17:13The soldier meant to do the real fighting was Sheridan's favorite officer,
01:17:18one of the Union's most celebrated generals, George Armstrong Custer,
01:17:23who had built his reputation leading daring cavalry charges against the Confederates.
01:17:30Custer leapt at the chance.
01:17:35November 23rd, 1868.
01:17:39Reveille at three o'clock.
01:17:41Snowed all night and still snowing very heavily.
01:17:45Daylight found us on the march.
01:17:48All landmarks were invisible.
01:17:50Then, General Custer, with compass in hand, took the lead and became our guide.
01:17:572nd Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey, 7th Cavalry.
01:18:04Custer drove his men relentlessly, until one night his Indian scouts reported
01:18:10they had found a Cheyenne village of some 50 lodges.
01:18:13He ordered his men to prepare for a dawn attack, though he didn't know how many Indians were there, or whose village it was.
01:18:25As it happened, it was black kettles.
01:18:30He and his band were now encamped along the banks of the Ouachita River, in what is now Oklahoma.
01:18:35A white flag flew above his teepee.
01:18:40I have always done my best to keep my young men quiet.
01:18:45But some will not listen.
01:18:48And since the fighting began, I have not been able to keep them all at home.
01:18:52But we want peace, and I would be glad to move all my people down this way.
01:19:00I could then keep them all quietly near camp.
01:19:04Black Kettle.
01:19:06Some of his young men had slipped away to steal livestock and raid settlers.
01:19:14There were four white captives being held in the village.
01:19:18It was the pony tracks of one of the war parties that had led Custer's scouts to the edge of the camp.
01:19:28November 27th, 1868, dawned.
01:19:32Two days short of the fourth anniversary of the slaughter at Sand Creek.
01:19:39My great-grandmother was among about 400 individuals that followed Black Kettle.
01:19:45And were camped along the Ouachita.
01:19:48And the soldiers came in from the Four Directions.
01:19:54To the tune of the military band playing Gary Owen.
01:19:57They were born on such a bitterly cold morning that the instruments of the men froze to their lips as they went about the slaughter.
01:20:06Custer and more than 600 soldiers charged through Black Kettle's camp.
01:20:14It was early in the morning when the soldiers began the shooting.
01:20:17All of us jumped from our beds, and all of us started running to get away.
01:20:30I was barefooted, as were almost all of the others.
01:20:36Kate Bighead.
01:20:37The killing went on for half an hour.
01:20:44The survivors hid in the tall grass.
01:20:48My great-grandmother escaped again, fortunately, but Black Kettle and his wife did not.
01:20:55He brought his pony up alongside of her and told her to get behind him.
01:21:02She climbed up behind him, and as they started to ride across the Ouachita, were killed.
01:21:12He died fighting for what he believed in.
01:21:15That was peace.
01:21:16In the spring, the last Cheyenne holdouts from the relentless winter campaign began to surrender.
01:21:32One band was led by a chief named Rock Forehead.
01:21:36Custer decided to try to talk him into giving up, rather than risk an attack.
01:21:41He entered the village with only an interpreter, and was taken to the chief's teepee.
01:21:52There, seated under the sacred arrows, Cheyenne's most honored and powerful medicine,
01:21:58the Indians passed along a ceremonial pipe for Custer to smoke.
01:22:03He told them if they returned to the reservation, no one would be harmed,
01:22:08and peace would be restored.
01:22:11Eventually, Rock Forehead would agree to give up.
01:22:16But on that day, he was not convinced that Custer was trustworthy.
01:22:21And he tapped out the pipe's ashes on the general's boots,
01:22:25to bring Custer bad luck, and to drive home a warning.
01:22:31They told him then, that if ever afterward, he should break that peace promise,
01:22:37and should fight the Cheyennes.
01:22:40The everywhere spirit surely would cause him to be killed.
01:22:43They told him to be killed.
01:22:44They told him to be killed.
01:22:45They told him to be killed.
01:22:46They told her seanan true
01:22:56They told him to be killed.
01:22:59They told him to his memory twice a week with a durchaus quote.
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