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Documentary, Ken Burns The West ;8 Ghost Dance
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00:00When I was a boy, the Lakota owned the world.
00:21The sun rose and set on their land.
00:25They sent 10,000 men to battle.
00:30Where are the warriors today?
00:33Who slew them?
00:35Where are our lands?
00:38Who owns them?
00:41Siddinbo.
00:42Siddinbo.
00:44Siddinbo.
00:45Siddinbo.
00:46Siddinbo.
00:47Siddinbo.
00:48Siddinbo.
00:49Siddinbo.
00:50Siddinbo.
00:51Siddinbo.
00:52Siddinbo.
00:53Siddinbo.
00:54Siddinbo.
00:55Siddinbo.
00:56Siddinbo.
00:57Siddinbo.
00:58Siddinbo.
00:59Siddinbo.
01:00Siddinbo.
01:01Siddinbo.
01:02Siddinbo.
01:03Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
01:33By 1887, the West was changing faster than ever before.
01:54Americans were moved by the same impulses that had always moved them,
01:58to better their own lives and transform the region in the process.
02:03Now, their numbers soared and they brought with them the tools of the new industrial age.
02:14Mining still lured people to the West from every corner of the globe,
02:19but it was a full-scale industry now.
02:24And the cities it created seemed little different from the grimy factory towns of the East.
02:34Homesteaders and fortune seekers still arrived,
02:38even though much of the best land had already been claimed.
02:46And the frenzy over what was left touched off human stampedes,
02:50while whole towns opened for business overnight.
03:04But for the first inhabitants of the West,
03:07it seemed that a way of life that had lasted for generations was ending.
03:11But as they saw their remaining land stripped away,
03:17some Indians sought refuge in a religion that promised it had all been a bad dream.
03:24that there are more than ever others.
03:25It's worth it.
03:30If you stop and think about the kind of prejudice a lot of people suffered,
03:37a lot of the destruction that took place as a consequence of war and conquering,
03:41destruction that took place as a consequence of war and conquering, then it wasn't such
03:47a pretty picture. But I have to say that I think we have to recognize that that's a story
03:55of all places, of all nations. No matter where in the world, it is a story of conquering,
04:05great sacrifice, great loss, and a lot of times a taking away of things that really belong to
04:14someone else. But even knowing all of that and wishing that part of it were not there
04:25cannot take away the spirit and the idealism and the excitement that the people felt that
04:34actually did it and that we still feel when we think about them doing it.
04:41On the morning of April 22nd, 1889, some 100,000 eager would-be settlers surrounded what was
05:03called the Oklahoma District on the Southern Plains, preparing to storm in and stake their claims.
05:10Two million acres in the heart of Indian Territory were being opened for homesteading. All along
05:16the district's borders, soldiers from the U.S. Army held back the swarm of excited pioneers
05:22who were poised for the signal that the land rush could begin. At precisely noon, the bugles blew and the huge crowd surged ahead.
05:41Many headed for towns about to be born. Oklahoma City, Stillwater, Kingfisher, Norman, and Guthrie.
06:04The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver
06:13lashed his horses furiously. Each man on foot caught his breath and started forward.
06:19Harper's Weekly.
06:23By the end of the day, all 1,920,000 acres in the Oklahoma District had been claimed.
06:38But the choicest lots had already been taken by settlers who had illegally slipped through
06:43the army lines the night before. They called themselves Sooners.
06:52Men who had expected to lay out the town's sight were grievously disappointed at their first glimpse
06:57of their proposed scene of operations. The slope east of the railway at Guthrie Station
07:05was already dotted white with tents and sprinkled thick with men running about in all directions.
07:13By noon of the following day, the 15,000 new citizens of the brand new town of Guthrie began choosing their mayor.
07:23It wasn't easy. There were two candidates and no ballots. Two lines were formed and each man's vote was tallied.
07:32But so many voters ran to the back of the line to vote again that the whole business had to be done over.
07:41Lawyers went to work, filing land claims for a fee.
07:47Three men without a cent between them opened a bank. Deposits were kept in a pot-bellied stove until they could afford to buy a vault.
07:58A blacksmith soon saw the need for a dentist, declared himself one, and advertised his skills by hanging the teeth he extracted on a string outside his tent.
08:12Within five days, wood-framed buildings were being banged together along Main Street.
08:22And by the time Guthrie was only one month old, it had a hotel, general stores, three newspapers, and 50 saloons.
08:33In the years that followed, there would be more land rushes throughout the West, bringing in settlers and creating new towns in numbers never before imagined.
08:56I am a being of the West. I am an heir to the richest possible heritage that anybody could have.
09:11I think of those people who were ready to take on anything.
09:18And to do so with the commitment and the dedication that no matter, come hell or high water, they were going to succeed.
09:28I think I'm a part of that. And I love the notion of being somewhere in that lineage and know that my children are too.
09:41The Indian may now become a free man, free from the thralldom of the tribe, free from the domination of the reservation system, free to enter into the body of our citizens.
10:06This bill may therefore be considered as the Magna Carta of the Indians of our country.
10:13Alice Fletcher.
10:18In 1887, well-meaning reformers had persuaded Congress to pass the Dawes Act.
10:27It provided for each head of an Indian family to be given 160 acres of farmland or 320 of grazing land.
10:37Then, all the remaining tribal lands were to be declared surplus and opened up for whites.
10:46Tribal ownership and the tribes themselves were meant simply to disappear.
10:55The Dawes Act was a way to break up the whole tribal structure of Native American nations.
11:05Instead of saying you are a group of people, all of a sudden you are individual landowners, you are Americans.
11:14And so it was designed to break up community, to civilize people, make us farmers, and to also break up our tribal structure.
11:24In 1889, the same year as the Oklahoma Land Rush, two Eastern women arrived at the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho determined to implement the Dawes Act.
11:40Alice Fletcher was a leader of the group that called itself the Friends of the Indians, a pioneer in the emerging field of ethnology and one of the architects of the new law.
11:55Her companion was Jane Gay, a sometime poet who had learned the art of photography to document their time with the Indians.
12:05They had come, they believed, to save the Nez Perce from themselves, by dividing up their land and making them homesteaders.
12:18Alice explained what she had called them together to hear.
12:22explained the land allotment, the meaning of citizenship, and her wish that the whole people would see the wisdom of the great change that she had come to bring upon them.
12:35Still a silence.
12:37The interpreter read the law and then sat down and waited.
12:41A little stir arose among the people, and at length one man stood up, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, with an air of authority about him.
12:52He said, we do not want our land cut up in little pieces.
12:57We have not told you to do it.
12:59We are content to be as we are.
13:02And a groan of assent ran along the dark line of sphinxes as the old man drew his blanket about him.
13:09Our people are scattered, said another.
13:13We must come together and decide whether we will have this law.
13:18She told them that there is nothing for them to decide.
13:23They have no choice.
13:26The law must be obeyed.
13:30Jane Gay
13:32Alice Fletcher immediately set to work marking off the new boundaries on the reservation.
13:44The Nez Perce came to call her the Measuring Woman.
13:49Chief Joseph himself came to pay a visit.
13:53After his long flight from the Army in 1877, he had been exiled to Oklahoma,
13:59and then allowed to return to a reservation in eastern Washington,
14:03but not to his beloved homeland, the Wallowa Valley in Oregon.
14:10Using a new device, a wax cylinder, Fletcher convinced Joseph to record one of his traditional songs.
14:17But she could not talk him into taking an allotment of land.
14:35He will have none but the Wallowa Valley from which he was driven.
14:40He will remain landless and homeless if he cannot have his own again.
14:46It was good to see an unsubjugated Indian.
14:50One could not help respecting the man who still stood firmly for his rights
14:56after having fought and suffered and been defeated in the struggle for their maintenance.
15:02Alice Fletcher kept at it for four long years, trying to divide Indian lands fairly,
15:12while fending off whites who sought to persuade her to leave the best land for them.
15:30I'm nearly used up.
15:34I have such a hard time here.
15:38But I shall soon push through.
15:40My honor is involved in getting this done.
15:48By the time she was finished, she had made more than 2,000 Nez Perce allotments,
15:53over 175,000 acres.
15:59Then she and her friend started east to Cambridge, Massachusetts,
16:03where Fletcher had been awarded a fellowship at Harvard's Peabody Museum.
16:07In the week's journey home across the continent, we shall have time to review the outcome of our earnest endeavors.
16:17But if it has been well for us and well for the Indian, it's not for us to know.
16:25We can only leave the question among the unsolvable, whose multitude grows ever greater as life goes on.
16:37The Dawes Act, meant to help Indians, devastated them instead.
16:52In 1895, the remaining half-million unallotted acres of Nez Perce tribal land were declared surplus and opened for homesteading.
17:05By 1910, there would be 30,000 whites within the Nez Perce reservation.
17:12And just 1,500 Nez Perce.
17:20Across much of the West, the story would be the same.
17:23Before the Dawes Act, some 150 million acres remained in Indian hands.
17:31Within 20 years, two-thirds of their land was gone.
17:46By the 1880s, the great American West was not a matter of cowboys, Indians, mountain men, and explorers.
17:53But in fact, a land largely urban, largely industrial, and riven with many of the same problems that assaulted the industrialized East.
18:06The mining industry, probably more than any other single industry, was designed specifically to get into the West, find what resources it had, dig them out, leave a wreck behind, and get out and move on someplace else.
18:20Butte, Montana was always a mining town.
18:30It had been born during a gold rush in the 1860s, and was given a second lease on life with a silver strike in the 1870s.
18:39Then, in 1881, 300 feet below the ground, miners made an even more important discovery.
18:48The largest deposit of copper the world had ever seen.
18:52It was just what the new electrical age required.
18:56Copper for conductors, machines, wires.
18:59By the mid-1880s, Butte's mines were yielding almost 2,000 tons of silver and copper ore every day, well over a million dollars every month.
19:14Its citizens boasted they lived on the richest hill on earth.
19:18Butte had a kind of collective energy that I suspect no other western town could have matched.
19:27The mines never closed, the bars never closed, certainly the red light district did not close.
19:35I've always thought of it as an eastern town, as a misplaced eastern town,
19:40a kind of downsized Pittsburgh located in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.
19:49Most of the Butte miners were Irish, but there were also Finns and Japanese and Italians,
19:55Croatians, Mexicans and Swedes, 38 different nationalities in all,
20:01so many that the no-smoking signs in the mines had to be printed in 14 languages.
20:08All the men were working steadily toward one goal,
20:12take as much ore as possible from the mines, 4,000 feet below the surface.
20:18It was the most dangerous job in America.
20:23In the hot, airless tunnels, temperatures stayed above 90 degrees all year round.
20:29Mineshafts collapsed or caught fire.
20:34And there was the perpetual threat of silicosis, caused by inhaling dust,
20:40which tore at the miners' lungs and led thousands to die young from pneumonia and tuberculosis.
20:47The elevation to ground level in the middle of Butte winter was the cause of great
20:55inhalation among the school children of Butte because men being raised from a 100-degree mine
21:01would be covered with sweat.
21:03And as they reached the surface, as their sweat-drenched work clothes would strike 40-degree
21:08below air, they would disappear in a plume of evaporation.
21:12So the school children used to gather on the hillside and watch the men raised,
21:17and it was their after-school pleasure to watch them literally disappear in this cloud, this puff of smoke.
21:25In approaching Butte, I marveled at the desolation of the country.
21:35There was no greenery of any kind.
21:38It had all been killed by the fumes and smoke of the piles of burning ore.
21:44Bill Heywood.
21:48Just four trees survived within Butte itself, and all the nearby hillsides had long since been stripped of wood
21:56to fuel the smelters that roared on all day and all night.
22:01Thick, reeking smoke hung perpetually over the city and the raw-boned mining settlements around it.
22:09Cabbage Patch, Anaconda, and a place called Seldom Seen.
22:15Butte had an air pollution problem that was such that it would be literally dark at noon.
22:22The prevailing winds usually would carry the smoke away, but in dead air conditions, Butte was obliterated.
22:30It disappeared from view.
22:32Much of mining that goes on in the West today is still operating under a law signed by Ulysses S. Grant, called the General Mining Law of 1872,
22:49which was designed specifically to encourage mining in the West.
22:55It encouraged exploitation.
22:58It literally gave away enormous chunks of American land at almost no price, imposed no restrictions on how the mines would be developed,
23:08required no reclamation work afterwards, no monitoring of whatever acids and other garbage that might get spilled into the local water tables,
23:17and gave away, no one even knows how much precisely, gold and silver, with no royalties paid to the government at all.
23:27The West is a fairly fragile environment.
23:33Unlike the well-forested East, the scars last longer, the damage is of a longer duration,
23:39and yet we still continue to use the West the same way, as if what we did was impermanent.
23:45But in human terms, it is not impermanent at all.
23:48It lasts a very long time, generations.
23:52By 1890, no Indian people anywhere in the West lived freely on their own land.
24:15And even the reservations on which they struggled to survive were being broken up under the Dawes Act.
24:21Congress had cut appropriations.
24:26Rations were drastically reduced.
24:30There were deadly epidemics of measles, influenza, whooping cough.
24:38On the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, the Lakota medicine man Sitting Bull was living quietly in his cabin.
24:49He was still regarded with respect by those Lakotas who remembered the eerie accuracy of his visions during the days when they had fought Custer.
25:01But the Lakota were divided now, as they struggled to come to terms with the white man's world.
25:08And Sitting Bull had had another, more disturbing vision.
25:13This one told him that the worst fate that could befall a Lakota awaited him.
25:19To die at the hands of his own people.
25:23That fall, Sitting Bull had a visitor, a Minikanju Lakota named Kicking Bear, just back from a train trip to the far West and bearing remarkable news.
25:40A ceremony called the Ghost Dance was sweeping through many tribes of the West.
25:49It was part of a message of hope for all Indian peoples, being preached by a Paiute medicine man and prophet named Wawoka.
25:58My brothers, I bring you word from your fathers, the ghosts, that they are marching now to join you.
26:07Led by the Messiah, who came once to live on earth with the white man, but was killed by them.
26:15I bring to you the promise of a day in which there will be no white man to lay his hand on the bridle of the Indian's horse.
26:26When the red men of the prairie will rule the world.
26:31Wawoka.
26:36Wawoka's gospel of salvation was filled with Christian as well as Indian elements.
26:43Men and women were first to purify themselves and forswear alcohol and violence.
26:51Then they were to dance in a large circle, chanting and appealing to the spirits of their ancestors.
27:00When they did, Wawoka promised, the whites would vanish, the buffalo would cover the earth again.
27:07The ghost dance, I think, was a desperate prayer.
27:14They thought that, well, it may be possible that all of this has been a bad dream or all of this is passing and there will be the restoration of the world we knew and loved.
27:28Like most Indians, Sitting Bull remained skeptical of the ceremony's promised powers.
27:35But he agreed to let the ghost dance be taught to those people at Standing Rock who wanted to learn it.
27:41In the Lakota version of the ceremony, the dancers wore special shirts, said to be stronger than the white man's bullets.
27:49The people wearing the sacred shirts and feathers now formed a ring.
27:59We boys were in it, all joined hands.
28:02Everyone was respectful and quiet, expecting something wonderful to happen.
28:09The leaders beat time and sang as the people danced, going round to the left in a sideways step.
28:16Occasionally, someone fell unconscious into the center.
28:26As each one came to, she or he slowly sat up and looked about, bewildered, and then began wailing inconsolably.
28:36Pine Ridge Agency, November 12, 1890.
28:50We need protection and we need it now.
28:53Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy.
28:57The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted.
29:03And this should be done at once.
29:06Daniel F. Royer.
29:11Responding to the pleas of a frightened Indian agent, Washington dispatched General Nelson A. Miles with 5,000 troops,
29:20including the 7th Cavalry, Custer's Old Command.
29:24At Pine Ridge and Rosebud in South Dakota, the ghost dancers feared that the soldiers had come to attack them
29:31and fled to a remote plateau surrounded by cliffs, which nervous whites soon began calling the Stronghold.
29:40Meanwhile, at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Indian police, charged with keeping peace among their own people,
29:50heard a rumor that Sitting Bull was about to join the ghost dancers.
29:58Forty-three Lakota policemen were dispatched to bring Sitting Bull in.
30:03Two troops of U.S. Cavalry followed at a distance.
30:07Before dawn on December 15, 1890, the police burst into Sitting Bull's house, ordered him to his feet, and pushed him toward the door.
30:22Outside, Sitting Bull's followers began to gather, taunting the Lakota police, vowing to keep them from taking their leader.
30:30Sitting Bull hesitated, unsure of what to do.
30:37Then one of his supporters raised his rifle and shot one of the policemen.
30:42Both sides began firing.
30:47A Lakota policeman put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head.
30:51The last of his great visions had come to pass.
30:58Sitting Bull had been killed by his own people.
31:20My grandfather's mother was one of the people who was from Sitting Bull's camp.
31:25And my grandfather would tell me that when Sitting Bull was killed, they had very few horses.
31:35So the few horses they had, they put the young children on, and they walked to Bigfoot's camp.
31:41And that she wept as she walked.
31:45And she wept not only for Sitting Bull being killed the way he was, but also wept because she feared that she would not live to have children.
31:57And if she did have children, and if she did have children, would they be Lakota.
32:04Sitting Bull's grieving followers fled toward the Cheyenne River Reservation, where they joined a mini Kanju band led by a chief named Bigfoot.
32:12He had once been an enthusiastic ghost dancer, but he was no longer certain that the world would be transformed.
32:22Bigfoot decided to take his band into Pine Ridge and see if there wasn't some way to reconcile things.
32:29But General Miles misunderstood what Bigfoot was doing, and ordered the 7th Cavalry under Colonel John Forsythe to intercept him.
32:44They caught up with Bigfoot three days after Christmas.
32:48The chief was riding in a wagon, too ill with pneumonia even to sit up.
32:52But he flew a white flag to show his peaceful intentions.
33:03The soldiers transferred Bigfoot to an army ambulance, and then led his band down to a little creek for the night.
33:11It was called Wounded Knee.
33:17There were 120 men and 230 women and children.
33:23The soldiers distributed rations.
33:26An army doctor did what he could for Bigfoot.
33:31But the soldiers also posted four cannon on the top of a rise overlooking the camp.
33:40The following morning there was a bugle call.
33:43Then I saw the soldiers mounting their horses and surrounding us.
33:46It was announced that all men should come to the center for a talk.
33:51Bigfoot was brought out of his tent and sat, and the older men were gathered around him.
33:57Dewey Beard.
33:58Charles Allen, a reporter for a Nebraska newspaper, watched from the hilltop.
34:08At the southeast edge of the group of standing Indians, there was a fair-sized plat of grass, where in all the exuberance of early youth were eight or ten Indian boys dressed in the gray school uniforms of that period.
34:22The fun they were having as they played bucking horse, leapfrog, and similar games carried the mind for a fleeting moment back to the days of boyhood.
34:34Troops began moving from teepee to teepee, confiscating knives and axes from the women, sometimes seizing a rifle.
34:47A medicine man began to dance.
34:50Do not fear, he told the warriors, but let your hearts be strong.
34:57Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured the bullets cannot penetrate us.
35:06Suddenly, scooping up a handful of dirt, he tossed it scattering in the air, and with eyes turned toward heaven, implored the great spirit to scatter the soldiers likewise.
35:20Almost simultaneously with him throwing a handful of dirt into the air, soldiers tried to disarm a man who was deaf, and he hung on to his rifle, and they kind of struggled over it, and it went off.
35:37These two things happened at the same time, and bang, I mean, it just blew everything up.
35:42The soldiers opened fire, with rifles, revolvers, and finally, a cannon that hurled exploding shells into the teepees.
35:57The Lakotas did their best to fight back.
36:12When the shooting finally stopped, some 250 men, women, and children were dead.
36:18I walked around, viewing the sad spectacle.
36:25On reaching the corner of the green where the schoolboys had been so happy in their sports for a short time before, there was spread before me the saddest picture I had seen, or was to see thereafter.
36:38For on that spot of their playful choice were scattered the prostrate bodies of all those fine little Indian boys, cold in death.
36:51The gunfire had blazed across their playground in a way that permitted no escape.
36:57They must have fallen like grass before the sickle.
37:06Dead, too, were 25 soldiers.
37:11Wounded Lakotas and wounded soldiers alike were taken to the Holy Cross Episcopal Church at Pine Ridge.
37:19Its walls were still hung with Christmas decorations.
37:32Pews were torn from their fastenings, and armfuls of hay fetched by Indian helpers.
37:41Upon a layer of this, we spread quilts and blankets taken from our own beds.
37:44The victims were lifted as gently as possible and laid in two long rows on the floor.
37:53A pathetic array of young girls and women and babes in arms, little children and a few men, all pierced with bullets.
38:03A young girl who had a ghost shirt on underneath her clothes said,
38:14They told me if I put this on, the bullets would not go through, and I believed them.
38:19Now see where we are.
38:22For several days, the dead Lakotas were left where they had fallen.
38:37While the army contended with sporadic fighting that broke out on the reservation.
38:41Finally, after a heavy snowfall, a burial party arrived at Wounded Knee, dug a pit, and dumped in the frozen bodies.
38:54In the shine of photographs are the slain, frozen and black, on a simple field of snow.
39:12They image ceremony.
39:16Women and children dancing, old men prancing, making fun.
39:23In autumn there were songs, long since muted in the blizzard.
39:29In summer, the wild buckwheat shone like fox fur and quill work, and dust guttered on the creek.
39:37Now in serene attitudes of dance, the dead in glossy death are drawn in ancient light.
39:55On January 15th, 1891, the 4,000 remaining ghost dancers finally surrendered to General Miles.
40:03Armed Indian resistance in the west had ended.
40:08Wounded Knee happened yesterday.
40:32For Lakota people, wounded knee is today.
40:35today. Wounded Knee represents all the frustrations of those years and years and years on the
40:44reservation. Even though it happened in 1890, it's fresh in Lakota people's minds and in their
40:51hearts. That tragedy, that destruction, that devastating thing that happened to them, it
40:59exists today. It exists in our hearts and our minds. The way we think, when we see about,
41:04when we talk about Indian-white relations, that's the first thing that comes to mind.
41:08We'll never forget Wounded Knee.
41:27I know a land where the gray hills lie eternally still under the sky.
41:34Where all the might of suns and moons that pass in the quiet of nights and noons leave never
41:40a sign of the flight of time. On the long, sublime horizon line.
41:46Ethel Waxham.
41:55On October 20th, 1905, the Rollins to Lander Stagecoach rattled north toward the Sweetwater River in central Wyoming.
42:04On board was an unusual passenger, a 23-year-old named Ethel Waxham. She was a city girl from Denver, a graduate of Wellesley College who had spent a summer doing volunteer work in the slums of New York.
42:21Schooled in four languages, she dabbled in poetry, enjoyed staging amateur theatricals, and was voraciously curious about the world.
42:33Just a few weeks earlier, she had been offered her first full-time job as a teacher in a remote, one-room school in the center of Wyoming.
42:43My mother, who was always great for adventure, decided that she would take the job.
42:55Of course, the adventure started when the Mills family, with whom she would live and whose three children she would teach, wrote her and told her what things to bring and what kind of clothing and what to expect.
43:12But there was no mention of how beautiful the ranch was and what the scenery was like and what the people were like.
43:23So, all those things were a surprise and a revelation to her.
43:29She moved in to the Red Bluff Ranch and started recording her observations of the remarkable new life she'd begun to lead.
43:39At last, we saw the little schoolhouse of logs, 14 by 16 with a good sod roof.
43:50The hole was put up, I believe, at an original expenditure of $75.
43:56The door has had some passerby's six-shooter emptied into it.
44:02She began teaching, seven students in all, ages 8 to 16.
44:09The first 15 minutes, or half hour, are given to reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Kidnapped, while we all sit about the stove to keep warm.
44:19Usually, in the middle of the reading, the sound of a horse galloping down the frozen road distracts the attention of the boys.
44:28Until a few moments later, six-foot George Schlichting opens the door, a sack of oats in one hand, his lunch tied up in a dishrag in the other.
44:38Cold from his five-mile ride, he sits down on the floor by the stove, unbuckles his spurs, pulls off his leather chaps,
44:47unwinds three red handkerchiefs from about his neck and ears, takes off one or two coats, according to the temperature,
44:55and, straightening his leather cuffs, is ready for business.
44:59Visitors to the ranch where Ethel lived were few, sometimes no one for days.
45:09But among those who came by with increasing regularity, despite a difficult 11-hour ride, was a rugged sheep rancher named John Galloway Love.
45:20Mr. Love is a Scotchman about 35 years old.
45:25His face was kindly, with shrewd blue twinkling eyes.
45:30But his voice was most peculiar and characteristic.
45:34Close analysis fails to find the charm of it.
45:38A little Scotch dialect, a little slow drawl, a little nasal quality, and a tone as if he were speaking out of doors.
45:47He is full of quaint turns of speech and unusual expressions.
45:51For he is not a common sheep herder, it is said, but a sheep baron, or mutton air.
45:58My father was unmarried, and he was beginning to make a little money, and he wanted a wife.
46:06And here was this beautiful school man, and so of course he fell in love with her.
46:16But she did not fall in love with him.
46:21No bells and whistles rang, but she was intrigued.
46:27John Love was born in Wisconsin to Scottish parents.
46:33He was bright and resourceful, but high-spirited and got himself expelled from the University of Nebraska in 1891.
46:43Then he had invested what little money he had in two horses and a buggy and headed for Wyoming.
46:50When his horses died after drinking poisoned water, Love abandoned his belongings and went the last hundred miles on foot.
47:00Since then, he had spent seven years on the range, herding other people's sheep, caring for their cattle.
47:09Saving up enough money to start a sheep ranch of his own on a treeless stretch of land along Muskrat Creek.
47:19I have asked him many times why that godforsaken country would be his home.
47:26He knew about the Red Bluff Ranch and other places along the Wind River front.
47:34But he chose that because, as he said simply, he needed a lot of room.
47:41He wanted his outfit to grow.
47:46Ethel Waxham enjoyed Love's wit and his stories about ranching.
47:51But when he proposed marriage, she turned him down and went on with her work.
47:56When the school year ended, Ethel left Wyoming and entered the University of Colorado
48:02and began to work toward a master's degree in literature.
48:06Then, letters began to arrive.
48:12Muskrat, Wyoming, September the 12th, 1906.
48:16Dear Miss Waxham,
48:18Of course, it will cause many a sharp twinge and heartache to have to take no for an answer.
48:24But I will never blame you for it in the least.
48:27And I will never be sorry that I met you.
48:30I will be better for having known you.
48:35I know the folly of hoping that your no is not final.
48:40But in spite of that knowledge, I know that I will hope until the day that you are married.
48:48Only then I will know that the sentence is irrevocable.
48:53Your sincerely, John G. Love.
49:01November 12th, 1906.
49:05Dear Miss Waxham,
49:06I know that you have not been brought up to cook and labor.
49:10I have never been on the lookout for a slave
49:13and would not utter a word of censure if you never learned.
49:18Or if you got ambitious and made a batch of biscuits that proved fatal to my favorite dog.
49:24I will do my level best to win you.
49:27And if I fail, I will still want your friendship just the same.
49:33Your sincerely, John G. Love.
49:39February 15th, 1907.
49:43Dear Mr. Love,
49:45I am fortunate in having two letters from you to answer in one.
49:50The days have been comparatively dull.
49:53I am too busy for dances here, if I care to go, which I do not.
49:58The seven months I spent at the ranch I would not exchange for any other seven months in my life.
50:05They seem shorter than seven weeks, even seven days here.
50:10Sincerely yours, Ethel Waxham.
50:15Dear Miss Waxham,
50:17I, for one, am glad that your curiosity led you to drift up here to Wyoming.
50:22And now my supreme desire in life is to persuade you to come back.
50:27With love and kisses,
50:29ever yours,
50:31John G. Love.
50:34Dear Mr. Love,
50:37Since you began to sign your name as you do,
50:40you must have known that I would not like it and would not continue since we are only friends.
50:46I wrote you not to expect any more letters from me unless you stopped it.
50:51Ethel P. Waxham.
50:53Dear Miss Waxham,
50:55I will always sign all letters properly in the future.
51:00Please forgive my errors of the past.
51:04I suppose that I ought to be satisfied with your friendship.
51:08But I won't be.
51:10You sincerely,
51:12John G. Love.
51:15In 1907, Ethel received her master's degree,
51:19took a job teaching in Wisconsin for a year,
51:22then came back and spent another year in Colorado.
51:25Everywhere she went,
51:29John Love's letters pursued her.
51:32Dear Mr. Love,
51:36There are reasons galore why I should not write so often.
51:40I'm a beast to write at all.
51:43It makes you maybe think that no is not no,
51:46but perhaps, or yes, or anything else.
51:49Good wishes for your busy season from EW.
51:54P.S.
51:56I like you very much.
52:04For years, John Love slept outdoors,
52:08fighting against the terrain and climate to keep his herds alive,
52:13struggling to build his ranch.
52:17He scoured the countryside for abandoned buildings
52:20and hauled them over rough roads to Muskrat Creek.
52:23A saloon and an old hotel became bunkhouses, sheds,
52:28and a blacksmith shop.
52:30He hauled the logs for the main house from the Wind River Mountains,
52:34a hundred miles away.
52:36Each trip took him two weeks.
52:39October 25th, 1909.
52:45Dear Miss Waxham,
52:47There is no use in my fixing up the house anymore,
52:50papering, etc., until I know how it should be done.
52:53And I won't know that until you see it and say how it ought to be fixed.
52:58If you never see it, I don't want it fixed, for I won't live here.
53:03We could live very comfortably in the wagon while our house was being fixed up to suit you,
53:08if you would only say yes.
53:11Dear Mr. Love,
53:14Suppose that you lost everything that you have and a little more.
53:19And suppose that for the best reason in the world I wanted you to ask me to say yes.
53:25What would you do?
53:27E.
53:30Dear Miss Waxham,
53:33If I were with you,
53:35I would throw my arms around you and kiss you,
53:39and wait eagerly for the kiss that I have waited over four years for.
53:44Your sincerely, John G. Love.
53:52Finally, in the spring of 1910,
53:54Ethel Waxham agreed to be John Love's wife.
53:59When my father was sure that my mother was going to marry him,
54:05he had a sheep wagon built specially to his order,
54:11and that was to be the honeymoon sheep wagon.
54:15They were married on June 20th in 1910,
54:20and it was pretty hot,
54:22so they started out for the mountains,
54:25and from then on there is a blank in our knowledge.
54:31Mother rarely discussed it except in times of crisis,
54:37and my father never discussed it.
54:41But apparently it rained a great deal.
54:44The horses got away,
54:47and they were marooned,
54:49and they never got to the mountains.
54:54It was the first test John and Ethel Love would face together,
54:58but it would not be the last.
55:00Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste?
55:13You have time enough.
55:15Why sacrifice the present to the future,
55:19fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth
55:23and your cities with people.
55:26In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours,
55:32and we are not happy.
55:36You dream of your posterity,
55:39but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age,
55:44and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature,
55:51who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees
55:55and lined these waters with busy wards.
55:59Why then seek to complete in a few decades
56:04what took the other nations of the world thousands of years?
56:09Why in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature,
56:13squander her splendid gifts?
56:16You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before,
56:24and may never have again.
56:28James Brice
56:39seulement
56:42Haveé…· that even though we!
56:44There are many people can believe them in the united states
56:46and celebrate as group of stay on our region,
56:49and000.
56:50Haven't even been blessed?
56:51In the past,
56:52we will find those places to share their Ð½Ð°Ð¿æ‘†ä½ å°±
56:53so that if you want to exist?
56:55And there are some people with computers.
57:00If you want to enjoy their land,
57:02we believe that at the difference is point 10 minutes.
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