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Documentary, Ken Burns The West 7 The Geography of Hope
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00:00:24Confidence goes a long way towards success, and the confidence of these
00:00:29Westerners is superb.
00:00:32I happened in September of 1883 to be in the city of Bismarck in Dakota, when this young
00:00:39settlement was laying the cornerstone of its capital.
00:00:43The town was then only some five years old, and was gaily decorated for the occasion.
00:00:51In one of the speeches it was proved that as Bismarck was the centre of Dakota, Dakota
00:00:57the centre of the United States, and the United States the centre of the world, Bismarck
00:01:04was destined to be the metropolitan hearth of the world's civilisation.
00:01:11However, the feature of the ceremonial which struck us Europeans most was the spot chosen
00:01:17for the capital.
00:01:18It was not in the city, nor even on the skirts of the city.
00:01:23It was nearly a mile off, on the top of a hill in the brown and dusty prairie.
00:01:30Why here, we asked?
00:01:32Is it because you mean to enclose the building in a public park?
00:01:36By no means, was the answer.
00:01:39The capital is intended to be in the centre of the city.
00:01:43It is in this direction that the city is to grow.
00:01:48It is the same everywhere, from the Pacific to the Mississippi.
00:01:52Men seem to live in the future, rather than in the present.
00:01:57They see the country not merely as it is, but as it will be, 20, 50, 100 years hence.
00:02:06Lord James Brice.
00:02:09Lord James Brice.
00:02:18Oh yes.
00:02:26Well in, a combine of Hola.
00:02:32Who gives a nice whole town in the world at來到 Glen.
00:02:32You're of the makers of one of the AT Learning моментaur being.
00:02:32You're there, look now.
00:02:54¶¶
00:03:15By 1877, the American conquest of the West was nearly complete.
00:03:22For every Indian in the West, there were now nearly 40 whites.
00:03:27And as the Indian Wars drew to a close,
00:03:31the last obstacles to American domination dropped away,
00:03:35and the country readied itself to assert control over the entire region.
00:03:46Between 1877 and 1887,
00:03:49four and a half million more people came West.
00:03:53Almost half settled on the Western Plains,
00:03:57creating new towns in a region once thought too harsh for human habitation.
00:04:04Bismarck and Champion.
00:04:06Epiphany, Wahoo and Nicodemus.
00:04:12Some came seeking freedom, land of their own,
00:04:16and opportunities they couldn't find in the East.
00:04:21While others found in the West a place to change themselves,
00:04:26become someone else,
00:04:28start over.
00:04:32¶¶
00:04:33¶¶
00:04:38¶¶
00:04:45¶¶
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00:04:55But as more and more Americans arrived,
00:04:58there was less and less room for those who didn't conform.
00:05:02Indians were expected to change overnight,
00:05:07to forget their old ways
00:05:09and make themselves over in the image of their conquerors.
00:05:15The Chinese, who had done more than almost anyone
00:05:18to connect the West to the rest of the nation,
00:05:22would be told that they were no longer welcome anywhere in the United States.
00:05:29Mexican Americans were overwhelmed by the newcomers,
00:05:32even in towns they had lived in for centuries,
00:05:38while the Mormons were forced to surrender part of their religion
00:05:44in order to save the rest of it.
00:05:50But even as Americans tried to tame the West,
00:05:54they preferred to remember a gaudier version,
00:05:57full of violence, adventure, and most of all, romance,
00:06:02a wild West.
00:06:05And yet, between 1877 and 1887,
00:06:10Americans would come to learn firsthand
00:06:12just how wild the West could really be,
00:06:18and that no conquest could ever be complete.
00:06:33The West is about possibilities.
00:06:37And sometimes, the price of success of one group's possibilities
00:06:41is going to be the ending of possibilities for another group.
00:06:45Americans aren't wrong in seeing the West as a land of the future,
00:06:49of seeing a land in which astonishing things are possible.
00:06:53What they often are wrong about is that there's no price to be paid for that,
00:06:57that everybody can succeed,
00:06:59or that even what succeeds is necessarily the best for everyone concerned.
00:07:05the West is much more complicated than that.
00:07:15the West the West is more vive the West..
00:07:20the West is more limited.
00:07:22The West.
00:07:24Down On Me
00:07:42In a fit of madness, I one day said to the man I was renting from,
00:07:47it's no use.
00:07:48I works hard and raises big crops, and you sell it and keeps the money
00:07:52and brings me more and more in debt.
00:07:56So, I will go somewhere else and try to make headway like white working men.
00:08:01So I told my wife, and she says, let us take to the woods in the night time.
00:08:06Well, we took to the woods, my wife and four children, and we was three weeks living in
00:08:12the woods waiting for a boat.
00:08:14Then a great many more black people came, and we was all together at the landing.
00:08:20Before long, the Grand Tower hove up and we got on board.
00:08:25Says the captain, where is you going?
00:08:28Says I, Kansas.
00:08:39In 1877, the last federal troops were withdrawn from the south.
00:08:45Reconstruction collapsed, and new state laws began to restrict the rights of freed slaves.
00:08:53African Americans found themselves once again in the power of their former masters.
00:09:00Some favored emigrating to Liberia in Africa, or northward into Canada.
00:09:07To others, the open spaces of the West seemed to offer more immediate hope.
00:09:15Conditions might be better a hundred years from now, when all the present generation is dead
00:09:21and gone, but not a four, sir, not a four.
00:09:25And what's going to be a hundred years from now, ain't much account to us.
00:09:31The whites has the lands and the scents, and the blacks has nothing but their freedom.
00:09:38And it's just like a dream to them, Pap Singleton.
00:09:47Benjamin Pap Singleton was an ex-slave from Tennessee, who believed himself appointed by
00:09:53God to rescue his people.
00:09:57He had become convinced that there was no future for blacks unless they left the South
00:10:02and formed their own independent communities in the West.
00:10:08Kansas seemed like an ideal place for people who were disillusioned with the black codes
00:10:15that had been passed in the South.
00:10:18The meanness of the Ku Klux Klan, the meanness of the sharecroppers who really weren't sharing
00:10:24the way they had agreed, and these are the people who paid five dollars, five bucks to Pap Singleton
00:10:32to come up the river to a new life in Kansas.
00:10:37The West has always been seen as a place of opportunity, and this was certainly as true
00:10:42for people of African descent as for anybody else.
00:10:45Singleton and other leaders weren't necessarily doing it for purely altruistic reasons.
00:10:51Like a lot of great Westerners, they were speculators in land and hoped to make their fortunes.
00:10:57But they did have a vision of a place where people of color could breathe free, could be a part
00:11:07of the West, and all of those things that the West has come to mean both at that time and
00:11:13since.
00:11:16The black emigrants called themselves exodusters, because like the Old Testament Hebrews, they
00:11:24believed their salvation lay in reaching a promised land.
00:11:30Soon, blacks were scattered across eastern Kansas, and their hopeful letters home were being
00:11:37read aloud in black churches.
00:11:41Then, in the spring of 1879, a rumor raced through African American communities throughout
00:11:48the Deep South that the federal government had set aside all of Kansas for former slaves,
00:11:55providing every black family that could get there with free land and five hundred dollars.
00:12:02It wasn't true, but it was enough to convince some 6,000 people to start west.
00:12:10Some went by riverboat as far as St. Louis.
00:12:13Others, too poor to pay their passage, walked the whole way.
00:12:46PLEA Ruth
00:12:47I'll tell you what we've как doet
00:12:48Son of God, shine, shine, shine.
00:12:51Shine like a star in the morning.
00:12:53Shine, shine, shine.
00:12:55All around us, all around us.
00:13:01Governor's Mansion, Topeka, Kansas.
00:13:05Last Saturday, I had a call from a delegation
00:13:08of 100 leading colored men
00:13:09from the states of Mississippi and Alabama.
00:13:12They said that they had rather die in the attempt
00:13:15to reach the land where they can be free
00:13:17than to live and die in the South any longer.
00:13:22Governor John P. St. John.
00:13:28By 1880, more than 15,000 African Americans
00:13:32had migrated to Kansas.
00:13:34Most of them settled on farms and in small communities
00:13:38like Juniper Town, Dunlap, Rattlebone Hollow, and Nicodemus.
00:13:51When I landed on the soil of Kansas,
00:13:54I looked on the ground, and I says,
00:13:56this is free ground.
00:13:59Then I looked on the heavens, and I says,
00:14:02them is free and beautiful heavens.
00:14:05Then I looked within my heart,
00:14:07and I says to myself,
00:14:09I wonder why I was never free before.
00:14:14I said, let us hold a little prayer meeting
00:14:16on the riverbank.
00:14:17It was raining, but the drops fell from heaven
00:14:20on a free family,
00:14:21and the meeting was just as good as sunshine.
00:14:25We was thankful to God,
00:14:27and we prayed for those who could not come.
00:14:31I asked my wife,
00:14:33did she know the ground she stands on?
00:14:35She said, no.
00:14:37I said, it is free ground.
00:14:40And she cried for joy.
00:14:59The West has always been,
00:15:02and will always be,
00:15:04a place where there's struggle to survive,
00:15:07and where nature strikes heavy blows at you.
00:15:11But I think that's part of the West.
00:15:15That's geography.
00:15:18And I think part of that conquering of the West
00:15:22seeped into the American character.
00:15:26In many ways,
00:15:27the West has been a geography of hope
00:15:31for the country as a whole.
00:15:38For 40 years,
00:15:40as Americans moved west,
00:15:43the western plains of Kansas,
00:15:45Nebraska,
00:15:46and the Dakotas were passed over.
00:15:48With better land available elsewhere,
00:15:50they were considered too dry for homesteading.
00:15:54But now,
00:15:55the hunger for land reached
00:15:57even into these inhospitable places.
00:16:01The railroads and the states
00:16:03outdid themselves
00:16:04to lure new settlers.
00:16:07It was one of the greatest conjobs in history.
00:16:11They had a promotional campaign in Nebraska
00:16:13that I think was spending a million bucks a year,
00:16:17back when you could buy a fancy five-course dinner
00:16:20for $1.25.
00:16:21I mean, it was advertising.
00:16:23They had their own magazines, brochures.
00:16:26They had journalists on the take.
00:16:28I mean, it was a phenomenon.
00:16:34And in order to sell it,
00:16:36they described these, you know,
00:16:40beautiful regions
00:16:41where you could raise a bountiful harvest
00:16:43of practically anything,
00:16:44and summer lingered into November,
00:16:46and by February it was already spring.
00:16:48And we're talking about Nebraska
00:16:50and places like that.
00:16:53As it happened,
00:16:54the 1870s and early 1880s
00:16:57were unusually wet years in the West.
00:17:00The prairies, plowed and planted for the first time,
00:17:04yielded bumper crops.
00:17:07Promoters made the most of it.
00:17:09The plains might once have been desert-like, they said,
00:17:12but no longer.
00:17:14The climate itself, they promised,
00:17:17had changed for good.
00:17:19And it was the very presence of settlers
00:17:22that had changed it.
00:17:25The plow will go forward.
00:17:28God speed the plow.
00:17:30By this wonderful provision,
00:17:32which is only man's mastery over nature,
00:17:35the clouds are dispensing copious rains.
00:17:39The plow is more powerful in peace
00:17:42than the sword in war,
00:17:43the instrument which separates civilization from savagery
00:17:47and converts a desert into a farm or garden.
00:17:52To be more concise,
00:17:54rain follows the plow.
00:17:57Charles Dana Wilber.
00:18:00Within 10 years,
00:18:02nearly 2 million people
00:18:04migrated farther onto the plains.
00:18:07The populations of Colorado and Nebraska doubled.
00:18:12South Dakotas, Montanas, and Wyomings tripled.
00:18:19But as it turned out,
00:18:21rain did not follow the plow.
00:18:27The wet years came to an end.
00:18:31Many places on the high plains emptied
00:18:34just as quickly as they had filled with homesteaders.
00:18:39But some stubbornly hung on.
00:18:44There's no question in my mind
00:18:45that the settlers are the real heroes.
00:18:48Yes, yes indeed.
00:18:50In this harsh country,
00:18:52much of it harsh and forbidding
00:18:55and demanding, tough country,
00:18:57the fact that people could go there
00:19:00and establish communities
00:19:02and make a living for themselves
00:19:04and build up societies.
00:19:06I think that was a real triumph.
00:19:12In a year's time,
00:19:13a homesteader would encounter
00:19:14a catalog of meteorological disasters.
00:19:19In the springtime,
00:19:20there'd be the floods and the tornadoes
00:19:23that would make it difficult
00:19:23to get into the fields to plant a crop.
00:19:26Once the crop was planted,
00:19:28you might go for six,
00:19:29eight weeks at a time
00:19:30with no rain at all.
00:19:32And then it was bad enough
00:19:33that the rain was half of what
00:19:34the homesteader might have expected
00:19:36in his homeland.
00:19:37Here, it would fall all in one day
00:19:39and flood out that which had managed
00:19:42to survive through the drought.
00:19:44There were the grasshopper storms
00:19:45and the wind storms,
00:19:46hail storms that would pound a crop
00:19:48into the ground,
00:19:49in some cases,
00:19:50freezing a crop in July
00:19:52when you thought there was no chance
00:19:54of anything happening like that at all.
00:19:56In the fall, at harvest time,
00:19:59fire could take it
00:20:00as the fire swept across the grasslands.
00:20:03Through the winter,
00:20:04it'd be a matter of surviving the cold.
00:20:08And then in the spring,
00:20:09it started the whole mess all over again.
00:20:14We look at these people
00:20:16sitting in front of their sod houses
00:20:17and we think,
00:20:18what squalor living in a dirt house.
00:20:23We see women in maybe an elegant dress
00:20:26but without shoes on.
00:20:28And we think these people were poor.
00:20:32But what I see is pride.
00:20:37What they're really saying is,
00:20:39look how rich we are.
00:20:41We're stinking rich.
00:20:43Our muskmelons are this big.
00:20:46We have two horses.
00:20:48We have a cow and there she is,
00:20:50pegged right back there.
00:20:52They're showing us that they made it.
00:20:55These are not people who are embarrassed
00:20:57by their situation.
00:20:58They are drenched in pride.
00:21:02Ah, Nebraska-land,
00:21:05sweet Nebraska-land,
00:21:07upon thy burning soil I stand,
00:21:12and I look away across the plains,
00:21:16and I wonder why it never rains.
00:21:25What's remarkable to me is that they were singing,
00:21:28and that they were laughing while they were singing.
00:21:31But we've reached the land of desert sweet
00:21:33where nothing grows for man to eat.
00:21:35The wind it blows with feverish heat
00:21:37across these plains so hard to beat.
00:21:40But that's not a sad song.
00:21:41It sounds like the blues when I say it,
00:21:43but it was a song of laughter and rejoicing
00:21:46because they were laughing at themselves
00:21:47in this crazy situation they were in.
00:21:51We do not live.
00:21:52We only stay because we're too poor to move away.
00:21:56We have no wheat.
00:21:57We have no oats.
00:21:59We have no corn to beat our shoats.
00:22:02Our chickens are so very poor.
00:22:05They bake for crumbs outside our door.
00:22:08In Nebraska-land, sweet Nebraska-land,
00:22:11upon thy burning soil I stand,
00:22:14and I look away across the plains,
00:22:17and I wonder why it never rains.
00:22:35The noblest part of the West is the fact
00:22:39that it gave hope to people in ways
00:22:41that we had not been able to have before.
00:22:47It was a force in the shaping of the national character
00:22:50and an important one.
00:22:52And I think when and if we ever lose
00:22:56that sense of hope that the West holds for us,
00:23:00we will have lost by just that much
00:23:02our sense of ourselves as Americans.
00:23:06But what we did when we crossed the Mississippi
00:23:10and entered this land and took it as our own
00:23:14was to turn our backs
00:23:16on our own best history.
00:23:21There is very little
00:23:23that is presumably dear to the American psyche
00:23:27in terms of the Constitution,
00:23:29in terms of civil rights,
00:23:30in terms of our highest ideals
00:23:33that was not at one time or another systematically violated
00:23:36during the history of the West,
00:23:38and sometimes in ways that had never been matched before
00:23:42at an intensity,
00:23:44at a level of violence,
00:23:45at a level of thoughtlessness.
00:23:59The farther my people keep away from the whites,
00:24:03the better I shall be satisfied.
00:24:06The white people are wicked.
00:24:09I want you to teach my people to read and write,
00:24:13but they must not become white people in their ways.
00:24:16It is too bad a life.
00:24:19I could not let them do it.
00:24:23I would rather die an Indian
00:24:25than live a white man.
00:24:29Sitting Bull.
00:24:40By the spring of 1881,
00:24:43the Indians of the Northern Plains
00:24:45had all but lost their struggle to remain free.
00:24:49Only Sitting Bull
00:24:51and fewer than 200 of his followers,
00:24:54many of them members of his own family,
00:24:56remained defiant in Canada.
00:25:01But on July 19th, 1881,
00:25:04he led a handful of his hungry people south,
00:25:08across the border,
00:25:09and gave up.
00:25:18I surrender this rifle to you
00:25:20through my young son,
00:25:23whom I now desire to teach in this manner
00:25:26that he has become a friend of the Americans.
00:25:30I wish him to learn the habits of the whites
00:25:33and to be educated
00:25:35as their sons are educated.
00:25:39This boy has given my rifle to you,
00:25:42and he now wants to know
00:25:44how he is going to make a living.
00:25:50Sitting Bull still wanted the right
00:25:52to cross back and forth into Canada at will,
00:25:56to live on the little Missouri
00:25:58near the Black Hills,
00:25:59and to hunt wherever he wished.
00:26:04The army granted none of Sitting Bull's requests.
00:26:09They eventually ordered him to go to the Standing Rock Reservation,
00:26:14hundreds of miles to the east in North Dakota,
00:26:17and live there as his people lived.
00:26:21At Standing Rock,
00:26:22he was reunited with his daughter
00:26:25and wept to see again
00:26:26those who had been with him
00:26:28at the Little Bighorn.
00:26:31The lifestyle of the Lakota people
00:26:33had changed so much.
00:26:36Here you had this free-roaming people
00:26:38that were dependent upon the buffalo
00:26:40for a way of life,
00:26:42and all of a sudden now
00:26:44they're confined in these small areas.
00:26:47They're living off of rations,
00:26:49and people are starving.
00:26:52It's almost like being in a prison cell.
00:26:54Even though reservations were pretty good size,
00:26:56the idea of compacting people into that area
00:26:59and saying,
00:26:59you can't move outside of this area,
00:27:01you can't travel outside of this area,
00:27:02and if you do, you need a pass.
00:27:05The whole idea of confining Lakota people
00:27:08was so devastating to him.
00:27:13It was like being confined to
00:27:17a tiny island
00:27:20with no way to
00:27:23navigate among this
00:27:25enormous sea
00:27:28of white strangers.
00:27:33Every two weeks,
00:27:34a few scrawny steers
00:27:36were brought to the reservation,
00:27:38where men
00:27:39who only a few years earlier
00:27:41had hunted buffalo
00:27:42on the open plains
00:27:44now shot cattle for their food.
00:28:04Any Indian who shall engage in the sun dance,
00:28:07scalp dance,
00:28:08or war dance
00:28:09shall be deemed guilty of an offense,
00:28:11and upon conviction thereof
00:28:14shall be punished
00:28:15by withholding of his rations
00:28:16not exceeding ten days.
00:28:19Bureau of Indian Affairs.
00:28:23Like Indians on all the other reservations,
00:28:26the Lakotas were ordered
00:28:28to give up their language
00:28:29and speak English,
00:28:31abandon their faith,
00:28:33put behind them
00:28:34from all their religious customs.
00:28:47Lakota men were recruited
00:28:49to serve as police,
00:28:51empowered to help keep the peace
00:28:53and to enforce the new rules.
00:28:57Well, the idea was
00:28:58if we couldn't pray,
00:29:00if we couldn't behave
00:29:01the way we do,
00:29:02have our social customs,
00:29:03and we couldn't speak,
00:29:04we'd very quickly become white people
00:29:07and we would no longer
00:29:08be a military problem.
00:29:11So the idea was
00:29:12corrupt them from the inside.
00:29:14You know, make them give up
00:29:16who they are.
00:29:17If they don't talk their language,
00:29:18they won't practice
00:29:20their culture and religion.
00:29:28What Americans
00:29:29were trying to do initially
00:29:30was to move Indians
00:29:33out of the way.
00:29:34But at the same time,
00:29:36they've promised Indians
00:29:37a permanent existence.
00:29:40Reservations were going
00:29:41to be a place
00:29:42in which Indian peoples
00:29:44were going to be allowed
00:29:45to slowly adjust
00:29:47to the larger white society
00:29:49around them.
00:29:50The Lakotas lived
00:29:52in log cabins now,
00:29:54as well as teepees.
00:29:56And they were expected
00:29:57to farm.
00:29:59Even Sitting Bull
00:30:00found himself at work,
00:30:02hoe in hand.
00:30:06In August of 1883,
00:30:08a delegation of United States
00:30:10senators visited Standing Rock
00:30:12with a plan for opening
00:30:14part of the reservation
00:30:16to White Settlement.
00:30:18Sitting Bull protested bitterly.
00:30:22Do you know who I am?
00:30:24I want to tell you
00:30:25that if the Great Spirit
00:30:27has chosen anyone
00:30:28to be the chief
00:30:29of this country,
00:30:31it is myself.
00:30:33You were not appointed
00:30:35by the Great Spirit.
00:30:37Appointments are not made
00:30:38that way.
00:30:40You have no following,
00:30:41no power,
00:30:43no control,
00:30:44and no right
00:30:45to any control.
00:30:47If it were not
00:30:48for the government,
00:30:49you would be freezing
00:30:50and starving
00:30:50today in the mountains.
00:31:06Just across the Grand River
00:31:08from his cabin,
00:31:09Sitting Bull could see
00:31:10the spot where he had been born
00:31:12into an entirely
00:31:13different world.
00:31:16To fill the empty hours,
00:31:17he composed his own song.
00:31:21A warrior I have been,
00:31:23he sang.
00:31:24Now it is all over.
00:31:27A hard time I have.
00:31:48Unlearned as you may think
00:31:50us to be,
00:31:50we are not wholly ignorant
00:31:52of your history.
00:31:55We Chinese are taught
00:31:56to believe
00:31:57that your government
00:31:58is founded
00:31:59and conducted
00:32:00upon principles
00:32:01of pure justice.
00:32:03And that all of every race
00:32:05and creed
00:32:06are here
00:32:06surely protected
00:32:08in person,
00:32:09liberty,
00:32:09and property.
00:32:11Chongsun.
00:32:16In October of 1871,
00:32:19an eager and ambitious
00:32:20young Chinese man
00:32:22named Chongsun
00:32:23arrived in the West.
00:32:25He carried $600
00:32:26with him
00:32:27and dreamed of starting
00:32:29a tea plantation
00:32:30in Southern California.
00:32:32But almost immediately,
00:32:34he found himself
00:32:35caught up in a riot
00:32:36in Los Angeles.
00:32:38It started
00:32:40as a quarrel
00:32:41between two Chinese men
00:32:42over a woman,
00:32:43but quickly turned
00:32:45into an armed struggle
00:32:46between the small
00:32:47Chinese community
00:32:48and the rest of the city.
00:32:51Before it was over,
00:32:53at least 23 Chinese immigrants
00:32:55had been hanged
00:32:56or stabbed
00:32:57or shot to death.
00:33:00Chongsun was beaten
00:33:01and robbed
00:33:02of his savings.
00:33:06There were more
00:33:08than 300,000 Chinese
00:33:09in the country
00:33:10by the time
00:33:11Chongsun arrived,
00:33:13helping to build
00:33:15the Transcontinental Railroad,
00:33:17running laundries
00:33:19and restaurants,
00:33:21planting vineyards
00:33:22and operating
00:33:23fishing fleets
00:33:24up and down
00:33:25the Pacific Coast.
00:33:28But when depression
00:33:29struck,
00:33:30white workers
00:33:31came to blame
00:33:31the Chinese
00:33:32for their troubles.
00:33:34We intend
00:33:35to try and vote
00:33:36the Chinaman out,
00:33:38to frighten him out,
00:33:39and if this won't do,
00:33:41to kill him out.
00:33:43And when the blow comes,
00:33:45we won't leave
00:33:45a fragment
00:33:46for the thieves
00:33:47to pick up.
00:33:48The heathen slaves
00:33:49must leave this coast
00:33:52if it costs
00:33:5310,000 lives.
00:33:56Dennis Kearney,
00:33:57the Workingmen's Party.
00:34:02Anti-Chinese violence
00:34:04broke out
00:34:04all across the West.
00:34:08In Rock Springs, Wyoming,
00:34:11whites murdered
00:34:1228 Chinese.
00:34:14In Tacoma,
00:34:16state militiamen
00:34:17had to be called in
00:34:18to restore order.
00:34:20The Chinese in Seattle
00:34:22were rounded up,
00:34:24pushed onto boats,
00:34:25and forced out to sea.
00:34:35The Los Angeles riot
00:34:36had left Chung Son penniless,
00:34:39but he hadn't given up.
00:34:41He made his way north
00:34:43to the little town
00:34:43of Watsonville,
00:34:44where he managed
00:34:45to find a job
00:34:46digging ditches
00:34:47and laying a gas line
00:34:49for $1.50 a day.
00:34:52Being a man
00:34:53of education
00:34:54and culture,
00:34:55I'm capable
00:34:56of other work
00:34:57than digging
00:34:58in the streets.
00:34:59But my philosophy
00:35:00teaches me
00:35:01any useful work
00:35:03is more honorable
00:35:04than idleness.
00:35:06I shall,
00:35:07therefore,
00:35:08with patience,
00:35:09continue to dig
00:35:10with an abiding hope
00:35:11for something better.
00:35:14But when the ditch
00:35:15was finished,
00:35:16Chung Son
00:35:17could not find
00:35:18another job.
00:35:18No one would hire him.
00:35:22A new California law
00:35:24made hiring
00:35:25a Chinese worker illegal,
00:35:28punishable by fines
00:35:29and jail terms.
00:35:32Then, in 1882,
00:35:35Western politicians
00:35:36and labor unions
00:35:37managed to persuade
00:35:39Congress
00:35:39to pass
00:35:40the Chinese Exclusion Act.
00:35:43For the first time
00:35:45in the history
00:35:45of the United States,
00:35:47the government
00:35:49decided
00:35:49to exclude
00:35:51a group
00:35:53of immigrants
00:35:54on the basis
00:35:55of race.
00:35:58And it set
00:35:59a precedent now
00:36:00because for the first time
00:36:01you have this
00:36:02new thinking
00:36:03introduced.
00:36:05Well,
00:36:06we can not only
00:36:07determine who could
00:36:08become citizens
00:36:09in this country,
00:36:10but we could determine
00:36:11who could come
00:36:12to this country.
00:36:15The year before
00:36:16the Exclusion Act
00:36:17passed,
00:36:18nearly 40,000
00:36:20Chinese entered
00:36:21the United States.
00:36:22The next year,
00:36:24just 23 were allowed in.
00:36:28But Chung Son
00:36:29had had enough
00:36:30of America.
00:36:34He set sail
00:36:35for home.
00:36:38I hope you will
00:36:40pardon my expressing
00:36:41a painful disappointment.
00:36:44The ill treatment
00:36:45of my own countrymen
00:36:47may perhaps be excused
00:36:49on the grounds
00:36:49of race,
00:36:50color,
00:36:51language,
00:36:51and religion,
00:36:52but such prejudice
00:36:54can only prevail
00:36:55among the ignorant.
00:36:58In civility
00:36:59and polite manners,
00:37:02Americans are wholly
00:37:03wanting
00:37:03and are very
00:37:05properly styled
00:37:06barbarians.
00:37:21At two in the morning
00:37:23on September 8,
00:37:241883,
00:37:25a 24-year-old
00:37:27New York assemblyman
00:37:28stepped down
00:37:29from the train
00:37:30at the Little Missouri River
00:37:32in the heart
00:37:33of Dakota Territory.
00:37:34He had already
00:37:36earned a reputation
00:37:37for himself
00:37:37back east
00:37:38as a noisy
00:37:39but energetic
00:37:40reformer.
00:37:42Now,
00:37:43he had come west
00:37:44to build himself up
00:37:45after a bout
00:37:46of cholera,
00:37:47and he was determined
00:37:48to shoot a buffalo
00:37:49before the species
00:37:51disappeared.
00:37:53His name
00:37:54was Theodore Roosevelt,
00:37:56and he seemed
00:37:57the quintessential dude,
00:37:59shrill,
00:38:00nearsighted,
00:38:01Harvard-educated,
00:38:03wheezing with asthma,
00:38:04and insistent
00:38:05upon being called
00:38:06Mr. Roosevelt.
00:38:09Still,
00:38:10despite day after day
00:38:12of cold rain
00:38:13so fierce
00:38:14that even his seasoned guide
00:38:16urged him
00:38:17to abandon the chase,
00:38:18he found
00:38:19and shot
00:38:20his buffalo.
00:38:25Roosevelt fell in love
00:38:27with the West,
00:38:28and with the prospect
00:38:29of quick riches
00:38:30it seemed to offer
00:38:31virtually free of charge.
00:38:36He was just one
00:38:37of hundreds
00:38:38of eager entrepreneurs
00:38:40hoping to cash in
00:38:41on the beef boom
00:38:42on the northern plains.
00:38:45Everything seemed
00:38:46to suggest
00:38:46it was a sure thing.
00:38:49A good-sized steer
00:38:51when it is fit
00:38:52for the butcher market
00:38:53will bring from
00:38:54$45 to $60.
00:38:56The same animal
00:38:58at its birth
00:38:58was worth
00:38:59but $5.
00:39:01He has run
00:39:02on the plains
00:39:03and cropped the grass
00:39:04from the public domain
00:39:05for four or five years
00:39:07and now,
00:39:08with scarcely any expense
00:39:09to its owner,
00:39:11is worth $40 more
00:39:12than when he started
00:39:13on his pilgrimage.
00:39:16All one needed
00:39:18to do
00:39:18was buy a herd
00:39:19and turn it loose
00:39:20on grasslands
00:39:21that seemed
00:39:22as limitless
00:39:23as the profits
00:39:24they promised.
00:39:26Cotton was once
00:39:27crowned king,
00:39:28wrote a Western
00:39:29newspaper editor,
00:39:30but grass is now.
00:39:37Fortune seekers
00:39:38from England,
00:39:39Scotland,
00:39:40and Europe
00:39:40invested after reading
00:39:42newspaper stories
00:39:43that proclaimed
00:39:44routine profits
00:39:45of 40 cents
00:39:46on the dollar.
00:39:48Marshall Field,
00:39:49the Chicago dry goods king,
00:39:51bought a herd.
00:39:52So did William K. Vanderbilt,
00:39:54the railroad magnate,
00:39:55and Joseph Glidden,
00:39:57the man who manufactured
00:39:58barbed wire.
00:40:01Rich men's sons
00:40:02from the East
00:40:02were nothing new
00:40:03as far as I was concerned.
00:40:05The range in the 80s
00:40:06was as full of them
00:40:07as a dog's hair of fleas,
00:40:09and some of them
00:40:09were good fellows
00:40:10and some were damn fools.
00:40:13Teddy Blue Abbott.
00:40:19But for Theodore Roosevelt,
00:40:21the West was much more
00:40:23than a chance
00:40:23to get rich.
00:40:24It was also a chance
00:40:26to escape the sorrows
00:40:27of his private life.
00:40:30In 1884,
00:40:31when his mother and wife
00:40:33died within hours
00:40:34of one another,
00:40:35he dealt with his grief
00:40:37in long, solitary rides
00:40:39across the badlands.
00:40:45Nowhere else
00:40:46does one feel
00:40:47so far off
00:40:48from mankind.
00:40:49The plains stretch out
00:40:51in deathless
00:40:52and measureless expanse,
00:40:53and as he journeys
00:40:55over them,
00:40:56they will,
00:40:56for many miles,
00:40:57be lacking
00:40:58in all signs of life.
00:41:00Black care rarely sits
00:41:02behind a rider
00:41:03whose pace
00:41:04is fast enough.
00:41:16Over the course
00:41:17of three summers
00:41:18on his Dakota ranches,
00:41:20Roosevelt rounded up cattle,
00:41:22hunted down rustlers,
00:41:24and reveled
00:41:25in the rugged landscape
00:41:26and equally rugged life.
00:41:30Like all Americans,
00:41:32I like big things.
00:41:35Big prairies,
00:41:36big forests
00:41:37and mountains,
00:41:38big wheat fields,
00:41:40railroads,
00:41:41and herds of cattle, too.
00:41:43I am myself at heart
00:41:45as much a westerner
00:41:47as an easterner.
00:41:50In the West,
00:41:51Roosevelt had transformed himself.
00:41:56Here, he said later,
00:41:58the romance
00:41:59of my life began.
00:42:25It was the custom
00:42:26of the town of Los Angeles
00:42:28in all of the families
00:42:30of the early settlers
00:42:31for the oldest member
00:42:33of the family
00:42:34to rise every morning
00:42:36at the rising
00:42:36of the morning star
00:42:37and at once
00:42:39to strike up a hymn.
00:42:42From house to house,
00:42:43street to street,
00:42:45the singing spread,
00:42:47and the volume
00:42:48of musical sound
00:42:49swelled
00:42:51until it was as if
00:42:52the whole town sang.
00:42:57To the casual visitor,
00:42:59Los Angeles in the 1870s
00:43:01seemed much as it had been
00:43:03when the United States
00:43:04had taken California
00:43:05from Mexico in 1846,
00:43:07an old Hispanic farming town
00:43:10with a population
00:43:12of fewer than 10,000 people.
00:43:22But life for its native inhabitants
00:43:25had already begun to change.
00:43:28Bullfights and bear baiting
00:43:29had been outlawed.
00:43:31Baseball had become
00:43:32the city's most popular sport.
00:43:35Political power
00:43:36had long since passed
00:43:38from the old California families
00:43:40into the hands of Anglos.
00:43:45Then, the Southern Pacific Railroad
00:43:47and its competitor,
00:43:48the Acheson, Topeka,
00:43:50and Santa Fe,
00:43:51built the first railroad lines
00:43:53into Los Angeles
00:43:54and immediately began
00:43:55a fair war.
00:43:58For a time,
00:43:59passengers could make it
00:44:00all the way to Los Angeles
00:44:02from St. Louis
00:44:03for as little as $1.
00:44:06The purity of the air
00:44:08of Los Angeles
00:44:09is remarkable.
00:44:12Vegetation dries up
00:44:13before it dies
00:44:14and hardly ever seems
00:44:16to decay.
00:44:18Meat suspended in the sun
00:44:20dries up
00:44:21but never rots.
00:44:23The air,
00:44:25when inhaled,
00:44:26gives to the individual
00:44:27a stimulus and vital force
00:44:29which only an atmosphere
00:44:31so pure
00:44:32can ever communicate.
00:44:35Now,
00:44:37Easterners
00:44:37and Midwesterners,
00:44:38drawn by reports
00:44:40of warm sunshine
00:44:41and cheap land,
00:44:42began arriving
00:44:43in larger
00:44:44and larger numbers.
00:44:47120,000
00:44:49in 1887 alone.
00:44:52Speculators poured in.
00:44:54So many,
00:44:55the hotels ran out of beds
00:44:57and rented them
00:44:58bathtubs to sleep in.
00:45:01In just two and a half years,
00:45:0460 new towns
00:45:05were founded
00:45:06in Los Angeles County.
00:45:08By 1890,
00:45:10the Anglo population
00:45:12of Los Angeles
00:45:13was five times larger
00:45:14than it had been
00:45:15just ten years before.
00:45:17And the town's
00:45:19Mexican-American heart,
00:45:20now known as the barrio,
00:45:23had been surrounded.
00:45:29The change was
00:45:30so drastic,
00:45:32we had to turn
00:45:34inward
00:45:36and find the strength
00:45:38within our families,
00:45:40a circle of safety
00:45:42to preserve
00:45:43our traditional ways.
00:45:46And one way
00:45:47to do that
00:45:48is to fall back
00:45:50into the community,
00:45:51into the family,
00:45:52into the barrio.
00:45:54and try to hang on
00:45:55to what you have
00:45:56of your history.
00:46:00There's music,
00:46:02people walk
00:46:03on the streets,
00:46:04people know each other.
00:46:09You belong in a barrio,
00:46:11and you're proud
00:46:12of your barrio.
00:46:16What's outside
00:46:17is an alien land
00:46:18where the color of your skin
00:46:20makes a difference,
00:46:22where the way you speak
00:46:23makes a difference.
00:46:25In the barrio,
00:46:27that doesn't matter,
00:46:28you know,
00:46:29you're accepted.
00:46:30And out there
00:46:32is another world.
00:46:50I tell you that Mormonism
00:46:52is one great surge
00:46:53of licentiousness.
00:46:55It is the brothel
00:46:56of the nation.
00:46:57It is hell
00:46:58enthroned.
00:47:00This miserable corpse
00:47:02of Mormonism
00:47:02has been rotting
00:47:04in the sun
00:47:04and rotting
00:47:06and rotting
00:47:06for 40 years.
00:47:08And the United States
00:47:10government
00:47:10has not had the courage
00:47:11to bury it.
00:47:14Reverend T. DeWitt Talmadge.
00:47:20The same year
00:47:21that the Chinese Exclusion Act
00:47:23was passed,
00:47:24Congress also took action
00:47:26against the Mormons
00:47:27of Utah.
00:47:29For nearly half a century,
00:47:31they had struggled
00:47:32to carve out
00:47:32their own unique society
00:47:34in the West,
00:47:35resisting federal control
00:47:37at every turn.
00:47:38The church
00:47:40owned the territory's
00:47:41biggest businesses,
00:47:42had its own political party,
00:47:45and often carried out
00:47:47its own laws
00:47:48and punishments
00:47:48in defiance
00:47:49of federal judges.
00:47:52But Congress'
00:47:54main target
00:47:54was the Mormon practice
00:47:56of plural marriage.
00:47:58Now polygamy
00:47:59was declared
00:48:00a federal crime.
00:48:03Polygamists
00:48:03were barred
00:48:04from voting,
00:48:05holding office,
00:48:06and serving on juries.
00:48:09And those found
00:48:11guilty of the practice
00:48:12could be sentenced
00:48:13to five years
00:48:14in prison.
00:48:16Many Mormon families
00:48:18fled to Canada
00:48:19or to Mexico.
00:48:21Others stayed at home
00:48:23and took their chances.
00:48:26The thing to keep in mind
00:48:28is that polygamy
00:48:29was a sacred calling,
00:48:33that this was
00:48:34a commandment of God,
00:48:35that they were fulfilling
00:48:37a very important
00:48:39church principle
00:48:40people in doing this.
00:48:41And that was more important
00:48:43than the law.
00:48:44Not that they had
00:48:45contempt for the law,
00:48:46but they would do it
00:48:48because they believed
00:48:49it was right.
00:48:53Two months
00:48:54after polygamy
00:48:55became a felony,
00:48:57David King Udall,
00:48:58a prominent
00:48:5930-year-old Mormon
00:49:00in charge of a new
00:49:01colony in Arizona,
00:49:03married his second wife,
00:49:05Ida Hunt.
00:49:07Today I have made
00:49:09the most solemn vows
00:49:10and obligations
00:49:11of my life.
00:49:12Marriage,
00:49:13under ordinary circumstances,
00:49:16is a grave
00:49:16and important step.
00:49:18But entering
00:49:19into plural marriage
00:49:20in these perilous times
00:49:22is doubly so.
00:49:25Ida Hunt Udall
00:49:30The persecutions
00:49:31became unbearable.
00:49:34A newspaper
00:49:34was published
00:49:35whose sole mission
00:49:37was to misrepresent
00:49:38and vilify our people.
00:49:40Every issue
00:49:41contained low,
00:49:42vulgar articles.
00:49:44My name frequently
00:49:46came out
00:49:46in glowing colors,
00:49:48calling me a prostitute,
00:49:49mistress,
00:49:50et cetera.
00:49:55On July 10th, 1884,
00:49:58two months
00:49:59after learning
00:50:00she was pregnant,
00:50:01Ida was told
00:50:02that federal marshals
00:50:03were in Arizona,
00:50:05arresting men
00:50:06and serving
00:50:07their plural wives
00:50:08with subpoenas.
00:50:12Under cover of darkness,
00:50:14she slipped out of town
00:50:16and entered
00:50:16what the Mormons
00:50:17called the underground,
00:50:19shuttling from
00:50:20one hiding place
00:50:21to another,
00:50:23often using assumed names
00:50:25while she was harbored
00:50:26by church members.
00:50:32After being separated
00:50:34from her family
00:50:35for more than half a year,
00:50:36she learned through
00:50:37a newspaper
00:50:38that her mother had died.
00:50:40That same day,
00:50:42she gave birth
00:50:43to a daughter.
00:50:48Dear David,
00:50:50today I have had a letter
00:50:53saying that the apostles
00:50:55will not consent
00:50:56for me to return
00:50:57to Arizona
00:50:59and say that I must
00:51:00lose myself again
00:51:01if possible.
00:51:06Oh, Deed,
00:51:09I never missed you
00:51:10as I do tonight.
00:51:13The world seems so lonely,
00:51:16so loveless without you.
00:51:21How long will the Lord
00:51:22require his poor,
00:51:23weak children
00:51:24to be thus tried?
00:51:31My dear girl,
00:51:33better that I had
00:51:34suffered imprisonment
00:51:35than to have you
00:51:37going by another name
00:51:39and running here and there
00:51:41for fear of being known.
00:51:45it touches the manly feelings
00:51:47of any man
00:51:48to such a degree
00:51:49that it is almost
00:51:51unbearable.
00:51:54God bless you
00:51:55in your wandering.
00:52:01February 26, 1886.
00:52:04As I write,
00:52:06Pauline is laying in bed,
00:52:08laughing, talking,
00:52:09and biting her toes.
00:52:12Dear little refugee,
00:52:15how she would love her papa
00:52:17if she could ever have
00:52:19the privilege
00:52:19of making his acquaintance.
00:52:22But how utterly
00:52:23she is exiled
00:52:24from his heart.
00:52:26For it is impossible
00:52:27to love a child
00:52:29whom you never see.
00:52:35The federal government
00:52:36intensified its pressure
00:52:38on the Mormons.
00:52:39More leaders
00:52:40were sent to jail.
00:52:42All Mormons,
00:52:43polygamists or not,
00:52:45were to be prohibited
00:52:46from voting.
00:52:48Federal marshals
00:52:49threatened to confiscate
00:52:50church property.
00:52:53The church was being
00:52:54driven towards bankruptcy.
00:52:57It was clear
00:52:58they had to make
00:52:59a change.
00:53:00And I think
00:53:01this was a very
00:53:01pragmatic decision
00:53:04to say polygamy
00:53:06is dragging the church down
00:53:07and we're going to have
00:53:09to give it up.
00:53:12Finally,
00:53:13the church president,
00:53:14Wilfred Woodruff,
00:53:16retired to his study
00:53:17in Salt Lake City
00:53:18and emerged
00:53:19with a revelation.
00:53:22He advised all Mormons
00:53:24to obey Congress
00:53:25and refrain from
00:53:26entering into
00:53:27plural marriages.
00:53:29He and the other
00:53:31Mormon leaders
00:53:32now believed
00:53:33their best hope
00:53:34lay in statehood.
00:53:36To win it,
00:53:37they disbanded
00:53:38the church's
00:53:39political party,
00:53:40divested themselves
00:53:42of most of the
00:53:43church's businesses
00:53:45and drew up
00:53:46a state constitution
00:53:47that finally separated
00:53:49church from state
00:53:50and outlawed polygamy.
00:53:55On January 6, 1896,
00:53:59Utah,
00:53:59which had been founded
00:54:01as a refuge
00:54:01from the United States,
00:54:03was admitted to the Union
00:54:05as the 45th state.
00:54:13Ida Hunt Udall
00:54:15spent two and a half years
00:54:17in exile.
00:54:19David,
00:54:19who refused
00:54:20to give up
00:54:21either of his wives,
00:54:22had gone to jail
00:54:23for a time.
00:54:24But his and Ida's
00:54:26commitment
00:54:26to their beliefs
00:54:27and each other
00:54:29never wavered.
00:54:32They were finally
00:54:33reunited
00:54:34and had five more
00:54:36children together,
00:54:37three of them
00:54:38after the Mormon church
00:54:40renounced polygamy.
00:54:43The church
00:54:44could not undo
00:54:45what had been done
00:54:46in practicing
00:54:47plural marriage.
00:54:49The Lord
00:54:49took care of us
00:54:50and will continue
00:54:52to care for us.
00:54:54Those who live
00:54:55that order of marriage
00:54:56righteously
00:54:56will have glory
00:54:58added to their posterity.
00:55:11There's a sense
00:55:12in the whole
00:55:13late 19th century
00:55:14United States
00:55:14that the country
00:55:16can be made
00:55:17into a single,
00:55:18unified,
00:55:19coherent place.
00:55:21And at the same time,
00:55:22there's a sense
00:55:23that you're going
00:55:23to make it into,
00:55:24in this 19th century
00:55:25phrase,
00:55:26a white man's country.
00:55:28And the West
00:55:29is a very mixed place.
00:55:31It's full of Chinese.
00:55:33It's full of Mormons.
00:55:34It's full of Mexicans
00:55:36who have become
00:55:36Mexican-Americans.
00:55:38It's full of Indian peoples.
00:55:40And the question becomes,
00:55:42what are you going
00:55:43to do about them?
00:55:59Let us forget once
00:56:00and forever
00:56:01the word Indian
00:56:02and all that it
00:56:04has signified
00:56:05in the past.
00:56:08And remember only
00:56:10that we are dealing
00:56:11with so many children
00:56:12of a common father,
00:56:15Charles C. Painter.
00:56:18In the autumn of 1883,
00:56:21a group of white people
00:56:22gathered at the Mohonk
00:56:24Mountain House
00:56:25in upstate New York.
00:56:27They were clergymen,
00:56:29government officials,
00:56:31social workers.
00:56:32And although some of them
00:56:34had never been to the West
00:56:35or actually met an Indian,
00:56:38they were convinced
00:56:39they knew how to bring
00:56:40Native Americans
00:56:41into the mainstream
00:56:43of American life.
00:56:45The decisions
00:56:46they would make
00:56:46would change the lives
00:56:48of all the Indian peoples
00:56:49of the West
00:56:50forever.
00:56:55The name reformers
00:56:57had for themselves
00:56:57was Friends of the Indians.
00:56:59It's a very revealing name.
00:57:02What they saw themselves
00:57:04as doing
00:57:04was sharing the blessings
00:57:05of Christianity
00:57:06and the blessings
00:57:08of modern civilization
00:57:09with people
00:57:10who did not yet have it.
00:57:12They were going
00:57:13to protect their rights.
00:57:14They were going
00:57:14to raise them up
00:57:15to the level
00:57:16of others in American society.
00:57:18And they were going
00:57:19to try to absorb them
00:57:20into what they saw
00:57:21as the best qualities
00:57:22of American Protestant civilization.
00:57:24And as they saw it,
00:57:25who could argue with that?
00:57:29The Friends of the Indian
00:57:31wanted to transform
00:57:32the youngest generation
00:57:34as rapidly as possible.
00:57:37Indian children
00:57:38as young as five
00:57:39were to be taken
00:57:40from their families
00:57:41and sent halfway
00:57:43across the continent
00:57:45to the United States
00:57:46Indian Training
00:57:47and Industrial School
00:57:49at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
00:57:53It was a military school
00:57:55and they were trying
00:57:57to make white people
00:57:58out of them.
00:58:00Then when they took
00:58:01the children away
00:58:03from the mothers,
00:58:04they just knew
00:58:05they'd never see
00:58:06their children anymore.
00:58:07And then they didn't
00:58:09think about school,
00:58:11they were thinking
00:58:12they didn't know
00:58:13whether or not
00:58:14they really went
00:58:15to school
00:58:16or were going
00:58:16to be killed.
00:58:19Our belongings
00:58:20were taken from us.
00:58:22Even the little medicine
00:58:23bags our mothers
00:58:24had given us
00:58:25to protect us
00:58:26from harm.
00:58:28Everything was placed
00:58:29in a heap
00:58:29and set afire.
00:58:33Lone Wolf.
00:58:38All the boys
00:58:39in our school
00:58:40were given English names
00:58:42because their Indian names
00:58:43were difficult
00:58:44for the teachers
00:58:45to pronounce.
00:58:47Besides,
00:58:48the aboriginal names
00:58:49were considered
00:58:50by the missionaries
00:58:51as heathenish.
00:58:53And so,
00:58:54in the place
00:58:55of Tainio Gawaja
00:58:56came Philip Sheridan
00:59:00in that of Wapide,
00:59:03Ulysses S. Grant.
00:59:14Within 20 years,
00:59:16there were 24 other
00:59:18off-reservation schools
00:59:19like Carlisle
00:59:21and 81 boarding schools
00:59:24and 147 day schools
00:59:26on the reservations.
00:59:28Dog Creek,
00:59:30Forest Grove,
00:59:32Pocatello,
00:59:33Fort Defiance,
00:59:35Fort Concho.
00:59:37Despite their grim reality,
00:59:40many Indians
00:59:41saw them
00:59:41as the best available way
00:59:43to prepare their children
00:59:44for a new life
00:59:46in the white man's world.
00:59:49Even Sitting Bull
00:59:50made sure his children
00:59:52were sent to school,
00:59:53including his son Crowfoot,
00:59:55who had surrendered
00:59:56his father's rifle
00:59:57to the army
00:59:58at Fort Buford.
01:00:01All Indian schools
01:00:03shared the same goal.
01:00:05Education,
01:00:06said one reformer,
01:00:08should seek
01:00:08the disintegration
01:00:09of the tribes.
01:00:10They should be educated
01:00:12not as Indians,
01:00:14but as Americans.
01:00:22Even if one was successful
01:00:24at Indian school,
01:00:26let's say that one
01:00:27went off to Carlisle
01:00:28and graduated
01:00:28and came back,
01:00:30what place did that man
01:00:31have in a society
01:00:33that had not changed,
01:00:36that didn't need
01:00:37to have somebody
01:00:38that knew how to play
01:00:39the French horn
01:00:39or do the Irish jig,
01:00:42they had no value
01:00:43in that society.
01:00:45I think one of the
01:00:47contrasts was,
01:00:48you know,
01:00:49what kind of shoe
01:00:49do you wear?
01:00:51You know,
01:00:52do you wear a moccasin
01:00:53or do you wear
01:00:53the white man's shoe?
01:00:58Yes,
01:00:59they took our dialect away.
01:01:01When I went to Concho,
01:01:03my little friends,
01:01:04we all spoke our dialect
01:01:07and we were told
01:01:09not to talk it,
01:01:10speak English.
01:01:12So our matron,
01:01:14big, husky, white lady,
01:01:16her name was Garrett.
01:01:20Somebody said,
01:01:21Mother Garrett's coming.
01:01:22Well,
01:01:23we all try to keep quiet,
01:01:24but she heard me.
01:01:27Mother Garrett
01:01:28jerked me by the color
01:01:30of my dress
01:01:31and drugged me
01:01:32in the bathroom.
01:01:33That
01:01:34lie soap
01:01:36was about that big
01:01:37and about that high.
01:01:39She broke off her piece
01:01:41and she
01:01:42washed my mouth
01:01:43with lie soap.
01:01:45She said,
01:01:46Don't you ever
01:01:47speak Indian again
01:01:48or I'm going to
01:01:50wash your mouth again.
01:01:51And my tongue
01:01:53got blistered
01:01:54from that lie.
01:02:25I'm going to
01:02:45The Zuni faith is as a drop of oil in water,
01:02:50surrounded and touched at every point,
01:02:53yet in no place penetrated or changed inwardly
01:02:57by the flood of alien belief that descended upon it.
01:03:01The Zuni adjusts other beliefs and opinions to his own,
01:03:06but never his own beliefs and opinions to others.
01:03:10In religious culture, the Zuni is almost the same
01:03:14as ere his land was discovered.
01:03:17Frank Cushing.
01:03:26In 1879, a frail but eager 22-year-old named Frank Hamilton Cushing
01:03:32arrived at the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico.
01:03:37Three and a half centuries earlier,
01:03:39the Zunis had been among the first Indians of the West
01:03:42to meet a European, the explorer Coronado,
01:03:46who had stormed their village in 1540.
01:03:51Cushing had arrived for an entirely different reason.
01:03:55He had been fascinated by tales of Indians
01:03:58ever since he had discovered an arrowhead
01:04:00near his home in central New York as a boy.
01:04:04Now, he was part of the first expedition
01:04:07of the newly formed U.S. Bureau of Ethnology,
01:04:12sent to survey Indian tribes as quickly as possible
01:04:15on the belief that Native Americans
01:04:18and their customs were about to disappear.
01:04:22To the shock of his eastern companions,
01:04:25Cushing immediately moved in to one of the Indians' homes
01:04:28and announced he intended to stay.
01:04:32The best way to understand Indians, he said,
01:04:35was to live the way they did.
01:04:39Cushing learned pottery-making, cooking,
01:04:42and the Zuni's language.
01:04:50He wore Zuni clothing, grew his hair long,
01:04:54had his ears pierced, and adopted a Zuni name,
01:04:59Tenatsali, medicine flower.
01:05:06The Zunis accepted Cushing into their sacred priesthood of the bow,
01:05:10but only after he went through the lengthy
01:05:13and torturous initiation,
01:05:15which included days of fasting,
01:05:17sitting motionless on a hill of fire ants,
01:05:20and taking an enemy's scalp.
01:05:25Cushing was now an influential member of the tribe.
01:05:28He took part in their councils,
01:05:31and he joined a war party against Navajo raiders,
01:05:34enraging the Navajo's Indian agent.
01:05:40Mr. Galen Eastman, Navajo Indian Agency,
01:05:44Fort Defiance, Arizona Territory, sir.
01:05:47It is quite true that I fired, not twice, but three times,
01:05:52into two different bands of horses belonging to the Navajo Indians.
01:05:57It is possible that, as I intended,
01:06:00I killed one or two of them,
01:06:02although of this I cannot be certain.
01:06:06Rest assured, sir,
01:06:09that when all of our grievances are set right by the Navajos,
01:06:12we shall be then very ready to say amen
01:06:15and to act all things aright on our side.
01:06:20Very respectfully, your obedient servant, F.H. Cushing,
01:06:25First War Chief of Zuni, U.S. Assistant Ethnologist.
01:06:32Cushing continued to quarrel with missionaries
01:06:35and Indian agents intent on changing the Zunis.
01:06:38But when he exposed a scheme by relatives of a powerful U.S. Senator
01:06:43to build a ranch on Zuni land,
01:06:46his superiors ordered him back home.
01:06:50He had been sent to study the Zunis, not become one.
01:06:55In 1884, Cushing returned to Washington.
01:07:06More than half a century later, in 1938,
01:07:10an archaeologist reported that older Zuni people,
01:07:14not knowing that Cushing had died in 1900,
01:07:17still wondered why their good friend Medicine Flower
01:07:21had never returned.
01:07:39In 1886, the only new range left in Montana
01:07:42was north of the Missouri River.
01:07:44The northern Pacific was running through central Montana,
01:07:48and the settlers had come in so thick
01:07:50they was crowding the cattlemen everywhere,
01:07:52causing the range to be overstocked.
01:07:55Teddy Blue Abbott.
01:07:59By the summer of 1886,
01:08:01the once booming cattle business was in trouble.
01:08:12Seven and a half million hungry cattle
01:08:14were now competing for grasses,
01:08:17which every year grew less plentiful from overgrazing.
01:08:21In some places where it had once taken just five acres of land
01:08:25to support a steer, it now took more than 90.
01:08:32Big herds of voracious sheep were beginning to move across the landscape,
01:08:36and farmers were appearing, turning grasslands into fields,
01:08:41putting up barbed wire fences, driving cattle from their crops.
01:08:48Meanwhile, beef prices were dropping.
01:08:54The summer of 1886 was hot and dry.
01:08:59On the overgrazed ranges, the cattle grew thin and weak.
01:09:05Then came winter.
01:09:12In November, we had several snowstorms,
01:09:15and I saw the first white owls I have ever seen.
01:09:18The Indians said they were a bad sign.
01:09:21Heap snow coming, very cold.
01:09:24It got colder and colder.
01:09:27It was hell without the heat.
01:09:33On the northern plains, it began snowing on November 13, 1886,
01:09:39and did not stop for a month.
01:09:41The cattle struggled to stay alive,
01:09:44nosing through the snow in search of what little grass remained.
01:09:55January 1887 was the coldest month
01:09:58anyone on the northern plains could recall.
01:10:02The snow fell so hard during one 72-hour blizzard,
01:10:06a survivor wrote,
01:10:08that it seemed as if all the world's ice,
01:10:11from time's beginnings,
01:10:13had come on a wind which howled and screamed
01:10:17with the fury of demons.
01:10:25It was all so slow.
01:10:28Plunging after them through the deep snow that way.
01:10:34The horses' feet were cut and bleeding from the heavy crust,
01:10:37and the cattle had the hair and hide wore off their legs
01:10:40to the knees and the hocks.
01:10:43It was surely hell to see big four-year-old steers
01:10:46just able to stagger along.
01:10:54The unsheltered, helpless cattle began to die.
01:10:58Some, too weak to stand, were simply blown over by the savage wind.
01:11:05Others, their feet frozen into the ice, died like statues.
01:11:24When the snow and ice finally began to melt,
01:11:28cattlemen understood for the first time
01:11:31the magnitude of what had happened.
01:11:38Dead animals were everywhere, hundreds of thousands of them,
01:11:42sprawled across the hillsides and along fence lines,
01:11:48heaped at the bottom of coolies where the snow had trapped them,
01:11:52swollen and bobbing in the rushing rivers.
01:11:59I saw countless carcasses of cattle going down with the ice,
01:12:04rolling over and over as they went,
01:12:07sometimes with all four stiffened legs pointed skyward.
01:12:12For days on end, tearing down with the grinding ice cakes,
01:12:17went death's cattle round-up.
01:12:23Ranchers scoured the prairies for survivors.
01:12:27The first day I rode out, one remembered,
01:12:30I never saw a live animal.
01:12:38Cattlemen would remember the winter of 1886-1887
01:12:42as the great die-up.
01:12:46In the end, the only men who made much money
01:12:49on the northern cattle ranges that spring
01:12:51were scavengers,
01:12:53gathering bones to sell to fertilizer companies.
01:13:00Like the homesteaders who had learned
01:13:03that they could not change the climate of the West,
01:13:06the ranchers who had rushed in during the beef bonanza
01:13:09had learned they could not ignore it.
01:13:22In its present form, stock-raising on the plains is doomed,
01:13:26and can hardly outlast the century.
01:13:30And we who have felt the charm of the life,
01:13:33and have exulted in its abounding vigor
01:13:36and its bold, restless freedom,
01:13:39must also feel real sorrow
01:13:41that those who come after us
01:13:43are not to see, as we have seen,
01:13:46what is perhaps the pleasantest, healthiest,
01:13:49and most exciting phase of American existence.
01:13:54Theodore Roosevelt.
01:14:15The show is worth seeing.
01:14:18It is worth anybody's while to put himself into some trouble
01:14:21to go and see it.
01:14:23A better idea of the dangers pioneers confront,
01:14:27of the resources and skill that difficulties bring out,
01:14:30of the way in which the Wild West has been settled and civilized,
01:14:34can be obtained from one visit to this exhibition
01:14:37than by reading a score of histories
01:14:40and a cartload of descriptions.
01:14:46For 30 years, twice a day, six days a week,
01:14:50from Chicago to Philadelphia,
01:14:53Paris to Munich,
01:14:55Buffalo Bill brought his gaudy version
01:14:58of the Wild West to the world.
01:15:02William F. Cody had done nearly everything
01:15:05a man could do in the West.
01:15:08He'd been a gold seeker, buffalo hunter,
01:15:12cattle rancher, and Indian fighter.
01:15:15But most of all, he was a superb promoter,
01:15:19of the West and of himself.
01:15:22On Staten Island one summer,
01:15:25a million people attended his shows.
01:15:28Another million paid to see him that winter
01:15:31at Madison Square Garden.
01:15:34Each scene is instructive, one advertisement promised.
01:15:38A year's visit west in three hours.
01:15:46In every performance, a wagon train was raided by Indians
01:15:51and saved by Buffalo Bill.
01:15:55A settler's cabin was attacked
01:15:58and saved by Buffalo Bill.
01:16:02There were Pony Express riders,
01:16:04a buffalo hunt,
01:16:06Mexican vaqueros displaying their skill with the lasso,
01:16:09and the authentic Deadwood Stagecoach,
01:16:13surrounded by Indians
01:16:14and saved by Buffalo Bill.
01:16:22But the grand finale was a reenactment
01:16:25of the Battle of the Little Bighorn,
01:16:27showing with historical accuracy,
01:16:30the handbills claimed,
01:16:32the scene of Custer's last stand.
01:16:41And at the end,
01:16:42there was Buffalo Bill himself,
01:16:45in the center of the battlefield,
01:16:47while behind him the words,
01:16:49too late, were projected onto a screen.
01:16:53Crowds couldn't get enough of it.
01:17:01Even Libby Custer, who had been widowed by the actual event,
01:17:05proclaimed it the most realistic and faithful representation
01:17:09of a Western life that has ceased to be.
01:17:13She came back to see it many times.
01:17:24It was, the showman boasted, a noisy, rattling, gunpowder entertainment.
01:17:31For millions of people all over the world,
01:17:34William F. Cody had become the embodiment of the West.
01:17:42Buffalo Bill, I think, is the one true genius the 19th century West really produced.
01:17:48Buffalo Bill is an incredible self-creation.
01:17:52What Buffalo Bill knew about the West is that, in fact,
01:17:55it gave you the opportunity to make yourself over,
01:17:58and then once you've made a role for yourself to inhabit it,
01:18:03the lines between reality, the lived experience in the West,
01:18:09and the mythic West that Buffalo Bill portrayed for a living,
01:18:12become very, very blurred.
01:18:18In 1885, Sitting Bull himself joined the entourage.
01:18:25Billed as the slayer of General Custer, he was paid $50 a week,
01:18:30and reserved the right to profit directly from the sale of autographs and pictures of himself.
01:18:39The aging chief was required only to ride around the arena once a show,
01:18:44and afterwards, to sign his name for the awestruck visitors
01:18:48who came to peer at him in his teepee.
01:18:54It's interesting for Sitting Bull because, first of all,
01:18:56it's a chance for him to see the rest of the world and see what America is about,
01:19:00and a lot of Indian people that went with him, interpreters and everything.
01:19:04And they realize that the world has changed, and their way of life has changed,
01:19:08and what's happening on the reservations isn't necessarily indicative of what America could be about.
01:19:17I think he was probably, in turns, amused and humiliated by the experience.
01:19:26This was so much unlike the reality that he had lived as a young man,
01:19:34and yet it was a bizarre reflection of that reality, too.
01:19:38So he must have seen his experience from a different angle when he was in the Wild West show.
01:19:45Sitting Bull liked Buffalo Bill, who gave him a handsome hat and the gray horse he'd ridden in the show
01:19:52as gifts.
01:19:54But he could not understand why beggars were left to drift about the streets of big cities,
01:19:59and he gave much of his pay away to newsboys and hobos he met on the tour.
01:20:09This is a show about conquest. This is a show about the conquest of the West.
01:20:13Everything that the audience sees is Indians attacking whites.
01:20:18This is this strange story of an inverted conquest.
01:20:22It's a celebration of conquest in which the conquerors are the victims.
01:20:26And there's something at one level that still is deeply weird about this.
01:20:32What is going on when you celebrate a conquest and you only show yourself being victimized?
01:20:39It's conquest won without the guilt.
01:20:42We didn't plan it. They attacked us.
01:20:44And when we ended up, we had the whole continent.
01:20:50Buffalo Bill says the Wild West is over. It's finished. It's done.
01:20:55The conquest of the West has now taken place, and all it can do is reenact it for you.
01:21:01The West is still out there, but it's not the same West that it would have been 10 or 20
01:21:06years ago.
01:21:16After four months with the Wild West show, Sitting Bull returned to his home at the Standing Rock Reservation.
01:21:24There, he had another of his mystical visions about the future.
01:21:37In 1876, one vision had warned him that the army was marching against the Lakota.
01:21:50Another vision had predicted that Custer's soldiers at the Little Bighorn would fall into his village upside down.
01:22:03But now, he had a new vision. This one was equally clear.
01:22:12Wandering alone near his home one morning, he watched a meadowlark flutter down onto a hillock.
01:22:21Then the bird spoke to him. It said,
01:22:25Your own people, Lakotas, will kill you.
01:22:32Sitting Bull had faith in his visions.
01:22:35They had always proved true before.
01:22:46Ah, Nebraska-land, sweet Nebraska-land,
01:22:52Upon thy burning soil I stand,
01:22:56And I look away across the plains,
01:23:00And I never rains,
01:23:02And I wonder why it never rains.
01:23:10We've reached the land of desert sweet,
01:23:13Where nothing grows for man to eat,
01:23:16And the wind it blows with feverish heat,
01:23:19Across those plains so hard to beat.
01:23:22That's Nebraska-land, sweet Nebraska-land,
01:23:26Upon thy burning soil I stand,
01:23:29And I look away across the plains,
01:23:32And I wonder why it never rains.
01:23:40We have no wheat, we have no oats,
01:23:43We have no corn to beat our shoats,
01:23:46Our chickens are so very poor,
01:23:49They bake for crumbs outside our door.
01:23:52In Nebraska-land, sweet Nebraska-land,
01:23:56Upon thy burning soil I stand,
01:23:59And I look away across the plains,
01:24:02And I wonder why it never rains.
01:24:10Our horses are a bronco race,
01:24:13Starvation stares them in the face,
01:24:16We do not live, we only stay,
01:24:19Cause we're too poor to move away.
01:24:22From Nebraska-land, sweet Nebraska-land,
01:24:25Upon thy burning soil I stand,
01:24:28And I look away across the plains,
01:24:31And I wonder why it never rains.
01:24:34My
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