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Documentary, The Black West A Counter History of the Wild West 2022
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00:01Art France and Kappa Press present a film by Cecile Donjean.
00:06The shadows of cowboys riding on a hill.
00:11They rushed down an arid gully, then in front of the setting sun.
00:15One cowboy is on a cliff watching over the brown landscape.
00:19Produced by Patrice Lawton.
00:22The Wild West is one of the most powerful myths in the world.
00:26Riding through a gateway.
00:27A world of cowboys and Indians, which for more than a century has populated our imagination.
00:36A legend manufactured by Hollywood, invariably with white heroes fighting against those who were once called Redskins.
00:47But it is time to tell the other side of the myth.
00:52A cowboy in a brown coat.
00:53In 1875, one in four cowboys were black.
00:59There were African Americans in the Wild West, and there were many of them.
01:05By the hundreds of thousands, they too wrote the pages of the National American Novel.
01:12They provide a fresh perspective on the brutal overpowering of an entire continent.
01:20In this new history of the Wild West, each iconic figure has a double.
01:26A black incarnation.
01:29The sheriff.
01:31The stagecoach driver.
01:33The cowboy.
01:35I have decided to write the record of slave and cowboy.
01:39A long horse-hide lariatten in my hand.
01:42I felt I could defy the world.
01:45A painting of a flying woman pulling telegraph line across the land above trains, horse-drawn carts, and Native Americans.
01:53American pioneers went west in search of adventure and wealth.
01:57Among them, the blacks sought even more.
02:01Freedom.
02:04Through half a century of adventures, their astonishing trajectories draw another history of the Wild West.
02:12A cowboy rides over curving, rocky mountains.
02:15Then a tumbleweed rolls into a town.
02:17In yellow western font, the Black West.
02:20A counter-history of the Wild West.
02:25A woman opens a front door and is silhouetted against a steep-cliffed mountain.
02:30Summer 1955.
02:33John Wayne is starring in The Searchers.
02:36A film by John Ford.
02:38On horseback.
02:40The conservative star is at the height of his popularity.
02:44But does John Wayne know that he's playing a black man?
02:47He brandishes a gun.
02:49His character was based on the true story of Britton Johnson, a former slave who went in search of his
02:57wife and two children who had been kidnapped by the Kiowa Indians.
03:03Today, John Ford's masterpiece is considered the greatest western ever made.
03:09It perfectly portrays the violence of the time while concealing the fact that an African-American is hiding behind John
03:19Wayne.
03:20Art Burton, historian, South Holland, Illinois.
03:25The back of Art's shirt has an illustration of a Native American wearing a headdress.
03:30Art's also wearing a pale hat with a red ribbon around it that has a Native American design.
03:36To be an American hero, you had to be white.
03:39You know, that was the bottom line.
03:43And everybody else, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, they were not considered.
03:51Another shot from The Searchers.
03:52The history of the West is not limited to this eternal, stereotypical duel between the Redskins, as they were called
04:00at the time, and the Pale Faces, who looked like John Wayne.
04:05The reality is more complex.
04:08It must be reconstructed not with just two players, but with three.
04:14In the film, Native Americans on horseback are chasing after a group of cowboys.
04:19Now, a heavyset black man, Quintard Taylor, historian, University of Washington.
04:25The United States, through most of its history, was based on a principle called white supremacy.
04:33Whites accepted the notion that they were in charge and that they should be in charge.
04:38And if they are in charge and should be in charge, why should they care about anybody else?
04:44A rocky crag on the pinnacle of a tapered mountain in golden afternoon sunlight.
04:51History has been whitewashed without realizing that this white, this whiteness, was only an imaginary color, a political construction, a
05:03way for some to consider themselves superior to all others.
05:07Long shadows are splashed across the landscape, bleeding into valleys and dotted behind bushes.
05:13The sky moves through a gradient from hazy white to deep blue.
05:19Now, a woman in a wide-brimmed hat and a rich blue top.
05:23Angela Bates, historian, Nicodemus Historical Society.
05:28We participated in the settling of the West, and our story needs to be told.
05:34The part of our story has a little bit of a different twist because we were former slaves.
05:40And this is the first time that we are affording the opportunity to experience real freedom.
05:49This story begins with a celebration.
05:53An illustration of soldiers.
05:56We are in 1865.
06:00After four years of deadly conflict, the Civil War finally ends with the victory of the abolitionists.
06:10All slaves are emancipated.
06:14But few freedmen have enough money to buy their own farm.
06:20Where to live?
06:22On what land?
06:25Many of them leave to try their luck in the Wild West.
06:30A white man with a black hat strides down a path.
06:33He has snow-white hair and a matching moustache above his lip.
06:37Roger Hardaway, historian, Northwestern Oklahoma State University.
06:42When slavery is abolished, you've got four million free blacks.
06:47What do you do?
06:49The plantation owners are not going to give you any money.
06:53They're not going to give you any land.
06:55They will hire you back and let you live in the old slave cabin
06:59and do the same work you did when you were a slave on the same piece of land
07:04and pay you practically nothing.
07:06And that happened a lot.
07:08A woman's washing a young black boy outside.
07:12Freed slaves now have to rent the land that they have always cultivated.
07:17They also need seeds, plows and mules.
07:22They soon find themselves in debt.
07:26And economic slavery replaces the slavery of yesterday.
07:31A man steps into a pen.
07:34John Solomon Lewis.
07:36He's carrying two buckets.
07:39I am more and more in debt.
07:42I will go somewhere else and try to make headway like white working men.
07:47The man I rented from got very mad and said to me,
07:50If you try that job, you will get your head shot away.
07:56The man ambles back toward the pen's entrance as the picture blurs.
08:00Now an illustration of a black man being held at gunpoint by two white men,
08:05then a building that's been set alight.
08:08A new violence breaks out against the former slaves.
08:13In reaction to the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery,
08:17militias go on the rampage.
08:19A group photo of people with a skull.
08:23A secret organization is created at the end of 1865
08:26to impose white supremacy by force.
08:30Their hats are marked with three large Ks.
08:35One word describes it all, and that's fear.
08:37People were afraid.
08:39White people were afraid that there was going to be retaliation.
08:43And blacks were afraid because they didn't know where to go.
08:46They didn't know who they could trust.
08:49Everything was based on fear.
08:50You also had the Ku Klux Klan
08:52and other terrorist organizations in the South
08:55killing people who tried to rock the boat,
08:59who wanted to vote,
09:00who demanded equality under the law.
09:03And the federal government wasn't doing a whole heck of a lot
09:06to protect people in the South from the Ku Klux Klan.
09:10A photo of a black man in a hat.
09:13Letter to the governor of Alabama.
09:16I'm afraid to leave town and in constant dread of being murdered.
09:21This state of things cannot long continue.
09:24Either we must have protection or leave.
09:30To the governor of South Carolina.
09:33On Friday night, there came a crowd of men to my house,
09:37calling, knocking, climbing, and shoving at the door.
09:41It is a plot to drive me out of the country because I am a schoolteacher.
09:46Please, your honor, send some protection up here.
09:51A young black man in a suit, then a group of travelers.
09:55It becomes necessary to flee.
09:58The West then appears as a promised land.
10:01The home of those who were soon to be called the Exodusters.
10:07For many of the black people who came West,
10:10there was this dual promise.
10:12The promise of land and freedom.
10:15And so there's a push and pull factor.
10:17There's the push of racism, which is, you know, forcing them out.
10:22But there's the pull of Kansas, the lure of Kansas, that's seen as a better place.
10:28A sign advertises going to Kansas for $5.
10:32The exodus of black families from the South begins.
10:37In 1879, 20,000 freedmen leave the South.
10:42John Solomon Lewis, his wife, and their four children are on the road.
10:48A group of travelers resting on the banks of a river, then boarding a huge steamboat.
10:53People and horses are standing near small houses.
10:57When I landed on the soil of Kansas,
11:01I looked on the ground and I said,
11:03this is free ground.
11:06One brick building is labeled AME Church, 1885.
11:11John wanders down a church aisle, removing his hat before he's praying,
11:15hands held together and head bowed.
11:19Then I looked within my heart,
11:21and I wondered,
11:24why was I never free before?
11:27A single thick tear rolls down the center of his cheek and into his beard
11:32as he stares unblinkingly up at the wooden ceiling of the church.
11:40Now, rustling golden grasses wave gently in the breeze,
11:44and they fold down as the perspective slowly moves through fields of them.
11:49The promised land slips away from the Exodusters.
11:54There are no trees on the plains of Kansas and Nebraska,
11:58and the Exodusters often have neither tools nor timber.
12:03Down a track through the flowing grasses,
12:05a nodding donkey moves slowly on the horizon.
12:08Now, a family outside a home.
12:11When that first large group arrived in September of 1877,
12:15they were living in dugouts, you know, earth homes.
12:20You would dig down into the ground and into the knoll,
12:23and you'd clear it all out, like a gopher.
12:28Yeah, and you would live in there, holes in the ground.
12:32A woman arranges things on a shelf inside,
12:35then two people walk down a hill before a twister curls across the ground.
12:40This was an environment that was,
12:42some people would consider hostile compared to the way they had lived,
12:45even as slaves.
12:48So it's very hard,
12:49but that tells you the determination of the people that did it.
12:54An aerial photo of several blocks of a young town.
12:58About 50 black towns spring up.
13:01One of the most famous is called Nicodemus.
13:05Four people stand out the front of a wooden house.
13:09Willianna Hickman remembers her first impressions
13:12when she arrived there with her six children in the spring of 1878.
13:16A woman wanders out of a house and begins hanging clothes on a line.
13:21I looked with all the eyes I had.
13:24I said,
13:25Where is Nicodemus?
13:27I don't see it.
13:29My husband pointed out various smokes coming out of the ground
13:33and said,
13:35That is Nicodemus.
13:38The families lived in dugouts.
13:43The scenery was not at all inviting,
13:45and I began to cry.
13:48Angela sings inside a church.
13:54Amazing grace,
13:59How sweet
14:01The sound
14:05That saved
14:09A wretch
14:13Like me
14:19I once was lost
14:25But now I'm found
14:30Was blind
14:33But now I see
14:41Kansas
14:42Kansas is not quite the promised land of the freedmen's dreams.
14:46But it's one of the places where a new profession is emerging for young African Americans.
14:52Cowboy.
14:55Yee-haw!
14:58A montage of cattle being rounded up,
15:01then an animal that's been wrangled by two lasso-wielding cowboys on horseback.
15:06More images portray cowboys cooking themselves a meal,
15:09and another leaning on his white horse.
15:12Texas ranchers,
15:14who can sell their meat for ten times as much in the northern states,
15:17decide to move their huge herds to where the railways stop,
15:21to Abilene and Dodge City in Kansas,
15:24and to Denver in Colorado.
15:28Among the thousands of cowboys they hire is Nat Love,
15:33the only black cowboy to have written an account of his incredible life.
15:39His horse gallops down a dusty slope,
15:41then a collection of riders canter through a valley dotted with small green bushes.
15:46Nat, who has long, dark, curly hair, comes to a stop with his two companions.
15:52I started out for the first time alone in a world I knew very little about.
15:58I was at the time about 15 years old.
16:01Hard work and farm life had made me strong and hearty.
16:06I eventually brought up at Dodge City, Kansas.
16:10At that time, it was a typical Far West city,
16:14with a great many saloons,
16:17dance halls,
16:18and gambling houses.
16:22And very little of anything else.
16:25On horseback, Nat gazes about.
16:28An old monochrome photo of some Native Americans
16:31with long hair sitting on the steps of a building.
16:37Photos of the inside of saloons where men have their feet on the table,
16:40are holding beers,
16:41and are dancing together.
16:46In a video clip, a bartender slides a drink down the length of the bar where a patron grabs it.
16:55When he arrives in Dodge City, Nat Love spots a cowboy and asks him for a job.
17:01He's immediately hired for $30 a month.
17:05An excerpt from the memoir, Life and Adventures of Nat Love.
17:08There were several colored cowboys, and good ones too.
17:14The wild cowboy, prancing horses, and the wildlife generally.
17:19I was very fond of all these things.
17:22They all had their attractions for me, and I decided to try for a place with them.
17:30Nat has a five o'clock shadow.
17:32Then one side of his lip curls into a confident grin.
17:36In fact, the cowboy profession had come about a long time before Nat Love discovered freedom.
17:44In the days of slavery, it was mainly blacks who looked after the herds on the ranches in Texas.
17:53The quintessential example of freedom for Americans is the cowboy.
17:58And yet, very few Americans know that the first cowboys were actually enslaved blacks.
18:04A photo of cowboys rounding up cattle.
18:08The word cowboy came from somebody who was handling cattle.
18:12And they called them boy instead of men to kind of keep them subservient and to let them know that
18:18they weren't quite equal to the men who were Caucasians, you know, on the farm or on the plantation.
18:26Nat Love was proud to be a cowboy.
18:29On July 4th, 1876, he becomes a rodeo champion.
18:34He's sitting on his horse's back, gazing over the textured brown rippling cliffs of the landscape.
18:41The United States is now 100 years old.
18:45The telephone has just been invented.
18:47And Nat Love has no idea what the future will hold.
18:50When we'll meet up with him again, the world will have changed.
18:55Wind flaps his brown coat.
18:58A long, very thin mountain range separating two plains like a wall.
19:04The shadows of clouds glide over enormous natural pillars of a similar material near some tall, steep-cliffed mountains.
19:11The West offers another outlet for young African Americans, the army.
19:18They're in lines behind a white man on horseback.
19:21In 1866, after the Civil War, Congress creates four black units.
19:30This is the first time in American history that black soldiers become a permanent part of the army.
19:37Now they're on horseback.
19:39With the 9th and 10th Cavalry, 20% of the Cavalry is now African American.
19:45And they are sent to the Wild West.
19:50Vance Hunter Marchbank
19:54We were coming out of a great Civil War.
19:57We were four million slaves, penniless, uneducated, landless.
20:04One soldier's holding a bottle.
20:06Should I endure a life in the South, or should I take my chances in an unknown world?
20:12Another's brandishing a pan.
20:15I would much rather be a soldier than anything else.
20:19Some of the men are in huge woolly coats.
20:22They got a uniform that made them proud to be a part of this nation.
20:26And they got three meals a day, even though they may have eaten hardtack and spoiled pork.
20:31They got a horse to go to the West and be a part of that.
20:35They got paid.
20:36It gave them a sense of pride.
20:39A man standing in a military uniform, another on a horse, then a third with a handgun.
20:44Now, a broad-shouldered man in a furry coat smoking a pipe.
20:49Private Charles Creek
20:51I thought, there must be a better living in this world.
20:54I got tired of looking at mules in the face sunrise to sunset.
20:59Charles sucks and puffs on his pipe.
21:03They are soon known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
21:08Bob Marley pays tribute to them in this song, written in 1978.
21:13Buffalo soldier
21:16In the heart of America
21:20Strolling from Africa
21:24Brought to America
21:26Said he was fighting on a rival
21:31Fighting for survival
21:45The American West lacks both infrastructure and security.
21:50Making log cabins
21:52The country desperately needs soldiers to tame these remote lands.
21:58Laying bricks and building a railway
22:01The role of the Buffalo Soldiers is to protect the population, but also to ensure the flow of mail and
22:08trains.
22:09A train on a lattice bridge
22:12The black soldiers soon become the armed wing of the federal government, which uses them to do their dirty work.
22:20Expelling the Native Americans from their land, including by force of arms, and collecting the dead.
22:28From then on, it is black skins against red skins, under the orders of the white skins.
22:35Dead bodies are piled on a horse-drawn cart.
22:40The extermination of the buffalo accompanies the American Indian genocide.
22:46In a photograph, two men stand with an enormous pile of bovine skulls the size of a large building.
22:53Now, a man in a dark outfit, cream gloves, and a light neckerchief.
22:59Henry McComb, 10th Cavalry Private
23:03We made the West.
23:05We defeated the hostile tribes of Indians and made the country safe to live in.
23:10In a clip from Buffalo Soldiers by Charles Haid
23:13What kind of soldiers are you?
23:16Buffalo Soldiers, Sergeant!
23:18What kind of a soldier is that?
23:20That's it right here!
23:21All on horseback, a man gestures an item at the sergeant, who nods in response and offers a thumbs up.
23:28Then, in a small village, a Native American man with long dark hair speaks.
23:38Are you a slave?
23:40The sergeant turns to the translator, then struggles to find words.
23:46No, I am not a slave.
23:48You were a slave.
23:56Yes, I was.
23:58Who?
24:00Why do you fight for those who were your masters?
24:06Come tomorrow, son.
24:09I will kill every man, woman, and child in this canyon.
24:16A soldier looks appalled.
24:19Why do they fight?
24:21I can speculate.
24:23Again, part of it is the pay, because it's a regular job.
24:27Part of it, let's be honest, part of it is that sometimes Buffalo Soldiers actually hate Indians.
24:34Not all of them, but some of them do hate Indians.
24:37We tend to focus on the fact that whites are racist.
24:40Yes, whites are racist.
24:42But understand that that racism percolates down.
24:47And so what happens then is that blacks know that whites hate them, but blacks also recognize that whites hate
24:55the Indians.
24:56And often the blacks will begin to hate the Indians as well.
24:59There is a hierarchy, and you always want to situate yourself.
25:03If you're a person of color, you want to situate yourself as close to the top of the hierarchy as
25:09possible.
25:10A monochrome photo of a Native American man standing with a black man.
25:15The black man took the land from the red man and gave it to the white man.
25:22It wasn't just blacks they used.
25:25They used other Indian tribes against other Indian tribes.
25:28So, you know, divide and conquer.
25:31You know, that's what they did, and that's what they utilized.
25:35A painting of someone ordering others about.
25:39From the first centuries of colonization, the Anglo-Europeans take care to avoid any alliance between blacks and Native Americans.
25:48A painting of colonization.
25:51To reinforce the slave system, they soon encourage the Native Americans to own black slaves.
25:59A painting of chained slaves, then of a white man speaking to a group of Native Americans.
26:05For the first American president, George Washington, the aim is to civilize Native Americans.
26:13A sign for a Cherokee pharmacy.
26:15Because they agreed to adopt Western customs, five Native American tribes, the Cherokee, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminole are now
26:31considered civilized by white society.
26:34Among the criteria for so-called civilization includes living in a brick or wooden house, eating at set times, and
26:44also
26:45owning slaves.
26:47A lot of them became slaveholders because they wanted to emulate the Caucasians.
26:55So you had all of these things.
26:59Christianity, slaveholding, the ability to read and write, becoming educated, all of that made you civilized.
27:08Right, right.
27:09What's civilized?
27:10Yeah.
27:13America's supposed to be civilized, but, you know, some of the stuff they do is not very civilized.
27:19A photograph of a black family sitting in tattered clothes.
27:23These tribes became, quote, civilized in the parlance of the time.
27:28The Cherokee were an example.
27:30They developed the constitution.
27:31They developed the government.
27:33They lived in big houses.
27:35They had slaves for those houses.
27:38If you saw a Cherokee plantation in Georgia in the 1830s, it would be identical to a white plantation.
27:48This is the home of Greenwood LeFleur of the Choctaw tribe.
27:53He owns about 400 black slaves.
27:56Joseph Van, Cherokee, about 100 slaves.
28:02Holmes Colbert, Chickasaw, eight slaves and their children.
28:07Peter Pitchlin, left in Choctaw costume, right in European dress, 50 slaves.
28:15John Ridge, Cherokee, about 30 slaves.
28:22In 1830, it was estimated that 10% of the Cherokee had black slaves.
28:29But blacks and Native Americans could have invented a different story.
28:34I wish I could say that the alliance would rise.
28:37I mean, it sounds logical.
28:39It sounds plausible.
28:40There are these two groups.
28:41You know, blacks are oppressed.
28:43You know, Indians are oppressed.
28:45You would think that they would get together, but they didn't.
28:49Large rolling hills cast waves of curved shadows, then a shallow valley with deep channels,
28:54as if a huge claw had scraped across the earth.
28:57The valley's floor is dotted with trees, and now clouds are rippling light over the land.
29:03Old footage of horse riders.
29:061875.
29:07In the Indian Territory, which will later become Oklahoma.
29:12This is where the five main Native American tribes are grouped together, living according
29:18to their own laws.
29:20In old monochrome footage, Native Americans and cowboys, both on horseback, charge across
29:25a field and fire guns as a horse-drawn cart tumbles down a dusty road being pursued by more riders.
29:32Out of reach of the white justice system, the wildest place of the wild west becomes a criminal's
29:38paradise.
29:40People exit a train being held up.
29:43Amongst the many outlaws who have made this their home is Cherokee Bill and the Dalton
29:48brothers.
29:49Many of them wear wide-brimmed hats.
29:52Now, a woman with platinum hair.
29:54The author of Bad News for Outlaw, Vonda Mishu Nelson.
29:58Indian Territory had become a haven for outlaws because there was no real law there.
30:07The tribal police could not arrest whites.
30:14They were out of their jurisdiction.
30:17A black man with a thick, wide mustache.
30:21This is where Bass Reeves settled.
30:24The former runaway slave will become the outlaw's worst nightmare.
30:29He takes a wanted poster.
30:32I would say this Bass Reeves was probably the greatest gunfighter in the wild west.
30:37Period.
30:38There's no other lawman on note that killed that many people.
30:41If you try to get in a gunfight with Bass, it was tantamount to committing suicide because
30:47he was so good.
30:48He could shoot so good.
30:49They said he shot folks at a quarter of a mile.
30:51So I would put him at the top of the gunfighters in the wild west.
30:56Bass strides away from a building, then pauses, stroking his bold mustache.
31:04Roofless, incorruptible, Bass Reeves kept his cool under pressure.
31:09A group of men behind bars.
31:12Over the course of his prolific career, he will arrest more than 3,000 criminals and kill 14 of them.
31:20Old footage of a masked white man riding a speeding white horse.
31:26The Lone Ranger.
31:28This Zorro-like American vigilante was the most famous hero of his time.
31:33Like Bass Reeves, the Lone Ranger rode a proud white stallion and wore a disguise to catch bandits.
31:40But these two heroes had something else in common.
31:43Their faces were black.
31:47When the Lone Ranger started in the 1930s, he had a black mask that covered his whole face.
31:57But why hide the fact that the hero is black by putting a black mask on a white actor?
32:03A photo of the Lone Ranger posing with two revolvers at his hips aimed forward.
32:10Black people were invisible, so they wore a mask anyway, all the time, psychologically, to white people.
32:17We were invisible.
32:19We weren't seen.
32:20We weren't seen as human beings.
32:22We weren't seen.
32:23We were just, you know, we were like ghosts, living ghosts walking up and down the street.
32:29A black man with a broad grin's riding a horse, then he tips his hat.
32:34It was not until 1974 that Mel Brooks directed a black sheriff.
32:40He no longer hid his face, but he still wore the mask of irony.
32:46When Blazing Saddles came out, it was a spoof on the Wild West.
32:51And they had a black man who was hired to be a sheriff of a town.
32:56He rides down the main road.
32:59Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
33:04The crowd stops cheering as he rides closer to them, and some people's mouths are held ajar.
33:10But the sheriff grins and tips his hat to them.
33:14As chairman of the welcoming committee, it is my privilege to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to our new
33:23figure.
33:27The majority of people had never heard of black marshals in the Wild West.
33:32Didn't have a clue.
33:33And some people even thought it was a joke, because they said the only thing they had to relate this
33:40to was Blazing Saddles,
33:41where a black man was a lawman in the West, and that was a comedy.
33:46In a snippet from Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger, the titular character stops with his sidekick at the top of
33:52a cliff.
33:52What does the Lone Ranger's mask really hide?
33:59Margaret, let's do this.
34:01In the 2013 version, the real star of the film is Bass Reeves' Native American sidekick, played by Johnny Depp.
34:11Nobody move!
34:12The Lone Ranger is still white and rather stupid.
34:15What's with the mask?
34:18See, I told you, I feel ridiculous.
34:22Stupid white mask.
34:25Depp's character holds up the Lone Ranger's black mask and a group of Asian men holding lanterns nod at him.
34:31But let's get back to the real story.
34:35The rest of Bass Reeves' life says a lot about America.
34:39He's walking with his white horse.
34:42At the turn of the 20th century, everything falls apart for him.
34:47His career, his freedom, and his family.
34:52In 1902, his sense of justice is put to the test.
34:58In 1902, he had to arrest his son for murder.
35:02His son committed domestic murder.
35:04And that was probably one of the toughest times of his life where he had to go out and arrest
35:08his son.
35:09He said, I'll take the writ, the warrant.
35:13A young man in a curled hat.
35:16And Benny was tried for murder and received a life sentence.
35:23Black bars slide over Benny's mug shots, then Bass wonders past themselves.
35:29In a sad irony, it's thanks to the law that he's so cherished that he will lose his own freedom.
35:36In a photo, a crowd is gathered outside the U.S. Land Office building.
35:41In 1889, the federal government opens up Native American land for a settlement.
35:47People standing along a line.
35:50At noon on April 22nd, thousands of pioneers gather to await the opening of the Indian territory.
35:58A man with a watch signals, then they're off.
36:02When the cannon sounds, thousands of people rush in to claim a piece of land for themselves.
36:10Thousands of horse riders and horse-drawn carriages race across the landscape, kicking up dust in their wake.
36:16Someone standing by a horse kneels down and makes note of a stake which reads SEG 20T.
36:24For Bass Reeves, this influx of white people will change everything.
36:31In 1907, the Indian territory officially becomes Oklahoma.
36:37The new government immediately enacts segregation laws.
36:42Photos of the community.
36:44This is the end of the mixed population that had characterized the territory.
36:50Bass Reeves is no longer allowed to be deputy marshal and has to resign.
36:55It's the law.
36:58A photo highlights Bass amongst the crowd.
37:01Now, Wanda's sitting on a chair on a veranda.
37:03After working for our country for 32 years, suddenly he is denied rights of a basic citizen.
37:19Even though all those years he had put his heart into making our nation better
37:28and bringing all those bad guys to justice.
37:33But that's how he was repaid.
37:36In the early morning, he wanders through the main street.
37:40Bass couldn't even be buried in the city cemetery,
37:43due to the laws that were discriminatory against African Americans.
37:50January 12th, 1910.
37:52The day that Bass Reeves died,
37:55the largest comet that appeared in the 20th century appeared in the sky
37:59on the day that he died.
38:03Bass and his horse are walking out of the silent town
38:06when overhead a burning light streaks across the sky
38:09with a white smokey line trailing behind it.
38:13The comet disappears behind a two-storey wooden building on Bass's right.
38:21A grainy sepia photo of a woman holding a long rifle in both hands.
38:25She has a thin belt and a small white collar.
38:29Going west to live in freedom only to end up in segregation
38:32is also the story of Mary Fields, who touched Gary Cooper's heart.
38:40Icon of the American Western, Gary Cooper, who won an Oscar for High Noon,
38:45is one of the few Hollywood actors who grew up in the Wild West.
38:49He has a tall face and is wearing round hats.
38:53Gary Cooper met Mary Fields when he was a child,
38:56and she made a strong impression on him.
38:59In 1959, he writes about her in Ebony, a magazine for the black community.
39:05His magazine headline reads, Stagecoach Mary.
39:10The legend of Hollywood and the reality of the West collide.
39:15Mary Fields?
39:18She was six feet tall, weighing well over 200 pounds.
39:21She smoked cigars.
39:23She wore a 38 Smith & Wesson strapped under her apron.
39:29Mary Fields' destiny was exceptional,
39:32but as Gary Cooper writes, it was emblematic of all black women of the Wild West.
39:39Born a slave, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw breath.
39:46A photo of her in a garden.
39:49Mary Fields works for a while on the Mississippi River
39:52and heads across the United States to Montana.
39:55She carries two large suitcases along the tracks.
39:59And in 1895, at the age of 60, she applies for a job with the United States Postal Service.
40:08She tosses her cigar.
40:10Gary Cooper.
40:13She was a stagecoach driver, the first black woman ever to drive a U.S. mail route.
40:18The coach has huge wheels.
40:21Maybe because she was a Negro, she was never bothered by Indians.
40:27It is there, as in all stories of the Wild West, that the legend of Mary Fields begins.
40:36It is said that in the saloons where she was a regular, she liked to make a bet, $5 and
40:42a glass of whiskey,
40:43that she could knock out any cowboy with one punch.
40:48Gradually, her fiery temperament made her a local celebrity.
40:53Cascade is joyful on Mary's birthday.
40:56We know today that the legend of Mary Fields stretches the truth by far.
41:01And perhaps that is why she is a true Western heroine.
41:06Her legend goes well beyond the reality.
41:10A woman with long white hairs walking across grass.
41:14Meante Metcalfe McConnell, the author of Deliverance, Mary Fields.
41:19She wasn't six foot, she wasn't 200 pounds.
41:22She was a crack shot rifle woman.
41:25And she probably was strong enough to beat two men up, but I don't think she ever did.
41:32So, I guess one of those is accurate.
41:38Mary Fields is well-liked, even becoming the baseball team's mascot.
41:42And she seems to have the unanimous support of the community.
41:47But when the town of Cascade becomes a city able to pass its own laws,
41:51Mary Fields' free ways begin to divide the population.
41:57The first law they make is a law that all women are not allowed to smoke or drink,
42:07and they are not allowed in the stalloon.
42:10They made that law specifically for Mary Fields so that she could no longer go into the saloon.
42:19Mary Fields continued to smoke cigars until the end of her life in 1914.
42:26Her death coincided with the end of the Wild West.
42:32In old footage, thick steams billowing up into the sky from a single moving point.
42:40A dark steam train speeding up as it passes a station, then comes around a downhill corner.
42:48So-called civilization was on the march.
42:53Two men are pumping a hand car as another standing with them pointing at something.
42:58A huge steam train with a lamp on its front is barreling down the tracks.
43:04As the new world bristled with rails and barbed wire, horses were replaced by motors.
43:11And city dwellers only tolerated cows on their plates.
43:17For the former slaves, the West and its promise of freedom were gone for good.
43:24A photo of a cowboy with his gun.
43:27When we meet Nat Love again, he too is looking back.
43:33History seems to have changed direction.
43:36The big-hearted cowboy has finally taken a new job on the railway.
43:42He is a baggage porter, then a doorman.
43:47But his heart is still on the prairie.
43:50He ambles around a table where a cigar is smoking.
43:55To us wild cowboys of the range, used to the wild and unrestricted life of the boundless plains,
44:01the new order of things did not appeal.
44:06Many of us became disgusted since quitting the wildlife for the pursuits of our more civilized brothers.
44:13Nat walks out of the saloon doors.
44:16No sooner than the Wild West had been settled, it was transformed into a spectacle.
44:24It was now up to the movies to tell the story of the Wild West, to distort it and embellish
44:30it.
44:33In Western after Western, the racial and economic violence of the Wild West was presented as a victory of civilization
44:41over barbarism.
44:42A dead body is lying in shallow water by some burnt-out teepees.
44:47In this version of history, the presence of African Americans was not necessary.
44:53We are discovering today that this erasure was nothing but storytelling.
44:58A narrative written by the dominant powers of the time, a legend imposed to keep everyone in their place.
45:06I grew up watching cowboy and Indians, and either I had to be an Indian or I had to be
45:12a cowboy who was a white man, and so I had no perspective about who I was.
45:17If you don't tell a person their history or things that happened to their people in the past, they think
45:24they don't have a history.
45:25And when other people don't know you have a history, they think less of you.
45:31We are finding out that, you know, we not only were snookered, but whites were snookered too.
45:36They didn't know. They were taught the same things that we were taught.
45:40The story is much richer. The story is about many people.
45:46Not just one heroic people that took over and look at what we've done and look at the civilization that
45:53we brought.
45:54Never mind our, you know, inhumane actions and our arrogant attitudes of superiority.
46:02I mean, come on. It's a different story.
46:06Angela walks over grass by a tall framework sculpture. Roger's wearing a blue shirt.
46:13It's often said that every generation has to rewrite their history.
46:16History doesn't change, but our perception of it does.
46:19What we choose to include and what we choose to exclude differs from generation to generation.
46:26I mean, we assume that everybody wants to hear the truth. That's a myth.
46:31Not everybody wants to hear the truth.
46:33People want to hear or believe what makes them comfortable.
46:37And the things that make them uncomfortable, they will push aside.
46:43Quintard's walking in slow motion past several weathered wooden buildings.
46:48In the West, in the frontier, African Americans were freer than they would be later.
46:58And in some ways, if we want a truly egalitarian society, it might be best for us not to sort
47:04of project into the future, but to look to the past.
47:08Grids of old portrait photographs of people from a diverse range of backgrounds, then the sun glinting through trees.
47:18Gently gliding over a craggy cliff on a hill splashed with golden afternoon sunlight.
47:25The memory of the Wild West is a living thing.
47:30Since the very beginning, it has been constructed on a foundation of distorted facts.
47:37Because we know today how political our history and our image of it can be.
47:42The time has come to recognize all the heroes of the Wild West and to write, in black ink, the
47:50missing pages of the American national novel.
47:54Hazy mountains in the distance top wide plains.
47:59Oh, freedom. Oh, freedom. Oh, freedom over me. Before I be a slave, I be buried in my grave. And
48:14go home to my Lord and be free.
48:19absolubi.
48:21I am a slave.
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