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.
03:48These 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 lies a land
04:32where a hundred rivers and lakes weave through dense green forests
04:36and misty, languid swamps.
04:39Towering above this lush landscape
04:41are the smoky heights of the great Adirondack Mountains.
04:47This is the land where the people of the Longhouse,
04:50the mighty Iroquois nation, took root.
04:53The 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.
05:07Their 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.
05:18But 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,
05:31the 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.
05:39At 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.
06:08His face was cruel
06:10and his hair was matted like a mass of writhing snakes.
06:14He scorned these peacemakers.
06:17But finally, the peacemaker and Hiawatha
06:19held a council with Tadadaho
06:21and worked their own magic on him.
06:24They asked him to become the head chief of the new confederacy.
06:29Tadadaho agreed,
06:30and the great peace was begun.
06:35The establishment of the confederacy
06:37brought a newfound sense of security to the Iroquois.
06:41The times of peace were good,
06:42and the Creator provided the people with their three sisters,
06:46corn, beans, and squash, to sustain them.
06:50The 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
06:58that surrounded their land.
07:01Women held great power,
07:02for the Iroquois traced their ancestry
07:05through their mother's lineage,
07:06and the head mothers, not the men,
07:09appointed 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
07:23with 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
07:49brought peace between the five nations
07:51and led to peace throughout the nations of the Northeast.
07:55But in the late 1600s,
07:57beaver skins were a prized commodity in Europe,
08:00rivaling the Europeans' lust for gold.
08:04Realizing this,
08:05the Iroquois sought to monopolize the trade in pelts.
08:09They played one European power against the other
08:11and dictated terms to other tribes
08:14eager to trade.
08:16They challenged their old enemies,
08:17the Mohicans,
08:18for the right to trade exclusively with the Dutch.
08:22Then they turned their attentions north,
08:24where the French were trading with the Hurons
08:26along the St. Lawrence.
08:28The 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
08:40and also absorbed into the Confederacy.
08:44Now, expanding to the south,
08:46the Iroquois encountered
08:47the Tuscarora tribe in the Carolinas.
08:50The Tuscaroras were being driven
08:52from their lands by white settlers,
08:54so the Iroquois invited them
08:56into their great Confederacy.
08:58The Tuscaroras migrated north
09:00and became the sixth nation of the Iroquois.
09:03By 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
09:19with the Iroquois form of government.
09:21His contributions to the U.S. Constitution
09:24may have come from the Iroquois principles.
09:26In 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
09:40into 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
10:16as a conquered nation,
10:19forcing the Iroquois to surrender
10:20most of their territory.
10:22Now, much of the precious land
10:26that sustained their life
10:28for 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.
10:39In 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.
10:46By the end of the 18th century,
10:51the 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 with a command
11:15from the creator.
11:17These messengers condemned whiskey,
11:19abortion, and witchcraft,
11:21and called for a return to the old ways
11:23of living before the whites came.
11:26The Iroquois people were profoundly affected,
11:29and his teachings became known far and wide
11:31as the Longhouse religion.
11:34But the displacement of the Iroquois
11:36from their land continued.
11:38Tragically,
11:39between 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.
12:02A 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.
12:55The 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 burns the memory
13:11of 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,
13:21ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya.
13:25In a great peninsula at the edge of the continent
13:48lies a land of lush green forests
13:51and deep meandering swamps.
13:53Bordered on the east by the mighty Atlantic
13:56and on the west by the Gulf of Mexico,
13:59this is Florida,
14:01land of the great Seminole nation.
14:05It was here that the Seminoles
14:07fought the longest resistance to U.S. expansion
14:10by any Indian nation.
14:12It took three wars,
14:14half the U.S. army,
14:16and over $30 million
14:17to subdue the proud and defiant Seminole people.
14:21To this day,
14:23the Seminoles remain the only Indian nation
14:25that never signed a document of surrender
14:28with the U.S. government.
14:32Florida's first people,
14:34the Timucua, Calusa, and other tribes,
14:36were virtually wiped out by war and disease
14:38brought by the Spanish and British
14:40in the 16th and 17th centuries.
14:43Then, in the early 1700s,
14:45a wave of refugees came to Florida from the north,
14:48fleeing from the expanding British colonies.
14:51They were Creek Indians
14:52driven off their lands by settlers
14:54and African slaves
14:56and other Indians escaping slavery.
14:57In the lush grasslands of Spanish Florida,
15:02these Indians and blacks
15:03began to merge into one people
15:05known as the Seminoles.
15:07Their name came from the Creek word Seminole,
15:10meaning runaway or wild.
15:13And for many years,
15:14these runaways lived together
15:15in the untamed land of northern Florida.
15:18Blacks formed their own towns
15:19side by side with Indians,
15:21some free,
15:22some enslaved to Indian masters.
15:24Life centered around Seminole towns or tawas.
15:31They worshipped the master of breath,
15:33embodied in the sun,
15:34and took names for their clans
15:35from the world around them,
15:37names like alligator,
15:39turtle,
15:39snake,
15:40and maize.
15:42Every summer,
15:43at harvest time,
15:44the Seminole people
15:45gathered in town squares
15:46to celebrate the new year
15:48with the Green Corn Festival.
15:50After eight days of dancing,
15:52sweat baths,
15:53and purification,
15:54the priests swept the old ashes
15:56from the fire pits.
15:57Then they started a new fire
15:59in the town square,
16:00and all past grievances were forgiven.
16:03Medicine men carried hot coals
16:04from the town fire to each home,
16:06and on every hearth,
16:07the people roasted green corn.
16:11In the warmer climate of Florida,
16:14Seminole farmers began to grow
16:16large groves of oranges,
16:17and many learned the ways
16:19of horse ranching
16:20and slaveholding
16:21from their European neighbors.
16:22The Seminole chief,
16:24King Payne,
16:25even owned a plantation
16:27with 20 slaves,
16:281,500 head of cattle,
16:30and 400 horses.
16:32But then,
16:34in 1776,
16:36American colonists
16:37revolted against British rule.
16:39England created chaos
16:40by proclaiming freedom
16:41for all African slaves.
16:44More and more African runaways
16:45fled south
16:46to join the Seminoles.
16:47American slaveholders
16:49grew angry and nervous
16:51about whole towns
16:52of black Indians
16:53living at their southern doorstep.
16:56After the Revolutionary War,
16:58Americans began crossing
16:59the Florida border
17:00to settle on Indian lands.
17:03Slave traders raided
17:04Seminole villages,
17:05kidnapping anyone
17:06who looked black.
17:08Infuriated,
17:09the Seminoles struck back.
17:10In 1817,
17:14the American government
17:15sent Army General
17:16Andrew Jackson
17:17down south
17:18on a mission
17:18to recapture
17:19runaway slaves.
17:21Jackson's troops
17:22illegally crossed
17:23Spain's Florida border
17:24and burned Seminole villages,
17:27confiscated livestock,
17:28and destroyed food stores.
17:30The Seminole people
17:31fought back,
17:32their numbers tripled
17:33by New Creek refugees
17:34from the north.
17:35That November of 1817,
17:39the Seminoles ambushed
17:40a boat carrying women,
17:42children,
17:43and 40 soldiers
17:44on the Apalachicola River,
17:46and all but 13 whites
17:48were shot dead.
17:49This marked the beginning
17:50of the First Seminole War.
17:54Once again,
17:55Andrew Jackson
17:56marched into Florida.
17:58Jackson and his troops
17:59destroyed more Seminole towns,
18:01and the Seminoles
18:02fled further south.
18:04Jackson's victory
18:05in the First Seminole War
18:06led Spain to sign a document
18:08with the United States
18:09for the sale of Florida.
18:12The Seminoles were coerced
18:14by the U.S. government
18:15to sign a treaty
18:16and were pressed
18:17onto a large reservation
18:18in central Florida.
18:20These new lands
18:21were swampy
18:22and unfit for farming,
18:24game was scarce,
18:25and government rations
18:26in short supply.
18:28The officer in charge
18:29of the reservation reported,
18:31they are in the most
18:32miserable situation,
18:33and unless the government
18:34assists them,
18:35many of them
18:36will starve to death.
18:38In this hour of desperation,
18:40one warrior rose
18:41to lead the Seminoles
18:42in their second war
18:43of resistance.
18:44His name was Osceola,
18:46and he soon became
18:47one of the great leaders
18:48in American Indian history.
18:51In 1834,
18:53the government tried
18:54to get the Seminole chiefs
18:55to sign a treaty
18:56for their removal
18:57to Oklahoma.
18:58Government agents
18:59spread the treaty
19:00on the table
19:01and waited tensely.
19:03Suddenly,
19:04Osceola jumped up
19:05and plunged his knife
19:06into the treaty,
19:07saying,
19:08the only way
19:09I will sign
19:10is with this.
19:12A government agent
19:13named Wiley Thompson
19:14arrested Osceola,
19:16and the chief shouted
19:17as he was dragged away.
19:19I will remember the hour.
19:21The agent has had his day.
19:24I will have mine.
19:27Osceola was soon
19:28released from prison
19:29and, with his great skill
19:31as a speaker,
19:32convinced his people
19:33that they must resist.
19:35In December of 1835,
19:37Osceola ambushed
19:38and murdered
19:39the Indian agent
19:39Wiley Thompson.
19:41That same day,
19:43Seminole chief
19:44Mikanopi
19:44led an attack
19:45on government troops
19:46under the command
19:47of Major Francis Dade
19:48near present-day Ocala.
19:50180 Seminole warriors
19:52ambushed Dade's infantry unit.
19:55The entire army command
19:57was soon annihilated,
19:58with only three
19:59known survivors.
20:01The Dade massacre
20:02was a shocking defeat
20:03for the U.S. Army
20:04and brought down
20:05the full fury
20:06of the government.
20:07The Second Seminole War
20:09had now begun.
20:12To the whites,
20:14Osceola said,
20:15you have guns
20:16and so have we.
20:17Your men will fight
20:19and so will ours
20:20until the last drop
20:21of the Seminole's blood
20:22has moistened the dust
20:24of our hunting grounds.
20:25At the end of a bloody
20:27and futile year of fighting,
20:29the U.S. had nearly
20:30one half of its army
20:31in Florida.
20:33General Jessup
20:33called Osceola
20:34to meet under a flag
20:35of truce,
20:36but then double-crossed him
20:38and threw the great leader
20:39into prison
20:39in St. Augustine.
20:41Three months later,
20:43brokenhearted
20:43and severely ill,
20:45Osceola died in prison
20:46in Fort Moultrie,
20:47South Carolina.
20:48Osceola's death
20:51was a horrible setback
20:52to the Seminole resistance,
20:54and the army continued
20:55its relentless war
20:56against the people,
20:57pushing the Seminoles
20:58deeper and deeper
20:59into Florida's southern swamps
21:01and Everglades.
21:03Perhaps 500 Seminoles
21:05remained in Florida,
21:06nearly invisible
21:07in the deep swamps.
21:09Their lands,
21:10often covered with water,
21:11they lived by hunting
21:12and gathering
21:12and by raising vegetables
21:14in small plots
21:15above the waterline.
21:16They built elevated homes
21:18and they learned
21:19to avoid the deadly
21:20water moccasins
21:21that occupied their swamps.
21:25But civilization occasionally
21:27discovered isolated bands.
21:29In 1855,
21:31in an effort to agitate
21:32the remaining Seminole people,
21:34a U.S. surveying party
21:35raided the garden
21:36of Billy Bolegs,
21:37the last of the Seminole chiefs.
21:40The government agents
21:41confiscated what they could carry
21:42and burned the rest.
21:45Bolegs led his people
21:46on in resistance
21:47against the army
21:47for three years.
21:49But finally,
21:50outnumbered
21:51and out of resources,
21:52Bolegs and his followers
21:53surrendered
21:54and were sent
21:55west of the Mississippi.
21:58Yet several hundred Seminoles
22:00managed to stay behind
22:02in the vast,
22:03uncharted Everglades.
22:05The government finally
22:06gave up pursuit
22:06of these last free
22:08Seminole Indians
22:08and to this day,
22:10they never formally surrendered.
22:11Like the melting pot
22:16that became America,
22:18the Seminoles are a patchwork
22:19of different peoples
22:20and cultures.
22:22They are Indians,
22:23African slaves,
22:24and other refugees
22:25united in a struggle
22:27to create a separate nation.
22:29A proud and defiant people,
22:31the Seminoles remain today
22:33the only unconquered Indian nation
22:36in the United States.
22:37.
23:07In 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,
24:07and crafting 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.
24:44These paintings 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 the
25:55world 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.
27:12Well, 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.
27:42Here, 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.
27:58Carlton chose his old friend, Kit Carson, to head the military campaign against the Navajos.
28:05Carlton 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 a thousand New Mexico volunteers to
28:17wage war against 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,
28:28and starve them into submission.
28:31But 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.
28:58Barbencito 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 the
29:20wasteland that General Carlton considered a fine reservation.
29:25Indians who escaped the reservation told of a barren, drought-stricken land where they lived
29:29like prairie dogs in burrows.
29:32Kit Carson continued to hunt those who were still free.
29:36In September 1866, Chief Manuelito and 23 hungry, ragged warriors surrendered at a military post
29:44in northwestern New Mexico.
29:46His band had resisted capture for more than three years, but now they were too exhausted
29:52to fight on.
29:54The days of the 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.
30:12Two 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 Carleton'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.
30:50Sherman told the Navajo,
30:53My 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
31:08ground, we 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.
31:46There are so many birds, as well left with them, and the sky above.
31:50However, there are so many birds, like they're just gonna be found.
31:55And I mean, I know a rabbit is wrong, isn't it?
31:56But I mean, I know, a rabbit is wrong, right?
32:00And you know, when it is the same with a man with a man, with a cat, with a man with
32:03something that you love in your own trauma.
32:05The other people, you know, the other people who are friends, are you?
32:08And you know, a rabbit is wrong with a mother.
32:08If you know, there are so many people who have any woman, with a man.
32:12You don't want to know how they are.
32:13It 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 to ride in freedom
32:36across the Great Plains.
32:38Here, 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 like a dark living sea
33:11across 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 all they needed for their existence.
33:31They killed only enough animals
33:33to supply their needs for the winter.
33:35They stripped the meat carefully to dry in the sun,
33:37storing 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.
33:48The 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.
33:57But the Lakota and Ojibwas drove them
34:00onto the high plains in the 1700s.
34:04In time, they abandoned planting
34:05and followed the roaming buffalo.
34:08The Cheyenne were fiercely independent
34:10and were among the most feared warriors in the West.
34:14Their 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,
34:25hunting and raiding.
34:26The Cheyenne were known
34:28for their advanced religious beliefs.
34:31They held a life-renewing Sundance ceremony
34:33every mid-summer,
34:34after the tribes left winter camps
34:36and 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
34:56racing like a storm cloud from the east.
34:59It would soon change the century-old life
35:01of 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.
35:13Soon, hundreds of buffalo bones lay scattered on the southern plains,
35:17their uneaten flesh rotting in the hot prairie sun.
35:22After 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.
35:38The district military commander,
35:40Colonel John Shivington,
35:42ordered his men to burn villages
35:44and kill Cheyennes wherever and whenever found.
35:48This preacher-turned-soldier said,
35:50It is right and honorable to use any means
35:54under God's heaven to kill Indians
35:56that 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
36:08and keep my band so.
36:10I want to live in peace.
36:13Black Kettle had once shook the hand
36:15of President Lincoln in Washington,
36:16and he prided himself
36:17that he had never led a raid against the settlers.
36:20In the fall of 1864,
36:27Black Kettle and fellow chiefs
36:29met with Evans and Shivington.
36:31They convinced the Cheyenne to move to Fort Lyon,
36:34where the Cheyenne could stay the winter
36:36under military protection.
36:38So Black Kettle led 600 of his people
36:40to a camp in the broad valley
36:41of Sand Creek in Colorado.
36:44But 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
37:18along 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,
37:30and 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 showing the scalps,
37:42severed 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 south of the Arkansas River.
38:33By 1868, the Kansas military commander,
38:37Philip Sheridan, was 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.
39:36But 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
41:12the Lakota until finally settling
41:14in the Great Plains in 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.
41:33The Hesapa, called by the settlers the Black Hills,
41:40became the sacred heart of the Lakota Nation.
41:43Warriors 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.
42:01All that remained in their possession
42:03was the sacred Hesapa
42:05and some hunting grounds in Montana.
42:08Yet 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.
42:27When 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 to 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 under 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.
43:17But the Ogallala leader sent a message saying,
43:21When 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 into Fort Laramie
43:36and signed a treaty declaring Powder River Country
43:39and the Black Hills unceded Indian territory.
43:43In return, Red Cloud promised to go on the reservation,
43:46where he would never lift his hand
43:47against the whites again.
43:51For 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 on a gold-hunting expedition
44:03into the Black Hills.
44:06Custer sent reports to the eastern newspapers
44:08of gold from the grassroots down.
44:11The Indians watched a torrent of riotous prospectors
44:15pour into the sacred heart of their nation
44:16in complete disregard for the treaty the whites had made.
44:21When Washington tried to buy the Black Hills,
44:24the Ogallala war chief Crazy Horse replied,
44:27One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.
44:31The Hunkbapa chief Sitting Bull warned,
44:33The Black Hills belong to me.
44:36If the whites try to take them,
44:37I will fight.
44:41Unable to buy the Black Hills,
44:44President Grant sent orders to 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, the Plains tribes were gathering
44:55at Rosebud Creek for the sacred sun dance.
44:57Amidst the chanting and swirling warriors,
45:15Sitting Bull made 50 skin offerings in each of his arms
45:18until his blood flowed around him
45:20and he fell into a trance.
45:23When he awoke, he told of a vision,
45:25I saw soldiers and some Indians on horseback
45:30coming down like grasshoppers
45:32with their heads down and their hats falling off.
45:36They were falling right into our camp.
45:40Soldiers were indeed coming.
45:42General Sheridan had ordered troops to 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, the Lakota were forced to sign away
46:48their right to the Powder River and Hesapa.
46:51The government said that they had violated the treaty
46:53by going to war with the U.S.
46:56Promised a reservation in the Powder River country,
46:59in May of 1877,
47:01Crazy Horse marched his band of starving Ogallalas
47:04to 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 back from Canada,
47:25offering to pardon his war crimes
47:27in return for surrender.
47:29The hunkpapa leader refused, asking,
47:31What have we done that 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 crossed 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 of the Great Plains,
48:06not a herd of buffalo could be found.
48:10Sitting Bull joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show,
48:14selling autographed photos of himself
48:16to gawking children all across the continent.
48:20The show's finale was a reenactment
48:22of the Battle of the Little Bighorn,
48:24and the terrible Indian Wars
48:25were now only an entertainment for the victor.
48:28On the reservation,
48:32warriors lived on rotting scraps
48:33and dreams of their past.
48:37Inevitably, a prophet came,
48:39telling of a new messiah
48:40coming to bury the whites beneath the earth
48:43and bring the Indian dead to life.
48:46The hunting grounds would be restored,
48:48and the land would once again
48:49be heavy with buffalo.
48:50This prophet was 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 donned ghost shirts
49:09that would stop the white man's bullets.
49:13Fearing a new Indian uprising,
49:15Major General Nelson Miles
49:17ordered troops onto the Indian agencies.
49:20Though Sitting Bull was openly skeptical
49:22of the new religion,
49:24the whites thought he was to blame
49:25for disturbances
49:26and ordered his arrest.
49:29On the morning of December 15th,
49:3143 Indian police
49:32led the Hunkbapa chief from his cabin.
49:35Shots were fired,
49:36and Sitting Bull fell to the ground,
49:38dead.
49:40Another band of soldiers
49:42had gone in search
49:43of the Miniconju chief Bigfoot,
49:45whose people had gone
49:46to the Badlands
49:47where they could perform
49:47the ghost dance without fear.
49:50The Bluecoats caught up with them,
49:52and the Indians and the soldiers
49:53camped for the night
49:54beside Wounded Knee Creek.
49:57500 soldiers stood guard
49:59over 350 men, women, and children.
50:03At sunrise,
50:04the army began disarming the Indians.
50:07Somehow a rifle went off
50:08and a soldier fell dead,
50:10and both sides opened fire at once.
50:13The army cut down half the men
50:15with its first volley,
50:16and rapid-fire cannons
50:17rained shrapnel from the hills.
50:20Indians ran and were shot down
50:22like buffalo.
50:23When the smoke blew away,
50:25153 men, women, and children
50:28of the Lakota nation lay dead,
50:30their blood flowing together
50:32with 25 corpses
50:33from the 7th Cavalry.
50:35The ghost shirts had been powerless,
50:38and the snows fell for two days,
50:40softly muffling the moans
50:41of the dying.
50:43On New Year's Day of 1891,
50:47the frozen dead of Wounded Knee
50:48were gathered in wagons
50:49and buried in a mass grave.
50:52Lakota Shaman Black Elk
50:54said many years later,
50:55I can still see the butchered women
50:58and children lying heaped and scattered,
51:00and I can see that something else
51:03died there in the bloody mud
51:04and was buried in the blizzard.
51:07A people's dream died there.
51:10It was a beautiful dream.
51:11But the legacy of the Titan Lakota
51:16still commands deep respect
51:18and admiration today.
51:20Their fight for survival
51:21against the U.S. Army
51:22at Little Bighorn
51:23created a legend,
51:25yet ultimately led
51:26to their final defeat.
51:28The spirit of the Lakota,
51:30a proud people who poured forth
51:32their blood to preserve
51:33a way of life,
51:35will endure long
51:36after the stories of battle
51:37are forgotten.
51:45These nations each contributed
51:47a piece in the patchwork quilt
51:49that has become America.
51:51From the Iroquois
51:53great law of peace
51:54which influenced the writing
51:55of our Constitution,
51:57to the Cheyenne concept
51:59of peaceful resistance,
52:01these great Indian nations
52:02built a heritage
52:04that still inspires
52:05new generations
52:06of Native Americans.
52:08They will always be
52:10a vital part
52:11of the American adventure.
52:12Hope
52:13this is the great
52:23thing that we are
52:23who'll find
52:25well.
52:26So
52:27some
52:28rod that
52:29storyteller
52:29so
52:30that
52:30at
52:32camera
52:32ideas
52:33are
52:33the
52:34she could
52:34easily
52:34Nelson
52:35are
52:36desperate
52:37her
52:37and
52:38her
52:39approval
52:39is
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