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TV, Documentary American Experience - We Shall Remain - After Mayflower - 2010-10-15
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00:00:21It is a story at the heart of America.
00:00:27One richer.
00:00:30And more surprising than we've been told.
00:00:43Tonight, American experience begins a story that spans 300 years and a vast continent.
00:00:51The greatest thing a person can have is the power.
00:01:01It's scary.
00:01:03It is a story of hope, courage, and survival.
00:01:08We were about to be obliterated culturally.
00:01:13Our spiritual way of life, our entire way of life was about to be stamped out.
00:01:22Every tribe in this country has a time of horror, absolute horror, when they were confronted
00:01:30by this invader.
00:01:31What we did to the Southeastern Indians, it's ethnic cleansing.
00:01:38Fire!
00:01:39Fire!
00:01:39It was done to them.
00:01:41So they did it back.
00:01:47But better.
00:01:48Whatever means and manner we could, since the Europeans arrived here, we've had to fight
00:01:54for our survival.
00:01:57Tonight, an epic history of America, seen through native eyes, too remarkable, too inspiring, to
00:02:13ever forget.
00:02:15To ever forget.
00:02:17The Master of Life has appointed this place for us to light our fires.
00:02:27And here we shall remain.
00:02:39The Master of Life has been a part of the Southeastern Indians.
00:02:40The Master of Life has been a part of the Southeastern Indians.
00:03:16Almost nothing is known about the most iconic feast in American history, not even the date.
00:03:24It happened, most likely, in the late summer of 1621, a little less than a year after the
00:03:31Wampanoag saw a small group of strangers land on their shores.
00:03:39Half these strangers, men, women, and children, had died of disease, hunger, or exposure in their
00:03:46first winter on the unforgiving edge of North America.
00:03:50But by the next summer, with the help of the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims had taken a harvest
00:03:55sure to sustain the settlement through the next barren season.
00:03:59And they meant to celebrate their faith that God had smiled on their endeavor.
00:04:20As the thanksgiving began, a group of Wampanoag men, led by their chief, Massasoyet, entered the Plymouth settlement, not entirely
00:04:30sure of the reception they'd get.
00:04:41Sometimes the pilgrims are saying, back off, and sometimes I think they bring the Wampanoags closer, depending on what circumstances
00:04:47are like.
00:04:48But this is a celebration of their survival, of their recognition that they probably wouldn't have survived without the assistance
00:04:56of these Indians.
00:05:10Massasoyet and his men had not appeared empty-handed.
00:05:12They brought five fresh-killed deer, providing some of the vittles for a celebration that stretched over the next three
00:05:19days.
00:05:20Pusketeers, make ready!
00:05:32Pusketeers, fire!
00:05:33Pusketeers, fire!
00:05:36Pusketeers, fire!
00:05:37Hooray!
00:05:38Hooray!
00:05:38Hooray!
00:05:39The Wampanoag and the pilgrims were an unlikely match.
00:05:42But the two peoples were bound by what they shared, an urgent need for allies.
00:05:48The pilgrims were completely alone in a new world, separated by thousands of miles of ocean from friends and family.
00:05:55The Wampanoag, badly weakened by rolling epidemics, lived in fear of rival tribes.
00:06:02That they found one another in 1621 looked like a boon to each.
00:06:08The Thanksgiving celebration at Plymouth was certainly an unusual event.
00:06:13It's not something we see thereafter.
00:06:16It symbolizes where the relationship stood as of the fall of 1621.
00:06:35I'm glad you're amused anyway.
00:06:38I'm pumped up. I like it there.
00:06:41A belly chair.
00:06:43Try some of this, good one.
00:06:52For the English, it establishes that they're going to be able to survive because of the Native Americans.
00:07:10There has to be some kind of gambling game.
00:07:13There are strong personal relationships certainly going on among the leading political figures on each side.
00:07:21And for all we know, among other individuals as well.
00:07:24Oh no!
00:07:27Видal!
00:07:28Pouchaos!
00:07:29Pouchaos!
00:07:31Wimbledo!
00:07:32Let's go!
00:07:33Pouchaos!
00:07:38Pouchaos!
00:07:41Go check!
00:07:44Hoop!
00:07:45Hop!
00:07:46Hoop!
00:07:49Hoop!
00:07:52Hoop!
00:07:53Hoop!
00:07:53Hoop!
00:07:53Hoop!
00:07:54Hoop!
00:07:58For those who followed the pilgrims across the Atlantic,
00:08:02the first Thanksgiving would enter into national mythology,
00:08:05where it remains the bright opening chapter of the American creation story.
00:08:11For the Wampanoag and for Massasoit,
00:08:14the memory of that day would recede into darker places,
00:08:18shadowed by betrayal and loss.
00:08:26It's as if you could take the storybook version of American history,
00:08:30the myth of the first Thanksgiving, and turn it entirely upside down.
00:08:34Here's this story that's sad, that's sinister,
00:08:38and finally is about cruelty and power.
00:08:45Looking back, Massasoit would on one level have felt he was true to himself,
00:08:51but on another level he must have regretted what he'd done.
00:08:55He must have thought,
00:08:56what if we'd taken a different course of action in dealing with these people?
00:09:19They lived in a place of privilege,
00:09:21at the edge of a world,
00:09:23where every new day began.
00:09:25And they called themselves the Wampanoag,
00:09:28the people of the first light.
00:09:31Well, think about it.
00:09:32You're here.
00:09:33You are in the east.
00:09:34You see the sunrise.
00:09:36In relation to your world,
00:09:38to what you know,
00:09:39you are the people of the first light.
00:09:41You are the Wampanoag.
00:09:47Behind the Wampanoag,
00:09:48the sun's west-moving light slowly revealed 3,000 miles of human culture,
00:09:53from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
00:09:59Indian people shaped this continent.
00:10:01They established civilizations here,
00:10:04societies that had risen and in some cases fallen long before Europeans arrived.
00:10:09As you look across the continent at this time,
00:10:13Shawnees in the Ohio Valley are shaping that area,
00:10:18building their own societies.
00:10:19Cherokees in the southeast,
00:10:21Sioux in the western Great Lakes reaching out on the plains,
00:10:24Apaches on the southern plains and in the southwest.
00:10:28Everywhere across North America,
00:10:30there are communities and tribes and peoples whose histories are ongoing.
00:11:01The confederation of tribes that made up the Wampanoag
00:11:04was one small network section of the native web
00:11:07that spread across North America.
00:11:10The people of the first light hugged the coast of a vast ocean.
00:11:14To the north were the people of the big hill, the Massachusetts.
00:11:17To the west and inland were the Nipmuc,
00:11:20the people of the freshwater.
00:11:22Then the Mohegan and Pequot and the Narragansett.
00:11:26Just think of this one big circle.
00:11:28And everyone speaking different dialects of an Algonquin language,
00:11:33but they were mutually intelligible.
00:11:35So we're all interrelating with each other,
00:11:39married, trading, sharing resources, using resources.
00:11:42It was a community of communities,
00:11:45and they had intermatched and had their own agendas,
00:11:48their own political problems, their own warfare, and their own trade.
00:11:53There was a rich sort of political interaction in this region.
00:11:58Sometimes everyone gets along and sometimes they don't.
00:12:00But they resolved the conflicts,
00:12:02sometimes through military activity and sometimes through negotiations.
00:12:07We had times when we forgave offenses as part of our tradition.
00:12:11Certain ceremonies were held, like the Green Corn Festival,
00:12:14which was held around the harvest time for the corn.
00:12:16That was a time when you would forgive all the offenses
00:12:19of your different people that you might not have been in good terms with.
00:12:24And you would invite them to the ceremony,
00:12:27and they would come and you'd exchange songs and dances.
00:12:29We continue with that because we believed that everything we had
00:12:33was a gift from the Creator.
00:12:40The half-dozen neighboring tribes had achieved a balance of power,
00:12:44the weaker paying tribute to the stronger.
00:12:47The Wampanoag had sufficient numbers to defend their territory
00:12:51against their nearest rivals, the Narragansett.
00:12:55And the bounty of the land itself eased intertribal tensions.
00:12:59Nature Noag!
00:13:01Nature Noag!
00:13:03House!
00:13:04The shallows of the ocean and the bays gave up heaps of shellfish.
00:13:08Inland rivers watered the growing fields,
00:13:11where the Wampanoag cultivated corn, beans, squash.
00:13:16The woodlands were filled with game for food and furs
00:13:19to get them through the cold, dark of winter.
00:13:22In 1615, the land sustained tens of thousands of people.
00:13:27The explorers who described these regions
00:13:31all described the native peoples of New England
00:13:33living in these very populous villages.
00:13:36In fact, Champlain, sailing for the French,
00:13:39decided that they didn't want to colonize New England
00:13:41because there were too many people here.
00:13:49For a hundred years, alien ships had trolled off the Wampanoag coast,
00:13:53apparitions on the horizon.
00:13:56Odd-looking European explorers and fishermen
00:13:58occasionally came ashore,
00:14:00but they made scant effort to establish relations.
00:14:22The visitors were known to kill native people
00:14:25or to capture and carry away men and women.
00:14:29But in the centuries since Columbus,
00:14:31the Europeans had yet to leave any real footprint
00:14:34on the Wampanoag shores.
00:14:56In the years 1617 to 19,
00:15:00an epidemic swept through New England.
00:15:03We don't know exactly what disease this was,
00:15:06and some of the reports of symptoms
00:15:08seem to suggest different diseases.
00:15:10It's possible that one followed rapidly upon the other.
00:15:18A normal epidemic hits a few people
00:15:21and then other people get sick,
00:15:23but the first people start getting better.
00:15:26In this case, everyone gets sick at once.
00:15:30A sickness was usually interpreted
00:15:33as an invasion of hostile spiritual powers,
00:15:37and the native people had medicine men
00:15:40whom they called powwows,
00:15:41who were experts at countering the spirits
00:15:44of the diseases with which native people had experience.
00:15:49In this case, the powwows were ineffective.
00:15:52Often they were victims themselves.
00:15:55The way that native people refer to it
00:15:57is that the world turned upside down.
00:16:21A whole village might have two survivors.
00:16:27And those two survivors were not just like any two people.
00:16:30They were two people who had seen everyone they know
00:16:32die miserable, wretched, painful,
00:16:36excruciatingly painful deaths.
00:16:50So it's not only that the population was eviscerated,
00:16:54it's that the survivors were deeply affected
00:16:58by their experiences
00:16:59and vulnerable in ways that are hard for us to imagine,
00:17:03you know, the sort of post-apocalyptic vulnerability.
00:17:07Massasoit had seen nine of every ten of his people perish,
00:17:10of a cause nobody understood.
00:17:12Tiny microbes for which the native population
00:17:15had no natural defense.
00:17:17Alien diseases left behind by European sailors.
00:17:25As the season of death subsided,
00:17:27the Narragansett,
00:17:29largely spared the ravages of the epidemic,
00:17:31began a series of raids on Wampanoag villages.
00:17:35And the beleaguered Wampanoag looked to Massasoit
00:17:38to lead them into an uncertain future.
00:17:47E.D.
00:17:50E.D.
00:17:50E.D.
00:17:51E.D.
00:17:51E.D.
00:17:51E.D.
00:17:52Look into the channel for the starboard.
00:17:55Oh, he's fired!
00:17:56He's standing.
00:17:58Over here, lads.
00:18:00Over sort of there, lads!
00:18:02All the way!
00:18:03Put your backs into it!
00:18:05Pull!
00:18:07Pull, lads!
00:18:08Pull!
00:18:09In December of 1620,
00:18:11after 66 days at sea
00:18:14and five uneasy weeks
00:18:15on the northern tip of Cape Cod,
00:18:17a scraggly cult from England
00:18:19anchored its sailing vessel, the Mayflower,
00:18:22off the mainland coast
00:18:23and sent a small party of men
00:18:25to scout the wooded shores.
00:18:27Ship oars!
00:18:29Store the oars, the mainsail.
00:18:31For fairness, that's a help!
00:18:33Hand it down, we're there, lads!
00:18:34Hello, you poor boy!
00:18:35Come on, I'll get there!
00:18:37Let's tie it off, right here!
00:18:38Radical religious views
00:18:40had made the pilgrims unwelcome
00:18:41and unwanted in England.
00:18:43They had no home to go back to
00:18:45if they fail to make one
00:18:46in this new world.
00:18:51Soon after coming ashore,
00:18:52the scout party stumbled onto
00:18:54the Wampanoag village of Patuxet.
00:19:01Patuxet was a large community of,
00:19:05it's estimated, well over 2,000 native people.
00:19:08In 1618, the sickness reduces the population
00:19:11to almost zero.
00:19:17What kind of jewelry are they?
00:19:20When the English arrive, they find houses falling to ruin,
00:19:25fields lying fallow, human bones bleaching in the sun
00:19:28that had been scattered by animals.
00:19:30They attributed this devastation to God looking out
00:19:34and clearing the way for his chosen people.
00:19:41We found a hole.
00:19:46Patuxet had easy access to fresh water,
00:19:49a decent harbor and high ground from which the pilgrims could defend themselves.
00:19:54They set their lone cannon on a nearby hill
00:19:57and christened the village New Plymouth.
00:20:00The fortifications were hardly sufficient to the task.
00:20:04The Wampanoag, even in their weakened state,
00:20:06could have wiped out the visitors with ease.
00:20:09Instead, Massasoit sent warriors
00:20:11to keep an eye on the strangers.
00:20:14The pilgrims reported themselves
00:20:16in the journals that they saw Indians.
00:20:19And of course, when they didn't see them,
00:20:21they thought they saw them
00:20:22because any time a bush would move,
00:20:24they were sure there was an Indian behind it.
00:20:27Our people always had to watch.
00:20:29It was part of a survival.
00:20:30You had to watch anyone to observe how they were
00:20:33and to see how they were going to act.
00:20:35When Indian people see the strangers who have arrived
00:20:40and they've brought with them women and children,
00:20:42that makes them different from previous Europeans
00:20:45that they've seen or heard of.
00:20:48In Wampanoag tradition,
00:20:49if you're thinking about making trouble,
00:20:51you don't bring your women
00:20:53and you don't bring your children.
00:20:56So, to see folks showing up with women and children,
00:20:59immediately they're not a threat.
00:21:01Secondly, they're really, really sickly
00:21:05and they're starving.
00:21:08For you who are troubled,
00:21:11rest with us.
00:21:12When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven
00:21:16with his mighty angels,
00:21:18in flaming fire,
00:21:20taking vengeance on them that know not God
00:21:23and that obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:21:28We pray always for you
00:21:31that our God would count you worthy of this calling
00:21:35and fulfill the good...
00:21:37The longer the Wampanoag watched,
00:21:39the more pitiful the strangers appeared.
00:21:42102 pilgrims had made the trip across the Atlantic.
00:21:46Midway through that winter,
00:21:4815 had died of disease or deprivation.
00:21:51By the end of the winter,
00:21:53the pilgrims had buried 45 of their fellow travelers.
00:21:5713 of the 18 women had died.
00:22:01But even as their numbers dwindled,
00:22:03it was clear the strangers were not giving up
00:22:05and anxiety grew among the Wampanoag.
00:22:10While many powerful tribal leaders, or sachems,
00:22:14argued that it was time to finish off the pilgrims
00:22:16before their settlement took hold,
00:22:19Massasoit counseled patients.
00:22:21The final decision on handling the strangers
00:22:23would fall to him.
00:22:46Sachem of the Poconocets,
00:22:48one of the groups that made up the Wampanoag Confederacy.
00:22:51He had risen to the leadership of all the Wampanoag,
00:22:54earning his title Massasoit.
00:22:58Massasoit is a classic sort of village chief
00:23:02or super village chief in the Algonquin world.
00:23:06He is a man of great respect among his people.
00:23:09He doesn't have the coercive power
00:23:12that a European sovereign or a monarch would have.
00:23:15He is a person who leads by example
00:23:18and people have faith in his leadership
00:23:20and his experience.
00:23:24Throughout that winter,
00:23:25Massasoit wrestled with the question
00:23:27of how to deal with the newcomers.
00:23:29The chief's first impulse
00:23:30had been to put a curse on the pilgrims
00:23:32and watch them die off altogether.
00:23:35But the weakened Wampanoag
00:23:36needed any friends they could get.
00:23:39Massasoit was paying steep tribute to the Narragansett,
00:23:42but he knew his near neighbors
00:23:44had the numbers to overrun
00:23:45the remaining Wampanoag villages
00:23:47whenever they chose.
00:23:49And he was aware that the strangers
00:23:51came from a nation of wealth
00:23:52and military might.
00:24:08During the winter of 1620-21,
00:24:12Massasoit must have been thinking
00:24:13about the possibilities
00:24:14of some kind of alliance
00:24:17because the pilgrims look pretty manageable
00:24:20given the fact that 50% of them are dead
00:24:22by the end of the first winter.
00:24:28Massasoit, and this is an assumption
00:24:30that was made by Indians
00:24:31all up and down the coast,
00:24:33would have thought this will be good.
00:24:35I can have these people here,
00:24:37I can get from them
00:24:38the things that I want from Europeans,
00:24:42and I can control them.
00:24:43So they'll be an ally
00:24:45and a benefit to me and my people.
00:25:00Panu Papa Pinot,
00:25:01wala and damma in
00:25:02It's funny
00:25:06you get the excuse
00:25:07you're sick of when there's never
00:25:12Can you see
00:25:17you hear some of them?
00:25:17It's over here, just a hander.
00:25:23A bit of man or beast.
00:25:26That's ready now.
00:25:31We'll need more wood over here.
00:25:33It's just there, so we'll need to cut more wood over here.
00:25:37Get back there.
00:25:40In the first days of spring 1621,
00:25:44Massasoit sent a small party into the pilgrim settlement.
00:25:47All right, stay back, everyone.
00:25:54Come on, Frank. Look out.
00:25:57Please.
00:25:59The Wampanoag chief and 60 of his men
00:26:01waited on the far side of a small river.
00:26:05He refused to enter the village himself
00:26:07until the pilgrims agreed to give up a hostage.
00:26:12Don't worry.
00:26:15I'll be right here.
00:26:16The English chose a young man with little to lose.
00:26:20Edward Winslow was a 25-year-old
00:26:22whose wife was just days from death.
00:26:24You're all right, lad.
00:26:28Winslow agreed to go as the hostage
00:26:30and to deliver Governor John Carver's invitation to Massasoit
00:26:34to enter Plymouth for talks.
00:26:57I come from King James.
00:27:03Who welcomes you?
00:27:06with love and peace.
00:27:08With love and peace.
00:27:12The King Sage, my lord, is his friend and ally.
00:27:17Please.
00:27:18Enter our village.
00:27:23Carver, the governor,
00:27:25I'd like to speak with you.
00:27:28Please, we wish to be at peace with you as our closest neighbours.
00:27:37Please.
00:27:54Please.
00:28:11Among the men with Massasoit that day was a Wampanoag who could act as translator.
00:28:19Disquantum, or Squanto, had been kidnapped years earlier
00:28:23and sold into slavery in Europe.
00:28:25When he made his way back home, Squanto could speak a little English
00:28:29and was familiar with European custom.
00:28:42My king welcomes you here.
00:28:51This is one of the very first of these treaty encounters that are going to become such an important part
00:28:56of Anglo-American relations with Indian peoples across the continent.
00:29:00We want to be at peace with you.
00:29:04We want you to promise that none of your people will harm any of our people.
00:29:22Let us agree then, that if anyone would justly attack you, then we will help you.
00:29:30And if anyone would justly attack us, then you will help us.
00:29:36There was cause for joy on both sides.
00:29:39The pilgrims had friends to help them navigate the unfamiliar hardships of their new home.
00:29:44The Wampanoag had made themselves the first and favoured ally of the new English colony.
00:30:01There's a very clear sense that Massasoit understands the entire treaty as reciprocal.
00:30:07At the very end of the treaty, it says, if you do these things, then King James will esteem you
00:30:14his friend and ally.
00:30:16So it would make very good sense for the Indians to think this is an alliance.
00:30:21This is a meeting between friends.
00:30:27As soon as the treaty is concluded, that very day, Massasoit says, tomorrow I'll bring my people and we'll plant
00:30:34corn on the other side of the stream.
00:30:36So this sense that we're the same people now, we're going to be sharing everything.
00:30:45Over the coming months, the two peoples made halting moves towards codifying their alliance.
00:30:51As a show of friendship, Massasoit formally seeded the settlers the village of Patuxet and all the planting land and
00:30:58hunting grounds around it.
00:31:00In July, Edward Winslow made a 40-mile journey to Massasoit's village, Poconocet, and presented the chief a gift of
00:31:07a copper chain.
00:31:09The Wampanoag agreed to trade with the English alone, and not the French.
00:31:14Massasoit would benefit as the facilitator of trade between the English and other tribes.
00:31:19A few weeks after Winslow's visit, the pilgrims invited the Wampanoag to take part in their first American Thanksgiving.
00:31:28But what sealed the relationship was a simple show of personal respect.
00:31:37In February of 1623, when a messenger arrived at Plymouth with the news that Massasoit was desperately ill,
00:31:45Winslow, like many Algonquian, rushed to his side.
00:32:04Winslow makes the point that this is what Indians do.
00:32:09When a friend is sick, everyone congregates at the friend's bedside.
00:32:15This is one of those places where Winslow is acting as he knows Indians expect people to act.
00:32:45Edward Winslow is a very interesting man. He was the second in command in Plymouth.
00:32:51Edward Winslow is a very interesting man. He was the second in command in Plymouth.
00:32:51And he's the one who takes it upon himself to become the principal emissary to Massasoit.
00:33:14Some Indians had a dual chiefdom system. That is, they had an overall chief, who is called the inside chief,
00:33:22who is responsible for the community, and basically stays within the community.
00:33:30And then there's an outside chief, who is responsible for essentially foreign relations and war.
00:33:39Winslow is acting as the outside chief.
00:33:42Winslow is acting as the outside chief.
00:34:09Winslow is acting as the outside chief,
00:34:11Watch over your child, Massasoit, and be around with your strength and spirit, and restore it to your health.
00:34:19Winslow's medicine was of no particular benefit to Massasoit, but the Chief did recover, and Winslow was there,
00:34:26representing the entire Plymouth colony, when Massasoit was able to rise again.
00:34:54In spite of a growing trust between Edward Winslow and Massasoit,
00:34:58the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag remained tentative.
00:35:03The Pilgrims were separatists, devout Christians who had fled the Old World,
00:35:07for fear its corruptions would darken the godly light in which they dwelled.
00:35:12Corrupting influences lurked everywhere.
00:35:21Even Winslow, who found the Wampanoag and other tribes trustworthy, quick of apprehension, and just,
00:35:27fretted about close contact with the Indians.
00:35:31You see at the beginning of the 17th century, this kind of cautious getting to know one another.
00:35:39As those peoples become more and more dependent on one another, and exchange more and more goods and ideas,
00:35:44and people, children, wives, families, have more and more contact with one another,
00:35:48In a sense, the two peoples come to share a great deal.
00:35:53They come, the English come to be more like Indians in many ways.
00:35:56They dress more like Indians, they use Indian words, they're familiar with Indian ways,
00:36:01and the Indians come to be more like English.
00:36:03A lot of Indians speak English, they wear English clothes, they build houses that are English.
00:36:08There's a reciprocity of exchange that actually turns out, we might think,
00:36:14oh, how lovely, you know, what a nice multicultural fest that is.
00:36:17But actually, it makes everyone very, very nervous.
00:36:22The Pilgrims were especially wary.
00:36:24They were badly outnumbered, and many Indians, they believed, bore the English in inveterate malice.
00:36:30They also knew Massasoit hadn't the power to shield them from every danger.
00:36:36So in the spring of 1623, after hearing rumors of a planned attack by Massachusett Indians to the north,
00:36:43the Pilgrims, under their militia leader Miles Standish, made a deadly preemptive raid,
00:36:48and returned to Plymouth with an object lesson to those who would cross them.
00:36:54Gentlemen, here's a proper trophy!
00:36:58Swirl! Swirl!
00:37:00Swirl!
00:37:00Swirl!
00:37:03This sudden and unexpected execution has so terrified the Indians, Edward Winslow wrote,
00:37:09that many have fled their homes.
00:37:11Living like this on the run, many have fallen sick and died.
00:37:18Shocking and brutal as the raid was, Massasoit counseled his sachems to keep up relations with Plymouth.
00:37:24The Wampanoag were still the favored friends of the English,
00:37:27and the English were surely no threat to their friends.
00:37:32Massasoit is able to keep this peace for a long time,
00:37:36which suggests that it's not simply his personality and his command that's doing that.
00:37:42The nature of Native society means that he is representing what the majority of his people want to do.
00:37:49The Indians wanted certain things from the Europeans.
00:37:54Knives, axes, swords, and steel drills.
00:37:59Europeans bring things like metal kettles that are very useful for Indian people,
00:38:02and Indian people incorporate those goods into their own cultures on their own terms and in their own ways.
00:38:08For Native people, trade is about binding people together in relationships of reciprocity.
00:38:13So that was the question, how do we bring the English into these relationships of reciprocity?
00:38:38We live right near the shoreline and we harvested the quahogs,
00:38:42which you make the quahog chowder from and all the other good things.
00:38:45And then after you eat the contents and you save the shell,
00:38:50we wasted nothing that the Creator gave because everything was a gift.
00:38:53And from the shell from the quahog, the purple spot is what we made the wampum beets from.
00:38:59All the tribes respected the wampum,
00:39:02and the value that wampum had was spiritual, more so than material.
00:39:07We used it in ceremony. It sealed the agreements.
00:39:10It was what notarized the transaction.
00:39:14When wampum was exchanged, no one would break the agreement that went along with a wampum,
00:39:19a marriage agreement or a treaty or whatever, because it was so sacred,
00:39:23and you don't go against the Creator.
00:39:28Initially, the Europeans then will say,
00:39:30well, this must be like silver or gold.
00:39:31This is something that Indian people will use and trade back and forth.
00:39:34So they accept it initially as well.
00:39:37And wampum is seen as Native American currency by the English.
00:39:47European traders, long familiar with the money economy,
00:39:50set in motion a system for exchanging hard goods for wampum,
00:39:54making the Indians' traditional ceremonial amulet the coin of the American realm.
00:40:00Trade flourished under this ingenious new system.
00:40:03English merchants eagerly awaited Indian furs from the New World.
00:40:07The beaver hat was the fashionable new accessory on the streets of London,
00:40:11and the arrival at Plymouth of product-laden ships from England was happy news to all.
00:40:17With the import of steel drills,
00:40:19Native tribes could greatly speed the manufacture of wampum.
00:40:23It's much easier to create a wampum shell,
00:40:27to drill that hole through the center with a steel drill than with a stone drill.
00:40:31And so suddenly there's a large supply of wampum.
00:40:35And what this means is that tribes in the interior,
00:40:38who previously had very little access to wampum,
00:40:42now are able to get it.
00:40:44And they're also groups that have furs and other things to trade to the Europeans.
00:40:51Plymouth colonists rely on Massasoit
00:40:53to begin brokering connections with other Native groups.
00:40:55So Massasoit becomes this very important node in these regional exchanges
00:41:00among furs and European goods and wampum,
00:41:03all of which are being exchanged many times in different groups,
00:41:06depending on who has what.
00:41:09With the pilgrims integrated into the web of his alliances,
00:41:13Massasoit's gamble,
00:41:14welcoming the strangers,
00:41:16seemed to have paid handsome dividends.
00:41:20I think he would have looked back over the previous decade
00:41:23and thought that he had done some pretty good work.
00:41:25It must have seemed possible to Wampanoags
00:41:28and to other Native groups in southern New England
00:41:31to envision a future in which English and Native communities
00:41:35could live profitably together.
00:41:47In the spring of 1630,
00:41:49a fleet of ships led by the Arabella
00:41:51appeared off the coast to the north of Plymouth,
00:41:53carrying a thousand new immigrants.
00:41:57While the pilgrims had been escaping Europe,
00:42:00these Puritans meant to recreate a new and more pious England in America.
00:42:05They had embarked from England with a grant from their king
00:42:08to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony
00:42:10and with a boundless sense of mission.
00:42:14In Europe at this time,
00:42:16and particularly among the Christian kingdoms of Europe,
00:42:18there was this belief in the right to go out and usurp land
00:42:22that was not occupied by Christian people.
00:42:24And this is a religious basis for this,
00:42:27as well as political,
00:42:29in that this was a God-ordained practice
00:42:32in which one would be spreading Christianity
00:42:35and would be spreading European civilization,
00:42:39and there was a moral obligation to do so.
00:42:43On board the Arabella days before it landed,
00:42:46the future governor of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony,
00:42:49John Winthrop, essayed the epic vision.
00:42:52The Lord shall make us a praise and glory,
00:42:55for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
00:42:59The eyes of all people are upon us.
00:43:07The Puritans washed into Massachusetts Bay by the thousands in the next five years,
00:43:12establishing town after town,
00:43:14their path cleared by new waves of smallpox hitting tribes in New England.
00:43:19One of the historians of the Puritans,
00:43:22I'm quite sure it was one of the clergymen,
00:43:24said in reference to the death of so many of the Massachusetts people,
00:43:28that the land was almost cleared of those pernicious creatures
00:43:32so as to make way for a better growth.
00:43:35Now he's talking about women, children, all of that,
00:43:38but that's the way they relate it,
00:43:39because their unfounded notion of European superiority.
00:43:44They kept coming one boatload after another.
00:43:49You have all of these people who are coming over from England
00:43:52with that sense of entitlement.
00:43:54They have this image of the colonies,
00:43:59as if there's just great space for them to occupy,
00:44:02and there are great resources that are for the taking.
00:44:17In less than a generation,
00:44:18Massasoit saw the English population surrounding the Wampanoag
00:44:22rise from 300 to 20,000.
00:44:33The animals that the English bring with them
00:44:35are incredibly devastating,
00:44:37because they just let them run loose.
00:44:44The pigs, in particular,
00:44:46had apparently no natural enemies here.
00:44:51They would talk about, you know, innumerable numbers of pigs
00:44:55just vacuuming up the acorns
00:44:58and the other things on which native people relied for food
00:45:01and on which these animals that the native people
00:45:04were accustomed to hunt relied for food.
00:45:16The population of the English colonies was growing dramatically,
00:45:20with an increasing demand to establish new towns,
00:45:23create farms and expand.
00:45:25The one thing that native people have
00:45:27that the English people want is their land.
00:45:30Access to an acquisition of this so-called free land
00:45:34that the Americas offer is a source of constant
00:45:37and recurrent conflict with Indian people.
00:45:41The English came from a society where land was in short supply.
00:45:47Ownership of land was a mark of status,
00:45:50as well as a source of wealth.
00:45:52For Indian people, land is homeland.
00:45:56You are rooted to it by generations of living on the land,
00:46:02your identity is tied up in it.
00:46:04It's not a commodity to be bought and sold.
00:46:09Massasoit had not felt pressured to sell land
00:46:11for the first 20 years of Plymouth's existence.
00:46:14And his first commitments to seed territory had seemed harmless.
00:46:18But just as the English became more aggressively acquisitive,
00:46:22Massasoit found himself in a weak bargaining position.
00:46:25The beaver population was badly depleted,
00:46:28collapsing the trade on which his relationship
00:46:30with the pilgrims had been built.
00:46:32And the English no longer needed Massasoit's help
00:46:34in expanding their commercial reach.
00:46:36So he was forced to bend to his allies' desire to have his land.
00:46:42The chief got what he could for the Wampanoag land.
00:46:45He sold one parcel for 10 fathom of beads and a coat.
00:46:48As time went on, he asked for more.
00:46:52Hatchets, hoes, knives, iron kettles,
00:46:56moose skins, matchlock muskets,
00:46:58yards of cotton, and pounds of English coin.
00:47:01There are several incidents where Massasoit's clearly disgruntled
00:47:05with the way things are changing.
00:47:06For instance, he agrees to sell some of his land
00:47:09to some of the settlers down in Rhode Island.
00:47:12And they pay him for it, and he says,
00:47:16this is nowhere near enough, and he gives it back.
00:47:20And they refuse to take it.
00:47:22They refuse to take the gifts, the payment, back.
00:47:26And they say, you know, you can't return this,
00:47:29and this is a done deal.
00:47:30This land is now ours.
00:47:42The English were in a race to establish empire in the Americas,
00:47:46jockeying for territory with the French, the Spanish,
00:47:50the Swedish, the Dutch.
00:47:56They're very expansive, and they don't expand incrementally.
00:48:03They're aware that the Connecticut River is a major conduit of trade.
00:48:08The Dutch are already on the lower end of the river,
00:48:11and so clearly they want to control the Connecticut River
00:48:14from its midsection.
00:48:18With the influx of English people in the 1630s,
00:48:23Puritan New England ceases to be weak and vulnerable,
00:48:28and now becomes a power in the region.
00:48:31As they look further west, they see another major power.
00:48:37The English identify the Pequot as an obstacle to their expansion.
00:48:47In the spring of 1637, Massasoit received word
00:48:52that a force led by Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies
00:48:55had destroyed the Pequot,
00:48:57the most powerful Indian confederacy in the area.
00:49:01In the final battle, English soldiers, to the horror of their Indian allies,
00:49:06had burned an undefended village, killing hundreds.
00:49:11The Pequot War established in Indian mines
00:49:15the potential savagery of the English.
00:49:18The idea of 700 people, men, women, and children,
00:49:23perishing in the burning of a fort was incomprehensible to Indians.
00:49:29It was a cautionary tale that Massasoit did not forget.
00:49:34It was a cautionary tale.
00:49:37It was a cautionary tale.
00:49:38It was a cautionary tale.
00:49:38It was a cautionary tale.
00:49:39It was a cautionary tale.
00:49:41It was a cautionary tale.
00:49:44Soon after the destruction of the Pequot,
00:49:47Massasoit traveled to Massachusetts Bay Colony
00:49:50to deliver to its governor, John Winthrop,
00:49:53a gift of 16 beaver skins,
00:49:55and to restate his long-standing friendship with the colonists,
00:49:58all in hopes that they would continue to honor the promise of shared security
00:50:02the English had made in that first long-ago treaty.
00:50:06Massasoit hopes that this tribute is going to solidify his friendship with Massachusetts
00:50:11because he's worried, and he's not the only one.
00:50:15Winthrop writes in his journal that after the Pequot War,
00:50:20dozens of Indian groups in the area come to Massachusetts to the court
00:50:24and try to make friends.
00:50:26Say, you know, we want to be your friends, your partners, your subjects,
00:50:30whatever it takes.
00:50:31They're frightened.
00:50:32They're frightened.
00:50:52Massasoit's eventual heir, his second son,
00:50:55was born around the time of the Pequot War
00:50:57and nearly 20 years after the arrival of the pilgrims.
00:51:01He knew no world but the one in which English and Wampanoag lived together.
00:51:05Even his names would suggest a man comfortable in two cultures.
00:51:10He was first called Medicom and later Philip.
00:51:14He came of age in the 1650s,
00:51:16in a world his forefathers could not have imagined.
00:51:18He fancied fine English lacework and richly detailed wampum.
00:51:22He was one of the few Wampanoag who kept pigs,
00:51:25and he counted among his close friends both Indians and Englishmen.
00:51:29He was described by an English traveler as walking through the streets of Boston,
00:51:36decked out in massive amounts of wampum,
00:51:40showing his wealth and his power,
00:51:43comfortable walking in this world that had been created together by the English
00:51:47and the native people of the region.
00:51:50As he approached manhood, Philip was more and more aware of his father's growing unease.
00:51:56Massasoit's tribal borders had receded in around Narragansett Bay.
00:52:00Disease continued to thin the Wampanoag.
00:52:03His trusted ally, Edward Winslow, had died.
00:52:07The new leadership in Plymouth had little memory of the time they had needed Massasoit's help.
00:52:13When did the English lose their sense of openness?
00:52:17Well, when they become more independent,
00:52:20when they realize that they no longer need the Indians.
00:52:22And right around that same time, in the 1650s, they make one attempt to convert the Indians to Christianity,
00:52:31which is to say, in effect,
00:52:34well, if you're going to live among us, you need to basically become us,
00:52:37because we can't live with people who are different from ourselves.
00:52:41In 1651, Puritan minister John Elliott established a praying town in Natick, Massachusetts.
00:52:48In Natick, as in the dozen praying towns that followed,
00:52:52Indians who converted to Christianity were assured physical security
00:52:56and the promise of eternal life,
00:52:57so long as they agreed to live by moral codes drawn up by Puritan clergy.
00:53:03The praying Indian towns were set up by the English to basically control Indians.
00:53:10You had all these rules that were alien in concept,
00:53:13and Native people had to do everything in the English way.
00:53:17And everything Indian, of course,
00:53:19all the traditions that were sacred to your fathers and your fathers' fathers since time immemorial,
00:53:25you had to reject all that in favor of following the English way.
00:53:29So you had to look down on your own people, essentially, is what it boiled down to.
00:53:34Wampanoag people here got the idea that
00:53:39somehow, if we are to survive at all,
00:53:43we've got to at least say that we're assimilated,
00:53:47we've got to say that we're Christian, whatever that means,
00:53:49we're going to be wiped out completely.
00:53:51In order to be accepted as a full member of the church,
00:53:54you needed to relate a conversion experience that was witnessed by the congregation
00:53:59and that was deemed sufficient, that you've been saved, that you believe yourself to be saved.
00:54:05We have this remarkable set of documents that were published at the time called Tears of Repentance
00:54:11that were Indians from Natick relating their conversion experiences.
00:54:16And they were witnessed by a panel of ministers.
00:54:21I heard that word, that it is a shame for a man to wear long hair,
00:54:27and that there was no such custom in the churches.
00:54:31At first I thought I loved not long hair, but I did, and found it very hard to cut it
00:54:37off.
00:54:38And then I prayed to God to pardon that sin also.
00:54:44When they said the devil was my God, I was angry, because I was proud.
00:54:51I loved to pray to many gods, then going to your house, I more desire to hear of God.
00:54:58Then I was angry with myself, and loathed myself, and thought, God will not forgive my sins.
00:55:07I see God is still angry with me for all my sins, and he hath afflicted me by the death
00:55:14of three of my children.
00:55:17And I fear God is still angry, because great are my sins, and I fear lest my children be not
00:55:25gone to heaven.
00:55:28The English missionaries demanded from Indian people much more than an expressed belief.
00:55:35in their God.
00:55:37It was part of an English cultural assault, which Massasoit must have seen was tearing apart many native communities.
00:55:46And I think that's why he wants to try and curb the missionaries, try and stop this kind of assault
00:55:53taking place.
00:55:57As Massasoit's days drew down, he made a point of stipulating in land deeds
00:56:02that Christian missionaries stay out of what remained of Wampanoag territory.
00:56:27Having watched the English erode his tribe's land holdings in his father's authority,
00:56:32Philip determined to make a marriage of power.
00:56:35He wed a woman who was a leader in her own right,
00:56:38the daughter of a chief who had opposed Massasoit's alliance with the English from the beginning.
00:56:45Massasoit must have wondered what kind of world he was handing on to his sons, to his children.
00:56:52I think there's a certain resignation in some of his actions toward the end of his life.
00:56:58An attempt to stem the tide of English assault on Indian land, on Indian culture,
00:57:04on Indian sovereignty, and a lingering hope that maybe things will still work out okay.
00:57:12Maybe there can still be peace, because I think that was his vision of what New England would be.
00:57:18It was a vision of peace.
00:57:26Massasoit died in the early 1660s, 40 years after his first alliance with the Pilgrims.
00:57:33His passing came just as a new, hard-edged generation of English leaders was rising to power.
00:57:38Men like Josiah Winslow, Edward's son, who was intent on hastening the final reckoning between the Wampanoag and the English.
00:57:47Philip, just 24 years old, took his father's place as the Wampanoag chief.
00:57:54And suddenly, it's all on him.
00:57:57He was leading in a very difficult and very dangerous time, where essentially every part of our society was being
00:58:06stripped away.
00:58:08The wampum trade was declining.
00:58:10Fur trade was declining.
00:58:11The demand for the English to acquire more and more Algonquian land was increasing.
00:58:19More and more native people, for whatever reason, were choosing to move to praying towns.
00:58:24The world that had created Philip was collapsing around him.
00:58:31Philip hoped to strike a delicate balance, maintaining his alliances among the English, while also maintaining what remained of Wampanoag
00:58:39sovereignty.
00:58:41He continued to abide by the terms of his father's treaty.
00:58:45But like his father, he rejected repeated efforts by Puritan missionaries to convert him.
00:58:51If I became a praying sachem, I shall be a poor and weak one, he said, and easily trod upon
00:58:57by others.
00:58:58He also declared a moratorium on land sales.
00:59:03English authorities had little interest in humoring the young Wampanoag chief.
00:59:08There were a variety of ways that English claimed possession of Indian lands.
00:59:13Everything from just seizing them and then attending to the legalities much later.
00:59:19Merely occupying lands that they want to declare vacant and thus available for the taking.
00:59:25One that is, I think, often overlooked is that the English would get Indians indebted.
00:59:32As Indians continue to experience ill health and epidemic disease, one of the things they become indebted for is health
00:59:39care.
00:59:40It's being provided by English guardians.
00:59:43These English guardians use this as a way to get their hands on Indian land.
00:59:47So that once the debts have been accumulated, they go to the Indian estate for the land for payment.
00:59:56And this becomes a massive mechanism of Indian dispossession.
01:00:00What people felt for millennia, this is my land and my land is me and I am it, obviously, because
01:00:11we come from it and we eat from it.
01:00:14And, you know, things die, they go into the land and we eat from what grows from there.
01:00:19So when we say land, ahki, it's just ahki, land.
01:00:23But if you say my land, you have to say natahkim.
01:00:27This means that I am physically the land and the land is physically me.
01:00:32And after Europeans were here for about 70 years, people started, you started to write natahki, which is so sad.
01:00:43Because that means I am not necessarily part of the land anymore.
01:00:47It can, my land can be separated from my person.
01:00:54There is a continual erosion of tribal people's ability to maintain control over their own lives.
01:01:01And I think by the 1660s, Philip finds himself up against the wall.
01:01:05In other words, unless one makes a stand, the Wampanoag or the tribal people are going to be completely overrun.
01:01:21In 1671, rumors spread that Philip was growing angry and preparing to act.
01:01:28Authorities in Plymouth, Josiah Winslow chief among them, summoned Philip to account for himself.
01:01:42Josiah Winslow has no curiosity whatsoever about these people with whom he's grown up.
01:01:47He's known them all his life.
01:01:49He considers them an obstacle.
01:01:51He considers them untrustworthy.
01:01:54He wants nothing more than to find a means of provoking a war that could lead to their extermination.
01:02:00You have, have you not?
01:02:03In recent times, procured a great and unusual supply of both ammunition and provisions.
01:02:10Planning an attack on us both here in Taunton and in other places.
01:02:14These charges against me are false.
01:02:18If you have no such designs, have your men hand over their weapons.
01:02:24He had two choices.
01:02:26Either give all the weapons up,
01:02:29or acknowledge to the English that he was preparing for war,
01:02:33as they were accusing him of.
01:02:34So he had to choose the less of the two evils.
01:03:00Philip was made to sign a confession in which he admitted disloyalty to the English,
01:03:04and promised to turn over any weapons the Wampanoag had amassed.
01:03:10This is a real turning point for Philip in that it's quite clear that the aims now of the English
01:03:15are not just to gain more and more land,
01:03:18not just to undercut Native people economically and spiritually, but clearly to make Native people their subjects.
01:03:26They no longer are being treated as equals, they're no longer being treated as allies,
01:03:32they're being treated essentially as second-class citizens in their own country.
01:03:38Philip was not eager to make a fight with the English.
01:03:42A war would shred his father's historic alliance and put his entire tribe in peril.
01:03:48There were only a thousand Wampanoag remaining, and nearly half were living in the praying towns.
01:03:54Philip had few warriors, but the Wampanoag chief did prepare,
01:03:58seeking allies among nearby tribes and quietly buying up firearms.
01:04:02At home in Mt. Hope, with his English friends nearby,
01:04:07Philip wrestled with the enormity of a war against Josiah Winslow and Plymouth Colony.
01:04:15He was clearly a person caught in historical forces that gave him very difficult choices.
01:04:26And like many Indian leaders in those situations across the continent,
01:04:31he must have been weighing the options of peace and war,
01:04:36he must have been trying to balance conflicting pressures.
01:04:40Betrayal forced Philip's hand.
01:04:42In January 1675, Philip's personal secretary traveled to Plymouth to warn Governor Winslow that Philip was arming for war.
01:04:51Three weeks later, the secretary was dead.
01:04:55English authorities arrested three of Philip's men,
01:04:57tried them for the murder, and executed them.
01:05:01For Indian people, of course, a killing of an Indian by an Indian in Indian country
01:05:07was something that should have been settled by Indian people.
01:05:12After that blatant assault on Indian sovereignty,
01:05:16Philip must have been an incredible pressure from his warriors to step up and do something about this.
01:05:24As whispers of a coming war spread among the English colonists that following summer,
01:05:29the deputy governor of Rhode Island invited Philip to a meeting to offer some friendly advice.
01:05:44We thank you for coming over to speak with us.
01:05:48Our business is to try to prevent you from doing wrong.
01:06:00We have done no wrong.
01:06:04If you start a war against the English, much blood will be spilt.
01:06:08A war will bring in all Englishmen, for we're all under own king.
01:06:13I urge you to lay down your arms, Philip, because the English are too strong for you.
01:06:20Then the English should treat us as we treated the English when we were too strong for the English.
01:06:34Philip's angry young warriors refused to heed Easton's warning
01:06:37that war with Plymouth would bring every colony in New England down on their heads.
01:06:42Days after the conference with Easton, Philip sent warning from Mount Hope
01:06:47to an old English friend nearby Swansea.
01:06:50It might be best to leave the area.
01:07:08When Wampanoag warriors began their rampage, Philip stood with them,
01:07:13convincing other aggrieved tribes in the area, including the Wampanoag's old rival, the Narragansett,
01:07:19to join their fight against New England, a fight the English would come to call King Philip's War.
01:07:27This war that breaks out in New England is a major war. It has a big impact on the societies
01:07:34in New England, both Native American and white.
01:07:37By the winter of 1676 or so, to get outside of Boston for Europeans was a very dangerous prospect.
01:07:47Native American forces had devastating victories over the English in the early months of that war, destroyed large numbers of
01:07:54towns and people and property,
01:07:56and were very much winning that war and putting the English on a defensive.
01:08:00The war spread to Connecticut. The war spread into Rhode Island. The war spread into Eastern New York.
01:08:07Tribe after tribe after tribe after tribe became involved in this.
01:08:12English colonists from the outlying villages fled to bigger towns. Some simply boarded ships and headed back to Europe.
01:08:20Alarmists among the English feared they would all be driven into the sea.
01:08:25The English look now very differently at Indian people, even those Indian people who have lived among them, even those
01:08:34Indian people who have committed to living a Christian life and are living in the praying towns.
01:08:40These Indians now come to be regarded as, at the very least, a potential fifth column, as people who cannot
01:08:49be trusted, as people who are liable to turn on you at any time.
01:08:56As winter approached, the colonists banished hundreds of Christian Indians living in the praying towns, men, women, and children.
01:09:05They took them on a forced march to the Charles River, put them in canoes, and put them on Deer
01:09:12Island in the middle of Boston Harbor, which at that time of year is a cold, lustery place.
01:09:18Over 300 or 400 perished from lack of food and exposure because they gave them no blankets or food or
01:09:27anything and just dumped them there.
01:09:32The war ground on month after month, exacting a terrible price.
01:09:3825 English towns were destroyed.
01:09:41More than 2,000 English colonists died.
01:09:43But the shared danger did unite the colonies, and they lashed back.
01:09:50In early 1676, Philip could feel the tide turning.
01:09:54And then the powerful Mohawks, long-time allies of the English, made a surprise attack, killing almost 500 of Philip's
01:10:02men and dooming his confederacy.
01:10:14A year into the war, scores of Indian villages had been burned to ash.
01:10:205,000 native people had died.
01:10:23Hundreds of men, women, and children who did survive, heathen malefactors, Josiah Winslow called them,
01:10:29were loaded onto boats, shipped to the West Indies in Europe, and sold into slavery.
01:10:39Native tribes in southern New England had been crushed, and would never again control their destiny in their homeland.
01:10:54In the summer of 1676, Philip retreated home to Mount Hope with his wife and children.
01:11:01His cause all but lost.
01:11:16It does seem a little unusual that he would come back to Mount Hope.
01:11:21Because there are so many troops around there looking for him, it's like consciously walking into a trap.
01:11:28When he returns to Mount Hope, he certainly has given up. He's going there to die.
01:11:34Rather than a grand, heroic military figure, he's a more poignant, sad figure.
01:11:40A person filled with sorrow at the end of his life.
01:11:45On August 12th, 1676, an English militia unit, along with a praying Indian named John Alderman,
01:11:53surprised Philip and his dwindling band of followers.
01:11:58After Philip was shot by Alderman, they dismembered his body.
01:12:03The scarred right hand of Philip was given to Alderman as a trophy of the war.
01:12:11His parts were strewn about the colonies, spread to the four corners.
01:12:18This is a warning to other people, to other Indian people.
01:12:22This is what the English will, this is how the English will deal with rebellion, deal with treason.
01:12:29And remember that in English eyes, Philip was a traitor.
01:12:32And this was the punishment meted out by 17th century Englishmen to traitors.
01:12:39Massasoit's son was dead and scattered, but the colonists were taking no chances.
01:12:45They captured Philip's son and heir, a nine-year-old boy, and locked him in a jail in Plymouth.
01:12:51While English authorities deliberated on whether to sell the boy into slavery or simply murder him,
01:12:57the Puritans gave thanks to their god.
01:13:00And the final day of thanksgiving of the war is the day that Philip's head is marched into Plymouth.
01:13:07This decapitated head on a pole, it's erected in the center of town and is cause for a great celebration.
01:13:18They wouldn't take it down, Philip's head.
01:13:21For two decades, while Philip's son lived in slavery in the West Indies,
01:13:25the head was displayed in Plymouth, a reminder to the Indians about who was in charge,
01:13:30a reminder to the English that God continued to smile on their endeavor.
01:13:46It's hard to see how conflict could have been avoided and how the outcome of that war could have been
01:13:54different.
01:13:58Looking at the generation before this war, there is at least a moment where things were different.
01:14:20And let's roll it, please. We are rolling.
01:14:31One of the things we hope for in We Shall Remain is to sort of relocate Native American history
01:14:38at the center of American history. You know, it's often been sort of relegated to the sidelines.
01:14:44And by looking at Native history really closely, you realize that this is very central
01:14:49to the whole idea of this nation, how it came about, what the stories are that created America,
01:14:56who the heroes of America really are.
01:15:04We knew we didn't want the series to be an encyclopedia of Native history.
01:15:09We wanted to have very discreet stories that were strong stories with strong characters.
01:15:15We worked very closely from the very beginning with Native historians and advisors.
01:15:20We think about what were the important stories, what stories should we tell and how should we tell them.
01:15:25We were looking for moments where Native Americans employed diplomacy, where they used their spirituality,
01:15:32where they used politics. And so that informed our choices in the stories.
01:15:37In the series, what you find is that nothing is simple and nothing is black or white.
01:15:45When you have the odds and the adversity that you find with a lot of this history and Indian people
01:15:52and what they went through, you can't always be sure of the choices you would have made at the time.
01:16:10Listen, my people.
01:16:15The past speaks for itself.
01:16:21Where today are the Pequots?
01:16:25Where the Narragansett, the Powhatan, Okonokeh, and many other once powerful tribes of our race?
01:16:34Tecumseh is without question one of the great American patriots.
01:16:37I mean, if we think of a patriot as someone who loves his or her country, certainly no one
01:16:43gave more of the last full measure of devotion to defending his homeland than Tecumseh.
01:16:50What he achieved was something which had never really been achieved before.
01:16:54He put together a pan-Native American coalition who answered the call,
01:16:58which was first a spiritual call and then increasingly a cultural and a political and finally a military call.
01:17:07In 1809, Tecumseh set out with an entourage of warriors and interpreters on the first of a series of epic
01:17:13tours,
01:17:15determined to swell the ranks of the burgeoning Indian Confederacy any way he could.
01:17:19The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we are united in one common cause against the common foe.
01:17:29This is a man, a self-proclaimed leader, a self-proclaimed chief, who stood up and said,
01:17:37hey, this is enough. And he took a stand.
01:17:43At the heart of this story of a kind of a last stand effort to hold on to the Native
01:17:49American homeland,
01:17:50east of the Mississippi in the early 19th century, is a remarkably intimate story of two Shawnee brothers.
01:17:57The other, his troubled, vulnerable younger brother, Laloethika, the Shawnee prophet,
01:18:03who one day woke up and had a tremendous vision of a revitalized Native American experience.
01:18:09Billy Morasty plays the prophet. Michael Greyes plays Tecumseh. They both do an amazing job in those roles.
01:18:18Each one of the five episodes in the series is very different in terms of their aesthetic
01:18:29and their mixture of documentary and dramatic narrative. They're very different. If you see
01:18:37one of them, I don't think you can really say you've seen them all.
01:19:10I don't think you can really say you've seen them all.
01:19:10I don't think you've seen them all.
01:19:11All right.
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