[ Music ]

>> Hello I'm Kevin Costner.

Welcome to 500 Nations.

The settling of this country has
always been of interest to me.

It's fired my imagination and shaped my
life both personally and professionally,

but my knowledge of history has
been limited by what I was taught.

As far as I was concerned, the history
of the continent started 500 years ago

when Columbus discovered the New World.

But we know that's not true,
there were people here.

So how is it that we know
so little about this past?

The human history of North
America, our own story?

Could it be that we don't think it worthy

of mention the way history has
remembered the ancient civilizations

of Greece, Rome, Egypt or China?

The truth is we have a story
worth talking about.

We have a history we're celebrating.

Long before the first Europeans arrived here,

there were some 500 nations
already in North America.

They blanketed the continent from coast to
coast, from Central America to the Arctic.

There were tens of millions of people
here speaking over 300 languages.

Many of them lived in beautiful cities, among
the largest and most advanced in the world.

In the coming hours, 500 Nations
looks back on those ancient cultures,

how they lived, and how many survived.

[Background Music] We turned for guidance to
hundreds of Indian people across the continent.

You'll meet many of them in our programs.

To bring the past to life we
searched archives for the oldest

and most authentic images of Indian people.

We sought out rare books and
manuscripts for the actual words

of participants and eye witnesses to history.

Our camera crews travel throughout North
America to film at the actual places

where important events in
Indian history occurred.

We filmed incredible treasures
of Indian creativity

from museums across North America and Europe.

Historians and archeologists work with visual
artists and advance computer technology

to allow us for the first time to walk through
virtual realities of ancient Indian worlds.

What you're about to see is what happened.

It's not all that happened
and it's not always pleasant.

We can't change that.

We can't turn back the clock.

But we can open our eyes and give the
first nations of this land the recognition

and respect they deserve, their rightful
place in the history of the world.

With that in mind, we take you
first to where our story ends,

on the great planes in the late 1800s.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> The rumor got about the school.

The dead are to return.

The buffalo are to return.

The Lakota people will get
back their own way of life.

That part about the dead
returning was what appealed to me,

to think I should see my dear mother,
grandmother and brothers, and sisters again,

but boy like I soon forgot about it.

Until one night when I was rudely awake in
the dormitory, "Get up, put your clothes on

and sleep downstairs we are running away".

A boy was hissing into my ear.

Soon, 50 of us little boys about 8
to 10 started out across country,

over hills and valleys running all night.

I know now that we ran almost 30 miles.

There on the Porcupine Creek thousands
of Lakota people were in camp.

[ Chanting ]

>> By the late 1880s a message of
hope spread across the great planes.

It was called the ghost dance, a dance to
restore the past, when Indian nations were free.

[ Chanting & Noise ]

They dance without rest, on and on.

Occasionally, someone thoroughly
exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious

into the center and laid their dead.

The visions into the same way like a course
describing a great encampment of all the Lakotas

who had ever died, where there
was no sorrow but only joy,

where relatives strong out with happy laughter.

The people went on and on and could not stop.

And so, I suppose the authorities
did think they were crazy,

but they weren't, they were
only terribly unhappy.

>> Driven off their lands Indian nations were
confined to desolate reservations dependent

on corrupt government agencies
for food and supplies.

>> [Background Music] The people
were desperate from starvation.

We felt that we were mocked in our misery.

We held our dying children and felt their
little bodies tremble as their souls went out

and left only a dead wake in
our hands, Red Cloud, Oglala.

>> The ghost dance hurt no one, but
as it spread white settlers panic.

The United States government outlaw the dance.

>> The white men were frightened
and called for soldiers.

We had begged for life and the
white men thought we wanted theirs.

>> On a mild day just after Christmas
of 1890, a band of [inaudible] Sioux

under their leader Big Foot left the
Cheyenne River agency in South Dakota heading

for a meeting at Pine Ridge with
the Oglala leader Red Cloud.

Traveling with Big Foot were 106
men and 252 women and children.

Among them was a boy, Dewey Beard,
who would later tell his children

and grandchildren about that day.

>> Grandpa Dewey Beard being the last
survivor, I would listen to what he had to say.

In a way, it was sad and yet it's so
beautiful because it's bringing back history.

One thing that he would say is that had the
soldiers had the government left them alone.

In time, they would have looked outside
and seen how things were changing

and the change would come
about from within the bands.

>> [Background Music] Big Foot's band
was intercepted by the 7th Cavalry.

The officer in charge found Big
Foot wrapped in heavy blankets dying

from pneumonia in the back of a wagon.

Big Foot was ordered to make
camp along Wounded Knee Creek.

In the morning, his people would be stripped
of their weapons and escorted to Pine Ridge.

Big Foot made assurances of his peaceful
intentions and the band made camp.

>> He's a peaceful man.

He's always say that think about the
elderly, think about the children

and the women and don't start the trouble.

>> Morning broke after a
sleepless night surrounded

by soldiers [inaudible] witnesses
would later recall what happened next.

>> Big Foot who was sick came up with a
flag of truce tied to a stick, Dewey Beard.

>> As soldiers strained their guns on them,

Big Foot and his men brought forth all their
weapons, placing them near the white flag

of truce Big Foot had planted
in front of his lodge.

The soldiers then searched
their tents and wagons for arms,

even confiscating cooking and sewing tools.

[ Music & Noise ]

As Big Foot's people gathered around
the flag of truce outside his tent,

four powerful Hotchkiss rapid repeating
guns were mounted above the camp.

>> I noticed that they were
erecting cannons up here,

also hauling up quite a lot
of ammunition for it.

>> They encircled us like a band of sheep.

>> I could see that there was
commotion amongst the soldiers and I saw

and looking back they had their
guns in position ready to fire.

>> Thomas Tibbles, a white
reporter who followed the troops

to Wounded Knee recorded what happened next.

>> Suddenly, I heard a single shot
from the direction of the troops.

Then three or four, a few
more and immediately a volley.

At once came a general rattle of
rifle firing then the Hotchkiss guns.

[ Gun Shot ]

>> An awful noise was heard.

I thought I was paralyzed for a time.

Then my head cleared and I saw nearly
all the people on the ground bleeding.

My father, my mother, my grandmother, my older
brother and my younger brother were all killed.

>> And he saw his mother walking toward him.

She was walking along and she was shot.

"Dewey" she said, "Keeping walking, my son."

She said, "Keep going."

She said, "I'm going to die."

And that was the last time he saw his mother.

>> The women as they were fleeing with their
babies were killed together, shot right through.

And after most of them had been killed,
a cry was made that all those not killed

or wounded should come forth
and they would be saved.

Little boys came out of their places of
refuge and as soon as they came in sight,

a number of soldiers surrounded them and
butchered them there, American horse Oglala.

>> The firing continued for an hour or
two wherever a soldier saw a sign of life.

[ Noise ]

>> With the sunset, the weather
turned intensely cold.

[Background Music] About 7 o'clock that night,
the 7th Cavalry brought in the long train

of dead and wounded soldiers
and Indians from Wounded Knee.

Forty-nine wounded Sioux women and
children had been piled into fueled wagons.

>> The wounded Indian women and children
were eventually carried into an agency church

where they lay in silence on the
floor beneath a pulpit decorated

with a Christmas banner reading,
"Peace on Earth, goodwill to men."

>> Nothing I have seen in my whole life
ever affected or depressed or haunted me

like the scenes I saw that night in that church.

One, unwounded old woman held a baby on her lap.

I handed a couple of water to the old
woman telling her, "Give it to the child."

Who grabbed as if parched with thirst.

And she swallowed it hurriedly
I saw it gush right out again,

a blood stain stream through a hole in her neck.

Heartsick, I went to find a surgeon.

For a moment he stood there near the
door looking over the massive suffering

and dying women and children
and how the silence,

the silence they kept was so
complete it was oppressive.

And then to my amazement, I saw that
the surgeon who I knew had served

in the Civil War attending the wounded
from [inaudible], it began to grow pale.

This is the first time I've seen a lot of women

and children shot the pieces,
he said, and I can't stand it.

Thomas Tibbles, reporter.

>> For three days, the frozen bodies
of the dead including Big Foot lay

where they fell at Wounded Knee.

Finally, the army dug a large
trench at the massacre site then

as they collected the bodies,
a blanket was seen moving.

Beneath it snuggled against her
dead mother was a baby girl.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] The official military
history's called Wounded Knee the last battle

in the Indian wars.

But the tenacious struggle for Indian survival
is symbolized by a child clinging to life

for three days on a frozen
field continues to this day.

500 nations will follow a path
that covers thousands of years

and will bring us full circle to 1890.

In this hour we will travel back in
time to three stunning civilizations

that flourish long before
the arrival of Europeans.

To the Anasazi of the southwest, the
mound builders of the Mississippi,

and the great pyramid builders of the Maya.

But when we return we'll go back
even farther to creation as seen

through the eyes of Indian people.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> When earth was still young and giants still
roam the earth, a great sickness came upon them.

All of them died except for a small boy.

One day while he was playing, a snake bit him.

The boy cried and cried.

The blood came out and finally he died.

With his tears our lakes became,
with his blood the red clay became,

with his body our mountains became
and that was how earth became.

Taos Pueblo.

>> Pleasant it looked this newly creative world.

Along the entire length and breadth of the earth
our grandmother extended a green reflection

of her covering and the escaping
odors were pleasant to inhale.

Winnebago.

>> God created the Indian country and that
was the time this river started to run.

Then God created fish in this river
and put deer in the mountains.

Then the creator gave Indians life.

We walked and as soon as we saw the game
and fish, we knew they were made for us.

My strength, my blood is from the fish,
from the roots and berries and game.

I did not come here.

I was put here by the creator
Meninick Yakama [phonetic].

>> In the Old Testament, Adam and
Eve were forced from the garden

of creation and expelled to a cruel world.

[ Noise ]

>> For most North American Indian
nations, it was and is very different.

They stayed in the garden,
the place of their creation,

the single place on earth most perfect for them.

>> The Crow Country is a good country.

The creator has put it exactly
on the right place.

While you are in it, you farewell,
whenever you go out of it,

whichever way you travel, you fair worst.

The Crow Country is exactly in the right place.

Ealaapuash.

>> There is a song in everything, [inaudible].

[ Music ]

>> Make my eyes ever behold
the red and purple sunset.

Make me wise so that I may know the
things you have taught my people,

the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.

Make me ever ready to come to you with clean
hands and straight eye so that when life fades

as the fading sunset my spirit may come to
you without shame, Tom Whitecloud Ojibway.

[ Music ]

To the outsider, the sun beaten deserts
of the American southwest are a harsh

and unforgiving land reluctant to support life.

To the ancient people who live there, it was
a place where the creator provided everything.

>> There is nothing there that you can see
even to this day with very little vegetation.

We see a lot of rocks and we see a lot of sand.

The Hopis are always maintaining that that's
a chosen place from who was chosen for them

by the creator of the great
spirit for the Hopis.

>> The ancient people of the desert were the
ancestors of all the modern Pueblo nations.

To their Hopi descendants, they
are known as the Hisatsinom,

but to most of the world they are
known by the Navajo name, Anasazi.

Around 900 AD the Anasazi flourished in a
wide circle covering parts of modern day Utah,

Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

[ Noise ]

The Anasazi found balance with their world.

They learned where to find
water and how to harness it.

Villages joined together
to build dams, reservoirs

and irrigation canals turning deserts
into gardens of corn and squash.

They were a people intimately
connected to their land.

In a very real sense, they emerged from it.

Generations before the time of Christ, the
Anasazi lived in subterranean pit houses,

sunken homes with stone worked walls and
broad strong roofs, formidable protection

against the searing sun and
bitter cold of the desert.

With time, they adopted their above
ground storage houses into living spaces

but the underground pit houses
were not abandoned.

They were retained as spiritual places of
teaching, the place of origin, the Kiva.

100 years before the first gothic cathedrals
were built in Europe, the master architects

and stone masons of the Anasazi were building
great Kivas that could hold 500 people.

Around 900 AD the Anasazi leadership
embarked upon a bold and visionary plan,

create a mecca for pilgrimages and a
focal point for trade at the very center

of their land they chose the barren
treeless Chaco Canyon, 100 miles northwest

of present day Albuquerque, New Mexico.

It was a monumental undertaking.

They built 400 miles of distinctive graded roads
and broad avenues all leading to the canyon.

At distant points, signal stations were
constructed where fires blaze to communicate

across the vastness of the dessert
and to guide travelers at night.

Over 50,000 trees were cut down
in the surrounding mountains

to build the towns of Chaco Canyon.

Along with traders and pilgrims,
the roads carried resources

to maintain dozens of communities.

None compared with the largest single
complex the Anasazi ever built.

[ Music ]

Pueblo Bonito, the Wonder of Canyon.

[ Music ]

At its peak Pueblo Bonito's 800 rooms may
have housed over a thousand residents.

Some sections overlooking the main plaza
loomed five stories above the canyon floor.

The plaza pulsated with life.

Women gathered the colored corn blanketing
the rooftops and melt and rose to grind it.

Children played, men returning
from the fields gathered to talk.

[ Music & Chanting ]

37 sacred kivas scattered throughout the complex
speak to Pueblo Bonito's rich ceremonial life.

During ceremonies the feet of dancers pounded
the ground smooth as spectators huddled

against the buildings and
throng the roofs to watch.

The Chaco Canyon was more
than the spiritual mecca.

It was also a center of trade and commerce.

And trade in one stone more valuable to Chaco's
Mexican trading partners than gold or jade,

was the engine of the canyon's economic growth.

Turquoise.

Here, raw stone arrived from distant mines for
the craftsman of Pueblo Bonito to cut and shape

into small tiles and beads
which would then traded south

to merchant centers in the heart of Mexico.

There they were transformed
into extraordinary creations.

For 150 years trade fueled the Chaco economy but
the wealth and power of the canyon was fleeting.

Chacos made your turquoise consumer to a
land in central Mexico fell to civil strife.

Extended drought or hostilities also may have
contributed to the down fall of Chaco Canyon.

[ Music ]

By 1150, it was in decline.

The great turquoise road over the
Mexican high sierra abandoned.

But the Anasazi world still flourished,

the people of Chaco Canyon
simply moved to other locations.

Many went north to Mesa Verde which at

that time was reaching its
cultural and architectural height.

There under the shelter of the pines
studded mazes of Southern Colorado,

the architects of Chaco Canyon would help create
some of the most stunning buildings of all time.

The largest of this is known as Cliff
Palace, though it is a palace in name only.

These beautiful stone buildings of
Anasazi were home to common families.

It was a society based on equality.

Men rotated service on public
works, women plastered houses.

The men who farmed also carved.

Spiritual leaders tiled the fields.

>> Each time when I see and visit
any ancient drawling I feel close

because these are my ancestors,
my forefathers for centuries.

I feel on meditation looking at their drawlings
within few minutes half hour I get refreshed.

[ Music ]

>> The people of Mesa Verde and many
other Anasazi towns relocated around 1300.

The period of the ancestors came to an end
and the modern day Pueblo world took shape.

Traditions that lived today in the American
Southwest the way of life, the architecture,

the religion are the resonants of a
heritage reaching back thousands of years.

[ Music ]

>> We [inaudible] wanted to send a prayer to
the sun so we called on his friend the bear

and the bear came and he said I'm honored to
be asked to do this but I can only take it

to the top of the highest tree
but I know someone who can.

So let's call eagle and so eagle was
called and eagle said "Yes, I can try."

And so eagle flew and flew and flew up, up,
up and got to sun and delivered the prayer.

And the sun was so taken with this and
said "Give me one of your feathers."

And so the eagle plucked out a tail of feather
and gave it to the sun and the sun kissed

that feather which is why, you know,
eagle feathers are black on the end

and this is because the sun sings on there.

So take this back and forever this will
be my recognition of my special people.

[ Music ]

>> Along the Mississippi river, six miles

from present day Saint Louis
Missouri there stood a city

that once dominated the heart of the continent.

At its center was a powerful leader.

>> [Background Music] A great number

of years ago there appeared among
those a man who came down from the sun.

This man told us that he had seen from on
high that we did not govern ourselves well,

that we have no master that each of us had
presumption enough to think him self capable

of governing others while he
could not even conduct himself.

>> A thousand years ago the great
sun, a leader who was both king

and Pope lived the top a man made
royal mountain 10 stories high,

its 16 acres base larger
than any pyramid in Egypt.

>> He told us that in order to live

in piece among ourselves we must
observe the following points.

We must never kill anyone but
in defense of our own lives.

We must never know any woman besides our own.

We must never take any things
that belong to another.

We must never lie nor get drunk,
we must not be avaricious.

We must give generously and with
joy and share our subsistence

with those who are in need of it.

>> From the heights of his royal state
the great sun mediated between the creator

and the people between the sun and the earth.

This is Cahokia city of the sun.

The great sun ruled the thriving
center of a vast Mississippian culture.

Outside the walled city communities of
farmers, hunters, and fisherman stretched

from miles surrounded by fields of corn.

With 20,000 residence, no city in the United
States would surpass Cahokia's historic size

before 1800.

Only then would Philadelphia's
population eclipse the ancient center.

>> This people lived in the [inaudible] houses
on time the principal people did, the priest

and the royalty, they lived in very
substantial houses not tipis, not tipis.

Tipi is Western plains people.

Down here they live in houses.

They were sedentary, they were farmers, they
use the rivers and the miles and streams

as a not only for commerce
but for sustenance as well.

>> [Background Music] With the Mississippi
and other major rivers has its highways.

Cahokia was linked by trade
to a third of a continent.

Copper arrived from the great
lakes, obsidian from yellow stone,

mica and crystal from the Appalachians,

gold and silver form Canada,
shell from the Gulf of Mexico.

[ Music ]

>> Look at this old trees that
has seem so much asked by them,

magnificently dressed Indian people coming
down that-- by that dug out, reading people,

standing right here on this bunk of-- having
a good time 'cause they did, you know,

Indian people are always
known how to have a good time.

And there would be a feast prepared

and the women would put the corn
together and they make sofkee.

They would roast a deer, the
people would bring gifts.

You never go to an Indian's house without
bringing something that was old as the sunrise.

[ Music ]

>> Cahokia was the pinnacle
of a mound building culture

with traditions dating back to before 1,000 BC.

Thousands of mounds still dock the landscape
from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

An average funeral mound in the
Ohio Valley was three stories tall.

Construction could represent
200,000 man hours of labor

or 100 men carrying the baskets
of earth for a year.

But few mounds compare with the
religious effigy located 50 miles east

of Cincinnati, Ohio, the Great Serpent Mound.

The enormous snake stretches
over 400 yards in length.

While their earthworks are the
mound builders most visible legacy,

their smaller creations are
their most beautiful.

[ Music ]

Only glimpses remain of the people who changed
the course of life on the northern continent.

Most of their material world, wooden
buildings, boats, baskets, woven textiles,

leather footwear, and clothes
have long since turned to dust.

>> An old [inaudible] relative of mine that
used to go outside and hold my hands up

and bless my self with the
sun that's hot [phonetic].

Well, I can't do that anymore because they
say we sun worshippers said we didn't worship

the sun.

We worship what was behind
it, the power behind it.

[ Music ]

[ Noise ]

>> In the 19th century, 2,000
miles south of Cahokia,

a group of European explorers carved their
way in the jungles of Southern Mexico.

There, buried for centuries and
surrounded by massive pyramids,

they came upon a royal palace splendid
with grand rooms, courts, and a tower.

The Europeans recognized that by their own
standards, the site was a legacy of greatness.

Standing in the middle of the largest
Indian nation in North America, the Maya,

descendants of the pyramid builders,
the explorers could not imagine

that the towering architecture
was the work of Indian people.

Instead, they speculated wildly
about the lost civilization

that could have built so grand in existence.

Refugees from the sunken continent
of Atlantis, a lost tribe of Israel,

seafarers from the Orient, even
beings from another planet.

They considered everything but the obvious.

In 1949, a Mexican archeologist came to the
same magnificent ruins now known as Palenque.

[ Music ]

He climbed the steps to the top of the largest
pyramid, the Temple of the Inscription.

There he noticed holes in the
floor below the capstones.

He removed the slacks and discovered a
rubble-filled passageway descending deep

into the pyramid's heart.

After three years of excavation,
the passage was clear.

At the bottom was a tomb that had
been buried for over 1,200 years.

It would unlock the history of Palenque and
help to reveal the past of the Mayan people,

a past they left for the future to read.

For centuries, Mayan glyphs were
considered complex picture stories

like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Only in the 1980's that archaeologists
finally recognized that it was true writing.

They were not looking at pictures to be
interpreted but symbols for sounds to be read.

It was the Maya language.

Instantly, a door was opened on the past.

Beneath the five ton sarcophagus
cover at Palenque,

late Pacal shield in the Maya language.

He was born in 603 A.D. His head was
bound at birth to enlarge his forehead,

a fashion that marked him as
a member of the royal elite.

He wore a cosmetic bridge on his nose
and decorated his hair with water lilies.

Pacal rose to power at the age of 12.

He would build a holy city and rule for
nearly 70 years leading Palenque during a time

of greatness and growth in the Mayan world.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] As the Maya
expanded, over 60 capital cities emerged.

Their growth fueled by a
successful agricultural society.

[ Music ]

The roots of Mayan agriculture reached
back thousands of years and stretched

across Mexico and into Central America.

Now, friends and brothers listen to these
words of dreaming, spring rains give us life

and bring forth the golden corn silk.

By the time of Christ, there were
millions of people in the region

with agriculture allowing
populations to settle and expand.

[ Music & Noise ]

Art, mathematics, astronomy, architecture,
priesthood and royalty, all flourished.

[ Music ]

By the mid '700s, at Palenque alone, the
sons of Pacal ruled over 200,000 Maya living

in regional communities of farmers,
weavers, stone masons and feather-workers.

[ Music ]

At the golden age of building
and growth could be transformed

by a new era of war and destruction.

For reasons still locked in the past,
the Mayan world turned against itself.

Farmers became soldiers.

[ Music & Noise ]

By 800 A.D., an era had ended.

Most of the capitals that have
been among the living wonders

of human creativity including Palenque
were deserted and reclaimed by the jungle.

[ Music ]

South of here there's a desert.

It's a forbidding barrier
stretching hundreds of miles.

On the other side of that dessert is Mexico.

Over thousands of years, skilled
travelers managed to cross this barrier

but widespread contact was impossible, and so
each side developed in their own unique way.

In Mexico, millions of Indian people, 80 percent
of the continent's population created art

and architecture that was unparalleled
and it's your size and physical ambition.

They developed writing and astronomy.

Their wars were wage between massive
armies even by contemporary standards.

In this hour we follow an epic story told

through the actual words of
those who took part in it.

Along with eye witness illustrations of
events that occurred almost 500 years ago,

we take you to the present day
site of Mexico City to the heart

of the most powerful military empire
in the continent's history, the Aztec.

[ Music ]

>> Extended lies the city
lies Mexico spreading circles

of emerald light radiating
splendor like a quetzal plume.

[Background Music] Oh author
of life, your house is here.

Your song is heard on earth.

It spreads among the people, behold, Mexico.

By the Aztec calendar, it was the year one read.

And Motecuhzoma, emperor of the Aztec was
the most powerful man in the Americas,

by many standards, the most
power man in the world.

[Background Music] From his
capital, Tenochtitlan,

Motecuhzoma ruled over 10 million subjects.

For almost 90 years, his people had build
an empire with their armies and become rich

from the tribute of defeated states.

But Motecuhzoma was troubled,
prophetic nightmares disturbed his sleep

and he had been reading ominous signs.

[ Music and Noise ]

A huge tongue of fire burning
in the night sky to the east,

a major temple mysteriously destroyed by fire.

[ Noise ]

A comet blazing across the day time sky.

Signs and dreams were vital to the Aztec.

They guided decisions of state.

>> Motecuhzoma thought as now
we'll do in our villages today

that when important things
happen you will dream of it.

They too saw things perhaps in
the night sky, a shooting star.

Motecuhzoma and others at the time
would have thought I have seen it.

>> Motecuhzoma could feel disaster approaching
but he did not know what threatened his empire.

He did know that nations lived in
cycles like all things in nature,

growth and fullness were followed by fall.

[ Music and Bird Chirping ]

The cycles of nations had been played
out many times in the valley of Mexico.

Ruins of ancient cultures were
scattered across the region.

Motecuhzoma had only to look 20 miles to the
east to the ruins of a long abandoned city

so magnificent the Aztec
called it the Home of the Gods.

In the cycle of nations, even
the Home of the Gods had fallen.

[ Music ]

900 years before Motecuhzoma, workers had come
from throughout Mexico to build Teotihuacan.

The city among the grandest in the
world was a monumental work of art.

[ Music ]

Its largest building, the pyramid of the sun had
a base the size of the biggest pyramid in Egypt.

Teotihuacan's military might
controlled Central Mexico for centuries.

>> When I first saw this place Teotihuacan and
the pyramids, I thought this is truly beautiful

that which our grandfathers,
our fathers before have done.

And I thought when I looked at it again;
it is like having your father that died

or your brother that died
and meeting them again here.

You remember them and you see their greatness
when you contemplate what they left behind.

>> [Background Music] With all it's
power Teotihuacan was still trapped

in the cycle of nations.

In one of history's great unsolved mysteries,

the city was systematically burned
and abandoned at its height.

With the dissolving of the empire,
Central Mexico turned to chaos

with small rival kingdoms locked
in struggle for power and survival.

[ Noise ]

Elite warriors fought for kings on the field
of honor like knights in medieval Europe.

It was a world of royal blood
line's betrayal and revenge.

In Central Mexico, small kingdoms would struggle
for 200 years before the cycle would turn again

and they would begin to unify
under the leadership

of the Toltec people from
the city state of Tolan.

Over 500 years before the rise of the
Aztec, the Toltec redefined leadership

in Central Mexico enforcing
power not through military might

but through the moral force of their teachings.

They coordinated trade between
states and arbitrated disputes all

within the framework of their religion.

[Background Music] Their capital
functioned like Wall Street,

the Vatican and the Supreme Court combined.

It was also here in Tolan that a priest
who held the name of the god, Quetzalcoatl,

the feathered serpent would be exiled,
eventually sailing into the Gulf

of Mexico vowing to return in another
time as a savior for the people.

[ Music ]

After less than two centuries, Tolan like
Teotihuacan before it was violently destroyed.

But while the city burned, the
sophisticated Toltec leadership escaped many

of the elite families moving
to the valley of Mexico.

For 150 years in the shadows of the ruins of
Teotihuacan, the Toltec established control

over the city states of the valley.

Their influence was so great that
their blood lines became the benchmark

of nobility throughout the region.

During the same time, a nomadic tribe
far to the west was in the midst

of an epic search for a homeland.

They were the Meshika, Motecuhzoma's ancestors.

[ Music & Noise ]

Behold, a new sun has risen, a new god is born,
new laws are written and new men are made.

Around 1300 after nearly two centuries of
wandering, the Meshika people came to the valley

of Mexico, a valley long
dominated by the Toltec.

The Meshika with no Toltec blood were seen by
the refined city states as violent barbarians,

a threat to the stability of the valley.

[ Noise ]

The local states attacked the Nomad nation,
killing many and driving the survivors

to a rocky area covered with
cactus and infested with snakes.

The exile was meant to destroy them but the
Meshika were used to adversity, they flourished.

Soon the resilience and skills and warfare
impressed their sophisticated neighbors.

They begun to sell their services as mercenaries

and within a generation the Meshika
were accepted as part of the social

and political fabric of the
lush mountain valley.

In 1325 they asked the neighboring
Lord of Colhuacan to send his daughter

to become the wife of a Meshika ruler.

Flattered and seeing the opportunity for
unity the Lord of Colhuacan complied.

Days later when he and the other lords
of the valley went to the Meshika town

to honor the new princess, instead of seeing his
young child emerged a priest appeared dressed

in her skin.

Horrified, the Lord of Colhuacan
called for revenge.

>> "Here, come here my vessels from Colhuacan.

Come avenge the hideous crime
committed by this Meshika.

Let them die, destroy them
such deprave man of evil.

My vessels, we shall finish them off
and leave no trace on memory of them."

>> Colhuacan and its allies attacked the
Meshika driving those they did not kill

into a lake in center of the valley.

Almost annihilate the Meshika
again prove resilient.

As they gathered on a swampy island and
lake they saw an eagle perched on a cactus.

The prophetic sign they were told they would
see when they reach the end on there long search

for home land, the place that
would be called Tenochtitlan.

[ Music ]

Now we have found the land promised to us.

We have found peace for the
weary Mexican people.

Now we want them nothing be confident
children, brothers and sisters

because we have obtain the promise of our God.

[Background Music] For 100 years the
people of Tenochtitlan built up the island

through great sacrifice they
reclaimed land from the swampy lake

and erected stone temples public
buildings cause ways of hue

and stone were constructed
to the North, South and West.

An Aqueduct was built to bring in freshwater
from main land spring three miles away.

Canals were dug throughout the
island to transport goods and people.

They gained trade wealth and again hired
themselves out as mercenary soldiers

for the powerful city states of the valley.

Marriages were arranged that finally
brought them honored Toltec blood lines.

Tenochtitlan was a city on the rise.

The cycle of power was turning toward
the Meshika and when war again broke

out in the valley the Meshika
and their allies prevailed.

In victory they called themselves
the Aztec, after the Meshika place

of origin Aztlan, land of herons.

[ Music ]

From this point Aztec prophecy
foretold a glorious future.

The might of our powerful arms in
the spirit of heart shall be felt.

Within we will conquer all
nations near and far rule

over all villages in cities from sea to sea.

Become lords of gold and silver, jewels
and precious stones, feathers and tributes

and we shall become lords over them in their
lands and over their sons and their daughters

who will serve us as our subjects.

For over 80 years, the Aztec
launched far-reaching campaigns

of conquest expanding their
domain from Gulf to Pacific.

They fought epic battles with
city states throughout the region.

Most were conquered and turned into
tributaries, forced to supply slave laborers

for Aztec public works and
pay high taxes and goods.

Aztec scribes recorded the taxes of many states.

Bolts of fine clothe, discs of hammered
gold, exotic plants and feathers,

precious stones, feathered military uniforms.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Built on the backs of
the tributary states, the island capital

of the Aztec grew into one
of the wonders of the world.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] When I first opened my
eyes in this world, I was born of this heritage.

I have seen the beautiful festivals
we have in our villages, our dances,

and it would've been like that there.

They had many festivals in this place with many
beautiful dancers wearing many brilliant colors.

I think it was even more
beautiful then, much more beautiful

when our grandfathers lived
there and followed their ways.

>> The two-story houses of the elite
were adorned with beautiful gardens.

Royal aviaries housed thousands of rare birds

and store houses swelled
with the wealth of empire.

The city was cleaned daily
by thousands of sweepers.

Its refuse [phonetic] collected
and shipped away on barges.

[ Noise ]

The central markets thronged with
professional traders whose travels took them

to far distant locations,
men who spoke many languages

and often carried with them news of the world.

[ Music & Noise ]

[Background Music] The center of
Tenochtitlan was dominated by the great temple.

Its twin pyramids representing deities
who embodied the conflict at the heart

of Aztec society, the eternal struggle
between life and death, fertility and war.

Their private rituals which on special
occasions included the sacrifice

of human prisoners incorporated this duality.

Life required death to exist
and death required life.

Tenochtitlan became a city of hundreds
of thousands, a bustling metropolis ruled

by the Aztec emperor from
the grand imperial palace.

But in the year 1 reed, the Christian
year 1519, Motecuhzoma could feel a shadow

across his empire and he could not forget that
the prophecy of Aztec greatness had a dark side.

A prophecy long held in their oral tradition.

I shall make war against all provinces and
cities, towns and settlements and make all

of them my subjects, my servants.

But just as I will subjugate them, so too will
they be snatched from me and turned against me

by strangers who would drive
me out of this land.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] Ever since
their years as a wandering tribe,

the Aztec believed their
destiny was to rule the world.

Now, at the height of empire, Motecuhzoma
listened to his dreams and saw the signs.

They foretold disaster.

Then, word came of strange
happenings in the east,

boats and men landing on the Mexican coast.

Men unlike any they had encountered
before, their bodies sheath in metal.

[ Music & Noise ]

Motecuhzoma sent scouts to the coast to
find out more about the new arrivals.

They were very white, their
eyes were like chalk,

their hair on some it was
yellow and on some it was black.

They wore long beards, they were yellow too.

The strangers had landed on the gulf coast,
that was also disturbing information.

Centuries earlier, the banished priest
from the cult of the feathered serpent,

Quetzalcoatl had left Mexico from the
same coast promising one day to return.

[Background Music] Another prophecy
that threatened Motecuhzoma.

If he comes in the year 1
reed, he strikes at kings.

It was now the Aztec year 1 reed.

Whether Motecuhzoma believed the
prophecy or not was of little importance.

He knew that many subjugated people
throughout the empire embraced the story

of the feathered serpent and awaited his return.

For it was in their heart that he would come

that he would come to land
to reclaim his kingdom.

Whoever these invaders were, whether they
represented Quetzalcoatl or a foreign power,

Motecuhzoma could feel the threat to his empire.

And his fears were justified.

Spanish conquistador Hernando
Cortes had landed in Mexico.

>> It was said that first he dreamt
that Quetzalcoatl would return.

After that when he saw Hernando Cortes
and the others, he thought, he has come.

Quetzalcoatl has come.

Only, he was wrong, another had come, someone
with evil intentions because Cortes did not come

with religious faith or to do good things.

He came to commit terrible
crimes against the Meshika.

>> As a diplomatic gesture, Motecuhzoma sent
emissaries carrying the costume of Quetzalcoatl

which they presented to Cortes aboard his ship.

Cortes responded with a display of force.

He ordered the Aztec delegation shackled and
forced to watch as his men fired a Lombard canon

and a thunderous hail of fire and
smoke blowing apart a tree on shore.

The astonished emissaries were released
and they raced back to Tenochtitlan.

Motecuhzoma received the news with alarm.

Spanish weapons and armor were
formidable and it would be only a matter

of time before tributary
states chafing under the yoke

of Aztec oppression would join the conquistador.

They would lead him to the wealth
that lay at the center of the empire

to the one thing Spanish
conquistadors crave above all else.

>> We Spanish suffer from a disease
of a heart which only gold can cure.

>> Cortes ordered his 450 men army inland.

When some of his men resisted,
he sank his ships.

There would be no turning back.

[ Music & Noise ]

[Background Music] The army moved
relentlessly toward the valley of Mexico.

As Motecuhzoma had anticipated,
Cortes formed alliances along the way

with rebellious city states.

One tributary leader spoke
for the fears of many.

>> Motecuhzoma and the Meshika
had given us much pain.

They have imposed a tribute upon
us, they have become our rulers.

If the Spaniard should abandon
us in haste, if they should go,

so perverse are the Meshika
that they will kill us.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> [Background Music] While many nations lived
in fear of the Aztec, one city state less

than 50 miles east of Tenochtitlan had
never fallen to the empire, Tlaxcala.

There, Cortes forged his key alliance,
6,000 Tlaxcalan troops joined the Spaniards.

[ Music & Noise ]

As reports reached the Aztec capital,
some of Motecuhzoma's advisers argued

for a decisive military campaign.

But Motecuhzoma held his armies in check
unwilling to leave the capital unprotected

or risk setting off a general rebellion.

Stalling for time, he sent emissaries to protest
Cortes' advance and had a wall of trees planted

across the road to disguise
the route to Tenochtitlan.

Paralyzed with doubt, the emperor
was fast becoming only a player

in a prophecy being fulfilled.

>> And he must have thought,
these men, why have they come?

What do they want?

Maybe we can attack and kill
some of them but not all of them.

For that reason, some did not want to fight.

They had seen that if they shot
arrows at them, they did not fall.

They made a clanging sound as
they bounced off their armor.

Even if they fired at the horses, they
did not die because the horses had armor.

>> Cortes and the Tlaxcalan army
turned first to a city state

that remained loyal to the
Aztec emperor, Cholula.

Eyewitness accounts were recorded.

>> The mira [phonetic] rose from the Spaniards
[inaudible], summoning all the noblemen, lords,

war leaders, warriors and common folk.

And when they got crowded into the
temple courtyard, then the Spaniards

and their allies blocked the
entrances and every exit.

There followed a butchery of stabbing, beating,
killing of the unsuspecting Cholulans armed

with no bows and arrows,
protected by no shields.

With no warning, they were
treacherously, deceitfully slain.

>> 6,000 Cholulan citizens
lay dead in the streets.

[ Music ]

Tenochtitlan received the news
of the massacre and shock.

An Aztec eyewitness later recalled.

The city rose into molt [phonetic],
alarmed as if by an earthquake,

as if there were a constant
reeling of the face of the earth.

Motecuhzoma's worst nightmare
was about to reveal itself.

[ Music ]

Do the former rulers know what
is happening in their absence?

Oh, that any of them might see might
wonder at what has befallen me.

That what I am seeing now that they
have gone for I cannot be dreaming.

[ Music ]

>> Proudly stands the city
of Mexico, Tenochtitlan.

Here, no one fears to die in war.

Keep this in mind, oh princes.

Who could attack Tenochtitlan?

Who could shake the foundations of heaven?

[ Noise ]

>> On November 8, 1519, in the Aztec year 1
reed, Hernando Cortes arrived at the gates

to the imperial city of the
Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan.

An Aztec eyewitness later
recalled, Mexico lay stunned silent.

None went out of doors, mothers
kept their children in.

The roads were deserted as
if it were early morning.

[ Music ]

Motecuhzoma walked out onto the grand causeway.

Coming face to face with Cortes, the emperor
offered his hospitality leading the Spaniards

through the city gates to his imperial palace.

[Background Music] The people of Tenochtitlan
watched and their words were remembered.

The iron of their lances glistened from afar.

The shimmer of their swords was
as of a sinuous watercourse.

Their iron breast and back
pieces, their helmets clanked.

Some came completely encased
in iron as if turned to iron.

And ahead of them ran their dogs panting with
foam continually dripping from their muzzles.

>> The Spanish soldiers were
themselves struck with awe [phonetic].

>> We were astounded.

The majestic towers and houses, all of massive
stone and rising out of the waters were

like enchanted castles we had read of in books.

Indeed, some of our men even asked
if what we saw was not a dream.

>> Even Cortes was amazed.

>> Considering that these people are barbarous,
lacking the knowledge of God and cut off

from all civilized nations, it is truly
remarkable to see what they have achieved.

>> Once they reached the palace,
Motecuhzoma's diplomatic plans were shattered.

Cortes turned on his host
seizing the emperor hostage.

>> What now my warriors?

We have come to the end.

We have taken our medicine.

Is there anywhere a mountain
we can run away to and climb?

>> Motecuhzoma was forced to
lead Cortes to the treasury.

>> Motecuhzoma's own property
was then brought out.

Precious things like necklaces with pendants,
armbands tufted with quetzal feathers,

golden armbands, bracelets, golden
anklets with shells, turquoise items,

turquoise nose rods, no end of treasure.

They took all, seized everything
for themselves as if it were theirs.

>> Cortes wrote to the king of Spain, "Your
highness, there is so much to describe

that I do not know how to begin
even to recount some part of it.

Motecuhzoma has all the things to be found
under the heavens fashioned in gold and silver."

The Spaniards melted the
beautifully crafted gold into blocks.

For five months, holding Motecuhzoma prisoner
in his own palace they lived in splendor

and pillaged the city from within.

>> I thought this isn't Quetzalcoatl.

This isn't a God.

They said, "Look at them,
how they eat just as we do.

Look at them they go about just as we."

When they saw him, they knew
he wasn't really Quetzalcoatl.

They said among themselves to their
people, "Look brothers, this isn't a God.

Our gods do good things and this
one, he wants to destroy us."

>> Among the Aztec people, a resistance
began to organize under the direction

of Motecuhzoma's brother, Cuitlahuac.

In an effort to cripple the movement,
the Spaniards attacked the large,

unarmed religious gathering in April of 1520.

[ Noise ]

One man who saved his life by
playing dead later recounted a scene.

They charged the crowd with their iron
lances and hacked us with their iron swords.

They slashed the backs of some.

They hacked at the shoulders of
others splitting their bodies open.

The blood of the young warriors ran
like water had gathered in pools.

And the Spaniards began to hunt them
out of the administrative buildings,

dragging and killing anyone
they could find even starting

to take those buildings to
pieces as they searched.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> [Background Music] The Aztec
counterattacked forcing the conquistadors

to retreat behind the walls of the great palace.

The Spaniards then brought Motecuhzoma

out in chains before his people
to order them to stop fighting.

But the emperor could not
bring himself to speak.

He stood by while another
hostage delivered his message.

"Mexicans, men of Tenochtitlan, your ruler,
the lord of men, Motecuhzoma implores you.

He says, Listen Mexicans, we
are not equal to the Spaniards.

Abandon the battle, still your arrows, hold back
your shields, otherwise, evil will be the fate

of the miserable old men and women of the
people, of babes in arms, of the toddlers,

of the infants crawling on the
ground or still in the cradle."

>> But the Aztec were not
of people to be subjugated.

They reformed their government
and elected Motecuhzoma's brother,

Cuitlahuac as the 10th emperor.

Under his direction, the Aztec
continued the siege of the palace.

[ Music & Noise ]

[Background Music] After 30
days, Motecuhzoma was killed.

The Aztec accused the Spaniards
of strangling him

and hurling his body from the top of the palace.

The Spaniards claimed he was
stoned to death by his own people.

[ Music ]

One of the most powerful men on earth
had fallen, trapped in a play of destiny.

Prophecy had become reality.

Days later, the Spaniards trapped in the
palace without food or water attempted

to escape undercover of darkness.

Aztec witnesses recounted the events.

>> That night at midnight, the
enemy came out crowded together.

The Spaniards in the lead,
Tlaxcalans following screened

by a fine drizzle, a fine sprinkle of rain.

They were able undetected to cross the canals.

Just as they were crossing the canal,

a woman drawing water saw them,
"Meshikas, come all of you.

They are already leaving.

They are already secretly getting out."

Then a watcher at the top
of the temple also shouted

and his cries pervaded the entire cities.

"Brave warriors, Meshikas,
your enemy already leaves.

Hurry with the shield boats and along the road.

>> [Background Music] As the Spaniards moved out
onto one of the main causeways over the lake,

canoe after canoe full of Aztec soldiers

under Cuitlahuac's direction
showered them with spears and arrows.

Many Spaniards waited down with gold
stolen from the palace fell into the water

and drowned carried to the bottom by the weight.

The canal was filled, crammed with them.

Those who came along behind walked on corpses.

It was as if a mountain of
men had been laid down.

They have pressed against one
another, smothered one another.

>> Three quarters of the Spanish army never
reached the outskirts of Tenochtitlan.

Cortes and the rest of the survivors
escaped into the countryside.

For a moment, the great city was free.

And when the Spaniards thus disappeared,

we thought they had gone for
good never more to return.

Once again, the temples could be swept out, the
dirt removed, it could be adorned, ornamented.

But the fleeing Spaniards left behind
another enemy, an Aztec survivor remembered.

At about the time that the
Spaniards have fled from the city,

there came a great sickness,
a pestilence, the smallpox.

It's spread over the people
with great destruction of men.

It caused great misery.

The brave Meshika warriors
were indeed weakened by it.

Even the new emperor died of the disease.

>> It was after all this had
happened that the Spaniards came back.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> Cortes and his men had healed
their wounds and rebuilt their army.

New alliances were made.

The Spaniards and 75,000 Tlaxcalan and allied
Indian soldiers set siege to Tenochtitlan.

[ Music & Noise ]

The entire population rose to defend their city.

Aztec witnesses would remember the struggle.

Fighting continued.

Both sides took captives.

On both sides, there were deaths.

Great became the suffering of the common folk.

There was hunger, many died of famine.

There was no more good pure water to drink.

Many died of it.

The people ate anything, lizards, barn
swallows, corn leaves, salt grass,

never had such suffering been seen.

The enemy pressed about us like a wall.

They herded us.

The brave warriors were still
hopelessly resisting.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> After two and a half long months,

the Spaniards with their overwhelming
numbers brought Tenochtitlan to its knees.

[ Music ]

>> Finally, the battle just quietly ended.

Silence reigned.

Nothing happened.

All was quiet and nothing more took place.

Night fell, and the next
day nothing happened either.

No one spoke aloud.

The people were crushed.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Great
was the stench of the dead.

Your grandfathers died and with them died the
son of the king and his brothers and kinsmen.

So it was that we became orphans oh my sons.

So we became when we were young.

All of us with us, we were born to die.

[ Music ]

Tenochtitlan was leveled.

The magnificent gardens, the marvel of their
world were destroyed, the rivers and canals

that so amazed the Spaniards were filled in.

Then Cortes set fire to the aviaries.

Thousands of birds, vermilion flycatchers,
iridescent hummingbirds, scarlet tanagers,

green and blue macaws, the beauty
that was Mexico was turned to ashes.

[ Foreign Language ]

>> [Background Music] Some say
the Meshika came to an end.

It's gone, finished.

We're still here.

We, the people who ignorant outsiders
insult by calling us Indians, we are here.

This culture was not finished off.

The culture is gone as an empire, as a
social political religious structure.

But what remains is what the people have.

We weren't finished off.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> Proudly stands the city
of Mexico, Tenochtitlan.

Here, no one fears to die in war.

Keep this in mind, oh princes.

Who could attack Tenochtitlan?

Who could shake the foundations of heaven?

[ Music ]

>> Our next program will begin far to the east
of Mexico on a Caribbean island where a meeting

between Spanish and Indian people appeared
at first glance to be merely an encounter

between two potential trading partners.

But that first encounter between Christopher
Columbus and the Taino people in 1492 was

in reality, a world shattering event.

Please join us for 500 Nations,
a Clash of Cultures.

[ Music ]

>> Hello. I'm Kevin Costner.

Welcome back to 500 Nations.

First encounters between Europeans and
Indian people are some of the most famous

and important events in world history.

Most of us can recite the names
of Christopher Columbus' ships.

The year he first landed in the new world

and how he mistakenly called the
people the encountered there Indians.

But few of us know the names of
the people who greeted Columbus

or much about the lives they lived.

How did they greet the strangers?

Were they treated like gods?

Were they feared?

Were they attacked or were they treated as
a new and exotic trading partner by people

who had a long history of dealing
with other seafaring cultures?

The first meeting between European and American
worlds would bring two very different cultures

into conflict.

We'll take you now to the Caribbean
where the rough road of contact begins.

500 Nations continues with a Clash of Cultures.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] How much damage?

How many calamities, disruptions and
devastations of kingdoms had there been?

How many souls have perished in the
Indies over the years and how unjustly?

How many unforgivable sins had been committed?

Bartolome de Las Casas.

[ Music ]

>> In December of 1492, three
ships under the command

of Christopher Columbus approached the
second largest island in the Caribbean.

For eight weeks, Columbus had traveled from
the Bahamas to Cuba finally reaching the site

of modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The island he would name Hispaniola.

The island was then populated
by people known as the Taino.

One region was controlled by the
paramount chief, Guacanagari.

[ Noise ]

On Christmas Eve while coasting along the shore,
Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria ran aground.

>> When Guacanagari learnt the news, he sent all
his people from the town with many large canoes

to unload everything from the ship.

So great was the care and
diligence which that came exercised.

And he himself was as diligent unloading the
ship as in guarding what was taken to land

in order that everything
would be well cared for.

>> Grateful for the island leader's help,
Columbus accepted his invitation to come ashore.

>> The admiral left to dine on shore and
arrived at the time when five kings had come.

All subject to the one who
is called Guacanagari.

Guacanagari came to receive the admiral as soon
as he had reached land and took him by the arm.

>> Columbus was immediately struck
by the beauty of Taino life.

>> The king observes that very wonderful state

in such a dignified manner
that it is a pleasure to see.

Neither that of people nor land can there be.

The houses and the villagers are so pretty.

They love their neighbors as themselves.

And they have the sweetest beach in the world
and they're gentle and they are always laughing.

Christopher Columbus.

As a token of gratitude for the rescue of his
men and supplies, Columbus presented Guacanagari

with a red cape, a prestigious
item among the Taino elite.

In return, Guacanagari gave Columbus
a golden tiara he wore on his head.

To Guacanagari, it was a fair exchange, a
gesture of mutual respect and recognition.

The opening of trade between equals.

To Columbus, it was a crown,
a symbol of authority.

Guacanagari was surrendering
his lands and people to Spain.

But Columbus was not simply
looking to rule people.

He saw something much more
valuable to his future.

He saw gold.

The price he could take back
to his sponsors in Europe.

There was wealth to be had.

And to the Europeans of that time wealth
belong to those strong enough to take it.

[ Music ]

Now, I have ordered my men
to build a tower and a fort.

Not that I believe it to be necessary for it
is obvious that with these men that I bring,

I could subdue all of this island, seize
the people and make and without arms.

But it is right that this tower be made so
that with love and fear, they will obey.

[ Music ]

Leaving behind a contingent of men
and a fort built from the timbers

of the Santa Maria, Columbus
set sail for Europe.

With him, he would carry the news of a
new world, gold and dazzle island natives.

Guacanagari and the Taino had
no way of knowing what was

about to happen to their ancient way of life.

The Taino's ancestors were part
of the series of migrations

of South American-Indian people
dating back over 2,000 years.

They farmed the land and
harvested the wealth of the sea.

Taino traders traveled in huge, ocean-going
canoes capable of carrying up to 150 men,

boats laden with feathers, gold, wood, pottery,
beautiful birds, cotton fabric, and food.

Island nations were woven together by trade.

Trade was the communication system
by which nations knew one another.

It maintained peace.

Some trading partners even exchanged their names

to create lasting bonds between
their communities.

[ Music & Chanting ]

By the time of contact, there were well over
a million people living in the Caribbean.

Local community leaders were subject to
powerful regional leaders like Guacanagari,

who controlled trade with large personal
fleets and warehouses of commodities.

[ Music & Noise ]

Into this world, Columbus returned in November
1493 with a military flotilla of 17 ships.

Under his command were armor-clad soldiers,
mounted cavalry, attack dogs, and guns.

The Spanish conquest of the Caribbean began.

Gold mines were opened and the Taino
were enslaved, forced to mine the ore.

A Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas who
accompanied Columbus on his second voyage spoke

out against the cruel treatment
of the Taino people.

>> It is not possible to recount the hundredth
part of what I have seen with my own eyes.

A man have need to have a body of
iron to undergo the labor they endure

in getting gold out of the mines.

They must delve and search 100 times
over in the inner parts of the mountains

until they dig them down from top to bottom.

They must work the very rocks
hollow, Bartolome de Las Casas.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] Epidemics
and famine swept the island.

Yet the Spanish continued to demand

that the beleaguered Taino supply
them with both food and labor.

Garrisons were strung across the
island to fortify the gold fields.

When resistance sprang up,
Columbus sent out military units

to terrorize towns into submission.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> They were so relentlessly persecuted
and pursued with their wives and children

up into the hills so tired,
hungry, and harassed.

And there went with them disease, death,

and misery just as if they
had been killed in the wars.

They died of hunger and sickness
that surrounded them

and the fatigue and oppression that followed.

After 1496, no more than a third remained of
the multitudes that had been on the island.

>> Taino suffering was so severe that thousands
took their own lives rather than submit.

>> Where so many went to the
woods and there hanged themselves,

after having killed their children saying it
was far better to die than to live so miserably.

Some threw themselves from the high cliffs
down precipices, others jumped into the sea,

and others starved themselves to death.

Benzoni, soldier for Spain.

>> Some escaped into the
mountains including Guacanagari,

the paramount chief who had befriended Columbus.

He soon died a homeless wanderer.

By 1503, 11 years after Columbus' first voyage,
only a few packets of resistance remained.

[Background Music] In the mountainous
region of Xaragua, Taino people ruled

by a woman named Anacaona, successfully
evaded Spanish demands for labor.

Determined to break the resistance, the Spanish
governor requested a diplomatic meeting.

Anacaona agreed and summoned 80 regional sub
chiefs to her statehouse for the meeting.

When the 80 leaders were gathered
inside, the governor gave a signal

and that statehouse was set on fire.

Soldiers lined up outside with swords,

Taino leaders who did not burn
were killed as they fled the place.

Anacaona was spared only to
be later executed by hanging.

In the aftermath of the bloody carnage,
a little boy stood among the ashes

and smoke beside the charred
remains of his father.

A boy whose name, the Spanish would
come to remember well, Enrique.

[ Pause ]

[ Music ]

[Background Music] The child who witnessed the
murder of his father and the other Taino leaders

in Xaragua was taken away from the
killing field by a Spanish priest.

He was placed in the care of
missionaries and baptized Enrique.

Although raised by Spaniards, he never forgot
his own identity, heir to the chiefdom,

the Bahoruco region of the island.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> Enrique was a tall and graceful
man with a well-proportioned body.

His face was neither handsome nor ugly,
but that of a serious and stern man.

He married a native, a woman of excellent
and noble lineage named Dona Lucia.

Bartolome de Las Casas.

The Spanish government created
a labor grant system

under which individual Spanish landholders were
given village populations to use as force labor.

Enrique, his wife, and his people were turned

over to a debauched [phonetic]
young Spaniard named Valenzuela.

They were at his mercy.

The priest, Las Casas protested.

>> In a more just world, Enrique
would have been the master.

Valenzuela viewed Enriquillo as a slave and
valued him less than manure in the street.

>> Enrique complied with Valenzuela's
tyrannical demands for which he was rewarded

with regular beatings and robbed
of his last remaining possessions.

His many appeals to Spanish
authorities fell on deaf ears.

When Valenzuela raped his wife,
Enrique reached his breaking point.

He and his followers escaped to their home
lands in the lofty Bahoruco mountains.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] The Spanish came
to call him the "Rebel Enrique" and those

who followed him were termed
rebels and insurgents,

although in truth they were not rebelling
but only fleeing from their cruel enemies

who are misusing and destroying
them just as a cow or an ox tries

to escape from the slaughterhouse.

Bartolome de Las Casas.

>> Enrique organized his people.

Women, children, and elderly were
sent into caves high in the mountains

where they raised chickens and cultivated
gardens to feed the resistance army.

Scouts were posted on every crag and pass, heavy
boulders rolled into place above the footpaths.

Enrique instructed his men to fight only in self
defense to kill Spaniards only in the course

of battle and otherwise to simply
deprive them of their arms.

At first, the Spanish army was confident they
would quickly crush the Taino resistance.

[ Music & Noise ]

But Enrique's people armed only
with spears, iron spikes, fishbone,

and bows and arrows fought
with fierce determination

against the Spanish and their
sophisticated arms.

Time after time, they forced
the enemy to retreat.

During one fierce battle,
Valenzuela himself was captured.

But even this mortal enemy's
life would be spared.

Enrique ordered him released.

As word of Enrique's victory spread across
the island, many Taino fled to his refuge

and joined the fight for freedom.

His legend grew.

It was said that Enrique never slept at night,

that he himself patrolled
the village until dawn.

For over a decade, he fought
Spain to a standstill.

Finally unable to defeat the guerillas
on their own territory, an exhausted

and humiliated Spanish government
made overtures of peace.

>> I know the Spanish very well because
they killed my father and grandfather

and all the people of the kingdom of Xaragua,
and reduced the population of the entire island

of Hispaniola, I have fled to my
own land where neither I nor any

of my followers are harming anyone
but are simply defending ourselves

against those who came to capture and kill us.

I need not talk to another Spaniard.

Enrique, Taino.

>> But there was one Spaniard to whom Enrique
would still talk, the priest, Las Casas.

After many years spent demanding the king act
to stop Spanish atrocities in the new world,

Las Casas had been officially
designated protector of the Indians.

He now sought out Enrique
in his mountain stronghold.

Two months later, Las Casas and Enrique
appeared before Spanish authorities

and negotiated a truce.

14 years after it began, the rebellion came
to an end but only after the Spanish agreed

to guarantee freedom for Enrique's people.

At the base of the Abajo mountains,
Enrique settled with his 4,000 followers,

the last members of a culture
that had flourished for millennia.

By the end of the century, the Taino
population that Las Casas had estimated

at two million was officially reported extinct.

[ Music ]

>> What does the name de Soto mean to me?

It means, the personification of evil.

[ Music ]

[ Music & Foreign Language ]

>> [Background Music] In the late spring
of 1539, less than 50 years after Columbus,

less than 20 years after the
fall of the Aztec empire,

Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto landed

on the west Florida coast north
of present day, Tampa Bay.

[ Music & Noise ]

He rode at the head of a
600 man army, 200 mounted.

They were supported by 100
servants, herds of horses,

pack animals, swine, and trained attack dogs.

Unable to carry the quantity of food
needed to support the massive expedition,

de Soto would feed his men and animals
on the bounty of the towns they entered.

The invaders came prepared to
take their provisions by force.

[ Music ]

In July, de Soto struck north into
the lands of the Timucua people.

Chiefdoms of fishermen and farmers scattered
across the northern Florida peninsula.

[ Music & Noise ]

[Background Music] One by one, villages
were plundered by the marauding army.

[ Music & Noise ]

Indian people were enslaved as
burden bearers chained together

with iron neck collars in groups of 30.

>> If they were men of virtue, they
would not have left their own country.

They have made high women,
adulterous and murderers of themselves

without shame of men or fear of any god.

Timucua.

>> But the Timucua were people
who also knew of war.

As the Spanish army advanced, news
reached one leader, Urutina who was secure

in a military strength that
had never failed him.

As the Spanish force neared Urutina's
town, de Soto sent a messenger ahead

with a warning to submit or be destroyed.

Urutina responded.

>> "I am king in my land.

I and all of my people have
vowed to die a hundred deaths

to maintain the freedom of our land.

This is our answer both for
the present and forevermore."

>> De Soto Urutina's town with
his army in battle formation.

But oddly, they met no resistance.

The chief who had promised such defiance
seemed to have completely submitted.

But the surface belied the reality.

While the Spaniards gorged
upon the town's food stores,

Urutina secretly summoned fighting
men from throughout the region.

Then playing out a military chess
game, the young chief invited de Soto

to witness Timucua military maneuvers in
a large field, his plan, to amass his army

and launch a surprise attack
on the Spanish force.

But de Soto had been forewarned by a spy.

Matching the Indian leader move
for move, he brought his army

to the field in battle formation.

To the rear of the Timucua force were
two lakes, to their flanks were forest,

and in front of them, the Spanish army.

Suddenly, de Soto gave a signal.

Urutina was seized and the Spaniards attacked.

The Spanish cavalry thundered forward.

Their horses hoofs driving
into the Timucuan ranks.

[ Noise ]

Outmatched, the Indian force fell back.

[ Music & Noise ]

Some ran towards the shelter of the trees.

Hundreds more plunged into
the lake nearby swimming

out into the deep water to evade their pursuers.

The Spaniards fired into the lake trying
to force the Timucua to surrender.

[ Music & Noise ]

Indian resistors had to tread water constantly,
but by nightfall not a single man had yielded.

A Spanish chronicler observed
the agonizing struggle.

>> And now, they continued
to torment the Indians.

Never once letting them set foot on the
shore hoping that they would become exhausted

by the swimming and as a
result, give up more quickly.

Alas, they threatened with death
those who would not surrender.

Regardless of how much the Castilians afflicted
them they could not do enough to keep them

from showing their spirit and strength.

For even though these men realized that
they were without hope of in the hardships

and danger they were experiencing,
some chose death as a lesser evil.

It was not until late the following morning,
the 200 survivors surrendered in a body.

>> They had been swimming 24 hours and
it was a great pity to see them emerged

from the lagoon half drowned, and swollen,
and transfixed by the toil, hunger, fatigue,

and lack of sleep they had suffered.

Garcilaso de la Vega, Spanish chronicler.

[Background Music] The remaining
seven were dragged

out of the water at knife
point by de Soto's men.

[ Music & Foreign Language ]

>> The Timucuan prisoners were chained

and distributed among the
Spanish soldiers as slaves.

Urutina was imprisoned inside his statehouse.

He would make one last act of defiance.

Pretending to have possibly accepted his
defeat, he lured de Soto within his reach.

Suddenly, he launched at the Spanish
leader smashing his face with chained fist.

[ Music & Noise ]

The chief gave up such a tremendous roar that he
could be heard for a quarter of a league around.

The blow was so fierce that de Soto was
unconscious for more than half an hour

and he bled through the eyes, nose, and mouth.

Simultaneously, Urutina was
gored by 12 swordsmen.

Outside, the Timucua who fell upon
their captors fighting with stones,

pots of boiling food, anything at hand.

The Spaniards turned upon them
killing and discriminating.

They were valiant and spirited people

and had they found themselves
free would have done more harm.

With all that imprisoned as they were,
they tried to do everything they could.

And for this reason, the Spaniards killed each

of them not permitting a single
one to live which was a great pity.

[ Music ]

>> In a certain way, I feel like
the land has a memory its own.

And the memory of the suffering can still
be felt in the Southeastern United States.

You can go in the sites where Indian
villages and even reminds a cities once where

and you can see the ruins, you can see
the mounds where people were buried

and you don't see the people and you
know immediately there was a great

and tragic story there.

So I think that the story
still lives even if it's not

in our history books, it's in the land itself.

[ Music ]

>> Having led ways to the Timucua,
de Soto marched his army north.

In the spring of 1540, he approached the town
in a present day Columbia, South Carolina,

Cofitachequi, a farming community
with a religious

and socia heritage reaching back
to the ancient mound builders

[ Music & Noise ]

[Background Music] The armies approach was
monitored by the people of Cofitachequi.

They hit what they could of their food
stores and sent their elderly chieftess away

to a town removed from de Soto's path.

[ Music & Noise ]

When de Soto reached the
bank of the watery river,

the niece of the old chieftess
cross the river to meet him.

Relying on diplomacy rather than military force,

she hoped to persuade the
Spaniard to spare her people.

The mistress of her town men, eight
of her ladies embarked in a canoe

which have been covered with a great
canopy and adorned with ornaments,

it was told by a second one which bore
six principle Indians and many oarsmen.

In this manner, they all cross the river.

The mistress of Cofitachequi came before
de Soto and after paying her respects,

seated herself upon a chair which
her subjects had brought for her.

She alone spoke with the governor.

>> "Excellent lord, although my possibility does
not equal my wishes for goodwill is more worthy

than all the treasures of the world which
maybe offered without it, with very sincere

and open goodwill I offer you my person, my
lands, my vessels, and these for service."

>> Unwrapping a great strand of pearls from
her neck, she presented them to de Soto.

Struck with admiration, de Soto called her,
The Lady of Cofitachequi, but her generosity

and graciousness would not
prevent the plunder of her town.

The Spaniards feasted on 600 bushels of corn.

They looted the graves and temples for pearls.

Then de Soto demanded the old chieftess be
summoned from hiding to gain her submission.

Finally, a 21 year old, adopted son

of the chieftess was pressed
in to leading the army to her.

The Spaniards marched out of town behind
the young guide stopping sometime later

in the forest to eat.

>> He begun to grow morose and to sit
contemplatively with his hand on his cheek.

He gave some long and profound sighs.

Then as he sat in the midst of the Spaniards,

he began to remove his arrows
one at a time and very slowly.

Observing that the Castilians were not
watching him, he struck himself in the gullet

in such a way as to inflict a mortal
wound and thus died instantly.

When the Indian bearers were asked why the
boy had taken his life, they explained.

He realized that the act of guiding these people

to his mother's present location was
unworthy of the love she bore him.

>> The elderly chieftess remained undiscovered.

But before resuming his march,
de Soto took her young niece,

the Lady of Cofitachequi, as his hostage.

After days of traveling west, she managed

that daring escape even recovering
some of the plundered pearls.

[ Music & Noise ]

De Soto would not pursue her.

He moved on crossing the Appalachian Mountains.

In July, he traveled down a
broad river into the territory

of the Coosa, what is now Northern Alabama.

The Spaniard were amazed by the
size and wealth of the Coosa nation

where a single day is march took him through 12
towns, each surrounded by vast fields of crops.

When they reached the Coosa
capital, they were met on the road

by a thousand men wearing
great feathered head dresses

and bearing their young chief on a liter.

After replenishing their supplies de Soto and
his men departed without serious incident.

With them they would take stories of the Coosa
wealth that would become legendary in Spain.

As the army headed west, they left
behind one man too sick to travel,

a decision that would that
shutter the Coosa world.

[Background Music] On October 18, 1540,
de Soto arrived at the 45 town of Mabila

in the territory of the powerful Mobile nation.

The Mobile had been preparing for this moment.

Inside a strong defensive wall replete
with towers, a war council was in progress.

Upon the arrival of the Spaniards,

a man described as a "Captain
General" was sent out to confront them.

>> "Who are these thieves and
vagabonds who keep shouting?

Come forth.

Come forth.

With as little consideration as if they were
talking with some such person as themselves,

no one can endure longer the insolence of
these demons and it is therefore only right

that they die today, torn
into pieces for their infamy.

And that in this way an end be given
to their wickedness and tyranny.

>> As he finished speaking, the captain
general was struck down with a Spanish sword.

Instantly, thousands of Mobile fighters
spilled out driving back the Spaniards,

fighting so fiercely, the even grabbed
the caviler's lances by the blades.

>> The Indians fought with so great
spirit that they drove us outside again

and again Elvas, Spanish chronicle.

[ Music & Noise ]

But the Spanish soldiers broke to the
town's fortifications with battle axes

and drove the Mobile inside their homes.

[ Music & Noise ]

De Soto ordered the houses set on fire,
wind funned the flames engulfing the town

in thick smoke while de Soto kept
trumpets, pipes and drums flaring,

and yet the Mobile battled
ever more desperately.

[ Music & Noise]

Women fought frantically beside the
men prompting one Spanish soldier

to say, they fought the desire to die.

[ Music ]

Finally at sunset, after nine
hours of battle it ended.

Eyewitness estimates of the
Mobile dead range up to 11,000.

Bodies littered the streets between
the charred remains of buildings,

even the Spaniards reeled in shock.

One soldier emerged from the
silence of the aftermath frozen

like a wooden statue until he died.

A Mobile fighting men hanged himself by himself

by his bowstring rather than
be left to survive alone.

82 of de Soto's men died, and every one of
his soldiers was wounded, many seriously.

For a month, the army was
forced to stop and recover.

Then as the surrounding Indian nations
watch in horror, de Soto renewed his march.

But his army had been weakened.

The tide was beginning to turn.

In April of 1541, the invaders
reached the Mississippi river.

There, de Soto heard stories
of the powerful Natchez nation,

direct inheritors of the
grand Mississippian culture.

Natchez influence both economic and military
spread in all directions along the Mississippi.

Their temple pyramids rose majestically
along the banks of the rivers.

The Natchez paramount chief, Quigualtam
was heir to the tradition of the great sons

and spiritual head of a powerful
religious aristocracy.

His title was "Son of the sun".

He was carried on a liter so his
feet would never touch the ground.

His head was flattened according to
Natchez custom and tattoos of black red

and blue design were [inaudible]
across his body.

De Soto, claiming that he
too was a child of the sun,

summoned the Natchez leader to the Spanish camp.

Quigualtam sent back his reply.

>> With respect to what DeSoto said
about being the "Son of the Sun",

let him dry up the great
river and I will believe him.

With respect to the rest, I am
not accustomed to visit anyone.

On the contrary, all of whom
I have knowledge visit

and serve me and obey me and pay me tribute.

Quigualtam Natchez.

>> De Soto would never meet Quigualtam
or see the wealth of the Natchez.

On May 21st, 1542, he died.

His body was buried in the Mississippi.

Over the following year,
DeSoto's army ventured as far west

of Texas before returning to the Mississippi.

There they build a flotilla and headed
down river for the Gulf of Mexico.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] En route, they were met

by 100 magnificently-painted Natchi
canoes arrayed in battle formation.

Seated under canopies, fighting men dressed in
vivid colors and wearing large headdress plumes,

drove the Spanish boats out of Natchi
territory and down river where one tribe

after another picked up the pursuit.

[ Music ]

The Spaniards reached the Gulf
of Mexico on July 18th, 1543,

setting sail for Spanish
outposts on the Mexican coast.

[ Music ]

For the American-Indian nations, de Soto's
expedition mercifully came to an end.

[ Music ]

But it would not be the end of de
Soto's influence on the continent.

20 years later, another expedition
would enter South East.

This time, to colonize.

In Spain, the agricultural wealth
of the region had become legendary.

But the new arrivals found few
people and could barely survive.

[Background sound] In desperation, they
traveled North to the land of the Coosa

where de Soto's army had passed through
12 thriving towns on a single day marched.

But instead of the fabled towns, they found
ruins and temple mounds deserted and overgrown.

And instead of populations of thousands,
they found only pockets of survivors.

>> Our village had once been
very great and populous.

When other men similar to you destroyed
it and forced us to run away in fear.

[inaudible] Coosa.

>> Unknown to de Soto, the sick men he had left

with the Coosa carried a weapon
far more deadly than Spanish arms.

While the army carved a path of
destruction through the South East,

a hidden enemy that would take more
Indian lives than all the generals

and conquistadors combined, was
secretly traveling among them.

>> The Europeans had tremendous immunity and
resistance to the diseases that they had known

for tens of thousands of
years, smallpox in the plague,

chickenpox, whopping cough, measles, mumps.

The Indians had no epidemic diseases.

None of these were there.

Consequently, they had no
immunities, absolutely no resistance.

So, a disease as simple as mumps that we
think of today as a childhood disease,

it would come in to an Indian community

and quite possibly kill of
20 percent of the village.

Then the next year, another disease could
come through such a smallpox and kill,

perhaps 30 percent of the village.

So the Indians were tremendously
weakened by disease.

Knowledge was lost as elders died suddenly.

Nations were thrown into upheaval.

In less than 20 years, civilizations that had
flourished for centuries swirled into oblivion.

[ Music ]

>> Most Americans grew up with the story
of the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock

and how they were the first to encounter
Indian people in untouched wilderness.

But in fact, the arrival of English colonist
was by no means, the first encounter.

By the time the pilgrims landed
at Plymouth, English slavers

and traders had been working
the regions for decades.

Two of the first Indian people
that pilgrims met spoke English.

One of them had even been to England.

It would've been easy for the Indian nations to
destroy the original settlement but they didn't.

Instead, they welcomed them as
potential trading partners and allies.

They gave them land and a
knowledge of how to survive on it.

But nothing in the experience of
the Indian nations had prepared them

for the European invasion that would follow.

But before we look at the first colonist,

we'll go north to a people the English
would never conquer, the Inuit.

The people who most of us know is Eskimos.

Welcome to part four of 500
Nations, Invasion of the Coast.

[ Noise ]

>> [Background Sound] And I think
over again, my small adventures when--

with a sure win, I drifted out on my
kayak and I thought I was in danger.

My fears, those I thought so big for all the
vital things I had to get and to reach and yet,

there was only one great thing, the only thing
to live, to see and [inaudible] journeys,

the great day that dawns and the
light fills the world, Inuit.

>> In the northern reaches at the
continent, straddling the Arctic Circle,

lies an island larger than
Great Britain, Baffinland.

This was the world of the East Baffinland,
Inuit, people commonly known as Eskimo.

[ Music ]

For the Inuit, the spring thaw was
the time of euphoria and plenty.

[ Noise ]

Small bands would move to summer camp
along Baffinland's great southern bay.

There they would hunt caribou along the coast
and seal and walrus's in the rich marine waters.

[ Noise & Music ]

>> The great sea has set me adrift.

It moves me as a weed in the great river.

Earth and the great weather moved me, had
carried away and moved my inward parts with joy.

>> [inaudible] Inuit.

>> The Summer of 1576 would
bring something different.

That summer, English sea captain, Martin
Frobisher led an expedition and search

of a northern passage to the Orient.

In July, he passed between
masses of broken packed ice

and through a mountainous channel
he named Frobisher Straits.

As the English sailed into the bay,

several Inuit launched their
kayaks and paddled toward the ship.

Events were followed by the ships chronically.

>> Our captain discovered a number of
small things fleeting in the sea far off

which he supposed to be popped ices [phonetic]
or seals or some kind of strange fish.

But coming nearer, he discovered them to
be men in small boats made of leather.

>> The Inuit offered fish, seals
skin clothing and friendship.

One man agreed to guide the
Europeans through the straits

to a place Frobisher believed
to be the Pacific Ocean.

Five sailors were dispatched in a small skiff
to row the Inuit guide to his kayak on shore.

Then for reasons that may never be known,

the English man disobeyed Frobisher's
orders not to row out of site of the ship.

>> Contrary to his commandment, they rowed
further beyond that point of the land

out of his sight, he could not
here nor see anything of them.

And thereby, he judged they
were taken and kept by force.

>> Although, Inuit continued
to approach the ship for trade,

Frobisher was convinced of treachery.

Preparing to weigh anchor, he decided to
take a price back to his patrons in England.

>> The captain was oppressed with sorrow that
he should return again back to his country

without bringing any evidence
or token of any place whereby

to certify to the world where he had been.

>> Frobisher held out a bell toward an Inuit
trader whose kayak had drawn near the ship.

Reaching toward the hand
outstretched in friendship,

Frobisher seized the man dragging him aboard.

He then set sail for England,
leaving behind his five missing men.

But Frobisher would be denied his living trophy,

aboard ship the captain Inuit defiantly
beat his tongue in half and later died.

Soon after Frobisher left Baffinland,
the winter ice flows closed the bay

and the Inuit returned to their winter lives.

[ Music ]

The following summer Frobisher
returned to Baffinland.

On July 31st, one of his ships put
ashore at a point some 150 miles

from where his five men had
disappeared the previous year.

Stumbling upon a vacant Inuit summer camp,
they found articles of European clothing.

>> In this tents, they beheld a doublet of
canvas made after the English fashion, a shirt,

a girdle, three shoes for contrary feet and
of unequal bigness, which they well conjecture

to be the apparel of our five poor countrymen.

>> The next day, Frobisher sent
40 soldiers back to the area

where they surprised 18 Inuit
men, women and children.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] As the Inuit fled
they're tents, the English open fire

[ Noise ]

[Background Sound] Dodging bullets,
the Inuit ran for the shore.

Launching a large boat called an Umiac,
they tried to escape to open water

but English boats forced them
back against the rocky coast.

Frantically, they climbed up
the crags above the waves.

Soldiers surrounded them from land and sea.

While women and children huddled against the
rocks, the Inuit men fought for their lives.

>> Desperately returning
[phonetic] upon our men,

resisted them manfully so
long as their arrows lasted.

And after gathering up those arrows which our
men shot at them, yey, and plucking our arrows

out of their bodies maintained there cause
until both weapons and life utterly failed them.

And when they found they we're mortally wounded,

with deadly fury they cast themselves
head long from of the rocks into the sea.

Less perhaps, their enemies
should receive glory.

[ Noise ]

>> Some Inuit scrambled over the rocks, slippery
with blood and the wash of the sea and escaped.

A women and her wounded child
were less fortunate.

Frobisher took them captive.

Along with a man he had captures days before,
he had now collected a set of Inuit people.

As his ship sailed for England,
Frobisher displayed little compassion

for the kidnap victims torn away
from their homes and families.

They we're confined together, the
English crew allowed to watch them

for entertainment, hoping to see them mate.

>> Having now got woman captive for the comfort
of our man, we brought them both together

and every man with silence, desired to behold
the manner of their meeting and entertainment.

>> The crew was to be disappointed
by the couple's dignity.

>> Although they live continually together,
yet did they never use as man and wife

and they both was most shamefaced, least
any of their private parts be discovered.

>> Upon arrival in England, artist
John White painted these portraits.

Soon after, the Inuit man, woman
and child all died of illness.

The following spring, Frobisher sailed
on his final voyage to the Inuit world.

This time, no one came forward
to greet the ship.

The Inuit held themselves
aloof refusing contact.

[Background Sound] The English never
solved the mystery of their missing men.

But for centuries, the Inuit would tell the
story of the five white men Frobisher abandoned.

It was said that after living peacefully among
them, one spring the five men outfitted an umiac

with a masked and sails and
departed, never to be seen again.

[ Music ]

[ Pause ]

In 1600, the Atlantic coast of North
America, the present day United States,

was home to well over a 100 Indian Nations.

Nations nourished by fertile farm land
and bountiful hunting and fishing.

[Background Music] Well-maintained
gardens produced corn,

squash and a variety of other
fruits and vegetables.

Summer fishing camps stretched
along the barrier islands.

Sounds [phonetic] and estuaries swarmed
with fish harvested by traps and nets.

Land, people and teachings had melded
into a rich sophisticated way of life.

[ Music ]

At the very center of the Atlantic seaboard,
south of present day Washington D.C.,

30 small nations united in the early 1600s
to form the powerful Powhatan Confederacy.

The Powhatan Confederacy was built
by a charismatic leader who traveled

between his many subject towns with an
entourage of bodyguards and followers.

His named was Wahunsunacawh.

Through diplomacy, he held 30 nations together

and through military strength,
he controlled the region.

[Background Music] In 1607, an
English ship sailed up Chesapeake Bay

and into the lands of a Powhatan.

The ship was captained by a
soldier of fortune, John Smith.

Hoping to be the first successful
English colony in North America,

the small but well-armed expedition landed
at a place they would call Jamestown.

As Jamestown took shape, Wahunsunacawh
carefully weighed his options.

He could destroy the settlement, but he was well
aware of the power of European weapons and knew

that an attack would be costly
in Powhatan lives.

Wahunsunacawh also saw the advantage of
trade for European weapons and tools.

He chose to watch and wait, monitoring the
progress of the settlement through the eyes

of his most trusted ally,
his brother Opechancanough,

chief of the most powerful
Powhatan nation, the Pamunkey.

[Background Music] During their first winter,
the colonists we're barely able to provide

for their basic needs and many died.

[ Music ]

Opechancanough reported that the desperate
English had begun entering Powhatan towns

and taking food by force.

Wahunsunacawh decided that he had to
bring the colony under his direct control.

He ordered the capture of John Smith and
had the English captain brought before him.

Present was Wahunsunacawh's
favorite daughter, Pocahontas.

The romantic story of Pocahontas saving Smith

from death was undoubtedly an
example of Smith's own creativity.

His account of the incident written
immediately afterward said nothing

of his life being threatened.

Only his memoirs written 17
years later included the story.

In fact, in his memoirs, he claimed to have
been saved from death at the last moment

by a beautiful woman no less than three times.

In reality, it is probable that Wahunsunacawh
cemented an alliance by proclaiming Smith leader

of the Powhatan's newest
subject town, Jamestown.

Having established his supremacy and English
submission, Wahunsunacawh released Smith.

But as new people and supplies
arrived from England,

the colony tried a new tact
to gain the upper hand.

The English attempted to crown
Wahunsunacawh king of the Powhatan

which would make him a subject king of England.

B6ut the coronation turned into a farce.

>> And a foul trouble there was to
make him kneel to receive his crown.

He, neither knowing the majesty nor
meaning of a crown nor bending of the knee,

endured so many persuasions, examples,
and instruction has tired them all.

At last, by leaning hard on his
shoulders, he a little stooped

and Captain Newport put the crown on his head.

John Smith, English captain.

>> The true balance of power was reflected
in the trade between the two nations.

The English were forced to pay
extremely high prices in copper

and trade goods for Powhatan food.

New arrivals to the colony were
shocked at the exchange rate

and the situation was an embarrassment
to John Smith and the English.

Finally, emboldened by an infusion of
new weapons and men, Smith saw his chance

to tilt the balance of power toward Jamestown.

In January 1609, he took a military
contingent into a Pamunkey town

and seized Opechancanough
and held him at gunpoint.

His soldiers plundered the Pamunkey food
stores then demanded regular food tribute.

If the Pamunkey did not comply, Smith promised
to load his ships with their dead carcasses.

Despite the assault, Wahunsunacawh
strove to maintain the peace.

>> Why will you take by force
what you may have quietly by love?

Why will you destroy us who
supply you with food?

What can you get by war?

We are unarmed and willing to
give you what you ask if you come

in a friendly manner, and
not with swords and guns.

Wahunsunacawh, Powhatan.

>> But the English allowed
for no diplomatic solution.

No longer pretending to respect Powhatan
authority, they used their weapons

to take what they wanted,
including Powhatan land.

[ Music & Noise ]

The survival of the Powhatan people at stake,

Wahunsunacawh finally turned
to war in August of 1609.

[ Noise ]

It would continue unabated for four years.

[ Noise & Music ]

[Background Music] Then in April
1613, Pocahontas was kidnapped

for the ransom of all English prisoners of war.

The English captives were released,
but Pocahontas remained a hostage.

While held, she was indoctrinated daily
in English customs and Anglican religion.

Then the prisoner declared she had fallen
in love with one of her captors, John Rolfe.

The weary Wahunsunacawh agreed to a
truce hoping to see his daughter again.

>> I am not so simple as to not know that it is
much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably,

laugh and be merry with the English than to
run away from them and lie cold in the woods

and to be so hunted that I
can neither eat nor sleep.

Wahunsunacawh, Powhatan.

>> Pocahontas was baptized Lady Rebecca

and peace was sealed with
her marriage to John Rolfe.

[Background Music] Two years later, with
their infant son, they sailed to England.

Pocahontas was a sensation in London.

She was shown in the best
circles and presented to the king.

But the woman billed as the "right-thinking
savage" would not see her home again.

She became ill, and in March of 1617, as she
prepared to sail for Jamestown, Pocahontas died.

She was 22 years old.

With his lands shrinking, the death of his
daughter finally broke Wahunsunacawh's heart.

He relinquished power and
died the following year.

For Wahunsunacawh's brother, Opechancanough,

the struggle continued and
he faced a grave situation.

The American practice of smoking
tobacco was taking hold in England.

Demand for Virginia tobacco gave
Jamestown a cash crop and the need

for more Powhatan land for cultivation.

For the next 25 years, Opechancanough
would lead the Powhatan

in wars for their land and sovereignty.

[ Music ]

But by 1645, the struggle was becoming hopeless.

The aged Opechancanough was
carried into battle on a litter.

He could not walk without help.

He could not see without his
servants holding his eyelids open.

The last Powhatan war ended with the
capture of the 90-year-old leader.

[ Music ]

Opechancanough was murdered, shot
in the back by an English guard.

[ Music ]

>> The powerful Powhatan empire had proved
unable to stem the tide of colonial expansion.

On a little land that was left to
them, Powhatan people live to this day.

Some, descendants of the two
brothers, who guided their people

through the first generation of contact.

[ Music ]

[ Pause ]

In 1619, a young Patuxet man named Tisquantum
returned to his Massachusetts Bay village.

But no mother or father or wife
hurried to welcome him home.

His village was deserted, the houses overgrown.

And in the place of family and
friends, lay a field of bones.

[ Music ]

Five years earlier, Tisquantum had
been captured by Englishmen and taken

to Spain to be sold into slavery.

Freed by Spanish priests,
he made his way to England.

From there, he worked his way
back to North America as a guide

and interpreter on an English ship.

Tisquantum's village had been
decimated by disease brought

by the same English slavers
who had abducted him.

Now, he stood in the shattered
remnants of his home.

This year there would be no ceremony of
thanksgiving for the bounties of the earth

and sea, no thanks for the corn, the
wild turkeys and geese, the lobsters,

walnuts and berries that were so plentiful.

Tisquantum's long journey
finally ended in Montaup capital

of the neighboring Wampanoag
nation, themselves recovering

from the ravages of European diseases.

[Background Music] In December of the following
year, 1620, a small English ship, the Mayflower,

sailed into the Patuxet Ba,y landing at
the site of Tisquantum's deserted village.

The English renamed it "Plymouth".

[ Music ]

The pilgrims' first winter was a hard one.

[ Music ]

Sickness and starvation reduce
the 100 colonists by half.

No Indian people came forward
and none could be found.

With the coming of spring, the surviving
pilgrims were amazed by the appearance

of one Indian man who greeted
them with the word welcome.

His name was Samoset.

>> He had learned some broken English among
the Englishman that came to fish at Munhegan.

We questioned him of many things.

He told us, the place where we now live is
called Patuxet and that about four years ago,

all the inhabitants died
of an extraordinary plague

and there is neither a man,
woman nor child remaining.

As indeed, we have found none.

So, that there is none to hinder
our possession or lay claim unto it.

William Bradford, Plymouth Colony.

>> Samoset left Plymouth and traveled to
Montaup to bring word of the fledgling colony

to the Wampanoag leader, Massasoit.

Within days, Massasoit and an
entourage set out on a trip to Plymouth.

Samoset was sent ahead with someone
who's English was even better

than his own, Tisquantum, the last Patuxet.

The one person who could
truly call Plymouth home.

Later that day, Massasoit arrived.

>> He was a very robust man in his best years,

grave [phonetic] of confidence
and spare of speech.

His face was painted with a red, like
mulberry and he was oiled both head and face.

William Bradford, Plymouth Colony.

>> Using Samoset and Tisquantum as
interpreters, Massasoit negotiated a treaty

with the pilgrims for peace
and mutual protection.

Massasoit had reason to seek allies.

The European epidemics had
wiped out a vast majority

of the Wampanoag people and neighboring nations.

However, they're powerful rivals to the
west, the Narrangansett were left untouched.

An alliance with the pilgrims would help the
Wampanoag regain they're diplomatic strength.

>> Why would they want to have two enemies?

The Narrangansetts whom they could
probably consider to be their biggest threat

or this not-like English people
that kept coming around the country

but they never seem to stay before.

Now, all of a sudden they got a
group of them that's building houses

that have brought their, families, women.

The first time Englishwomen have been in
New England, native logic would say, "Well,

you don't bring your women
where you're going to make war.

So, let's make peace with this
people, use them as allies.

They got their strange weapons.

If we make peace with them first before anybody
else does, then we'll have them on our side

and we won't have to face their guns."

>> While Massasoit and his entourage return to
Montaup, Tisquantum remained with the pilgrims

on his beloved homeland and taught the new
arrivals how to plant and where to fish.

In the fall, 20 acres of Indian corn
stood at Plymouth, ready for harvest.

And just as Tisquantum taught the
pilgrims to plant, he must have told them

of the annual ceremony of thanksgiving.

A ceremony of thanks to celebrate
the gifts of their world.

The pilgrims embraced the
event and invited Massasoit

and his Wampanoag to share their bounty.

The Indian leader arrived with 90 of
his people and five deer for the feast.

[ Music ]

For three days and nights,
the celebration continued.

Prayers and dances, alternating with shooting
contest, wrestling matches and games.

The Thanksgiving of 1621 would be
remembered as the pilgrims' first.

But, for the Wampanoag, such a day of thanks
had occurred from the beginning of time.

>> We believe that everything that was
given to us was a gift from the Creator.

So, because it was a gift, we remember to give
thanks and we did that and all of the ways

that we could and this was the
basis of our ceremonial life.

And, because everything was a gift, we realize
there was an obligation that comes with a gift

and that obligation was to share because
if we didn't share, there was no reason

for the Creator to continue
to give us those gifts.

>> At the end of the first thanksgiving,
the pilgrims and Wampanoag promised

to make the feast an annual celebration
of their harvests and friendship.

But the relationship between the
nations was destined to change.

[ Music ]

>> We gave them unconditional
acceptance and love and nurturement.

That was-- otherwise, they would
have been massacred at the beach.

>> When the English first came, my father was
a great man and the English, a little child.

He constrained other Indians
from harming the English.

He gave the English corn and
showed them how to plant.

He let them have a 100 times more land
than now I have for my own people.

King Philip, Wampanoag.

>> For almost 40 years while the Plymouth Colony
rapidly expanded, Massasoit maintained peace

between his Wampanoag and the English.

>> Massasoit of the Wampanoag nation, he was
a magnificent peacekeeper and that 50 years

of peace maintained between us and the
English was really due to his intelligence,

integrity, and love for the people.

>> By the time of Massasoit's death in 1660, a
new generation had risen to power in Plymouth.

They had long forgotten his generosity.

Leadership passed to Massasoit's
24 year old son, Philip.

He would become known as King Philip.

>> The time when Philip took over,
he was a different side of a person.

He was going to fight to the end for his people.

>> In 1662, when King Philip came to power,
the growing colonies held 50,000 residents.

In New England, Indian nations
found themselves surrounded.

Their agricultural land shrinking.

Many Wampanoag were left with
little choice but to work

for the English as laborers and servants.

But it wasn't just land and liberty
they were losing, their culture

and traditions were also under attack.

>> The English, they thought of Wampanoag
as inferior from all the way around,

from a standpoint-- especially their religion,
and then as a people, they were savages.

>> Zales [phonetic] Puritans set out to convert
them, pressuring many to abandon their homes

and beliefs and to move to
newly established praying towns.

With little regard for the lost
of the sovereign Wampanoag nation,

the English arrested King Philip's people

for violating the Puritan
Code of Ethics, the blue laws.

Individuals were prosecuted for
hunting and fishing on the Sabbath,

for using Indian medicine and entering
into non-Christian marital unions.

>> The women, when we went out for a moon
lodge and spent time alone or with our friends,

who also had their moon at the
same time and we sit out there

and with alone chatting and terrifying.

They made laws against us
saying we couldn't do that.

That we needed to be in the village, we needed
to be working except for on the Sabbath.

>> [Background Music] In Plymouth,
Indian people were sentenced to death

for denying the Christian religion.

[ Gunshots ]

>> Pray or be shot was the method of conversion.

That's how the first Christian Indians
had Christianity bought to them.

>> King Philip took an uncompromising
stand against the repression.

>> "You see this vast country before us
which the creator gave to our fathers.

You see these little ones,
our wives and children.

And you now see the foe before you.

They have grown insolent and bold.

All our ancient customs are disregarded.

Treaties made by our fathers are broken.

Our brothers murdered before our eyes."

King Philip, Wampanoag.

>> Fifteen years after his father's death,
King Philip finally urged his people to war.

>> Our ancestor's spirits
cried to us for revenge.

These people from the unknown world will
cut down our groves, spoil our hunting

and planting grounds and drive us and our
children from the graves of our fathers.

>> King Philip had no other choice because
his land was being taken away, his people,

the allegiance of his people was being eroded.

The war itself was not only over land.

It was also over the right to follow our
own traditions the Creator had given us.

[ Music ]

>> On June 24th 1675, King Philip's War began.

[ Noise ]

In a brilliantly orchestrated series of forays
several English towns were caught off-guard

and burned to the ground by
the Wampanoag and their allies.

>> An Indian never forgets a kindness,
but he never forgives a wrong,

and because there had been so much kindness
shown during those good years between Massasoit,

King Philip's father and
those settlers that came.

King Philip never forgot any of those families
that had been close to he and his family.

And he spared them.

He actually even sent warnings to
some of those families during the war

that their towns would be burned, so
they could escape with their families.

[ Crowd Noise ]

>> As Indian victories mounted,
hysteria gripped the settlements.

It was reported that Indian troops hung
upon the fringes of the English towns

like the lightning on the edge of clouds.

On the side of a bridge over the Charles River,

one of King Philip's men
posted a taunting message.

>> "Know by this paper that the
Indians that you have provoked

through wrath and anger will war if you will.

There are many Indians yet.

You must consider the Indians
lose nothing but their life.

You must lose your fair houses and cattle."

James, Nipmuc.

>> Through the fall and winter,
fortune favored King Philip's forces.

Then a series of defeats
demoralized some Wampanoag allies.

>> The Great Swamp Massacre was where
over 300 Native American old women

and children were all burnt alive

in their wigwams just six days
before Christmas, December 19th 1675.

And one historian recorded that the
smell of burning flesh so moved one

of the Pilgrim soldiers that he later asked one

of his superiors whether burning
their enemies alive was consistent

with the benevolent principles of the Gospel.

>> The fortunes of war were turning.

With the coming of spring, their winter food
stores were depleted and they were unable

to plant or replenish their supplies.

King Philip's people were starving.

And English troops hunted them as
though trailing a wounded animal.

[ Music ]

In May, the English attacked
an allied Indian force camped

above the falls on the Connecticut River.

300 Indian people were killed.

Some managed to reach their canoes but
in their haste, left behind their paddles

and were swept over the falls to their deaths.

[ Water Gushing ]

For the next two months, King Philip

and his people evaded capture
but the noose was tightening.

[ Battle Sound ]

In August, English troops fell upon
his camp killing or capturing 173.

King Philip narrowly escaped but among those
captured were his wife and 9-year-old son.

[Background Music] In Plymouth,
the clergy decided their fate.

They were sold into slavery in Bermuda.

>> My heart breaks.

Now, I am ready to die.

>> He would choose where he would die.

King Philip returned to his home at Montaup,
where his father, Massasoit had often fed

and entertained the Pilgrims decades earlier.

[ Music ]

In the dawn light of August
12th, 1676, an English

and Indian army surrounded the sleeping camp.

[ Music ]

[ Gunshot ]

[ Music ]

Moments later, King Philip was dead, shot
through the heart by an Indian mercenary.

King Philip's head was put
on display in Plymouth

where it remained for the next 20 years.

[ Music ]

[ Water Flowing & Music ]

>> We all have a purpose, a
role in life, and the Creator,

in all of his wisdom saw fit to spare us.

We all could have been burned
alive in the Great Swamp.

We all could have been slaughtered in that war.

But we were left here for a reason.

And I believe that part of that reason
is to be a conscience for this society

to prevent those same kinds of mistakes from
continuing to be repeated over and over.

That's what I see as my purpose, as the purpose
of all of our native people who will stand up

and continue with that spirit that
King Philip, Pontiac, Geronimo,

all of our great leaders have had.

[ Music ]

>> In our next program, we move to the
interior of the continent where the lands

of the Indian Nations were turned into
battlefields as the French, the English,

and the American colonists
all fought for supremacy.

Please join us when 500 Nations
returns for "A Cauldron of War."

[ Music ]

Hello. I'm Kevin Costner.

Welcome back to 500 Nations.

Even before the colonies were established
in the East, the European entrepreneurs

of the New World started pushing west
testing the boundaries of this rich new land.

What they discovered was the
wealth of the Indian Nations

and the staggering abundance
of their natural resources.

The beautiful furs, the endless
supply of deerskins.

Indian people, in turn, saw that the goods
the Europeans offered made life a lot easier.

Metal axes, knives, copper kettles and guns.

And for a time, this simple arrangement worked.

But very quickly, North America became
an irresistible prize to the Europeans.

They sent armies to fight for the control

of the continent's resources the
way modern armies fight over oil.

In this hour, we take you to the
heartland to a continent in turmoil.

Welcome to Part Five of 500
Nations, A Cauldron of War.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] "When the
white man came here as stranger,

he saw that the furs worn by
our nations were valuable.

And he showed to our ancestors many
goods which he brought with him.

And these were very tempting.

The white man said "Will you not sell the
skins of your animals for the goods I bring?"

Our ancestors replied "We will buy
your goods and you will buy our furs."

The whites proposed nothing more.

Our ancestors acceded to nothing else."

Peau de Chat, Ojibway.

>> In the 1600s, French and English
fur traders made deep inroads

into the North American continent where
interior Indian Nations hunted beaver, mink,

fox and other fur-bearing animals.

[Background Music] For Northern Indian Nations,
trading with Europeans was merely an expansion

of a seasonal round that had
been repeated for centuries.

Winter was the traditional time for
villages to disperse into smaller groups

to hunt and trap from winter camps.

Spring was the season when they came
back together and resumed village life.

Hunters returned home with their
winter's take of pelts and welcomed trade.

At first, European traders conformed
to this cycle and the beautiful

and exotic furs placed Indian traders
in a strong bargaining position.

>> "I heard my host, a Montagnais
leader, say one day, jokingly,

the beaver does everything perfectly well.

It makes kettles, hatchets,
swords, knives, bread.

In short, it makes everything.

He was making sport of us Europeans who have
such a fondness for the skin of this animal."

Nicholas d'onee, fur trader.

>> Fur trade was becoming
central to the European economy.

From beaver came felt, and when the
felt hat came into fashion in Europe,

the North Atlantic trade
took on global proportions.

>> It seemed like the European
way of trading was to--

to go out and try to outdo one another
who was going to have the most.

And so our people were not like that with
the other nations before the Europeans.

But they soon caught on to-- to be
able to become wealthy that way.

>> Increasing demand and higher prices forced
the fur trade to change and along with it,

the very structure of Indian Nations.

Many Indian people found it more lucrative to
trade than to pursue old economic activities.

>> If you take a primitive tribe anywhere
and present them with something that's going

to make them live faster, have an
easier life, they will take it.

You know, the easy, easy way.

And by using the easy way,
you're losing also your culture

because keeping your culture is not always easy.

>> [Background Music] Young men broke away
from their traditional community roles

to pursue commercial hunting in order to obtain
goods that could only be gained through trade.

[ Music ]

Agricultural nations planted less.

Fields lay fallow as pelts were used
to purchase food from European traders.

Ancient cultural and religious values
came under attack as the relationships

between Indian people, the land and
animals, changed through commercial hunting.

Even European traders noted the transition.

>> Before, they killed animals only in
proportion as they had need of them.

They never made an accumulation of skins of
moose, otter, beaver or others but only so far

as they needed them for personal use.

>> Within decades, the animal populations of
entire regions were completely exterminated.

>> In the past, there was none to barter with us
that would have tempted us to waste our animals

as we did after the white
people came on this island.

>> Nations who once traded in peace were
forced into competition, even hostility,

as hunters encroached upon the lands of others.

>> "The times are exceedingly altered.

The times have turned everything upside down
chiefly by the help of the white people.

In times past, our forefathers lived
in peace, love and great harmony

and had everything in great plenty.

But, alas, it is not so now.

All our fishing, hunting and
fowling is entirely gone."

Harry Quaduaquid, Mohegan.

>> Adherence to traditional values
was further eroded by the greatest

of all scourges that flowed from trade, alcohol.

A British trader observed.

>> They do not call it drinking
unless they become drunk.

Immediately after taking everything
with which they can injure themselves

from the houses the women
carry it into the woods

where they go to hide with all their children.

After that, the men have a fine time
beating, injuring, and killing one another.

>> With each generation, alcohol cut deeper
into the social fabric of Indian nations.

In 1803 alone, 21,000 gallons
of rum flowed into the interior.

>> "We are meant to deliberate upon what?

Upon no less as subject than whether
we shall or shall not be a people.

The tyrant is no native to our
soil, but is the pernicious liquid

which our pretended white friends artfully
introduced and so plentifully pours among us."

Creek Speaker.

>> Trade also brought a deadly killer that
went unrecognized until the 20th century.

Indian nations had long traditions
in painting and paint making

and few pigments were as
highly prized as red ocher.

When European traders introduced brilliant
red vermilion paint it became widely used

for facial and body decoration.

But the paint was made from lead and mercury,

hidden poisons that may have
struck down thousands.

[ Music ]

[ Howling ]

>> Such was the agreement made by
my ancestors with the white man.

They hunted for the white man and
before many years, the game grew scarce.

And the benefits we derived
from this agreement are these.

Instead of using a stone to
cut my wood, I used a sharp ax.

Instead of being clothed in my
own warm, ancient clothing I used

that which comes from across the big water.

Instead of having plenty of
food, I am always hungry.

[ Music ]

And instead of being sober,
the Indians are drunk.

[ Howling ]

[ Water Flowing ]

>> Along the South Atlantic coast,

one small Indian nation would take their
economic destiny into their own hands.

In 1670, the English founded Charleston on
land belonging to the Sewee, or Islanders.

Charleston emerged as the economic heart of
the Southern colonies built on a thriving trade

in deer hides with the Sewee
and neighboring nations.

>> In the late 1600s, with the founding

of Charleston the whole economy
revolved around the Indian trade.

The men who lived along Goose Creek
became the big traders who would go

into the interior, trading with the Indians.

Trading all manner of manufactured goods
and beads but primarily to get deerskins

which were being used for all kinds of purposes.

>> [Background Music] The financial success
of the Charleston traders did not extend

to their Indian suppliers, who
typically received only five percent

of what buyers in England paid for their hides.

The Sewee were determined to be treated fairly.

An English observer reported.

>> Seeing that the ships always came in
at one place made them very confident

that that way was the exact road to England.

And seeing so many ships come thence,
they believed it could not be far.

John Lawson, surveyor general.

>> The Sewee believed that by rowing
to the distant point on the horizon

where ships first appeared they would
be able to find their way to England.

Once there, they could establish direct
trade eliminating the expensive middlemen.

Preparations were secretly begun.

>> "It was agreed upon immediately to make an
addition of their fleet by building more canoes,

and those to be of the best sort and biggest
size as fit for their intended discovery.

Some Indians were employed about
making the canoes, others to hunting.

Everyone to the post he was most fit for,

all endeavors tending towards an
able fleet and cargo for Europe."

John Lawson, surveyor general.

>> After months of preparation,
the canoes were loaded with hides,

pelts and the most valuable
possessions of the Sewee Nation.

All able-bodied men and women
boarded the vessels and launched

into the surf leaving behind only the
children, the sick and the very old.

The Sewee Nation had become a flotilla.

But as they entered Open Ocean, their
fragile endeavor turned disastrous.

[Thunder] A gale blew up.

High seas engulfed the Sewee canoes.

[ Noise ]

Those strong enough to survive
were not the fortunate ones.

They were rescued by a passing English
slave ship, only to be delivered

to the auction block in the West Indies.

In an instant, the Sewee Nation ceased to exist.

Its people had become a commodity.

They were not alone.

Indian slaves, along with deer hides and rum,

formed the basis of the Southern
colonial economy.

>> In Charleston, South Carolina, the slave
trade really started with the selling of Indians

and everything that we see later with the
African-Americans who were sold there was going

on in the 1600s and 1700s with the Indians.

They would be brought into market, they'd be
put up on a block they would be auctioned off.

>> Many Indian slaves were kept for the home
economy in the South or shipped to New England.

Most were sent to Barbados, the Bahamas,

Jamaica and other Caribbean outposts
to work the sugar plantations.

Life in servitude was brutal and short and,
as Indian slaves succumbed to violence disease

and harsh working conditions, African
slaves were imported to take their place.

>> Africans and Indians were
basically being treated as animals.

Even though the Catholic Church had
recognized the humanity of the Indians,

most of the conquerors who came over
did not recognize them as human beings

and they treated them the same way they
would wild horses or cows by branding them,

by chaining them, by making them march
in long lines chained to one another,

and then by selling them in an auction block.

You could see an Indian being sold on an
auction block the same way you could see cows,

or horses, or a mule being sold.

>> As late as 1730, one-quarter of the slaves in
some Southern colonies were still Indian people.

>> "They took a part of my tribe and
sold them to the Spaniards in Bermuda.

But I would speak, and I could wish
it might be like the voice of thunder

that it might be heard afar off,
even to the ends of the earth.

He that will advocate slavery is worse than
a beast and he that will not set his face

against its corrupt principles is a coward
and not worthy of being numbered among men."

William Apess, Pequot.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] "You British and the
French are like the two edges of a pair

of shears and we are the cloth which
is cut to pieces between them."

Odawa.

>> By the mid-1700s, the Indian nations

of the Eastern interior were
surrounded by European powers.

Spain controlled Florida.

The English were pressing in
from their colonies in the East.

And the French were aggressively moving across
the Great Lakes and along the Mississippi River.

Spurred by the increasingly lucrative
fur trade, along with valuable farmlands,

North America was seen by the
Europeans as a commercial prize.

To win it, the French and English established
military outposts throughout the interior

to support their trading ventures and
solidify their claims to the land.

>> This idea of encroachment and land
ownership and [inaudible] were so foreign

to us that we couldn't understand it.

As individuals, we couldn't understand it.

It was carving up our mother's breast.

It was parceling out the land and the
air above it to individual ownership.

[ Gunshots & Horse Neighing ]

>> In 1754, France and England
clashed for control over the continent

in what would become known
as the French and Indian War.

From Europe, the American conflict was seen
as a distant chess match for territory,

power and trade with Indian
nations mere fighting pawns.

But in America, the interior Indian
nations saw their homelands turned

into violent battlegrounds.

>> "Why do not you and the French fight
in the old country and on the sea?

Why do you come to fight in our land?"

Shingas, Lenape.

>> Most Indian nations joined the
war on the side of the French.

>> We had a very close affinity
to the French people.

The reason is because they had
no designs on our territory.

They were not out to colonize.

If they wanted to live with us
they married into the tribe,

and they lived with us, and they were welcome.

On the other hand, at the
other end of the scale,

the English are notorious for being colonists.

They don't want the sun to set on the British
Empire so they want colonies everywhere,

and this New World was no different.

That's why they came.

>> In 1760, after six years of war, the French
shocked their Indian allies in the Ohio Valley

and the Western Great Lakes by
abruptly withdrawing from the region.

While the French continued to fight
for other parts of the continent here,

the English army moved into
their abandoned forts unopposed.

>> Englishmen, although you have conquered
the French, you have not yet conquered us.

We are not your slaves.

These lakes, these woods and mountains
were left to us by our ancestors.

They are our inheritance and
we will part with them to none.

>> One Odawa man, who had fought alongside
the French then watched them retreat,

refused to abandon the struggle.

His name was Pontiac.

>> On the night he was born,
there was snow and rain and winds.

There was lightning and thunder,
and there were shooting stars.

And all of the phenomena that was
taking place that night the elders said

that there was a great person being born.

>> While many leaders saw the English as a
threat to their nations Pontiac saw the English

as a threat to all Indian people.

Nations had to put aside the
past and unite in common purpose.

Pontiac's vision would change the
thinking of Indian leaders for generations.

>> So, what he did was to
organize his own thoughts

and then organize his own
people and then other tribes.

Got them together, with what undoubtedly had
to be great oratory and great diplomatic moves

and skills to get people, some of whom were
his bitter enemies, our tribe's bitter enemies.

We fought the Hurons for hundreds of years.

We fought the Shawnees.

We fought many of these tribes.

He went around and got them to become part
of what's known as Pontiac's Confederacy.

>> "It is important for us, my
brothers, that we exterminate

from our land this nation
which only seeks to kill us.

When I go to the English chief to tell
him that some of our comrades are dead,

instead of weeping, he makes
fun of me and of you.

When I ask him for something for our sick, he
refuses and tells me that he has no need of us.

There is no more time to lose.

And when the English shall be
defeated we shall cut off the passage,

so they cannot come back to our country."

Pontiac, Odawa.

>> Fighting men from the
Anishinabe, Miami, Seneca, Lenape,

Shawnee and other nations,
responded to his call.

In May of 1763, Pontiac's Rebellion
erupted with the siege of Fort Detroit.

Over the next two months, nine of the
11 English forts in the region fell.

Only Detroit and Fort Pitt remained in British
hands, both under siege by Pontiac's alliance.

>> When he started taking the British forts, and
he took them one by one, cut off the security

of the colonists, then they were on their own.

Then his vision was that once we get the
last one, once we get Detroit we'll start

and we'll just kind of herd
them ahead of us like ducks

or geese right back to the Atlantic Ocean.

>> Pontiac stood on the verge of total victory.

With France still in control of Louisiana

and the Mississippi local French residents
assured him that French forces would soon return

to the region to help him drive
out the English once and for all.

But unknown to Pontiac, France had
already signed a treaty of surrender

in Paris ending all hostilities between
the two colonial powers in North America.

Rumors of the accord reached Pontiac
in June at the height of his triumph.

But he refused to believe that the French
would not respond to his victories.

The British army, freed from campaigns

against the French launched massive
expeditions against the Indian forces.

But Pontiac's alliance held their ground.

[ Shouting and Gunshot ]

Increasingly desperate to prevail British
commander Jeffrey Amherst put a bounty

on Pontiac's head then proposed
a sinister tactic, germ warfare.

>> Could it not be contrived to send the
smallpox among those disaffected tribes

of Indians?

We must, on this occasion, use every
stratagem in our power to reduce them.

You will do well to try to inoculate
the Indians by means of blankets to try

to extirpate this execrable race.

>> Shawnee, Lenape, and Odawa were crippled
by smallpox-infested blankets from Fort Pitt.

>> Pretty soon, burst out a
terrible sickness among us.

Lodge after lodge was totally vacated.

Nothing but the dead bodies lying
here and there in their lodges.

Entire families being swept off with
the ravages of this terrible disease.

>> In October, confirmation of the French
surrender reached Pontiac and his allies.

The news was a decisive blow to
the momentum of the rebellion.

Now they knew that help would never come.

Pontiac called off the siege of Detroit and
retired with his people to their winter camps.

The next spring, he tried to rally forces
for another push against the English

but his efforts were ineffective.

Many Indian nations were
encouraged by English promises

that settlements would never
be allowed on their land.

They were also anxious to normalize
relations and to resume European trade.

[ Music ]

With the passage of another year,
Pontiac was a leader without a following.

His moment had passed.

The British forts were there to stay.

In 1769, only six years after the incredible
success of his campaign against the British,

Pontiac died murdered in the
ancient Indian center of Cahokia.

But his life had not been in vain.

His vision of united Indian nations would echo

through the region and across
the coming decades.

[ Music ]

>> The idea didn't die.

The idea that Pontiac had implanted with these
other leaders and these other tribes prevailed.

>> Pontiac's life was a message to the future.

But before the nations of the Great Lakes

and Ohio Valley would rise again
the continent would be embroiled

in another costly war this time, between
the American colonists and their king.

[ Music ]

>> "The Iroquois laugh when you
talk to them of obedience to kings

for they cannot reconcile the idea of
submission with the dignity of man.

Each individual is a sovereign in his own mind
and as he conceives he derives his freedom

from the Creator alone he cannot be
induced to acknowledge any other power."

John Long, fur trader.

>> The Europeans, their point of view on
our people is that we didn't really exist

as a people, as a structured
people until they came.

You know, but, really, when you research
back into our history you're going to find

that we were already structured
and with governments intact,

and our way of life was already intact.

>> The oldest democracy in North America
was created by five Indian nations.

And what is today New York State.

The Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk,
Seneca, and Cayuga,

together they became known as the Iroquois.

They called themselves the Haudenosaunee.

[ Pause ]

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was born

in a violent era centuries
before the French and Indian War.

At that time, a vicious cycle
of war and revenge was running

out of control among the five nations.

[ Noise ]

In the midst of the chaos, a visionary
man from the Huron nation appeared.

Rather than a war club and
arrows, he carried teachings.

He would be known as the Peacemaker.

The Peacemaker proposed a
set of laws by which people

and nations could live in peace and unity.

A system of self-rule, guided by moral
principles known as the "Great Law."

>> In all your acts, self-interest
shall be cast away.

Look and listen for the welfare of
the whole people and have always

in view not only the present
but also the coming generations.

The unborn of the future nation.

>> When the Great Peacemaker
designed the confederacy

and its laws he brought together five
warring nations into one heart, one body,

one mind and he symbolized
it by using five arrows

when he bound it together
to make it a strong union.

He said, "When you pull one
arrow out, it's easily broken."

He broke one in half in front
of them, just to show them.

So he told them, he said,
"If you all stick together

in union then you will never be broken."

>> [Background Music] The first wampum belt
was created to symbolize the Great Law.

The image embodied the dream
that became a reality.

Five nations, independent,
but joined together as one.

The Great Law was both a set of moral teachings
and a concrete plan for a democratic union built

around the social structures of the nations.

Each nation had long been organized into
clans which served as extended families.

Clans lived together in longhouses which
were owned by the women of the clans.

Up to 200 feet in length, longhouses
sheltered as many as a dozen families

with private areas and shared fires.

They were a place of security, a
warm refuge against harsh winters.

Clan membership passed from mother to child.

When a child came of age, they
would marry into another clan.

In this way, the entire nation
was woven into one greater family.

From this clan structure the Haudenosaunee
built a representative democracy.

The women of each clan would
appoint one man as clan chief.

In this way, leadership would rise
through trust, rather than conquest.

The clan chiefs of each of the five nations
gathered at the Haudenosaunee capital

of Onondaga to form the Grand Council.

Governing from the heart of their territory
the Grand Council envisioned all five nations

as sheltered by a giant longhouse
stretching 250 miles.

The longhouse's central aisle was the
Haudenosaunee trail, the principal line

of communication between
the members of the league.

The eastern door of the domain
was guarded by the Mohawk.

The Seneca watched the door to the west.

And the Onondaga were the
center, the keepers of the fire.

The democratic confederacy envisioned by the
Peacemaker preserved peace for centuries.

>> When the Europeans arrived in
the territory of the Haudenosaunee

in the early 1600s the process or protocol that
the Peacemaker had given to us was in place.

So we were able to deal with those
Europeans on a political basis.

>> In 1754, Benjamin Franklin
attended a conference

with the Haudenosaunee in Albany, New York.

He came away inspired by the successful model of
independent states united under one rule of law.

Soon after he would propose
a similar union of colonies.

[Background Music] Twenty-two years later these
united states would declared their independence

from England.

In that year, 1776, events swirled
toward the American Revolution.

10,000 strong and strategically located
between the colonies and the British

in Canada the Haudenosaunee
were seen as a key to victory.

British and American diplomats met repeatedly
with representatives of the Grand Council trying

to pull the Indian nations to their side, but
the Grand Council guided by the principles

of peace laid down by the Great
Law declared their neutrality.

Although they would not ally with
either power in a diplomatic gesture,

a deligation from the Grand
Council traveled to Philadelphia.

There the Haudenosaunee, the
oldest democracy in North America,

officially recognized the
fledgling American government.

The deligation had been lodged Independence Hall
above the chamber of the continental congress

where representatives were drafting
the declaration of independence.

[Background Music] During
that same critical summer

of 1776 a young Mohawk named
Joseph Brant returned from England.

A protege of the British agent for
Indian affairs, sir William Johnson,

Brant's family had long standing
ties to the British.

Traveling among the Haudenosaunee nations
Brant passionately argued for an alliance

with the British as their only hope to
prevent being overrun by the Americans.

>> He started to go amongst the
nations of the Mohawks, the Oneidas,

the Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas.

Trying to entice the young men
to go on the side of the British.

>> In an act that threatened the
very existence of the confederacy,

Joseph Brant in open defiance of the Grand
Council called a meeting in the summer

of 1777 to argue the British case.

Black Snake, a young Haudenosaunee man
from the Seneca nation listened closely.

>> Brant came forward and
said "That if we did nothing

for the British there would be no peace for us.

Our throats would be cut by
the red coat man or by America.

That we should go and join the Father.

This is the way for us."

>> Black Snake's uncle, a respected
Seneca leader named Cornplanter rose

to challenge Brant.

Cornplanter was a veteran of the French
and Indian Wars and had participated

in the critical council decisions of his time.

He wanted no part of a war
that was not his to fight.

>> "You must all mark and
listen to what I have to say.

War is war, death is death,
a fight is a hard business.

Here America says not to lift
our hand against either party.

I move therefore to wait a little while to
hear more consultation between the two parties.

But the British say everything
he is going to say to us.

We then can see clear where we
are going and not be deceived."

Cornplanter, Seneca.

>> In shocked disbelief, Black Snake and the
others watched as Brant rose to his feet.

He ordered Cornplanter to stop
speaking then called him a coward.

>> The men had a great deal of
controversy among themselves with some

for Brant and some for Cornplanter.

They begin to say that we
must fight for somebody

because they could not bear
to be called cowards.

>> The following day the gathering,
predominantly Mohawk and Seneca,

broke with the Grand Council and
agreed to fight with the British.

Cornplanter resigned himself to the
majority will and rallied his men.

>> Every brave man show himself now.

Hereafter we will find our many dangerous times.

I therefore say to you, you must stand like
good soldiers against your own white brother.

Because just as soon as he finds out that you
are against him, he will show no mercy on us.

>> But as factions broke from the Grand
Council not all joined the British.

The Oneida heavily influenced by American
missionaries were moving toward an outright

alliance with the Americans.

The horror of civil war loomed
over the confederacy.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] In the midst of the American
Revolution a Haudenosaunee's civil war began.

On August 6th 1777, Oneida fighting men and
their American allies clashed at Oriskany Creek

with British troops and their
Seneca and Mohawk allies.

[ Gunshots and Shouts ]

At day's end, [Background Music]
hundreds lay dead on the battlefield.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] As the war
raged across the eastern continent,

Mohawk and Seneca forces allied
with the British wreaked havoc

on frontier settlements draining
American economic

and military resources away from the war effort.

In retaliation, George Washington sent an army
against the Haudenosaunee capital at Onondaga,

one nation still clinging
tenaciously to neutrality.

After Washington's army ransacked the
capital, the Onondaga also plunged angrily

into the war on the side of the British.

>> You call George Washington
the father of your country.

We call George Washington Hanadegaies,
which means "town destroyer".

>> In August 1779, Washington
sent General John Sullivan

into Haudenosaunee country with 5,000 men.

Entering territory few white men had ever
even seen, Sullivan carved a chilling swath

of destruction forcing those in
his path to flee their homes.

Sullivan's soldiers could not
help but marvel at the prosperity

of the deserted towns they were destroying.

>> We reached the town which consisted of
128 houses, mostly very large and elegant.

>> The Indians live much better than
most of the Mohawk River farmers.

Their houses very well furnished with
all necessary household utensils,

great plenty of grain, several
horses, cows and wagons.

It appears to be a very old settlement.

There are a great number of apple and peach
trees here, which we cut down and destroyed.

>> A group of Haudenosaunee
mercenaries who guided Sullivan's army

into the territory were captured by the Seneca.

One man recognized his own
brother among the captives.

>> Brother, you have merited death.

When those rebels had drove us from the fields
of our fathers to seek out new homes it was you

who would dare to step forth as their pilot
and conduct them to the doors of our homes

to butcher our children and put us to death.

No crime can be greater.

But though you have merited death and shall die

on this spot my hands shall not be
stained in the blood of a brother.

Who will strike?

>> A Seneca chief killed the prisoner instantly.

But even the powerful Seneca could not
stand against Sullivan's massive army.

Old and young grabbed what few
possessions they could carry and fled.

>> "The part of our corn they burnt
and threw the remainder into the river.

They burnt our houses, killed what
few cattle and horses they could find,

destroyed our fruit trees and
left nothing but the bare soil.

What were our feelings when we found
that there was not a mouthful of any kind

of sustenance left, not even enough to keep
a child one day from perishing with hunger?"

Dehgewanus, Seneca.

>> In retaliation for the American destruction
of Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca and Cayuga villages.

Joseph Brant attacked the Oneida and
neighboring Tuscarora, allies of the Americans.

In the end, all of the five
nations were ravaged.

Out of scores of Haudenosaunee
towns only two survived unscathed.

And it was already fall with no
way to replace the lost crops.

The tragedy heightened with
the coming of winter.

It was the coldest in memory,
snow fell five feet deep.

Many homeless Haudenosaunee died
of hunger, cold, and disease.

[ Music ]

Less than four years later in 1783, the British
government surrendered at the Treaty of Paris.

With no concern for the sovereignty

of Indian nations even their allies the British
ceded control of the continent as far west

as the Mississippi to the new American nation.

In post war treaties, the United States
government seized vast Haudenosaunee lands.

Even those belonging to their allies, the
Oneida, whose women had brought life-saving corn

and blankets to George Washington's
starving troops at Valley Forge.

But the five nations of the Haudenosaunee would
heal the wounds of civil war and remain defiant.

In 1790, they forced concessions from the
United States at the Treaty of Canandaigua

which allowed them to keep their core homelands.

The Haudenosaunee would survive and
rebuild, drawn together by the great law

and their grand council, a
union that endures to this day.

>> If the Haudenosaunee was destroyed at the
revolutionary war then why am I sitting here?

If we were not destroyed, our council fire still
remained, our council's fire has remained all

of these years and the history and the
culture of the Haudenosaunee, its political

and spiritual structure is still intact
and we sit here traveling around the world

on our own passports as sovereign people.

We were not destroyed by the revolutionary war.

>> No sooner had the United States come into
being than its people hungry for new land

and opportunity poured west,

across the Appalachian Mountains,
to open up the new frontier.

But imagine the movement as the
Indian people must have seen it.

This was their home where their ancestors were
buried, where they were raising their children.

They had already experienced the disruptions of
trade, alcohol, missionaries, disease and war.

Now, their lands were at stake.

Indian people fought to preserve their freedom
and in their aggressive defense stories

of frontier violence came to define
them as hostiles and savages.

Armed with this distorted image, the same cycle

that had dispossessed the Indian
nations of the East, was underway again.

We begin part six in the Ohio River Valley
where on the atmosphere of frontier chaos,

one of the great leaders of North America
would emerge with a message of hope.

His name was Tecumseh and he would
try to change the course of history.

[ Music ]

>> "When we passed through the country between
Pittsburgh and our nations, lately Shawnee

and Lenape hunting grounds, where we could
once see nothing but deer and buffalo,

we found the country thickly
inhabited and the people under arms.

We were compelled to make a detour of 300 miles.

We saw large numbers of white
men in forts and fortifications

around Salt Springs and buffalo grounds."

Cornstock, Shawnee.

>> In the aftermath of the American Revolution,

the lands of the powerful
Haudenosaunee nations were shrunk

to a little more than reservation islands.

The front lines of the invasion moved
west to the nations of the Ohio Valley,

the Lenape, Shawnee, Miami, and others.

[Background Music] Settlers flooded west.

Many of them revolutionary war
veterans paid with land grants

by the government left bankrupt from the war.

Supported by the new United States, they
came prepared to fight for the land.

[ Horses Galloping and Neighing ]

>> "The people of our frontier carry on
private expeditions against the Indians

and kill them whenever they meet them.

[Gunshots] And I do not believe there was a jury
in all Kentucky who would punish a man for it."

John Hamtramck, major, United States Army.

[ Music ]

>> Over the next 20 years, through a
series of battles and dubious treaties,

the New United States laid claim to Indian
lands on the frontier, vast tracks receded

to white settlement including the future
sites of Detroit, Toledo, Peoria and Chicago.

>> "My heart is a stone, heavy with sadness
for my people, cold with the knowledge

that no treaty will keep
whites out of our lands.

Hard with the determination to resist
as long as I live and breathe."

Blue Jacket, Shawnee.

[ Rain Drops ]

[ Fire Blazing ]

[ Chanting ]

>> In this atmosphere of despair and frontier
violence, missionaries undermine the cultural

and religious values of Indian communities.

>> Our life is who we are, our identity, our
language, our ceremonies, our way of how we used

to dress and how we related to each other.

Those are the makeup, part
of the makeup of our people.

And so when Christianity came
about, it's started to change.

They were trying to make
us become what we were not.

>> "You have got our country
but are not satisfied.

You want to force your religion upon us.

The Creator has made us all but he has
made a great difference between us.

He has given us a different
complexion and different customs.

Since he has made so great a difference between
us and other things, why may we not conclude

that he has given us a different
religion according to our understanding?

We do not wish to destroy your
religion or take it from you.

We only want to enjoy our own."

Red Jacket, Seneca.

>> But the pressure on Indian people
was unrelenting, their land, livelihood,

culture and very beliefs under attack.

Frustrated warriors traded
scarce resources for alcohol.

>> And now reality is in your face.

You're slapped in the face with reality.

What's the best way to escape
that kind of reality?

During those times, our people began to
take up the rum to numb their feelings

because that feeling that hurt was so strong.

>> [Background Music] "The men revel in
strong drink and are very quarrelsome.

The families become frightened
and moved away for safety.

Now, the drunken men ran
yelling through the village

and have weapons to injure those whom they meet.

Now there are no doors in the houses
for they have all been kicked off.

Now, we men full of strong
drink alone track there."

Handsome Lake, Seneca.

>> One young Shawnee man, Lalawethika,
like many demoralized young men

of his generation, had succumbed to alcoholism.

He was completely dependent on
his older brother, Tecumseh.

Tecumseh and Lalawethika had grown
up in the world of frontier violence.

Their father was killed fighting the British.

Their older brother died at the
hands of Tennessee settlers.

The village of their birth had
been laid waste by Kentuckians.

Now, in 1803, determined to maintain
his traditions, Tecumseh led Lalawethika

and the people of their village west
into Indiana in an effort to put distance

between themselves and white settlers.

But in Indiana, Lalawethika's drinking worsened.

[Background Music] He sunk into a deep
depression but his life was about to turnaround.

One day while in his home,
Lalawethika fell to the floor.

For a time Tecumseh and others in the village
believed he was dead, but he was not dead.

Lalawethika had had a revelation,
a divine message that responded

to the unbearable conditions of his people.

Suddenly and clearly, he saw a path for
renewal, abandoned the ways of the white men

and returned to the old teachings.

From that moment forward, Lalawethika would
be known as Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee prophet.

Tenskwatawa never drunk again and he urged his
followers to shun alcohol and all other ideas

and things that came from white men.

>> "Have you not heard at the
evenings and sometimes in the dead

of night those mournful sounds that steal

through the deep valleys
and along the mountainsides?

These are the wailings of those spirits
whose bones have been turned up by the plow

of the white men and left to
the mercy of the rain and wind."

Tenskwatawa, Shawnee.

>> Tenskwatawa promised that if the
people return to their own ways,

the whites would be pushed back
and prosperity would return.

Tecumseh embraced his brother's
vision of cultural renewal

and together they spread the
message to every Ohio Valley nation.

Hundreds traveled to Indiana
to hear them speak in person.

Shawnee, Odawa, Wyandot, Kickapoo
and other families converged

on a new settlement established by the prophet
and Tecumseh near the intersection of the Wabash

and Tippecanoe Rivers, Prophetstown.

Tenskwatawa preached to visitors in
the council house every night followed

by dancing and singing.

White frontiersmen claimed to be able
to hear the drums all night long.

But it would be Tecumseh who would
challenge the course of history

by transforming his brother's message
into a political and military movement.

Using Prophetstown as his base Tecumseh
would emerge the most powerful Indian leader

of his time.

[ Music ]

>> "Brothers, we are friends.

We must assist each other to bear our burdens.

The blood of many of our fathers and
brothers has run like water on the ground

to satisfy the avarice of the white men.

We ourselves are threatened with a great evil.

Nothing will pacify them but the
destruction of all the red men."

Tecumseh, Shawnee.

>> In 1808, while the Shawnee prophet,
Tenskwatawa, preached the cultural renaissance

at Prophetstown, his brother Tecumseh traveled
throughout the territory spreading the prophet's

message along with a political
and military vision of his own.

>> "The whites have driven us from the
sea to the lakes, we can go no farther.

The way, the only way to stop this evil is for
us to unite in claiming a common and equal right

in the land as it was at first and should be
now for it was never divided but belongs to all.

Unless every tribe unanimously combines to
give a check to the ambition and avarice

of the whites they will soon
conquer us apart and disunited.

And we will be driven away from
our native country and scattered

as autumnal leaves before the wind.

Tecumseh, Shawnee.

>> Tecumseh electrified his audiences.

At one gathering a nervous white observer
reported seeing young men shaking with emotion,

a thousand tomahawks brandished in the air.

William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana
Territory, recognized Tecumseh's personal power

and charisma and saw the Shawnee
leader as a singular threat.

>> "The implicit obedience and respect
which the followers of Tecumseh pay

to him is really astonishing and more than
any other circumstance bespeaks him one

of those uncommon geniuses which spring
up occasionally to produce revolutions

and overturn the established order of things.

If it were not for the vicinity of the United
States, he would perhaps be the founder

of an empire that would rival in
glory that of Mexico or Peru."

Governor William Henry Harrison.

>> Prophetstown's population swelled.

But, despite the Tecumseh's growing
influence he could not control the actions

of all Indian leaders.

In 1809, at one of many treaty conferences
Governor Harrison convinced leaders

of the Miami, Lenape and Potawatomi

to sell three million acres of
land in Indiana and Illinois.

Tecumseh was outraged considering those
who signed the treaty guilty of treason.

>> No tribe has the right to sell a country
even to each other much less to strangers.

Sell a country, why not sell the air?

The great sea as well as the earth?

Did not the Great Spirit make them
all for the use of his children?

>> Tecumseh went to Harrison and, in a volatile
meeting, confronted the governor face to face.

>> "Brother, I look at the land
and pity the women and children.

I'm authorized to say that they
want to save that piece of land.

We do not wish you to take it.

It is small enough for our purposes.

I want the present boundary line to continue.

Should you cross it I assure you it
will be productive of bad consequences."

>> But the settlements continued to
expand even onto the newly ceded lands.

Tecumseh was convinced that only
force would stop the American advance.

To build a military resistance he continued
to traveled tirelessly among the nations

of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, while
Harrison kept a nervous eye on his movements.

>> No difficulties deter him.

For four years he has been in constant motion.

You see him today on the Wabash and in a short
time you hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie

or Michigan or the banks of the Mississippi.

And wherever he goes, he makes an
impression favorable to his purpose.

>> In 1811, Tecumseh traveled south in
an effort to bring the powerful Choctaw,

Chickasaw and Creek into the alliance.

There in village after village, he argued that
Indian nations stood at the brink of disaster.

>> Where today are the powerful
tribes of our people?

They have vanished before
the avarice and oppression

of the white man as snow before the summer sun.

Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn
without making an effort worthy of our race?

Shall we, without a struggle give up our
homes, our lands, the graves of our dead

and everything that is dear and sacred to us?

I know you will say with me never, never.

>> But Tecumseh's passion and presence alone
could not overcome a growing cultural rift.

Many Southern Indian leaders
were encouraging their nations

to emulate mainstream white society.

Others saw military conflict
with the US as suicide.

Although Tecumseh found passionate
supporters everywhere,

his hope that Southern Nations would join
in a unified resistance was not to be.

In January of 1812, Tecumseh returned to Indiana

to find Prophetstown destroyed,
its people dispersed.

Governor Harrison had waited until Tecumseh,
the military leader of the movement,

had departed for the South
before moving on Prophetstown.

But Tenskwatawa with a much smaller force
attacked the Americans before they reached the

town allowing the residents to evacuate.

[ Music ]

The following day, Harrison
entered the deserted town

on the Tippecanoe River and
burned it to the ground.

Although his army suffered twice the casualties
of the Indian force Harrison claimed the victory

that would eventually propel
him to the presidency.

Despite the loss of Prophetstown Tecumseh

and the Prophet began immediately
to rebuild their movement.

[Background Music] Then the War of 1812 broke
out between the British and United States.

Suddenly, there was a new
opportunity to push back the Americans

through an alliance with the British.

The two brothers moved north
to Canada with a thousand men.

There, they were joined by allies from
throughout the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes.

[ Music ]

After years of tireless effort, Tecumseh's
unified resistance was now a reality.

The British and Indian force laid siege to the
fort at Detroit quickly forcing its surrender.

American forts fell at Mackinac and Dearborn.

In January of 1813, Tecumseh and
his allies forced the surrender

of the Americans at Frenchtown.

Tecumseh hoped to push the campaign into
the Ohio Valley but the following May,

British and Indian forces
suffered their first defeat.

Then, during the summer the
war began to turn against them

and Tecumseh could see the British will failing.

He confronted the British
commander, General Proctor.

>> You always told us that you would
never draw your foot off British ground.

But now we see you are drawing back.

We are very much astonished to see you tying
up everything and preparing to run away

without letting us know what
your intentions are.

>> Without informing their Indian allies
the British made plans to abandon Detroit

as a large American force approached.

At the head of the American Army rode the man

who destroyed Prophetstown,
Governor William Henry Harrison.

Tecumseh demanded that General
Proctor make a stand.

>> "Listen, we wish to remain
here and fight our enemy.

You have got the arms and ammunition.

If you have an idea of going away, give
them to us and you may go and welcome.

As for us, our lives are in
the hands of the Creator.

We are determined to defend our
lands and if it be his will,

we wish to leave our bones upon them."

Tecumseh, Shawnee.

>> Faced with Harrison's
3000-man army Tecumseh was forced

to fall back with the British 80 miles.

They halted their retreat
along the Thames River.

There, Tecumseh would make his stand.

On October 5th 1813, the
Shawnee leader rallied his men

as he inspected the lines from horseback.

He urged General Proctor to do the same.

>> Tell your men to be firm,
and all will be well.

>> Tecumseh dismounted and joined his troops
at their position in a swampy thicket.

The night before, he had had a
premonition about the battle.

And in it, he had foreseen his death.

Tecumseh removed the scarlet British
military jacket he always wore

and dressed in traditional Shawnee clothes.

He handed his sword to a trusted friend
and instructed him to give it to his son

when he grew up and to tell
him what his father stood for.

In midafternoon, Harrison's cavalry charged.

The British lines immediately collapsed
and ran with the British general

on horseback passing his
own troops as they fled.

Tecumseh did not run.

And neither did his men.

From a nearby hillside the
Shawnee Prophet watched

as the Americans charged his brother's position.

Tecumseh received a gunshot wound
to the chest [gunshot] and fell.

Thirty minutes later, the battle was over.

[ Music ]

For the Ohio Valley nations the
eventual British defeat in the War

of 1812 would simply underscore
the tragic loss of Tecumseh.

In the years before the war, he had
traveled the Indian roads stretching

in every direction from Prophetstown.

In every village, his warning had been
the same, "The Americans will not stop

until they have taken all our land."

Tecumseh had seen the future.

>> "While strong it has been our
obvious policy to weaken them.

Now that they are weak and harmless
and most of their lands fallen

into our hands they must be taught
to improve their condition."

William Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

>> For decades, federal agents and Christian
missionaries had pressured Indian nations

to abandon their traditions and
assimilate into white society.

The policy, promoted by Thomas Jefferson and
others after him, advocated intermarriage,

religious conversion and financial incentives
to turn Indian people into Americanized farmers.

In the South, US policy was succeeding.

Traditionals had been eliminated
as a serious military threat

and American culture was spreading.

The large Southern nations, the Cherokee,
Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole came

to be known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

To the Americans, the most
civilized of these were the Cherokee.

>> We call ourselves Aniyunwiya which is
translated into "the Principal People."

When the Creator made the world he created
these beautiful mountains here in the Smokies.

And he needed someone to live here, someone
who would take care of what he'd made

and what he gave to us so he
chose the Cherokee people.

>> The ancient Cherokee nation flourished in

and around the Great Smoky Mountains
building their capital of Echota

in the foothills southwest of
present day Knoxville, Tennessee.

Echota was a peace town,
where no one could be harmed.

But with each passing generation
there were fewer and fewer who clung

to the traditional Cherokee-life way.

[ Music & Rooster Crowing ]

[Background Music] Many Cherokee
became successful modeling themselves

after their American neighbors living
in two-story houses on plantations,

raising European crops, owning slaves and
educating their children in American schools.

In 1817, a new national council formed

with wealthy landowner John Ross
as its principal elected chief.

The centuries-old clan-based
government was replaced

with a republican state modeled
after the American system.

Echota, the venerated Cherokee
peace town was replaced as seat

of government by New Echota in Georgia.

In 1821, a man named Sequoya
completed an alphabet

that committed the Cherokee language to writing.

Soon they had their own newspaper,
the Cherokee Phoenix.

But despite Cherokee efforts to coexist
and United States government policies

to bring Indian nations into the American way it
was a relationship marred by racism and greed.

In the middle of a booming slave economy built
around cotton demand for land was growing

and the Southern Indian nations
still controlled vast areas.

In 1828, Andrew Jackson, like William
Henry Harrison, used his reputation

as an Indian fighter to propel
himself to the presidency.

>> Greed usually is a thing that makes
people do things they wouldn't do otherwise.

Gold was discovered down in Georgia.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Hundreds
of miners illegally swarmed

across the Cherokee border
to lay claim to the vein.

The Cherokee turned to the
United States for protection.

But President Jackson, himself a land
speculator, removed federal troops

from the area, telling Georgia officials
"Build a fire under the Cherokee.

When it gets hot enough, they'll move."

>> The greed of the white man grew and the
first thing that came into his mind was,

"We must obtain this land at any cost."

And that idea of the removal started there.

>> For the Indian people who believed their
salvation lay in emulating American society,

the most bitter betrayal came on May 28th, 1830.

Under Jackson's advocacy the
Indian Removal Act was passed.

Nations east of the Mississippi were to
give up their homelands forever and move

to a special Indian territory in Oklahoma.

>> "The Americans said the
land shall be yours forever.

Now they say, the land you live on is not yours.

Go beyond the Mississippi.

There is game.

There you may remain while the
grass grows and the water runs.

Brothers, will not our Great
Father come there also?"

Speckled Snake, Creek.

>> At New Echota Cherokee
leaders felt deeply betrayed.

Principal Chief John Ross and wealthy Cherokee
landholder Major Ridge both had fought alongside

President Jackson in a war against
traditional factions of the Creek Nation.

Meeting in violation of Georgia state law the
Cherokee Council vehemently opposed removal

and reminded the nation of their law
that carried the death penalty for anyone

who sold Cherokee lands without authorization.

>> "Even if report was favorable as to the
fertility of the soil in Indian Territory,

if the running streams were as transparent
as crystal and the silver fish abounded,

we should still adhere to the
purpose of spending the remnant

of our lives on the soil that gave us birth."

Cherokee Council.

>> Indian protests fell on deaf ears.

The Choctaw were the first made to bend.

>> "Painful in the extreme is
the mandate of our expulsion.

I ask you in the name of justice for a
repose for myself and my injured people.

Let us alone.

We will not harm you.

We want rest.

We hope, in the name of justice, that another
outrage may never be committed against us

and that we may, for the future,
not be driven about as beasts

who benefit from a change of pasture.

We go forth, sorrowful, knowing
that wrong has been done."

George Harkin, Choctaw.

>> Between 1831 and 1832, 13,000 Choctaw
made the long and difficult trek to the West.

Two thousand were to die along the way.

>> "My voice is weak.

You can scarcely hear me.

It is not the shout of a warrior
but the wail of an infant.

I have lost it in mourning over
the misfortunes of my people.

Their tears came in the raindrops and
their voices in the wailing winds.

Our land was taken away."

Colonel Webb, Choctaw.

>> The Creek were next.

In the spring of 1836, the American Army
forced them to surrender all their land.

One-third of the Creek died on the journey west.

>> The way I feel is there
is a wound in our hearts.

And that was a wound in our ancestors' heart.

And that wound will never be healed.

And I feel like that whatever
they do for us will never pay up.

>> "Last night I saw the sun set for the last
time and its light shine upon the treetops

and the land and the water that
I am never to look upon again."

Menewa, Creek.

>> Every year, from 1830 to 1838 Cherokee
Principal Chief John Ross visited Washington

attempting to forestall removal.

>> "We have been made to drink
of the bitter cup of humiliation.

Treated like dogs, our lives, our
liberties, the sport of the white man.

Our country and the graves of our
fathers torn from us in cruel succession

until we find ourselves fugitives,
vagrants and strangers in our own country."

John Ross, Cherokee.

>> Ross wrote hundreds of letters.

He met several times with President
Jackson, with whom he had served in war.

He petitioned Congress and brought two
lawsuits before the US Supreme Court.

>> "We are not ignorant of our condition.

We are not insensible to our sufferings.

We feel them.

We groan under their pressure and anticipation
crowds our breasts with sorrow yet to come."

John Ross, Cherokee.

>> Ross did win one victory
when the Supreme Court ruled

that the Cherokee were a sovereign nation
and not subject to Georgia's jurisdiction.

But President Jackson disregarded the ruling
and belittled the power of the Supreme Court

by challenging the chief justice
to enforce the law himself.

Georgia held lotteries for Cherokee lands.

State troops forced people from their houses.

Cherokee government buildings at
New Echota were sold off along

with the residence of Principal Chief John Ross.

Cherokee leader Major Ridge
also lost his plantation.

He now became convinced of the
futility and peril of resistance.

>> I know the Indians have an
older title than the United States.

We obtained the land from the living God above.

They got their title from the British.

Yet they are strong and we are weak.

>> Major Ridge, as I understand it he
advocated for a good period of time

that no more Cherokee lands would be
sold or ceded under penalty of death.

And then later, he wound up
doing the same darn thing.

As a matter of fact, worse.

>> Ridge traveled to Washington without
the authorization of the Cherokee Council.

There, he met with federal officials.

Ridge privately negotiated a treaty
ceding Cherokee lands for $5 million,

new land in the Oklahoma-Indian
territory, and removal assistance.

>> We had been a country for 500 years before
they were and we were on an equal status.

And every time we had a treaty from then

on we got a little less status,
and they got a little more land.

>> Ridge returned home to convince the
national council to accept the treaty terms.

>> I would willingly die to preserve the
graves of our fathers but any forcible effort

to keep them will cost us our lands,
our lives and the lives of our children.

There is but one path of safety, one
road to future existence as a nation.

That path is open before you.

Make a treaty of cession.

Give up these lands and go over
beyond the great Father of Waters.

>> The national council rejected the treaty.

But Ridge, with no legal authority to
represent the Cherokee nation met secretly

with US officials.

Defying the council's death sentence for the
selling of Cherokee lands, Ridge, his son,

and others signed the removal treaty.

On May 17th, 1836, the US Senate
ratified the treaty by a single vote.

The Cherokee Nation was given
two years to move west.

In that time, Ridge and 2,000 Cherokee
emigrated to Oklahoma while the vast majority

of the nation ignored the illegal
treaty and remained on their lands.

[ Music ]

In late spring of 1838 as the
deadline for removal passed,

General Winfield Scott arrived
in Georgia with 7,000 soldiers.

His orders were to remove the
Cherokee by any means necessary.

>> "Think of this, my Cherokee brethren.

I am an old warrior and have been
present at many a scene of slaughter.

But spare me, I beseech you, the horror of
witnessing the destruction of the Cherokees.

Do not even wait for the
close approach of the troops."

General Winfield Scott.

>> Thousands of Cherokee were rounded up at
bayonet-point unable to carry with them anything

but the most necessary belongings then
held in stockades to await removal.

>> My great-great-grandmother,
when they came to take them away,

they drove them out of the house, didn't even
let the kids get their shoes or anything.

They were sitting down at dinner and they got
outside and they were kind of roughing her

around and my great-great-grandfather
kind of fought back.

They throwed him in chains and took him off one
way, took her and the children off another way.

>> Conditions inside stockades
were terrible and many died.

>> "We have been made prisoners by your
men but we do not fight against you.

We have never done you any harm.

We are Indians.

We have hearts that feel.

We do not want to die.

We are in trouble, sir.

Our hearts are very heavy.

Very heavy.

We cannot make talk."

Cherokee Council.

>> Sixteen thousand Cherokee
were removed from their homeland.

Principal Chief John Ross left
with his family on the last convoy.

His wife, along with one-quarter of the
nation, would die on the forced exodus

that would be known as the "Trail of Tears."

>> The non-Indian people who came here did
not view the Cherokee people as human beings

which made it easy to dishonor
and desecrate these people.

>> People sometimes say I
look like I never smile.

Most of the time, I keep thinking of the old
nation and wonder how the big mountain now looks

in springtime and how the boys and
young men used to swim in the big river.

And then there comes before
me the picture of the march.

Maybe someday we will understand
why the Cherokees had to suffer.

>> While the body of the nation was forced west
several hundred Cherokee evaded Scott's men

and retreated to the deep
recesses of the Smoky Mountains.

The Army, ineffective at locating the free
Cherokee, was recalled from the mountains.

As the troops were withdrawing one cavalry
detachment stumbled upon a small camp

of 12 free Cherokee.

Among them was an older man
Tsali, his wife, brother and sons.

When the Cherokee refused to submit to
the soldiers Tsali's wife was jabbed

with a bayonet, and a struggle ensued.

Two soldiers were killed.

Tsali and his family fled
deeper into the Smoky Mountains.

But US soldiers had died and now General Scott
would have to make the Cherokee pay at any cost.

With winter approaching, Scott
delivered an ultimatum to Tsali.

Surrender or 7000 soldiers would be
unleashed on the free Cherokee until the last

of their nation was captured or killed.

[ Music ]

Tsali made a fateful decision.

He offered to surrender if Scott would let
the rest of the Cherokee resistance remain

in their Smoky Mountain homeland.

Scott agreed and Tsali surrendered
along with his family.

>> Charley approaches and offers the
gun holding both ends with each hand.

General Scott takes the gun
and they are to be monitored.

>> They were taken to a place at
the mouth of the Tuckasegee River.

There, Tsali, his brother, and his two oldest
sons, would be executed by a firing squad.

Tied to a tree awaiting death, Tsali
had a last request of a friend.

>> Euchella, there's one favor
I wish to ask of your hands.

You know I have a little boy who
was lost among the mountains.

I want you to find that boy if he is not dead
and tell him the last words of his father

where that he must never go beyond the
Mississippi, but die in the land of his birth.

It is sweet to die in one's native land and be
buried by the margins of one's native stream.

>> On November 25th, 1838 Tsali died for
the freedom of the Eastern Cherokee people.

>> And when he died he was a victor.

He accomplished the thing which was upper most
in his mind that his people might go free.

>> Seven months later in the new Oklahoma
Indian territory, Major Ridge, his son,

and nephew who had all signed the
removal treaty were assassinated

for selling the Cherokee homelands.

>> Our next program moves West to Great Plains
and the famous horse culture that has come

to define the first nations of
this content throughout the world.

Join us when 500 Nations returns
with Struggle for the West.

[ Music ]

[ Silence ]

[ Music ]

[ Pause ]

Welcome back to 500 Nations.

I'm Kevin Costner.

For a lot of us, the most vivid picture
of the Indian world has come from movies,

screen heroes fighting armies
of hostile Indians.

The tide has changed in movie making thankfully
but the image of Indian warriors riding

across the Great Plains still remains the
universal symbol of all American Indians.

That even with his vivid image we know little
about the people and the legendary individuals

who led them, men who fought and
sacrificed everything for their nations.

In this hour, we'll see the people
of the Plains in a different light.

But first, we'll travel even further West
to a place where hundreds of thousands

of Indian people lived in
one of the most beautiful

and peaceful region of the content, California.

Welcome to Part 7 of 500
Nations, Struggle for the West.

[ Music ]

>> 300,000 people lived in the
diverse environments of California.

They spoke 80 languages, worked, worshiped,
and raised children on lands occupied

by their ancestors since before the
dawn of the European civilization.

Many California nations had evolved
into highly structured societies.

Among them, one of the largest was the
Chumash, living on the coastal islands

and along the coast in the area
of present day Santa Barbara.

Large Chumash towns supported a
professional class of the astrologers,

priests, government leaders, and healers.

Workers belonged to centuries old craft
guilds of basket and canoe makers.

Workers also manufactured the flat shell
beads that were the currency of the region.

Production and control of the money supply
placed the Chumash nation at the center

of the Southern California economy.

In the late 18th century, this
complex world of the ancient Chumash

and their coastal neighbors
would be changed forever.

In 1772, Spanish missionaries led by Father
Junipero Serra, arrived in Chumash territory.

>> Believe me, when I saw their
general behavior, their pleasing ways

and engaging manners, my
heart was broken to think

that they were still deprived
of the light of the Holy Gospel.

Father Junipero Serra, Spanish Missionary.

>> Ignoring the beauty and complexity of Chumash
society, the Spanish set out to convert them

to Christianity by whatever means necessary.

>> I and two of my relatives went
down to the beach to catch clams.

We saw two men on horseback
coming rapidly towards us.

My relatives were afraid.

They fled with all speed.

It was too late.

They overtook me and lassoed and
dragged me for a long distance.

Their horse is running.

When we arrived at the mission,
they locked me in a room for a week.

The father told me that he
would make me a Christian.

One day, they threw water on my
head and gave me salt to eat.

And with this, the interpreter told me that
now I was Christian, that I was called Jesus.

>> The building up of the mission into a
coercive labor force didn't happen overnight.

It was gradual thing.

But eventually, they began forcing Indians
to remove from their freeway of life

in their home villages, and to be reduced to
one central mission site to be controlled.

Once a family was taken into the missions, the
emissary separated children from their parents.

All the little boys and the little girls at age
of six were locked up in children's barracks.

So, it was work, religion,
and work all day long.

Highly structured, highly supervised.

Indian people were put to work tanning,
blacksmithing, and caring for the mission herds.

They made candles, bricks,
tiles, shoes, saddles, and soap.

Labor was strictly enforced
under the discipline of the lash.

>> And thus, I existed 'til
I found a way to escape.

But I was tracked.

They caught me like a fox.

They lashed me until I lost consciousness.

For several days, I could not raise myself
from the floor where they had laid me.

And I still have on my shoulders
the marks of the lashes.

Janitil, Kumeyaay.

>> For over 50 years, the mission
system backed by Spanish arms,

exerted control over the California
coast crushing every revolt.

Inside the missions, disease and
harsh living conditions contributed

to a genocidal death rate.

>> The average life of a mission
Indian was about less than 12 years.

For children, it was less than six years.

And so, there was a constant need
to feed this beast with laborers.

And one of the sad legacies of the missions
of California is that when people go

to them today, they don't think about Indians.

They say the padres built the missions.

That's nonsense.

The California Indians built the missions.

>> At the Santa Barbara mission alone, over
4,000 Chumash names filled the burial registry.

Their bodies discarded in
large pits near the church.

In 1821, control of California
transferred to Mexico

after it gained its independence from Spain.

The Mexican government secularized the missions.

Indian people were free to leave.

But 50 years had completely
transformed their world.

[ Music ]

Old villages were gone.

In their places were large Mexican estates.

Even the mission lands they had worked and
lived on became parts of vast private ranches.

>> To stand by and watch these men
takeover the missions which we have built,

the herds we have tended, to be exposed
incessantly together with our families,

to the worst possible treatment
and even death itself is a tragedy.

Mission San Luis Rey, Neophyte.

>> Homeless and left with few choices
for survival, mission Indians were forced

to exchange one master for another,
becoming peasant workers on the rancherias.

>> Many of the rich men of
the country had from 20

to 60 Indian servants whom
they had dressed and fed.

Our friendly Indians tilled our soil, pastured
our cattle, cut our lumber, built our houses,

made tiles for our homes, ground our grains,
slaughtered our cattle, dressed their hides

for market, while the Indian
women made excellent servants,

took good care of our children,
made every one of our meals.

Salvador Vallejo, Mexican Landowner.

>> In 1848, after the Mexican-American War,

California passed from Mexican
to American hands.

Soon after, gold was discovered in the North,
bringing a rush of miners onto the lands

of interior nations who had been out of the
reach of coastal missions and Mexican ranches.

>> The majority of tribes are kept in
constant fear on account of the indiscriminate

and inhuman massacre of their people.

They have become alarmed by the increased flood
of immigration much spread over their country.

It is just incomprehensible to them.

Adam Johnson, Indian Agent.

>> Miners came into Indian
communities looking for women.

Vigilante parties opened fire on men, women,
and children wiping out entire villages.

It was open season on Indian people
derisively referred to as "diggers".

>> The Humboldt Times, Eureka, April 11.

Headline, "Good Haul of Diggers.

One White Man Killed, 38 Bucks
Killed, 40 Squaws and Children Taken".

>> January 17th headline "Good Haul
of Diggers, Band Exterminated".

>> In the 1850s while the American nation
was on the verge of Civil War over the issue

of slavery, demand for agricultural
labor in California was so high

that the state legislature passed
an act legalizing Indian slavery.

>> A company of United States troops attended

by a considerable volunteer force
has been pursuing the poor creatures

from one retreat to another.

The kidnappers follow at the heels
of the soldiers to seize the children

when their parents are murdered and
sell them to the best advantage.

W.P. Dole, Indian Agent.

>> Only 30,000 native Californians
survived the gold rush.

10 percent of what had been most densely
populated Indian area, North of Mexico.

>> Upon on my last visit to Ventura,
I saw the last of the Ventura Indians.

They were living in a tiny hut
east of the mouth of the river.

One of the old men told me they were very glad

that I was not ashamed to
talk the Indian language.

They told me to continue in the
use of it and keep the beliefs.

If I did so, I would live a long time.

Fernando Librado, Chumash.

>> Fernando Librado lived to be 111-years old.

>> I once went over to Donaciana's house.

I wanted to learn the Swordfish Dance.

After the meal, I asked her to
teach me the old dances saying,

"For you are the only ones
left who know the old dances."

Donaciana began to cry and
I left saying nothing more.

Fernando Librado, Chumash.

[ Music ]

[ Noise ]

>> For thousands of years, the buffalo
thundered across the Great Plains,

a vast sea of grassland rising from the
Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.

Living off the herds were a
scattering of nomadic Indian nations.

>> My grandmother told me that when she was
young the people themselves had to walk.

In those times, they did
not travel far nor often.

>> In 1680, the Spanish were driven out
of the Southwest by the Pueblo nations.

As they fled, they left behind their horse
herds, an animal that would change the way

of life for Indian nations across the continent.

>> When they got horses, they could
move more easily from place to place.

Then, they could kill more of
the buffalo and other animals.

And so, they got more meat for food and
gathered more skins for lodges and clothing.

Iron Teeth, Cheyenne.

>> A new culture developed based on
the relationship between man and horse.

>> My horse fights with me and he fasts
with me because if he is to carry me

into battle he must know my heart and I must
know his, but we shall never become brothers.

I've been told that the white
man was almost a God,

and yet a great fool does not
believe that the horse has a spirit.

This cannot be true.

I have many times seen my
horse's soul in his eyes.

Plenty Coups, Crow.

>> With the coming of the horse, the nations
of the Plains would become legendary.

The Crow, Cheyenne, Sioux, Blackfeet,
Arapaho, Pawnee, Kiowa, Comanche,

and for generations their
way of life flourished.

Then in 1858, gold was discovered
at Pike's Peak, Colorado.

Four years later, the Homestead Act
opened the region to white settlement.

Almost instantly, the invasion became a flood.

In one year alone, 100,000
immigrants swarmed across the Plains

over two main roads spreading
a wide swath of destruction.

To protect travel on the immigrant roads,
the United States erected a network of forts

across the Plains and churned out cadets at
West Point specially trained for Indian warfare.

It was the Army's mission to force mobile
nations who hunted over large territories

onto confined areas, reservations.

Indian people were faced with only two
options, to give up their homelands

and way of life or fight the American Army.

Although some chose armed resistance, many
Indian leaders responsible for the protection

of large villages of women, children,
and elderly saw little hope in fighting.

Among these were two Cheyenne leaders,
Black Kettle and White Antelope.

They were willing to give
up lands to maintain peace

and bring their people safely
through the dangerous era.

[ Music ]

>> White Antelope and Black Kettle had a
duty to their people to try to protect them.

And to do this, they had to maintain peace.

So they felt that it was their duty to go
out and make peace with the United States.

So, they did.

>> Black Kettle and White Antelope ceded vast
Cheyenne lands to the United States in 1861

and agreed to confine themselves to a
reservation in exchange for protection

from soldiers and settlers and assistance of
food and money to replace lost hunting lands.

They then traveled to Washington
to meet with President Lincoln.

Lincoln presented Black Kettle
with a large American flag

and White Antelope with a Medal of Peace.

But over the next three years, continued unrest

on the Plains fanned rumors
of an impending Indian war.

In Denver, Governor John Evans inflamed
public opinion by fabricating stories

of Cheyenne hostilities and encouraged
civilians to take up arms against them.

Seeking protection for there
peaceful bands, Black Kettle

and White Antelope undertook the dangerous
trip to Denver to meet with Governor Evans.

>> All we ask is that we may
have peace with the whites.

I want you to give all the chiefs of the
soldiers here to understand that we are

for peace, and that we have made peace, that
we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.

Black Kettle, Southern Cheyenne.

>> Black Kettle and White Antelope
were promised safety for their people

if they camped near Fort
Lyon in Southern Colorado.

But the military commander of
Colorado, Colonel John Chivington,

had no plans for peace with any Indian people.

>> Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians.

I have come to kill Indians and
believe it as right and honorable

to use any means under God's
heaven to kill them.

Colonel John Chivington.

>> Black Kettle and White Antelope
had been told where to camp

and that they had nothing
to fear from the US army.

>> Why would they worry?

They were under the protection
of the American flag.

They were under the protection of the
international peace sign, the white flag.

>> At dawn on November 29th, 1864,
Chivington's Colorado Volunteers rode

through the snow toward Black Kettle and
White Antelope's sleeping camp at Sand Creek.

>> The women were out picking up wood when
they think what they thought was buffalo

but it wasn't buffalo and
they threw down their sticks

and started screaming and
running towards the camp.

>> Cheyenne George Bent was startled awake.

>> I heard shouts and the noise
of people running about the camp.

I jumped up and ran out of my lodge.

From down the creek a large body of
troops was advancing at a rapid trot.

[ Music & Noise ]

I looked toward the Chief's
lodge and saw Black Kettle

at a large American flag tied
to the end of a long large pole.

He was standing in front of
his lodge holding the pole.

>> Chief Black Kettle, he's about
there in front protecting his people

to show them that he wasn't afraid.

He's trying to tell them
that, you know, we made peace.

We're at peace.

>> Then the troops opened fire
from two sides of the camps.

The woman and children were
screaming and wailing.

And men running to their lodges for their arms

and shouting advice in directions
to one another.

White Antelope saw the soldiers shooting the
people and he did not wish to live any longer.

>> My great, great grandfather,
White Antelope, he felt heartbreak

that he know the treaty had been broken, a peace
that they have been sticking for so long time,

for a long time had been
shattered, had been broken.

>> White Antelope stood in front
of this lodge with his arms folded

across his breast, singing the death song.

>> And he cried.

He sang his song.

Nothing lives long by with his arms, nothing
lives long but the earth and the mountains.

>> White Antelope wearing
the peace medal given him

by President Lincoln was shot
dead in front of his lodge.

Black Kettle and his wife
ran toward the creek bed

where people were desperately
digging into the sand for protection.

Before they could reach it,
Black Kettle's wife was shot.

Believing her dead, he ran on without her.

>> Most of us who were hiding in the pits had
been wounded before we could reach the shelter.

And there we lay all that bitter cold day
from early in the morning until almost dark

with the soldiers all around us keeping
up a heavy fire most of the time.

They finally withdrew about 5 o'clock.

As they retired down the creek, they
killed all the wounded they could find.

That night will never be forgotten as long
as any of us who went through it are alive.

Many who had lost wives, husbands, and children,
or friends went back down the creek and crept

over the battleground among the naked
and mutilated bodies of the dead.

Few were found alive for the soldiers
had done their work thoroughly.

George Bent, Southern Cheyenne.

>> Over 500 Southern Cheyenne people died.

Black Kettle found his wife
with nine bullet wounds

in her body, but miraculously she was alive.

The survivors struggled into another
Cheyenne camp while Chivington returned

to Denver with over 100 Cheyenne scalps.

>> My people were massacred.

Terrible thing.

Their spirits are still there
at the massacre site.

They'll never rest.

>> Despite his loss, Black
Kettle saw no hope in resistance.

In 1868, his beleaguered band was camped along
the Washita River on a government reservation.

At dawn on November 27, 1868, almost four
years to the day after the Sand Creek massacre,

US Army troops under the command of George
Armstrong Custer attacked the sleeping village.

Black Kettle, his wife, and over
100 of his people were killed.

The Cheyenne leader's quest for peace had come
to a final bitter end costing him his lands,

his freedom, and the lives of the people
he had tried so desperately to protect.

[ Music ]

>> I was born upon the prairie
where the wind blew free,

and there was nothing to
break the light of the sun.

The white man has the country which we loved.

We only wish to wander on
the prairie until we die.

Ten Bears.

>> South of the Cheyenne, the Kaui-gu or
Kiowa nation lived on lands including parts

of present day Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

They were also being pushed under reservations
by treaties and the United States Army.

But the message of Black Kettle's
betrayal resounded across the plains.

>> The good Indian, he that listens
to the white man, gets nothing.

The independent Indian is the
only one that is rewarded.

Satanta, Kiowa.

>> To many, the only path
open was armed resistance.

A growing number of Kiowa rallied behind
an uncompromising leader, Satanta.

>> A long time ago, this
land belonged to our fathers.

But when I go down to the rivers, I
see camps of soldiers on its banks.

These soldiers cut down my
timber, killed my buffalo.

And when I see that, my heart
feels like bursting.

Satanta, Kiowa.

>> Satanta was a deepening thorn
in the war department's side.

In 1871, after leading a raid on a mule train
in Texas, he was brought before General Sherman.

Satanta defiantly accepted
responsibility for the raid.

>> I led about a 100 men to
Texas to teach them to fight.

This is our country.

We have always lived in it.

We were happy.

Then you came.

We have to protect ourselves.

We have to save our country.

We have to fight for what is ours.

>> Satanta was placed under
arrest shackled and held

in the crawl space below a
Fort Sill barracks for 12 days.

Finally, he was taken to Texas for trial.

There, he was imprisoned.

It would be two years before the Kiowa
nation was able to barter his release

by surrendering their guns and horses.

When Satanta returned to the reservation
where his people were confined,

he found that the money, food, and supplies
promised by the government as payment

for their lands had not come through.

And the lifeblood of the nation,
the buffalo, were fast disappearing.

>> Everything the Kiowas
had came from the buffalo.

Our teepees were made of buffalo hides,
so were our clothes and moccasins.

We ate buffalo meat.

The buffalo were the life of the Kiowas.

>> The US recognized that without the
buffalo, the Plains nations could not survive

and would have little choice
but to remain on reservations

and live off the meager government rations.

White buffalo hunters with high-powered
sharps rifles were encouraged

in and the slaughter began.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> Has the white man become a child that
he should recklessly kill and not eat?

When the Kiowa slay game, they do so
that they may live and not starve.

Satanta, Kiowa.

>> The slaughter proceeded
at an astonishing pace.

Thousands of animals were killed everyday.

>> The buffalo hunters have done more

to settle the vexed Indian question
than the entire regular army.

For the sake of lasting peace,
let them kill, skin,

and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated.

General Phil Sheridan, US Army.

>> In a desperate struggle for survival,

the Southern Plains nations
went to war to save the buffalo.

In the summer of 1874, thousands of Indian
people flooded off the reservations.

And in that moment of freedom, Satanta and
others led an allied Indian force in an attack

on a buffalo hunters' camp
at Adobe Walls, Texas.

But they were no match for the hunters
with their powerful buffalo guns.

Defeat was followed by massive military
expeditions by the United States Army

to force the Southern Plains
nations back onto reservations.

In the fall, Satanta was forced
to surrender and was returned

to the penitentiary at Huntsville, Texas.

Later, it was reported that he had
committed suicide by leaping out of a window.

The Kiowa believed he was murdered.

>> They killed Satanta.

That's what all was thinking
of the Kiowa people.

They killed him.

He didn't kill himself.

He's too much of a man to do anything like that.

He's too much of a chief to do.

Chiefs don't do that.

>> By winter, all Kiowa bands had
been forced back to the reservation.

The following spring, the last of the
Cheyenne surrendered followed soon

after by the last free Comanche.

Determined to break the Southern
Plains nations forever,

the army rounded up 10,000 Indian horses.

Almost 1,000 were shot.

The rest, sold at auction.

By 1890, the buffalo population of 50
million had been reduced to fewer than 1,000.

The war to save the buffalo and
a way of life had been lost.

>> The Kiowas were camped on
the north side of Mt. Scott,

those of them who were still free to camp.

One young woman got up very
early in the morning.

The dawn mist was still rising
from Medicine Creek.

And as she looked across the
water peering through the haze,

she saw the last buffalo herd
appear like a spirit dream.

Straight to Mt. Scott, the
leader of the herd walked.

Behind him came the cows and their calves,
and a few young males who had survived.

As the woman watched, the
face of the mountain opened.

Inside Mt. Scott, the world was green and
fresh as it had been when she was a small girl.

The rivers ran clear, not red.

The wild plums were in blossom chasing
the red buds up the inside slopes.

Into this world of beauty, the buffalo
walked, never to be seen again.

[ Music ]

>> Sometimes at evening, I sit looking out.

The sun sets, and dusk steals over the water.

In the shadows, I seem again
to see our Indian village

with smoke curling upward from the lodges.

And in the river's roar, I
hear the yells of the warriors,

the laughter of the little children, as of old.

It is but an old woman's dream.

Again, I see but shadows and hear only the
roar of the river and tears come into my eyes.

Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever.

[ Music ]

>> What treaty that the whites
have kept has the red man broken?

Not one. What treaty that the white
man ever made with us have they kept?

Not one. Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa.

>> The Northern Plains mirrored the South with
Indian nations being driven onto reservations.

Yet, a handful of leaders
refused to sign treaties

and were determined to remain free at any cost.

These defiant leaders became heroes
to Indian people across the Plains.

Among them, two men from the
Sioux nations stood alone.

One was the venerated Hunkpapa
holy man, Sitting Bull.

The other was a young Oglala fighting man
whose fierce military genius struck fear

into his enemies and inspired fervent followers.

His image would never be captured by
photographers or artists but his spirit of pride

and resistance would be carried
on by his people.

His name was Crazy Horse.

In the summer of 1876, thousands
of Cheyenne, Arapaho,

and people from many Sioux nations fled
the reservations to join Sitting Bull

and Crazy Horse in a great encampment along the
Little Bighorn River in present day Montana.

The gathering, possibly the largest
in Plains history swelled to 8,000

with camp circles stretching for miles.

The Indian people were well aware

that this could be their last
great celebration of freedom.

[ Music ]

They're far from any white settlements.

They would hunt the last remaining buffalo,
feast, race ponies, visit with old friends

and relatives, and join in a massive sun dance
that would be remembered for generations.

[ Music & Noise ]

On June 25th, 1876, as the United States
prepared to celebrate 100 years of freedom,

five companies of the 7th Cavalry
under George Armstrong Custer advanced

on Sitting Bull's camp.

It was not until the dust from the
7th Cavalry rose over the hills

that the startled encampment
learned of the troops.

Two Moons, leader of the Northern
Cheyenne, was swimming in the creek.

>> I looked up the Little Horn
towards Sitting Bull's camp.

I saw a great dust rising.

It looked like a whirlwind.

Women were screaming and men
were letting out war cries.

We can hear old men calling, "Soldiers are here!

Young men, go out and fight them!"

>> Crazy Horse rode through
the camp gathering his men

as Custer's surprise attack stirred
panic among the women and children.

>> Children were hunting for their mothers.

Mothers were anxiously trying
to find their children.

The air was so full of dust,
I could not see where to go.

Wooden Leg, Northern Cheyenne.

>> While the young men rode into battle,
Sitting Bull rallied the men still in camp

to protect the women and children.

The Hunkpapa, under Gall, and
the Oglala, under Crazy Horse,

quickly rode out and counterattacked.

>> Many hundreds of Indians
on horseback were dashing to

and fro in front of a body of soldiers.

The soldiers were on the level valley
ground and were shooting with rifles.

Not many bullets were being sent back at them
but thousands of arrows were falling among them.

Wooden Leg, Northern Cheyenne.

>> A big dust was whirling on the hill

and then the horses began coming
out of it with empty saddles.

Black Elk, Oglala.

>> The battle was over in
less than half an hour.

Custer, 260 men of the 7th Cavalry, and
as many as 150 Indian people lay dead.

Cheyenne survivors of the massacre of Black
Kettle's people along the Washita River exalted

in the death of Custer, the
man they called "Woman Killer".

But that night, Sitting Bull was reflective.

>> My heart is full of sorrow that
so many were killed on each side.

But when they compel us to fight, we must fight.

Tonight we shall mourn for our dead and for
those brave white men lying on the hillside.

Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa.

>> The next day, firing the grass as
cover the Indian forces broke camp

and headed toward the Bighorn Mountains.

News of the battle reached
the outside world on July 4,

1876 dampening a giddy US
Centennial celebration.

The next morning's newspapers, ignoring
all evidence, called it a "massacre".

>> We felt that it was a
great battle, not a massacre.

The soldiers were going to compel
us to stay on our reservation

and take away from us our country.

We were trying to get away from them.

Runs the Enemy, Cut Head, Sioux.

>> Outraged by what was seen as an
affront to their national pride,

the American public cried
out for immediate reprisal.

Punitive expeditions were
sent out mercilessly hunting

down the last free bands of the Northern Plains.

Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa escaped into Canada
where they received political asylum.

Crazy Horse's Oglala took refuge in
the Black Hills where the full force

of the United States Army was turned on them.

For months, the army was unable to
defeat or capture the Oglala leader.

Finally, the US made peace overtures to Crazy
Horse promising land, generous subsidies,

and protection if he and his
starving people turned themselves in.

On May 5th, 1877 after nearly a year of
successfully eluding the all-out manhunt,

Crazy Horse led nearly a 1,000
followers to surrender at Camp Robinson.

Oglala, already at the agency, lined
the route, singing and cheering.

One US Army officer marveled that it was
"A triumphal march, not a surrender."

The leader, who had known nothing
but the freedom of the Plains,

was stripped of his horse and gun.

Then, four months later, on September 5th,
1877 believing he was going to a meeting

with the commander of Fort Robinson,
Crazy Horse was led past an armed guard

to the doorway of a building.

Inside was a small barred cell,
three feet wide by six feet tall.

Crazy Horse resisted.

A soldier thrust a bayonet into his back.

That night, as Crazy Horse
lay dying, he told his father,

"Tell the people it is no
use to count on me anymore."

[ Music ]

Crazy Horse was laid to rest near
the creek called Wounded Knee.

[ Music ]

>> As Americans or people in any free
society, we cherish our independence and know

that the cost to secure this hard-won
commodity is often measured in human lives.

Think for a moment what would happen
if your freedom was placed at risk.

Is it any wonder then that Indian
nations fought to preserve theirs?

Now, imagine the unthinkable, being conquered.

You're forced onto barren land
and have no choice but to live

under the control of the conquering government.

In this last hour, we'll take you to the
reservations of the 1800s, to the stark,

bitter truth about the loss of freedom.

But first we go to the epic struggles of two
impassioned leaders whose resourcefulness

and daring are synonymous with courage, leaders
whose words remain among the most moving

in the history of the world,
Chief Joseph and Geronimo.

[ Music ]

>> My father sent for me.

I saw he was dying.

I took his hand in mine.

He said, "My son, never forget my dying words.

This country holds your father's body.

Never sell the bones of your
father and your mother."

I pressed my father's hand and told him
I would protect his grave with my life.

I buried him in that beautiful
valley of winding waters.

[ Music ]

I loved that land more than
all the rest of the world.

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce.

>> Upon his father's death, 31-year old
Inmutooyahlatlat, known as Chief Joseph,

became head of a band of Nez Perce,
whose home was the Wallowa Valley,

250 miles east of present day Portland, Oregon.

Famed for their selective breeding of
horses, particularly the appaloosa,

the Nez Perce had always been
friends to the Americans.

But with the opening of the Oregon territory
and the end of the Civil War, white settlers,

cattlemen, and gold miners came
to covet the rich Nez Perce land.

Ignoring their long friendship
with the Indian nation,

the US government supported
the settlers' claims.

In 1877, General Oliver Howard entered the
Wallowa Valley with orders from Washington

to remove the Nez Perce by treaty or by force.

[ Music ]

>> I did not want to come to this council
but I came hoping that we could save blood.

The white man has no right to
come here and take our country.

And we will defend this land as long as a drop
of Indian blood warms the hearts of our men.

>> Joseph was faced with a terrible choice,

to betray his father's dying wish
or to commit his people to war.

Finally, he reluctantly agreed to
relinquish his Wallowa Valley homeland.

Despite Joseph's concessions,
tensions remained high.

As the Nez Perce were preparing to
move onto the reservation, a youth,

whose father had been murdered by
settlers, gathered several friends

and killed four settlers who were known to have
committed atrocities against Nez Perce people.

>> I know that my young men did a great
wrong but I ask, who was the first to blame?

Their fathers and brothers had been killed.

Their mothers and wives had been disgraced.

They had been told by General Howard
that all their horses and cattle were

to fall into the hands of white men.

I would have given my own life if I could have
undone the killing of white men by my people.

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce.

>> When seven more whites were killed,

General Howard sent a military
force against the Indian nation.

Nez Perce leaders responded by
dispatching a truce delegation

under a white flag to meet
Howard's advancing army.

Howard's men opened fire.

[ Gun Shot ]

[ Music ]

So began Chief Joseph's famous
flight for freedom.

Over 700 men, women, and children, with sick and
elderly enduring a 1,800 mile fighting retreat.

The struggle would capture the
imagination of the American public.

Newspaper accounts made Chief
Joseph a household name.

With a military genius born of desperation,
the five Nez Perce bands outwitted

and outmaneuvered one military
force after another

as they made their way toward Sitting
Bull's camp and political asylum in Canada.

Circling through the mountains,
canyons, and plateau prairies of Idaho,

crossing the high ridges of the Bitterroot
Mountains into Montana and Wyoming,

colliding with frightened tourists in
the newly created Yellowstone Park,

the Nez Perce fought off in turn four armies
commanded by veteran Civil War officers.

[ Music ]

After 105 days of constant pursuit, the Nez
Perce reached the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana,

one day from Sitting Bull's camp and freedom.

They knew they had put safe distance between
themselves and the pursuing armies and stopped

for a last rest before moving across the border.

What they did not know was that a new
army had been dispatched by telegraph

and was surrounding them as they camped.

The Nez Perce were taken completely by surprise.

The fighting was intense.

And in the first moments, Chief Joseph and 70
others were cut off from the rest of the camp.

>> With a prayer in my mouth, I dashed
unarmed through the line of soldiers.

My clothes were cut to pieces, my
horse was wounded, but I was not hurt.

As I reached the door of my lodge, my wife
handed me my rifle saying, "Here's your gun.

Fight."

>> They ran up the hill when they were fighting.

It was going to-- they're
tearing the camp down there.

She had this little baby and her girl by the
hand and they said there was kind of a tree.

It's like there was a big log there.

So, she-- they crawled under that log to kind
of hide from the soldiers that might come

and probably shoot them down too.

And they just stayed there
'til everything was quiet.

>> The battle raged throughout the
first day with heavy casualties

on both sides including the leaders
of three of the five Nez Perce bands.

By the second day, the Nez Perce were
dug in and fighting from trenches.

The army could not mount an
attack without heavy losses.

Finally, on October 5th, General
Nelson A. Miles called Chief Joseph

to peace talks under a flag of truce.

Chief Joseph went to General
Miles and gave up his gun,

only one day from Sitting
Bull's camp and Canadian asylum.

>> I am tired of fighting.

Our chiefs are all killed.

The old men were all dead.

The little children are freezing to death.

I want to have time to look for my children
and see how many of them I can find.

Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Hear me, my chiefs.

I am tired.

My heart is sick and sad.

From where the sun now stands,
I will fight no more, forever.

>> But the United States would not honor
the terms of Chief Joseph's surrender.

The captured Nez Perce were shipped
south to a malaria-infested reservation

at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas before
final relocation to Oklahoma territory.

Chief Joseph had put down his gun but he had
not given up the struggle for his homeland.

He would devote the rest of his
life to honoring his promise

to his father and fighting for his people.

He traveled to Washington, DC where he
passionately argued his case before Congress.

>> I have heard talk and
talk, but nothing is done.

Good words do not last long
unless they amount to something.

It makes my heart sick when I remember all
the good words and all the broken promises.

>> In 1885, after eight long years and a massive
campaign launched by Eastern philanthropists,

Chief Joseph's people won the
right to return to the Northwest

but not to their beloved Wallowa Valley.

The cattlemen who occupied it threatened
to kill Chief Joseph if he returned.

Forever banished from his country, Joseph
and 150 members of his band were taken

under military escort to a
reservation in Washington territory.

There, in exile, Chief Joseph would die.

>> The doctor that was there
to examine to Joseph,

his plea was that Joseph lost his
life account of his broken heart.

[ Music ]

>> If the white man wants to live in peace
with the Indian, he can live in peace.

Treat all men alike.

Give them all an even chance to live and grow.

You might as well expect the rivers
to run backward as that any man

who was born a free man should
be contented when penned up

and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

Let me be a free man, free to
travel, free to stop, free to work,

free to choose my own teachers, free
to follow the religion of my fathers,

free to think and talk and act for myself.

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce.

[ Music ]

>> When I was young, I walked all
over this country, east and west,

and I saw no other people than the Apaches.

After many summers, I walked again and I found
another race of people had come to take it.

Cochise, Chokonen.

>> When California became part of the United
States in 1848, a new flow of military

and civilian traffic headed west.

Many bound for Southern California took
a route near the Mexican border that went

through the lands of Apache
nations, the Chokonen,

Bedonkohe, Nednhi, and Chi'enne Apache.

The Apache had a long and successful
history of defending their lands

against aggressive Spanish and Mexican invaders.

But as the newest arrivals, the
Americans crossed their lands,

most Apache held no grievances against them

and their leaders made every effort
to accommodate the travelers.

>> At last, in my youth, came the white man.

Under the counsel of my father who had for
a long time been the head of the Apaches,

they were received with friendship.

Soon their numbers increased and
many passed through the country.

We lived in peace.

Cochise, Chokonen.

>> In February of 1861, a charismatic Chokonen
leader, Cochise, was summoned to a meeting

with an inexperienced army
lieutenant named George Bascom.

Bascom accused Cochise of kidnapping
a child from a nearby ranch.

>> Cochise denied that any of
his band had done the kidnapping.

Bascom accused the chief of telling a lie.

Cochise was very proud of making his word good

and no greater offense could
have been offered him.

Daklugie, Nednhi.

>> Bascom ordered Cochise arrested but the
Apache leader escaped through heavy gunfire.

The men who accompanied Cochise were
held by Bascom and executed soon after.

>> At last, your soldiers did me a great wrong
and I and my people went to war with them.

Cochise, Chokonen.

>> Cochise cut off the passage
through Apache Pass.

The United States responded by
sending General James Carleton

to establish Fort Bowie in Apache Pass.

>> There is to be no council
held with the Indians.

The men are to be slain whenever
and wherever they can be found.

The women and children may
be taken as prisoners.

I trust that these demonstrations will
give those Indians a wholesome lesson.

>> But the long and intense efforts of the
United States Army would have little success.

Based at his stronghold high
in the rocky Dragoon Mountains,

Cochise fought a successful guerrilla war
against the US Cavalry for the next nine years.

Finally, in 1872, General Oliver Howard traveled
to Cochise's stronghold to sue for peace.

Cochise agreed to lay down his arms for a
promise that his people would be allowed to live

on their own land in Apache Pass.

Howard's promise would hold true through
the remaining two years of Cochise's life.

Then, in 1876, the United States dissolved the
Apache Pass reservation and ordered the people

to the barren San Carlos Reservation.

>> The creator did not make San Carlos.

It is older than he.

He just left it as a sample of the way
they did jobs before he came along.

Take stones and ashes and thorns and with
some scorpions and rattlesnakes thrown in,

dump the outfit on stones, heat the
stones red-hot, set the United States Army

after the Apache, and you have San Carlos.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> Of those ordered to relocate, two-thirds
refused, preferring to follow a new generation

of Apache leaders, leaders
committed to freedom at all costs.

Among them were Juh, Nana,
Loco, Victorio and Geronimo.

>> Juh told him that he could offer
them nothing but hardship and death.

As he saw it, they must choose
between death from heat, starvation,

and degradation at San Carlos
and a wild, free life in Mexico.

Short, perhaps, but free.

Let them remember that if they took this
step, they would be hunted like wild animals

by the troops of both the
United States and Mexico.

All of us knew that we were doomed but some
preferred death to slavery and imprisonment.

Daklugie, Nednhi.

>> Geronimo's strength of will had been
forged much earlier when his wife, children,

and mother were killed in a
Mexican raid on his village.

>> He had been away from home and came back

and found his entire family
scattered all over in the yard, dead.

The Americans and the Mexicans rode horses with
shoes and so he knew that they were the ones

that had come and destroyed his family.

And he made a vow then that he would kill
every Mexican and every American that he saw.

>> Now, he would lead the Apache
through their greatest test.

The final Apache resistance was a monumental
expression of human pride and love of freedom.

>> We are vanishing from the earth.

Yet, I cannot think we are useless.

Our God would not have created us.

For each tribe of men God
created, he also made a home.

In the land created for any particular tribe,

he placed whatever would be best
for the welfare of that tribe.

Thus, it wasn't the beginning, the Apaches

and their homes each created
for the other by God himself.

When they are taken from these
homes, they sicken and die.

How long will it be until it is
said, "There are no Apaches?"

Geronimo, Bedonkohe.

[ Music ]

>> For a decade, the Apache
surmounted overwhelming odds.

By 1886, Geronimo's tiny band was being
hunted across the mountains by 8,000 troops

from Mexico and the United States.

[ Music & Noise ]

>> He was losing all his
warriors and his family.

He could never beat them because there was
always somebody there and there were so many.

And he was losing his own people.

And he said, "If I keep fighting,
there will never be anymore of us."

>> At that time, Geronimo's
band consisted of 17 men.

He had also Lozen, known as the woman warrior.

Geronimo was handicapped by the presence too of
women and children who must be defended and fed.

Nobody ever captured Geronimo.

I know. I was with him.

Anyway, who can capture the wind?

Daklugie, Nednhi.

>> On September 3rd, 1886, Geronimo
turned himself in to General Miles

who had already made his reputation as
the man who finally caught Chief Joseph.

As a condition of surrender, Miles promised
Geronimo that his band would be taken

into custody for only a short while before being
released to a reservation in the Southwest.

But Miles lied.

Geronimo's people and even
Apache peacefully settled

at the San Carlos Reservation were
shipped to Indian prisons in Florida.

>> I was born as a prisoner of war.

They promised us in the beginning
that we would be held prisoners

for two years which went into 28 years.

And I'm almost sure we're the only tribe
that ever served that many years in prison.

[ Music ]

>> Geronimo would not live to be a free man.

After 23 years as a prisoner
of war, he died in 1909.

>> What is the matter that
you don't speak to me?

Why don't you look at me, smile at me?

I am a man, I have the same
feet, legs and hands,

and the sun looks down on me a complete man.

I want you to look and smile at me.

[ Music ]

[ Silence ]

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] By the late
1800s reservations had become virtual

concentration camps.

Most were on barren lands useless
for farming and devoid of game.

Indian people were forced to live
off of US food rations promised

in treaties in return for their lands.

Providing subsidies and food for over
200,000 Indian people was big business.

The distribution system quickly became
a corrupt network of government agents

and their partners known as the Indian Ring.

>> "If they bring any goods for the
Indians the agents live off of them.

And pay has been taken by the agents and
they have put money in their pockets.

The steamboat came in the night
and took away boxes of goods

so that the Indians would not know it."

Struck By The Ree, Yankton.

>> Robbing nations of their
meager government subsidies,

the Indian Ring left the
people in abject property.

>> And they hoped, it seems to me,
to take away the spirit of the people

so that we become more docile, so to speak.

We would then only depend upon them
for the way to be, we would have to go

to whoever brought out the rations.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] "I noticed a small
group of Indians who sat under a tree.

All were dirty, rugged and lean.

Soon an Indian woman and a young girl hurried
into the group, laid down packs and opened them.

I could see spread out there some dingy
meat, evidently waste from a butcher shop,

and some discarded scraps of stale bread
and another stray odds and ends of food.

I felt a wave of fury toward our
government's whole Indian policy."

Thomas Tibbles, reporter.

>> [Background Music] Many Eastern reformers
were determined to break the Indian Ring.

But they believed that the only lasting
solution was change not only for the bureaucrats

but for the Indian people themselves.

Indian ways were judged as backward and wrong,

that for their own good their
cultures had to be erased.

Indian people were to be
remade in the reformer's image.

>> "The Indians only say future can be
found in merging their interests with ours

and becoming part of the
people of the United States.

Their safe course is to quit being tribal
Indians, to go out and live among us

as individual men, to adopt our language, our
industries and become a part of the power."

Richard Pratt, director, Carlisle Indian School.

>> The policy of striping Indian people
of their cultures became official

with the 1887 passage of
the General Allotment Act.

The act broke apart communal land holdings
assigning plots to individuals in an effort

to force them to live like white farmers.

[ Dog Barking, Horse Neighing ]

>> "As long as Indians live in
villages they will retain many

of their old and injurious habits.

Heathen ceremonies and dances,
constant visiting.

I trust that before another year is ended they
will generally be located upon individual land

or farms."

Government Commissioner.

>> Supported by an alliance of eastern
reformers and western lands speculators,

allotment attacked both the sovereignty of
Indian nations and the fundamental concept

of land belonging to all the people.

>> "This is only another trick of the
whites to take our land away from us.

And they have played these tricks before."

Hollow Horn Bear, Oglala.

>> The allotment system was
ripe for massive fraud.

Corrupt agents declared small children,

dogs and horses as allottees then
seized their lands and sold them.

Indian orphans were shuffled off
to white families who adopted them

to obtain tittle to their allotments.

After allotment plots were handed out to
Indian people, the US government was free

to sell the remaining reservation
lands to whites.

During the allotment period, Indian
nations would lose two thirds

of the little land that remained in their hands.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] Two years after
the passage of the Allotment Act,

Oklahoma Indian territory was
officially open to settlers.

[ Music ]

[ Gunshot ]

[ Horses Galloping and Neighing ]

What followed were the famous land rushes.

The territories of the Creek, Cherokee,
and other nations were overrun.

Lands which had been promised then as
permanent, unassailable refuges in exchange

for their lands east of the Mississippi.

[ Music ]

[Background Music] But of all
the government policies designed

to end Indian cultures, the
cruelest was yet to come.

Indian people would be robbed
of even their children.

Across the country Indian children,
some as young as four years old,

were taken from their parents often
by force and sent to boarding schools.

[ Music ]

At the boarding schools, children were stripped

of all outward appearances
linking them to their Indian past.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] Our
belongings were taken from us.

Even the little medicine bags our mothers
had given us to protect us from harm.

Everything was placed in a heap and set afire.

Next was the long hair, the
pride of all the Indians.

The boys one by one would breakdown and cry
when they saw the braids thrown on the floor.

Lone Wolf, Blackfeet.

>> [Background Music] Children were forbidden to
speak of their traditions and severely punished

if they used their native languages.

Fed distorted images of evil Indians,
many came to doubt their own identity.

>> I remember growing up that I
never really felt good about myself.

We were taught to be ashamed
of who we were and who we are.

And it hurts when you're young
and you're trying to understand.

>> [Background Music] We all wore white
man's clothes and ate white man's food.

And went to white man's churches
and spoke white man's talk.

And so after a while we also
begin to say Indians were bad.

We laughed at our own people and their blankets

and cooking pats and sacred
societies and dances.

Sun Elk, Taos.

>> Many boarding schools were set
up in converted military posts

where for decades soldiers had been
trained to fight Indian people.

Students slept on cots and cement barracks and
were drilled daily in strict military regimen.

>> It was like an army barracks.

They marched us like they do in army
when you first go into the army.

We marched to school, we marched to eat.

They took us to church, we marched to church.

We lived kind of an army style life.

And we went to school that way.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] If we thought the
days were bad, the nights were much worse.

This was the time when real loneliness set in.

Many boys run away but most of them were
caught and brought back by the police.

We were told never to talk Indian,

and if we were caught we got
strapping with a leather belt.

I remember one evening when
we were all lined up in a room

and one of the boys said
something Indian to another boy.

The man in charge caught them by the
shirt and threw him across the room.

Later we found out his collar bone was broken.

>> The priest would take a leather harness
strap and he would beat my husband.

And every time that strap would come
down on him, how he would repeat

to himself I'll never forget my
language, he was thinking that.

I will never forget my language.

>> The boy's father, an old warrior came
to the school, he told the instructor

that among his people children were
never punished by striking them.

That that was no way to teach children.

Kind words and good examples were much better.

Lone Wolf, Black Feet.

>> Each day stretched into another endless day.

Each night for tears to fall.

Tomorrow, my sister said, tomorrow never came.

And so the days passed by and the
changes slowly came to settle within me.

Gone were the vivid pictures of
my parents, sisters and brothers.

Only a blurred vision of what used to be.

Desperately I tried to cling to the faded past
which was slowly being erased from my mind.

[ Music ]

>> For traditional cultures,
the effect was devastating.

Boarding school graduates returned to the
schools and encouraged new students fresh

from the reservations to
give up their traditions.

>> Don't look back, all that has passed away.

This country through her is all improved.

You saw when you were coming, cities,
railroads, houses, manufactories.

Boys, this was once all our country but our
fathers had not their eyes open as we have.

Now, the only way to hold our
land is to get educated ourselves.

Henry Jones, Creek.

>> But the home cultures were not altogether
powerless against boarding school invasion.

Many held firmly to their
traditions and returning graduates

who did not readopt found they
had no place in their old world.

[ Train Whistle ]

>> [Background Music] It
was a warm summer evening

when I got off the train at Taos Station.

The first Indian I met I asked him to run out
to the Pueblo and tell my family I was home.

The Indian couldn't speak English and I
have forgotten all of my Pueblo language.

Next morning, the governor of the Pueblo and
two war chiefs came into my father's house.

They did not talk to me.

They did not even look at me.

The chief said to my father, your son who calls
himself Rafael has lived with the white men.

He has been far away.

He has not learned the things
that Indian boys should learn.

He has no hair.

He cannot even speak our language.

He is not one of us.

Sun Elk, Taos.

>> These things that made life
for us, the most important thing,

these were the things they took
away from us and today so many

of our Indian children have forgotten
their language even here on our reservation

because they took that language away from us.

Our language that God gave us.

>> When we started this series we wanted
to make sense of how our continent

of some 500 Indian Nations
became what it is today.

What we found was an ironic path.

New commerce looking for freedom
and tolerance but showing little

of those virtues to the people they encounter.

Many Indian nations have survived.

Today, there are over 10 million
Indian people in North America

with two million in United States alone.

They no longer face conquistadors
or invading settlers.

But they continue to deal
with the complex struggle

to maintain their cultures and quality of life.

>> It's difficult to explain like
the native people are like a root.

You know, where everything grows there.

It's their community, it's their land.

That's where they live.

That's where they are born.

That's where they have their grandparents
buried, the ancestors were there.

The language is there, everything is there.

And then you ask them to change their
way of life so you carry them away.

I say it's just like when you try to plant a
tree, let's say, a spruce tree in a desert land,

even though you put water
in it, it's going ot dry.

It's going to die.

>> Our people, our families had been telling
us all these stories all these many years,

and at last we finally set foot and walked
in the areas and slept in the country

where our grandmothers and
grandfathers started from.

[ Music ]

And I can just imagine how my grandmothers
and my grandfathers would have felt

if they had come back like I did.

And I saw those places for them.

I was able to return.

>> I think a lot of times the general public
doesn't understand where the Native Americans,

their feelings of what's happened to them
in the past, and where they're coming from.

And why they're sometimes withdrawn.

Why they haven't really jumped
into the mainstream life.

>> I think what present-day Americans have to
learn is that our heroes are not their heroes,

and their heroes are not our heroes.

And when I went to school, just as
you and everyone else in this land,

we've all been exposed to the same value
system, the same perspective on history.

The lesson that is there, the
very important lesson, today,

for all people is to realize the value

of an alternative perspective
and that is why we are here.

That is why the creator allowed
some of us to remain in spite

of all the attempts to destroy us.

[Background Music] Every tribe has
had their Great Swamp in that process.

Every tribe has had their Sand Creek.

Every tribe has had their Wounded Knee.

The list is endless, and we've all
shared in that same experience.

[ Music ]

>> [Background Music] I went to a
meeting at Wounded Knee in November,

when there was snow all over
all over the ground.

And we were on our way to the burial site.

I could not help but think back.

And there was a feeling there.

There was a feeling that those that were there
in the grave were trying to tell me something.

And it brought tears to my eyes.

And I stood there, and there was a spirit
that came over and I could feel that spirit.

It was the spirit of God.

[ Music ]

>> There is a mightier power than kings and
presidents who guides the minds of the people.

A higher power.

>> The mandates are very simple, you know, that
we must live in the land that the Creator gave

to us and look after his gifts so that
our great-great-grandchildren will be able

to enjoy the same things that we enjoy today.

If you look at natural laws in a very simplest
form is that you must drink water to survive.

So if you pollute the water so that you
can't drink it then you will perish.

And there's no appeal to this
if you violate the natural laws.

>> Someday I fear that the land that we
have here now will be taken because some

of the treaties state that
as long as the water flows

and the grasses grow, that we will be here.

But our rivers are drying up and when
the water's gone what will happen then?

What's going to happen to my children?

>> Our cultures have been assaulted,
our lands have been stolen.

But we're still here as a people.

And we're fighting the same battles that
have been fought for the last 300 years.

They're unresolved.

And it's up to us to resolve them
in a fair and honorable manner.

Destiny is not a matter of fate.

It's a matter of choice.

And we have some choices to be made here.

We have the choice of continuing to
survive on this planet as Indian people.

That's our goal, and we're
going to accomplish that.

We're going to be here for
many, many years to come.

[ Music ]

>> Tall Oak of the Narragansett
Nation said it was his destiny,

perhaps that of all native people, to be the
conscience of America, to see that the tragedy

of the past would never be repeated.

Hopefully, now that we've had
a glimpse of the other side

of the American story we too can be
a part of that collective conscience.

Thank you for joining us.

[ Music ]